Antisemitism within the American right has become the most divisive and contested issue among conservatives today, drawing pro-Israel evangelicals and Jews into more antagonistic relationships with other segments of the movement. “For more than four decades, the alliance between evangelicals and pro-Israel conservatives has been an almost uniquely powerful force in American politics,” Jonathan Mahler writes in the New York Times Magazine (January 18), “shaping not only foreign policy but also domestic elections, with donations flowing freely every election cycle from pro-Israel Christian groups and individuals to pro-Israel Republican candidates.” Today, however, evangelicals, especially younger ones, have different views about Israel, as do non-evangelical Christians such as Catholics (and Eastern Orthodox). Along with many on the left, these conservative Christians became increasingly critical of Israel’s actions during the war with Hamas. They argue that “America is facing too many urgent crises at home—like the cost of living and illegal immigration—to justify sending billions of dollars a year to Israel,” Mahler writes.
While the Trump administration has maintained its pro-Israel stance, a growing number of conservative Christians have been embracing a “post-dispensationalist” (or “postmillennialist”) stance that discards Zionism and the role of Israel in biblical prophecy while imbibing a Christian nationalism that draws on Reformed and integralist Catholic thought. Charlie Kirk, who was evangelical and pro-Zionist, had exposed the faultlines over Zionism and antisemitism among young conservatives, convening a focus group on Israel last summer in hopes of reconciling the two sides. But now, even though Kirk’s Turning Point USA (TPUSA) burgeoned after his subsequent assassination last year, the Christian political organization and its related campus chapters have been experiencing the same conflict as that found in the wider conservative movement. “For many young conservatives, Kirk’s assassination was bitter confirmation of left-wing intolerance and a spur to deeper radicalization. Staring into an abyss of leadership, some of Kirk’s mourners flocked toward Jesus Christ; others were seduced by quite different forces, as antisemitism and conspiracism engulfed the right,” Simon van Zuylen-Wood writes in New York magazine (January 12). “A political moment that started with an overwhelming show of unity devolved day by day into something more like civil war, ensnaring everyone from the vice-president down to TPUSA’s campus leaders.”
Van Zuylen-Wood writes that Kirk’s absence is being felt at colleges, “where imitators and detractors alike have been rushing to fill the void.” An example of such attempts is “One Conversation at a Time,” a one-man show organized by 19-year-old Auburn University freshman and evangelical Christian Brilyn Hollyhand. Yet Hollyhand encountered a more hostile atmosphere than the one he had experienced at the pro-Israel Kirk meetings, as students attacked his support of Israel and his standard conservative views on immigration. “It does not take a great deal of internet research to deduce whose rhetoric all this echoes,” van Zuylen-Wood writes. “The day after Kirk’s murder, a Christian-nationalist pastor named Joel Webbon posted on X, ‘You killed Charlie. Now you get Nick. Enjoy.’” Nick Fuentes and his “Groyper” followers’ “brand of edgelord-flavored antisemitism” and far-right Christian nationalism have maintained their staying power among young people. Van Zuylen-Wood quotes another conservative campus leader, who acknowledged that, while no one wants the label, the Groypers “are, you know, I mean, they’re a lot like me. They’re a lot like any number of folks in our age group. They go into positions of power. They become leaders in chapters of the College Republicans.”
