[White nationalists are attempting to hijack Israel’s escalating
war to draw new recruits and push their antisemitic and Islamophobic
narratives. ]
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WHITE NATIONALISTS ARE CAPITALIZING ON THE GAZA CRISIS  
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Shane Burley
November 1, 2023
Waging Nonviolence
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_ White nationalists are attempting to hijack Israel’s escalating
war to draw new recruits and push their antisemitic and Islamophobic
narratives. _

Activist Nadine Seiler (right) confronts white nationalists during
their antisemetic protest outside the White House on Oct. 28,
Twitter/Joe Flood

 

At a rally near the White House, 40 white nationalist National Justice
Party, or NJP, members demanded a ceasefire in Gaza on Oct. 28.
“[In] a country as broke as ours … why the hell are they dragging
us into another Zionist war?” yelled one member of the group
[[link removed]],
standing next to alt-right podcaster Mike “Enoch” Peinovich. After
the speaker made an antisemitic reference to the U.S. as “Zionist
occupied territory,” one of the attendees demanded “no more Jewish
wars” to a passing cameraman.

Despite these claims of solidarity with Palestine, the white
nationalist intervention on this issue comes not from their concern
for Palestinian lives, but out of a desire to manipulate the conflict
to serve their own racial narratives. 

As coverage of the Gazan war streamed across white nationalist
websites and social media accounts, a confusing range of opinions
conflicted with each other, with some supporting Israel because they
think it could lead to a further attack on Islamic countries, while
others staunchly pointed the finger at Israel.

“Israel is a grotesque country. Not only do we not receive anything
in compensation for our support, but American interests are also
damaged as a result of our support for Israel,” writes Bernard M.
Smith for the _Occidental Observer_, a publication that few know
about but has had an influential role in developing American white
nationalism. The publication pushes racial pseudoscience, bogus race
and crime statistics, arguments for white ethnic superiority, and
scapegoating immigrants, queer people and women. But as the Israeli
bombing of Gaza began after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, coverage
shifted immediately to focus on Israel. 

In another article, posted on Oct. 18, the _Observer_ denounced the
doxxing of students at Harvard (and a truck driving around campus
bearing their likeness), who were harassed by pro-Israel organizations
after they signed a letter opposing Israel’s violence against
innocent civilians. The article was penned by Kevin MacDonald, an
essential figure in the birthing of the alt-right, who contends that
eugenics and social manipulation are used by Jews to increase their
own power and control over gentile society. The Jewish conspiracy is
baked into MacDonald’s worldview, and he believes Jews have now
gained power across all dominant institutions by shifting the values
in the worlds of academics, anthropology, philosophy, the media,
banking and politics. 

COUNTER-JIHAD

“There’s no such thing as Palestine. It’s always been a figment
of the imagination of Islamic terrorists and Jew haters,” said
far-right activist and former Florida Congressional candidate Laura
Loomer
[[link removed]] on
Twitter shortly after the Hamas attack. She was joined by a chorus on
the far right, primarily among those who still have some connection to
the GOP. “Make no mistake, this is Islam’s ‘holy war’ and
their ultimate goal is to wipe out all of Israel,” said
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green on Oct. 7 from her official
Telegram channel. 

Green has been mired in controversy since she took office,
particularly when her social media feed was found to be filled with
antisemitic conspiracy theories, including the theory that
Rothschild-funded space lasers were responsible for California
wildfires, and after she spoke at a conference hosted by white
nationalist Nick Fuentes. 

Much of this area of the far right seems to be hoping that this
conflict can reinvigorate what is known as the “counter-jihad”
movement, a far-right collection of groups and individuals who believe
Islam is a threat to the West and see Muslims as their primary
civilizational enemy. “The Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists are not
‘militants,’” wrote David Horowitz, a far-right Jewish activist
most credited with launching the counter-jihad movement. “They are
Nazis and their mission is to finish the job that Hitler started.” 

This is the same sentiment that was then echoed by former senior Trump
advisor Stephen Miller, the architect of the child separation policy
and “Muslim ban,” who is a former protege of Horowitz. “Israel
is fighting a jihadist death squad,” Miller said on Twitter on Oct.
19. “A genocidal terrorist camp operating on its border. Israel’s
straightforward military mission is to eliminate the death squad, a
necessary action to ensure the survival of the sole Jewish state.” 

Far-right media provocateur Andy Ngo completely devoted his social
media presence and articles at _The Post Millennial _to talking
about the alleged antisemitism of the left. He points out when
pro-Palestine protesters are Black or Muslim and then frames them as
radical extremists (suggesting that, somehow, Jewish philanthropist
George Soros is responsible for them).

