Is This the Rights’ Fight? Wrong Turn on Right 1: Free Speech, Antisemitism, and the Right’s Fractures

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Vocal.Media

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/09/26

Irina Tsukerman is a human rights and national security attorney based in New York and Connecticut. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in National and Intercultural Studies and Middle East Studies from Fordham University in 2006, followed by a Juris Doctor from Fordham University School of Law in 2009. She operates a boutique national security law practice. She serves as President of Scarab Rising, Inc., a media and security strategic advisory firm. Additionally, she is the Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Outsider, which focuses on foreign policy, geopolitics, security, and human rights. She is actively involved in several professional organizations, including the American Bar Association’s Energy, Environment, and Science and Technology Sections, where she serves as Program Vice Chair in the Oil and Gas Committee. She is also a member of the New York City Bar Association. She serves on the Middle East and North Africa Affairs Committee and affiliates with the Foreign and Comparative Law Committee. 

Tsukerman joins Scott Douglas Jacobsen to examine the right’s internal rifts, free-speech boundaries, and identity-based accusations. The discussion ranges from alleged responses to Charlie Kirk’s killing and the Jimmy Kimmel controversy to how “cancel culture” claims collide with private employer actions. They parse antisemitic tropes in media, obscure “Frankism” references, and the difference between criticism and defamation. Policy flashpoints include gender-affirming care for minors, fairness in women’s sports, HIV progress amid ACT’s planned wind-down, a Nova Scotia abuse case, and hardline trade/immigration proposals. The throughline: resist conspiratorial thinking, uphold pluralism, and balance inclusion with civil-liberties rigor.

Interview published September 19, 2025.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We were focusing on the Charlie Kirk–Jimmy Kimmel situation and broader Western governance challenges. Charlie Kirk’s killing is, by current evidence, most accurately categorized as a political assassination. It does not necessarily meet the definition of terrorism unless tied to a broader ideological campaign.

Domestic political assassination, as I described, is a downstream symptom of a larger issue. It has two main dimensions. First, there are subterranean corners of the online world—spaces not well captured in the mainstream—where the far right battles internally. On one side are extremists: selective Christian literalists, ethnic supremacists, or fusions of both. On the other side are hardline conservatives who may or may not tie their ideology to religion.

Charlie Kirk was seen by some as “not far enough right” for those on the extreme fringe. That tension reflects an internal struggle within the right itself.

Second, the framing of Kirk’s killing as a conflict between left and right—or even center and right—is misleading. The fight is happening within a narrow band of the right. Young men, in particular, are being informationally isolated, radicalized, and drawn into these inflection points.

Irina Tsukerman: Yes, I think that is a fair delineation. But I would add that the broader clash between the radical left and the right has contributed to this dynamic. In some ways—through a kind of “horseshoe theory”—the far right and the far left resemble each other more than they do the mainstream right or center.

For instance, many people defending the firings of those who criticized Charlie Kirk, or who expressed glee at his death, argue their response is backlash against the far left’s “cancel culture.” They contend that cancellation has swept up not only people guilty of bigotry or hate speech but also those who simply held views at odds with the hard left.

This narrative even extends to Donald Trump. His removal from major social media platforms at the end of his presidency remains highly controversial. On one hand, he was still the sitting president at the time; on the other, he had repeatedly violated platform terms of service, denied the legitimacy of the election, and contributed—at least indirectly—to the chaos of January 6 and the wave of election denial that followed.

The Biden administration’s later engagement with social media companies about enforcement of terms of service sparked legal challenges, which added to the controversy.

What began as a reasonable debate over the limits of regulating speech online has now morphed into a broader cultural and political fault line.

This also concerns the separation between government and private companies. The same people who recently promoted “free speech absolutism,” lecturing across Europe about free speech, and even hosted Nigel Farage complaining about alleged violations in the U.K.—specifically against Russian-backed personalities traveling with the sole purpose of inciting unrest—immediately shifted after Charlie Kirk’s death. They reverted to grievance narratives to justify crackdowns on free speech and expression.

