{"id":91740,"date":"2026-02-27T16:19:35","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=91740"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:19:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:19:35","slug":"a-conservative-jewish-professor-who-rejected-hitler-comparisons-now-invokes-one-for-tucker-carlson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/a-conservative-jewish-professor-who-rejected-hitler-comparisons-now-invokes-one-for-tucker-carlson\/","title":{"rendered":"A conservative Jewish professor who rejected Hitler comparisons now invokes one \u2014 for Tucker Carlson"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ANDREW LAPIN<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Jeffrey Lax, a descendent of Holocaust survivors who has lobbied against antisemitism at the college where he teaches, criticized liberals who compared Donald Trump to Hitler.<\/p>\n

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Jeffrey Lax appears on Fox News in July 2025. (Screenshot)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Now Lax, a law professor who defines himself as center-right and appears frequently on Newsmax and Fox News, is rethinking the idea of modern-day Hitler comparisons. In fact, he\u2019s ringing that bell on a key Trump ally: Tucker Carlson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never, ever, thought this day would come, but for the first time in my life, I am going to compare a human being to Adolph Hitler,\u201d Lax tweeted on Friday. \u201cUnderstand that I am the grandchild of 4 Holocaust survivors. I\u2019ve spent a lifetime urging people NOT to compare anyone to Hitler. But\u2026 Tucker Carlson\u2019s views, rhetoric, and influence remind me of Adolph Hitler.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lax was responding to Vice President JD Vance\u2019s favorable comments about the interview Carlson, a far-right pundit, did last week with Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. The interview ignited new allegations of antisemitism, but Vance did not suggest any concern. That, Lax says, is a big problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis situation is as dead serious as a heart attack and with @JDVance now expressly and abhorrently legitimizing Carlson\u2019s views, we are in a national Antisemitism State of Emergency,\u201d Lax continued.<\/p>\n

It was a dramatic outlay of angst about antisemitism on the right for a figure who has campaigned against left-wing anti-Israel activism at the City University of New York, where he teaches. But Lax said in an interview that he could not remain silent.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me to get to this point, it had to be something that was so deeply disturbing on many levels,\u201d he said. Carlson\u2019s call for genetics testing for Jews, he said, crossed that line. \u201cIf anything I\u2019ve ever heard is Hitler-esque, when you talk about Jews having to prove that they\u2019re Jews with DNA \u2014 if DNA testing was available in the days of Hitler, do you not think that Hitler would have used it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lax emphasized that he was speaking specifically of \u201cearly Hitler, the early years, before he took power, before he actually, physically caused anybody to be killed. I\u2019m talking about the rhetoric. He could\u2019ve been stopped at that point. People didn\u2019t take Hitler seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Tucker Carlson and Mike Huckabee speak in a Feb. 19, 2026, interview filmed at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel and released by Carlson online. (Screenshot)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

While Lax has criticized Carlson before, he has in the past refrained from extending those critiques to Vance \u2014 despite a mounting record of the vice president minimizing antisemitism on the right. \u201cI\u2019ve had suspicions about Vance for a long time,\u201d Lax said. \u201cI wanted to be sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance\u2019s defense of Carlson\u2019s interview provided the certainty he needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs he out of his mind?\u201d Lax said. \u201cBy saying something like that, you are saying that what Tucker is saying is legitimate and needs to be discussed, including that Jews should have genetic testing done to be sure that they\u2019re Jewish and have right to the land.\u201d He described such a belief as \u201cbrain rot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lax joins a growing line of other Jewish conservatives who have expressed alarm about Vance and his closeness to the White House. They include far-right activist Laura Loomer; conservative columnist and Newsweek editor Josh Hammer; Israeli conservative luminary Yoram Hazony; Orthodox right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro; Rep. Randy Fine; pro-Israel activist groups StandWithUs and StopAntisemitism; and publications with a conservative-friendly pro-Israel bent including Tablet, The Free Press and Commentary.<\/p>\n