Many of the leading far-right parliamentary groups among the European
national populist bloc also publicly showed support for Israel in the
conflict. This could have been anticipated, since Israel’s ruling
Likud party and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu have worked to develop
alliances with the global right despite its rampant antisemitism. 

PREVIOUS COVERAGE
 German anti-racists get creative with ‘Rave Against the Right’
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Germany’s Alternative fur Deutschland party, or AfD, pledged its
support for Israel, even though it has a long history of antisemitic
statements and a deep connection to Germany’s neo-Nazi movement. In
recent years, the party has attempted to court right-wing Jews by
using their support for Israel as a way of drawing them into the fight
against what the AfD thinks is the bigger threat: Islam. 

The same logic motivates the far-right Britain First movement, which
said in a statement that the “government of Israel is run by
patriotic leaders who have zero tolerance for migrant misbehavior.”
Britain First’s primary mission is to demonize immigrants and it
looks towards Israel’s migrant policy, which is incredibly
restrictive, as inspiration. It also seems to venerate Israel’s
treatment of Muslim Palestinians and Arabs, which Amnesty
International refers to as “apartheid,” as a model for Britain to
follow.

THE SO-CALLED JEWISH CABAL

Inside the world of formal white nationalism, the mood was much
different. “[For] White nationalists, the central conspiracy theory
animating their movement is that there is a Jewish cabal animating
politics, the media, the economy and progressive movements, and they
see this Jewish cabal as the main enemy,” said Ben Lorber, a
research analyst at Political Research Associates who tracks the far
right. Lorber points out that they extend this conspiracy to their
views about Israel and they consider the U.S. a “Zionist Occupied
Government.”  

“[They] may not agree with Palestine solidarity protesters on
anything related to racism, and they don’t generally care about
Palestinians, but they think it’s important to oppose Israel because
they see Israel as a Jewish conspiracy,” Lorber said.

White nationalist Richard Spencer was notable for professing his
support of the Zionist project and arguing that Jews and Israelis
should support the alt-right because they “want the same things,”
which in his formulation is authoritarian ethnic nationalism. Yet his
commitment to Israel was opportunistic and has been a frequent topic
of discussion on his various livestreams and private Zoom calls for
Substack subscribers. 

For white nationalists, the show of support for Palestinians is
entirely a disingenuous attempt to hijack the conflict to add
political weight to their antisemitism. “[For] neo-Nazis and many
other white nationalists, anti-Zionism is based on hatred of Jews, not
solidarity with Palestinians,” writes researcher of the far right,
Matthew N. Lyons, in his 2018 book “Insurgent Supremacists.” 

This appropriation of Palestinian struggles has been a long-term
strategy in some sectors of the far right, which points to Israeli
settler colonialism as an extension of the supposedly malevolent
Jewish mind. “They have been doing this for years,” says
antifascist researcher Daryle Lamont Jenkins. “It has been ‘an
enemy of my enemy is my friend’ kind of thing. But in this case it
is hollow, because the enemy of your enemy is also your enemy, but one
you are trying to exploit.”

Jenkins says that this strategy was heavily employed by white
nationalist pioneers like David Duke. He created an organization
around the time of Operation Desert Storm called “No War For
Israel” in an effort to lodge the idea that these Middle Eastern
wars are the result of a global Jewish plot. His obsessive
antisemitism pushed him to try and put Jews, and eventually Israel, at
the center of every global political development and, reflexively, use
Israel’s crimes as evidence of Jewish perfidy. He is credited with
founding the antisemitic slur “Zio,” and his website is primarily
built around reporting on various global events he believes is under
their control, particularly regarding their dispossession of
Palestinians.

Nick Fuentes is using the escalating war on Gaza to further push his
isolationist proposal for American foreign policy, covering the
mistreatment that anti-Zionist activists have experienced since
speaking out about Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. Fuentes
alleged during his Oct. 18 livestream that the recent doxxing of
Harvard student activists was funded by a “Wall Street Jew” and
that he has experienced the same silencing after he “decided to
speak out against Israel.” 

“These people are a fifth column in this country, and I’m talking
about Jews,” Fuentes said in that same livestream. The U.S. could
not come out against Israel, he added, because the Jews have so
“deeply penetrated the American elite” and undermined American
sovereignty. Fuentes has had a series of controversies for making
antisemitic statements, from quietly dipping into Holocaust denial to
suggesting that “Talmudic Jews” are a threat who needed to be
converted
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The National Justice Party, an outgrowth of the Right Stuff podcast
network and their flagship show, “The Daily Shoah,” has made
documenting the war in Gaza a primary focus of their website, _The
Justice Report_. Eric Striker, a contributor to several of the
network’s podcasts, is known for having a particularly syncretic
form of neo-Nazism. He often tries to draw in issues from the left,
including criticisms of finance capital, and then bring them under the
banner of a vicious nationalism. “There is no such thing as left or
right. Antifa, the ‘Christian’ right, the Democrats and
Republicans, ‘populists’ and establishment, 100 percent of them
are geopolitical and social chess pieces deployed by world Jewry to
manage and manipulate unassuming and low agency gentiles,” Striker
wrote on Telegram on Oct. 14, now sporting a Palestinian flag in his
name.

