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This analysis was authored by the Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) by CAM:
On the night of June 12, 2025, Israeli forces launched pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites, triggering a 12-day war that reverberated worldwide. Iran responded with a series of ballistic missile salvoes targeting civilian population centers across Israel — killing 28 people and injuring thousands. The United States ultimately joined the operation against Iran, hitting three key nuclear sites with bunker-buster bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles, before a cease-fire was declared.
As news of the conflict spread, a disturbing trend emerged on the far-right of the political spectrum in the United States. While most Republicans supported Israel and military action against Iran, a group of extreme far-right voices — some with massive online followings — framed U.S. intervention as a betrayal of “America First” tenets and seized the moment to propagate classical antisemitic tropes alleging Jewish control and manipulation of world affairs.
When Criticism Becomes Conspiracy
Far-right political commentator and author Candace Owens — who has emerged as one of the most prominent modern-day American antisemitic conspiracy theorists — tweeted on the first day of the war, “Our foreign policy is dictated by Israel. Trump will continue to do as he is told by Netanyahu. If you want to know what America will do, spare yourself the fake White House press briefings and start listening to Bibi. We are a colony of Israel. Your politicians are bought and paid for.”
Our foreign policy is dictated by Israel.
Trump will continue to do as he is told by Netanyahu.
If you want to know what America will do, spare yourself the fake White House press briefings and start listening to Bibi.We are a colony of Israel.
Your politicians are bought…— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) June 13, 2025
Dr. Simon Goddek — a self-described “Hardcore Libertarian” — wrote, “It’s especially Jewish Americans pushing hardest to drag the U.S. into a full-blown war with Iran — while being, demographically, the least likely to ever send their own kids to fight it.”
Is it just me noticing that it’s especially Jewish Americans pushing hardest to drag the U.S. into a full-blown war with Iran — while being, demographically, the least likely to ever send their own kids to fight it?
— Dr. Simon Goddek (@goddeketal) June 16, 2025
Podcaster Darryl Cooper, known for his track record of Holocaust revisionism, posited, “Now that even the long-time doubters see that Overseas Israelis run US foreign policy, the next pill is to understand that it’s not some random coincidence that every war we’ve fought this century, with the partial exception of Afghanistan, has been against Israel’s primary rivals.”
Now that even the long-time doubters see that Overseas Israelis run US foreign policy, the next pill is to understand that it’s not some random coincidence that every war we’ve fought this century, with the partial exception of Afghanistan, has been against Israel’s primary…
— Martyr Made (@martyrmade) June 22, 2025
White supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes claimed, “For 25 years, Israel has used its control over America to systematically destroy all of its enemies – from Iraq and Libya to Lebanon, Syria and now Iran. They are using the United States to build an Israeli Empire and destroying it in the process.”
For 25 years, Israel has used its control over America to systematically destroy all of its enemies— from Iraq and Libya to Lebanon, Syria and now Iran.
They are using the United States to build an Israeli Empire and destroying it in the process.
— Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes) June 13, 2025
Even a leading once-mainstream conservative voice joined the chorus. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson — now an independent podcaster — asserted, “Israel just shows up and says we’re doing this.”
How do American soldiers feel about fighting on behalf of a foreign nation? pic.twitter.com/TVnbUABqrN
— Tucker Carlson Network (@TCNetwork) June 21, 2025
In a combative interview with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Carlson said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) should be registered as a “foreign lobby” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Sen. Ted Cruz insists AIPAC is not a foreign lobby. pic.twitter.com/hhHX3CoGUt
— Tucker Carlson Network (@TCNetwork) June 18, 2025
Steve Bannon — host of the “War Room” podcast and a former White House advisor — derided Jewish radio host and media personality Mark Levin as “Tel Aviv Levin” — a slur rooted in the antisemitic “dual loyalty” trope.
The Ghost of Pat Buchanan
This messaging is not a new phenomenon. Rather, it is an echo, amplified through digital megaphones, of rhetoric first popularized on the far-right by Patrick “Pat” Buchanan.
A former White House aide turned conservative media personality and three-time presidential candidate, Buchanan spent decades infusing far-right populism with antisemitic undercurrents. Though now retired from public life, Buchanan’s worldview helped lay the ideological foundations of today’s far-right hostility toward Jews and Israel. His rhetoric — sometimes repeated verbatim — has become gospel for contemporary far-right influencers.
In 1990, during the lead-up to the First Gulf War, Buchanan infamously said on the The McLaughlin Group talk show that “Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied territory” and that “only two groups… are beating the drums for war in the Middle East — the Israeli Defense Ministry and its ‘amen corner’ in the United States.”
He later demanded an investigation into “AIPAC and the Israel lobby” for allegedly passing classified American intelligence to Israel and accused “Israel and its fifth column” of maneuvering the U.S. toward war with Iran.
Similar to Owens’ recent tweet that “white American men” were going to “go die for Israel again,” Buchanan once said Jews would never fight America’s wars, unlike “kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales, and Leroy Brown.”
This is the ideological soil from which today’s far-right antisemitic narratives grew.
From the Fringes to the Feed
The conspiracy theories Buchanan once whispered on the fringes are now shouted into the mainstream — dressed in populist rhetoric, spread by influencers, and boosted by algorithms. What once got once banished from polite society is now a pathway to likes, follows, and viral influence.
Just as far-left activists have been accused of attempting to “Corbynize” the Democratic Party by turning it into a space hostile to Jews and indifferent to antisemitism, these far-right voices are attempting to “Buchananize” the Republican Party.
A Warning From the Past
In his 1992 book In Search of Anti–Semitism, the late William F. Buckley, Jr. — the intellectual godfather of modern American conservatism — publicly examined Buchanan’s rhetoric. After a careful review, Buckley concluded that Buchanan’s statements could only be described as antisemitic. His verdict carried weight — and helped relegate Buchanan’s toxic ideas to the fringes of the conservative movement.
Ironically, even Tucker Carlson once recognized the danger. Appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal show in September 1999, Carlson said:
“You reach a point when you say well gee, you know, here’s a guy … who’s constantly attacked Israel, who’s attacked American Jews for supporting Israel, unduly, who’s implied that American Jews push America into wars in which non-Jews die. There really is, and I’m not hysterical on the subject, but I do believe that there is a pattern, with Pat Buchanan, of needling the Jews. Is that antisemitic? Yeah.”
Debate is vital to democracy — but demonization is not debate.
Antisemitism — no matter how it’s dressed, no matter which side of the aisle it comes from — must be exposed, condemned, and rejected.
