The New Right’s Antisemitism Problem Is Real. So Is the Old Right’s Agenda.

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 09, 2026

“Jews rape children.” That was what his signs said.

I was getting off the highway at Exit 33 at about 4:30 pm this past Wednesday to pick up my kids at St. Paul’s Catholic High School in Bristol, Connecticut and there he was. A young man, masked, holding up signs in both hands containing that message and a handmade Star of David.

Was he a leftist member of Antifa or the DSA? Or another masked white supremacist like the group alleged to have staged a protest outside the Danbury Police Station recently? Who knows? I can’t tell them apart anymore. When I returned to the same spot ten minutes later, with kids in tow, he was already gone. I’m glad my kids never saw him.

But they are bound to see many other things like it. Ten years ago, that man’s message might have been so offensive as to inspire violence against him. In 2026, it’s just another Wednesday. Even if that Wednesday happened to be the third anniversary of the October 7th Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians.

In fact, Oct. 7th—the biggest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—was the moment a lot of people around the world decided, “Hey, Hamas has a point. I’m ticked at the Jews too.” That this would be the catalyst for an uptick in global Jew-hatred is one the strangest phenomena I have ever witnessed. The illogic of it may be topped only by how the assassination of Charlie Kirk somehow caused rightwing podcasting to descend into an antisemitic freak show.

As a Catholic activist who has applauded the new populism, it has been disheartening to see some parts of it degenerate into precisely the vices its critics warned of all along. Granted, those critics made themselves easy to dismiss. When everyone is Hitler, no one is Hitler. But that very way of overshooting the mark is what has allowed genuine antisemites to hide the fact that they are taking populism—and perhaps the country with it—right off a cliff.

All this came to mind this morning when I read Rod Dreher’s report on the National Conservatism conference now taking place in Jerusalem. I was present at the first NatCon conference seven years ago and the annual event remains, to my mind, the premiere venue for the intellectual working out of modern conservatism that is no longer done by the legacy magazines. I read the 70th anniversary issue of National Review at the end of 2025 and it seemed to depict the struggle for the Right as one between “conservatives” (them) and “populists,” who they see as something other than conservative. I think it would be accurate to describe the struggle as between two schools of conservatives, the old fusionists at places like NR and the new populists showcased in forums like NatCon. The latter is where the most interesting conversations are taking place.

Rod Dreher’s post describes the four speeches at a NatCon panel on U.S.-Israeli relations as a “bombshell,” laying out legitimate reasons for young conservatives’ growing coolness to the Jewish state. I agree with Dreher that the new populism has a genuine and growing antisemitism problem. But I sympathize with the pushback by the four speakers against overstating it. Catholics should especially watch Matthew Peterson’s speech. I share Peterson’s view that the New Right’s antisemitism problem is being overhyped by an Old Right that sees it as an opportunity for them to take back the power they have lost. See my reactions in this space to Insurrection Barbie and to the eternal beatdown of Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts.

Speaking of Roberts, I was particularly struck by this observation by Dreher:

So, here is Kevin Roberts admitting that the “No Enemies To The Right” strategy is wrong. This is progress! I don’t have any real inside information, but I think Roberts got to this place of admitting he was wrong to defend Tucker Carlson, and giving a talk in Jerusalem affirming that Israel, America, and the West must stand together against a common enemy, because Yoram Hazony did not react to his pro-Tucker mistake by distancing himself from him. I think Roberts’s speech in Jerusalem was a triumph for pro-Israel conservatives.

In other words, Yoram Hazony did what I had publicly wished Robby George had done instead of quitting the Heritage Foundation’s board. Hazony kept Roberts close enough to correct him. George walked away from Heritage just when his presence might have helped correct it from within:

Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the conservative Family Institute of Connecticut, said in response to George on Facebook that he disagrees with George’s decision to resign “when Heritage is trying to make amends and needs support of the adults in the room, lest it be tempted by the ancient evil about whose promotion Kevin Roberts was initially too sanguine.”

Wolfgang said the “continuing beatdown” on Roberts appears to be a proxy for the pre-Trump Republicans seeking to “take back the reins of the party from the Trumpers.” Though he told George, “I’m not saying that’s you,” he added that the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party and the “MAGA” wing should be unified in opposition to antisemitism.

The old Right is wrong to use the threat of antisemitism as a pretext for crushing the new populism. The new Right is wrong if it allows real antisemites to flourish under its banner. And the rest of us are wrong if we let those two errors tear us apart while an ancient evil makes itself at home again.