One of the most important developments in right-wing media in the last few years is the rise of a class of provocateurs who create on-the-ground, documentary-style videos targeting communities based on their religion, ethnicity, or political beliefs. These creators frequently make bombastic and unsupported claims, rely on deception and innuendo, and play to longstanding bigoted beliefs that have found purchase in their sizable audiences. 

While this type of content was once relatively limited to propagandists like James O’Keefe, social media policies and technological developments — alongside the rise in demand for white nationalist political commentary — have led to an explosion in so-called “independent journalists” chasing virality, influence, and dollars by optimizing hate and misinformation.

The cast of characters who populate this emerging ecosystem is large, but there are a few names that stick out above the others. At the moment, one of those names is Nick Shirley, whose claim to infamy is a video he created and promoted that purported to expose fraud at day care centers in Somali communities in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Shirley’s content helped lay the foundation for the Trump administration’s weekslong mass deportation operation across the state, during which federal agents shot and killed two people and traumatized the city.

He just endorsed an openly antisemitic video.

Wait, what antisemitic video?

On February 25, Shirley promoted and defended an antisemitic video made by fellow YouTuber Tyler Oliveira titled “I Exposed New Jersey’s Jewish Invasion… .” The video runs more than an hour long, and it seeks to transform pedestrian, local issues about land use into something sinister by relying on longstanding antisemitic tropes about Jews controlling the financial system.

At one point in the video, Oliveira asks a Jewish man if he thinks “moving capital and charging interest is something more valuable than what I do or what?”  

At other times, Oliveira portrays Jews as parasitic, a longstanding antisemitic stereotype. He claims the Jewish community is “financially depleting the public school system for non-Jewish kids, overwhelming local infrastructure, and turning a once-quiet town into a densely populated, overtrafficked Jewish enclave.” (It’s not the first time he’s framed Jews that way. Last month, Oliveira posted a video titled “Inside the New York Town Invaded by Welfare-Addicted Jews… .”)

“EXPOSE IT ALL,” Shirley wrote in response to Oliveira's post promoting his New Jersey video.

OK, but does this Shirley guy actually matter?

Unfortunately, he does. Shirley has been welcomed with open arms in right-wing media, appearing repeatedly on Fox News and on right-leaning podcasts like PBD Podcast, Full Send Podcast, The Shawn Ryan Show, and All-In Podcast. He was one of several influencers given access to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador in 2024, and, after the Trump administration rendered about 250 Venezuelans to CECOT in March 2025, Shirley appeared on Fox News to celebrate. Shirley also attended a White House roundtable on antifa and went on a ride-along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Chicago during the Trump administration’s siege of the city.

Among Shirley’s top fans seems to be Vice President JD Vance, who wrote on social media that “this dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes.” Shirley’s political access doesn’t stop there; he attended the State of the Union as a guest of Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN) and while there was praised for his videos by Rep. Young Kim (R-CA).

The lineage from O’Keefe to Shirley couldn’t be more explicit. In 2025, O’Keefe created an award ceremony to celebrate the trolls who have followed in his footsteps and bestowed the inaugural prize on Shirley. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that one of Shirley’s recent videos claiming to expose voter fraud borrows nearly the exact same myths and uses the same tactics O’Keefe deployed a decade and a half ago.  

In an awkward bit of timing, the morning after Shirley endorsed the antisemitic video, Fox News host Lawrence Jones praised Shirley’s Minnesota video. “You can hate Nick Shirley all you want to,” Jones said. “He exposed — what was going on at that day care center, didn't even have ‘learning’ spelled the right way, and you go in and there is no kids in there, I mean, that's rampant fraud.” 

Later that day, Shirley appeared on Fox News. To introduce him, anchor Martha MacCallum said, “Independent journalist Nick Shirley helped to expose the accusations of fraud in Minnesota. He's one of the reasons that this is a big story. He's joining me here in New York.” MacCallum closed the interview by imploring her viewers to “check him out on YouTube,” noting that “he's doing a lot of good independent journalistic work.” MacCallum did not mention Shirley’s embrace of the antisemitic video.

What’s been the broader reaction?

So far, the response to Shirley's endorsement in right-wing media has been limited, though that could change given the appetite for antisemitic content among much of that audience.  

A few conservative pundits have pushed back on Shirley. Far-right personality Laura Loomer, who is Jewish and a self-described “proud Islamophobe,” criticized Shirley’s response to Oliveira’s video. 

“Expose what? Jewish US citizens living their life peacefully?” Loomer wrote. (Shirley responded by claiming he was simply “anti-fraud” and denied being antisemitic.)

Senior editor at the libertarian Reason magazine Robby Soave asked, “Are there any big rightwing alt media video guys who are not deranged anti-Semites?”

Others have celebrated Shirley’s antisemitic turn. 

White nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes pushed back on Shirley’s critics, asking, “Wait a second, so what happened? I thought we were against fraud. I thought we were against ethnic enclaves. I thought we were scapegoating a minority group. Wait, but not like that!” 

Far-right conspiracy theorist Dom Lucre posted Shirley’s “EXPOSE IT ALL” quote and added a fire emoji and red siren emoji, plainly signaling his support.

Wait, what about this Tyler Oliveira guy. What’s his deal?

Oliveira is a YouTuber who built an audience doing innocuous stunts — soaking up an entire pool with paper towels, training to be a boxer — before moving to O’Keefe-style conservative stunts. He was instrumental in spreading the hoax that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. Like Shirley, Oliveira targeted and smeared the Somali community in Minneapolis in a video titled “Inside Minneapolis’ Somali Invasion… .”   

Oliveira’s repeated use of the word “invasion” in his titles is important. Not only is his use of it antisemitic on its face, but “invasion” is also the same word right-wing media and the Trump administration have used for years to describe migrants. Fox News and others frequently described Venezuelan immigrants and others as “invaders,” and the Trump administration has sought to invoke the Alien Enemies Act as a justification for some of its deportation policies by describing migration as an invasion. There is a direct rhetorical line from describing migrants as invaders to federal agents storming people’s homes in Minneapolis to Oliveira’s targeting of Jews in the New York and New Jersey region.

You don’t seem surprised by this. That’s not good.

No, it’s terrible. It should be surprising that a rising star in MAGA media promoted a video claiming Jews were invading New Jersey, but it isn’t. Antisemitism has been present in reactionary politics for decades, stretching from 1930s radio personality Father Coughlin through prominent figures in the John Birch Society and some of the paleocons in the early 1990s. 

Its recent iteration can’t be explained by one isolated factor, but there are some clear trends. As conservatives sought to win elections by demonizing immigrants, right-wing media figures like Tucker Carlson began popularizing the racist “great replacement” theory, which frequently posits that a cabal of Jews are importing people from third-world countries to replace white Americans. Anti-immigrant bigotry is central to the MAGA movement and its calls for mass deportations, and those impulses have indexed to a rise in antisemitism. 

MAGA also frequently uses “anti-elite” rhetoric, which can be slippery and easily slide into antisemitism, long known as the socialism of fools for its attempts to explain real inequities through racialized hatred of Jews. The picture wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging that many in right-wing media have opportunistically used legitimate criticism of Israel — specifically its devastating military campaign in Gaza — to launder their barely disguised antisemitism to a broader audience.  

None of this is good news. That Shirley could endorse a video about a Jewish invasion of New Jersey and appear on Fox News the following day illustrates the degree to which antisemitism is a powerful, animating force in conservative media right now. But longtime right-wing media observers know it's been a long time coming.