The virus of Jew-hatred on the right is spreading
It won’t be contained by trying to sweet-talk those who are
failing to speak out or who are being seduced by political commentators
Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
JNS
Feb 11, 2026
Carrie
Prejean Boller, former Miss California and conservative activist, takes part in the first hearing of the White House Religious Freedom Commission during which she went on an extended rant of Jew-hatred, February
9, 2026. Boller has a long history of antisemitism and is a staunch defender of Jew-haters Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
It was the last thing observers ought to
have expected to witness at a hearing of the U.S. Religious Liberty
Commission in Washington, D.C. The discussion
was supposed to highlight the Trump administration’s strong opposition
to the surge of antisemitism that has spread around the country and
across the globe since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks
in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But what took place on Feb. 9
illustrated something else.
The meeting was hijacked
by one of the commissioners, former “Miss California” Carrie Prejean
Boller, who went on an extended rant of Jew-hatred. In so doing, the
C-list, right-wing celebrity managed to highlight a growing problem that
has perplexed the Jewish community as well as Republicans. President
Donald Trump has been successfully leveraging the power of the federal
government to pressure a leftist dominated academic establishment to
reject the antisemitism that has been mainstreamed since Oct. 7. But
while he’s been doing that, a significant portion of his own electoral
coalition is mimicking the same blood libels that pro-Hamas mobs and
their enablers among the Democrats have been plugging for the past two
years and more.
No longer marginal
Boller’s performance created a brief
firestorm that the administration quickly sought to put out. Her
behavior, however, was a reminder not just of the virulence of
Jew-hatred that is spreading. It also made clear that its adherents are
not marginal figures confined to the fever swamps of the far right, but
instead, have a firm foothold inside the Trump camp.
This has confounded the Jewish and
pro-Israel communities, who were already having a hard enough time
trying to focus on the admittedly far greater threat of antisemitism on
the left. And it provided yet another example of why the stakes in an
increasingly bitter debate about what can be done about it are so high.
During the course of the hearing, Boller,
who was wearing a pin with American and Palestinian flags, claimed that
“Catholics do not embrace Zionism.” While the hearing was aimed at
providing testimony about how Jewish students are being targeted by
left-wing Israel-bashers and how anti-Zionism is indistinguishable from
antisemitism, Boller seemed determined to speak up for the cause of the
Jew-haters.
She declared that notorious antisemites
like political commentators and podcasters Tucker Carlson and Candace
Owens were merely opponents of Zionism and innocent of the prejudice
that they regularly platform. She also demanded that a witness
testifying about hatred and bigotry on college campuses “condemn” Israel
for its war on Hamas in Gaza.
Her comments generated justified
outrage—not only at her, but at the president for having the bad
judgment to reward her for her support for his re-election with a post
on the commission. Despite calls for her resignation from many on the
right, Boller vowed
that she would “never bend the knee to the State of Israel. Ever.” She
also echoed Carlson’s vicious attacks on evangelicals and Christian
Zionists, and showcasing a twisted version of Catholicism in which Jews
and Israel are depicted as enemies of American conservatives. That
heretofore obscure sector of the right has been getting greater notice
since Carlson hosted “groyper” neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes on his program—and then was defended by the otherwise pro-Israel and anti-antisemitic Heritage Foundation, including its president, Kevin Roberts.
Two days later, the commission’s chairman, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who had tried to rein in Boller at the hearing, announced
that she had been removed from her post. That, in turn, set off a
brushfire of criticism from the far right, including by Owens, claiming
that the “Zionists” had exerted their nefarious influence and removed
the former beauty queen and Trump supporter because she was a
“Christian.”
It doesn’t really matter whether this is
the last that we’ll hear from Boller, who is someone who has a talent
for generating controversy. She was forced to give up her beauty-queen
title for (depending on which version of the story you believe) either
expressing her opinion about gay marriage or for having made a sex tape.
Since then, she has married a former NFL quarterback and gone on to
become a loud opponent of gender ideology and supporter of Trump.
Vance’s neutrality
What does matter is how the virus of
Jew-hatred that is spreading on the right can be contained and rolled
back. The seriousness of the problem was made even more obvious at the
Turning Point USA America Fest in December. When Vice President JD Vance
declared
himself neutral in the debate about the spread of antisemitism that
broke out between conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and Carlson, that
not only signaled his sympathy for the latter. It also indicated a
clear breach in the movement and among administration supporters over
the question of whether there was room in their collective tent for
antisemites.
And it’s far from clear whether anyone in the world of pro-Israel and Jewish activism has a handle on what to do about it.
This was brought into focus last month at
the Second International Conference on Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem, when
prominent author Yoram Hazony gave a speech
that was interpreted by some as blaming the problem on the failures of
Jews and pro-Israel activists to sufficiently explain the issue to a
broad cross-section of people on the right. It generated blowback not
just toward Hazony for what seemed like a tone-deaf response to the
situation, but to the entire idea of an alliance between Jews and the
national conservative movement.
Hazony heads the Herzl Institute and the
Edmund Burke Foundation, the latter of which has hosted a series of
NatCon conferences where prominent conservatives like Vance have spoken.
His ideas about the failure of liberalism and the reasons why nationalism
is important to the defense of Western civilization and Jewish
security, rather than an inherent threat to it, have rightly gained a
wide audience in recent years. But the movement that he has helped found
is now under fire for its alliance with a sector of the right, a
significant portion of which is now showing itself hostile to Jews and
the Jewish state.
Hazony condemned Carlson’s antisemitism.
Still, he argues that the Jewish world has failed to reach people like
Vance, as well as a rising generation of conservative activists who seem
to be listening to Carlson and even Fuentes. That is undoubtedly true.
But by focusing on the failures of what he called the
“antisemitism-industrial complex”—a reference to Jewish establishment
groups like the Anti-Defamation League—he seemed to be blaming the Jews,
as opposed to those who target the Jews. That may not have been what he
meant; regardless, the damage was done, and it has given an opening for
those who opposed his ideas all along to claim that recent events have
discredited them.
A noxious brand of Jew-hatred
I don’t agree. I think the focus of the
Natcons on a more common-good version of conservatism—stressing the
importance of faith, tradition, nationalism and opposing globalist
economics—is entirely correct. But while I’ve been a vocal critic of the
ADL, what has happened with Carlson and his supporters isn’t the
organization’s fault. It’s a function of a revival of a particularly
noxious brand of Jew-hatred that has a long history on the right, dating
back to Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s to Pat Buchanan in the
1990s. And, as is the case with left-wing antisemites like New York City
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, there is no way to compromise with them or
sweet-talk them into giving up their ideological obsessions with
scapegoating Jews.
It may be that Vance will realize that his
presidential ambitions—right now, he is the clear GOP frontrunner in
the 2028 presidential race—are incompatible with a stance of neutrality
or a lack of concern about right-wing antisemitism. If so, that will
cause him to cut his ties with Carlson. Nor is there any reason why he
or other prominent Republicans should turn on Israel the way Carlson
has. Indeed, Vance has at times shown himself to be an advocate for the U.S.-Israel alliance.
But if he won’t disown Carlson, then it is
incumbent on all decent people, including those who rightly see great
merit in national conservatism and its defense of the West, to cut ties
with him. The same must apply to anyone on the right who, like Carlson,
opposes the idea of a Judeo-Christian heritage (something that is
antithetical to national conservatism), and who makes common cause with
leftist antisemites and anti-Zionists.
The focus on right-wing conservatism isn’t
a plot against Vance, the Trump coalition or national conservatism.
Antisemitism is never caused by anything the Jews do. It is always a
manifestation of the neuroses and the willingness of political factions
to use hatred against this particular minority to gain power.
The hate-mongers must be condemned
Opponents of antisemitism and supporters
of Israel must seek to persuade a generation of young people to disdain
the voices of the woke right. Those who haven’t been on trips to
Israel—or who may have been influenced by far-right ideas and the
pervasive woke leftism in the education system—must realize that they
are making a mistake by going down the rabbit hole of antisemitism. They
need to reach those being misled into believing that their Catholic
faith is antithetical to support for Israel and Zionism—something that
was made clear at the Religious Liberty Commission hearing. But just
like the effort to roll back the woke tide on the left that Trump has
championed, that won’t be accomplished by going easy on the haters.
Doing so may come at a political cost. Yet
it shouldn’t break up the burgeoning national conservative coalition.
That movement includes both American and European right-wingers who also
reject the erasure of borders and the war on Western civilization that
the woke left has been waging. Many of these people are natural allies
of Israel and the Jewish people. But if it does, then so be it.
The hate speech of Carlson, Owens and
Boller and the failure of some prominent figures on the right to condemn
them must never be condoned, rationalized or excused. Those who would
pull their punches in combating right-wing Jew-haters out of a concern
for maintaining partisan alliances are just as profoundly wrong as
liberals who do the same thing with erstwhile allies on the left.
