Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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My colleague, columnist Michelle Goldberg, recently wrote a profile of 31-year-old James Fishback, a Republican candidate for Florida governor. Fishback's become a sensation among some young Florida Republicans with his commitment to affordability and his fierce opposition to immigration and U.S. support for Israel. He also embraces a kind of trollish racism and anti-Semitism.
Given Fishback's views, I wanted to ask Michelle, what is it about Fishback that resonates so much with young Republican voters? Michelle, thanks for being here. Hey, thanks for having me. So first things first, this column of yours really connected with audiences. It was one of the most widely read pieces of the year in the New York Times so far. Thousands of people have left comments.
But for those who are unfamiliar, give us some background on James Fishback. Sure. And I should say, I mean, to me, James Fishback as a person is almost less interesting than the movement around him. But so James Fishback is somebody who's been trying to make it in Republican politics or conservative politics for a long time. was sort of on the outskirts of the MAGA movement.
He was in the news a bit years ago when he wrote a piece for the Free Press about his anti-woke high school debate league. Later, he started an anti-woke exchange-traded fund that he launched at Mar-a-Lago. These projects ended in scandal and disgrace. And
Recently, as he's decided to run for governor, he's shifted and he's sort of adopted the positions of Nick Fuentes, who some listeners might know as this kind of famous, young, like neo-Nazi-esque troll and very influential young conservative pundit. And so it's this combination of you know, extreme nationalism.
I mean, he's in Florida arguing that Florida's gun laws are too strict and that Florida's abortion laws are too lax, right? This is a place where abortion is... Banned after six weeks where they have, you know, stand your ground laws. He's extremely anti-immigrant, although he is the son of an immigrant himself. His mother is Colombian.
But I think what really sets him apart is this insistent focus on Israel and this kind of wink-wink attitude towards Israel. anti-Semitism. I mean, being in the crowds that came to see him, it was often when he brought up Israel that you could sort of feel the energy pick up in the audience, that people would start cheering and applauding.
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Chapter 2: What insights does Michelle Goldberg share about James Fishback?
And I just feel like that's a kind of an unsustainable position when you have Marco Rubio out there saying that America had to strike when it did because they knew Israel was going to hit and then Iran was going to hit back. You know, he's since tried to temper that. But people who heard it, I think,
were not crazy to hear that Israel was the one driving the bus here, especially in a situation where the administration has had so many shifting rationales and has never really made a coherent case for why they've started this war. I don't think you have to be an anti-Semite to look askance at the role of Israel in American foreign policy right now. I mean, James Fishback at some moments is...
openly anti-Semitic in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with Israel. You know, for example, he was visiting a university and was talking about the junk food served in cafeterias and how it's sort of like enervating, and he called it goyslop.
And goyslop, if you don't know, I mean, maybe you can figure it out from the context, is a sort of like far-right anti-Semitic term for basically, you know, kind of
Chapter 3: How does Fishback's anti-immigration stance resonate with young voters?
junk food that Jews like foist on non-Jews in order to, I don't know, sap their vitality or something. Is this a thing? Is this a thing? This is slapping of vitality through bad food? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's sort of where anti-Semitism and the Maha movement, it's like in the middle of that Venn diagram. I mean, no, it's not a thing that happens.
No, I mean, not literally, but I mean, is it a thing that people actually believe? Yeah, I think, I mean, how widely spread this conspiracy theory is, I cannot say.
Chapter 4: What role does anti-Semitism play in Fishback's political appeal?
That it is a conspiracy theory is true. And it's a conspiracy theory that, you know, again, James Fishbeck is like very happy to indulge in, has nothing to do with Israel. You know, similarly... The way he speaks about Israel is basically being – the reason that kind of his audiences don't have any of the things that they want, right?
The monocause behind all of Florida and the United States' problems. again, I think is obviously he's tapping into anti-Semitic animus. And although some people in the crowds will tell you or told me, you know, I don't have anything against Jews. I'm a Christian. I love everyone. Which, by the way, is also what Tucker Carlson often says.
