Several days ago, the many fans of Hasan Piker could watch the controversial left-wing anti-Zionist streamer for eight hours and 18 minutes straight, as he discussed the Iran war, cracks in US President Donald Trump’s voter base and, of course, Israel.

Much of the back half of the segment comprised an interview with, and rally for, Cori Bush, the anti-Israel former Democratic congresswoman from St. Louis now running to regain her seat. Pro-Israel groups spent millions to defeat Bush in 2024; on Friday, Piker told Bush supporters from the stage that Israel had worked to “subvert the democratic process.”

The next day, the New York Times published a nearly two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson, the controversial right-wing anti-Israel podcaster. The interview focused largely on his views on Israel and the Jews.

Carlson claimed that Trump was being held “hostage” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “and by his many advocates in the United States.” He denied, as he often does, that he’s an antisemite. He also said he doesn’t know what the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is.

Two days before that, he posted a two-hour video of his own in which he interviewed Marjorie Taylor Greene, the anti-Israel Republican former congresswoman who once shared a video claiming “Zionist supremacists” were seeking to replace Europe’s white population with migrants. Carlson has also promoted a version of that conspiracy theory, called “The Great Replacement.”

In his own monologue, Carlson railed against “people who pushed us into regime change war with Iran.” He added, “Those same people are also the ones, literally the same people, who are pushing the United States to continue to allow the rest of the world to move here.” One of those people, he added, is Rep. Mike Lawler, “the sponsor of the Antisemitism Awareness Act, or something to that effect, a censorship bill.”

If this all feels head-spinning, it is. It’s also become the norm for political commentary and discourse online, including from politicians themselves. And it’s feeding the never-ending debate in the US about Israel and Jews.

A race for attention with no guardrails

Some of the most influential commentators — Carlson, Piker, Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly — have audiences of millions who tune in online several times a week to hear them talk, unfiltered, for hours on end.

One of their favorite ways to fill these hours is by holding forth on Israel. By now, their views on the Jewish state, its military actions since October 7, 2023, its treatment of the Palestinians, and its influence on the US are well known (with the possible exception of Rogan, who’s more eclectic).

But they keep talking about it, rehashing their almost uniformly negative opinions time and again.  That, in turn, spawns a secondary round of discourse about what they said, whether it was antisemitic and how........

© The Times of Israel