Tucker Carlson’s anti-Zionism shows horseshoe theory nearing a circle

In December, the right-wing US media personality Tucker Carlson hosted the far-left UN special rapporteur for the Palestinians, Francesca Albanese, on his show.

The two outspoken personalities, from opposite corners of the political spectrum, found themselves in agreement, with Carlson deferring to Albanese’s explanations of the conflict.

“A lot of us have spent a lot of time doing our best to ignore what’s happening in Gaza,” Carlson said during a preamble to the interview. “The idea that they’ve killed tens of thousands of women and children, non-combatants, accidentally, is a lie. No, they murdered them.”

Last week, Carlson interviewed US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an Evangelical Christian and fellow Republican appointed by US President Donald Trump, who would seem more likely a member of Carlson’s camp. Unlike his talk with Albanese, though, Carlson was confrontational, challenging Huckabee’s justifications for Israel’s existence, using talking points familiar to the left, such as disputing Jewish indigeneity in Israel.

“The current prime minister’s ancestors weren’t from here,” Carlson said. “Netanyahu… his family’s from Poland. They’re from Eastern Europe.”

Carlson’s adoption of left-wing anti-Zionist arguments highlighted the so-called horseshoe theory of politics, which posits that the political spectrum is not a straight line, but that its ends bend toward each other, particularly when it comes to Israel and Jews.

With Carlson’s emerging right-wing anti-Zionism, the horseshoe is increasingly nearing a full circle.

The former US antisemitism envoy, Deborah Lipstadt, has described the horseshoe theory as the far left and far right being “closer to one another on the issue of antisemitism than they are to the center.”

“Rather than the right-left dichotomy, a more accurate predictor of antisemitic worldviews is the adherence to conspiratorial worldviews, anti-hierarchical aggression, and a preference for authoritarianism. This, of course, can describe someone at either end of the political spectrum,” Lipstadt said in 2024. “This might help us understand how people with conflicting views on a host of, if not all, other issues converge on antisemitism.”

The two sides traditionally took opposing views, though. Karl Marx framed Jews as inveterate capitalists, and the US right viewed Jews as communists. On the far right today, Jews are often seen as non-whites facilitating immigration to the US, while on the far left, Jews are treated as white invaders in the Middle East.

The start of the Gaza war has led to a new wave of discrimination against Jews as anti-Zionism saturated many US institutions. A cadre of Jewish scholars argues that anti-Zionism marks Western society’s third iteration of discrimination against Jews. First came anti-Judaism, focused on religion, then antisemitism, a hatred based on race. Anti-Zionism targets Jewish peoplehood and Israel, with its own set of tropes, libels and tactics, the scholars argue. Carlson appears to be moving into the third category, using some of those tropes, with a right-wing inflection.

Anti-Zionism can, in theory, remain purely political, but the ideology results in discrimination against Jews. Societies that have embraced anti-Zionism, like the Soviet Union and Iran, have become inhospitable to communal Jewish life.

The far right, the far left and pro-Palestinian groups form the three pillars of the US anti-Israel movement. All three blur the lines between legitimate political rhetoric and discrimination; there is no clear agreement over what Zionism even means. The far left and pro-Palestinian groups elide their differences to ally over their shared enmity to the US-led West, capitalism and “Zionists.” There’s not much common ground with the “America First” capitalist right, but there is an overlap with Israel.

The confrontational interview with Huckabee illustrated Carlson’s break with the pro-Israel Republican old guard, while his friendly, recent talks with anti-Israel characters from the left and right underline his position as a point of convergence for both sides.

In the past year, on the left, in addition to Albanese, Carlson discussed Israel with Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s, commentator Cenk Uygur and journalist Glenn Greenwald. On the other side, he’s spoken with the Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper, white supremacist Nick Fuentes and conspiracist Ian Carroll. While Carlson gives these figures airtime, and has leaned into classic antisemitism and white nationalism in the past, his own recent statements sound more like leftist anti-Zionism.

“It’s purer and less vulgar than Candace Owens or Nick Fuentes. It has less classically antisemitic and anti-Talmudic stuff,” said Adam Louis-Klein, a prominent critic of anti-Zionism. “It’s almost like a pure anti-Zionism that he’s now developing from the right.”

For example, both Carlson and the left accuse Israel of collective punishment (Carlson’s term is “blood guilt”); charge Israel with targeting journalists in Gaza; dispute whether Biblical Jews are connected to Jewish Israelis today; attack the notion of “Greater Israel” land claims; and are fixated on AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and US aid to Israel.

