Many say please don’t pay attention to Glen Greenwald and Tucker Carlson. That is a reasonable instinct. But Tucker Carlson’s audience is vast—far larger than most of us want to believe—and his messaging travels. It settles into conversations, into assumptions, into the ways we begin to make sense of the world. For that reason alone, I don’t think it can simply be ignored. It needs to be looked at carefully, and, when necessary, challenged for what it is.

Part of the dissonance I have been trying to describe lately has very little to do with social media or doomscrolling. It comes instead from a slower, more deliberate habit—reading, listening, trying to stay informed. And yet, despite that measured approach, something has begun to feel very off. The tone of public conversation is shifting, almost imperceptibly at first, but steadily, toward something darker. I felt that again listening to the recent conversation between Carlson and Greenwald.

I came to it open, even curious. I expected a serious discussion about civil liberties—about free speech, overreach, censorship, the pressure that governments exert in moments of crisis. Those are real concerns, and they deserve serious treatment. And for a while, the conversation gestures in that direction. But it does not remain there. It begins to drift, almost as if carried by an undercurrent, into something else—something less precise and ultimately troubling. The language loosens, and with it comes insinuation, ethnic suspicion, and a conspiratorial tone.

I have tried to be careful with the word antisemitism. It has been used too broadly, sometimes carelessly, sometimes as a way of shutting down legitimate criticism. But there are moments when one recognizes not a single statement, but a pattern—a familiar architecture. It is there in the suggestions of divided loyalties, in the quiet references to coordination behind the scenes, in the implication that what appears to be politics is something more tribal, more controlled. None of this is stated outright. It does not need to be. The structure does the work.

Listening from here in Big Sur, where the horizon is usually made invisible by a fog-bank and where one is perhaps more attuned to shifts in atmosphere than to noise, I found myself reacting less to any one claim than to the cumulative effect. It is like watching the fog roll in—not dramatic at first, but slowly obscuring what had seemed clear only moments before.

At one point, there is talk of pro-Israel groups not being truly loyal to the countries in which they operate, but instead shaping laws in the West to serve Israel’s interests. It is presented almost casually, as part of a broader argument. But the implication is unmistakable. It moves the discussion away from policy and into something older and more corrosive: the idea that certain people, by virtue of identity or association, are not fully of the society they inhabit. That they belong elsewhere, or answer to something else. It is a line of thinking with a long and troubling history, and hearing it again gives one pause.

Then there is the discussion of media—phrases about “buying up our media,” references to influence over platforms, the naming of individuals not as part of a structured argument but as points along a suggestive chain. And then the almost offhand prompt: “who’s doing it?” It is a small moment, but it carries weight. The listener is invited to complete the thought, to arrive at a conclusion that has not quite been spoken. It creates the feeling of insight without the burden of evidence. Wink wink. One recognizes the move, even if one cannot always immediately articulate why it feels so familiar.

What unsettled me further is that the conversation shows some awareness of the line it approaches. There is a moment where the distinction between Jews and Israel is acknowledged, even affirmed. And yet, as the discussion unfolds, that distinction quietly dissolves. The movement from Israel to pro-Israel groups to Jewish donors and figures in media and academia happens almost seamlessly, as though these were naturally interchangeable categories. It is not argued so much as assumed. And that assumption is precisely where the problem lies.

There are also moments that linger uncomfortably. Jewish concerns about antisemitism are treated with a degree of skepticism, as though they are exaggerated or instrumental. The presence of Jews in public life is invoked in a way that suggests not integration but disproportionate influence. And then, almost jarringly, the example of “forbidden speech” includes the claim that Jews were responsible for killing Jesus. I found myself stopping there, not out of outrage so much as recognition. That is not a neutral or incidental reference. It carries centuries with it. To introduce it so casually into a modern conversation about free speech is to open a door that perhaps should have remained firmly closed.

From there, the conversation moves into something even more diffuse—a suggestion that rising antisemitism may in part be “inorganic,” perhaps even the result of manipulation or “false flags.” Nothing is substantiated, but the atmosphere shifts again. One begins to see how easily legitimate concerns—about speech, about government pressure, about the limits of dissent—can be reframed within a narrative that points elsewhere, toward something more conspiratorial and less accountable.

What troubles me is not that these two men criticize Israel. That is both inevitable and necessary in a free society. What troubles me is the manner in which criticism is framed and the direction in which it is allowed to drift. There was, in this conversation, a perfectly viable path toward a serious and grounded discussion of free speech. Even the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, IHRA, definition they refer to is not law but a non-binding framework that explicitly permits criticism of Israel comparable to that directed at any other country. That alone could have anchored a thoughtful exchange.

Instead, the argument becomes something else. It shifts from critique to suggestion, from evidence to implication, from policy to identity. And in doing so, it begins to echo patterns that are not new, however modern the setting may be.

Sitting here, not far from the Pacific, I find myself thinking about how ideas travel. They do not arrive fully formed. They move in fragments, in tones, in suggestions that seem harmless until they accumulate. And once they settle, they are not easily dislodged.

So no, I do not think this is a serious or trustworthy analysis. It begins in a place that could have led somewhere important, but it veers, gradually and then unmistakably, into something more corrosive. It takes legitimate concerns and filters them through a language of insinuation and suspicion until what remains is no longer a defense of free speech, but a distortion of it.

And perhaps that is what I find most unsettling of all—not the volume of the voices, but the direction in which they are pointing, and how quietly that direction is becoming normalized.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)