Nick Fuentes to Hasan Piker: click by click, antisemitism goes mainstream

TAMPA, Fla. - The students are lined up in their hundreds− across the student center mezzanine, down the stairs and out into the hot Florida Spring of the quadrangle. Many wear suits and ties. Most are men. Just about everybody is under 25. Several sport baseball caps with the distinctive "America First" logo, identifying them as "Groypers" - supporters of the antisemitic Holocaust-denying internet troll Nick Fuentes.

The crowds are here, at the University of South Florida in Tampa, on this balmy mid-April evening, to meet and listen to James Fishback, a longshot candidate for Florida governor who has made a name for himself by incessantly talking about one country: Israel.

Fishback's constant sniping at Israel, including his use of antisemitic dog whistles, has attracted legions of conservative fans, as well as national headlines and columns. He seems to have tapped into a rich new vein in American politics: criticizing America's financial and political relationship with Israel, while adding a sprinkling of old-fashioned antisemitism.

And Fishback is just one of a host of politicians and political influencers embracing hostility towards Israel as a way to grow their influence and attract attention. Across the country, agitators on the left and the right are increasingly flirting with antisemitic tropes, conspiracy theories and in-jokes to bring in new followers.

This is happening against the backdrop of the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the unpopular war between the United States and Israel and Iran. The resulting embrace of antisemitism by mainstream politicians and commentators has coincided with spiking violence against Jews worldwide and soaring antisemitic sentiment on social media and other public forums.

The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors antisemitic hate speech and violence, found that 2025 was the third-highest year on record for antisemitic incidents in the United States since the ADL began tracking them.

"We've really just never seen a moment like this before," Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL to USA TODAY for our latest episode of Extremely Normal, a documentary series that examines the mainstreaming of once-fringe beliefs and movements. "We seem, rather than progressing, to be regressing in how our society sees Jewish people, and that is not okay."

Ammunition for the Right and the Left

As Israel's military action in Gaza has led to a backlash from both conservatives and progressives, influencers and politicians on both sides have swooped in.

Along with Fishback, other politicians have used criticism of Israel to boost their campaigns. Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist and failed Congressional candidate from Texas, promoted antisemitic tropes, catching the ire of the Democratic party, while nonetheless receiving significant financial and voter support.

Wildly popular online influencers have also increasingly embraced antisemitic tropes, including Holocaust denial.

Leading the charge to normalize anti-Jewish hatred is 27-year-old agitator Nick Fuentes, who has been railing against Jews for years. Fuentes enjoyed a brief flare of mainstream publicity last year, culminating in a fawning interview with former Republican kingmaker and broadcaster Tucker Carlson.

Following Fuentes' lead, other influencers on the far-right have also taken to questioning the Holocaust and filming videos praising Adolf Hitler, throwing Nazi salutes and singing along to antisemitic songs.

On the left, popular streamer Hasan Piker has also been accused of antisemitism for his use of charged language against the Israeli government and Jewish soldiers and settlers, and for his unabashed support of the terrorist group Hamas, whose founding charter called for the destruction of Israel.

Those words appear to be gaining traction. A June poll by Yale University found that younger voters were most likely to agree with antisemitic sentiments including "Jews in the United States have too much power."

This open embrace of antisemitism by some of the world's most popular influencers is terrifying to Jews the world over, who have seen anger at the Israeli government blend into a century of anti-Jewish hatred and boil over into aggression and violence.

An annual study by Tel Aviv University found that 20 people had been killed in antisemitic attacks in three countries - the highest number in more than 30 years. The report also noted that non-fatal antisemitic attacks remained historically high across the United States. The New York City Police Department, for example, has reported more than 300 antisemitic attacks in each of the last three years. In 2022, there were 59 such incidents.

"Twenty Jewish people were killed in 2025 alone, all in incidents that were openly related to what's happening in the Middle East and with the sort of the poison, the toxin, of anti-Zionism, using language about Palestine or Gaza and thinking it would be normal to kill Jews - not Israeli IDF soldiers, which also is not okay to be clear - but Jewish people going to a museum or walking in a park or lighting a menorah or attending services at synagogue," Greenblatt said. "it's not normal. It's just not. So I don't want to say that A or B is better or worse, but there's a trend right now."

Criticizing Israel is fine. Scapegoating Jews is not.

Politicians and influencers on the right and the left who have placed Israel in their sights often defend their harsh words and actions by claiming they are simply criticizing the current government of Israel - not Israelis in general, and certainly not Jews as a whole.

Fishback, for example, who peppers his speeches with snide remarks about Israel, told USA TODAY's Extremely Normal that he's against any type of religious-based hatred, including against Jews.

In a long interview at USA TODAY's headquarters in New York for Extremely Normal, Piker similarly defended his words, claiming he has nothing against the Jewish people as a whole, but that he should be allowed to criticize the Israeli government and military without being accused of antisemitism.

"I don't think it matters that much anymore - I think anti-Semitism is now, at least in the eyes of a lot of people, no longer seen as a big deal at all," Piker said. "I think this bigotry has exploded, and a big part of that is because antisemitism has been so cynically deployed and weaponized against all criticisms of Israel - accelerated in the last three years by institutions like the ADL."

Young people at pro-Palestinian protests and at Fishback's Tampa speech made the same argument.

"I feel like we're not allowed to criticize them at all, and that any criticism is just immediately shut down as antisemitism," said AJ Geraci, who was waiting in line in Tampa to meet Fishback. "There's a very big difference between being critical and openly hating Jews, which is what anti-Semitism is."

Greenblatt and others said there's absolutely nothing wrong with criticizing the actions of the Israeli government, and that doing so is healthy for democracy. But that's not what the Pikers and Fishbacks of the world do, he said.

The ADL maintains a roughly 10-page dossier on Piker and similar documents on other influencers the organization claims are spreading antisemitic hate.

"We bring the receipts," Greenblatt said.

For some unapologetic antisemites like Fuentes, there's ample evidence of blatant anti-Jewish hatred on display. For others, the alleged antisemitism is more nuanced.

Fishback, for example, when speaking to a group outside a college campus last year, described the food served in school cafeterias as "Absolute goyslop." "Goyslop" is an antisemitic term popularized on the messageboard 4Chan. It's used to suggest that Jews are foisting unhealthy, non-nutritious food ("Slop") onto non-Jews ("Goys").

Confronted on his use of the term, Fishback defended it, saying he thought it was innocuous and funny.

"I'm going to do things that are funny, that are punchy," he said. "I wish we would spend less time talking about word choice."

USA TODAY also pressed Piker on his choice of certain words to describe Jewish people in his broadcasts. In addition to calling one listener a "bloodthirsty violent pig-dog," a term long linked to antisemitism, he has frequently called orthodox Jews "inbred."

"When I'm calling like a settler or something ‘inbred,' it's not different than me calling a neo-Nazi inbred," he said. "Is it nice? No. Is it kind? Absolutely not. It's vulgar, for sure, I understand that. But it's not saying all Jews are inbred or anything like that."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nick Fuentes to Hasan Piker: click by click, antisemitism goes mainstream

Reporting by Will Carless, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect

This story was originally published July 10, 2026 at 11:59 AM.