March 11, 2025 - 6:00pm
The Right-wing podcast world has not been covering itself in glory recently. Last week Joe Rogan, by some measures the most influential media figure in the United States, made a minor shockwave by hosting Ian Carroll, a social media influencer who over the past year has risen from near-total obscurity to viral fame by pushing a host of crackpot antisemitic conspiracy theories. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the claims Carroll has endorsed or flirted with: that Israel was responsible for 9/11, assassinated John F. Kennedy, and controls the US government through an international “Zionist mafia” — a term that Carroll acknowledged was a euphemism for “Jewish cabal” (of which Jeffrey Epstein was a part).
Rogan is also set to air an episode soon with Darryl Cooper, aka MartyrMade, a “revisionist” popular historian famous for claiming on Tucker Carlson’s show last year that Winston Churchill was the chief “villain” of the Second World War. But he wasn’t the only Right-leaning podcaster to wander into this territory. On the same day that Rogan hosted Carroll, Theo Von, the ninth most popular podcaster in America, hosted Candace Owens, the formerly mainstream MAGA influencer who has claimed, among other things, that Judaism is a “pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons” and that the modern state of Israel was founded by a cult of child abusers.
On the same day, Carlson himself released a softball interview with the Emir of Qatar, framed as a counterpoint to the “media” attacks on the Gulf state designed to prepare the American people for a “new war against Iran”. He followed up with a post on the massacre of civilians in Syria by forces affiliated with the new interim government, which he blamed on the successful “neocon” efforts to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. “Neocon projects in the Middle East invariably destroy ancient Christian communities, from Iraq to Gaza and in many places in between. Can this be an accident? You wonder,” he said.
Huh? While the violence in Syria is deplorable, Christians have scarcely been targeted; the AFP could confirm only seven Christian deaths as of Tuesday, compared to hundreds of Alawites and Sunni Muslims. And it has nothing to do with “neocons” — a slippery term that can refer to national security hawks or supporters of Israel, but is frequently deployed in antisemitic discourse in the US as a euphemism for Jews. While most American foreign-policy hawks despised Assad as a Russian and Iranian proxy, the state primarily responsible for his overthrow was Turkey.
Meanwhile, Qatar — now praised by Carlson as an honorary member of the anti-“neocon” war party — was long the primary external sponsor of ant-Assad Syrian jihadist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, the local al-Qaeda affiliate to which the current government traces its roots. Carlson is smart enough to be coy with his rhetoric, but the overall impression he gives is that the recent intra-Muslim violence in Syria — sponsored by Turkey, Qatar and Iran — is actually the fault of Israel. It’s the job of the Ian Carrolls and Candace Owenses of the world to make the connection to the “Jewish cabal” more explicit.
One could say a lot about the mainstreaming of antisemitic conspiracy theories in the podcast sphere, but the main problem is that they are dumb, and leave those who believe in them unable to discern real-world causes and effects. For example, it is true that there is a pro-Israel lobby in the United States, financed both by the state of Israel and the American Jewish community. It is also true that since 2016, China, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have all spent more on foreign lobbying than Israel has.
Qatar in particular is an extremely sophisticated player in the elite level of American politics, spending freely on think tanks, universities, K-12 education, and lobbyists, and buying off politicians with abandon. When Robert Menendez, the former chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was sentenced to federal prison in January, it was for taking bribes from Qatar and Egypt. Reducing to the “Jews” or “Israel” the vastly complicated interplay of interests that go into formulating US government policy is a recipe for perpetual confusion.
Of course, there is no way of knowing whether Carlson has taken money from the Qataris or the Saudis (he interviewed a Saudi royal and major X investor last month), and it is unlikely that Rogan is on any sort of foreign payroll. But it seems like a better than even bet that conspiracy-brained content on the Right is being boosted by foreign sources.
