Identity/Crisis: “Carlson, Fuentes, and the New/Old Antisemitism” with Yair Rosenberg
Aired: November 18, 2025 | Host: Yehuda Kurtzer | Guest: Yair Rosenberg

Episode Overview

This episode explores the resurgence and transformation of antisemitism in America, focusing on the public platforming of white nationalist Nick Fuentes by Tucker Carlson, a leading right-wing media figure. Yehuda Kurtzer and journalist Yair Rosenberg analyze how antisemitic ideas are being amplified in America’s contemporary media landscape, the generational shifts in antisemitism, the inadequacies and pitfalls of Jewish communal responses, and the socio-political forces behind these developments. The conversation weaves current events, such as populist politics and social media culture, into a broader historical and psychological context, interrogating both the power and limitations of American Jews in contending with this menace.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

The New Landscape: Anti-Semites and Amplification (01:06–04:50)

• Networked Antisemitism:
  Kurtzer sets the stage by noting the irony that while antisemitism alleges a conspiratorial network among Jews, it's actually the anti-semites who are forming networks—amplified by digital technology.
• Nick Fuentes’ Platforming:
  Tucker Carlson, once a mainstream conservative, now hosts Fuentes—“badge of honor” NEET, open white nationalist, and author of violently antisemitic positions—to an audience of millions.
• The Overton Window: Radically antisemitic ideas now circulate in mainstream right-wing circles, shifting the bounds of acceptable public discourse with stunning rapidity.
• Mainstream vs. Extremism:
  The episode highlights a crisis: Are such extreme antisemitic assertions “serious,” “literal,” or just “cartoonishly evil” and thus easily dismissed?

“The magnitude of that kind of platforming is enormous and the backlash has been fascinating.” — Yehuda Kurtzer (03:52)

Why Is This Happening? Demographics, Memory, and Incentives (09:47–16:16)

The Changing Incentive Structure

• Rosenberg avoids psychoanalyzing Carlson’s motives, instead focusing on structural shifts:
  “People like Tucker Carlson… are not in fact creating the antisemitism so much as they are supply rising to meet demand.” (10:18)

Data on Generational Antisemitism

• Youth Are More Antisemitic:
  Polling (e.g., Kamala Harris campaign data from 2024) shows ~25% of young Americans openly harbor negative views of Jews—across party lines. Prejudice isn’t dying with age, it's rising among youth (11:15–12:36).

The Impact of Lost Holocaust Memory

• Memory Gaps Fuel Prejudice:
  The postwar American consensus against antisemitism was based not on Jewish storytelling but on the direct and secondhand experiences of non-Jews (veterans, clergy, media) who encountered Nazi atrocities. Now, young generations lack both firsthand and transmitted memory—leading to a “reversion” to prewar suspicion and blame (13:31–15:35).

“What affected how [Americans] treated Jews was not the Jewish experience, it was the non-Jewish experience of the Holocaust.” — Yair Rosenberg (12:50)

• Holocaust education has done little to address the unique role of antisemitism; universalizing the lesson dilutes its relevance to the specific risks Jews face (15:35–16:16).

Populism, Conspiracy, and the Trans-Political Nature of Antisemitism (16:16–22:00)

Populist Distrust and its Cost

• 2016 as a turning point: the rise of populism, left and right (Trump, Sanders), driven by justified grievances against elites.
• Populism’s downside: It easily morphs into scapegoating, with “a shadowy cabal at the top” blamed for all ills—a dynamic antisemitism is ready to exploit.
• Both left- and right-wing populisms feed or appropriate antisemitic ideas, framing “global elites” or “Zionists/Jews” as the enemy.

“All you have to do is say that those people are the Jews. And then there’s centuries of propaganda and Google searches backing you up.” — Yair Rosenberg (18:40)

From “Jews” to “the Jews”

• The leap from identifying individual Jews in power to ascribing collective guilt is at the heart of conspiracy logic.
  – “You do actually have Jews who are human beings who happen to be Jewish, who are sometimes easy to depict as the caricature of a cabal… once you do ‘Jews’, it’s easy to jump to ‘the Jews’.” — Yehuda Kurtzer (21:07)

Antisemitism in Christian Right, Evangelicalism, and Shifts within Conservatism (24:06–31:01)

Conservatism & Christianity

• Bret Stephens’ theory: the hard alignment of conservatism with Christianity has re-imported Christian antisemitism, shedding earlier philosophical respect for religious pluralism (24:06).
• Rosenberg pushes back: “Every ideology is subject to hypocrisy… There are good and bad versions of Christianity, conservatism, Zionism.” (25:09)

Evangelicals and Israel

• Earlier generations of American Jews trusted in evangelical pro-Israel sentiment, downplaying underlying Christian apocalyptic expectations.
• Younger evangelicals are increasingly isolationist. The right’s unconditional support for Israel—“just enabling the most right wing vision of Israel”—is a recent, fragile development likely to splinter as generational attitudes shift (27:34–31:01).

