Red on Red

Here’s a sentence you won’t see every day on this page: I agree with Matt Walsh and Mike Cernovich.

Walsh and Cernovich are populist “influencers,” each with more than a million followers on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter. Walsh has north of 2 million, in fact, and the number of subscribers to his Daily Wire podcast has more than doubled in the past year. When he and Cernovich speak, lots of MAGA voters listen.

Walsh is worried about Israel’s conflict with Hamas being viewed as a “holy war” that might eventually entangle the United States.

Cernovich fears that grief and rage might lead furious Israelis to wipe more than just Hamas off the face of the earth.

I share their concerns. Any decent person would.

But populist politics isn’t known for its decency. On the contrary, the essence of post-liberalism is unapologetic ruthlessness in wielding state power against one’s enemies. At a MAGA rally, you’re not apt to hear plaintive calls for restraint against innocents. You’re more likely to hear calls for killing terrorists’ families or shooting illegal immigrants in the legs.

So the calls from Walsh and Cernovich for everyone to maintain their moral bearings are … interesting. Suspicious, one might even say.

A recurring theme of this newsletter lately is that the left is divided over Hamas’ attack on Israel while the right is uncharacteristically united—so much so that certain America-First-ers sound like neocons. Evidence of Democratic squabbling is everywhere you look. House liberals are shouting at each other; the White House is attacking the Squad; members of progressive groups are resigning to protest the rallies being held in solidarity with Hamas. The GOP—functionally two parties under one banner—is momentarily speaking as one.

It won’t last, though. The seeds of intra-populist conflict over the war have already been planted.

Hamas’ attack is a fraught moment for MAGA influencers, because no one feels very sure how grassroots opinion will shake out. Rank-and-file right-wingers might do the same thing they’ve done for the past 20 years and rally solidly behind Israel against the common jihadist foe. There will, surely, be a vibrant “level Gaza” camp among the GOP base.

But they could also do what they’ve done with Ukraine by rallying behind the “America First” ethos of the Trump era. Post-liberals will find it uncomfortable siding with a liberal democracy without reservation against an illiberal enemy. Embracing Hamas is out of the question—doing so is too associated with leftism, if nothing else—but I think we should also expect a vibrant “not our war” camp on the right in this matter. Along with occasional reminders that, for all the Palestinians’ faults, at least you won’t find any drag-queen story hours in Gaza City.

The tweets from Walsh and Cernovich smell distinctly like prominent populists trying to feel out their audiences amid uncertainty about where right-wing opinion on the war will settle. It’s too soon and the images on social media are too raw to push a de facto anti-anti-Hamas position, but attacks on the likes of Lindsey Graham for being cavalier about human rights are early evidence of a rift opening in MAGAland.

There’s more.

It’s not a proper rift unless and until it reaches the top of the party, one might say. Well, this one has.

At a rally in Florida on Wednesday night, Donald Trump complained that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “let us down” by allegedly offering America no help with the assassination of Quds Force chief Qassem Suleimani in 2020. He attacked Netanyahu again in an interview with Fox News the same day, saying of Hamas’ massacre that the prime minister “was not prepared and Israel was not prepared. And under Trump, they wouldn’t have had to be prepared.”

He’s not wrong. But needling Israel’s leader as the country girds for its biggest war in 50 years is tone-deaf even for Trump.

He wasn’t done.

Hezbollah hasn’t attacked Israel from the north. Rumors that it had done so swirled on social media on Wednesday morning but proved to be false. (Since when does Donald Trump spread misinformation?) Again, though, his strategic point wasn’t incorrect: There would be a certain cunning to Iran’s proxies opening a two-front war against Israel at this moment. And again, his decision to poison morale by complimenting the bad guys as they plot to murder more innocent Israelis is, shall we say, unfortunate.

So unfortunate that Ron DeSantis and his team ditched their usual timidity about attacking Trump and let this fly in the hours afterward:

That came from the governor’s official campaign account. His super PAC swung away too, noting how the frontrunner had more criticism for the Israeli government at his rally than for Hamas. Top DeSantis spokes-troll Christina Pushaw piled on by highlighting how pro-Iranian social media accounts were promoting Trump’s comments about Hezbollah.

On both sides, there are ulterior motives.

