Zionism is Far-Right Bigotry, Hate of “the Other,” and Supremacy

Eliding a far-right racist’s own religious heritage

by Paul Haeder / February 3rd, 2025

They are trying to elevate France recognizing Josephine Baker as a hero, yet, Amy Goodman has the ability — and whatever else is going on with the Black journalist she interviews, French journalist Rokhaya Diallo — to sidestep the tribal and religious and historical and intellectual identity of this French monster, Éric Zemmour (above image).

He’s Jewish and he openly uses his Jewishness as a cuddle to get where he is today — published writer and candidate for office? Where is the money trail, that is the question. I ask this as I did get a reader’s comments (from the Dissident Voice newsletter where I am published) who is from California but has lived in New Zealand for 25 years. He’s a businessman, in hospitality, and he writes me from time to time. He is concerned with employees from South America, in his New Zealand restaurant, still skeptical of the Pfizer and how the NZ government makes it illegal to work without a series of jabs — booster madness is what 2022 will be. Just a little research on NZ —

New Zealand Terrorist Attack: The Israel Connection

“The corporate press is correct that Tarrant and Breivik follow the practices of the anti-Islam xenophobic movement on the rise in Europe, North America and now Oceania, but the key element they deliberately avoid mentioning is their strong collective affinity for the state of Israel.”

You know, the Christian Identity politics in the world, well, of course they are tied to Identity, and that is Christianity. The Jewish Identity politics (an entire country, Israel, Jewish, and like In God We Trust USA Christian nation) tie into of course, Jewish-ness. Zionism Identity, well, of course, Zionism is the identifier. Why would Jewish Amy Goodman not mention this person’s — Zemmour’s — Jewish identity? He’s anti-Muslim, and he’s a proponent of murder and mayhem. He’s misogynistic as HELL.

Oh, Josephine Baker —

‘Baker wrote about the injustices she had witnessed for a French paper, France-Soir. From Montevideo to Copenhagen, she gave talks about the evils of US segregation, and on 28 August 1963, she was the only official female speaker to speak alongside Martin Luther King at the March on Washington. In her French military uniform, Baker spoke about her own struggle for justice to a quarter of a million people. Looking out at the mix of races in the crowd, she declared: “Salt and pepper — just what it should be.”

Yet these actions did not go down well with the FBI, who had a file open against her since 1951 because of her “anti-United States statements and her fight for racial equality”. For 15 years, until Baker’s 60th birthday, they recorded her actions and called her a Communist Party apologist, not least because she occasionally partied with the Castro brothers in Cuba.’

Being the first black woman to become a global celebrity and to star in a major feature film – 1934’s Zouzou  undoubtedly made Josephine Baker an influential cabaret siren and fashion icon. Yet she was also so much more. A Second World War spy for the French Resistance, a civil rights activist, a suspected communist sympathiser, and a single mother to twelve adopted children from all over the globe, Baker refused to dance to anyone’s drum but her own.

Her words still resonate today: “Surely the day will come when colour means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul, when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free.”

(Ailsa Ross is a journalist living in the Canadian Rockies. She’s the author of The Woman Who Rode a Shark: And 50 More Wild Female Adventurers [AA Publishing, 2019])

So, how do we frame all of this through the lens and looking glass of racism and bigotry, a real foundation of Zionism, which is the founding force of the state of Israel? This by, Yoav Litvin, an Israeli-American doctor of psychology/neuroscience, a writer and photographer. His work can be found at yoavlitvin.com.

Early Zionists syncretised many aspects of European fascism, white supremacy, colonialism and messianic Evangelism and had a long and sordid history of cooperating with anti-Semites, imperialists and fascists in order to promote exclusivist and expansionist agendas.

In fact, throughout the past century, anti-Semites and Zionists have worked towards the mutual interest of concentrating Jews in Israel; the former as a means of scapegoating and expelling an unwanted population, and the latter to combat the “demographic threat” posed by native Palestinians. Further, both anti-Semites and Zionists construct Jews as a biological race, which needs to be segregated as part of a utopia of global apartheid.

