Randy Fine’s victory in the Republican primary for Florida’s Sixth Congressional District is a reason to breathe a sigh of relief.
Dan Bilzerian did not win. He did not come close to winning. His enormous social media presence, viral provocations, and campaign of open antisemitism failed to persuade a majority of Republican voters.
That matters.
It demonstrates that internet fame is not the same as political power. Millions of followers, viral videos, and endless online attention do not necessarily translate into votes. The loudest voices on social media do not always represent the American public.
Most voters rejected Bilzerian. They did not accept his slogans of hatred. They did not reward a campaign built around attacking a Jewish candidate for being Jewish.
That is the reassuring part.
The frightening part is that Bilzerian still received nearly 19 percent of the vote.
Almost one in five Republican primary voters supported a candidate whose antisemitism was neither hidden nor ambiguous. It was not based on a misunderstood statement or an old social media post taken out of context. Antisemitism stood at the center of his campaign.
Bilzerian repeatedly attacked Fine as a Jew. He promoted conspiracy theories about Jewish power, questioned the Holocaust, praised enemies of Israel, and released campaign material invoking Adolf Hitler and the possibility of another Holocaust.
The voters knew who he was.
They voted for him anyway.
This means that while Bilzerian’s online campaign failed to win an election, it succeeded in revealing that there is a real political audience for explicit antisemitism in America.
Nearly 19 percent is not a handful of anonymous internet trolls. It is not an insignificant fringe. It represents thousands of citizens who entered voting booths and deliberately selected a candidate associated with some of the ugliest ideas in modern history.
There is an important distinction between saying that America has become antisemitic and recognizing that an antisemitic political constituency now exists within America.
The majority of voters rejected Bilzerian, and that fact should not be ignored. But neither should his level of support be dismissed.
Social media campaigns can lose electorally while still winning culturally. They can move the boundaries of acceptable speech into the future.
A candidate such as Bilzerian does not need to win in order to cause damage. He only needs to make the previously unthinkable seem familiar.
The greatest danger is normalization.
Once openly antisemitic rhetoric becomes another legitimate position within political debate, the barrier separating democratic politics from extremism begins to collapse. What begins as online provocation can become a voting bloc. What begins as a voting bloc can eventually acquire representatives, donors, institutions, and power.
Fine’s victory shows that America’s political defenses against open antisemitism are still functioning.
Bilzerian’s support shows that those defenses are weakening.
The correct conclusion is therefore neither panic nor complacency. Most Floridians who participated in this primary did not vote for hatred. But far too many did.
Randy Fine’s victory deserves relief.
Dan Bilzerian’s 19 percent should serve as a warning.
