Antisemitic ‘King of Instagram’ who backed war on Israel nets 19% in GOP primary

Woke Right anti-Israel candidates lose GOP primaries for Florida governor and House races – but make double-digit showings.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

Antisemitic “manosphere” social media influencer Dan Bilzerian won nearly one in five votes in a Florida Republican congressional primary Tuesday despite running a campaign steeped in openly bigoted rhetoric, Holocaust denial and calls for the United States to declare war on Israel.

Bilzerian, the businessman and internet personality once widely dubbed the “King of Instagram,” received 18.7% of the vote in the Republican primary for Florida’s 6th Congressional District, according to state election results.

He finished a distant second to incumbent Rep. Randy Fine, a Jewish Republican and outspoken supporter of Israel, who took 56.9%.

Bilzerian nevertheless secured 16,773 votes, substantially more than the other two challengers in the race. Aaron Baker received 13.5% and Charles Gambaro took 9.7%.

The showing came after a campaign in which Bilzerian repeatedly made Jews and Israel central targets of his political messaging, building on years of inflammatory remarks that included Holocaust denial, spreading conspiracy theories about Jewish control, and advocating violence against Israelis.

Bilzerian, who has roughly 29 million Instagram followers, previously said that if he were US president, “I would declare war on Israel.”

He has gone even further in other appearances. During a streamed discussion last year, Bilzerian said he supported “exterminating Israel” and declared that he would personally be willing to travel to the country to kill Israelis.

His rhetoric increasingly focused on Fine after Bilzerian entered the congressional race in the spring.

In announcing his challenge, Bilzerian attacked Fine specifically over his Jewish identity and support for Israel, writing that the congressman “has no place in our govt” and promising to pursue treason charges against officials he believed placed Israel’s interests ahead of those of the United States.

The campaign grew still more inflammatory in its final days.

Bilzerian released an AI-generated campaign video depicting Fine with exaggerated antisemitic imagery, including horns and money, while repeatedly invoking his Jewish identity.

The video referred to Fine using antisemitic slurs and displayed footage of Adolf Hitler as its song asked, “Should we revisit that Austrian painter’s opinions?”

Bilzerian also posted shortly before the election that “District 6 understands the jewish [sic] problem.” Another message promoted by the influencer declared: “It’s not red against blue. It’s us against the Jew.”

The attacks prompted an unusual bipartisan denunciation from the two top leaders in the US House.

House Speaker Mike Johnson called Bilzerian’s attacks “disgusting,” adding that “Antisemitism and outward hatred of Jewish communities have no place in our politics or in America.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries similarly described Bilzerian’s campaign as “blatantly antisemitic” and said it “shocks the conscience.”

Other Republican officials also condemned the candidate, including Sen. Ted Cruz and former Arkansas governor and current US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

An analysis released in the week before the election found that approximately one-third of the posts made by Bilzerian’s congressional campaign account on X between May 12 and August 10 constituted antisemitic hate speech.

The analysis examined 657 campaign posts and found 218 containing terms related to Jews, Israel, Zionism, the Holocaust, Gaza or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Researchers classified 215 of those posts as hostile and estimated that antisemitic material from the account had generated millions of views.

Among the themes promoted by Bilzerian were claims of secret Jewish control over American politics, Holocaust denial and accusations that Jews were responsible for assassinations and other major political events.

Bilzerian had already attracted widespread condemnation well before entering electoral politics.

During a highly contentious 2024 interview, he claimed that Jews “control the media,” described Judaism as a supremacist religion and disputed the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust, saying, “I would bet my entire net worth that it was less than six million.”

His congressional campaign turned those views into a political platform centered heavily on opposition to Israel and pro-Israel organizations. Bilzerian called for ending American aid to Israel and portrayed US support for the Jewish state as evidence that American institutions had been captured by Jewish interests.

Fine, by contrast, has made support for Israel a central element of his political identity and has positioned himself as one of the most outspoken pro-Israel Republicans in Congress.

The incumbent entered Congress after winning an April 2025 special election to replace Mike Waltz, who left the House after joining the Trump administration. Fine had President Donald Trump’s backing and was heavily favored in Tuesday’s Republican primary.

Following Bilzerian’s defeat, the Republican Jewish Coalition said the challenger had made antisemitism the core of his campaign.

“Dan Bilzerian did not merely flirt with antisemitism,” the group’s CEO, Matt Brooks, said. “He made Jew-hatred the entire premise of his campaign.”

The nearly 19% Bilzerian received despite that record could draw further attention to the electoral reach of a growing online faction on the American right that combines “America First” opposition to US involvement overseas with explicit antisemitism and hostility toward Israel.

In the GOP’s gubernatorial primary in Florida, a far-right anti-Israel candidate also made a double-digit showing.

James Fishback, a white nationalist who mocked the frontrunner, Byron Donalds, for being black, received 177,494 votes, or 10.5%.

Fishback denounced junk food served in school cafeterias as “goyslop,” a term used in far-right social media circles to imply Jewish control of the food industry.

Antisemitismdan bilzerianFloridaprimaryRandy Fine