How Zionists Hijacked MAGA
On the Wednesday of the last week of July, a former Florida State University employee approached a man wearing an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) shirt on campus and began berating him for his support of a state she believed was committing genocide. By the next day, she was arrested, on the basis of the person wearing the IDF t-shirt alleging (with video support) that she gave him “maybe just a push” on the shoulder and also alleging (without any support) that she “definitely just hate-crimed” him. The attorney general of the United States, Pam Bondi, who directs the Department of Justice, had also commented on the case. Earlier that week, Leo Terrell, Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the DOJ, retweeted a post by an unknown X user complaining that a private retailer, Sephora, was carrying the product of an anti-semitic marketer (the marketer had made comments critical of Zionism). Terrell then publicly pressured Sephora, twice, to stop carrying the product, which, a month later, Sephora did.
These were not isolated incidents. Terrell’s superior is Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who early in her tenure “ordered employees to turn their attention to combating antisemitism,” which judging by the Department’s subsequent actions is code for anti-Zionism. A lawyer who gained a populist Republican following in the early 2020s representing conservative plaintiffs on issues of religious expression and gun rights and warning against the overreach of national security agencies, Dhillon has become a practitioner of exactly the selective “justice” she once seemingly opposed. In the early 2020s, the Justice Department prosecuted groups for what it, often blatantly falsely, called sedition or violence or incitement. Today the Justice Department is prosecuting people for expressing opinions about foreign policy—opinions now repackaged by the prosecutors into expressions of anti-semitism or “anti-Americanism” or threats to national security.
What, exactly, is going on here? How did members of a movement describing itself as America First and bent on stopping the “weaponization of lawfare”—a movement re-founded during a mass federal mobilization after January 6, 2021 that gave new meaning to the phrase “overzealous prosecution”—end up imitating their enemies to give aid to loyalists of a foreign nation? And how are they doing this without resistance from certified MAGA leaders: the most institutionally influential spokespeople of the movement who have expressed skepticism about aspects of America’s involvement with Israel?
Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton has said that Zionism succeeds on the American Right by a process of aggressive insinuation:
“Zionists [are] always rushing to get out ahead of anybody. Whatever it is that you’re about, they claim to be about that too…And then [they] say every other right wing thing that all other right wingers say about everything. And then [they] say…you’ve got to support Israel at the end.”
And, indeed, an investigation shows that roughly a score of Zionist operators have infiltrated Donald Trump’s Republican Party in just the way Horton describes. A handful have attached themselves to the most influential institutional spokespeople for MAGA, joining projects against DEI and unauthorized immigration while bringing with them an unquestioned loyalty to Zionism and the military corporate structures it relies on. The presence of these Zionist allies has effectively neutered these institutional spokespeople as critics of Zionism, outside of the occasional expression of concern over specific policies in the Middle East. It has also allowed another handful of more traditional Zionist Republican operators to aggressively push Zionist policies on the middle and top of the party without blowback from the base. The result has been ineffective resistance to pro-Israel policies coupled with a surge of anti-Muslim animus which justifies those policies and comes from the same Zionist source.
Among these Zionist operatives who have curried influence in the MAGA movement are the journalist-provocateur Laura Loomer; the journalist Ben Shapiro; the writer Dennis Prager; the talk show host Mark Levin; the policy intellectual Darren Beattie; and the lawyers Sigal Chattah and Ron Coleman.
Over the past half-decade or longer, these players have attached themselves to the various loci of the MAGA movement: Trump loyalists or Trump-supporting media outlets or powerful conservative voluntary associations who backed his third run for the White House in the name of populism. Since 2020 this orbit has included Trumpian populists like War Room’s Steve Bannon; as well as entrepreneurs-cum-activists like the late Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA; and education-focused activists like Christopher Rufo and Moms for Liberty.
Laura Loomer has, uniquely, managed her influence by leveraging her direct line to Donald Trump, but the other operators have institutionalized themselves. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro and Prager U’s Dennis Prager have worked on documentaries and education projects with TPUSA. Both have also branched into actual conservative education politics: Prager has contracted with the conservative culture warrior who heads Oklahoma’s Education Department to shape Oklahoma’s teacher selection process; and Shapiro is a longtime supporter of James Lindsay, Moms for Liberty’s resident intellectual. Mark Levin operates from Fox, where he regularly hosts (and praises) his “dear friend” Leo Terrell.
Current Undersecretary of State Darren Beattie along with current U.S. Attorney for Nevada Sigal Chattah made their names in MAGA via appearances on Steve Bannon’s War Room. Ron Coleman has since 2020 been a partner at the Dhillon Law Group, Harmeet Dhillon’s law firm, and was her one colleague at the firm picked or asked by Dhillon or Politico to comment for a report on her DOJ appointment in December 2024. Christopher Rufo has been given a platform by the Manhattan Institute, which as I have reported in the past for the Libertarian Institute is funded by the Zionist financiers Paul Singer and John Paulson, who are also bankrolling the Super PAC targeting Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). These players do not amount to a critical mass of operatives who can “drive the discourse,” but they are enough to blunt direct criticism of Zionist moves and allow Zionists to exercise influence with relative impunity.
Some of this blunting of criticism happens by what appears to be, at least functionally, sleight-of-hand. These players are building credibility with MAGA as non-Zionists or Zionist critics and then using their platform to support Israel and its actions. Ron Coleman identifies as an Israel backer who is “not a Zionist,” and he uses this self-described position as a springboard to “explain why you don’t have to be a Zionist to support Israel’s fight for survival.” (“I’m not a Zionist! It’s Just Personal” is the title of Coleman’s podcast on the topic, as if personal experience exempts him from the political implications of supporting Israel, which as a nation-state is above all a political entity.) Darren Beattie has been rebuffed by Zionists for criticizing Israel, but this nominal Israel critic has also pushed back on claims of Zionist influence in the 2024 Trump Campaign and the new administration—claims which, in retrospect, appear extremely well-founded.
Some of this blunting of criticism happens via these players’ proximity to more influential MAGA influencers.
Read the rest of this article at The Libertarian Institute.