MAGA infighting over issues involving neo-Nazis and Hitler sympathizers has reached such a fever pitch that Sen. Ted Cruz is bemoaning the rise of antisemitism within his party.
In the Texas Republican’s remarks, which mirrored a speech he delivered at a pro-Israel event last week, he said: “Everyone here knows we’re seeing more and more antisemitism rising on the right. In the last six months, I’ve seen more antisemitism on the right than I have in my entire life. This is a poison, and I believe we are facing an existential crisis in our party and in our country.”
Cruz’s own state — where the state GOP chapter has been linked to white supremacists and just last year reversed course on its prior refusal to ban antisemitic people from their party — has offered ample evidence regarding what the senator condemned. But the timing seems to link the remarks to more recent headlines in the national conservative movement.
Cruz’s comments also come in the wake of Tucker Carlson’s friendly chat with Nick Fuentes — a white supremacist who has said he loves Hitler.
That includes two reports from Politico — one detailing messages from a group chat in which Young Republicans leaders expressed support for Hitler and joked about gas chambers, and another that highlighted a Trump administration official who said he has a “Nazi streak.” In recent months, right-wing influencer Candace Owens has stoked antisemitic conspiracy theories alleging that powerful Jews and allies of Israel played a role in the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Cruz’s comments also come in the wake of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s friendly chat with Nick Fuentes — a white supremacist who has said he loves Hitler — which has ignited a raft of MAGA inflighting.
The clearest example of this came via Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who wrote a post on X condemning Kevin Roberts, the president of The Heritage Foundation, after he rebuked the “venomous coalition attacking” Carlson, who Roberts said “always will be a close friend of The Heritage Foundation.” Roberts said the organization is the “intellectual backbone of the conservative movement,” and criticized people for trying to “cancel” Fuentes.
McConnell, it seems, disagrees.
Let’s be honest: The fact that the MAGA movement has an antisemitism problem has seemed obvious since at least 2017, when a bunch of Trump supporters took part in events surrounding the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where some participants yelled “Jews will not replace us!”
All of this is to say: The Republican Party hasn’t seen members defect en masse when MAGA antisemitism has come under scrutiny in the past. But the past week has made clear that there are deepening fissures in the conservative coalition.
