Jewish conservatives ‘gobsmacked’ as MAGA faces ‘reckoning’ over antisemitism

Despite Carrie Prejean Boller getting booted from President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, Religion News reporter Mark Silk says, in a piece entitled “The US right’s antisemitism reckoning,” all bets are actually on the Republican Party’s antisemitic faction.“A sign of this is the current tempest over the Israeli American conservative political theorist Yoram Hazony,” said Silk, referring to Hazony’s book, “The Virtue of Nationalism,” as well as his comments that the right’s antisemitism streak is “pretty bad,” among its younger members.It’s still up in the air where the party will be in 10 to 25 years from now, said Hazony, whose ideas align with the MAGA wing of the U.S. Republican Party. He later blamed Jews and Christian Zionists for failing to make the case that former Fox News entertainer and MAGA influencer Tucker Carlson is an antisemite.Where’s the 15-minute explainer video making the case against Carlson and people in his MAGA realm who share the need to normalize antisemitism, Hazony demanded? Well, Silk says Hazony actually produced that video himself — but then clammed up and refused to release it.“‘Gobsmacked’ understates the reaction of Jewish conservatives,” said Silk.“Hazony’s conservative critics seem to have a sense that he mainly wants to make sure the Trumpian tent is as big as possible,” said Silk. “But the deeper problem is with his faith-based conception of nationalism.”Hazony, despite being a Jew living in Israel, can come off as a Christian nationalist.“If America’s going to change, it’s going to change because you decide that Christianity is going to be restored as the public culture of the United States, or at least most parts of it where it’s possible,” Hazony told attendees at the National Conservatism Conference in 2022. “[Don’t be afraid to say] this was a Christian nation, historically, and according to its laws, and it’s going to be a Christian nation again.”To be specific, Hazony appears to support the dominance of whatever religion manages to fight its way to a particular nation’s top. Hazony is hardly a proponent of worldwide Christendom. His concept of nationalism requires a nation “to valorize its own religious tradition,” said Silk. This means Christianity in the United States, Judaism in Israel, Hinduism in India, maybe even Islam in Muslim countries. “But once you make a particular religion intrinsic to your nationalist ideology, you open the door to ancient religious hostilities. Is it any wonder the American right is experiencing a revival of the old-time antisemitism?” Silk demanded.

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