In a radio interview 16 years ago, Rick Sanchez of Rick’s List on CNN at the time complained that comedian Jon Stewart and other “elite Northeast establishment liberals” had it out for him.

“Yeah, very powerless people,” Sanchez huffed after the host mentioned Stewart was Jewish. “Everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart and a lot of people who run the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah.”

Sanchez had worked himself into a furious state before sputtering accusations that were dissected in an extended news cycle — pundits debated whether “elite Northeast liberal” was an antisemitic dogwhistle. The fallout destroyed his career.

Things have changed in the years since Sanchez was fired. Rants about Jews have become more mainstream and, notably, those espousing these views are less likely to fulminate than they are to speak with a bemused irony or detachment.

I was struck by this distinction while watching a viral clip of Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes, on Subway Takes, a social media show filmed on public transit. It has millions of followers and enough cultural cachet that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz sought appearances during their White House run, each seeking to share a clever-enough “hot take” to endear themselves to the show’s massive audience.

Casablancas made his way through a series of boring takes — sending people audio messages is bad, modern cars are boring — before he landed on the take that went viral: “American Zionists get the benefits of white-privileged people but talk like they are Black people during slavery.”

What struck me most about the interview was how gleefully Casablancas built up to what was clearly a rehearsed opinion.

“Why don’t we turn the dial up a little bit,” Kareem Raheem, host of Subway Takes, had said early in the conversation.

“A bit?” Casablancas asked with a smirk. “Or all the way?”

He saved his thoughts about “American Zionists” until the very end: “You want the most controversial one? I know you do,” he told Raheem. “Well, it’s been nice having a career with you.”

Casablancas spoke with none of Sanchez’s venom but rather presented himself as gleefully speaking truth to power. It struck me that, where American antisemitism used to be angry, as in the rant from Sanchez and similar tirades by celebrities like Mel Gibson and Kanye West, it has become almost fun for the agitators. Where Sanchez actually did lose his career over his comments, Casablancas can joke about the idea.

Part of what’s going on is that it has never been more acceptable to criticize Israel or Zionism.

This is a huge victory for Israel’s critics who genuinely care about changing American foreign policy. But it simultaneously poses a conundrum for those who had used their criticism of Israel to signal they held verboten beliefs about our political order — beliefs that could range from a generic distrust in “the man” to conspiracy theories about Jewish cabals.

When Casablancas and The Strokes projected a montage of images from the destruction of Gaza during their performance at Coachella earlier this month, they generated a few headlines but there wasn’t widespread outrage. The display likely aligned with the views of many in the young audience.

And so those who want attention, or want to portray themselves as a maverick or outsider, someone who is bold enough to voice uncomfortable truths, must make clear that their criticism of Israel is about something more than Palestinian human rights.

Casablancas used his platform on Subway Takes to call for a populist political movement to “fight the real billionaire gang agenda villains.” But he hastened to caution against class warfare, describing something more amorphous. The only bad billionaires, he clarified, were the ones who sought to “deceive people” and owned media outlets.

This kind of squishy populism, which calls for rooting out a malevolent subset of the ruling class, has animated antisemitism for centuries, and Casablancas mentioned it immediately before complaining about how privileged and whiny “American Zionists” are.

If Casablancas, who is not Jewish, had clearly stated what seemed to be his core contentions — that many Jews don’t recognize that they benefit from being white and that Israel’s supporters exaggerate the severity of antisemitism — viewers of the lighthearted subway-based talk show on which he was appearing might have wondered why he was sharing his thoughts on Jewish identity. Both of those ideas have already been debated ad nauseam by American Jews themselves, so my guess is the clip would have generated a tiny fraction of the controversy in which pro-Israel influencers assailed Casablancas and progressives including Hasan Piker rushed to defend him.

That controversy was a feature, not a bug. All of Casablancas’ vamping about how controversial and career-ending his comments were about to be, and his decision to refer to “American Zionists” when he obviously meant Jews, suggested that the singer wanted to offend while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability.

We’ve seen similar escalations elsewhere.

On the right, this new style of antisemitism often retains a harder edge. James Fishback, who is running in the Republican primary for Florida governor, has mocked Byron Donalds, his Black opponent, for supporting Israel: “We will pull him over, check for drugs, and then arrest him for betraying America to Israel.”

And, on the left and apolitical center there has been a proliferation of memes ostensibly intended to denigrate Israel but often used to troll Jews or anyone else trying to raise sincere concerns about antisemitism.

When Adam Aleksic, a popular TikTok creator and linguist, made a video explaining how “goy” had become an antisemitic dogwhistle — something that is objectively true and unrelated to Israel — his comments were flooded with jokes about how he was being paid by Israel or AIPAC: “Bro got the paycheck 😭💀,” “Gee I could really use around $7k right now,” “’big yahu when will I get the check?’ 🥀.”

These impish expressions of antisemitism are more insidious than the angry outbursts that characterized previous antisemitism scandals.

Riffs that use coded language are harder to push back against, and easier for audiences to latch onto. Watching Casablancas laugh with Raheem, the charismatic host of Subway Takes, it’s much easier to find yourself nodding along than when you hear Gibson drunkenly rant to a police officer about Jews, or watch Ye talking about how he’d been drugged by a Jewish doctor while standing in a parking lot.

As antisemitism makes its way into popular culture with a wink and a nod, I fear that more people are going to want to get in on the joke.

The post The antisemites are enjoying themselves appeared first on The Forward.