We have faithfully followed Tucker Carlson’s descent into the gutter. In my opinion, every writer, public figure, publication, or institution that lauded him in years past is obligated to speak out against the vile figure he has become — deceitful and destructive in his own right and a discredit to everyone with whom he associates.
The September 2025 issue of National Review carries Jamie Kirchick’s long essay “Tucker Carlson’s dark turn” (behind NR’s paywall). Jamie’s essay documents many of the items that I have written about on Power Line. In this case, National Review continues in the tradition of William Buckley’s service of maintaining a conservative movement that is worthy of respect.
At the top of his essay Jamie pins this 1999 Carlson quote: “It’s perfectly valid to question America’s relationship with Israel . . . but I don’t think that’s the reason [Pat] Buchanan is being labeled an antisemite. It’s this kind of . . . relentless bringing up topics related to Judaism. . . . Here’s a guy who has . . . constantly attacked Israel, who’s attacked American Jews for supporting Israel unduly, who’s implied that American Jews push America into wars in which non-Jews die. . . . I do believe that there is a pattern with Pat Buchanan of needling the Jews. Is that antisemitic? Yeah.” Jamie’s essay concludes:
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After years of “just asking questions,” he has reached the nadir to which such questions inevitably lead. Carlson has chosen to exploit the world’s oldest prejudice while pretending that it’s somehow edgy.
Ultimately, the reasons why Carlson decided to become America’s leading purveyor of antisemitic ideas matter less than what this development says about our society. Why has “needling the Jews,” the very thing Carlson condemned Pat Buchanan for a quarter century ago, been a safe career move? For the persistent acting out of his anti-Jewish obsession in the national discourse hasn’t put a dent in his popularity; on the contrary, it may have even boosted it.
Thirty-four years ago, William F. Buckley Jr. published a 40,000-word essay in this magazine titled “In Search of Anti-Semitism,” wherein he renounced two prominent conservative figures for comments — much like Carlson’s — revealing their anti-Israel and anti-Jewish animus. Among many other calumnies, Joseph Sobran, a senior editor at NR, had called Israel an “anti-Christian country,” and, more notoriously, Buchanan had suggested that Jews seek to aid Israel by starting wars that Gentiles have to fight. Both men, Buckley concluded, had engaged in antisemitism, and both of their reputations suffered because of Buckley’s careful but devastating reproach.
The evidence of Carlson’s antisemitism is far more plentiful, and damning, than that used to indict Buchanan. Today, however, there is no figure on the American right with the gravitas of Buckley, who could literally write extremists and bigots out of the conservative movement with a well-argued essay. But even more central to the rise of Carlson and others of his ilk is that the moral and political guardrails that used to protect our civic life from the pollutive emanations of illiberalism and uncivilized behavior have all but vanished. The antibodies that a healthy society develops to resist Jew-hatred are fast dissipating. Eight decades after the end of World War II, the fading memory of the Holocaust, the rise of identitarian thinking, and the ideological corruption of American higher education have contributed to making our country a place where growing numbers of citizens find it reasonable to blame humanity’s perennial scapegoat, the Jews, for what ails society. Tucker Carlson’s enduring popularity indicates that the cancer on civilization that is antisemitism metastasizes apace.
