Tucker Carlson, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds. Donald Trump, and JD Vance at the Republican National Convention. Photo by Getty Images

Contributing Columnist Jay Michaelson September 9, 2024

It should now be clear that Donald Trump and JD Vance will put up with all kinds of antisemitism, even Holocaust denial, if it is in their political interests to do so. The question is whether enough American Jews will as well.

The most recent case in point: Vance’s refusal to condemn far-right conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson for legitimizing, publicizing and agreeing with a Holocaust “revisionist,” Darryl Cooper, on his show on X.

Carlson called Cooper “maybe the best and most honest popular historian working in the United States today.” Cooper proceeded to explain that the Holocaust was not a deliberate campaign to exterminate Jews, but a kind of side-effect of the war. Because of Winston Churchill’s refusal to negotiate a peace agreement, Cooper explained, Germany found itself in “a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners.”

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Cooper continued, “They went in with no plan for that and they just threw these people into camps. And millions of people ended up dead there.”

Now, presumably, in the Forward, I don’t need to fact-check these complete fabrications about the deliberate, calculated plan for the murder of six million Jews. These aren’t disputed historical facts; they have been established and reestablished countless times. Only an ignoramus or a liar would call them into question.

Cooper is a bit of each. He is not a trained historian, but he is a successful right-wing podcaster who first rose to fame in the wake of the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. (Interestingly, at the time, Cooper didn’t endorse the Big Lie, but blamed the fact that people fell for it on widespread mistrust of “liberal media.”)  Since then, he’s taken the well-trodden “contrarian” approach of questioning anything “institutions” say, up to and including actual historians. 

Cooper’s overall claim about World War II is that Churchill, not Hitler, was the real villain in the war, and the West has taken the wrong lesson from it — namely, that we should fight fascism and far-right ultra-nationalism. Indeed, later in the episode, Cooper echoed longstanding antisemitic conspiracy theories by blaming Britain’s entry into the war on pressure “by people, the financiers, by a media complex, that wanted to make sure [Churchill] was the guy who was representing Britain in that conflict for a reason.” 

Cooper even added an anti-Zionist twist, saying that “You read stories about Churchill going bankrupt and needing money, getting bailed out by people who shared his interests in terms of Zionism.”

If you ever needed an example for “Zionism” and “media complex” and “financiers” being antisemitic code words for “Jews,” this interview is a shining example. 

But Carlson didn’t condemn or even question these comments. On the contrary, he continued to fawn over Cooper, whose views, after all, align with Carlson’s embrace of the antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory” — i.e., that Jews are bringing in millions of immigrants to change the demographic balance of America.

Now, if you last checked in on Tucker Carlson three years ago, when he was ousted from Fox News for making overtly racist comments while lying about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, this story may not seem like a big deal. Carlson is some fringe figure on the far right, isn’t he?  No one cares what he has to say anymore.

Wrong. It was Carlson, according to many reports, who persuaded Trump to pick JD Vance as his VP over more moderate figures like Marco Rubio and Doug Burghum. He may be on the far right, but he’s definitely not on the fringe. He has Donald Trump’s ear, and Vance has him to thank for his new job opportunity.

And so Vance has consistently defended him. 

At first, Vance defended him because free speech. “We believe in free speech and debate,” he said. “The Democrats used to be the party where if you had an idea you didn’t like, you pushed back against it, you fought back against it, you criticized it. This whole idea that has taken hold in the far left of this country, that if you see a bad idea, the way to solve it is to censor it, I think it’s ridiculous.” 

No, what’s ridiculous here is conflating “free speech” with giving someone their largest-yet national platform and heartily agreeing with him while he denies the existence of the Holocaust. Cooper has 251,000 X followers; Carlson has 13.7 million. That is the kind of opportunity that a journalist like me would (metaphorically) kill for. And it paid off: After the Carlson interview, Martyr Made became the #1 podcast in America on iTunes. 

That is what we mean by “platforming.”  And obviously Vance knows it.

Lest this sound like some liberal take, here’s how ADL executive director Jonathan Greenblatt put it: “Someone needs to explain to @JDVance  that it’s not “guilt by association” when  @TuckerCarlson was slammed for laundering and legitimizing someone who engages in Holocaust denial and distortion. It’s guilt by action. Don’t dismiss it – condemn it.”

Exactly right. “Laundering and legitimizing” aren’t the same as tolerating free speech. They are guilt by action. And in Carlson’s case, they made Cooper the most popular podcaster in America. Which itself should be chilling.

Vance did offer a second defense of his defense of Carlson: Israel. “Senator Vance doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture,” said a statement from his campaign, “but he obviously does not share the views of the guest interviewed by Tucker Carlson. “There are no stronger supporters of our allies in Israel or the Jewish community in America than Senator Vance and President Trump.”

Which really is the core of the issue: the great Faustian deal of the MAGA Republican Party. The base of the modern GOP is now soaked in antisemitism, white supremacy, and conspiracy theories. There is no denying it; Carlson speaks to them and for them. 

But, at the same time, much of this same base is, indeed, highly supportive of Israel’s own far-right government. Which makes sense: As far right nationalist movements, they have a lot in common. And, of course, a large percentage of the Republican base is made up of Christian Zionists, who want Jews to be in Israel so that the apocalyptic world war that will bring the Second Coming of Christ can get underway as quickly as possible. 

In the weird politics of 2024, this is the package deal that the Republican party offers American Jews. You get staunch support of Israel, but along with it, you get Holocaust deniers defended by JD Vance, neo-Nazis like Nick Fuentes, spreaders of antisemitic conspiracy theories like Elon Musk, rabid antisemites like Candace Owens, and a presidential candidate who said that people marching through Charlottesville with torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us” are, in part, “very good people.”

So, my fellow American Jews, is this bargain worthwhile? 

Let’s be honest. We know why Vance isn’t condemning Carlson, and why he’s still slated to appear with him at a rally in two weeks. Because Carlson commands the base, and put Vance where he is today. Free speech has nothing to do with it.

The only question is whether the porridge of support for Israel’s right-wing government is worth the birthright of American Jews’ safety in a democratic America.

And no, there is no equivalence between Carlson legitimizing holocaust denial and anything the Democrats have said regarding Israel/Palestine. Yes, there are pro-Palestinian (and Palestinian) voices in the Democratic Party, but they are not in the leadership of that party. Just take it from the pro-Palestine crowd, which is heckling and boycotting Kamala Harris, and which may well swing the election for Donald Trump. 

The only way this situation would be equivalent would be if Rep. Rashida Tlaib were the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

I admit, the choice is easier for me than for some American Jews. I support Israel, but I don’t support this war anymore, and haven’t for many months. I think there should be a ceasefire and hostage release deal immediately, and it’s clear that Netanyahu is holding it up. So my politics align with Harris’s anyway. 

But I’d like to think that if they didn’t, if I were one of the thousands of Jewish Republicans who are reasonable, hawkish, and fiscally conservative, I’d still reject the MAGA package deal. I hope I’d see that supporting Israel a bit more zealously isn’t worth the holocaust denial, Christian Nationalism, neo-Nazis, QAnon, and countless antisemitic conspiracy theories — not on some college campus somewhere, but at the very highest levels of the party. 

At the very least, I hope I’d be a little unnerved.

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