GAINESVILLE, Florida—James Fishback took the stage in the University of Florida student union’s grand ballroom to speak before a standing-room-only crowd of about 400 people, almost all of them young and most of them male.
“I have zero political experience,” the long shot Republican gubernatorial candidate said at the beginning of his 80-minute speech hosted by the school’s College Republicans chapter last week. “I have zero years of going to the United States Congress, spending money that we don’t have, to buy weapons that we can’t afford, to give them to a country that is committing war crimes—known as Israel.”
The crowd erupted in applause as he criticized the Jewish state. The 31-year-old businessman running to succeed the term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis has made criticism of Israel central to his campaign. It’s a major reason he has seized the attention of many young people across the Sunshine State, and it’s a message that has found favor among young conservatives who at best are less supportive of Israel than older Americans and at worst demonstrate the growing acceptance of antisemitism on the right. The College Republicans chapter at the University of Florida itself provides a window into the embrace of radicalism and antisemitism among young conservatives, showing how ideological fragmentation among GOP groups has facilitated a drift toward extremist political beliefs.
The Fishback fervor.
Although polls show Fishback running well behind the Trump-endorsed frontrunner, Rep. Byron Donalds, to be the next governor, Fishback has made inroads among Gen Z voters. Quantitative data on how much support he has among this group is sparse, but the crowds of young people at his campaign events indicate they are gravitating to him. Many of the young men who came to see Fishback speak in Gainesville told The Dispatch they became familiar with him through videos on social media.
Fishback’s popularity among Florida’s youth stems in large part from his focus on affordability, an issue that plays to the economic anxieties of Gen Z voters. More recently, the political newcomer has also criticized the United States’ “reckless” war with Iran, which is “not in our own best interest,” arguing that “no American should ever die for Israel.” He also has denounced Florida’s relationship with Israel, which includes its decision to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Israeli bonds following the terrorist attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Although he condemned hatred of Jews in an interview with The Dispatch, Fishback’s rhetoric in discussing Israel has regularly drifted beyond simply criticizing the actions of the Israeli government or calling on the U.S. to reevaluate its relationship with the country. In his speeches, he has used terminology that critics have characterized as dog whistles for antisemitism.
“I will get the goyslop out of our public school cafeterias,” he said in his speech at UF. The term “goyslop” is a portmanteau of “goy,” the Yiddish word for a non-Jew that antisemites have reclaimed as a term of endearment for themselves, and “slop,” or low-quality food or online content. It is commonly used in antisemitic corners of the internet. “It’s not antisemitic; it’s funny,” Fishback told The Dispatch. When Fishback used the term in his speech, the crowd cheered.
At a campus appearance earlier this year at the University of Central Florida, Fishback vowed not to visit Israel if elected, opting to go to Brazil instead to ink a trade deal. In doing so, he denigrated the Western Wall, a Jewish holy site venerated by visitors to Jerusalem, including foreign dignitaries. “If you’re going to visit another country, you should be helping people, creating jobs, facilitating trade, not kissing a stupid wall,” he said. He contended to The Dispatch, though, that his use of “stupid” referred to “the act of American politicians who are not Jewish kissing a wall out of a political loyalty test to Israel.”
Fishback has also praised the audience of Nick Fuentes, an antisemitic streamer whose followers are referred to as “groypers.” Speaking to The Dispatch, Fishback defended both Fuentes and his followers against charges of being neo-Nazis. “I can tell you that the young men that I’ve met who have identified themselves as watchers of Nick Fuentes’ show, I’ve found them to be very well-informed, very respectful, very civil, and very patriotic. And so, I think this idea of smearing young, white Christian men as groypers or as neo-Nazis—that’s wrong,” he said. Questioned about Fuentes’ past comments praising Hitler as “really f–king cool”, Fishback said he did not know the context surrounding them but added, “At the end of the day, I’ll always defend everyone’s right to free speech.”
“It is wrong now for anyone, including and especially the losers in the Republican Party, to turn to us and call us antisemitic for not wanting to give Israel every single penny we have.”
James Fishback
To be sure, some of the young men who are fans of Fishback simply tend toward a more isolationist foreign policy. One fifth-year student at UF who came to hear Fishback speak and declined to provide his name said he was attracted to the candidate because of the prospect of “taking back the Republican Party and the conservative movement and making it America First again, decoupling ourselves from foreign interests and not allowing nations who are overseas to essentially make us carry their water for them, places like Ukraine and Israel.”
Others bluntly criticized Israel. A student at the University of South Florida who attended the Gainesville event blasted the “genocide” he said the country is conducting against Palestinians and had choice words for his fellow Christians who support Israel because of the spiritual significance of the land its government controls. “I promise you, the Israeli government doesn’t give a sh-t … about the Holy Land in Jerusalem,” he told The Dispatch. “They don’t care. It’s all about the money. They’re greedy.” Asked about Fuentes, however, he indicated he was uncomfortable with much of what the streamer had to say. “Nick has good points, but I also don’t agree with a lot of stuff Nick says,” he said. “Like, he might claim he doesn’t hate Jews, but I feel like he does deep down. That’s wrong.”
