Explosive Report Targets Catholic Antisemites
Traditionalist Catholic Candace Owens blamed for “unprecedented surge in ‘Christ is King’ chatter”
The celebrity clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson has coauthored a sensational report accusing Catholic antisemites of exploiting the slogan “Christ Is King” to further their campaign of hatred against Jews.
The 20-page report published last Thursday, “Thy Name in Vain: How Online Extremists Hijacked ‘Christ is King,’” is the collaborative effort of Jewish, Christian, and Hindu researchers under the aegis of Rutgers University and the Network Contagion Research Institute. It was released three days after the Philos Catholic project hosted eminent Catholic and Jewish speakers at a conference on Catholic antisemitism to combat the alarming surge in Jew-hatred, particularly by social media influencers on the “Catholic right,” The Stream reported.
Peterson and his team found that “extremist figures” including “Nazis, Nazi sympathizers and Muslim Masculinity influencers” had “systematically co-opted” the Catholic slogan proclaiming the kingship of Christ, “with mentions of the phrase on X alone increasing more than fivefold between 2021 and 2024.”
The report underlined the irony of using “Christ is King” as an antisemitic trope, since the slogan became popular after Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King in 1925 as a challenge against Nazi, Fascist, and Bolshevik totalitarianism.
“Pius XI clearly intended the feast of Christ the King to be a counterblast to what he refers to in the decree as ‘the plague of secularism’’ manifest in these ominous, neo-pagan movements,” said former University of Cambridge chaplain Fr. Alban McCoy.
“Christ Is King” Used as White Supremacist Mantra
The report named top Catholic influencers like Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, Jack Posobiec, PrayTheRosary12, and Trad West (who advances “theocratic nationalism” and “nostalgic Crusader revivalism”), as well as Muslim masculinity influencer Sneako, Holocaust denier Jake Shields, and misogynist Andrew Tate, whom Owens has been unapologetically supported.
According to the report,
The top post, authored by Candace Owens, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist with a 6.1 million-strong following, appended #ChristIsKing to a conspiracy theory involving French Prime Minister Macron. Owens’s use of the phrase appeared to serve as both an engagement tactic and a veneer of religious justification for her conspiratorial claims.
In 2024, more than 50% of all engagements around ‘Christ is King’ posts were driven by extremists and fringe influencers. Posts by Nick Fuentes, Sneako, and Andrew Tate achieved over 13.6 million views and more than 100,000 engagements during Easter 2024 alone.
The authors accused Fuentes and his followers of amplifying “Christ is King” as a “white supremacist mantra publicizing their antisemitic beliefs,” while explaining that Posobiec’s use of the phrase was “semantically neutral and devoid of bigotry” and “likely represented a historic, normative use of the Christian phrase” as did Bishop Joseph Strickland’s.
Conversely, Owens’s and Shields’s use of the phrase “marks a stark departure from its original religious meaning,” the report states. The authors blame Owens, a convert to traditionalist Catholicism, for “the unprecedented surge in ‘Christ is King’ chatter following Palm Sunday 2024.”
Leveraging the phrase to “voice grievances against Jewish and pro-Israel figures she blamed for her departure from The Daily Wire,” Owens’s early posts “injected ‘Christ is King’ with explicit antisemitic tropes, including allegations of covert global control and the perpetuation of ancient blood libel myths.”
Faithful Catholics Push Back Against Antisemitism
Meanwhile, faithful Catholics are pushing back against the sudden resurgence of Jew-hatred among their fellow religionists in the light of post-Vatican II magisterial teaching.
“These antisemitic Catholics perversely contradict their own Church’s Nostra Aetate which declared that ‘God holds the Jews most dear’ and that the Church ‘draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree’ that is Israel,” Fr. Gerald McDermott, an Anglican priest and author of Israel Matters: Why Christians Must Think Differently about the People and the Land, told The Stream.
