Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024, during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect

Over the past year or so, there has been a strange and unsettling shift on parts of the political and cultural right. Figures who built their influence by pushing back against progressive excess, moral confusion, intellectual laziness, and the erosion of democratic values have begun drifting into territory that should have been left behind long ago — antisemitic tropes, conspiratorial thinking, and flirtations with ideas they themselves once would have dismissed as corrosive and dangerous.

It has been very upsetting to watch, not least because many of these voices rose to prominence by presenting themselves as more serious, more grounded, and more responsible than the alternatives they criticized.

Some have pointed to foreign money and malign external influences – with Qatar chief among them as a reliable patron of some of the most destructive forces in the modern world – as an explanation. It would be naïve to deny that such actors play a role. But that explanation, on its own, is not enough to explain this phenomenon.

Even if Qatari money helps shape narratives at the top of the pyramid – and their possible involvement absolutely deserves scrutiny – it does not explain the sheer number of willing followers who nod along to contentious statements and ridiculous conspiracies without being paid a cent by anyone.

Elite influencers may be driven by incentives tied to financial or political power, but the grassroots level is clearly motivated by something else. Money may help light the match, but it does not explain why so many people are eager to watch the fire burn – and then cheer it on.

The instinctive response is to frame all of this as ideological betrayal – and then to draw battle lines, or to declare that the political culture of Western democracies is fundamentally broken. But that reaction is the wrong approach. It shuts down thought precisely when careful thinking is needed most. Because at its core, something more human – and far more familiar – seems to be going on.

What makes this moment so counterintuitive is that this regression on the right has not emerged from defeat or marginalization. It has emerged from success.

The stunning political victory by the Republicans in November 2024 should, in theory, have been followed by a period of consolidation – a sharpening of ideas and a renewed sense of responsibility. Instead, we are witnessing a growing rift between principled conservatism and a darker, more reckless version of right-wing beliefs. That paradox suggests we are dealing less with ideology than with a psychological response to the sudden expansion of freedom and power.

We tend to assume that success produces stability and confidence. History suggests otherwise. When people or movements feel genuinely embattled, they often develop discipline, clarity, and a strong sense of shared purpose – an understanding of what matters and what must be set aside for the greater good.

But when the wind is at their backs, and a threat – real or imagined – appears on the horizon, the result is often anxiety: “We might lose what we have!” And anxiety is dangerous. It clouds judgment and tempts people to reach for ideas they already know are corrosive, simply because they feel familiar.

History offers some sobering examples. After years of devastating war under Napoleon, France in 1814 finally rid itself of him and he was exiled to Elba. The country had a rare opportunity to step back, recover, and build something more stable and restrained. But when Napoleon escaped from Elba a year later and returned to France, large parts of the country welcomed him back.

Soldiers sent to arrest him joined him instead. Within weeks, France had re-embraced the very man who had brought it to ruin, and 100 days later, they paid for it at Waterloo. The regression was not imposed from above. It was embraced from below – and it was an utter disaster.

Ancient Rome offers a similar lesson. The Roman Republic was built on restraint, combined with a sophisticated system of checks and balances and a healthy suspicion of the concentration of power into the hands of one man. And yet Julius Caesar’s rise was welcomed by many as a solution to a period of dysfunction.

He was appointed dictator, and what followed was not renewal but the oppressive age of emperors. Rome gained order but lost its liberty. Once again, faced with uncertainty, a civilization chose a familiar system that was bad over the harder work of repair and healing — and they called it progress.

The Torah identifies this same flaw in human nature at the very beginning of Jewish history, in Parshat Beshalach. Just days after experiencing one of the most dramatic liberations ever achieved by a slave nation – the Exodus from Egypt – the newly freed Jewish people find themselves trapped between the sea and Pharaoh’s approaching army.

Despite everything they know – that God has redeemed them, that awesome miracles have carried them this far – panic sets in. They turn on Moses and cry out: “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you took us out to die in the wilderness?”

And then comes a line so jarring that it almost feels like parody (Ex. 14:12):  טוֹב לָנוּ עֲבֹד אֶת־מִצְרַיִם מִמֻּתֵנוּ בַּמִּדְבָּר – “It would have been better for us to serve Egypt than to die in the wilderness.”

How is this even possible? These are people who have just witnessed the collapse of the most powerful empire on earth for their benefit – who are, in that moment, at the very top of their game. And yet, even as they bask in the glow of victory, the instant their freedom begins to feel fragile, their instinct is not to move forward into the rational unknown but to retreat into what they already know is irrational evil.