You know, not all of them are that savvy or sort of that well-versed in the distinctions. And so you will also talk to people who will just tell you that, you know, they've recently learned about how Jews run the banking industry. Getting back to Fishback, you noted that his polling in Florida for the governorship is like 5% to 6% of the vote.
So it's a tiny, tiny amount of actual support, according to polls. Why do you think it was important to go and cover him, to go to Florida and really dig in deeply if he's got such a tiny sliver of potential support? Well, because those same polls show him leading among Republicans under 35.
And so I was sort of less interested in writing about where I think the Republican Party is today than where it's going. And we've all seen stories about, say— you know, kind of viciously anti-Semitic, viciously racist group chats among young Republicans, polling about far-right attitudes among young Republicans. The conservative writer Rod Dreher has written about the presence of Groyperism.
The followers of Nick Fuentes are called Groypers, and he's written about how pervasive that is among young Republicans around the administration. And so it just seemed like a way to see that movement, you know, not online, which is where I usually encounter it, but in person.
Are you concerned that this surge of Groyperism, as you say, among young Republicans represents the danger that this could be the future of the Republican Party because these young people are going to get older and will continue to vote Republican, presumably?
And, you know, whether or not they continue to vote Republican, there's going to be a future where my kids are going to live in a world in which anti-Semitism is pervasive in a way in which it really wasn't when I was growing up.
You know, I was looking around at some of these events and thinking, if in 20 or 30 years a real anti-Semitic party contends for power in the United States, this is a glimpse of where it's starting. So in a way, I guess you could say anti-Semitism is becoming politically normalized. Would that be accurate? Well, I think absolutely. And we can talk about anti-Semitism on the left.
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Chapter 5: How does Fishback's focus on Israel connect with his supporters?
And he's tried to rewrite that. But the words were indelible. And everybody who ever had suspicions about Israel's role in American foreign policy, including James Fishback, who talks about that Rubio quote on the stump repeatedly, you know, sort of took that as proof that that ideas that had previously been dismissed as conspiracy theories have now been confirmed by the Secretary of State.
And so the more this war goes bad, the more Americans are asked to make any sort of sacrifice. So... Even though the casualty count has been thankfully relatively low by the standards of a major American war, there are at least a dozen American service members who've been killed. There have been more than 200 wounded.
There are all of these economic repercussions and a broader sense that the world is spiraling out of control and people don't know why. And it's If you're inclined to believe that there is some dark force pulling the strings and then somebody says that I'm the only one brave enough to tell you who it is, you can sort of see why that is an enticing message.
Let's take a look at the Trump administration and the universe of right-wing influencers that give it fuel. What role have they played in connecting anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism? Um... Well, that's I mean, that's a sort of complicated question because you have such a civil war in that influencer sphere right now. And it really predated this war.
I mean, you really saw it break out after the murder of Charlie Kirk, where he saw an increasing number of conspiracy theories that there was some sort of Zionist plot to murder him. The idea was that Charlie Kirk, and again, there are grains of truth here, as there are to many conspiracy theories, right?
Charlie Kirk really was frustrated with pro-Israel donors who were trying to get him to kind of cast aside Tucker Carlson. And he felt a certain amount of conflict between some of his donors and his own misgivings about Israel's war in Gaza. And so, you know, that has turned in the imagination of
some very influential propagandists into evidence that there was a kind of massive Zionist plot to have him killed. It sounds crazy. But this idea has real purchase on the right. I mean, it even has purchase within Charlie Kirk's organization, Turning Point, in which you recently saw someone fired because they believed these things, right?
So if people within the organization believe these things, imagine... How many other people believe them? Candace Owens, who, like Tucker Carlson, is one of the most successful, widely listened to, widely viewed podcasters in the United States. You know, this has become the center of her cosmology.
And when I would talk to people at these events, the boys usually listen to Nick Fuentes and the girls usually listen to Candace Owens, if I can boil it down like that. You know, but it's not just them. This has kind of spiraled out into a broader war over Israel and American foreign policy. I don't think it's that pervasive within the MAGA movement writ large, right?
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