The rise of a new right-coded anti-Semitism might have been dismissed as an ephemeral murmur of the too-online right just a few months ago; it was largely masked by a thick layer of irony. But after an arson attempt at a Mississippi synagogue and an irruption of nakedly anti-Semitic rhetoric in the aftermath of joint U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran, it seems like the prejudice is making a play for the hearts of the young in 2026.
The primary idea behind the new anti-Semitism is the narrative of Jewish power. In some ways proceeding from older anti-Semitic conspiracies—especially about banking and international or organized Jewry, supercharged by Jeffrey Epstein’s scandals—today’s narrative of Jewish power has evolved with the reality (or hyperreality) of American-Israeli relations and continued Israeli battlefield success. Adapted to new developments in Middle Eastern geopolitics and the fact that the Jewish diaspora is no longer composed of refugees—victims with close connections to the Holocaust—it is a narrative of success not weakness.
Since the new anti-Semitism is adapted to a new reality, it has outgrown the old inoculations. It spreads because the moral language and norms constructed in the wake of the Holocaust are no longer fit to task. They are unpersuasive to a growing segment of young people, especially those whose political consciousness was formed in the midst of Israel’s victories following October 7.
Take for example the tradition of American politicians and world figures visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem. In the post-Holocaust moral order, these visits were a sign of goodwill and ecumenical understanding. They were condescending; the powerful participated in the traditions of the weak to show we mean you no harm. But today, cast in the light of a narrative of Jewish power (or ZOG: the Zionist Occupied Government) and the reality of Israeli success, the awkward images of popes, presidents, and presidential hopefuls donning kippahs and communing with the wall seem like a ritual of domination. The images recall a diplomat kowtowing in a foreign court. This interpretation might be wrong, it might be unfair, but it is a popular visual totem of the new anti-Semitism. It’s also self-reinforcing. The old mechanisms of signaling against anti-Semitism fit snugly into the worldview of the new anti-Semitism. Consider this: Were every member of Congress to fly to Israel and pray at the Western Wall tomorrow, would that serve to undermine or confirm a conspiratorial view of Jews’ role in the world?
Other methods of combatting anti-Semitism are similarly calibrated to an assumption of Jewish weakness. During the Super Bowl last month, Jewish billionaire Robert Kraft ran an ad in which a scrawny teenager was called a “DIRTY JEW.” The appropriate response to such an anti-Semitic incident, Kraft’s ad suggests, is the same symbolism of solidarity deployed during the Black Lives Matter movement. While the ad was widely deplored as “cringe,” there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Rather, the problem was that it played the chord of weakness and victimhood mere weeks before Israel and America eliminated the greatest enemy of the Jewish state, Khamenei, and amid a larger conversation about Jews’ influence in America. For those influenced by the new anti-Semitism, it was but further affirmation of a conspiracy.
Even the Holocaust can be a tool for the furtherance of the new anti-Semitism. The historical event of the Holocaust, the mass killing of millions of Jews and others by Germany and her allies, exists for many as a moral-theological event. And for a certain older generation of thinkers, the Holocaust ushered in a new logic; like the death and resurrection of Christ, humanity is split between eras before and after the event. This generation still lives in the “Age of Hitler” and reacts with full force regarding any heresy against the Holocaust. The incontinence of their responses has created a sort of game. Right-wing provocateurs will question some orthodoxy about the Holocaust, engendering backlash. The backlash is then used as evidence, perhaps only implicitly, of Jewish power. This mode, “just asking questions,” can range from the uncomfortable—highlighting the Bengali famine of 1943 or Allied firebombings of German cities—to the absurd—claiming that Hitler is a faithful servant of Christ. But as with visits to the Western Wall, the old method of response is counterproductive. The new anti-Semitism is largely fueled by a white nationalist’s aphorism: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
In order to build effective responses to the new anti-Semitism, the old tactics must be abandoned. Pressuring Elon Musk to visit Auschwitz or shutting down a documentarian’s Patreon, to give just two examples, might have been effective decades ago. But no longer. The moral language and norms constructed in the wake of the Holocaust are not necessarily wrong or immoral, they just don’t work anymore. There wouldn’t be a new anti-Semitism if they did.
Image by ASSOCIATED PRESS.