Zionism is a racist and settler colonialist movement, which opportunistically coopts aspects of Judaism in an attempt to justify its criminal practices of apartheid and genocide of indigenous Palestinians. White supremacy is dominant within Israeli society, which privileges white-skinned Ashkenazi Jews at the expense of dark-skinned African Jews, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews as well as African refugees. African/black Jewish communities are often denied recognition by Israeli authorities with some members even deported.

Zionism is based on a distinctly secular outlook, which embraces aggression and expansion as an acceptable response to trauma and denounces the traditional Jewish pacifist approach of viewing hardship as divine punishment for sins. The Israeli regime capitalises on a dynamic of violence and inequality reinforced by fear-mongering and the rewards of resource acquisition to promote a privileged ruling class at the expense of colonised Palestinian people. Zionist strategists manipulate the past traumas Jews have endured to galvanise support for aggressive policies that disenfranchise Palestinians.

They call it double punishment, or at least that’s what Yonathan Arfi, vice president of the Representative Council of French Jews, describes it. False narratives from Jews, and then coming from people who are Jewish. Stephen Miller, anyone? Remember his prominence in Trump-Alt-Hatred politics? So, Zemmour is Jewish, espouses supremacist views of whites (Jews over Goyim, but he doesn’t yammer too much on that), and he thinks all women are baby breeders and do not have the capacity for politics and can’t be geniuses. So, the legitimacy he claims as a Jew with his Nazi patina, well, that is the double take, double tap, double punishment.

So many will question how much Zemmour truly engages with his Jewish identity – but, as philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy argues, that has become irrelevant. Despite rigorous criticism from the Jewish community, “what Mr. Zemmour does, whether he likes it or not, [is] in the Jewish name”. (source)

They all do land with parachutes, pariahs and war criminals, one and all.

Israeli military hegemony is indeed no long-term guarantee of US interests in the region, but the scale of the US-Israel military relationship and the close synchronization of US and Israeli strategy down to the present are determined by a strategic calculus, not by sentiment. Kissinger’s comments do reflect an important shift in US policy at this time, towards greater reliance on compliant Arab regimes to preserve the status quo. But Israel’s function as a “strategic asset” is no mere rhetorical flourish of Ronald Reagan’s campaign. US policy, in 1975 as now, aimed to enhance Israel’s strategic capacity in the region, consolidate friendly Arab regimes, and to isolate and debilitate the Palestinian movement.
— “Kissinger Memorandum: ‘To Isolate the Palestinians,’” Middle East Report, 96 (May/June 1981).

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Pulitzer-prize winner Alice Walker caused much controversy by recommending David Icke’s book And the Truth Shall Set You Free, claiming it was “a curious person’s dream come true”.

Many reacted sharply to Walker’s endorsement of what is widely considered to be an anti-Semitic book, accusing her of embracing Icke’s racist conspiracy theories; others, like Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa, defended Walker, claiming her ideas are anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic. In her article, In defence of Alice Walker, Abulhawa claimed Palestinians are “killed, humiliated and destroyed in visible and invisible ways by Israel’s notions of Jewish supremacy”.
— Yoav Litvin, “The Zionist fallacy of ‘Jewish supremacy,’” Al Jazeera

This, Alice Walker, or …

Kissinger and the Tribe . . .

On December 2, Democracy Now— Read the transcript and see more of Diallo’s words.

We go now to France where we are joined by French journalist and filmmaker Rokhaya Diallo. Her latest op-ed for the Washington Post is headlined Josephine Baker enters the Panthéon. Don’t let it distract from this larger story. Thank you so much for joining us, Rokhaya. Why don’t you start off by telling us that larger story and then go into the significance of Josephine Baker being recognized?

Rokhaya Diallo: Thank you so much for inviting me. I am very happy—to me, it’s very good news to finally have a woman of color in the Panthéon, which is, as you said, one of the most prestigious places to welcome the most revered French figures. It is something that is very meaningful, because as well as being an entertainer, she was also a hero of resisting during the Second World War but also took part to the March on Washington. As you said, she was the only woman.