Trump is a manchild who views politics through the lens of who’s been nice to him and who hasn’t. Netanyahu wasn’t nice enough after the 2020 election, so Trump is seizing an opportunity to rub salt in the prime minister’s political wounds regardless of how painful that might be for Israel and its allies. (According to one report, he’s told allies that he wants Netanyahu “impeached.”) DeSantis, meanwhile, is hoping that Israel’s crisis can do for him what abortion hasn’t, causing a rupture between Trump and the Republican base that leads voters to stampede toward the governor as the true conservative in the race. To that end, DeSantis supporters on social media are making sure their followers understand just how offended they are by what Trump said.

After eight years of Republicans resolutely refusing to hold any of his ideological heresies against him, perhaps this is what finally causes the scales to fall from the eyes of MAGA Nation. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Laying aside the cultish ardor of their support, Trump devotees can point to his record on Israel to justify sticking with him the same way pro-lifers can point to his record on abortion to do so. Yes, he called for compromise with the left on abortion restrictions—but he’s also the man whose judicial appointees overturned Roe. Yes, he sounds like an idiot complimenting Hezbollah—but he also took out Suleimani, brokered the Abraham Accords, and moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

There’ll always be an excuse to forgive him for those who insist on doing so. In this case the excuses are obvious.

A Trump-DeSantis squabble would be newsy enough if it were the only red-on-red populist battle over Israel, but it isn’t. Two of the heaviest hitters in right-wing media are also now at odds on the subject. And there may be ulterior motives there too.

On Monday, Tucker Carlson interviewed Vivek Ramaswamy about Saturday’s pogrom and Washington’s reaction to it. The two zeroed in on a mutual enemy, the very hawkish Nikki Haley, after Haley called on Israel to “finish” Hamas. “The selective nature of ignoring certain other conflicts—even more importantly, ignoring the interests of the U.S. right here at home—is what irritates the heck out of me,” Ramaswamy told Carlson before accusing Haley of supporting military interventions because of, uh, “money.” Why is it, the two wondered, that establishment Republicans care more about people dying overseas than Americans dying from drug overdoses?

Two days later, Ben Shapiro responded with five of the most remarkable minutes of his media career. Watch:

It’s unusual for broadcasters who cater to populist audiences to clash over policy, particularly in derisive terms, but it’s really unusual for broadcasters of Shapiro’s and Carlson’s stature to do so. It’s risky, for one thing, as one never knows with whom a listener might side if compelled to choose. And it invites accusations that one has betrayed “the cause” by attacking a fellow traveler. Populists are supposed to stick together and focus on the common enemy, no? “Flight 93 elections” and all that.

So what’s this about?

Shapiro and Carlson have two of the largest online followings in right-wing infotainment, if not the largest. Coincidentally, Tucker is hard at work on building a new online media company that will follow the same sort of subscription model that’s made Shapiro’s Daily Wire so profitable. A cynic might wonder if Ben isn’t trying to sour his fans on Carlson’s enterprise before it launches and starts luring customers away.

I shy away from the cynical view in this case, though. Shapiro and Carlson both strike me as sincere ideologues with respect to the virtues of America’s alliance with Israel. If Ben’s outburst is uncharacteristic, I suspect it has less to do with feeling financially threatened by Tucker (although he should feel threatened!) than with him detecting the first stirrings among post-liberals toward turning against the Jewish state under Carlson’s tutelage. And panicking.

“I’m on the same side as Tucker” with respect to the scourge of fentanyl in the United States, an exasperated Shapiro pleaded with his audience. “I just don’t understand why he’s not on my side when it comes to ‘Hamas has to be wiped off the face of the earth.’” The Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party has been very good to Ben. Suddenly the leopards are eyeing Israel’s face and he’s nervous.

If the two highest-polling candidates in the Republican presidential primary and the two most influential broadcasters in Republican media are now feuding over Israel, I dare say we have an honest-to-goodness rift.

On Wednesday, Erick Erickson published an open letter on his Substack site titled, “Dear Friends in the Conservative Movement.” The fringe left has behaved abysmally since Hamas’ attack last weekend, he acknowledged, but right-wing supporters of Israel shouldn’t let that blind them to the fact that some of their usual populist allies aren’t allies in this one.

Candace Owens has been conspicuously quiet in the aftermath, Erickson pointed out, as one perhaps might expect of a comrade of Kanye “Death Con 3 on Jewish People” West. When she did speak, she sounded less than enthusiastic about standing with Israel.