This extended far beyond denouncing calls for violence against conservatives or rhetoric that bordered on justifying assassination. Some of the comments may have been provocative, but they likely did not meet the legal threshold for incitement to violence, which under the Brandenburg standard requires intent, imminence, and likelihood. Still, it is understandable why private employers, concerned with reputational risk, would be alarmed. But many of the comments that drew firings or calls for termination were not even close to that legal red line.

Some remarks were in poor taste, but not provocative; others were simply critical of Kirk and his legacy. In Jimmy Kimmel’s case—one of the most extreme examples—he was primarily critical of the MAGA movement as a whole, not of Kirk personally, and certainly did not justify Kirk’s murder. Some argued that ABC was already unhappy with Kimmel’s ratings and sought an excuse to move on; the FCC pressure and public outrage gave them cover. Still, the speed of his removal—literally before an episode taping—suggests fear and political pressure, not just contract convenience.

A broad coalition spoke out against FCC involvement: commentators from the left, like Andrew Sullivan; centrist editorial boards such as The Free Press; mainstream outlets like The Wall Street Journal; center-right Democrats like Noah Smith; Republicans outside the MAGA faction; and libertarians, including Reason magazine and the Cato Institute. With such a wide range of defenders, it is clear that the intervention by the FCC—and by Trump-aligned circles seeking to suppress criticism of Kirk—went far beyond ordinary debates about whether “language is violence.”

This was about protecting a cloistered political circle, defending its own interests through obvious double standards, grievance politics, and expectations of special treatment, rather than any principled reasoning about speech.

Critics of Kirk or the MAGA movement have been mischaracterized as people celebrating his death or calling for violence. This conflates First Amendment rights with private companies’ decisions to fire employees—or being pressured to do so—which is not the same thing.

Second, there is now an extremely sycophantic attitude within MAGA circles, essentially demanding total conformity in mourning Kirk. Anyone who does not grieve publicly and enthusiastically is accused of disloyalty. Some observers mocked this by posting memes comparing it to North Korea in 2012, when mourners were reportedly arrested for not appearing sufficiently emotional after Kim Jong-il’s death.

This expectation of performative loyalty has created thorny divisions between the right and the far right. On one side are those saying Kirk’s legacy should be defended: that he was a good person whose work advanced conservative identity and fostered public discourse. On the other side are those spreading conspiracy theories—claiming Kirk was “as bad as his critics say” and that his death was orchestrated by Jews or Israel.

Jacobsen: As one commentator warned, nearly every conspiracy theory eventually collapses into antisemitism, making Jews the scapegoat. This pattern has reappeared here. 

Tsukerman: The disturbing irony is that the very faction promoting this narrative—the Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Mike Flynn, Jack Posobiec, Dave Smith, Ian Carroll circle—were some of Kirk’s closest allies in his final years.

Kirk continued to feature many of them prominently. Even after his falling out with Candace Owens over her public break with Trump, he hosted her as recently as last December at a Turning Point USA event. Others in that group, including Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, were also involved in those gatherings. In fact, Tucker Carlson is scheduled to give a keynote speech at Kirk’s memorial in Arizona.

Tsukerman: Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance even hosted a memorial segment on Kirk’s show—ironically enough. Carlson has become the ringleader setting the tone for that sub-faction of MAGA, and Kirk’s death has revealed just how deeply MAGA is split, almost on the scale of the fissures we saw around Jeffrey Epstein.

Even within the far-right elements of MAGA—not just mainstream Trump supporters but the hardcore loyalists—there is division. Some support FCC crackdowns and demand total defense of Kirk as a “great man” whose critics are lying. Others argue that Kirk should be defended precisely because he was “exactly what his critics said”—that his legacy of extreme rhetoric is what they want remembered, and that is why, they claim, he was killed.

There has been a lot of cherry-picking of Kirk’s record to support these divergent narratives. More traditional conservatives acknowledge that his campus platforms for far-right personalities were problematic, feeding extremist currents inside MAGA. The far-right responses, though, split into two camps: one excusing everything Kirk did, denying any wrongdoing, and another embracing the most extreme aspects of his legacy. So even within the far-right there are two clashing visions, while a broader right vs. far-right divide plays out around free speech and the Jimmy Kimmel controversy.

