Tucker Carlson

Key Points

• Tucker Carlson is a former Fox News primetime host turned independent media figure and one of the most prolific amplifiers of antisemitic and conspiracy theory-laden content online.
• The Tucker Carlson Show, which can be viewed online, regularly platforms and lends legitimacy to extremist figures who have espoused antisemitism, anti-Israel conspiracy theories, Holocaust revisionism, white supremacism, and xenophobia, including Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, Darryl Cooper, Peter Brimelow, and Ian Carroll.
• Carlson takes a "just asking questions" approach that allows guests like Fuentes and Cooper to say the explicitly antisemitic part while he presents them as authoritative and denies personal endorsement.
• Carlson himself has promoted multiple antisemitic conspiracy theories, including claims that modern Jews have no biblical lineage and that Israel persecutes Christians.
• He is one of the most influential figures in mainstreaming the “Great Replacement” theory, framing immigration and demographic change as a conspiracy to take power from white Americans.

Recent Activity

• Carlson has taken advantage of the 2026 U.S.-Israeli military operation against the Iranian regime to spread virulent conspiracy theories about Israel and Jews, including that Israel had and intentionally did not share foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and that Israel has orchestrated U.S. involvement in other conflicts through manufactured intelligence.
• Carlson regularly legitimizes the idea that Israel or Zionist actors exert hidden, malevolent control over the U.S. government, a conspiratorial narrative that, while historically associated with white supremacist groups who coined the term “ZOG (Zionist-Controlled Government),” has since spread broadly across the political spectrum and has been adopted by extremist actors on both the far right and far left as well as Islamist-aligned movements.
• Carlson also regularly frames Israel as an enemy of Christians and Christian heritage, and claims Israel has a “desire to destroy Europe” and seeks to harm and undermine the United States.
• The viewership for Carlson’s show has grown to a combined 1.7 million views per episode, on average, between YouTube, Rumble, and RSS feeds, according to Podscribe. 
• Carlson himself has amassed an online following of over 34 million across X, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Rumble.

Background

Tucker Carlson previously served as a primetime host at Fox News, where he often used his platform to promote racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. While at Fox News, he claimed immigrants make the U.S. “poorer and dirtier” and was instrumental in promoting and mainstreaming the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Carlson has stated that the Great Replacement conspiracy theory “is not only real, it's the realest thing there is."

Carlson was forced out of Fox News in 2023 shortly after its lawsuit with Dominion over false 2020 election fraud claims, then launched his own online show and platform, The Tucker Carlson Network (TCN). 

Although conspiracy theories and anti-immigrant rhetoric featured very prominently in the early days of TCN, antisemitism was not a major focus.

In September 2024, Carlson reached a turning point in platforming antisemitism when he interviewed Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper, stating that he “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” The episode, viewed more than 35 million times on X, prompted condemnations, including from members of Congress and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

Since then, Carlson’s show has increasingly promoted and focused on antisemitic, white supremacist, and conspiratorial anti-Israel views.

Carlson has suggested, among other false narratives and conspiracy theories, that modern Israeli Jews have no link to the people of biblical Israel and that Israel is targeting and persecuting Christians.

Tropes peddled by Carlson often enter mainstream discourse and are parroted by other opportunists across the ideological spectrum.

Conspiracy Theories about Israel

Carlson has experimented with anti-Israel themes since at least April 2024 and has since cultivated support on both the far right and far left for demonizing the Jewish State. His rhetoric frequently goes beyond harsh criticism and into the realm of conspiracy theories.

Israel as a Threatening, Violent Power

He has made the false claim on a February 25, 2026, episode that Israel is “the most violent country in the world by far per capita” adding that “there is a feeling that like if you criticize them too much, they could hurt you.”

He has further claimed, without evidence, that Israeli spies attempted to carry out false flag attacks in Saudi Arabia and Qatar following the outbreak of the Iran war in late February 2026.

