The Dictatorship
How the left ought to approach the anti-Israel right
The American right is mired in a civil war over Israel.
Over the past year, a number of prominent right-wing pundits and activists have broken from President Donald Trump over his support for Israel and condemned Israeli policy in Gaza as mass murder. This dispute is reaching new heights since the anti-Israel sector of the right — led by right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson and including former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, right-wing podcaster and conspiracist Candace Owens, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, and white supremacist livestreamer Nick Fuentes — has accused Trump of betraying his own MAGA movement by, in their view, allowing Israel to drag the U.S. into the disastrous U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. “I hate this war and the direction that the U.S. government is taking,” Carlson said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published last weekend, while accusing the administration of failing to “act on behalf of its own citizens.”
Much of the pro-Palestinian left is watching with curiosity and amazement. At the peak of its energy objecting to U.S. backing for Israel’s genocide in Gazathe left-wing pro-Palestinian movement was overwhelmingly opposed by the right and sidelined by the Democratic Partyquashed by university administrators and silenced by a shameful round of cancel culture within liberal institutions. Now it watches as the right is riven by its own internal split over support for Israel, with the anti-Israel tendency spearheaded by the most powerful right-wing pundit in America and buoyed by widespread defection from a pro-Israel status quo among Republicans under age 50.
Carlson’s intensifying criticism of Israel does not stem from some kind of new, leftist-inspired commitment to universal human rights.
The pro-Palestinian left — which includes swathes of the Arab American community, movement advocates, democratic socialists, progressive students and a segment of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party — is in a strange position. Some leftists are pondering whether Carlson and his faction are in fact an unlikely ally to the pro-Palestinian movement.
Online, this discussion often takes the form of debating how to respond to Carlson saying humanizing things about Palestinians that can make him sound quite a lot like a leftist when engaging with the mainstream press. Over and over again, this discussion centers on whether one must “hand it to Tucker Carlson” or one of his allies, or whether their seeming correctness on one issue deserves “credit” or should become a basis on which they are “liked.”
But these are the wrong questions. They consider the issue through the cultural lens of whether it is appropriate to applaud. Instead, the left should be asking why Carlson et al. believe what they do — and then use that understanding to form judgments about political action.
Doing this makes clear that the anti-Israel right is not committed in any meaningful sense to Palestinian liberation and is not a friend of the left. That doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities for strategic partnership across the aisle at the level of legislation in Washington. But this is a hardly a case of common cause or grounds for a conjoining of movements.
That’s because Carlson’s intensifying criticism of Israel does not stem from some kind of new, leftist-inspired commitment to universal human rights or egalitarianism. Rather, it can be traced back to the same right-wing white nationalist worldview that he’s held for years, which constantly deploys antisemitic tropes to insinuate that Jews constitute a threat to ideal Western civilization — and that the fundamental problem with Israel is its Jewishness.
Carlson is a staunch advocate of “great replacement” theorya concept that holds that shadowy Jewish financiers are behind porous borders and the replacement of “native” Americans with immigrants. He ascribes to Israel “an Eastern view” that is “totally incompatible with Christianity and Western civilization.” He holds the view that Israel has a secret plan to demolish the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and trigger a global religious war whose primary victims would be “Christian, Western, white countries.” In October he invited Fuentes — a Holocaust denier who has called Adolf Hitler “really f–––ing cool” — onto his podcast for a softball interview, during which Fuentes said “organized Jewry” undermined American cohesion. After his podcast appearance, Fuentes said in a video, “We are done with the Jewish oligarchy. We are done with the slavish surrender to Israel.”
In other words, this faction’s hostility to Israel is tied to the idea that Jews — in the U.S. and outside of it — exert an undue and corrupting influence on American life. Carlson will periodically go out of his way to condemn antisemitism and deny that he supports it, but it’s not hard to see how it animates his worldview if you examine it closely. It’s also evident when, for example, he discusses Russia and Ukraine. He describes Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as “ratlike” and a “persecutor of Christians,” and says he is “more sympathetic” to warmongering Russian President Vladimir Putin than Zelenskyy.
Carlson’s allies also exhibit an aversion to Israel that seems tied to its identity and uncanny “influence” rather than a principled opposition to its misbehavior. Owens subscribes to a whole host of antisemitic conspiracy theories about Israel. More subtly, in Kent’s resignation letter from the Trump administration, he framed the president as innocent in his decision to launch the Iran war, and argued that Israeli leaders “deceived” him into joining it. (Inexplicably, Kent also blamed Israelis for the Iraq War, contra the historical record.)
It is true that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied Trump aggressively to join the war. But the idea that Trump and his entire inner circle were duped, or that he could have been strong-armed while presiding over the most powerful country in the world, is nonsense. The U.S. and Iran have been adversaries for decades, and the U.S. launched a war alongside Israel because it perceived shared interests in hobbling Iran, as well as providing a close ally with uncontested regional hegemony in an area vital to U.S. energy interests.
