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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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Candace Owens out at the Daily Wire

This is less than 24-hours after the ADL publicly attacked Candace, and Mediaite reports:

Owens’s departure comes after months of tensions between her and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro over her promotion of various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Her promotion of so-called antisemitic conspiracy theories has definitely been noticed on DR Twitter, and she's been engaged in public spats with a certain Rabbi Schmuley. So this isn't really a surprise, but it's a significant development that DR critiques of Zionism are making their way into Right-wing mainstream, as other rhetoric has in the past 10 years.

Candace is breaking from the Zionist right at the same time Tucker Carlson has turned heel on US support for Israel, and even Alex Jones who is notorious for his "the Chicoms are behind everything I love Judeo-Christian values" schtick - his willingness to humor every conspiracy theory to his audience except ZOG - yesterday accused Israel of Genocide.

I have a lot of criticisms of Nick Fuentes and his movement, but there has to be credit where it's due. I remember the Bush years, support for Israel was simply axiomatic and it was unthinkable for anybody to believe any differently. That has changed, and Zionism now faces a pincer movement of critique from both the Left and the Right, with the Right-wing critique of Zionism growing in influence among younger audiences.

with the Right-wing critique of Zionism growing in influence among younger audiences.

Are we sure about that? Certainly the left-wing critique of Zionism is growing in influence, but I'm not sure about the right-wing critique (to say nothing of explicitly DR ideas). I get the impression that when young people are critical of Israel, it's overwhelmingly for progressive reasons: Jews are white colonialists who are oppressing the non-white Palestinians, and opposing Israel is part of the broader struggle for racial justice. Right-wing inflected critiques of Israel seem to me to be as fringe as ever in the mainstream conscience. But I do agree with your general point that even "normie" right-wing media has become edgier recently; Fox News is a lot more willing to say "white" than they were a few years ago.

https://forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/part-1-The-Social-Costs-of-Being-Jewish-and-Supporting-Israel-on-Campus-What-a-Before-After-Survey-Can-Tell-Us.pdf

Interesting polling shows weirdly, conservatives are most likely to think Israeli civilians are valid Hamas targets, conservative students are more likely to avoid Jews because of Israel, conservatives are less likely to see anti-semitism as a problem in American society. Now, there's some interesting stuff about how Jewish students feel on campus, but the idea it's progressives are the leading edge of general Jewish hatred.