Carlson’s insistence in the Huckabee interview that Israeli Jews undergo genetic testing to prove their connection to the land echoes the anti-Zionist Khazar hypothesis. He cited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments about “Amalek” after the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, as evidence of genocidal intent, sounding like a progressive academic.

Both sides are sympathetic to traditional enemies of the West — see leftist streamer Hasan Piker lamenting the Soviet Union losing the Cold War, Carlson gushing over Russian grocery stores and Fuentes telling Carlson that he’s an “admirer” of Joseph Stalin. Carlson’s defense of Qatar in December echoed points made by CodePink.

Anti-Israel rhetoric surrounding the Epstein files was similar on the far left and far right, including on Carlson’s show, where he discussed Israel-related Epstein conspiracies with both Carroll and Uygur.

Both sides portray Israel as controlling US President Donald Trump and US foreign policy — a trope, like some of the others, that is shared with more traditional antisemitism. Carlson said Netanyahu was “running around the world, saying I’ve got Trump in my pocket,” while anti-Israel activists had an actor dressed as Netanyahu lead American leaders around on dog leashes.

“Israel has murdered tens of thousands of children on purpose and then locked the doors of Gaza, shot dozens and dozens and dozens of journalists so no one can film what’s happening, and just leveled the place so they can move the people out and take it,” Carlson said in December, a description of the war that could have come from the left.

Both also tend to dismiss antisemitism accusations as bad-faith underhanded ploys to protect Israel, seeing the accusations as impugning the accuser more than the accused.

“Antisemitism used to mean somebody who didn’t like Jews. Now it just means somebody Jews don’t like,” former US Rep. Matt Gaetz said on Carlson’s show.

And on both sides, rhetoric that was once off-limits is becoming normalized, as the differing movements increasingly make inroads in their political parties. Carlson is friendly with US Vice President JD Vance and was at the White House on Monday.

Carlson’s interview with Huckabee won plaudits from leftist media figures such as Mehdi Hasan and reporters from The New York Times and The Guardian, who did not mention his fabrications. Islamist anti-Zionist activists have been sharing clips of the interview on social media.

Other right-wing commentators like Owens have adopted some of the vocabulary more common on the left, like accusing Israel of perpetrating a “Holocaust” in Gaza, calling Israel a terrorist state, and attacking “Zionists,” alongside the old-school antisemitism based on race and religion that is less prevalent on the left.

A common criticism from Democrats and Republicans has been that their opponents only recognize anti-Jewish discrimination in the other camp, but if both sides agree on anti-Zionism, there won’t be problems on the other side to point to. Anti-Zionism is often not treated as discriminatory, but political, forming a major fault line in US discourse, politics and in the courts.

It’s not a perfect circle because there are still gaps between anti-Zionism in the two camps. Carlson isn’t going to call North America “Turtle Island,” he readily condemns Hamas, and his adherents aren’t going to take over campuses, while leftists aren’t going to censure Israel for providing citizens with abortions, back their arguments with Old Testament scripture, or support Trump.

Sometimes, the two sides attack the same targets from different angles, such as Carlson deriding Tel Aviv as the “world capital for drag queen story hours,” while leftists accuse Israel of “pinkwashing.” Carlson’s charge that Israel persecutes Christians at the Holy Sepulchre mirrors the pro-Palestine movement’s accusations of Israeli persecution at the Temple Mount’s Al Aqsa Mosque. Right-wing isolationism dovetails with leftist anti-imperialism in their shared opposition to strikes against Iran.

It’s not the first time the two camps bonded over anti-Zionism. Adolf Hitler allied with the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, for example, but Carlson’s anti-Zionism is a more modern iteration.

Carlson does not explicitly call for Israel’s destruction, arguably the literal definition of anti-Zionism, but his propagation of “all the anti-Zionist libels,” such as his portrayal of Israelis as European implants, puts his statements in that camp, Louis-Klein said.

“He’s delegitimizing Israeli identity by saying, ‘Israelis are not really from there.’ So even if he doesn’t literally say, ‘End Israel,’ it’s the same complex of ideas that’s coding Israel as inherently evil and illegitimate,” Louis-Klein said.

Some tropes have cross-pollinated between the different camps before, such as anti-Israel protesters endorsing the medieval blood libel or charges of Jewish deicide. Carlson’s anti-Zionist circle stands out, though, as an indicator of how pervasive that framework has become — from New York streets and the NGO world, to a right-wing media sphere that is adjacent to Republican party leadership.

“Can you feel the resentment? Because it’s real,” Carlson told Huckabee.