Miles Klee
Thu, October 19,2023
While conventional wisdom has long held that Republicans, and particularly evangelicals, are the staunchest allies of Israel in the U.S., the latest bloody exchanges between the state and Hamas militants have revealed fault lines in that critical base of support. Rather than close ranks to back Israeli attacks on Gaza, some right-wing influencers have turned on each other.
For instance, Islamophobic conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and pro-Russia MAGA influencer Jackson Hinkle, who mere weeks ago appeared to have a friendly relationship on X (formerly Twitter), are now sniping at each other over the conflict. Loomer, who is Jewish, has endorsed Israel’s actions, while Hinkle took a stance against their response to Hamas’ initial surprise attack, disputing reports from their military. He is now encouraging users to subscribe to his premium content for $3 a month to support his work “exposing Zionist propaganda.” Loomer, in turn, is accusing him of sympathizing with Hamas and buying bot followers (his audience has grown by hundreds of thousands this month alone). On Wednesday, she tweeted that Hinkle has “gone off the deep end.”
Conservative podcaster and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro has, like Loomer, been unwavering and adamant in his belief that Israel’s response to Hamas has been justified. But that doesn’t sit well with others on the right, like Elijah Schaffer, a podcaster and writer for Gateway Pundit, who on Wednesday described one of Shapiro’s tweets as a “call for genocide” against the Palestinian people, comparing it to the Nazi rhetoric of Adolf Hitler. In July, he had posted a selfie with Shapiro from 2018, thanking him for advice at the time about launching a right-wing program.
Charles C. Johnson, an alt-right political activist and Holocaust denier, tweeted that Shapiro was in essence an Israeli asset and demanded that he register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It’s not the first time Johnson has leveled such claims at Shapiro, but in the heat of the Israel debate, they’re getting far more traction. This particular post resurfaced on Gab, a “free speech” social media platform rife with antisemitic extremism, where failed Senate candidate Sam Parker used it as a pretext to declare that Shapiro is an agent of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. “Spread it on Twitter and Gab,” Parker wrote. “He’s pushing war propaganda like crazy!”
Shaprio has also sparred here and there with red-pill mansophere influencer and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate, who has accused Israel of committing war crimes and the American right of “screaming for genocide” against the Palestinian people. (Shapiro said in an interview earlier this year that he agreed with many of Tate’s “diagnoses” about how men have lost their way, if not his proposed solutions to this issue.) Hinkle has taken to bashing Shapiro as well, though he took no apparent interest in his pro-Israel views before the latest outbreak of violence in the region.
Charlie Kirk, founder and director of Turning Point USA, joined the Republican faction siding with Israel. But this position has been met with resistance from others in the conservative movement. A tweet of Kirk’s claiming that Hamas uses women and children as human shields drew a wave of abusive replies from fellow right-wingers, including former MMA fighter Jake Shields, an anti-vaxxer who recently proposed that Donald Trump serve as Speaker of the House. Shields, who recently agreed with Kirk’s assertion that “Whiteness is great” and was photographed with him at TPUSA’s AmericaFest in 2022, is now urging Kirk to “reconsider” his support for Israel and mocking him for thinking he can “solve” the long-running conflict. On Wednesday, Shields complained that his anti-Israel posts led people to label him an antisemite, which earned him a rebuke from Chris Loesch, husband of conservative radio host and former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch. In the past, Shields had tweeted amiably with both of them; on Tuesday, he called Chris a Nazi for calling him an antisemite.
Curiously, Kirk has meanwhile faced the critique that he is anti-Israel, due to his speculation during a podcast interview that its government might have had advance knowledge of the Hamas offensive and issued a “stand down” order to let it proceed. , Fox News contributor and husband of Meghan McCain, pounced on this comment, predicting that Kirk’s continued leadership of Turning Point USA signaled the right would have an antisemitism problem “that will follow them into the coming elections.” Chaya Raichik, an Orthodox Jew who runs the anti-LGBTQ hate account Libs of TikTok, came to Kirk’s defense, deeming Domenech’s accusation “laughable.” (Last year, Domenech praised Libs of TikTok for publicizing views from an “ideological bubble.”) Raichik did concede, however, that she’s “seen some alarming and anti-semitic posts from TPUSA affiliates.”
