Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

After condemning Nazism, Paul Gosar to share stage with members of Austrian party founded by Nazis

The Arizona Republican will attend a Conservative Political Action Conference hosted by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán

Rep. Paul Gosar’s record on antisemitism can be hard to summarize.

In the span of a few weeks, the far-right Arizona Republican denounced Nazis, promoted antisemitic content on a pro-Nazi website and attended a pro-Israel event on Capitol Hill. This week he’ll share a stage with an authoritarian leader who has invoked antisemitic tropes and members of a European political party that was founded by former Nazi officers. 

Gosar was invited to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual gathering in Hungary, which kicks off Thursday. The conference, organized by U.S. and European allies of the Republican-affiliated American Conservative Union, will also feature Viktor Orbán, the longtime populist prime minister of Hungary, who has glorified Nazi collaborators and used antisemitic dog whistles during his reelection campaigns. The gathering will also welcome Herbert Kickl, chairman of the Freedom Party of Austria, which was founded by former Nazis in 1956; Harald Vilimsky, an FPÖ member of the European Parliament and Jack Posobiec, a conspiracy theorist with white nationalist ties.

Several former Trump administration officials are also planning to attend. 

When Orbán spoke at CPAC’s conference in Dallas last August, he invoked the Holocaust and assailed Jewish billionaire George Soros in an unleashed attack on progressive Democrats and the mainstream media. Gosar has also lambasted Soros, floating the false theory that the Holocaust survivor funded the neo-Nazis who organized a deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville 

Caroline Wren, a CPAC spokesperson, called Orbán “an incredible leader” and praised Gosar for accepting the invitation. “Every member of Congress should come to Hungary and learn how to emulate Orbán’s governing style,” she said. 

A spokesperson for Gosar didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Gosar has associated himself with white nationalists, attended a couple of conferences organized by Nick Fuentes, a prominent white supremacist and  Holocaust denier, and appeared on the southern border with a pro-Nazi blogger. Media Matters, a left-leaning nonprofit that monitors news outlets, has charged that Gosar, on at least 30 occasions, has embraced antisemitic tropes and antisemites.

The Republican congressman faced backlash last month for promoting antisemitic content in his weekly newsletter, which he distributes each Sunday through his U.S. House email. The April 17 edition featured a link to a neo-Nazi website praising him for opposing U.S. assistance to Ukraine, but omitted an antisemitic reference from the original headline that described senior Biden administration officials as “Jewish warmongers.”

Gosar defended the email, saying that “it’s not possible to read every article on every website we link to.” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, countered on Twitter that Gosar is trying to “brush off his platforming of antisemitic content and long-standing support for white nationalists.”  

In last month’s newsletter, Gosar said he “will never support Nazis,” adding that “it’s difficult to believe” he has to denounce support for Nazis in 2023. And last week, Gosar spoke at a Jewish event celebrating Israel’s 75th anniversary and honoring  former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. 

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.