Steven Crowder’s Gatekeeping Critique of AIPAC

The career of Steven Crowder has taken on a peculiar trajectory. Crowder began as a comic who transitioned into a Conservative late-night show, only to transition that to a daily morning show over which is ongoing today. Formerly at Conservative Review, which merged with The Blaze, he went solo after a public dispute with Jeremy Boreing and the Daily Wire. Since going independent as a Rumble partner, Crowder has had a very public divorce and a lawsuit with a former employee which damaged his brand. That said, he did break the Nashville Tranifesto story against the desires of the ERLC.

This past week, Crowder came out against AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which is the most notorious pro-Israel lobby in Washington, DC. Even Thomas Massie quipped that everyone in Congress has an AIPAC handler. As an increasing number of Americans are noticing patterns regarding a certain Middle Eastern country and its influence in American politics, and by extension a small group of people having disproportionate influence over a failing polity, there are those who cry “antisemitism” against those who notice. Many of these are gatekeepers, whether it be Babylon Bee, Daily Wire, Moscow/Apologia, or “intellectual” types like James Lindsay.

Steven Crowder’s video, however genuine he might be, reflects the shifted Overton Window, yet at the same time seeks to prevent people from going too far, thereby containing his audience as to what can be believed about a particular subject matter, which is made clear in the opening of the segment.

I don’t like seeing this division that you see on the Right, and I think that you have this identity politics—this kind of class warfare going on, really what used to be the far left, which is the actual party of antisemitism. And then, they sort of connected with the far right in being antisemitic.

The opening framing of the issue is hardly any different from the substance of James Lindsay, Joel Berry, and others who are gatekeepers on the right. They reject Identity Politics despite the fact that all politics is Identity-based. The individual will always lose to the collective, so collectivizing is necessary for self-preservation. Many of the Neocons and Liberals operating on the Right are against any notion of White people collectivizing, even though all other groups actively do this with political success. Crowder sees the right adopting Identity Politics as a problem when the more paleoconservative or dissident right increasingly acknowledges its necessity in forging any solutions. Moreover, Trump’s electoral success was because he tapped into the American Identity, as is embodied in the words, Make America Great Again. That immigration and trade were his chief issues signals that America’s decline was due to diversity and globalism.

There are actual people out there to whom the Jews are at the center of all problems in the world, and then you have people who just like accusing you of racism, homophobia, transphobia. They use “antisemitic” to try and silence any legitimate criticism.

While there are “Jew-spergs” who cannot go a conversation without bringing forth the Jews, one of the people who “blames” Jews for all the problems in the world (except Nazism) is Dennis Prager, who is Jewish. There is no shortage of clips of members of said group bragging or documenting certain activities that have negative effects on society. Explanations for this might vary, but it can be boiled down to adopting a socio-religious identity that is rooted in an explicit rejection of Christ.

Crowder then goes on to relay his support for Israel wiping Hamas off the face of the earth and juxtaposing Islam’s opposition to depictions of Muhammad with how their religion is a blasphemy of Christ. This ignores a comparison between the Quran’s claims about Christ, that he was merely a prophet, with the Talmud’s claims that Christ is in hell boiling in excrement. Both are wrong. Clearly, one is much more blasphemous than the other, but Crowder ignores this.

Crowder’s critique of AIPAC comes from separating personal beliefs from one’s duty as an American. To Crowder, the problem with AIPAC is not that they lobby Americans to support a foreign country that was critical in instigating the Iraq War, but for the same reason he despises ACT Blue and SEIU—because they “give huge sums of cash to far-left, anti-American candidates.” To Crowder, the only caveat with AIPAC is that they support Israel, and he suggests this is the only metric by which AIPAC dispenses money. He also articulated a stance against foreign AID spending, even to nations like Israel, under the guise of prioritizing America first as an American.

Crowder goes on to refute the democrat claim that AIPAC is a “conservative” organization, which, while his information is not inaccurate, he is intentionally critiquing AIPAC in a way that obfuscates the issue of a foreign nation influencing American politics and the results of that influence on foreign policy. Does it really matter whether they donate more money to Democrats than Republicans when the problem is that members of Congress appear to care more about Israel than America?