“The double helix can divide — or it can unite. The choice is not in the molecule. It is in us.” 

By Andrew Klein

Dedication: To my wife — who knows that identity is not a line, but a fold.

I. The Allure of Certainty

There is something seductive about DNA. It promises certainty in a world of ambiguity. It offers to cut through the noise of culture, history, and politics and deliver a verdict: this is who you are. this is where you come from.

But DNA does not speak. It is interpreted. And interpretation, as we have seen throughout history, is vulnerable to the biases, ambitions, and political agendas of those who hold the microphone.

The misuse of genetic science is not a bug. It is a feature of a world that craves simple answers to complex questions.

II. The Khazar Theory: A Conspiracy Reborn

In February 2026, Tucker Carlson used his platform to call for universal DNA testing in Israel. His target was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose ancestors, Carlson noted, came from Poland: “So how do we know he has a connection to the people who God promised the land to?”

Carlson was resurrecting the Khazar theory — the belief that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the ancient Israelites but from a Turkic people who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages. The theory has a long history but has been largely discredited by genomic studies. A 2025 study assembled “the largest data set available to date for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins,” concluding that Ashkenazi Jews “derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe”. No particular similarity to Caucasus populations — the region of the Khazar Khaganate — was evident.

None of this matters to Carlson or his audience. The data are ignored. The story is what matters. And the story serves a purpose: to delegitimise Jewish claims to Israel. As the Anti-Defamation League has documented, the Khazar theory has grown in prominence in antisemitic circles since October 2023.

The DNA evidence is beside the point. The politics is the point.

III. The Dangerous Flexibility of Genetic Narratives

A 2016 study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin demonstrated something remarkable: the same genetic data could be framed to emphasise either similarity or difference between Jews and Arabs, with measurable effects on attitudes and even aggression.

When participants read that Jews and Arabs were “genetic siblings,” they rated each other more positively and displayed less aggression. When they read that the two groups were genetically dissimilar, the opposite occurred. The researchers warned that genetic information could be “a weapon to stir conflict”.

This is not hypothetical. Consider two headlines. In 2000, the BBC declared: “Jews and Arabs are ‘genetic brothers’.” In 2013, Medical Daily claimed: “Genes of most Ashkenazi Jews trace back to indigenous Europe, not Middle East”. Both were published. Both were true — within the narrow parameters of the studies they reported. Both were used to advance competing political agendas.

DNA does not have a politics. But the stories we tell about DNA do.

IV. The Nazi Precedent: Science as a Tool of Genocide

When Carlson’s critics objected to his call for racial testing, they noted that “the idea of tracing bloodlines is often associated with the Nazis, who chose their victims based on how many Jewish ancestors they had”. The comparison is not incidental. It is instructive.

Under the Nazi regime, eugenicists developed tools for systematically identifying hair and skin colour, classifying individuals according to the “relative whiteness” of their features, to separate “Aryans” from Jews. The Nazis referred to this project as Rassenhygiene — racial hygiene — which “found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany,” marked by efforts to avoid “miscegenation” and the belief that “lower races” would contaminate “higher” ones. Jewish anthropologist Dr. Maurice Fishberg exposed this as “a ‘political’ move,” noting that “most Nazi pseudo-scientists favour the formation of Nordic breeding colonies”.

This is the logical endpoint of the idea that DNA can determine belonging. Once you accept that identity is encoded in the double helix, you have accepted that some people can be classified as pure and others as impure — and that the state has the right, perhaps the duty, to act on that classification.

Hitler did not invent racial science. He weaponised it. The same could be said of anyone who uses DNA to delegitimise another’s claim to land, culture, or belonging — whatever their political affiliation. The far-left and far-right alike have embraced the Khazar theory: both Carlson’s ally Candace Owens (“The people currently occupying Israel are Khazarian Turks”) and influencer Shaun King (“He has ZERO ancestral connection to the land”) have promoted the same discredited idea.

V. The Fallibility of Ancient DNA

The problems with genetic determinism are not limited to contemporary politics. They extend to the study of the deep past.

A 2024 volume, Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA (MIT Press), offers the first comprehensive critical analysis of the “ancient DNA revolution”. Key themes include “the fallibility of aDNA as incontrovertible evidence,” “the risks of scientific racism and political instrumentalisation,” and “the role of media in shaping public imaginaries of the past”. The editors argue that aDNA knowledge emerges “not solely from laboratory analysis but from complex interactions between science, culture, and society”. The collection ultimately challenges “DNA essentialism” and calls for “resisting molecular chauvinism”.