There also are many other factors explaining why Trump was convinced that dominating Iran would be easier than it has been, including his own anti-intellectualism, the surprising smoothness of his Venezuela intervention and his many yes-men advisers. Kent’s cartoonish theory of the cause of the war only makes sense if one subscribes to the harmful worldview of Israelis as all-powerful puppeteers. And the entire anti-Israel right’s fixation on the country as an engine of U.S. imperialism allows it to preserve the myth of America as wholesome when it isn’t “manipulated”or made a “slave” by subversive outsiders.
The real rationales for right-wing anti-Israel positioning have nothing to do with Palestinian dignity or opposition to Israeli apartheid, genocide and its brutal style of warfare against neighbors. Rather, to the extent that the right mentions Palestinians at all, it uses them as a prop: part of an agenda to force the U.S. to break with Israel based largely on a bigoted suspicion of Jews and isolationist inclinations to withdraw from Middle East interventionism.
So what does it mean from the perspective of left-wing politics? It means the anti-Israel right is a terrible source of media information and political education, because of its noxious ideologies. It also means it’s a bad idea to invite champions of the anti-Israel right to intellectual and political organizing conferences on the left as featured speakers or as friends of the cause. That would mean importing and normalizing antisemitism — and virtually every other kind of bigotry that prevails on the American right — into spaces that are meant to counter bigotry and uphold universal human rights as core principles. The left’s opposition to domination is irreconcilable with the right-wing nationalist ambition to unleash domination within America for “heritage Americans.”
But there are a couple of opportunities here for the left. One is through an emerging opportunity to persuade and recruit people from the right to the left at the grassroots. This can be done by leveraging disenchantment with Trump’s policies on Israel and Iran, and by persuading ordinary, disillusioned right-wingers to rethink their worldview. As polarized as the country is, a nontrivial share of the public floats to different parts of the political spectrum based less on ideology than on broad sentiments about status quo policies and institutions. They can be persuaded to think differently. Consider, for example, the roughly 12% of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential primary voters who cast their general election ballot for Trump in 2016likely based on the notion that any vote against the political-economic establishment and forever wars was worth considering.
Pro-Palestinian organizations and the left more broadly have an opportunity to change the mind of people from the right who are sick of war and instinctively repelled by the carnage in Gaza and who feel betrayed by Trump. This would entail making clear and unapologetically antiracist arguments to persuadables that no group of people — Palestinians, Jews, immigrants, Black people, women, trans people or any other marginalized group — is “the problem.” The real problems are the political and economic systems and ideologies that uphold exploitation and perpetual warfare while scapegoating out-groups.
A charismatic Democratic presidential candidate who is fiercely opposed to the belligerent logic of imperialism has a lane here. Arguing that putting an end to American meddling in other countries’ business and to backing Israeli carnage in the Middle East could plausibly siphon off soft Trump voters who are sick of the wasteful and gruesome business of empire maintenance.
If the anti-Israel right eventually evolves into a significant subset of the GOP in Congress, Democratic lawmakers looking to cut off aid to Israel will have an opportunity to collaborate with those members to bind the president’s hands. (Greene tried to work with a handful of progressive Democrats to oppose Israeli military funding last year.) This kind of cross-ideological strategic partnership is how lawmakers get things done all the time, and a focus on a concrete policy position — no more aid to Israel — wouldn’t require the left to compromise its values. It may be the only way for progressive Democrats to wor k around pro-Israel holdouts in their own party establishment.
The question of how to work with people across different political camps is never a simple one. But here’s something that is straightforward: You don’t have to hand it to Carlson, nor do you have to not hand it to Carlson. You should ignore him and get on with with the real work of liberation and opposing empire.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
A federal judge in Washington has denied a bid Wednesday brought by a watchdog group to immediately block the Justice Department’s “anti-weaponization” fund, for now choosing to trust the department’s assertions that it is not moving forward with the fund.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled immediately, denying Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the Department of Justice from taking steps to create the fund.
Throughout the 30-minute hearing, the DOJ reiterated that the administration was not moving forward with the nearly $1.8 billion fund, which seeks to compensate individuals who allege they have been politically targeted or victimized by the DOJ.
Andrew Block, the only lawyer present for the government, repeatedly cited Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s June 2 congressional testimonyin which he said the administration was “not moving forward” with plans to create the fund.
Leon indicated he agreed with the DOJ’s position that the case appeared to be moot, saying he was not persuaded there was an issue for the court to decide regarding the creation of the fund. He issued a stern warning to the DOJ, saying, “Don’t play possum with this court!” — meaning he does not want to be deceived.
The plaintiffs argued Blanche’s testimony did not amount to an official cancellation. Nikhel Sus, CREW’s attorney, said Blanche “refused to memorialize that rescission,” or in other words, put it in writing. Sus said that was “highly unusual.” Leon responded, “This whole case is highly unusual to say the least.”
Leon asked the government twice why they would not just rescind the order that established the fund. Block responded, “I don’t know,” and pointed again to Blanche’s public statements about the fund’s future.
Both Leon and Sus raised the issue of Trump’s continued public defense of the fund. “It can still be an important issue and also not moving forward,” Block said. “That isn’t a direction to move forward with the fund.”
