Blurb: – from www.theblaze.com
David Harsanyi recently sounded the alarm in the New York Post that “Gen Z’s casual anti-Semitism is growing.” His warning has some merit, but it also reveals blind spots about the political context he prefers not to acknowledge.
Harsanyi isn’t wrong that ugly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic rhetoric has surfaced in parts of the populist right. Plenty of very online commentators have insinuated — and in some instances insisted — that Charlie Kirk’s assassination was tied to Israel. Conspiracy theory claims circulate online that Jewish billionaires control conservative media, bribing or blackmailing Republicans into supporting Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza no matter the cost.
Gen Z has broken old taboos. That’s healthy. But if Zoomers want to be taken seriously, they must separate legitimate criticism of US policy from adolescent conspiracy theories.
This is an “ugly turn,” but it didn’t appear out of thin air. Once the neoconservative gatekeepers lost their grip, a wider debate on the right was inevitable.
For decades, particular outlets and movement foundations policed what conservatives were allowed to say. That censorship has collapsed in the internet era, for better and worse.
I welcome the broader discussion on the right. It was overdue. But the opening comes with a price: young voices saying stupid and reckless things. Then again, establishment conservatives have spent years saying reckless things of their own. My own anthology of commentaries catalogs four decades of such elite nonsense — much of which never saw daylight in “respectable” venues such as National Review, Commentary, or the Wall Street Journal.