Antisemitism is on the rise. Bondi Beach has Jews scared.

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It’s hard to put numbers behind what feels like a rise in antisemitism in American political discourse. But people are trying. Back in 2024, a Democratic pollster named David Shor released some polling data from more than 100,000 voters. He said he found that a quarter of those younger than 25 held an “unfavorable opinion” of Jewish people. That sentiment plummeted with age, but Isaac Saul has started to wonder if this is a warning—especially because of how younger people are getting their information online and from far-right influencers.

“I think what people miss is just how ubiquitous it is,” says Saul, who writes the Tangle newsletter and is Jewish. “Everybody talks about Nick Fuentes or Candace Owens and they’re the superstars, but there are dozens, hundreds of other people who are ‘smaller’ that still have bigger platforms than me.”

On a recent episode of What Next, host Mary Harris spoke to Saul about why antisemitism is everywhere and how to confront it. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mary Harris: How worried are you about antisemitism right now? From a scale of 1 to 10? 

Isaac Saul: I would say pretty worried. And it’s changed pretty seriously. If you asked me this question three years ago, I would have said −3. I was somebody who laughed at and mocked my mom or grandmother for seeing antisemitism everywhere. I was always telling them “Nobody cares about the Jews anymore.” But then I started to experience it.

I would get soft antisemitism, like people making Jew jokes or stuff that I could laugh at. And now I’m experiencing stuff that I don’t think is funny.

We’re speaking this week of this attack at Bondi Beach in Australia. I’m curious if you put these fears together, the fear of an attack and the fear about what you’re talking about now, which is more of a creeping rhetorical antisemitism that seems to be on both sides of the political spectrum in the United States. And what I’m so concerned about in this moment is something almost gentler, a creeping sense, especially among young people, that something is off with Jews or Judaism. What do you think? 

I can’t get over just how ridiculous it feels that we’re having this conversation in 2025. I do think that that’s a smart distinction. But I also lend some credence to the view that has been expressed by some Jews and Zionists after this attack that this is why chanting “Globalize the intifada” sends a chill up some people’s spine. When I see college students doing that at Columbia’s campus, I don’t think they’re going to shoot up a beach in Australia. But it’s also true that what just happened in Bondi Beach is, to many people, what globalizing the intifada looks like. This is why a lot of Jews want to nip…