Carlson additionally advances the conspiracy theory that Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty “on purpose.” The 1967 Six-Day War incident — in which Israel attacked a U.S. ship believing it was an Egyptian vessel, formally apologized and paid compensation to the families and the U.S. government — functions as an antisemitic propaganda tool that casts Israel as an aggressive, treacherous force willing to kill Americans. Israel and the U.S. government concluded the incident was a case of mistaken identity. The conspiracy theory has been used by antisemites and anti-Israel actors on the left and the right, as well as Iranian state-affiliated accounts to stoke hatred of Israel and Jews.

Carlson has tried to get ahead of the antisemitism charge, telling the audience at the Turning Point USA convention in December 2025: “It's totally fine to ask about why a foreign government tried to sink one of our ships in 1967. That doesn't make you an antisemite."

Israel as the Puppet Master of U.S. Foreign Policy

Carlson has repeatedly claimed that Israel manipulates the U.S. into doing its bidding. He has alleged that Israel provided false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to push the U.S. into invading Iraq, and that Israel had foreknowledge of 9/11 and a 1983 Hezbollah attack on U.S. Marine barracks but concealed it.

“We'll declassify the 9/11 files. And then all those people on the internet were like, ‘Oh, the dancing Israelis. They did it. Israel had foreknowledge of 9/11.’ There were text messages sent to Israel, warning of 9/11. All true, by the way,” he said in one March 2026 episode. He has suggested that Israel withheld information about the attacks because this would have supposedly been beneficial to Israel to involve the U.S. in Middle Eastern conflicts.

In a May 2026 New York Times interview, Carlson went further, claiming the Iraq War was itself a “product” of “Israel's interests above America's interests.”

He made similar claims about the Iran war, alleging pressure came from "donors and people with influence over the president" who were "pushing the president to do this and telling him that... you will save and redeem Israel." Most strikingly, he described President Trump as a “hostage” under Netanyahu’s “total control” and called his relationship with the Israeli prime minister akin to "slavery."

These unfounded claims are not just dangerous disinformation narratives — they are also common talking points among antisemitic groups who leverage anti-Israel conspiracy theories about 9/11 and world events to substantiate their broader hatred of Jews.

Israel to Blame for Mass Migration

Carlson has also linked mass migration and demographic changes in the West to Israel. He's stated that Israel has a “desire to destroy Europe” and suggested that Israel’s true goal when it engages in Middle Eastern conflicts is to harm its neighbors, Europe, and the United States.

In one telling example from a March 25, 2026, episode, Carlson claimed that “every Israeli-inspired war over the past 30 years” has sent “desperate migrants to Europe,” framing demographic shifts in cities like London as “downstream consequences” of Middle Eastern conflicts orchestrated by Israel and tying his anti-immigrant rhetoric to antisemitic conspiracy theories.

In an April 29, 2026, episode, Carlson constructed a narrative in which pro-Israel political donors, intellectuals, and legislators are implementing a “neocon program” to deliberately alter the demographics of the U.S. while seeking to preserve Israel as a so-called ethnostate. “These are Israel's most loyal soldiers in the United States Congress, and they are voting to open our borders once again. So, it's yet more evidence... that there is a direct connection between loyalty to a foreign power and a desire to hurt this country,” Carlson stated, referring to a vote unrelated to Israel to extend protections for Haitian migrants. "Their number one goal as a policy question is to keep Israel an ethnostate while preventing the United States from being one," he later claimed. 

In a previous episode, on March 2, 2026, Carlson insinuated that Israel intentionally destabilizes its neighbors and that part of Israel’s objective in the Iran operation was to harm Europe via refugee crises. “Lebanon and Syria, really every country that Israel has destabilized on purpose, you have a refugee crisis. And where do they go? Well, of course, a lot will come here [the U.S.], of course. But a lot will go to Europe, just as Syrians flooded into Europe... if you're trying to understand, like, why this is happening, why would you want that? Look at the effects... The point of the system is what it does. And what does this system, what does this war do? Hurts the Gulf states, crushes the Western Europeans, and it hurts the United States. That's the point,” Carlson said.