But there are two things that left me with mixed feelings. First, the fact that France tends to use the fact that it has been very welcoming to African Americans throughout the 20th century to picture itself as a very open and welcoming country. But the thing that we tend to forget is that while Josephine Baker was celebrated and dancing on Parisian stages, France was a very violent colonial power, so it was also colonizing Africa and Asia and also the Caribbean, and perpetrating very much violence to people who were colonized and also displaying them in what was called at that time the Colonial Exhibitions, which were basically human zoos where you could see people coming from the colony to be seen by visitors from Paris and from other regions of France.

So there was a double standard with African Americans being welcomed because they were American and didn’t have any historical agreement to settle with France. At the same time, other people of color were actually submitted to the French state.

I go back to New Zealand, because it is very easy to believe New Zealand is this great, well-run, law abiding, great place!

Sources:

1. “New Zealand’s Hidden Role at the Biggest US Bombing Base in the Middle East”
   A recent issue of Air Force News revealed that a senior NZDF officer served a six-month posting at the Qatar base, placing New Zealanders at the heart of the main targeting and bombing center in that region

2. “World’s Super Rich Buying Pandemic Escape Mansions in New Zealand”
   A number of the planet’s richest people, including billionaire co-founder of Paypal Peter Thiel, are escaping to New Zealand to shelter in luxury bunkers amid the COVID-19 pandemic.FacebookTwitter

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Paul Haeder's been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Here's his Amazon page with more published work Amazon. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.

 

Zionism: Jews and Penguins




by M. Shahid Alam / January 27th, 2025

Zionists have sought to delegitimize Palestinian opposition to Zionism or Jewish settler-colonialization of their lands, by accusing them of antisemitism, that is, of harboring hatred for Jews as such, not because of what they had/have been doing to Palestinians.

Yahweh gave Palestine to the Jews in perpetuity: thus the story goes in the ancient literature of the Hebrews as recorded some 2,500 years ago in Genesis. Why would the Palestinians refuse to handover their country to the ‘original’ Ashkenazi title-holders to Palestine: if not for their hatred of Jews – if not for their inveterate hatred of Jews? Is there be any merit to this accusation? Could it be that in fact, this accusation is a smear – one instance of the weaponization of antisemitism – employed by Zionist Jews to malign their Palestinian victims? Indeed, this smear is hurled at anyone with the temerity to disagree with the narrative that Zionist Jews have constructed to justify their European exclusionary settler-colonialism in Palestine, now ongoing for more than a century.

It is as if the Whites in the United States were to accuse the Blacks of anti-white racism whenever they demanded their human rights. It appears that the Whites in the USA have not thought to be this creative when defending their apartheid, their exclusion of Blacks from the rights of citizenship. That is not to say that they have not been nearly as creative in other ways.

Consider a simple test to discover where the truth might lie in this matter, with the Jewish accusers or the Palestinians accused? Imagine a replay of the history of Palestine starting with the announcement of the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917.

In this infamous Declaration – actually a letter written by one British Lord, Sir Arthur Balfour, to another British Lord, Lionel Walter Rothschild, a prominent member of the Rothschild banking family in Britain. In this letter, Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary – tersely and artfully – conveyed the British government’s commitment to create a “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. In other words, the British Empire would use all the authority at its disposal to enable European Jewish Zionists to create a Jewish colonial-settler state in Palestine.

Soon after the Balfour Declaration, European Jews began arriving in Palestine, under the military protection of the British colonial government in Palestine. Over the next thirty-one years, these Jewish colonial-settlers – drawn almost entirely from Europe – built the political, social, administrative and military infrastructure of an exclusionary Jewish state in Palestine – one that rigorously excluded Palestinians – with the fullest support and cooperation of its British colonial government.

When the Palestinians organized to resist the settler-colonization of their lands, the British colonialists were ready to use brutal force against them. Starting in 1936, as the resistance gained momentum, the British responded with blunt and brutal force. They made mass arrests of Palestinians, incarcerating them in concentration camps without trial; they demolished homes and villages suspected of supporting the resistance; and clamped curfews on villages and cities to disrupt the movement of Palestinian fighters. By the time the Palestinians resistance was crushed in 1939, nearly all the leaders of the resistance had been executed – often staged as public spectacles – sentenced to long prison terms or exiled. In other words, the British had created the conditions for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Jewish colons.

