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there has always been an antisemitic (not to mention anti-Black and xenophobic) strain within American conservatism, but the Cold War had managed to keep it at bay — temporarily. It never went away. It just took a back seat while there was a common enemy that united the nativist white nationalists, religious traditionalists, free market capitalists and neoconservative internationalists. But with the end of the Cold War, this temporary alliance dissolved and these deeper fault lines reasserted themselves. Israel brings these fault lines to the surface like few other topics.

“Much of this area of the far right seems to be hoping that this conflict can reinvigorate what is known as the ‘counter-jihad’ movement, a far-right collection of groups and individuals who believe Islam is a threat to the West and see Muslims as their primary civilizational enemy,”

While an intraconservative debate rages online and on the fringes of right-wing activism, at the policy level the Republican Party’s pro-Israel center of gravity is not only secure, but has been fortified by Oct. 7. And with Donald Trump as the party’s standard bearer for a third straight cycle — despite his flirtation with the conspiratorial, racist fringes of the far right, including antisemites, and despite his fondness for Buchanan’s “America first” isolationism — the Israeli right would be thrilled to see him back in the White House.