Their alarm comes as Carlson builds a formidable political network of his own ahead of the midterms, made up of figures with growing sway over young voters. He has given friendly interviews to several outsider GOP candidates, including Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, lover of antisemitic memes; Texas congressional candidate and pardoned Jan. 6 rioter Ryan Zink; U.S. Senate candidate Paul Dans, who is challenging pro-Israel Sen. Lindsay Graham; and Iowa gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn, who used his Carlson interview to disparage non-Christian elected officials.<\/p>\n

Influential figures identified with the left are also increasingly coming to Carlson\u2019s side on Israel and Jews. \u201cHey bitch, the goyim are waking the fuck up. Deal with it,\u201d Ana Kasparian, a co-host on the progressive online network The Young Turks, tweeted as part of an extended defense of Carlson this week.<\/p>\n

Amid a backlash, the next day Kasparian doubled down: \u201cI do not regret this comment. I don\u2019t apologize,\u201d she tweeted. \u201cIsrael is evil, genocidal and has destroyed our country. They\u2019re about to drag us into another war and all we hear from Israelis and their braindead supporters is \u2018ANTISEMITE\u2019 if you disagree with Israel\u2019s agenda.\u201d (Kasparian\u2019s Young Turks colleague, Cenk Uyghur, is a regular Carlson guest.)<\/p>\n

While antipathy toward Carlson has been all but fully cemented for Jews on both sides of the aisle, not every Jewish conservative has turned on Vance.<\/p>\n

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US Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha Vance visit the gravestone with the ashes of an unknown prisoner and the wall with the inscription “Never again” in five languages, during a tour of the Dachau Concentration Camp memorial site in Dachau, Germany, on Feb. 13, 2025. (Tobias Schwarz \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Matt Brooks, director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, harshly criticized Carlson and his defenders last fall after the pundit interviewed white nationalist Nick Fuentes, and the group\u2019s most recent conference was marked by repeated denunciations of Carlson. Yet RJC has refrained from publicly pointing the finger at Vance, and its posts about him to date are uniformly complimentary \u2014 as on Thursday, when the group retweeted a speech from the vice president\u2019s X account about Democrats and affordability.<\/p>\n

A request for comment to the RJC was not returned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is outrageous that the RJC would not criticize Vance,\u201d Lax said. \u201cThat is self-destructive. That is insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also treading carefully on Vance are many establishment Jewish groups. Neither the Anti-Defamation League nor its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, has publicly criticized the vice president since February 2025, when the ADL\u2019s X account docked him for meeting with the head of Germany\u2019s far-right AfD party. The American Jewish Committee, similarly, has critiqued Carlson\u2019s rhetoric in the past but remained muted on Vance as he\u2019s increasingly clarified that he believes the pundit is a valuable part of the Republican coalition. Comments to representatives for the two organizations were not returned.<\/p>\n

Because Lax runs a registered nonprofit, the Zionist group S.A.F.E. Campus, he said he was hesitant to comment too specifically on electoral politics. But he said he believes Jews on the right are \u201ccoming around\u201d to the problem of antisemitism on their side. And he\u2019s deeply concerned about Vance running for president in 2028 without having distanced himself from Carlson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could never support a candidate who says we need to have a conversation about genetically testing Jews,\u201d Lax said. \u201cWhat Vance said, I think people\u2019s eyes popped out of their heads.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, despite his earlier defenses of Trump, he said the president must more forcefully condemn Carlson and Vance\u2019s rhetoric now. \u201cHe can\u2019t have his vice president say that it is an important conversation that we talk about genetically testing Jews to see if they come from Abraham,\u201d Lax said. Vance himself once compared Trump to Hitler, prior to being chosen as his running mate.<\/p>\n

Lax is also reflecting more on his 2024 piece decrying Trump-Hitler comparisons. If the president doesn\u2019t issue a more forceful condemnation of his party\u2019s antisemitic wing in the next month, the professor said, \u201dI may very well change my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Friday afternoon, he had drawn a possible line in the sand, tweeting a call for Trump to demand Vance\u2019s immediate resignation.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnough. This is a National Antisemitic State of Emergency. Only Trump can end it. And he must do so now,\u201d Lax wrote. \u201cIt starts by booting JD and cutting Tucker out from all conservative and Republican orgs.\u201d<\/p>\n

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