We know, for instance, that organised Chinese botnets helped to raise the profile of “America First” influencer Jackson Hinkle as soon as he began posting pro-“Axis of Resistance” content in the wake of 7 October; that Chinese influence operations have been pushing similar messages through far-Left networks; that Right-wing influencers have been caught taking absurd sums of money from Russia; and that all sorts of domestic political actors, including major-party PACs, have been paying influencers on the sly. Carroll has been approvingly cited by Iranian state TV, and one of Carlson’s favourite anti-“neocon” interlocutors, Jeffrey Sachs, is a regular on Chinese state television who has personally pocketed millions from the UAE.
In other words, it looks like an op and smells like an op, even if we don’t yet know whose. But if there’s one thing you should understand about American politics in 2025, it’s that ops aren’t limited to the “Zionist mafia”.
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SubscribeJewish supremacists always hide behind ‘the Jews’ when they want to deflect attention from their actions. Unfortunately for Jewish supremacists, there are massive numbers of ‘online Jews’ who also call them out—like Jeffrey Sachs.
I believe Jewish supremacy has an ‘online right,’ an ‘online left,’ and an ‘online non-Jewish supremacist Jewish’ problem.
Article: “Does the online right have an antisemitism problem?”
Exhibit A, right here.
Fun fact: the term ‘Jewish supremacy’ (intended to describe an alleged sense of superiority Jews feel towards non-Jews) was first published in print in the infamous antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1903, which falsely claimed to describe a Jewish plot to enact, quote, “Jewish supremacy over the whole world”.
Using this term uncritically plays right into a long history of fabricated accusations against Jews, portraying them as an invisible, malevolent force controlling global affairs. That’s exactly how antisemitism functions: by taking a baseless idea and repackaging it as if it’s an obvious truth.
If you think you’re simply ‘calling out bad actors,’ ask yourself: why frame it in terms that have been used for over a century to justify not just persecution but brutal pogroms and the systematic extermination of the European Jews? Why rely on language with roots in one of the most infamous hoaxes in history? Criticizing individuals or political movements is fair game – but when you use language steeped in antisemitic conspiracy theories, you’re perpetuating something far darker.
You’re obviously a Jewish Supremacist. All groups have nasty people and ideologies – this includes Jews. Islamic supremacy, do you deny it exists? No. White supremacy? Black supremacy? Obviously, you do not. We could go on with other peoples and religions and obvious supremacist movements within them.
But you deny the existence of Jewish supremacy. Why?
Some Jews are obsessed with other groups and their ‘anti-semitism’. No one is denying that this anti-semitism exists. Do you think ‘gentiles’ should not discuss Jewish ‘anti-gentilism’ – or Jewish supremacy? The genocide in Gaza is an obvious manifestation of this supremacist worldview.
If there was a genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Jews, I think they would have made a much better job of killing all the Arabs than they seem to have managed so far.
I dislike the usage of the term “Genocide” for what is happening in Gaza, (although by the new definition of the term adopted after WW2, it is legally correct). I much prefer war crimes and ethnic cleansing, reserving Genocide as the attempt to kill all of an ethnic group as one is able). Israel is not interested in killing Pals, per se, they just want them gone.
In 1947-48 they ethnically cleansed “Green Line” Israel, and to their surprise, instead of being like the Jews of Europe when they were expelled from countries, the Pals, remained on the borders and continued the struggle for the land which they had lived in for generations, if not longer. (The Melkite Christians, who are also Pals, claim to be the descendents of those converted from the time of the apostles).
After having run for their lives in 47-48, and having lived as refugees ever since, the Pals in Gaza and the WB, are risking death to avoid having this happen to them a second time.
You, Mr. James sir, are obsessed with supremacy. From my side of the Atlantic, it seems pretty cranky. Supremacists, of any description, are a confounded nuisance and best ignored.
I suspect that the root cause is that people like this, distrust reputable news organisations and rely on social media (including podcasts) for their information. So it’s hardly surprising that they think pretty weird things.
