Maureen Tkacik, a top editor for The American Prospect, an influential progressive magazine in Washington, has made no secret of her self-avowed hatred of Israel, particularly in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza.

“Hating Israel is everything to me,” Tkacik wrote in one social media post in February, while adding in another, “If you don’t hate Israel I strongly question your humanity.”

In recent months, however, she has increasingly entertained conspiracy theories about Israel, used antisemitic rhetoric and expressed her approval of far-right extremists stoking anti-Jewish sentiment, raising questions over her ongoing association with a periodical that had long been viewed as a paragon of modern liberalism.

The Prospect — a magazine first published in 1990 that has helped to launch the careers of Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Jonathan Chait and other prominent liberal pundits — states on its website it “is devoted to promoting informed discussion on public policy from a progressive perspective,” while highlighting its efforts “to dispel myths, challenge conventional wisdom and expand the dialogue.”

But Tkacik’s online commentary has clashed with that editorial ethos, as she is drawn to conspiracy mongering about Israel and what she views as its malign influence on U.S. politics and government.

In some social media posts, for instance, she has indicated that she believes it is possible Israel was involved in the assassinations of both President John F. Kennedy and conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

“JFK did not want Israel to develop the nuclear weapons they still refuse to acknowledge having,” she wrote last month, in response to commentary from far-right commentator Tucker Carlson tacitly suggesting that Israel was behind the killing, a conspiracy theory that has recently gained renewed currency on the far right.

Regarding Kirk, Tkacik has frequently cast doubt on the FBI’s investigation into his killing, saying “there appears to be probable cause that he was scared of being harmed by Israel in the weeks prior.”

“The evidence that he was embroiled in a serious feud with the Israel lobby is abundant,” she wrote about Kirk last week, adding, “Israel has killed for far less.”

In other posts, Tkacik has railed against “ZOG,” short for “Zionist Occupied Government,” which the American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League have called a white supremacist conspiracy theory alleging that the United States is controlled by Jews. 

As she expressed her growing horror with Israel’s military operation in Gaza, Tkacik, the Prospect’s investigations editor, largely abandoned the pretense of journalistic objectivity about related matters — dismissing hostage posters as “genocidal propaganda,” calling reports of Hamas engaging in widespread sexual violence “the systemic rape lie” and labeling a Jewish New York Times reporter “a Likud asset,” among other incendiary statements.

Last week, Tkacik lashed out in response to a Jewish Insider report about a democratic socialist mayoral candidate in Washington who had privately apologized to a group of Jewish communal leaders for saying she would not attend events “promoting Zionism.”

“What is so apparently impossible about saying GO F*** YOURSELF to Nazis?” she said of the rabbis and communal leaders in a characteristically vituperative post reminiscent of social media comments in which she has smeared pro-Israel Jews as Nazis and told them they should move to Israel.

In a handful of posts, Tkacik has otherwise referred to JI as “Jewish supremacist insider” while seeking to discredit its reporting.

Tkacik has alternatingly described Israel as a “Zionist cabal that in the end may be dominated by non-Jews,” “a genocidal demon rapestate hellbent on obliterating civilized humanity,” “the literal HQ of US Homeland Security” and — in one even more extremely worded comment she has only tentatively walked back — “a brainwashed psychopathic death cult that might need to be nuked to save the human race.”

Her invocation of demonic rhetoric to denigrate Israel echoes the antisemitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens, whose show Tkacik has said she “secretly” follows. “Candace says some ludicrous things but ‘our government is occupied by Zionists’ ain’t one of them,” Tkacik argued in a social media post last November. 

In addition to occasionally praising Owens and Carlson — who have emerged as the right’s most vicious critics of Israel — Tkacik has defended Ian Carroll, an antisemitic influencer who has pushed Holocaust revisionism while promoting conspiracy theories about Israel’s connection to Kirk’s killing and other issues.

Addressing the recent foiled terrorist attack at a synagogue in Michigan, Tkacik seemed to suggest that the congregation had played a part in inviting the violence due to its support for the Jewish state. 

“My kids went to summer camp at a reform synagogue where I was surprised to learn ‘lots of Israeli flags’ hung indoors,” she wrote last month. “It is heartbreaking to imagine kids targeted over a camp venue, but given that this is the world OUR overlords have made I don’t understand how a place of worship hangs a flag associated w genocide.”

In response a request for comment from JI on Tuesday, Tkacik said: “Every single one of these quotes has been stripped of its context, so I don’t imagine any response here will fare any better, but there is no polite or respectable or levelheaded way to engage honestly with the unrelenting indiscriminate violence Israel has perpetrated over the past two and a half years, or for that matter apartheid lobby stenographers who spend their days trying to get people fired for opposing genocide.”

Editors at the Prospect did not return requests for comment about her posts and whether they reflect the magazine’s values.

Tkacik, who goes by Moe, has long been regarded as a strong investigative journalist known for a fiercely independent streak, focusing on such diverse issues as corporate malfeasance, private equity and health care. She co-founded the feminist website Jezebel in 2007, following stints with The Wall Street Journal, Time and Philadelphia magazine. She started at the Prospect in 2023, according to her LinkedIn profile.

In her reporting on Israel-related subjects while at the magazine, Tkacik has appeared to avoid the sort of extreme rhetoric that has characterized her social media output, even as she has been highly critical of Israel — in keeping with the outlet’s approach to the Jewish state and pro-Israel advocacy groups such as AIPAC.

In a Facebook post last month, Tkacik described herself as someone who “argues with strangers on the internet about Israel,” while also acknowledging “how insane and pathologically self destructive that would seem to someone with normal hobbies.”

“It is not healthy,” she wrote elsewhere on social media last year, “to hate anything as much as every human being needs to hate Israel at this moment.”