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From Kanye, to Nick Fuentes and Megyn Kelly: Why J.D. Vance’s Silence Matters Now
US Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 20, 2025. Phone: REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo
In moments of political stress, the most revealing test of leadership is not rhetoric but refusal: what a leader will not tolerate, what he or she will not excuse, and what they will not leave unnamed.
That is why Vice President J.D. Vance’s persistent failure to confront antisemitism on the populist right must be treated as a primary concern, not a side issue.
In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly spoke approvingly of Nick Fuentes — an openly antisemitic extremist who has praised Hitler, embraced totalitarianism, and argued that Jews should be excluded from American civic life.
Kelly described Fuentes as “very smart” and suggested his ideas had value for the country. Carlson appeared to agree. Within 24 hours of that exchange, Candace Owens reposted Kanye West’s infamous “Death Con 3 on Jewish people” tweet and called it a “vibe.”
This is not fringe behavior leaking into the mainstream. It is the mainstream.
And it is happening inside the political ecosystem that Vice President Vance now helps lead.
Vance’s ties to Carlson are not incidental. Carlson is not merely adjacent to Vance’s politics; he is a close ally, and Vance even employs Carlson’s son. Carlson’s reach — tens of millions of people each week across podcasts, clips, and social platforms — is enormous. That influence now includes the normalization of figures and ideas that were once considered politically radioactive.
That is the context in which Vance’s silence must be judged.
A growing cohort of influential right-wing pundits has adopted a conspiratorial style long associated with antisemitic politics. With Candace Owens as a notable exception, most avoid naming “the Jews” directly, relying instead on euphemisms — “globalists,” shadowy elites, cultural engineers, disloyal insiders. The vocabulary is coded; the architecture is unmistakable.
Carlson has popularized this conspiratorial worldview for millions. Owens has given it its most explicit voice — recycling classic antisemitic libels about Jewish control of finance and media, falsely blaming Jews for the slave trade, attacking Jewish identity itself, and even defending Kanye West’s call for violence against Jews.
Kelly has moved from accommodation to outright normalization, publicly praising Fuentes and treating an admirer of Hitler as a legitimate political voice.
Together, these figures reach tens of millions of Americans across television, YouTube, X, podcasts, and livestreams. Fuentes himself commands a large online following through his “Groyper” network. This is not marginal radicalism. It is mass politics.
Yet from the highest levels of Republican leadership — including the vice presidency — there has been no sustained, unequivocal rejection of these figures or the ideology they propagate.
When asked about antisemitism on the right, Vance has insisted that figures like Tucker Carlson are unfairly maligned and that the Republican “big tent” does not have an antisemitism problem. His framing reduces antisemitism to a vague subset of “extremism,” effectively sidestepping the ideology and its consequences.
The only clear break in Vance’s pattern of evasion proves the rule. When Fuentes grotesquely attacked Vance’s wife on racist grounds, Vance responded clearly and immediately.
But when Jews are targeted, when antisemitic narratives are normalized, and when eliminationist rhetoric spreads through the very coalition that sustains him, the response is silence or deflection. That distinction matters.
Silence Is a Choice and Antisemitism Is Not a Side Issue
No serious political actor is unaware of what is happening. This antisemitism is not subtle. It is rhetorically patterned and widely documented.
We have already seen where this pattern leads. Democratic leaders long ignored antisemitism on the progressive left, laundering it as “anti-Zionism” and activism. It produced exclusion, purity tests, and the quiet normalization of treating mainstream Jewish identity as a problem.
The Democratic Party’s antisemitism problem was not an accident. It was the result of leaders who refused to draw lines early. Some notable Republicans have shown that it is possible to confront this threat directly. Vance, however, appears to be repeating the Democrats’ failure from the right.
Antisemitism does not behave like a policy disagreement that can be managed. It behaves like fire. Once given oxygen, it spreads — from insinuation to justification, from justification to action. Once permitted, it does not remain contained.