Fishback seems to have tapped into a similar strain of anti-Israel sentiment that rose on the left following the October 7 attack and resulting war in Gaza. Often, that opposition included unvarnished antisemitism. At many college campuses across the country, left-wing protesters used slogans associated with terrorist groups and set up encampments that led Jewish students to feel threatened. The Anti-Defamation League gave the University of Florida a “Better than Most” rating on its 2026 campus antisemitism report card. Part of that was due to the school’s low tolerance for pro-Palestinian protesters occupying communal campus spaces in 2024 under its then-president, Ben Sasse.
That there are people on both sides of the aisle who oppose Israel’s war in Gaza, which Fishback also calls a “genocide,” is not lost on him. “Certainly, there’s this horseshoe theory, right? That elements of the right and the left are unifying on this issue,” he told The Dispatch. At the same time, he reminds conservative college students how their left-leaning peers characterized even mainstream conservative beliefs as racist.
“I was, as many of you are, rightly upset when our friends on the left would turn to us and scold us for being racist for opposing racial hiring quotas or DEI or training to tell white men that they are internally and irredeemably toxic,” Fishback said in his speech. “That was wrong to say, ‘Oh, you’re racist for opposing those things.’ It is wrong now for anyone, including and especially the losers in the Republican Party, to turn to us and call us antisemitic for not wanting to give Israel every single penny we have.”
The fall of the Florida College Republicans.
For all his controversial rhetoric, Fishback is not the most inflammatory speaker the University of Florida College Republicans (UFCR) have brought to the Gainesville campus this academic year. Back in October, weeks after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the chapter hosted a panel featuring right-wing influencer Elijah Schaffer of Rift TV; Hugo Lennon, a far-right Australian influencer who calls himself “Auspill” and has been involved with the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network; Michael Hennessey, who faced charges in connection with the January 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill; and Braeden Sorbo, son of conservative actor Kevin Sorbo.
In his appearance in Gainesville, Schaffer spouted antisemitic conspiracy theories, including insinuating that Jews had a hand in Kirk’s killing, throughout the event, which was attended by dozens of people. “They molested kids,” he said. “They killed Charlie. Who’s ‘they,’ though? I don’t know, Kanye. Who is ‘they’?”
He later blamed Jews for economic problems more broadly. “We can’t necessarily say at this event who’s causing all the problems, but a lot of them live in Boca Raton,” Schaffer said, referencing a Florida city with a large Jewish population. Sorbo then chimed in, “They’re very prominent in Boca, in Hollywood, where I grew up. They’re all over there.”
As the College Republicans chapter has drawn closer to antisemitic figures and given them platforms on campus, other GOP groups have taken notice. Days after the Fishback event, the University of Florida announced it was deactivating the chapter at the request of the Florida Federation of College Republicans, which found that the chapter “engaged in a pattern of conduct that violated [the federation’s] rules and values.” The chapter decried the deactivation, and attorney and former Florida House member Anthony Sabatini on Monday filed a lawsuit against the university on the chapter’s behalf. Asked about the deactivation and lawsuit, a university spokeswoman told The Dispatch the school does not comment on pending litigation and directed it to its original statement announcing the chapter’s disbanding.
Other conservative student organizations on the school’s campus have distanced themselves from the UFCR chapter, citing its willingness to tolerate antisemitism and far-right voices. “The College Republicans Chapter at the University of Florida has gone past traditional conservative values and turned into an extreme right group pushing anti semitic and other far right ideas on our campus which has lead [sic] to our chapter halting any forms of collaboration with them as we continue to fight to maintain and uphold true conservative principles,” Jennifer Garcia, president of the Turning Point USA chapter at UF, told The Dispatch via text.
The head of the school’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, Peter Kostantinov, said both ends of the campus political spectrum have become more extreme, but he said that “none was as pronounced as UF’s College Republicans,” which has exhibited an “open embrace of radicalism.”
On social media, the UFCR has taken on a combative tone. Earlier this year, an X user posted a CNN photo of Border Patrol official Greg Bovino wearing a long green, military-style coat and compared the look to Nazi attire. The UFCR account replied: “Shut up liberal. Those photos look awesome,” the chapter wrote. “‘Hitler took cool photos’ okay and we are taking cool photos too, deal with it.”
Chapter President Michael Andre declined an interview request from The Dispatch, and the chapter did not respond to requests for additional comment, but he did address his critics when he introduced Fishback on stage. “My organization, the UF College Republicans, has come under a lot of fire, mostly from conservatives who have labeled us as ‘leftist’ or as the ‘woke right,’ or any other pejorative that can slander us as anything less than what we are, which is American patriots that are rightfully weary of the direction in which our country is headed.”
There is also crossover between UFCR and another group on campus, the UF chapter of Uncensored America, a national organization that offers speakers such as right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. The groups are two distinct organizations, but Marc Orta, the chapter president of Uncensored America, also serves as the secretary of UFCR, according to screenshots of the groups’ pages on the university’s student involvement website obtained by The Dispatch. UFCR promoted an Uncensored America event on campus featuring Myron Gaines, a podcaster and influencer who has denied that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust and written books titled Why Women Deserve Less and Why Women Deserve Even Less.