That is the crucial point. It is not a calculation that makes sense, nor is it a carefully thought-out strategy; it is a psychological reflex, and a dangerous one. Faced with what feels like an existential threat, people often reach for the familiar – even when that is the worst possible thing they could do.

Which is what makes the current flirtation with antisemitism and conspiracy thinking on certain parts of the right so disturbing. These are old instincts, long known to be destructive, that have now resurfaced because they feel familiar, as some on the right feel tinges of anxiety.

But familiarity is not necessarily wisdom; far more often, it is a dangerous trap. A recent study suggests that engagement with antisemitic conspiracy theories on the right has risen dramatically since the November 2024 election. Unless this trend is halted, it won’t end well.

The Torah’s message at the sea is uncompromising. The way forward is not to turn backward. Redemption does not come from retreating into the habits and ideas that once enslaved and degraded us. The sea will open up and offer salvation only when someone is willing to step into it – to take the risk, and to trust that moral clarity and courage still matter.

Regression may feel comforting, but it leads nowhere. The only way forward is through.

People inspect the area of Al-Ahli hospital where Palestinians were killed in a blast from an errant Islamic Palestinian Jihad rocket meant for Israel, in Gaza City, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot

A document seized in Gaza and reported by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster exposes a reality that sharply contradicts much of the global coverage of the Israel-Hamas war: Palestinian civilians have long been killed by Palestinian rockets and terrorist leaders knew it, discussed it, and accepted it.

The document records a meeting between Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials held before Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and the war that followed. In it, Hamas representatives confront Islamic Jihad leaders over a deadly and recurring problem: rockets misfiring and landing inside Gaza, killing civilians.

“Your rockets are falling on people’s homes, and this is a recurring issue,” a Hamas official is quoted as saying.

The response from Islamic Jihad is even more damning. “We are at war,” a senior representative of the terrorist group replies. “Even if a thousand people are killed by friendly fire, that is the price of war.”

This is not a battlefield mishap acknowledged after the fact. It is an explicit, pre-war admission that Palestinian terrorist groups were aware their weapons routinely killed civilians and that they viewed those deaths as acceptable.

The document also records Islamic Jihad officials admitting that they knew their rockets were defective. According to the report, the weapons were manufactured using blueprints supplied by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In other words, unreliable rockets were knowingly produced, launched from densely populated areas, and expected to fall short.

Image of the seized document, as presented by Kan Public Broadcaster

This matters because it directly undermines a central assumption that has dominated coverage of Gaza for years and intensified after Oct. 7: that civilian casualties are almost entirely the result of Israeli fire.

Kan’s report does not quantify how many Gazans have been killed by Palestinian rockets. But it does establish something journalists have consistently avoided confronting: terrorist groups themselves acknowledge that their own fire kills civilians and that this has been happening for years.

That reality burst briefly into view 10 days after the war began, when a PIJ rocket exploded in the courtyard of a Gaza hospital, killing hundreds of Palestinians. Israel was immediately blamed across much of the international media. Only later did evidence emerge that the blast was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.

This newly revealed document shows that the incident was not an anomaly. It was a known risk discussed internally long before Oct. 7.

So, why has this revelation barely registered outside Israel?

Journalists often justify their reliance on casualty figures and on the fog of war. But here, there is no ambiguity. This is a primary source document describing internal discussions between terrorist groups, criticizing each other for weapons failures and explicitly accepting civilian deaths as collateral.

If such a document emerged showing Israeli officials dismissing civilian deaths as “the price of war,” it would dominate headlines worldwide. When terrorist groups say it among themselves, it is met with silence.

This selective attention has consequences. Media outlets routinely report Gaza casualties without asking how many were caused by Palestinian fire. They rarely revisit earlier claims when new evidence emerges. And they almost never scrutinize the conduct of terrorist groups with the same intensity they apply to Israel.

The Kan report exposes not just the recklessness of Palestinian terrorist organizations but the media’s unwillingness to reckon with it. By ignoring evidence that complicates a simplified narrative, journalists deprive audiences of essential context and accountability.

This document does not absolve Israel of scrutiny. But it does demand that journalists stop treating Palestinian armed groups as passive actors whose actions are irrelevant to civilian harm.

Terrorists killing their own civilians is not a footnote. It is a central fact of this conflict. The question is no longer whether the evidence exists.

It is why so many in the media choose not to report it.