Of course criticizing Soros isn’t antisemitic, I say in our interview. But there is a difference between criticism and conspiracy. Looking back, would he say now that when Carlson began attacking Soros, Carlson was also trafficking in antisemitism?

“I can’t go to what was in Tucker’s heart back when he was talking about George Soros,” Shapiro replies. “All I can do is sort of characterize actual things that people say. When he was criticizing Soros as a nefarious funding source behind various left-wing mechanisms, I don’t think that’s antisemitic any more than it’s antisemitic for people to say that Sheldon Adelson was a powerful figure funding a lot of right-wing politicians.”

It’s what Carlson has done in the years since, Shapiro says, that’s the problem. He’s broadened his criticism to condemn a “supposed substructure of powerful people who are ‘Zionistic’ or ‘pro-Israel,’ and he’s tied that into an entire sort of theological view of what Jews are. And so I think that is a different thing.” Whether that difference is “in degree or in-kind is hard to tell.” (Carlson didn’t reply to a request for comment.)

Shapiro tells me that he doesn’t even like to use the word antisemitism anymore, because he thinks it’s been stripped of meaning. “Instead, what I would say is that conspiracy theories about the power of Jews in the world are bad, and [Carlson] obviously engages in those right now at a very, very high level. Was he engaging in that when he was criticizing Soros? I didn’t see it, certainly, at that same level.”

What about the idea that those interested in combatting antisemitism are undercutting their fight by claiming that every criticism of Israel is automatically antisemitic?

“I’ve made many critiques of Israel, usually from the right,” he responds. “Most of my critiques are the opposite of everyone else’s critiques. I think Israel should have gone harder and faster in Gaza, for example.”

But there is a “projection being promoted,” he adds, “by people without good intent, to suggest that when something is really antisemitic—like actually really antisemitic, meaning full-on conspiracy-theorizing about Israel and power and Jewish power in the world and all this kind of stuff…it’s a motte-and-bailey argument. You say something like, ‘Israel controls American foreign policy,’ which is eminently untrue and conspiratorial, and then you immediately revert to, ‘I’m not saying anything antisemitic, I’m just being anti-Israel! How dare you conflate anti-Israel with antisemitic?’”

There are many ways that the Republican Party’s relationship with Israel could develop. The two main possibilities, though, are that things either snap back to the way they were, or traditional support for Israel in conservative American politics vanishes. Which of these does Shapiro think is more likely?