War, Israel and the apocalypse. Tucker Carlson is gone. Even Trump distances himself from it

The MAGA movement is an ideological mix, bringing together libertarian opponents of the state, tech right activists, white supremacists, 4Chan trolls, evangelical followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory and the rest. She has always had a lot of extremely suspicious characters around her. This was most clearly seen on January 6, 2021 – when far-right activists and conspiracy theorists dressed as shamans stormed the Capitol together, believing that they were part of a groundbreaking political and cultural revolution.

Nowadays, even the more serious among the rather frivolous leaders of this movement they are turning more and more towards the rhetoric of the end of the world. This radicalization was accelerated by, among others, war with Iran. This is best seen today in the example of Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News in 2023, and since then he has been running his own show on the X platform (formerly Twitter) and other social media.

The man who was long considered a Trump ally, the most influential creator of alternative media, has lost his way so much that Trump, in an interview with ABC News last Friday he even “kicked” him out of the MAGA movement. “MAGA is America First and Tucker has nothing to do with it,” Trump said. – He got lost.

Meanwhile, Carlson himself, only on the X platform, has 17 million followers and represents a significant portion of this movement. What actually happened?

Tucker Carlson's anti-Israel obsession

At first glance, the MAGA movement is divided into America First and America Only camps: interventionists and isolationists. Carlson belongs to the latter group – not only does he think attacking Iran is fundamentally wrong, but goes further and portrays Trump as a puppetthe leashed dog of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

In his opinion, Trump does not serve American interests, but the “Zionist lobby.” In recent days, Carlson has become increasingly obsessed with attacking Israel. For example, in a conversation with Republican senator Ted Cruz, who is favorable to Israel, he questioned his argument as to why Israel has the right to its own state at all.

If, as Cruz claims, the land has belonged to the Israelites for thousands of years, then – as Carlson ironized – anyone who wants to live in Israel would need to undergo a genetic testto check whether he actually has the right to do so. This was just the beginning. Recently, Carlson stated that Israel is one of the ugliest parts of the world, which is why “everything beautiful” around it is being destroyed – including Tehran and Beirut. According to him, since 1948 “nothing beautiful has been built there.”

But, Carlson says, it's not without reason. He also presents his own interpretation of what is really behind the war with Iran. And it speaks directly about the Apocalypse, the biblical end of times.

Carlson shows photos of alleged IDF soldiers he found on social media. These soldiers wear patches with the temple symbol on their uniforms – these are not official insignia of the Israeli army, but a religious symbol relating to the reconstruction of the Third Templeas Carlson concludes.

The reconstruction of the “third temple” is of particular importance to both fundamentalist Jewish and Christian circles. In Judaism, the rebuilding of the temple (first destroyed in 586 BC, second in 70 AD) is part of the messianic erainextricably linked to the coming of the Messiah.

In Jerusalem – where the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are now located – a key religious expectation would thus be fulfilled. In Christianity, this event is interpreted more ominously: according to eschatology it is the rebuilding of the temple that is to usher in the end times and the Apocalypse — the end of the world and the taking of true believers into the Kingdom of God.

Radicals are becoming radicalized

Many fundamentalist Christians look forward to this moment. In 2018, the current US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth he even said that the “miracle of rebuilding the temple” might not be far away. In Carlson's interpretation, this means that Hegseth is also a puppet, installed in Trump's cabinet by Jewish circles.

According to Carlson, war with Iran is not just a mistake, but a deliberately created conflictintended to free Jerusalem from Muslim rule, enable the construction of the third temple and thus bring about the end of the world.

However, it is difficult to say unambiguously whether Carlson actually believes his narrative. Does he really think that radical fundamentalists have so much power and that religious, not geopolitical, motives are at the heart of the attacks?

Carlson remains a showman for whom the message is sometimes more important than the facts. When he visited Israel a few weeks ago, he said that he was detained there by the authorities – which was not true. He also claimed that Israel is a much more beautiful country than the USA. Today his story sounds completely different. Some MAGA supporters don't mind such contradictions – the power of a good conspiracy theory has always outweighed the facts.

This is a development with potentially dangerous consequences. When even radical conspiracy theorists are beginning to radicalize their own message and suddenly they refer to the biblical Armageddon, it is no longer just a political dispute. Ideology transforms into religious end-of-the-world politics.