Although Leon rejected CREW’s bid for an immediate block, he indicated he is still considering its request for a longer-term block against the fund.
A block order from a separate federal judge in Virginia remains in effect until at least Friday.
Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.
The date when Social Security’s trust fund is expected to run out of money just got bumped up. The fund is now projected to empty in 2032according to a new report released by Social Security’s trustees.
The new depletion date isn’t an earth-shaking change — it’s only a quarter earlier than the estimate in last year’s report. But it illustrates how President Donald Trump’s policies are degrading a program he promised to never jeopardize — and accelerating an approaching crisis in how our government will assist the elderly and disabled.
The report names three factors that contributed to the earlier insolvency date. One is a declining fertility rate, but the other two drivers can be traced back to Trump: a drop in immigration into the country, and the “substantial effect” of the tax policies in the One Big Beautiful Bill he signed last summer.
Trump’s acceleration of the program’s insolvency comes atop his assaults on the program’s administrative capacities.
Reduced immigration during Trump’s second term — especially when coupled with a declining fertility rate — strains Social Security because the program is funded through payroll taxes. Those come out of people’s paychecks, and fewer workers supporting an aging population means the program receives less revenue. Indeed, Social Security already has been tapping its trust fund for the better part of the past two decades because the program’s costs have exceeded its cash income. And as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out last yearlast year’s tax cuts were a boon to the rich but a bust for the solvency of the Social Security trust fund.
To be clear, if the fund is depleted, Social Security won’t go belly up. Benefits will continue to be paid out, but there will be a large drop in the amount. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the “average monthly cut would total $500, which is more than what the average retired household spends on groceries each month.”
That would be a huge blow to the budgets of many older Americans. Social Security is a major source of income for most retirees, and roughly 40% of beneficiaries over the age of 65 rely on it for most of their income. And it would mark the destabilization of the sole source of retirement security for most Americans that is supposed to be insulated from ups and downs — unlike 401K plans. As the CBPP has pointed outSocial Security is “most workers’ only source of guaranteed retirement income that is not subject to investment risk or financial market fluctuations.”
Trump’s acceleration of the program’s insolvency comes atop his assaults on the program’s administrative capacities. His cuts to the Social Security Administration have left offices understaffedincreased wait timesand reduced quality of customer service.
Ultimately, Trump is exacerbating a colossal social safety net problem that predates him, and the trust fund will hit dire straits after he has left office. Democrats need to have clear plans for shoring up the program and making it robust for the future — which will require not being sheepish about taxes as a tool for renewing the social contract. And when Republicans try to claim that they, too, are champions of Social Security, all Democrats need to do is point to the truth.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The latest from Northern Ireland: “The family of a man who lost an eye in a knife attack appealed for calm on Wednesday after the incident triggered a wave of anti-immigrant violence in Belfast overnight, with masked men burning families out of their homes and torching vehicles. The appeal came as a Sudanese man appeared in court charged with attempted murder and as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and politicians in Northern Ireland condemned the violence by ‘masked thugs’ that had targeted ethnic minorities.”
* In related news: “The British government hit out at X owner Elon Musk Wednesday, accusing him of whipping up tensions online ahead of disorder in Belfast.”
* The tenuous state of a dubious ceasefire: “Trump said the U.S. is going to hit Iran ‘hard’ today when pressed by reporters in the Oval Office about his statement earlier that Tehran will ‘pay the price’ for taking ‘too long’ to reach a peace agreement. ‘Well, we’re going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard, resuming bombing,’ he said.”
* The latest casualty figures from Lebanon: “Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon has killed at least 3,666 people, including 131 healthcare workers, and injured more than 11,300 since the U.S. and Israel began their war with Iran in late February, the Lebanese health ministry reported yesterday.”
* The changing nature of modern warfare: “Ukraine is wreaking havoc on unarmored trucks and trains in the battlefield’s rear, using drones with upgraded engines and batteries, integrated Starlink communication systems and new artificial-intelligence capabilities. The ramped-up attacks are causing fuel shortages, complicating troop rotations and reducing Russian military activity on the front.”
* This seems like a reasonable request: “Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee demanded Wednesday that Bill Pulte, President Donald Trump’s controversial pick for acting director of national intelligence, submit to a full security check before assuming the post, including an examination of his financial holdings and foreign contacts.”
* Some market trends can’t be stopped despite the White House’s best efforts: “Even as President Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the U.S. and remains the leading source of new power. Data released Wednesday by global energy think tank Ember, along with a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, show the continued growth of solar and decline of coal in the United States despite federal policy. In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal, or 12.8%, Ember said.”
* A bizarre schedule for a nonemergency vanity project: “Federal officials are laying more groundwork to begin construction on President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, sharing additional documents that detail the project’s scope and an aggressive timetable for potentially completing work before Trump’s term ends. According to National Park Service documents posted this month, the administration envisions 20 hours per day of construction on the arch, year-round, in hopes of completing the project within two to three years.”
See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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