Looming in the background of all this infighting — and perhaps the only far-right operator who relishes the idea of a Republican schism over Israel — is Nick Fuentes, the Hitler-loving white supremacist whose “groyper” troll army pushes an ultranationalist “America First” agenda. During one of his latest livestreams, a beaming Fuentes listed a number of far-right figures he feels are drifting toward the groyper worldview, including Trump, Kirk, Schaffer, Alex Jones, and Tucker Carlson, expressing his surprise and delight at “finally getting to a confrontation” on “the Jewish question,” or “a point where that line is being crossed.” The so-called “Jewish question” — or “JQ,” as it is sometimes styled on social media — is a phrase that has carried down through generations of antisemitic propaganda.
https://twitter.com/classicsgroyp/status/1714135696317747276The battle of these online personalities mirrors that of GOP politicians when it comes to U.S. involvement in the present Middle East crisis. Except, of course, the influencers can test the waters of more extreme opinion and misinformation. And it’s altogether possible the more toxic elements of their debate will float up into mainstream discourse, just as Fuentes is hoping. That bodes ill for the West’s understanding of an already chaotic upheaval — but worse still for the people suffering through it.
Right-Wing Media Is Flooded With Dehumanizing Rhetoric Against Palestinians
Rowaida Abdelaziz
Thu, October 19, 2023
When 32-year-old Hanaan Shahin opened the door of her ground-floor apartment in Plainfield, Illinois, her landlord was already angry.
Days prior, Joseph Czuba had told Shahin that he wanted her and her son to move out, according to Czuba’s sister. Less than a week later, he allegedly confronted Shahin again, this time with a military knife.
Shahin didn’t have time to speak. Czuba allegedly stabbed her more than a dozen times and killed her son, 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, as she tried to call 911. The FBI has launched a federal investigation into the attack.
Czuba’s wife told investigators he’d been listening to conservative talk radio on a regular basis, and that he’d become increasingly angry over the escalating conflict in Israel and Gaza.
On Oct. 7, Hamas militants launched a large-scale attack on Israel, taking hostages and killing more than 1,400 people. Israel quickly retaliated, launching a full-blown raid and aerial campaign that killed more than 4,000 peopleand displaced more than 1 million people in 10 days.
Since then, right-wing media has capitalized on the attacks, stoking hostility with xenophobic and anti-Muslim rhetoric — including referring to Palestinians as “barbarian pigs,” drumming up hatred against Arabs and Muslims in the U.S., and targeting the two Muslim women who are members of Congress.
It’s not clear if conservative radio was the sole factor in Czuba’s alleged turn to violence. But the dangers lurking within the trend are clear enough. Studies have found a link between hateful rhetoric and hate crimes. In 2018, researchers found that hate crimes against Muslims increased 32% in 2016, as Donald Trump was running for president and targeting Muslims with hostile and hateful language that reverberated across cable news and on social media.
Some of the recent claims on right-wing airwaves are too grotesque to amplify here. Others, listed below, may give an idea of what’s being said:
Eric Bolling, a host at the conservative cable news company Newsmax, said Palestinians are “addicted to violence” like an “addict is addicted to drugs.”
Dan Gainor, a freelance opinion editor at Fox News, called Palestinians and Arabs “barbarian pigs” who “tried to genocide Israel” in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Charles Kirk ― the president of Turning Point USA, a right-wing organization that has promoted Christian nationalism ― said last week that “a vast majority of Muslims” don’t hold Western values but rather have a “medieval” worldview. He also referred to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) as “an active threat to the United States” who “hates this country.”
John Whitehouse, news director at Media Matters, a media watchdog group, told HuffPost that far-right media outlets take inspiration from one another. Message boards and social media sites like 4chan and X disseminate unchecked conspiracy theories and racist rhetoric, which then get amplified on conservative TV and radio shows.
Conservative radio has the ability to “really reach a mass audience,” Whitehouse said — specifically, the “sorts of audience that would be more likely to take some sort of horrific action.”
Similarly, various Republican lawmakers have endorsed an approach of unfettered violence when speaking about the conflict.
Sen. (R-S.C.), for example, called on Israel to “do whatever it takes.”
“Gaza is going to look like Tokyo and Berlin at the end of World War II when this is over,” Graham told Fox News’ Sean Hannity last week. “And if it doesn’t look that way, Israel made a mistake.”
Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) said there should be “no rules of engagement,” and that the White House should “get out of Israel’s way to do what it needs to do best.”
Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted: “Anyone that is pro-Palestinian is pro-Hamas” — not differentiating between civilians and the militant group.
Arab and Muslim groups warn that the consequences of such extreme language will likely be an increase in hate crimes. Muslim and Arab communities are on edge, bracing for more violence.
“Language has real-life impact and real-life consequences,” said Jasmine Hawamdeh, communications director at the Anti-Arab Discrimination Committee, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “We’ve seen it manifest into violence across the country.”
“When hate is perpetuated like that, we become a divided America and a weaker America and an America that is not inclusive,” Hawamdeh said. “The American dream becomes further away from immigrants and communities of color.
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