And the problem doesn’t just concern Jewish Americans. Antisemitism has always been the earliest warning sign of democratic decay.
Societies do not begin by persecuting everyone. They begin by deciding that one group does not fully belong. Jews have been assigned that role with grim consistency across history.
When antisemitism is normalized — explained, contextualized, ignored — violence follows. Moral barriers erode. Victims are abstracted.
American Jews are seeing those patterns again: campus exclusions, ideological tests, street violence explained away as “context,” and political leaders unwilling to draw lines. This is why antisemitism is not just another culture-war issue. It is a stress test for liberal democracy itself.
Leaders draw boundaries. Through what they name, condemn, or ignore, they signal which ideas corrode civic life and which are allowed to spread.
Vance’s refusal to confront antisemitism — while some figures in his political orbit praise Fuentes and his coalition gives space to rhetoric that threatens Jews — sends a clear message: some forms of hatred are acceptable if they arrive wrapped in populist grievance. There is no neutral ground here. To refuse to draw the line is to move it.
A Moment of Decision
This is not a demand for ideological purity. It is a demand for moral clarity.
Criticizing elites is legitimate. Questioning institutions is healthy. Good-faith debate about America’s relationship with Israel is perfectly valid in a democracy. None of that requires trafficking in conspiratorial antisemitism, excusing it, or pretending not to see it when it appears.
History is unforgiving on this point. Leaders who believed they could harness antisemitism without being consumed by it were always wrong.
J.D. Vance is not a spectator in this moment. He is Vice President of the United States, with power and choice.
If antisemitism continues to metastasize inside the political coalition Vance is helping to build, he will not merely have failed to stop it. He will own part of the cost.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.
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A Chabad Jew was stabbed in NYC. He returned the next day to continue wrapping tefillin.
(JTA) — Less than 24 hours after he was stabbed in midtown Manhattan, Yosef, a Chabad-Lubavitch man from Crown Heights, was back on the same street where he’d been assaulted, popping into Diamond District businesses as usual to help employees wrap tefillin.
Yosef, 26, who did not share his last name to maintain his privacy, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he was back on 47th Street on Thursday afternoon, the day after the stabbing, without missing a beat in his Monday-through-Thursday rounds even as police investigate the incident as a possible hate crime.
A number of the people he visited pieced together that the widely circulated footage of a man being stabbed the previous night was of him.
“They were in shock. They were obviously scared for me,” said Yosef, who has been wrapping tefillin and distributing Shabbat candles to Jewish Diamond District employees for about three years. He started that routine when his father, a Chabad Jew who works in the jewelry business, realized he needed his son’s help to handle the demand for those acts. Yosef told Chabad.org that he was “still shaken” by the attack a day later.
Still, he told JTA, “We can’t allow some hate to stop us.”
Yosef said he felt it was important to communicate that message because “we need more mitzvahs in the world, we need more light in the world.”
Yosef was taken to Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday evening around 6 p.m., where medical staff assessed that he had no internal bleeding and would not need stitches. No arrests have been made, but the assailant has been described as a woman in her 40s.
The attack has renewed concerns about security that have faced Chabad adherents and institutions, which often host public events and maintain a visible street presence. But the threat didn’t diminish their presence in midtown Manhattan on Friday.
Multiple Chabad men stood under a bright yellow tent on the sidewalk wrapping tefillin for a steady stream of workers in the heavily Jewish Diamond District.
“The Rebbe says that the way to defeat darkness is only through the addition of light,” said Shmuel Cohen, who was handing out small photographs of the movement’s late leader, the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
Cohen told JTA that he had not heard about the attack that took place just down the block two days earlier, though his partner under the sidewalk tent had. Cohen said that the best way to respond is through “the observance of Torah and mitzvot without being ashamed of our Judaism but presenting it to everyone.”
Also on Friday, Chabad officials met with New York Police Department representatives for their annual meeting about security ahead of Chabad’s international conference in Crown Heights, the Brooklyn neighborhood where the movement is headquartered. The conference begins on Nov. 5.
