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Opinion: From Parkland Activist to Antisemitic Conspiracist: David Hogg’s New Israel Obsession 3

David Hogg at a Coral Springs town hall meeting in 2018. {Sharon Aron Baron}

In a series of inflammatory X posts this week, Democratic activist David Hogg—once hailed as a beacon of youthful courage after surviving the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting—unleashed a barrage of antisemitic rhetoric targeting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

On September 28, Hogg, now 25, posted: “AIPAC is the most successful foreign influence operation in US history,” a statement echoing racist tropes portraying Jews as shadowy foreign agents undermining American sovereignty. The post quickly earned plaudits form neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes and other white supremacists. “So true,” the Jew-hater Fuentes replied.

Hogg followed up Sept. 29 by imagining a dystopian parallel that likened Israel, a close U.S. ally and the Middle East’s only democracy, to America’s authoritarian foes.

“Imagine if this was the situation with Iran or North Korea and there was a group of Americans putting hundreds of millions of dollars into congressional elections specifically to focus only on arming and funding the North Korean or Iranian governments,” Hogg wrote. “Would we not call that a foreign influence operation?”

This analogy isn’t subtle—it’s a direct invocation of the “dual loyalty” canard, the insidious myth that Jewish Americans harbor primary allegiance to Israel over the United States. The slur has been weaponized by figures from Henry Ford to modern-day Jew-haters like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens on the right, and Linda Sarsour and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar on the left.

But Hogg wasn’t finished. After garnering tens of thousands of likes on his posts, he added: “It is irrefutable that AIPAC has set an extremely dangerous precedent that threatens US national security,” the MSD grad wrote, again invoking antisemitic conspiracy theories. He followed up with another false claim, this time using the antisemitic puppet-master trope: “The fact that basically 90% of members of Congress think about them nearly and it is their biggest fear tells us they have way too much power.”

It’s a disappointing ideological turn for Hogg, who burst onto the national stage as a co-founder and figurehead of March for Our Lives, the gun control advocacy group born from the mass shooting in which 17 people were murdered at his Parkland high school. His telegenic activism—marked by impassioned speeches and viral social media campaigns—propelled him into the heart of Democratic politics.

From February through June 2025, he served as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), representing young progressives and using his platform to push for gun safety measures. Yet in recent weeks his focus has shifted toward Israel – the omnicause around which all left-wing causes seem to revolve ever since Hamas-led terrorists slaughtered some 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, taking another 251 innocent people hostage.

Forty-eight hostages are still being held by terrorists in Gaza, including two Americans. But Hogg, who obsesses over Israel while ignoring the world’s worst human rights offenders (see Qatar, China, and Saudi Arabia, for starters) has never once found time to post about his American brethren held captive by Hamas.

Let’s clear up a few things for the misinformed Hogg: AIPAC is an American PAC run and funded by Americans, not a foreign-influence operation. The bipartisan, Washington D.C.-based organization said it supported 361 pro-Israel Democratic and Republican candidates last year.

Among those the PAC boosted were opponents of two vehemently anti-Israel candidates: former Democratic U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, of Missouri, and U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, of New York, both of whom were defeated by centrist Democrats. The vanquished “Squad” members routinely invoked antisemitic tropes, the same hateful ground on which Hogg is now treading.

What makes Hogg’s rhetoric particularly offensive is his portrayal of AIPAC not as a bipartisan grassroots organization of American citizens advocating for a key U.S. ally, but as a nefarious puppet-master dictating foreign policy. This hyperbolic narrative—unsupported by evidence of AIPAC’s supposed omnipotence—mirrors Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style fantasies of Jewish cabals controlling global affairs.

As Brianna Wu, a Democratic activist and tech entrepreneur, retorted on X, “David, this is such a wildly antisemitic statement. The people at AIPAC are our AMERICAN friends and neighbors.”

Labeling Jewish political activism as “foreign” is an age-old tactic, one that conflates legitimate advocacy with espionage and erodes the hard-won acceptance of Jews as full-fledged Americans.

Hogg’s attacks extend beyond AIPAC to broader condemnations of U.S. support for Israel. On September 22, responding to reports falsely claiming that U.S. citizens were among those killed in an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, he fumed: “We should not be arming a government knowingly killing civilians including our own citizens. It’s f—-ng shameful many Democrats in Congress will see this and say nothing for fear of AIPAC.”

And on September 12, he juxtaposed federal food assistance with military aid: “Do you ever think about how insane it is there are more conditions on food stamps than there are on billions of dollars in lethal aid to Israel?” A better question: Is there any problem to which left-wing figures like Hogg won’t try to link Israel and, by extension, Jewish people?

Hogg’s missives ignore the context of Israel’s defensive actions against Iranian proxies and Hamas, while framing aid as unchecked “lethal” largesse funneled by a pro-Israel lobby. Such distortions not only delegitimize Israel’s right to self-defense against terrorists bent on its annihilation, but also stoke resentment against Jewish donors and voters who support the Jewish state—precisely the dynamic that has led to an unprecedented surge in antisemitic incidents on U.S. campuses and streets since October 7.

Hogg also ignores the country that actually is spending billions to influence the minds and political positions of Americans: Qatar.

While playing permanent host to Hamas’ leaders, the oil-rich country has become the single largest source of foreign funding to U.S. universities since reporting began in 1986, donating $6.3 billion. China is also giving billions to American universities. Both authoritarian nations are mass purveyors of antisemitic propaganda, which helps explain why scores of students at elite U.S. universities now back Hamas over Israel.

This isn’t Hogg’s first brush with controversy over Israel and Jews, but it marks a stark evolution from his earlier record. In 2022, he swiftly condemned Kanye West’s antisemitic tirades as “insanely antisemitic,” emphasizing that “there has been a deeply disturbing rise in antisemitism that must be condemned at every level.”

Opinion: From Parkland Activist to Antisemitic Conspiracist: David Hogg’s New Israel Obsession 5

Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg in 2023.(Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

Following the antisemitic murders of two Israeli embassy staffers outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum in May, Hogg mourned the victims and vowed, “There can be no room or tolerance for antisemitic violence in ANY form.”

Yet today, his X feed reads like a playbook from pro-Palestinian radicals working to hound Jews out of public spaces and silence Jewish voices under the guise of “criticizing Israel.”

For Jewish Democrats, Hogg’s pivot is a gut punch. As a former DNC official, his words carry weight in a party already grappling with internal rifts over Israel. Critics like the Zionist Organization of America have long accused Hogg of Holocaust trivialization through his book title Never Again, co-opted from the mantra of Jewish resilience post-Shoah to argue against gun rights. Now, his Israel obsession amplifies those concerns.

Hogg’s journey from Parkland hero—whose raw grief galvanized millions of young people—to purveyor of conspiratorial barbs against pro-Israel Americans is a cautionary tale. In an era when antisemitic acts and rhetoric are seemingly becoming commonplace, influencers like him bear a responsibility to wield their platforms with facts and nuance, not anti-Jewish canards.

The Jewish community, ever vigilant against hatred masquerading as critique, calls on Hogg to reflect: True peace activism unites against bigotry—it doesn’t fuel it.

We expect better from a hometown kid.

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Author Profile

Kevin Deutsch

Kevin Deutsch is an award-winning journalist and author of two nonfiction books. He covers general assignment news and Jewish community issues for Talk Media. He has also worked as a staff writer at The Miami Times, the Rio Grande SUN, the New York Daily News, Newsday, The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, The Riverdale Press, and Bronx Justice News.