“distrust reputable news organisations”
Sir, I live in North Korea, thank you for letting me know the trustworthiness of the ‘reputable’ news sources. I will follow their lead from now on. I am now free from ‘thought impurity’ and will never have to worry about thinking ever again.
On the other hand take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Gentiles
An interesting read
Let’s be absolutely clear – anyone who believe s single syllable of anything Tucker Carlson says is too stupid to contemplate.
Rogan was never anything more than the mouthpiece of incels and jobless losers. His already miniscule credibility was shredded with the incident where he attributed idiotic comments from Trump to Joe Biden and had to be fact checked live on air by his team.
Watch for yourself – you mugs might learn something:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6mfEXmTtc0
What we’re learning is that you’re absolutely obsessed with the whole business.
Any potential typically rubbish response from you can already be discounted as part of your obsession.
Once you’ve picked your target, C.S., you need to actually point your weapon in that direction.
Tucker Carlson isn’t known for what he says, he’s known for turning on a microphone and listening to what other people say. If some of those people are bozos or evil or both, the viewer is perfectly capable of figuring that out. Turns out a substantial number of his guests fall into neither of those categories.
Ditto Joe Rogan. “…never anything more than the mouthpiece of incels and jobless losers.” Again, wide of the mark, C.S.; Rogan’s audience is a teeeeny bit broader than that. Oh, dear, he once had to be fact checked?? Goodness, let me clutch my pearls.
The media landscape is not what it was. Cronkite’s gone and he ain’t comin’ back.
CS could be a bot designed to parody what reactionary lefty hacks say.
If Rogan is being ”fact checked” or casually corrected live on air, surely that proves (to non-mad people) that he is not deliberately running partisan propaganda (unlike much of the MSM).
The format of the show is just long form conversation, so content pretty much just revolves around whoever his guest happens to be.. Mostly apolitical.
If it was full of the kind of highly divisive partisan ideological stuff that the left have painted themselves into a corner over then it wouldn’t be a successful show with such a massive audience. That stuff is niche/ exclusive/ elitist by definition.
Always and never are seldom true except that CS appears to always BS, and never finds a reasonable thing to say.
Who you callin’ a mug, palooka?
Well as a Socialist you must be rabidly anti-Semitic
“it is true that there is a pro-Israel lobby in the United States, financed both by the state of Israel and the American Jewish community”.
Is it true though? When people talk about the “Israel lobby” (usually pejoratively, of course), they refer to A) AIPAC, which is supported by the American Jewish community, and B) American Christian supporters of Israel. The government of Israel does not directly lobby Congress, American friends of Israel do.
In contrast, the government of Qatar, for example, directly pays lobbying firms in Congress, as mentioned in the article. So do other governments.
It is worrisome that an analysis of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish disinformation in the right-wing podcast world, is itself spreading such disinformation.
True, but disingenuous. AIPAC pretty much demands unconditional support of Israel. The NRA is really the only lobby that can make a claim to give it a run for the money. And the NRA is regularly villified, not so AIPAC. Also, the NRA does not lobby on behalf of a foreign government. If there were a lobby a tenth as powerful as AIPAC lobbying for a foriegn government, it would be viewed as a national threat by a sizeable portion of America.
Does the online right have an antisemitism problem? Yes, of course they do. So too do the online left and online Islamists. With such a silly headline I really couldn’t even bother to skim the article.
Indeed, like racism and so many other isms, anti-semitism will probably never die out completely. The question we should always ask is, how do we address it? Do we try to stifle or stamp-out the crazy? or is it more reasonable to let it be aired and considered and then rejected?
I’m not loving Tucker lately and hate the Tates, but I’d rather hear their voices than wonder why they went silent.
Anti-semitism is racism!
It’s just a list of loons and their obsessions.
Easy to generalise. Give examples of anti semitsm from the left and right.
Oh, please!! what a childish argument! do two wrongs now make a right? . It is hardly ‘silly’ to point out this emerging phenomenon which is much less known than its Islamist counterpart! I had hoped there might be almost complete and obvious agreement that Islamists explicitly and progressives either naively or cynically, are often anti-semitic. That hardly excuses nutcase people from the Right doing the same.
