Tucker Carlson Exploits Smashed Jesus Statue to Demonize Jews

By now we have probably seen the image from last week in Lebanon of an IDF soldier smashing the head of a statue of Jesus. As wrong as the hammering of the crucifix is, I am more troubled by how Tucker Carlson has used the soldier’s actions as an occasion to demonize Israeli Jews.

On his April 22 Tucker Carlson Show, Tucker says: “Why would an Israeli soldier want to smash the face of Jesus? This is a country (Israel), we are often told, that is a safe haven for Christians in the region. The problem is that (the IDF soldier) got caught on camera and in fact, as it turns out, not only did the guy who did it get punished, but also the guy who filmed it because (for Israel) exposing what the IDF does to the world is the real crime. What does this reflect about the attitudes of Israel itself about Christianity?

These masterfully designed questions are meant to raise doubts about the motivations of Jews as they relate to Christians. With the line—“exposing what the IDF does to the world is the real crime”— Carlson, not so subtly, accuses the IDF of not only smashing a Jesus statue in Lebanon but— wait for it—plummeting the entire world.

On the Facebook page of the Tucker Carlson Show, Carlson answers his question, “Why would an Israeli soldier use a sledgehammer to smash the face of Jesus?” His answer, once again, demonizes Jews: “Because there are a lot of people in Israel who hate Christianity above all.” Here, Tucker falsely characterizes a sizable number of Israeli Jews as seething in hatred toward Christians—a picture cunningly planted in the minds of his nearly 60 million viewers who hang on his every word.

Tucker Carlson has a Jew problem. At Charlie Kirk’s funeral, Carlson used the occasion to demonize Jews during his eulogy for Charlie, accusing Jews of the age-old charge of deicide—the murder of God: “It actually reminds me of my favorite story ever. It was about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem, and Jesus shows up and he starts talking about the people in power, and he starts doing the worst thing that you can do, which is telling the truth about people, and they hate it, and they just go bonkers. They hate it, and they become obsessed with making him stop. ‘This guy’s got to stop talking. We’ve got to shut this guy up.’ I can just picture the scene in a lamplit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus thinking about, ‘what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us? We must make him stop talking.’ There’s always one guy with the bright idea, and I could just hear him say, ‘I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we just kill him? That’ll shut him up. That’ll fix the problem.’”

That this antisemitic trope painting Jews as nefariously sitting in a dark room planning the murder of Jesus is Tucker’s “favorite story ever” is troubling. It’s bizarre that Tucker is so infatuated with his perception of Jews as evil murderers. Tucker’s creation (“I can just picture the scene”) and telling of this story might be a clue into Tucker’s demonization of Jewish people. Since the 2nd century, when church father Justin Martyr announced that Jews would be perpetually and collectively culpable for crucifying Jesus, the accusation of deicide has been charged against Jews, making them the scapegoats for the death of Jesus.

However, according to all New Testament accounts, Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross. It was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judea, serving under Emperor Tiberius, who passed down the sentence of death upon Jesus. His name was Pontius Pilate. It was Roman soldiers who carried out Pilate’s orders by nailing Jesus to a Roman cross.

The fact is, the Italians killed Jesus. But blaming Italians perpetually for deicide is just as ridiculous as blaming Jews. Should we hold Italians guilty for all generations – past, present, and future – for the brutality of Pilate? No. This is because in Jesus’ own testimony, he said, “No one takes it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). As well, the Christian story of redemption is founded on the belief that the death of Jesus on a Roman cross was to atone for the sin of humanity. So, we cannot hold Jews responsible for the death of Jesus. Neither can we blame Italians. This is because Christian doctrine – the kind not influenced by church father Justin Martyr or media mogul Tucker Carlson – places collective responsibility on humanity as a whole, not on Jews. We all, like sheep, have gone astray.

For Tucker and other Christians to deflect their collective guilt upon Jews for killing Jesus makes Jesus a non-Jew. By blaming Jews for Jesus’ death, Tucker makes Jesus a Christian in solidarity with other Christians who oppose Judaism and Jews. In reality, Jesus was killed by the Romans because he was a Jew in solidarity with Jews and Judaism. Tucker’s “favorite story ever” does not reflect this. By charging Jews with the collective, inherited guilt for the death of Jesus, classic European Christian antisemitism received the oxygen it needed to lay the moral foundation to oppress Jews. The charge of deicide led to the mass murder of Jews by Christians throughout the Middle Ages—think Crusades, blood libels, inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions—culminating in the Holocaust in the 20th Century.

The tragedy in Tucker’s Jew problem is in the power of influence he has over his audience. There are comments (7,770 so far) about both his question—“Why would an IDF soldier smash the face of Jesus?”—and his accusation on his Facebook page last week that “a lot of people in Israel hate Christianity.” Here are just a few comments from Tucker’s largely conservative Christian audience: “They (Jews) are the chosen ones to eradicate”; “Let the Germans loose”; “These people originated from the depths of hell”; “Israel has no respect for Christians”; “2000 years ago they did the same to the living Jesus”; “They literally killed Jesus. I can’t understand why some Christians support the IDF”; “They want to keep killing Jesus”; “In reality, Jews don’t believe Jesus and they hate the virgin Mary”; “Zionists are the same who tried to kill Jesus”; “They hate Jesus. It’s in their beliefs. We have nothing in common with those rats.”

Tucker has asked, “Why would an IDF soldier want to smash the face of Jesus?” Might it be the young man has family members who lived to tell him about how they were rounded up by the Nazis—often turned in by their Christian neighbors who accused them of killing Jesus—and sent to the death camps? Might it have stemmed from the pain of persecution by Christians, his people endured for nearly 1,900 years because of the false charge of collective guilt for the death of Christ?

Tucker has proclaimed his “favorite story ever” is about his perception that Jews are Christ killers. It might be that Tucker’s question, “Why would an IDF soldier smash the face of Jesus?” is the wrong question. Perhaps the question Tucker should be asking is: “Why am I so aroused by the ancient antisemitic myth of deicide?” The answer to this question might get to the root cause of why many of the 60 million followers Tucker Carlson influences are filled with such antisemitic rage.