We’ve been here before. The effigy of Saddam Hussein has turned into the effigy of Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei. Their statues have been toppled, leaving uneasy regimes and tenuous questions about the future. But the uncanny proximity of these historic miracles to Purim begs the question of who will be the next Haman. Although he lacks political authority and nuclear powers, I’ve decided I’m casting Tucker Carlson as Haman in my imaginary play of the biblical book of Esther.

Let me explain. The Esther story is a prescient reminder — as if we need a reminder — that antisemitism lurks everywhere and that people of influence have peddled irrational, conspiracy theories about Jews from the beginning of time. 

Haman’s description of the Jews may be the earliest recorded expression of antisemitism: “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; and it is not in your majesty’s interest to tolerate them” (Est. 3:8). People who are different, who are dispersed, and have different practices should not be tolerated. They should not be allowed to live. 

In Haman’s world, we should be allowed to broadcast lies that kill and foment violence with impunity, just as Khamenei did for decades. Haman made his declaration as if it were a fact when it was only a feeling. It is unclear whether Ahasuerus had even heard of this small people, but he agreed to Haman’s plan to annihilate them, handed Haman his signet ring, and then the two sat down to feast. This last small detail offers a glimpse of how casual, cruel, and irresponsible people who have power and platform can be when it comes to the lives of others. 

I know what you’re thinking: Why Carlson when there are sadly so many other possible contenders auditioning for the role of chief antisemite now that Khamenei is dead? Candace Owens, for example, might have some time on her hands. In addition to hosting antisemites, Holocaust deniers, and racists like Nick Fuentes and Darryl Cooper, Carlson has spread his own spurious views based on invective and an overactive imagination. He falsely claimed that Israel’s president Isaac Herzog visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island, that Israel manipulates American public opinion through a “brain virus” and has accused Israel of being a police state. And then this year, he questioned whether the Jews of today are really the Jews of the Bible. 

Today, government positions vie with social media platforms when it comes to influence. We can topple a regime, but the bottom-crawlers on social media aren’t going away. What makes Carlson “Haman of the Year” in 2026 is the way that he pushes out the calumny. People watch and listen to him because they find his extremism and farfetched lies entertaining. Let’s face it. People like Carlson, like Haman, have always existed. The trouble is with those who give them airtime. Who wouldn’t want to scapegoat the Jews for everything from 9/11 to starting COVID to the weather? Burdens are always easier to carry when there’s someone else to blame. 

What did the average Persian living at the time of the Esther story think of the Jews? The scourge of global antisemitism has had me thinking about climates that become breeding grounds for hate both then and now. Ministers can say lots of foolish things that fail to take hold in the collective imagination. But some theories and conspiracies do. It takes a lot of people to shift a cultural norm – unless, of course, hatred was always there just waiting for a chance to surface in its most venomous and violent forms. It did not take much to kindle ancient resentments.

And therein lies the problem. 

Initially, when Haman’s decree traveled outside the palace walls through an elaborate postal system, “the city of Shushan was dumfounded” (Est. 3:15). No one understood the decree from on high or how it would reshape the kingdom. But as Haman’s policy took root, a quiet acquiesce settled on the kingdom.

Jews, however, were more than confused; they were devastated: “There was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping, and wailing, and everybody lay in sackcloth and ashes” (Est. 4:3). But with all of the noise of despair, the rest of the population was mum. There was no unrest, no dismay, no disgust, no upstander advocacy, and no protest. Not one Persian questioned Haman’s judgment or his leadership. 

When Haman’s hold on the king unraveled and his megalomania was revealed, the king still did not repeal his decree. He merely allowed the Jews to defend themselves if someone were to rise up to kill them first. Maybe Ahasuerus thought no one would act on Haman’s decree. But if he thought that, the king was dead wrong. That day was a bloodbath for the Persians precisely because so many “good” people with formerly kind and civil relations to their Jewish neighbors unleashed a torrent of hate that was deep inside awaiting release. 

Later, when the king transferred his signet ring from Haman to Mordechai, the latent feelings of neighboring people turned from hatred to anxiety – “the fear of the Jews fell upon them” (Est. 8:17). Had there been love in their hearts originally, these neighbors would have celebrated the transfer of power. Suddenly, their darkest, meanest thoughts and behaviors would haunt them, even destroy them – should the Jews seek revenge. 

Although the king allowed Jews to plunder their neighbors (Est. 8:10), the Jews in the Purim story left the spoils (Est. 9:10, 15, 16). They were to get no benefit from violence. They were to exhibit self-restraint in their self-defense. I am reminded of Paulo Freire’s warning that “the oppressed, in seeking to regain their humanity, become in turn oppressors of the oppressors.” Instead, the task of Persia’s Jews would be “restorers of humanity both,” as per Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Mordechai’s lasting achievement was the renewal of taxation and fiscal responsibility to the empire. The goal was to spread amity across the kingdom, not enmity. 

This year, I tremble at the thought of hearing the megillah. Yes, it’s the same old story. And that’s the problem. It’s the same old story. I think of the non-Jews in my life who could have offered a word of comfort after a European soccer game turned bloody or after two worshipers were killed in Manchester on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar but didn’t. I received no well-meaning texts of consolation after the massacres at Bondi. No one shared outrage at the car-ramming into a synagogue in Crown Heights. Like the Jews in Shushan, we wept among ourselves. 

The Husseins, the Khameinis, and the Tucker Carlsons of this world have taught us that hate always needs a direct object. Hate is a societal disease. It is contagious. It kills. If we don’t fight back in disgust, hate’s tentacles grab more. 

Bible scholar Michael V. Fox wrote in Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther that regardless of whether he reads Esther as historically accurate, he nevertheless knows it is true: “Indeed, I relive its truth and know its actuality. Almost without an effort of imagination, I feel something of the anxiety that seized the Jews of Persia upon learning of Haman’s threat to their lives, and I join in their exhilaration at their deliverance. Except that I do not think ‘their,’ but ‘my.’” It’s hard not to read the Esther story personally, especially this year.

The reading and re-reading of Esther annually serves as an affirmation that some of the same dynamics of governance, authoritarianism, hierarchy, bureaucratic waste, status, and the objectification of women break through old castle walls and make themselves at home in contemporary politics. The thing that appeals to us about stories is there “once-upon-a-time-far-far-away” quality, not their “same old, same old” reality. The text does not change. But we do. And because of that constant flux and history’s loop, we read what we once read, even just a year ago, with new eyes.

Please know this. Hate only has short-term wins. Justice has a long tail. Every empire that has tried to destroy the Jews is now in the rubbish bin of history. We are still small, and we’re still here to tell the story.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)