Among the vilest figures in American politics today is the far-right influencer Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier who makes no secret of his hateful views. “We are done with the slavish surrender to Israel, the wars, the foreign aid, the policing of antisemitism, the Holocaust religion and propaganda,” he said in a 2025 video typical of his bigotry.

Once banned from social media, Fuentes now enjoys 1.3 million followers on X and 688,000 followers on the alt-right streaming site Rumble. His extremism has increasingly gone mainstream, especially among young Americans.

In a recent survey by the Yale Youth Poll, the nation’s largest survey of young adults, 55 percent of respondents ages 18 to 22 agreed that “America should end the slavish surrender to Israel, its wars, and its demands for foreign aid”—a paraphrase of Fuentes’ video. The organization has also found that young adults are much more likely than older generations to agree with anti-semitic tropes.

In its fall survey, the Yale Youth Poll found that 30 percent of young adults “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed that “Jews in the United States are more loyal to Israel than to America,” compared to 16 percent of Americans 65 and over. Just 24 percent of young Americans think “Israel should exist as a Jewish state”—versus 64 percent for Americans over 65.

Other polls have found a similar rise in antisemitic sentiment among younger Americans. A 2024 survey of more than 4,000 Americans by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that Millennials and Gen Z were the most likely to agree with anti-Jewish canards such as “Jews have too much power in the business world” and “Jews have a lot of irritating faults.” A 2020 survey by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (the Claims Conference) found that 15 percent of Millennials and Gen Z “believe it is acceptable for an individual to hold neo-Nazi views,” while another 15 percent were “unsure.”

The rise in antisemitic thinking accompanies a spike in antisemitic violence. The ADL reported an average of 17 antisemitic incidents per day in 2025 involving harassment, vandalism, or physical assault.

One potential reason for growing antisemitism among young adults is lack of knowledge. The Claims Conference survey also found that 63 percent of Millennials and Gen Z Americans “do not know that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust,” and only 44 percent were familiar with death camps like Auschwitz and Dachau. Ten percent believe the Holocaust didn’t happen or were “not sure,” while another 23 percent said they believed the death toll was exaggerated.

Jack Dozier, a Yale junior who is director of the Yale Youth Poll, has an additional explanation: He says the prevalence of antisemitic sentiment on social media has normalized these views. Indeed, the Yale Youth Poll found that people who get their news from social media are more likely to hold anti-semitic views.

And it’s not just Gen Z. As David Masciotra pointed out this week in the Monthly, anti-semitism is becoming a bipartisan political problem. “Popular leftist commentators speak with the most frequency and excitement about Israel, AIPAC, and the omnipresence of Zionist influence,” David writes. Especially worrying, he argues, is the left’s tolerance—and even elevation—of anti-semitic figures like Hasan Piker. “If you are praising a man who refers to Hamas as a “resistance group” comparable to American slave revolts, you are inches away from excusing Hamas yourself,” David writes. Read here.

Also new at the Monthly…

FacePlat in Maine. Revelations of Graham Platner’s extramarital sexting have raised new concerns about the populist oysterman’s electability this fall for the U.S. Senate. In his first column this week, Politics Editor Bill Scher believes these worries to be real, and he argues Democrats can still save themselves next week in the primary. “No Maine voter should enter a voting booth thinking the race is over, and Platner has already won just because that’s what Platner’s loyalists and many Republicans want you to think,” Bill writes. (Gov. Janet Mills reminded voters this week that she is “still on the ballot,” despite having suspended her campaign.) Bill’s Friday column questions whether Platner’s defenders are falling into the same trap as apologists for Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. “Just like how Clintonian moderates and Trumpian reactionaries myopically embraced the myth of indispensability, so are Platnerian progressive populists,” he writes. Read here and here. You can also watch Bill and Matt Lewis debate Platner’s viability here.

Still time for 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes has been around for almost 60 years, but can it survive Bari Weiss? The new CBS News editor in chief has orchestrated a massacre of the show’s top leadership over the last year, including its executive producer, deputy executive producer, and top correspondents like Scott Pelley (fired this week). “That’s not how you treat a precious institution, especially one that’s making $200 million a year for your network and is up 9.1 percent in the ratings over last year,” writes contributing editor Jonathan Alter. Jonathan urges 60 Minutes survivors to hold on. “I hope that talented journalists go to 60 Minutes now to help them come back,” he continues. “And I hope that the many talented producers who are still working at 60 Minutes can dry their tears and go to work on creating a terrific 59th season for one of the greatest shows in the history of television.” Read here.

Have Ukrainians turned the tide? As Ukraine-based journalist Tamar Jacoby has chronicled for the Monthly for months now, Ukraine has been slowly revolutionizing how war will be waged in the future. Its innovations now seem to be be paying off. “Kyiv has all but halted Russian gains along the 1,000-mile front line, and the Ukrainian defense industry continues to roll out new weaponry—still longer-range missiles, more sophisticated drones, better electronic warfare jammers, and interceptors to shoot down incoming missiles,” Tamar writes. These Ukrainian victories could point toward a broader European strategy to defend against Russia—and one that doesn’t involve dependence on the U.S. Read here.

Plus…

• The Hill columnist William Liang offers an inside look at the quixotic (and expensive) campaign of populist billionaire Tom Steyer to be the next governor of California.
• Meredith Kolodner, Matt Krupnick and Jon Marcus summarize five big changes coming to higher education financing this summer (this piece courtesy of The Hechinger Report).
• James Zirin catalogues the many ways in which Todd Blanche is disgracing himself as acting Attorney General.
• Contributing writer David Atkins speculates that the MAGA contingent may actually believe the conspiracy theories driving the Trump administration’s irrational policies.
• Sara Bhatia reviews An Inconvenient Widow, Lois Romano’s revealing biography of Mary Todd Lincoln.

Coda (bad influence[r] edition…)

• “Can you trust that post about Tom Steyer? How paid influencers are flooding into the governor’s race,” CalMatters. “Campaign finance filings from January through April 18 show Steyer has paid over $123,400 to at least eight influencers. … That includes $100,000 to Texas-based Latino mega-influencer Carlos Eduardo Espina, whose 14.3 million Tiktok followers are a coveted target for Democrats and who has endorsed Steyer.”
• “Reporting under the influencer,” Texas Monthly. “The problem emerging is not that a new media class of influencers exists but that politicians are heavily incentivized to prioritize it … [Creators] frequently can tap into audiences the mainstream media struggles to reach: the youths, foreign-language readers, and people from underrepresented communities more generally … Many influencers also accept briefs from partisan consultants on what to ask or what issues to make content about.”
• “Washington’s New Lobbyists: Paid Online Influencers With Few Rules,” Wall Street Journal. “They don’t work for traditional news outlets and are thus unshackled from newsroom ethics rules, such as the typical ban on accepting gifts worth more than $25. They don’t have to follow the disclosure laws that apply to big-money super PACs or lobbyists. And they have large followings eager to hear pro-Trump views, a gold mine for those looking to sway both Washington and the public.”
• “‘Unbelievable how accurate’: How paid influencers influence Polymarket’s odds,” Politico. “Nick Shirley, Brian Krassenstein, Riley Gaines and more were paid to promote the prediction markets, often with posts not disclosing they were essentially ads. One influencer says Polymarket “wrote posts for them to share on X and asked them to promote specific bets.”

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Have a great week!

Anne Kim, Senior Editor