Tucker Carlson has been named “Antisemite of the Year” by a Jewish civil rights group in response to his interviews with a series of controversial speakers over the course of 2025, most notably white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
The former Fox News host interviewed Fuentes in late October, in the course of which his guest attacked “organized Jewry in America,” stressed the importance of being “pro-white,” and said he was a “fan” of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who persecuted Russian Jews.
Carlson himself attacked “Christian Zionists” on the American right for supporting Israel during the same conversation, singling out former president George W Bush, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and Sen. Ted Cruz for particular criticism.
“By an overwhelming vote margin, Tucker Carlson has been named StopAntisemitism’s 2025 Antisemite of the Year,” StopAntisemitism founder and executive director Liora Rez told The New York Post.
“Carlson’s divisive, hateful, and dangerous rhetoric and his repeated glowing interviews with bigots and Hitler apologists have made him the most reviled Jew-hater over the last 12 months.”
The same organization also attacked the host immediately after the Fuentes episode aired, commenting: “He uses his platform of millions to normalize antisemitism, from downplaying white supremacy to promoting the antisemitic ‘great replacement theory,’ turning dog whistles into a megaphone for hate.”
The Independent has reached out to Carlson for comment.
In addition to Fuentes, the host has sat down with several others this year who have expressed views the group objected to, including Palestinian pastor Munther Isaac and Darryl Cooper, a revisionist historian of the Second World War.
“When influential figures normalize antisemitic narratives, it contributes to a climate where threats, harassment, and violence against Jews become more and more common,” Rez told the Post.
“Antisemitism is surging in the U.S. and abroad, and it is increasingly driven by people with powerful platforms… not just by fringe extremists.
“Words don’t kill, but they dig the graves by inflaming hatred and inspiring unstable actors. Words have consequences, and in today’s environment, they can and do pave the way to real-world violence and deadly attacks on Jews.”
Carlson’s decision to platform Fuentes inspired a huge backlash among American conservatives, with Florida Republican Rep. Randy Fine, who styles himself “the Hebrew hammer,” calling the broadcaster “the most dangerous antisemite in America” and accusing him of taking on “the mantle of leader of a modern-day Hitler Youth.”
Amid the immediate fallout, the conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation was accused of attempting to distance itself from Carlson by removing his name from an online donation page it sponsors.
Its president, Kevin Roberts, subsequently defended him in a video message, saying, “Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic. And, of course, antisemitism should be condemned.
“Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.”
Carlson himself was dismissive of the furore, telling fellow Fox alumni Megyn Kelly his critics can “buzz off,” adding that he does not need to “prove that I’m a good person” and was “just doing my thing, which is I want to understand what people think.”
President Donald Trump also defended Carlson over the interview, saying he had “said good things about me over the years” and that people could make up their own minds about Fuentes, who, notoriously, dined at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022 after being invited along to meet Trump by troubler rapper Kanye West.
Fellow right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro was far less sympathetic, blasting Fuentes at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference last week by calling him a “Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse” and saying Carlson had “built Nick Fuentes up.”
More surprisingly, Fuentes himself has changed his tune on Carlson since their meeting, saying in a livestream rant earlier this month: “I want this guy to stay the f*** away from me. I don’t know who he is, but I’ll tell you one thing: He is not who he says he is.”
He went on to declare that he had “never met a faker human being in my life.”
