Carlson, the former Fox News host who was fired from the network in 2023 and began his own independent network that routinely features interviews on various topics of interest to the MAGA-verse, has a massive following. He also maintains close relations with Trump and others in his inner circle and is, along with other right-wing podcasters, thought to offer a crucial connection to a vital part of the electorate that delivered the White House to Trump.
Israel, and American support for it, has become a major topic of contention among this very constituency. This is partly fueled by the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but more importantly it is driven by the perception that far too much American blood and treasure is spent defending Israeli interests and that criticism of this American policy is often sternly policed through pro-Israel influence in American policymaking and cultural spaces where accusations of antisemitism are the latest manifestation of the “wokevirus.” For this reason, each time Carlson is called an antisemite by those who disagree with his Israel views, deserved or not, it only seems to validate him with his audience.
Carlson has also been making an argument around Israel within a faith-based frame that contrasts with the fundamentalist views that have shaped U.S. support for Israel on the American right. God, in the latter’s view, is effectively a real estate agent who has given a divine right to Zionist Jews to take the land of Palestine. Other Christians, who interpret the Bible’s commands in a figurative sense that applies to the Christian Church, and not a modern political movement, see this quite differently. To them, the modern state of Israel is merely a recent political entity and not the inheritor of God’s blessing from Old Testament Scripture. Instead, that blessing is inherited by the church through the ultimate sacrifice of Christ. For these reasons, as the many heads of the Christian churches in Jerusalem recently proclaimed, traditional Christians may look at Christian Zionism as a politicized perversion of Christianity.
