By Philip Klein
Thursday, September 03,2026
This
post is in response to The Ridiculous Hyper-Parsing of JD Vance
Rich has accused critics of “ridiculous hyper-parsing” of Vice
President JD Vance’s comments to the Republican Jewish Coalition. I disagree.
To start with, Vance is the sitting vice president and
the front-runner to be the next nominee of the Republican Party. Tucker
Carlson, the person who helped launch Vance’s political career and whom Vance
has repeatedly described as a friend, has emerged as the most influential
antisemite in America. Yet Vance has refused to criticize Carlson, even as
Carlson regularly attacks not only Jews but also Vance’s boss, President Trump
(Carlson went so far as to question whether Trump might be the anti-Christ).
So given that Vance has refused to distance himself from Carlson in the face of
his increasingly outrageous provocations, there are obviously a lot of
questions about whether the likely future leader of the GOP shares Carlson’s
worldview.
I was not in the room when Vance spoke, so I defer to
Rich on how he was received, but I believe that the criticism his remarks have
garnered is justified.
In addition to his direct refusal to condemn Carlson,
these are the Vance comments that drew the most scrutiny:
What I say to the people, like
the root of antisemitism, the core of antisemitism to me, is the idea of blood
libel. The idea that because of your genetics, because of your blood, because
of your ancestry, you are guilty of a crime that you never committed. And I
think that blood libel, which is at the root of antisemitism, is the exact
opposite of the Christian gospel. And because of that, I believe the gospel is
actually the solution to this.
Vance completely distorted what “blood libel” actually
means. In reality, what it refers to is the idea that Jews regularly kill
Christians as part of secret rituals, the most notorious example being the idea
that the blood of Christian babies is used for the making of Passover matzot.
The modern equivalents of blood libels are the litany of claims of supposed
Jewish misdeeds, particularly the hoaxes about Israel committing genocide and
inducing mass starvation in Gaza.
“Blood guilt” is the idea that all Jews are genetically
responsible for the crimes of a single Jew, or for crimes that other Jews
committed in the past. The idea of blood guilt was most relevant to historical
forms of antisemitism — such as hating all Jews because “Jews killed Jesus.”
The “blood guilt” line is one that Carlson himself has used to brush aside
accusations that he has engaged in antisemitism.
So, whether intentionally or out of ignorance, Vance
defined antisemitism in a way that conveniently absolves his friend Carlson.
No, Carlson isn’t saying that every Jew today is guilty of killing Jesus. But
what he is doing is going on air every day and spreading lies and conspiracies
accusing Jews, and Israel, of bloody misdeeds and weaving it into a sinister
conspiracy of global control.
At a time of historic levels of antisemitism in America,
when the Democratic Party has already been consumed by antisemitism, a lot of
people are genuinely worried about whether Republicans will move in the same
direction. It is completely legitimate to parse what Vance is saying on this
subject.
UPDATE: After I posted this, I saw that Vance addressed
Carlson again from the White House briefing room, saying, “Tucker is a friend
despite the fact that we disagree on a number of things, and I’m not going to
play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political
disagreements with them.” If you listen to the full
answer, the instances of disagreements he cites are with Carlson’s
criticisms of Trump, and his effective endorsement of Abdul El-Sayed over Mike
Rogers in the Michigan Senate race. At no point does Vance mention that he
disagrees with Carlson’s antisemitism. Instead, he downplays everything as a
matter of “political disagreements” — as if they merely have different views on
tax policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment