No, Mark. Not Everyone Who Disagrees With You Is A ‘Traitor’

Do you happen to share a different opinion on the war with Iran and U.S. foreign policy than the neoconservative radio host Mark Levin?

If so, I have bad news: you’re a traitor to your country, a fifth-columnist disgrace on par with Benedict Arnold, and if you know what’s good for you, you should shut up or change your tune before I cancel you and ruin your life.

I’m being satirical, but Mark Levin isn’t. In recent weeks, Levin has repeatedly and baselessly accused anyone opposed to the Iran War — namely, Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson — of being traitors to their country. The examples are endless. Traitor this, traitor that. His highly original and clever smear lexicon also includes “neo-fascist,” “Marxist-Islamist,” and “Woke Reich.” But he throws around the word “traitor” with more feckless disregard and intensity. His smooth, Manichean brain cannot stop carving America into two factions: loyalists and traitors. (RELATED: Neocon Chicken Hawks Spread Disgusting Lie To Smear Joe Kent’s Wife)

Levin’s ceaseless shrieking about fifth columnists and traitors is almost comical. A broken record that will keep spinning and spinning and emitting harsh, tinny noise. You can picture him, at 90 years of age, babbling away in an echoey, palatial Palm Beach home, accusing the congenial home aide of being a CCP spy because she served him Chinese food the week of Independence Day — all in that iconic, hysterical, grating tone.

WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 16: U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and Julie Strauss Levin (R) look on as conservative radio host Mark Levin (C) speaks during a Hanukkah Reception in the East Room of the White House on December 16, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump hosted attendees to celebrate the holiday and the lighting of the menorah on the third night of Hanukkah. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Jokes aside, there is something deeply disturbing about his flippant use of the word “traitor.” For example, labeling someone a “kook” or “conspiracy theorist” does not imply they have engaged in criminal behavior. But smearing someone as a “traitor” does. It implies they have committed a most serious crime, which carries with it serious penalties, including death. There are many epithets and slurs one can use to smear and discredit an opponent, as Levin has done on numerous occasions, but traitor has weight to it that the others do not.

In an irony that surely escapes him and his supporters, Levin previously called out Democrats for using irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric against the Trump administration and ICE agents to “stoke violence”:

The Democrats helped stoke violence in LA. They’ve defended illegal aliens. Trashed ICE as Nazis. Physically assaulted them in Newark.

National Guard called up. Marines placed on high alert.https://t.co/lkhXrGSblf

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) June 8, 2025

So is Levin attempting to “stoke violence” against antiwar voices by continuing to smear them as “traitors”? I’ll let you decide, but let the record reflect that he made this very same “lower the temperature” critique of the left in 2025.

And, for someone who loves America so much, Levin appears deeply ignorant and incurious of its history, particularly the illuminating bits that have been papered over and ignored by the official gatekeepers. If he only took a break from his social media histrionics, he might learn a thing or two about previous wartime chapters in our history, which in fact bear uncanny and chilling resemblance to our current time.

He might learn, for example, that in 1899, President Theodore Roosevelt smeared critics of U.S. involvement in the Spanish-American War as “unhung traitors.” Or that, during World War I, the federal government jailed upwards of 1,000 American citizens for protesting conscription and our foolish entry into the brutal stalemate.

These facts would be tougher for him to process, but Levin might learn that the original America First Committee was forever “tainted” by a single speech from Charles Lindbergh, that the organization included Jewish pacifists, and that it refused to cooperate with pro-Nazi and Germanophile groups, such as the German-American Bund. Levin might learn about the “ultra-interventionist pro-New Deal group,” Friends of Democracy, and how, in the lead up to World War II, the group “sought to equate anti-war sentiment with support for Hitler and Mussolini”; hired an agent provocateur, John Roy Carlson, to join the America First movement and spread a fake anti-Jewish hate sheet; and focused on the “marginal bigots” to smear good-faith figures in the America First movement. (RELATED: Traitors, Trotskyites And The Modern Day Neocon)

Levin’s ignorance of yesteryear’s smear artists reminds me of a great quote from the late conservative scholar, Angelo Codevilla. In an interview with Tablet Magazine, Codevilla observed that the liberal ruling class is utterly clueless and, in their own way, provincial because they have neither visited nor are even aware of popular American destinations outside their elite bubbles, such as Branson, Missouri.

Whatever you think of the war — whether you are for it or against it, whether you are unsure, or just want peace on Earth — you are still an American. You are not a traitor. You are free to protest and speak your mind and exercise your First Amendment right. Should one’s opinion be censored, lest his opinion be aired on foreign state TV? Of course not. That would be un-American.

Traitor Tucker. Notice how he embraces every enemy against our country. And during war with Iran, Iran promotes his lies and conspiracies. Traitor. https://t.co/laEHi3extw

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) March 20, 2026

For Mark Levin, though, a differing opinion is treason in his personal empire of lies.