Jacobsen: To clarify the spectrum—on the right, who counts as “mainstream,” and how far does the far-right extend? For example, have openly neo-Nazi outfits like Stormfront commented on Kirk’s death, or are they staying hands-off? I know Nick Fuentes has weighed in, but where does he fall in this spectrum?

Tsukerman: That is a useful distinction. Fuentes is firmly far-right but not necessarily the farthest extreme. Explicitly neo-Nazi groups appear to be keeping their distance, likely calculating that letting MAGA’s far-right carry the anti-Jewish conspiracy narrative benefits them without exposing themselves. Very few MAGA figures, even the most radical, openly identify with Nazi sympathies.

Interestingly, both Kirk and Fuentes had separate fallings-out with Candace Owens. For Kirk, the breaking point was not her antisemitism—he tolerated that far longer—it was her increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories against Trump and other MAGA figures.

That was the line Kirk would not cross. Nick Fuentes, interestingly, confronted Candace Owens on her antisemitism—not because he opposed it, but because he thought it was crude and ignorant. He accused her of being a “primitive antisemite,” spreading conspiracy theories that were nonsensical and disconnected from the older, more established antisemitic narratives. His argument was essentially: your conspiracies are weak, let me show you the “real” ones.

He tried to position himself as the “serious” voice of antisemitism, claiming that Owens’ narratives were amateurish. It was grotesque but revealing. Fuentes, abhorrent as his views are, can articulate them more coherently than Owens, which makes him more effective. Owens, by contrast, has become increasingly incoherent.

So neither Kirk nor Fuentes broke with Owens because of her antisemitism. Their disputes came from other issues—Kirk over her conspiracies about Trump and MAGA, and Fuentes over her lack of ideological sophistication.

Jacobsen: And in terms of where to draw the line with groups like the Groypers?

Tsukerman: Fuentes and the Groypers would not have called for shutting down Kirk’s critics outright. Publicly, they had been at odds with him on various issues. What complicates matters is that some of Kirk’s most aggressive critics overlap ideologically with Antifa-aligned factions, especially in their willingness to justify violence. The assassin himself—whether tied more closely to Antifa or Groypers—appears to have drawn from both worlds.

This shows how, paradoxically, there are areas where Antifa and Groypers converge, including their embrace of violence.

On the antisemitic side, none of these factions have drifted into the most outlandish supernatural conspiracies—the “lizard people” or similar delusions. Instead, their rhetoric remains in the “classical” antisemitic register: finance, politics, backroom deals. Still delusional, but grounded in worldly scapegoating rather than metaphysical fantasy.

Candace Owens, though, came closer to that supernatural strain. She has not gone as far as reptilian theories, but she has invoked Frankism—a bizarre 18th-century heretical movement sometimes twisted into modern conspiracy theories. That already pushes her into territory where antisemitism bleeds into the mystical.

Jacobsen: Niche, boutique antisemitism. This involves essentially someone who became an apostate from Judaism, almost like a self-proclaimed messianic figure, but in ways that are not remotely consistent with traditional Judaism.

Tsukerman: This is Jacob Frank, the 18th-century leader of the Frankist movement. He broke with Judaism and declared himself a messianic figure, blending distorted Kabbalistic ideas with a cult of personality. His movement collapsed, but it has lingered in the margins of antisemitic lore.

The irony is that Frankism is not well known—barely even among Jews, and certainly not among most antisemites. That is why Fuentes criticized Candace Owens. She dredged up obscure, exotic narratives that are far removed from conventional antisemitic tropes. They are buried so deeply in history that most people have no context for them.

Jacobsen: One more thing: the gender dynamic. When I interviewed the president of Mensa International, he pointed out that among men especially, debates often descend into “my IQ is bigger than your IQ”—a kind of intellectual chest-thumping. That is happening here too. Nearly all the central players outside Candace Owens are men.

Tsukerman: We should note Marjorie Taylor Greene—MTG. She was cited in Kirk’s texts as proof that he had become anti-Israel, which his far-right critics seized on to bolster their claim that they were “correct” about him. Kirk himself also featured her.

MTG represents the bizarre mystical end of this spectrum. She is infamous for claiming Jewish space lasers caused wildfires and that Jews control the weather. Her rhetoric is not rooted in physics or reality; it veers into quasi-naturalistic fantasy. At times she implies advanced technology like satellites, at others it is just mystical control. She oscillates between pseudo-science and magical thinking.