DISINGENUOUS “SOLIDARITY”

In reality, the white nationalist movement has nothing to offer the
fight for Palestinian liberation. It is simply trying to inject
antisemitism into the discourse, and many have been perfectly open
about that. As Mark Gullet wrote on Oct. 18, for the white nationalist
Counter-Currents website, “I have no ‘side’ in the Gaza
conflict. It’s not a sporting fixture. I don’t have any money on
it. Dead babies here, white phosphorus there. Whatever. “[The] only
relevant question is: What is in this conflict that will benefit
whites or otherwise and, if otherwise, what do we do about it?” 

The same point was made by the alt-right associated YouTuber RamZPaul,
who has spoken at white nationalist conferences like American
Renaissance and the National Policy Institute. On Oct. 18 he posted on
Twitter, “Why must Americans be forced to choose between two warring
tribes? Why must we send billions to support some tribe’s ethno
state?” This is essentially a position similar to that taken by
far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whose InfoWars has
alternated between suggesting Israel was responsible for the attack,
to saying the West is covering up for Hamas.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE
 5 ways to push antisemites out of the Palestinian solidarity
movement
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The reality is that despite attempts to co-opt the Palestinian
solidarity movement for their own goals, white nationalists have been
largely unsuccessful. They will continue to fail as long
as Palestinian solidarity activists are aware of how the far right
tries to hijack important issues
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reframe them through a racialist lens. 

Lorber notes that the advantage Palestine solidarity activists have is
that they are often closely aligned with larger antiracist coalitions
that can give them intel on disingenuous far-right figures attempting
to participate. “Many of the people at these Palestine solidarity
rallies are antifascists, and they know who their local fascists are
and are determined for them not to have a space at their rally.”
This is also happening at a time when Palestinian solidarity
organizers are routinely labeled as antisemitic
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groups like the Anti-Defamation League, which confuses the issue and
makes it more difficult to address real antisemitism when it surfaces.

“[Work] closely with local antifascists who know those particular
neo-Nazis and fascists intimately enough to alert people when they try
to ingratiate themselves with organizers and participants,” Jenkins
recommended. He also noted that in every community there are
antifascists who typically research the local far-right and who will
know who is there to opportunistically shift the rhetoric towards
antisemitic conspiracies. They can provide support and guidance to
organizers who want to remove fascist agitators. 

Recently the Jewish antifascist organization Outlive Them outed a
Christian nationalist activist who had been trying to join Palestinian
solidarity demonstrations, using messages like “Jewish supremacy is
the real white supremacy.”

Since the Palestinian solidarity movement is a centerpiece of the
broad American leftist coalition, antifascist consciousness has often
guided decisions about who to allow to join the fight against Israeli
apartheid. When antisemitism has emerged in the Palestinian solidarity
movement it has often been pushed out, such as with the cases
of Gilad Atzmon
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collaborator with Greg Johnson at Counter-Currents), Israel Shamir
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Weir.
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O’Keefe
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a conspiracy theorist who spent time in the Palestine solidarity
movement, was summarily removed from good standing when he developed a
public friendship with David Duke. 

As the movement against Israel’s genocide in Gaza builds up steam we
can expect to see the far right disingenuously attempt to bring in
recruits who are also outraged by Israel’s violence. By focusing on
the demands for democracy and equality in Palestine, organizers can
drill to the heart of what the movement is about and oust those who do
not share those underlying principles.

_Shane Burley [[link removed]] is a
writer and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of
"Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It" (AK Press). His work as
appeared in places such as Jacobin, AlterNet, In These Times,
Political Research Associates, Waging Nonviolence, Labor Notes,
ThinkProgress, ROAR Magazine and Upping the Anti. Follow him on
Twitter: @shane_burley1._

_Waging Nonviolence is a nonprofit media organization dedicated to
providing original reporting and expert analysis of social movements
around the world. With a commitment to accuracy, transparency and
editorial independence, we examine today’s most crucial issues by
shining a light on those who are organizing for just and peaceful
solutions._

_Through on-the-ground movement coverage and commentary that draws on
both history and the latest research, Waging Nonviolence works to
advance the public’s understanding of movements and their key role
in shaping politics. Subscribe for a free newsletter.
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* white nationalists
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* Germany
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* anti-Semitism
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* Islamophobia
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