“Manosphere” celebrity Andrew Tate also took a less orthodox view of the conflict, including the allegations that Hamas terrorists beheaded Israeli infants.

“You should remember who platformed him, who elevated him, and who thought he was a voice of reason and sanity and you should walk away from them and him,” Erickson wrote of Tate. I do remember who platformed him. And who platformed neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, another enemy of Israel mentioned by Erickson.

The safe bet, always, is that populists will paper over their differences in the end. A year from now, most right-wingers across the spectrum will have talked themselves into supporting Trump no matter where he and the MAGA base have landed with respect to the war. In fact, Shapiro and Erickson share the grim distinction of having opposed Trump in 2016 and then persuaded themselves to vote for him in 2020. Imagine watching him govern for four years and growing more partisan, not less.

Left-wingers still occasionally suffer crises of conscience about the worst actors on their own side. Conscience is frowned upon among the populist right.

There are reasons to think the split over Israel could have legs, though.

For one, the war could last a while. Republicans overwhelmingly support Israel at the moment, but they also overwhelmingly supported Ukraine after Russia invaded. They don’t anymore. The longer the conflict drags on, the more post-liberal propaganda the average right-wing media consumer will digest. A heartfelt ally of Israel like Shapiro won’t waver, but the average joe who just wants to be in step with right-wing orthodoxy may find his enthusiasm waning after digesting his thousandth Tucker Carlson monologue on the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.

The Biden factor will also complicate matters. Behold:

Adaam James Levin-Areddy, The Dispatch’s multimedia guru, has relatives in Israel and tells me that the president’s remarks on Tuesday made a considerable splash there. Not only was the passion with which Biden expressed his solidarity appreciated, the address provided a modicum of leadership that’s absent in Israel at the moment. Israelis have turned against Netanyahu and his government, partly because of the catastrophic security failure but partly because the ruling coalition’s populist priorities over the past year seem wildly irresponsible in hindsight. Biden is the closest thing Israel has right now to a figure to rally around.

Trump’s remarks on Wednesday night about Hezbollah, during which he called Israel’s defense minister a “jerk,” were also noticed by Israelis and were … less well-received, per Adaam. Outspoken Israeli Trump supporters have been uncharacteristically tepid in their defenses of him today and some on social media have even sarcastically called on the IDF to bomb Ramat Trump, a town that was renamed in honor of you-know-who. There’s been a distinct, sudden, jarring “vibe shift” in opinion about which American politicians are true allies and which aren’t.

The Biden White House has wasted no time in taking advantage.

As the Democratic incumbent comes to be seen as the more reliable friend of Israel in the presidential race, the rift among right-wing populists risks widening. Carlson and his ilk will leverage Biden’s support for operations in Gaza to their own ends; the average joe whom I described earlier will reason that if the Democratic leadership backs Israel, backing Israel must be the wrong thing to do. Ambitious populists like DeSantis who want to run for president in 2028 may feel obliged to back off from their current positions lest they come to be seen as aligned with Biden, just as they’ve backed away from criticizing Trump over his indictments lest they be seen as aligned with Biden’s Justice Department.

Principled right-wing allies of the Jewish state, however, may view the contrast between Biden and Trump in terms less flattering to the Republican and find themselves wondering whether a second Trump term might be more dangerous than they thought. What if Trump allows his grudge against Netanyahu to influence his policies toward Israel, which would be wholly in character for him? What if he staffs his next administration with Tuckers and Candaces and other post-liberal ideologues—an entirely realistic prospect—and they end up persuading him to equivocate between Israel and Hamas?

You can almost hear him: We’re going to have a beautiful peace deal, the best peace deal anyone’s ever seen. How will the “finish Hamas” wing of the populist right like that, particularly given his track record on peace deals with jihadist savages?

Eventually the accumulation of straws on the proverbial camel’s back may be just enough that some Shapiros and Ericksons simply can’t get to yes on Trump 2024. Being bad on Israel is one thing, but being bad on Israel and abortion and entitlement reform, never mind that whole “trying to overthrow democracy” from a few years ago business? Most populist conservatives will swallow hard and dutifully pull the lever anyway but a few will end up wondering whether this party in its current iteration is doing anything at all for them anymore and will stay home.

And a few staying home is all it takes in states as tight as Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin.

Just something to think about as Ben Shapiro and Andrew Tate throw roundhouses at each other over Israel on social media. Populism will survive this war, but like so many other survivors, it won’t be the same.

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