Anna Källén’s The Trouble with Ancient DNA (University of Chicago Press, 2025) asks a different but related question: who is responsible if stories of ancient DNA are adopted for dangerous political projects?. Her answer is implicit: all of us. Scientists cannot wash their hands of the uses to which their research is put. Journalists cannot claim neutrality when they sensationalise findings. And the public cannot abdicate the responsibility to question what they read.

VI. What DNA Cannot Tell Us

Genetic evidence is powerful. But it is also partial. It can tell us about ancestry, about migration, about relatedness. It cannot tell us about identity.

A 2016 study of a Neolithic necropolis in France found “no correlation between funerary practices and maternal ancestries”. Individuals with different genetic backgrounds were buried in the same way, with the same rituals, treated as equals in death. The homogeneity of funerary treatment “regardless of their potential maternal ancestries is striking”.

What does this tell us? That culture — the practices, beliefs, and relationships that define a community — can transcend genetic origins. People with different ancestries can share the same identity. People with the same ancestry can choose different identities.

DNA cannot tell you who you are. It can only tell you where some of your ancestors came from — a limited subset, at that. As the researchers of the Kitka Sámi burial noted, “ancient DNA helps researchers understand population history, it does not define ethnicity or identity. Sámi identity is not a biological trait, but a historical, cultural, and social phenomenon.”

The same is true for every group.

VII. The Real Story Is in the Teeth

If DNA is an unreliable guide to identity, what should we look at instead? The answer, in part, is teeth.

Archaeologists study teeth because they preserve diet, health, migration, and even social status. They study burial sites because they reveal rituals, relationships, and beliefs. They study tools and pottery because they show what people did, not just who their ancestors were.

These are the footprints of human life. They are messy. They are ambiguous. They do not lend themselves to headlines. But they are real.

And they tell a consistent story: mixing, movement, complexity.

From the earliest hominins migrating out of Africa to the interbreeding of Homo sapiens with Neanderthals. From the Crusades to the Silk Road. From the Roman Empire to the modern metropolis.

Human history is not a story of purity. It is a story of exchange.

The same people who want to use DNA to prove “purity” will find that DNA proves the opposite — mixing, movement, complexity.

VIII. The Irony of Purity

The Nazis dreamed of a pure Aryan race. But as geneticist David Reich has shown, “modern humans today carry genetic makeup from both Neanderthals and Denisovans” — from species that went extinct tens of thousands of years ago. There is no pure European. There is no pure anything.

The same is true in the Middle East. As the BBC reported in 2000, Jews and Arabs share significant genetic ancestry. The same is true in India, in China, in the Americas. Every population is a mix.

The irony is delicious. The very science that the racists invoke to justify their hierarchies reveals that those hierarchies are nonsense.

But this requires intellectual honesty — the willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads. And intellectual honesty is in short supply when politics is at stake.

IX. Conclusion: The Humility We Need

Genetics is a powerful tool. It has revolutionised our understanding of human history. But like all tools, it can be used for good or for ill. It can build bridges — or it can sharpen swords.

The choice is not in the molecule. It is in the interpreter.

What is needed is humility. The recognition that DNA can answer some questions — and not others. The admission that identity is not a line, but a fold — a complex, dynamic, contested process that no single test can capture. The understanding that the past is not a museum. It is a conversation.

And the warning: if you would not let someone tell you who you are based on your DNA, why would you let them tell someone else?

Andrew Klein

References

1. Bechar, S. (2026, February 26). Tucker Carlson pushes DNA tests for Jews, ‘Khazar’ theory. The Jerusalem Post. 

2. Elia-Shalev, A. (2026, February 28). Why Tucker Carlson pushed for Jewish DNA tests, and the Khazar theory touted by antisemites. Jewish Telegraphic Agency / The Times of Israel. 

3. Kimel, S. Y., et al. (2016). Genetic research can promote peace or conflict, depending on how it’s used. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 

4. Behar, D. M., et al. (2025). No evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazi Jews. Human Biology. 

5. Wikipedia. (2026). Racial hygiene. 

6. Strand, D., Källén, A., & Mulcare, C. (Eds.) (2024). Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA. MIT Press. 

7. Källén, A. (2025). The Trouble with Ancient DNA. University of Chicago Press. 

8. Rivollat, M., et al. (2016). Distinct ancestries for similar funerary practices? A GIS analysis comparing funerary, osteological and aDNA data from the Middle Neolithic necropolis Gurgy “Les Noisats”. Journal of Archaeological Science, 73, 45-54.