When put together, Carlson’s longstanding claims of engineered demographic change in the U.S., of malevolent, hidden control by Israel over U.S. foreign policy, and of Israel's alleged motives to harm “Christian Western white countries," these allegations resemble elements of the antisemitic variant of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, one in which Israel (as a substitute for Jews) is deliberately orchestrating non-white immigration to Western countries.

Religious War and the Al-Aqsa Conspiracy

Carlson has on multiple occasions suggested or promoted the conspiracy theory that Israel seeks to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam and located on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, to build the Third Temple. In Jewish tradition, the Temple, built and destroyed twice in antiquity, is believed by some to be destined for reconstruction in the messianic era. A March 23, 2026, episode with former Israeli Knesset speaker Avrum Burg includes a section titled "The Many Attempts to Rebuild the Third Temple," in which Carlson repeatedly presses Burg on this subject. The conspiracy theory that Jews or Israel are plotting to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque has existed for more than a century and has fueled multiple bouts of violence against Jews.

Carlson also enthusiastically agreed with Burg's framing of Israel's military operation against the Iranian regime as "the first religious fundamentalist world war," saying: "That's exactly what it feels like.”

Separately, Carlson promotes the conspiracy theory that Israel is secretly masterminding a supposed purging of Christians in Israel and the Middle East, both by targeting them directly and by fomenting war in the region.

Platforming Antisemitism

Carlson previously championed some antisemitic conspiracy theories while at Fox, but the regularity and intensity with which Carlson has promoted antisemitism on his TCN platform has increased greatly since late 2024. Though Carlson at times makes statements appearing to denounce antisemitism on his show, he also regularly pushes narratives that frame antisemitic tropes as reasonable points of view. Carlson regularly hosts guests who have espoused antisemitic rhetoric and often heaps praise on them during softball interviews.

Carlson will often frame his role as “just asking questions,” which presents such figures as authoritative and allows him to deny personal endorsement. This careful positioning, as someone merely questioning U.S.–Israel policy, leans on guests like Fuentes and Cooper, whose role is to say the explicitly antisemitic part.

His show regularly pushes “globalist” conspiracy framing, demonization of Jewish public figures, distortion of Jewish religious beliefs and normalization of content that overlaps with antisemitic ecosystems.

Insinuations he has made include:

• Prominent Jewish American media figures such as Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin, as well as supporters of Israel such as Senator Ted Cruz or Ambassador Mike Huckabee, work on behalf of Israel at the expense of Americans.
• Modern Jews share no genealogy, theology, or culture with the ancient Israel of the Bible, a false claim used in antisemitic circles to delegitimize Jewish identity and frame Jews as conniving usurpers of someone else’s history.
• The Israeli government endorses killing based on "bloodline," and Israel's conduct is rooted in a religious mandate, from biblical text, to destroy enemies and their families. Carlson cites a reference by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu post-October 7 to the biblical concept of Amalek, falsely characterizing it as a religiously mandated policy of collective punishment. While Carlson doesn't explicitly name Jews, his framing, which attributes this supposed belief to Israel's alleged non-Western character, deploys a centuries-old antisemitic trope that weaponizes Jewish Scripture to cast Jews, and by extension the Jewish state, as inherently violent, uniquely bloodthirsty, and hostile to non-Jewish society.
• Israel is an enemy of Christians and Christian heritage, and American evangelical leaders can be compared to the Reich Church under Nazi Germany.
• The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism is “inherently an attack on Christianity” and “an anti-Christian document” because it defines the statement “the Jews killed Jesus” as antisemitism.