If one bothers to read at all, it is clear anti-semitism manifests, sadly, in multiple areas.
Where? Point it out to me? It’s right wing now to be anti war and anti ethic cleansing? Ok. Is it possible to criticise the actions of Israel without it being antisemitic ? Why were there no articles on the rise of anti semitism 2-3 years ago? Maybe has something to do with the obliteration of Gaza? The wanton murder of innocents? I do remember there being a big rise after 9/11 in islamaphbia, and judging ny a lot of Unherd comments i read, there still is.
It doesn’t work anymore, that’s what’s happening l. People aren’t scared off by being labeled an anti semite.
The Palestinians are Semitic in origin too.
Weak.
Wrong. They speak a semitic language [Arabic]. Not the same thing at all. “Antisemitism” is a term invented by a Jew hater to make his hatred of Jews sound more “scientific”. The term always means “hatred of Jews” and nothing else.
The Palestinians are also descendants of Abraham, the first semite.
Yes. But when that “criticism” is indiscriminate, non-specific, and based on knee-jerk credence to lies propagated by enemies of Israel, then it is antisemitic or, to be most charitable, reckless pandering to antisemites.
Except what criticism are you talking about? Let me give some historically well documented “lies”.
Israel was born in terrorism, massacre and ethnic cleansing. Lord Moyne was assassinated by proto-IDF forces. Dito Count Bernadotte, (someone who had rescued many Jews from death camps in 44-45), because as UN peace negotiator he pressed for the rights of those who were ethnically cleansed to return to villages that they had lived in for generations. These people fled for their lives because of murders and massacres, (of which the best documented is Deir Yassin where proto IDF militias killed every man, woman and child they could find).
Since then, the conflict never ended, both sides resorted to terrorism. Both sides indiscriminately killed civilians. Generally, the Israeli’s, with the apparatus of a state behind them, killed 10 or more innocents to every one that the PLO managed. Generally in the western press accepted the Israeli insistence that only terrorists were killed in these operations. This t*t-for-tat terrorism has never stopped on either side. Events of 10/7 and subsequent actions can only be understood in this context.
Israel was born in a war of self-defence. This war was begun by Arabs from the moment of the UN vote in 1947, but in truth was a continuation of Amin al-Husseini’s campaign the drive out the Jews which he began in 1920.
In the decades before the war of independence, you will not find a single instance of Jews driving out Arabs from their homes, but plenty of horrendous examples of Arab aggression and massacres against Jews. The Jewish self-defence forces were born out of necessity in this era – the British being mostly useless (and worse, appeasers of the Arabs).
The Arabs started the war with the Jews, and then bleat when the Jews didn’t roll over, but against the odds defeated them. Wars are messy. People get displaced. There are consequences to starting an aggressive war and losing.
Lies propagated by enemies of Israel?
Please give examples.
In replying to Mr. Barnett, I have given plenty of well documented “lies”. But Mr. Barnett has not seen fit to try and refute them. Nor have any of the other commenters here. Why?
Perhaps because their true aim is censorship of anything but the pro-Israeli narrative which has held sway in the West since WW2 ended. To answer me, or anybody else who brings facts to the discussion would be against their purposes of pretending that there is no other realistic narrative and that anybody who maintains such a narrative is just a “brainwashed” student.
Yes Mark, they seem to throw names around willy and nilly, but when it comes to giving examples, they are silent in retreat.
Genocide against Palestinian Arabs[?] IDF is rather incompetent in this area given the increase in Arab population even under war conditions in Gaza.
Apartheid[?]: Israel needs to retake Apartheid 101: for example, appointing an Arab to the Supreme Court means an automatic failing grade. There are numerous other failures. Not sure the Apartheid accreditation board would think allowing a retake would be worthwhile.
Very few of the accusations against Israel stand much scrutiny – especially when you consider the war context.