Institutional fracture.
The drift toward antisemitism and far-right radicalism among young college men comes several years after campus Republican groups splintered into different organizations.
UF deactivated the College Republicans chapter after being contacted by the Florida Federation of College Republicans, a state arm of the National Federation of College Republicans (NFCR). However, the chapter says it’s no longer affiliated with that organization.
Less than two weeks before the UFCR chapter hosted Fishback, it announced its affiliation with the College Republicans of America (CRA). Both NFCR and CRA broke off from the legacy national college Republican organization, the College Republican National Committee, after a squabble over the elections of national leaders in the summer of 2021.
Today, the different groups fight over who the legitimate College Republicans organization is. In terms of ideology, NFCR has stayed generally within the mainstream of the Republican Party. That’s not the case for CRA.
Earlier, this month, CRA announced 23-year-old Kai Schwemmer—whom UFCR hosted late last year—as its new political director. An associate of Fuentes, Schwemmer appeared in a promotional video for one of his 2021 initiatives and was featured at a 2022 conference he hosted. In a since-deleted tweet from 2021, Schwemmer wrote, “the white population is globally declining and we are being terribly treated by the incoming populations.”
In response to the backlash following his hiring, Schwemmer called on his critics not to judge him by years-old comments. “My comments in high school and as a teenager should not be taken to accurately reflect my views or demeanor now,” he tweeted. “I condemn all forms of hatred, including antisemitism, obviously. I’m not a groyper; I am simply and unapologetically an American nationalist.”
“There is an organized and well-funded effort that is pushing this garbage, and the Democrats allowed it to destroy their own party. I don’t want to see the Republican Party go the same way.”
Sen. Ted Cruz
But Schwemmer was making comments that could fairly be called antisemitic as recently as late last year. In December, he falsely claimed that the top executives at defense contractors Boeing and Raytheon are Jewish, saying they are also Zionists. He claimed the executives are part of a collection of “Zionists in America who, no matter what, are going to be supportive of—whether it’s just militarily or monetarily—they’re going to support U.S. involvement and U.S. support for Israel.” The same month, he questioned whether, given their religious beliefs, Jewish people’s political motivations were in line with America’s best interests in an interview with Deseret News.
In response to the social media firestorm that followed Schwemmer’s appointment, CRA press secretary Macy Gunnell issued a defiant statement: “based lol he isn’t going anywhere and neither are we.”
CRA boasts on its website that it has more than 200 chapters nationwide. The Republican National Committee has not weighed in on the schism among the campus groups and does not formally affiliate with them. But on the same night Trump gave his keynote address accepting the party’s nomination at the 2024 Republican National Convention, CRA Vice President Gabe Guidarini led the pledge of allegiance on the main stage. In response to backlash over Schwemmer’s appointment, onetime CRA President Will Donahue referred to that appearance as evidence of CRA’s conservative bona fides. “It wasn’t NFCR on stage at the RNC,” he tweeted. An RNC spokeswoman declined to comment on Schwemmer’s appointment and on the rift among College Republicans groups.
Republicans raise alarms.
In December, Vice President J.D. Vance downplayed the prevalence of antisemitism in the conservative movement. “When I talk to young conservatives, I don’t see some simmering antisemitism that’s exploding,” he told NBC News.
But other Republicans at the national level have raised alarm over the rise of antisemitism in their ranks, particularly among younger people. At a symposium last week co-hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition and National Review, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas castigated influencers who trafficked in antisemitism, but he also downplayed their power, noting the strong pro-Israel line the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have taken. “They are not influential,” he said in his speech. “They are at least not influential with Donald Trump, who continues to reject their kooky advice. They’re not influential with Republicans in the Senate, who continue to reject their kooky advice. And if you look at public opinion polls, they’re least influential of all with normal voting Republicans all across the country.”
But the chief concern among those who have decried antisemitism among young conservatives is that, even if party veterans in positions of power do not tolerate the extremists, those younger people who will soon or already make up the staff in Republican offices and campaigns and who vote for GOP candidates have fallen under their spell.
“The fact that this room is persuaded does not mean that the college campus is,” Sen. Ted Cruz said in his speech at the symposium. “It does not mean that the Capitol Hill interns are. It does not mean that the interns at Heritage and [Conservative Partnership Institute] and every other conservative institution in this country, that they’re persuaded.”
Cruz has been the loudest Republican voice warning about the threat of antisemitism among young people on the right, and he has called on the party to stem the tide before it takes over the GOP.
“Speak out. Take on directly the lies that are being pushed by the other side,” he told The Dispatch when asked what GOP elected officials can do to combat antisemitism among young Republicans. “There is an organized and well-funded effort that is pushing this garbage, and the Democrats allowed it to destroy their own party. I don’t want to see the Republican Party go the same way.”
