The Problem of Anti-Americanism

By Seth Mandel

Friday, February 27, 2026

 

Anew Gallup survey shows that, for the first time, Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel. Aside from what this means for Israel, it bodes ill for the U.S.—less because of the raw numbers themselves and more because of what led to the decline.

 

Obviously the global media’s repetition of the debunked “genocide” lie has taken its toll. The problem for America here is that those most active in spreading the pro-Hamas propaganda that has bled the Jewish state of sympathy in the West are making similar arguments about the United States.

 

On the right, there’s Tucker Carlson. The former Fox host memorably went to Moscow in 2024 to promote Russia’s stock talking points and even dip into classic Soviet propaganda. It was part of his long-running campaign against U.S. ally Ukraine and the U.S.-led NATO alliance. When asked about the rose-colored glasses through which Carlson stares longingly at Vladimir Putin, the pundit explained his preference for the anti-American dictator over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “I am definitely more sympathetic to Putin than Zelenskyy for the following reason: I think it’s fair to judge leaders on how they do for their country. They have one job. Do a good job for your country. Make it better.”

 

He has since taken on new causes to champion. There’s Qatar, the patron of Hamas during a war in which the terror group was holding Americans hostage and had carried out a massacre including dozens of Americans. Then there’s Iran, which has used Carlson as its highest-profile messenger while its proxies were killing Americans in Jordan after having done so in Iraq for years.

 

Sure, Carlson has focused most acutely, at least of late, on spreading anti-Semitism, the one activity that seems to bring him any true joy and the reason he gets out of bed in the morning. But in his promotion of those who question whether the Allies were actually the villains of World War II, Tucker and his guests muse over whether American and Britain are actually much worse than the Nazis.

 

On the left, there’s the “pro-Palestine” protest movement that is often just as openly anti-American as Carlson. Anti-Israel encampments featured “Death to America” signs. Pamphlets at the University of Michigan’s pro-Hamas demonstrations proclaimed: “Ultimately, our main task as revolutionaries in the United States remains to be the unmaking of the American empire.” There was also the simpler “Freedom for Palestine means Death to America.”

 

In North Carolina, protesters took down the American flag. So did demonstrators at Yale, where students could see protest signs saying “the United States of AmeriKKKa is a death country.” In Washington DC, protesters set fire to an American flag.

 

And why would it be any different? After all, these schools are teaching “decolonization theory” that sees the U.S. as the center of “colonialism and imperialism” akin to the way Iranian figures argue that the U.S. is the “Great Satan” and Israel merely the “Little Satan.”

 

Then there is the fact that the propaganda flowing through left-wing institutions—including universities and the media—is enabled by propagandists for the Chinese Communist Party and spread on Chinese-controlled social media.

 

These aren’t “critics of Israel.” They are useful idiots for America’s most powerful enemies no less than similar-minded activists were during the Cold War. It’s naïve in the extreme to think that these latest “sympathy” polls are merely an Israeli public-relations crisis and not a sign that America’s domestic extremists are on the march.