Chabad has been targeted in multiple high-profile attacks in the past year, including the deadly Bondi Beach shooting in Australia in December. The following month, a man rammed a car into the doors of the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn, raising further questions over how the movement should balance its commitment to making its events accessible with security.
Meanwhile, Jews have been targeted in more than half of hate crimes committed in New York City in 2026, despite making up about 12% of the city’s population.
“Security is our top priority. Our goal is to provide an environment where every participant feels safe and can fully experience the purpose and spirit of the gathering,” said Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, a top organizer of the upcoming conference.
In the wake of the attack, Yosef said he is not concerned about going out in public as a visibly Jewish person and doesn’t plan to change how he approaches the world.
“I was wearing the same clothes on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday,” he said. “I didn’t change my routine.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A Chabad Jew was stabbed in NYC. He returned the next day to continue wrapping tefillin. appeared first on The Forward.
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They met on a Birthright trip then married. Now this American Israeli couple’s internet fame has turned to infamy.
Ethan and Hila Klein first met at Yad Vashem — Israel’s Holocaust museum — in 2007, a meet-cute they recounted, giggling, years later for their millions of YouTube followers.
“I think I went up to her and said something like, ‘They had it coming, don’t you think?’” said Ethan, known for his edgy humor and infamous internet trends, including Vape Nation and Papa Bless. “No I didn’t say that. I wonder if you would have laughed though.”
They were on a Birthright trip, Ethan an American and Hila an Israeli soldier on leave to join the group. Soon after the trip ended, Ethan moved to Israel to be with Hila, and the two began making videos under the name H3H3 Productions (the H for Hila and the 3 standing in as an E for Ethan). They married, moved to America, and started a popular podcast.
A Jewish love story, until Thursday, when Hila, now mother to their three children, accused Ethan publicly of having a months-long affair.
“The betrayal I feel is immeasurable,” Hila said in an Instagram post. “My only family on this side of the world. How do I even begin to make sense of this?”
Ethan reposted her statement.
Their podcast is run by a handful of crew members who often chime in and participate in various skits and bits. The crew also shared a statement saying they stand with Hila and refuse to work with Ethan, though they added they don’t know what this will mean for the future of the show.
A couple roiled by Oct. 7
The left-leaning, secular couple’s videos and podcasts focused primarily on pop culture, internet drama and general politics, not Jewish or Israeli issues.
Both Ethan and Hila would make statements sometimes when tensions in Israel flared, and they would occasionally speak out against IDF actions that upset them.
In 2021, Ethan started a podcast with political commenter Hasan Piker, a controversial left-wing influencer, called Leftovers, a nod to their leftist politics.
Then came Oct. 7.
Ethan, an American Israeli dual citizen like Hila, was horrified by the attacks but quick to call the IDF genocidal in the aftermath. In their first episode together after Oct. 7, Ethan and Piker said the show would continue through their disagreements. The episode was tense, and it was their last.
As Piker’s rhetoric on Israel intensified and became at times antisemitic, the two began a nasty internet feud, culminating in a nearly five-hour livestreamed debate.
Piker posted about the news of the affair on X, sharing a video of Ethan and expressing disgust for men who cheat.
“Now this is a high caliber man [with] good morals,” Piker said sarcastically. He also posted “Judge me by my enemies” after sharing Hila’s statement.
Hila, who owns a makeup and clothing company, increasingly came under scrutiny by Piker and others after Oct. 7 for her service in the IDF. Artists refused to work with her. One model she hired publicly disavowed her after finding out she was Israeli.
The couple was harassed, sometimes online, sometimes in-person, as they attempted to take what they viewed as a nuanced stance in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. The united front seemed to fortify their relationship, as Ethan, ever outspoken, routinely came to his wife’s defense.
Their show lost thousands of subscribers, but loyal fans stuck with them — fans who now say they are gutted and confused by the news of the affair. Many in disbelief noted that Ethan had Hila’s face tattooed on his arm less than two years ago as a surprise for her.
