NR’s Haley Strack has posted this round-up of the effusion of “the online right’s Israel foes.” She writes:
Israel attacked Iran last night. As expected, the same people who were “just asking questions” revolted against Israel in support of America’s enemies.
Darryl Cooper, whom Tucker Carlson lauded on his show as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” said on Thursday that America should “commence airstrikes on Tel Aviv immediately.” Dave Smith, Joe Rogan’s favorite comedian-turned-foreign-policy expert, accused Israel of launching “a dangerous, preemptive war of aggression” that “should be condemned by the US government and US citizens alike.” Smith also denied claims that Cooper was an antisemite; Cooper just had “nuanced” views, Smith said.
It may be easy to disregard such online-right opinions as fringe, but their millions of followers and the billions of views they receive suggest otherwise. Nick Fuentes said “this is the final battle in Israel’s 50 year reign of terror to destabilize & destroy every country that resists their rule.” Candace Owens called Israel’s “bloodlust” demonic. Matt Stoller doesn’t think Israel’s “bloodthirsty insanity” should be “our problem.” Crisis magazine’s Eric Sammons doesn’t think Catholics can support Israel’s attack on Iran. UFC fighter and podcaster Jake Shields is “sick and tired of paying for and fighting Jewish wars” and demanded the destruction of Israel. Dan Bilzerian said, “These jews just can’t help themselves, they attack Iran unprovoked, and they’ll be crying about how they don’t feel safe by morning,” adding, “If I was the president, I would round up every politician supporting Israel and have them all tried for treason.” These are just a few.
The unmentioned Tucker Carlson is both more discreet more than a fringe figure. Jewish Insider reports:
Talk show host Tucker Carlson broke with President Donald Trump on Iran on Friday, writing in a scathing commentary in his daily newsletter that the United States should “drop Israel” and “let them fight their own wars.”
“If Israel wants to wage this war, it has every right to do so. It is a sovereign country, and it can do as it pleases,” Carlson wrote of Israel’s preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “But not with America’s backing.”
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In recent days, Carlson has argued that fears of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon in the near future are unfounded and said that a war with the Islamic Republic would not only result in “thousands” of American casualties in the Middle East but “amount to a profound betrayal of” Trump’s base and effectively “end his presidency.”
Carlson reiterated that claim in his newsletter, accusing Trump of “being complicit in the act of war” through “years of funding and sending weapons to Israel.”
Direct U.S. involvement in a war with Iran, he said, “would be a middle finger in the faces of the millions of voters who cast their ballots in hopes of creating a government that would finally put the United States first.”
Carlson harks back to Charles Lindbergh, the most prominent spokesman of the the old America First — the first America First. Lindberg had his “facts” wrong then and Carlson has his “facts” wrong now. The friends of Tucker Carlson, such as Darryl Cooper and Candace Owens, serve a useful purpose. They clarify what’s happening here.