If one were determined to completely split President Trump's MAGA coalition, how would one proceed? Trying to drive a wedge on the immigration issue doesn't necessarily make sense: Hardening and securing America's borders is so fundamental to the nationalist-populist MAGA project that there may be little room in the coalition for much dissent. Trying to divide MAGA along lines of economic laissez-faire or populism is also doomed to failure: As important as pocketbook issues are to ordinary Americans, the fickle details of fiscal policy generally do not stoke burning passions.
However, one could do much worse than focus on Jews and, specifically, the respective relations between American Jews and American Christians and between the United States and Israel. I experienced this firsthand, once again, this week.
As a practicing Jew, I was recently offline for the holiday of Sukkot, also known as the Festival of Tents or the Feast of Tabernacles. Of all the Jewish holidays, it is the one most closely associated with pure joy and happiness. how is says in Leviticus“You will rejoice before the Lord your God for a period of seven days.” And so I did.
When I came back online on Wednesday afternoon, I discovered that while I was away, the unhinged Conspiracy theorist Candace Owens had he accused me ridiculously of prior knowledge – or perhaps complicity – in the murder of my own friend charlie kirk. A statement like that is, at best, egregious behavior. Anything goes, it seems, to push the (completely unfounded) narrative that Jews had something to do with Kirk's death.
Owens is not the only prominent center-right voice to have embarked on this dark path. Tucker Carlson, the one-time king of cable news who now works as a dissident podcaster, has demonstrated an unhealthy obsession with the Jewish people and the State of Israel. From accusing Israel of “genocide” to entertaining Hitler/Nazi Apology to “simply ask questions” about whether Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad asset to discarding the Hebrew Bible In itself, Carlson's agenda has become completely clear.
The list goes on. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and her former colleague Matt Gaetz spend an inordinate amount of time these days criticizing the alleged (and supposedly nefarious) Jewish and Israeli influence on American culture and politics. Low-name Jew-hating conspirators sometimes find their way into the the most popular podcasts in the country.
All this, meanwhile, while Trump, the leader of the MAGA movement, continues openly supportive of the close relations between the United States and Israel. Furthermore, the Trump Justice Department and the administration in general continue loyal supporters of the security of the Jewish people. From his first to his second term, Trump has been the The most pro-Jewish president. in American history.
So what happens?
The immediate goal of this concerted disinformation operation is the degradation of American Jews, but the more politically salient goal is the gaslighting of American evangelical Christians, the core of the MAGA base and an overwhelmingly pro-Jewish and pro-Israel electorate. By focusing so much on the Jewish people and the Jewish state, these provocateurs have a much broader goal in mind than simply isolating America's small Jewish minority. They also want to distance themselves from evangelicals.
The goal, then, appears to be nothing less than the complete supplanting of MAGA by a new political movement – an angry, ultra-conspiratorial, unbiblical man, neopagan movement of misfits and their parasites.
Given the extraordinarily ambitious (and cowardly) nature of that goal, the stakes are high. Historically, political movements die when they become subsumed by paranoid hatred of Jews. Likewise, societies crumble and nations perish when they turn against their Jewish populations and fall prey to the world's oldest fanaticism.
And for evangelical Christians who support the Jewish people and the Jewish state, the entire operation is nothing less than a collective slap in the face. Jews are harmed and Christians are insulted.
The contrast between what I experienced during Sukkot and what I discovered afterwards is both stark and illuminating. While I was “rejoicing” with my family before God, as I have been commanded to do, the agents of destruction were inventing the most outlandish lies imaginable to sow division and resentment. It is the eternal struggle of humanity that goes back millennia: justice versus tyranny, order versus chaos, light versus darkness.
I know which side of that eternal divide I am on. My hope is that the American right and the MAGA coalition also know which side they are on.
Josh Hammer's latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Fate of the West.”.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer
