What America’s Fractured Right Means for Israel and the Jewish World

The recent Trigonometry interview with Dinesh D’Souza pulls back the curtain on a right-wing movement that’s starting to come apart at the seams. His critique of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens isn’t just about ego or personality — it’s about the loss of a shared moral and strategic compass on the American right. In this piece, I draw on that exchange to explore how the movement’s internal fractures — between populists, libertarians, and faith-based conservatives — are reshaping what it even means to be “conservative” today. Those same divisions ripple outward, carrying real consequences for Israel and the Jewish world. As loyalty, ideology, and moral clarity collide, the question becomes whether a splintered right can still sustain its historic bond with Israel — or whether we’re watching the early stages of a deeper realignment, one with implications far beyond American politics.

At the center of this polarization lies what D’Souza terms “the parody of investigation” — a new media ecosystem in which figures like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson turn speculation into spectacle. Owens, he says, engages in an “intellectual strip tease,” always hinting that she knows something explosive about Israel, Jews, or “globalists,” but never quite revealing proof. Carlson performs what D’Souza calls “ventriloquist journalism”: asking questions so loaded they deliver the answer for him. Both are masters of outrage as entertainment — a genre that has proven immensely profitable and deeply corrosive. In this market, truth is less valuable than engagement; evidence less important than suspicion. The result is a movement increasingly shaped not by ideas, but by algorithms.

For Jewish communities observing from afar, perhaps the most alarming aspect of the conversation is the reemergence of antisemitic tropes within parts of the populist right. D’Souza and the hosts note that anger over America’s “cultural disintegration,” the loss of shared values, the dominance of identity politics, is increasingly misdirected toward Jews and Israel. “Jews didn’t take over the universities forty years ago,” one host reminds listeners. “They didn’t invent this anti-Western ideology.” But as disaffected voters seek visible scapegoats, the old stereotypes resurface. “Globalists” becomes a coded term; “Mossad” becomes shorthand for conspiracy.

For D’Souza, this is not simply ignorance. It is civilizational suicide. In his 2006 book The Enemy at Home, he warned of a growing “devil’s alliance” between the Western cultural left and radical Islam, united by their shared hostility to Israel, Judaism, and the moral heritage of the West. Today, he says, parts of the right are joining that alliance, undermining not only Israel but the very Judeo-Christian foundations that sustain Western democracy.

In the era of Reagan, the conservative movement had intellectual guardians — figures like William F. Buckley and Irving Kristol — who maintained clear moral boundaries. Racism and antisemitism were not tolerated in mainstream conservative thought. Those boundaries have vanished. Many of the intellectuals who once defined the right turned against Donald Trump, leaving a vacuum that populist influencers were quick to fill. “Think of the distance between Irving Kristol and Tucker Carlson,” D’Souza says. “Tucker doesn’t even pretend to be knowledgeable about anything.”

Without that gatekeeping, conservatism has become tribal rather than philosophical. What unites followers now is not policy but grievance. The podcast’s hosts describe a new kind of right-wing victimhood culture — a mirror image of the left’s identity politics. And where there is victimhood, there must be a persecutor.

The implications for Israel are serious. In the United States, support for Israel has long rested on a bipartisan moral foundation: a shared belief in Western civilization, democracy, and the biblical roots of freedom. If that moral framework collapses — if conspiratorial populism replaces principled conservatism — Israel will find itself abandoned by parts of the very movement that once defended it most passionately. The same rhetoric that once condemned antisemitism now traffics in it; the same media figures who once celebrated the U.S.–Israel alliance now flirt with isolationism or worse. D’Souza’s warning is stark: “When you sever America’s connection with Israel, you don’t just weaken Israel. You weaken the West itself.”

Another insight from the conversation is that conspiracy pays. Anti-woke commentary no longer commands the same attention it once did. To sustain viewership — and revenue — pundits must constantly escalate. “The incentive structure,” one host says, “is to go in a more conspiratorial, out-there direction.” The result is a feedback loop where fear and suspicion are the only currencies that matter. The marketplace of ideas has been replaced by the marketplace of indignation.

Underlying all of this is the collapse of genuine debate. In previous generations, ideological rivals met in public forums — often fiercely — but with shared respect for truth. Today, there is no reason to engage one’s opponents. Why risk losing followers — or advertisers — when the algorithm rewards isolation? Each political tribe now lives in a self-contained reality that is shaped by its own media, language, and myths. Even a national tragedy like Kirk’s assassination becomes just another opportunity to reinforce existing biases.

What emerges from the discussion is not only a diagnosis of the American right, but a warning for democratic societies everywhere: when truth becomes tribal, civilization falters. For Jews and Israelis, the lesson is doubly urgent. The same forces that once scapegoated Jews as global conspirators are reawakening in new, digital forms. They thrive on polarization and do not remain confined to one nation. If America — the world’s largest democracy and Israel’s greatest ally — succumbs to this sickness, the consequences will be global.

As D’Souza and his hosts suggest, that bond is the last defense against both nihilism and tyranny. Lose it, and we lose not only Israel’s allies, but the very idea of a moral world.