On his show, Carson has hosted a string of guests who openly espouse antisemitic rhetoric and promote conspiracy theories about Jewish power and influence:

On September 24, 2024, Carlson hosted Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper, who labeled Winston Churchill the “chief villain” of World War II and insinuated that the Holocaust was merely the accidental result of poor planning on the part of Germany. Cooper returned on July 17, 2025, this time claiming that Jeffrey Epstein was a spy for Israel.

On August 1, 2025, Carlson hosted Candace Owens, who used the opportunity to call Israel a “demonic state,” spread conspiracy theories that Epstein was a spy working for Israel and that Israel killed John F. Kennedy, and claim that “Israel's controlling our government.”

On October 7, 2025, on an episode of his 9/11 series, Carlson hosted Michael Scheuer, an anti-Israel conspiracy theorist who was listed as a featured speaker at the antisemitic 2024 JP [“Jewish Problem”] Conference.

Later that same month, Carlson hosted Nick Fuentes, an avowed white nationalist who used the opportunity to claim that Jews were responsible for the world’s ills. Carlson later said he regretted the Fuentes interview because it was "a distraction” and dismissed the backlash as "hysterical," telling the New York Times in the May 2026 interview that Fuentes was just "a kid" with "no power except his words" who merely says "naughty things." When reminded directly that Fuentes denies the Holocaust, Carlson responded: "OK, but is that worse than killing kids?"

The guest roster for Carlson's show in 2026 was similar. On January 2, 2026, and February 6, 2026, Carlson hosted conspiracy theorist Ian Carroll, who has previously repeatedly claimed that a Jewish mafia controls America.

On March 9, 2026, Carlson hosted former Colonel Douglas Macgregor, who claimed that “Zionist billionaires” controlled the U.S. economy and political system.

Days later, Carlson hosted Carrie Prejean Boller, a former member of the White House Religious Liberty Commission who defended Candace Owens against accusations of antisemitism. In their discussion, Boller took issue with defining the statement “the Jews killed Jesus” as antisemitism. The overwhelming majority of Christian traditions, including the Catholic Church to which Boller belongs and the Episcopal Church to which Carlson belongs, have declared statements collectively blaming Jews for the death of Jesus to be theologically incorrect and have condemned them as harmful to Jews. Carlson, however, appeared to agree with Boller’s assessment, suggesting that defining such a statement as antisemitism was equivalent to “an attack on Christianity.” 

On an April 15, 2026, episode, Carlson appeared to double down, denouncing a definition of antisemitism which “tells us that the suggestion that Jews killed Jesus is quote ‘classic antisemitism...’ So there goes the New Testament. The whole New Testament is antisemitic, too.” The myth that all Jews are collectively guilty of killing Jesus, a concept known as the “charge of deicide,” has been declared baseless by Church leaders and historians and has been used to justify violence against Jews for centuries.

Promotion of White Supremacist Talking Points

In a January 2025 episode, Carlson began by reading a post on X from an anonymous individual advocating for “white solidarity” and the necessity of white majority rule in the United States, stating, “If white men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. Remember, if non-whites openly hate white men while white men hold a collective majority, then they will be a thousand times more hostile and cruel when they're a majority over whites.” Following this reading, Carlson approvingly states, “All of that, in my opinion, is obviously true.”

Carlson further claimed in that episode that America is “a white country,” and that “systems created by whites... they’re more humane, they're more just, they're more fair, and they're much more efficient and cleaner.”

Carlson later echoed the white supremacist “white genocide” conspiracy theory, claiming that “the defining fact of our lives is that whites around the world are being eliminated and I would like to know why,” in a section of the episode titled “Why Is The White Population Around The World Being Eliminated?”

Downplaying Antisemitism and White Supremacy

Carlson has repeatedly downplayed the threat and prevalence of antisemitism, as well as white supremacy. He has claimed that the only systemic racism in America is against white Christian men and that anti-white racism is worse and more pervasive than antisemitism.

Carlson also claimed that “there's never been any real antisemitic movement in the United States,” and that, “there's no evidence that white people becoming aware of the fact that they're white is a threat to Jews.”