On a recent autumn evening in San Antonio, the cavernous sanctuary of Cornerstone Church was packed with thousands of Christian Zionists, all gathered for the 45th annual "Night to Honor Israel." The event, hosted by John Hagee—founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), an organization that claims over 10 million members—was meant to be a celebration of faith and solidarity. But this year, the mood was tinged with anxiety and urgency.
Senator Ted Cruz, the keynote speaker, didn’t mince words. “I’m here to tell you, in the last six months, I have seen antisemitism rising on the right in a way I have never seen in my entire life,” Cruz declared, his voice echoing through the hall. He warned of a "growing cancer" of antisemitism among conservatives, and he placed blame squarely on the shoulders of church leaders for failing to confront it. “The work that CUFI does is desperately, desperately needed, but I’m here to tell you, the church is asleep right now.”
Cruz’s remarks, delivered on October 19, 2025, marked a striking public reckoning within the conservative movement. But he wasn’t alone. In the days surrounding his speech, a chorus of conservative voices—columnists, think tanks, and activists—issued their own alarms about the normalization of antisemitic rhetoric and figures on the American right.
According to The Free Press, columnist Eli Lake traced how far-right activist Nick Fuentes, once shunned for his overtly racist and antisemitic statements, had been welcomed back into the fold by popular podcasts and livestreams. The “stigma” around Fuentes, Lake argued, had “melted away,” reflecting a dramatic shift in what’s considered acceptable discourse on the online right. Meanwhile, Tablet magazine published a confessional essay detailing a libertarian-to-alt-right pipeline, one that normalized conspiratorial thinking about Jews and revived open flirtations with Hitler apologetics. The author described how “antiwar” rhetoric had morphed into reflexive anti-Israel sentiment and broader hostility toward Jews.
The Jewish educational center and think tank Tikvah, in an October 23 email to supporters, echoed these concerns. “Today, there is a clear faction of the right that is overtly hostile to Israel and to Judaism. And though small, it is no longer marginal or possible to ignore,” wrote Avi Snyder, a senior director at Tikvah. The organization pointed to a growing body of essays warning that some on the right were reviving old suspicions about Jewish loyalty, casting the U.S.-Israel alliance as a trap, and even disputing the moral clarity of the Allied fight in World War II.
These warnings came in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September—a tragedy that quickly spawned a torrent of antisemitic conspiracy theories in right-wing online spaces. Fact-checkers documented a flood of false claims, including suggestions of Israeli or Mossad involvement, so pervasive that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt compelled to issue a public rebuttal. Prosecutors in Utah have since charged a suspect and outlined a motive unrelated to Israel, but the episode underscored how swiftly fringe ideas can migrate into the mainstream in today’s media landscape.
In his speech, Cruz revealed he had spoken directly with Netanyahu about the right’s declining support for Israel. Netanyahu, Cruz recounted, attributed much of the problem to foreign interference—bots and paid misinformation from places like Qatar and Iran. But Cruz disagreed: “I said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, yes, but no. Yes, Qatar and Iran are clearly paying for it, and there are bots, and they are putting real money behind it, but I am telling you, this is real, it is organic, these are real human beings, and it is spreading.’”
Cruz also warned of the resurgence of replacement theology—a belief that Christians have supplanted Jews as God’s chosen people—a doctrine he called a "lie" and linked to the current wave of antisemitism. While he avoided naming names, his remarks landed amid a swirl of controversy involving high-profile right-wing figures. Nick Fuentes, after years of ostracism, was back in the spotlight; Tucker Carlson continued to draw millions with narratives that edged into Jew-baiting; and Candace Owens’ conspiratorial comments about Israel found a growing audience.
The normalization of such voices has had real-world consequences. A recent Politico exposé revealed a leaked Telegram chat among Young Republicans, where early-career GOP activists traded racist slurs, joked about gas chambers, and praised Hitler. The fallout was swift: firings, the shutdown of state chapters, and bipartisan condemnation. Yet Vice President J.D. Vance downplayed the incident as immature “jokes,” urging critics to “grow up”—a stance that itself became a lightning rod for debate over whether the right would police its own.
Rich Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, took to X (formerly Twitter) to urge conservatives to stop booking Tucker Carlson, calling his posture toward Jews and Israel “a disease that is poisoning the Republican Party.” Goldberg insisted, “It needs to be met with a decision by those we call ‘leaders’ to stop platforming him (and those who echo such vile sentiments).” Yet, as of late October, former President Donald Trump—still the most influential figure on the right—had not publicly weighed in.
This crisis of conscience is playing out not just in speeches and essays but in the very architecture of the conservative movement. On October 8, libertarian Jewish comedian Dave Smith hosted Nick Fuentes for a nearly four-hour conversation. Smith, despite being Jewish, downplayed Fuentes’ bigotry, stating, “I don’t actually think bigotry is the worst thing. It can be bad, but it’s not the worst thing.” Fuentes, in turn, painted himself as a victim of cancel culture and maintained his longstanding antisemitic views, claiming, “Everybody, in every nation, in all times, for thousands of years, eventually comes to the conclusion that Jews always act in bad faith.”
This normalization of antisemitism has not gone unnoticed by conservative thinkers. Chris Rufo, a leading Trump-era activist, warned in March about “influential online commentators” promoting conspiracy theories that Jews control the media and organize blackmail rings to secure support for Israel. Ben Shapiro, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, lamented that “there is a part of the Right that is extraordinarily conspiratorial and sees Jews as a conspiratorial force,” adding, “You get a lot more likes and clicks if you are promoting an anti-Israel, anti-Jewish agenda than if you are doing the opposite.”
Academic research backs up these observations. In 2022, scholars Eitan Hirsh and Laura Royden found that right-wing Americans—especially young Black and Latino conservatives aged 18 to 30—were more likely to agree with antisemitic statements than their left-leaning peers. The 2024 election, which saw Trump make significant gains among young and Latino voters with low social and political trust, appears to have fueled this trend. As historian Jovan Byford notes, antisemitism is a “3,000-year-old conspiracy theory,” and its resurgence among low-trust, conspiracy-minded voters is no accident.
Yet, the right’s internal reckoning is complicated. For every voice like Shapiro or Bari Weiss—Jewish conservatives who have made fighting antisemitism a top priority—there are others who see policing bigotry as a liberal trap or an attack on free speech. The refusal to enforce anti-bigotry norms has allowed figures like Fuentes to gain influence, even as organizations like CUFI remain staunchly pro-Israel and deeply concerned about rising antisemitism.
As the Republican Party heads toward the 2028 election, the conflict over antisemitism is shaping up to be more than just another intra-party squabble. Some warn of a coming "civil war" within the right—one that could determine not just the future of the GOP, but the safety and inclusion of American Jews in public life. As the stakes rise, the outcome remains uncertain, but the urgency of the moment is impossible to ignore.