“The Apostle Paul was willing to be cut off from Christ for the sake of his fellow Jews (Romans 9:3). No doubt he is ashamed of Christians who shout ‘Christ the King’ in order to abuse Jews,” he added. “They show that they serve a different Christ from the Jewish Jesus who affirmed the Chosenness of the Jewish people in His ratification of every word of Torah in Matthew 5:17-19.”
Asked about the rise of Jew-hating Catholics, Philos Catholic Director Simone Rizkallah, responded: “To Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, E. Michael Jones, and others who claim to represent the ‘Catholic right’ while peddling antisemitism, I would say this: Your rhetoric is not only morally reprehensible but also fundamentally opposed to authentic Catholic teaching.”
Rizkallah, a first-generation American of Egyptian-Armenian descent, added: “The obvious contradiction in Catholic antisemitism is that Jesus Himself was a Jew, and the New Testament affirms the enduring nature of God’s covenants with Israel.”
Philos Catholic has launched the Coalition of Catholics against Antisemitism to combat the “resurgent hatred of the Jewish people today,” labelling antisemitism as “a spiritual evil.” At last week’s conference, Catholic holocaust historian Dr. Richard Crane debunked the false distinction between anti-Judaism and antisemitism. Following the Holocaust, the Catholic Church apologized for being against Judaism as a religion but continued to maintain that the Catholic Church had not been against Jews as a people.
The Philos Catholic website cites Popes Pius XI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis — all unequivocally condemning “Catholic antisemitism” as an oxymoron.
In an article for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal published March 11, Christopher Rufo, a practicing Catholic and author of America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, explained how antisemitic ideologies are “lucrative in the digital economy.”
“The Internet rewards scandal, shock, and virality, and conspiracy theories enjoy burgeoning market demand,” he wrote in an article titled “The Anti-Semitic Influencer Problem.” “Candace Owens has never been more popular, turning each outrage and accusation into new views, followers, subscribers, and revenues.”
Writing in the Free Press journal last week, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, observed:
The Church’s stance on antisemitism is unequivocal. Our Savior was a faithful Jew killed by the Roman occupiers of Judea. He died for the sins of all mankind. According to our faith, Jesus brought about a New Covenant that exists side-by-side with the Old Covenant between God and the Jewish people. As Pope Saint John Paul II often observed, “God’s covenant with the Jews is unbreakable.”
During Lent 2024, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said it would require a pastoral note on antisemitism to be placed in worship aids and pew missals ahead of all Good Friday passion narratives reminding worshippers that “Jesus, his mother Mary, and the apostles all were Jewish.”
The bishops warned that “the crimes during the Passion of Christ cannot be attributed, in either preaching or catechesis, indiscriminately to all Jews of that time, nor to Jews today” and “the Jewish people should not be referred to as though rejected or cursed, as if this view followed from Scripture.”
The USCCB has also published a 60-page Catholic edition of a comprehensive glossary of antisemitic terms, phrases, conspiracies, cartoons, themes, and memes.
In August 2024, Owens’s father-in-law, Lord Michael Farmer, a committed Christian who is a member of the House of Lords, distanced himself from his daughter-in-law’s claim that modern-day Israel was founded by the Rothschilds to be a safe haven for pedophiles.
Farmer, an outspoken advocate of persecuted Christians, wrote: “Jesus Christ is God’s Son. He came into space and time as a Jewish man, He fulfilled Jewish law, His mother was Jewish, and His closest followers were ordinary Jewish men and women. He came to save us from the consequences of our rebellion.”
Traditionalist Influencers Attack Rutgers Report
Multiple traditionalist Catholic influencers and media have hit back against the report.
“Remember when the devil attacked Christ our Lord during His 40 days in the desert? Same strategy,” Catholic podcaster Taylor Marshall tweeted in response to a post from Owens. “The affirmation ‘Christ is King’ is anti-Talmudic. That’s why they’re angry,” he added, clarifying that the “they” referred to “Jews, Evangelical Dispensationalists, and Zionists.”
In video posted on X, Owens claimed that the study was “funded by Jews to make Christians war with one another during the Lenten season.”
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.