“The greatest thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother,” says the quote surrounding the tattoo.
The Forward attempted to contact the Kleins through their work emails and did not immediately hear back.
The post They met on a Birthright trip then married. Now this American Israeli couple’s internet fame has turned to infamy. appeared first on The Forward.
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These Jewish college students have some ‘nonnegotiables’ for El-Sayed
At the University of Michigan, first-year student Robert Kashan, 18, and sophomore Jacob Reich, 19, sat behind a large blue sign. “Some things are nonnegotiable,” it declared in all caps.
The sign laid out their requirements for any candidate seeking their support: a commitment to Jewish safety, “including for Zionist Jews,” and supporting Jewish statehood in Israel, among other positions.
“Zionism is a legitimate part of the Democratic coalition, and a lot of us are feeling less represented by the Democratic Party,” Kashan told the Forward.
The students are part of a broader “Nonnegotiable” movement in Michigan, a coalition of Jewish Democrats who are spelling out their dealbreakers for candidates ahead of the Senate election between Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed and Republican nominee Mike Rogers.
The movement has attracted national attention, with hundreds of rabbis across 34 states signing on to the “Nonnegotiable” demands. Meanwhile, about 20 students at the University of Michigan have publicly signed, while hundreds more offered support anonymously, according to Reich.
The “Nonnegotiable” supporters aren’t saying whom they’ll vote for if their concerns aren’t addressed — or whether they’ll vote at all. But they are pushing back against the assumption that Jewish voters will, as the saying goes, “vote blue no matter who,” urging El-Sayed to engage with their demands if he hopes to earn their support.
That’s in contrast with two other Jewish political camps, including a group called Michigan Jews for Democracy that endorsed El-Sayed. Their petition, which has garnered almost 1,000 signatures, notes that some signatories hold reservations about El-Sayed but are voting for him nonetheless as a check on President Trump.
“We understand that a vote is not a valentine; it’s a strategic chess move,” the petition reads.
A competing petition, dubbed “Michigan Jews Against Extremism,” has drawn hundreds of signatures from Michigan Jews who plan to vote for Rogers. That petition similarly emphasizes that Rogers voters may still have reservations about the candidate: “Our vote for Mike Rogers does not require that we agree with him on every issue or that we support President Trump,” it reads.
“Nonnegotiable,” meanwhile, rejects the idea that Jewish voters would have to choose between Zionist and Democratic values. Some have criticized the nonnegotiable movement for ignoring the reality of the electoral choice at hand. Others have called it “a veiled attempt to excuse the actions of Jewish Democrats who want to feel validated about voting for Mike Rogers.”
But Kashan and Reich, who met at Hillel and plan to major in political science, said the “Nonnegotiable” movement was the only way they could see themselves engaging in the election, as they felt increasingly pulled between their identities as Democrats and as Jews.
Some Michigan Jews have expressed alarm at El-Sayed’s questioning of whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state and his decision to campaign alongside controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric. Rogers, who Trump has endorsed, earlier this week called El-Sayed “anti-Jew.”
In a letter to Michigan Jews, El-Sayed has vowed to “stand up against antisemitism and take the threat of violence against our Jewish community incredibly seriously.” He has also hired a Jewish liaison in the final weeks leading up to the election.
This will be the first election when Kashan, who just turned 18, is eligible to vote, and Reich’s first national election after voting in a local primary in his hometown of Palo Alto, California. For both, voting Democratic in their first major election had once seemed like a given.
“I’m a Jewish Democrat, and I want Democrats to take the Senate,” Reich said. “I want to vote for a Democrat in my own state.”
They’re still holding out hope that will happen — and that, with less than two weeks until the Nov. 3 election, El-Sayed will sign on to their petition.
And if he doesn’t? Neither student is ready to say.
The post These Jewish college students have some ‘nonnegotiables’ for El-Sayed appeared first on The Forward.