If the anti-semites did not have double standards, they would have no standards at all.
Who martyred gaza?
It wasn’t Israel.
That is the problem.
Looking for a solution that’s doesn’t set up another martyrdom operation in 10 years should be worked on right now. And the answer isn’t feed house and cloth the soon to be martyrs so their evil government and their neighbours can go another round.
Please study the two Intifada’s as well as the “March of Return”. Also realize that when the IDF pulled out of Gaza in the 2006-2007 time frame, they were not giving the Pals Gaza to run as a sovereign country, but withdrawing their troops from a redoubt that was to costly to occupy and placing it under siege.
I’m a Brit who is trying to make sense of what is going on with the United States.
From this piece, what seems to be happening is a rebirth of the interwar America First movement. Isolationist? Tick. Antisemitic? Tick. Weakness for foreign dictators? Big tick. Intellectually incoherent? Tick.
Is Trump an America Firster? He has no qualms about using it, that’s for sure. Will he sell Ukraine down the river, in the way that the original America First movement would dearly have loved to do to my country? We shall shortly find out.
Currently Putin is on the horns so I guess they are anti Russia too.
Much like the weather, wait 10 minutes.
I encounter lots of Jewish conspiracy theories amongst the populist right, particular of younger generations (Y/Z). In the name of free speech, they can say whatever they like just as I will say the equivalent about Islam.
“Ian Carroll, a social media influencer who over the past year has risen from near-total obscurity to viral fame by pushing a host of crackpot antisemitic conspiracy theories.”
I listen to the occasional Rogan podcast, but I’d skipped over the Ian Carroll one until I saw an article here on UnHerd complaining about it.
The Streisand effect was strong enough that listened to another of his recent interviews:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3YCDV1Yj4f3XXiJIEvRgO5?si=Mjml023yR820oNY2wnXJcw
Although I get bad vibes from Tucker Carlson, Darryl Cooper and Candace Owens, Carroll seems to be asking some reasonable questions, at least in what I’ve heard from him so far. Some of the points he raised were simple historical facts that aren’t widely known, such as the bombing of the King David hotel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
Carroll might be an anti-Semite, but he was at pains to stress (correctly) that criticism of Israel or individual Jews is not the same as criticism of Jews in general.
If Carroll gets details wrong, point out what he gets wrong. If he leaves out important context, add context.
Instead it seems that Park MacDougald is using the term “antisemitism” the same way Islamists use “Islamophobia” – as stick to stifle free discussion.
“Although I get bad vibes from Tucker Carlson, Darryl Cooper and Candace Owens”
While Darryl Cooper’s “revisionism” on Churchill is bound to grate one should not judge him solely on that. (I can’t comment on that, as I have not listened to that one). I have found that Cooper generally tries to understand both sides of a conflict and give both, unbiased and sympathetic treatment. This is certainly true for “Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem”. Everyone who is interested in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict should invest the 6-8 hours to listen to it. Pro-Israeli propaganda has dominated the narrative since the creation of Israel. You ought to understand how the Palestinians view this conflict. As someone who was born in 1956, paid attention to events and also is extremely well read in history, I found this to contain a wealth of information. And almost all of it can be corroborated if one is willing go beyond hearsay into facts.
Why does no one address the elephant in the living room. Being anti-Israel does not equate to anti-Semitism. The moment you see any article or commenter making such an assumption or statement, you should immediately assume that they are either disingenuous or brainwashed.
Also, when one uses the term Zionist, one is automatically cast as being anti-Semitic. When, the Zionist project began in the later part of the 19th century it was a large number of Rabbis who opposed the concept of a Jewish State in the Holy Land considering it to be rebellion against God. (For their sins, God had cast them out of the Holy Land, as promised in the blessings and curses enumerated in Deuteronomy. Only when Messiah comes, will Jews be allowed to occupy the land as a nation).
As many Rabbis have pointed out equating Zionism with Jews is a form of anti-Semitism.