Rod Dreher: Tucker Carlson’s Antisemitism

More than a few people have asked me, “Why do you say Tucker Carlson is antisemitic? It seems to me he’s only criticizing the state of Israel.”

Let’s stipulate that it is certainly possible to criticize Israel and its government without being antisemitic. Heck, Jews do it all the time. (Just read an Israeli newspaper.) From time to time, Carlson says openly that he is not antisemitic. At last December’s Turning Point USA AmericaFest convention, Carlson responded to previous speaker Ben Shapiro’s criticisms:

“Let me just affirm one final time. Not only am I not an antisemite—and I would say so if I was—I’m not an antisemite for a very specific reason,” Carlson told the crowd. “Not because it’s unpopular, or my donors don’t like it. I don’t have any donors. I’m not an antisemite because antisemitism is immoral in my religion. It is immoral to hate people for how they were born.”

It is worth noting that Shapiro had not called Carlson an antisemite, or brought up Jews or Israel at all. He had accused him of remaining silent when Candace Owens suggested that Charlie Kirk’s widow might have played a role in her husband’s assassination and accused TPUSA of a cover-up, and of uncritically hosting “a Hitler apologist Nazi-loving anti-American piece of refuse like Nick Fuentes” without challenging someone “who said that the vice president of the United States is a quote, fat gay race traitor married to a jeet.” He called out Carlson for giving a similar welcome to “pornographer and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate” and for “mainstreaming fake historian and pseudo Nazi apologist Darryl Cooper.”

Carlson says he’s no antisemite, so why doesn’t that settle the issue?