Opinion | American Jews Should Fear the MAGA Right, Not a Muslim Mayor
Zohran Mamdani’s meteoric rise to power in New York City set off alarm bells in many Jewish communities. Mamdani is young, left-wing, Muslim, and has sharply criticized Israeli government policy, making many Jews uneasy. But Mamdani has repeatedly disavowed violence and engaged warmly with Jewish community leaders during his campaign. While many abhor his positions on Israel, nothing about him resembles the threats that actually endanger Jews in America. The fact that so many American Jews can’t see that clearly is the greatest crisis of political discernment our community has faced in generations.
The real danger to Jews today is coming from a radicalized, authoritarian right that is currently consolidating its grip on power. Those who closely observe Republican politics and its online subcultures know how deep the rot goes; antisemitism is no longer an ugly fringe but a core part of the right’s identity and worldview. The latest infighting within the MAGA movement makes this plain: On one side are “Groypers,” the young white-nationalist followers of Nick Fuentes. On the other side are institutionalist, neoconservative Republicans who still cling to a vision of the party as pro-Israel, business-friendly and respectable.
It’s clear which faction has the energy and momentum. The Republican Party’s pro-Israel wing, dominated by Christian Zionists and an aging donor class, is losing its internal war. The conservative writer Rod Dreher recently warned that as many as 40 percent of young GOP staffers identify as Groypers. For as long as they’ve had political consciousness, these young Republicans have been swimming in a toxic online soup of conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. An embarrassing leak of group chat messages offers a glimpse into this world—can it get more blatant than “I love Hitler” and talk of gas chambers?
On the surface, it’s all jokes and trolling, but this is by design: Antisemitism was, until recently, still taboo enough in the United States that it had to be cloaked in irony and humor so as to spread without consequences or removal by social media platforms. But the through line is deadly serious: Jews are portrayed as a “globalist” fifth column and the puppet masters behind immigration and feminism. Jews are avatars of everything hated about 21st-century society, echoing the reactionary fascism of the 20th century that saw Jews as the invisible hand behind liberal cosmopolitanism.
Republicans can’t confront the antisemitic right head‑on because the party now depends on them for energy and online relevance.
For Donald Trump, antisemitism is a tool: useful for culture war struggles against liberal institutions like universities, but ignorable when it causes embarrassment. From Charlottesville in 2017 to Trump’s infamous dinner with Fuentes and Kanye West in 2022, the right can flirt with explicit Jew-hatred as long as it energizes the base. When Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts rushed out a video defending Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Fuentes before half‑apologizing under pressure days later, it made the dynamic clear: Republicans can’t confront the antisemitic right head‑on because the party now depends on them for energy and online relevance. Trump realizes this on some level and will never explicitly disavow them. This cold political calculus is why no amount of loyalty or pro-Israel posturing will ever make Jews safe within a MAGA-controlled GOP, especially once Trump is out of the picture.
Even more sickening is the authoritarian turn of many Jewish Republicans, who differ from Groypers only in which minority groups they wish to see excised from American society. Florida Rep. Randy Fine remarked that the only thing he wants Mamdani running for is “his deportation flight.” Fine may imagine himself defending Jewish interests, but a Jewish politician using fascistic rhetoric like this is painfully short-sighted. First they came for…we all know the rest of the poem.
That’s what makes the hysteria about Zohran Mamdani so maddening. To treat him as a threat to Jewish safety while ignoring the metastasizing fascism on the right is to fight phantoms while the house burns down around us. Many Jewish lobbying groups have only made this confusion worse: It feels like these organizations would rather police the boundaries of acceptable criticism of Israel than confront influential people on the right who openly mainstream conspiracy theories about Jews.
Once seen as a bulwark of Jewish political power, groups like AIPAC are now radioactive to many Democrats and younger Jews. Their transactional politics—endorsing hard-right Republicans who undermine American democracy so long as they vote “correctly” on Israel—has shredded their credibility. And rather than confront the antisemitism seeping from the halls of power, the ADL launched a “Mamdani Monitor” within hours of the polls closing (he won’t even take office until January).
Part of the problem is generational: for many older Jews, unwavering support for Israel has long been synonymous with Jewish security. I’ve seen how my older relatives reflexively mistook valid concern about the brutality of Israeli military operations in Gaza for outright antisemitism. Since the October 7 attacks, older donors and institutions have doubled down on this strategy, but Israel’s reputation has cratered among young Americans on both sides, and many younger Jews see that approach as actively undermining both our safety and our moral credibility. Many older Jews were also spooked by imagery of a zealous pro-Palestinian left marching on college campuses, but those factions are truly fringe and distant from real political power. The generational gap between those who think the primary danger is on campus and those who know it’s already in Congress is leaving our community strategically blind.
What has actually protected Jews in America is not an uncritical alignment with whichever group is in power but rather the strength of pluralism itself: a democracy that values the rule of law. The fight for Jewish safety is the fight for democratic pluralism. Treating a Muslim mayor-elect as a bigger danger than white-nationalist radicalization on the right also threatens to alienate the kind of partners who are most likely to come to our aid in the future. In that context, Mamdani isn’t our enemy. Those on the right who dream of silencing him will not spare Jews, either.
Harry Jarin is a small business owner, a volunteer firefighter, and a congressional candidate for Maryland’s 5th District.
Top image credit: Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)