The Jewish Response: Overwhelm, Fatalism, and Agency (31:01–39:24)

Psychic Overload & Strategic Paralysis

• American Jews face “psychic overload” from the barrage of antisemitic incidents, struggling to classify, prioritize, or productively respond.
• Two flawed strategies:
  – 1) Over-amplifying every act of antisemitism (overwhelm, ineffectiveness)
  – 2) Relativizing/normalizing it (“this antisemitism is better/worse than that antisemitism”)

The Limits of Jewish Power

“In reality, the 99.8% of the world that’s not Jewish is going to determine the fate of the 0.2% that is.” — Yair Rosenberg (33:10)

• Jewish organizations can’t eliminate antisemitism, no matter how well they strategize: “Antisemitism fundamentally isn’t about what Jews say or do about it.”
• Jews can’t ‘decide’ how society treats them; their agency is real but circumscribed.

American Liberalism and Coalition Narratives

• Historically, Jews advanced not separate, defensive agendas but positive coalition-building, helping craft national narratives that proved protective (36:19–38:08).
• The power to shape broader American values is more effective than narrow ‘fight antisemitism’ efforts—yet this agenda has atrophied.

“Jews in the end… can be part of different stories that America tells about itself. And they should say which of those stories I think is better for everyone. Not just better for Jews… but better for us too.” — Yair Rosenberg (38:08)

Big Picture Drivers and Possibilities for Agency (41:10–46:57)

The Role of Social Media

• Social media platforms are “designed to proliferate conspiracy theories and disadvantage minorities.”
• The “globalized conversation” swamps local, nuanced relationships; online platforms elevate negativity and sensationalism (“negative material towards the out-group goes much farther than saying nice things about your own group”) (44:58–45:11).

Teaching Against Conspiracy Thinking

• Conspiracies flourish because they provide simple answers to good, complex questions.
• “We would be right to validate the grievance and to validate the question and the concern. But then to say this is a bad answer that will lead you into bad places…”
• Only “better answers” equipped with explanatory and predictive power can reduce conspiracy’s appeal (45:40–46:57).

History, Memory, and the Father Coughlin Analogy (48:37–52:02)

• Kurtzer raises Father Coughlin—the 1930s fascist radio priest—as a parallel to Carlson, asking if these moments are cyclical and self-consuming, or durable and dangerous.
• Rosenberg: Coughlin (like Carlson) was a product of deep social unrest; as those trends abate, their influence wanes. The answer isn’t fatalism, but “recognizing a problem for real and the real sources of it,” providing space for optimism about potential solutions.

“Father Coughlin is… feeding off of major social unrest and trends, and as some of those get resolved, some of his appeal goes away... Our history does recur. And some comfort comes from that in the sense that we have faced these questions before and we have gotten through it.” — Yair Rosenberg (50:48)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Media and Incentivizing Hate:
  “Tucker Carlson… has had a parade of Hitler apologists on his podcast, people saying that actually Hitler was misunderstood, he wasn’t as bad… It is an inversion of this traditional narrative, which has a more receptive audience now in service of a broader inversion of the American story in which Jews are suspect, right?” — Yair Rosenberg (16:16)

• On Generational Differences:
  “Some one quarter of young people… straight out that they had unfavorable opinion of Jewish people… as you go up the age curve, that just disappears.” — Yair Rosenberg (11:40)

• On Agency and Fatalism:
  “I think people want to tell a really agentic, powerful story about the Jews rising above their circumstances and constantly changing fate and bending the arc of history. …but… we don’t get to set the terms of discourse about which we’re discussed.” — Yair Rosenberg (35:46)

• On Strategies for Resilience:
  “There’s things… protective of our community… security, Jewish life and learning, resilience and so many other things… Without saying we have to conquer this all ourselves.” — Yair Rosenberg (38:39)

Important Timestamps

• 01:06–04:50 — Introduction: Rise of networked antisemitism, Carlson’s Fuentes interview, Overton window shifts
• 11:15–12:36 — Polling data on youth antisemitism
• 13:31–16:16 — Impact of Holocaust memory’s loss on American attitudes
• 16:16–22:00 — Populism, conspiracy, and their links to antisemitism
• 24:06–31:01 — The right, Christianity, Israel, and shifting evangelical attitudes
• 31:01–39:24 — Jewish community responses: Overwhelm, fatalism, agency, new vs. old strategies
• 41:10–46:57 — Social media’s role; need for educational responses to conspiracy theories
• 48:37–52:02 — Father Coughlin analogy, cyclical nature of antisemitic media figures

Final Takeaways

The episode provides a compelling, nuanced discussion that avoids alarmism and instead focuses on the deeper structural, historical, and psychological drivers of antisemitism’s modern revival. Rosenberg and Kurtzer advocate for realistic, historically-informed strategies—emphasizing coalition work, education in nuance and complexity, and persistent vigilance against the excesses and failures of contemporary social and media systems. Jewish resilience, they suggest, may best be grounded not in an illusory sense of power or control, but in partnership, coalition, and moral clarity in telling—and building—the American story.