So MTG, more than anyone else in this circle, embodies the descent into conspiratorial mysticism—where antisemitism shifts from political scapegoating into outright fantasy.

Jacobsen: One of the tactics I have noticed is how critics sometimes move from attacking arguments to turning the individual into a type. You become the embodiment of “all the negative traits of the West.” At that point, it is no longer about debate; it is typifying, almost dehumanizing. I have learned that you do not have to take part in your own abuse. You can maintain dignity and simply step away.

Tsukerman: I have seen this play out personally. I once made a mild criticism about discussions of relocating Gazans to South Sudan. I raised concerns about the cholera epidemic there—it seemed like it would not end well for either population. In response, I was attacked as an antisemite. It is the same accusation Norman Finkelstein often receives—being labeled a “self-hating Jew.”

The irony is that when people cry antisemitism for trivial reasons, they hand a gift to actual antisemites. It allows real antisemites to claim that any concern about antisemitism is just a cover for shielding Israel from criticism. That dynamic is corrosive because it delegitimizes the fight against genuine antisemitism.

Jacobsen: There is the male-majoritarian element—ego contests among men who dominate these movements. That could be satirized, almost like Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin caricatures of fragile male ego. At the same time, the real conflict is within the right and far right, yet the collateral damage often falls on centrists and left-leaning figures.

Tsukerman: Far-right movements generally have antisemitism at their core. It is a common thread. Some far-right groups mirror have a tactic in another context. They accuse anyone criticizing Charlie Kirk, or them, of being “anti-Christian.” It is a parallel rhetorical move—weaponizing identity accusations to shut down dissent.

Jacobsen: The Groypers often camouflage themselves with progressive-sounding imagery and language, which is no accident. It is a deliberate strategy. 

Tsukerman: Also, Trump just announced raising H-1B visa fees to $100,000. That effectively eliminates access except for mega-corporations and the top-tier Fortune 50 or Fortune 400 companies. In Canada, by comparison, international graduate students might pay around $10,000 annually for tuition, maybe $25,000 at most. But a $100,000 visa fee is unprecedented. People are questioning whether it is even legal.

Jacobsen: It seems their tone has shifted. Now they are calling for the U.S. to withdraw from the World Trade Organization altogether. The irony is that pulling out of the WTO would only leave a vacuum. If the U.S. abandons these multilateral institutions, it is obvious who fills the gap—China, perhaps with some European influence, like France’s recent efforts at rapid response.

Tsukerman: Even with criticisms of organizations like the WHO, membership carries advantages. Leaving the WTO or WHO hands the rule-making power to rivals.

Jacobsen: I interviewed someone for Skeptical Inquirer recently for an article on brain drain, and she made a striking point: the U.S. loses immensely when it drives away H-1B visa holders. These individuals do not just work jobs—they create whole industries, generate wealth, and redistribute economic benefits across regions, often into struggling Midwestern states. Yet those very populations often resent them.

I told reflected on the Edward Witten story—it felt surreal hearing his reasoning articulated so clearly in real time. People like Witten are once-in-a-generation figures. Restricting entry through exorbitant H-1B fees risks another “Yellow Peril”-style panic, or worse, conflating anti-China sentiment with antisemitic tropes. Anti-Asian scapegoating could easily fuse with older antisemitic narratives.

Tsukerman: The MAGA narrative about blue-collar workers is contradictory. On one hand, they argue that college is unnecessary, that trade jobs pay well and guarantee security. There is some truth—many trades are essential and resistant to automation. Yet, at the same time, they claim blue-collar men are victims of neglect and economic abandonment. They cannot have it both ways.

Anyway, I have got the draft title: Is This the Right Fight? Wrong Turn on Right (Part One). We will use this series to map the “sentimentology” of these factions. Sadly, I doubt Jimmy Kimmel will be the last target. Historically, Republicans have used federal government institutions to push back, while progressives have relied more on academia. That is why conservatives are so focused on universities like Harvard—they see them as the most powerful liberalizing institutions in the world.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time. I will see you next Friday, hopefully with a calmer week and more rest.

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