In 1947, the Ashkenazi Jewish colons began to employ their superior societal, state and military power to initiate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. By the end of 1948, they had captured 78 percent of mandatory Palestine; simultaneously, the Jewish military and militia perpetrated dozens. of massacres to expel 80 percent of the Palestinians from the lands conquered for the Jewish state. Israel banned the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes inside Israel, and those attempting to return were repulsed with deadly force.

Of the Palestinians who remained inside Israel, many lost their homes, agricultural lands and businesses. In addition, all were placed under military rule that would not be lifted until December 1966. After military rule ended, these Palestinians have lived under a variety of restrictions that remain in force to this day. Israel has been an apartheid society since its inception, with two sets of laws, one for Jewish colons and another for Palestinians.

In a mere thirty-one years, then, the European Jewish colons had created a Jewish state in Palestine after ethnically cleansing more than half its population, a unique achievement in the history of settler colonialism. In June 1967, Israel conquered the rest of Palestine – East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and the West Bank – while also expelling another 200,000 Palestinians from these areas.[1]

All the other European colonial-settlers in the Americas, Oceania and Southern Africa had taken centuries to create their own state, something the Jewish colons in Palestine achieved in a mere thirty-one years. In addition, the Jewish colons achieved this without a natural ‘mother country.’ How did a tiny, hated, weak and persecuted minority manage to achieve this miracle?

In our replay of this history, we will not change any of the events of this history of the settler-colonization of Palestine. We will only change the identity of the colons; we will replace the European Jewish settler-colonists with Penguin settler-colonists from Antarctica. These Penguins too will enter Palestine to establish an exclusionary Penguin settler-colonial state after expelling 80 percent of the Palestinians from 78 percent of Palestine. In other words, the Jews and Penguins do not differ in their aims, methods or achievements as
colonial-settlers in Palestine. They differ only in their identity: one group consists of Jews – at first overwhelmingly from Europe – another consists of Penguins from Antarctica.

If Palestinian opposition to the Zionist project was motivated by their antisemitism or prior hatred of Jews – then we should expect them to react differently to an identical settler-colonial project, now undertaken by Penguins from Antarctica. The Palestinian reaction has to be different because the Penguins are not Jews, and no one could accuse the Palestinians of antipenguinism, or an ancient hatred of Penguins because of their Penguin identity.

No Orientalists – Jewish, Christian, or secular: English, French or German – have accused Islam, the Qur’an, Prophet Muhammad, Muslim rulers, Muslim theologians, Muslim poets – Hafiz, Rumi, Omar Khayyam – Muslim philosophers – Al-Kindi, Avicenna, Averroes – of teaching the Muslims to hate the Penguins.

Simply stated, the Palestinians could not have brought a prior anti-Penguinism to their encounter with the Penguin settlers-colonists in Palestine. Without prior hatred of Penguins, therefore – using the logic of the Zionists – we can expect the Palestinians to welcome the Penguin settlers who begin arriving after November 1917. Since the Palestinians not infected with anti-Penguinism, they would not object to their dispossession by the Penguins.

Indeed, if the Penguin settlers could cite ancient Penguin could cite chapter and verse from their ancient scriptures to prove that a feathered Yahweh, some 5000 years ago, had awarded Palestine in perpetuity to the progeny of a Penguin Abraham and Jacob, we might expect the Palestinians to honor the feathered Yahweh’s pledge, since there is only one God, whether he reveals himself to Penguins, Jews, Arabs, Ostriches or Kangaroos. We might even expect the most devout Muslims among the Palestinians to insist on serving the divinely chosen Penguins as their slaves in perpetuity.

However, we would be sorely disappointed in these expectations. Once we grant the Palestinians their humanity – and we have to, willingly or not – surely they will oppose the Penguin settler-colonists – as they had resisted the Jewish settlers-colonists – but not because of any prior hatred of their Penguin identity. The Palestinians would oppose the Penguin settlers because of what they must do to them as exclusionary settler-colonists. Like their Jewish counterparts, they too will use terror to ethnically cleanse them, and establish an exclusionary Penguin settler-colonial state in Palestine.

In other words, the Palestinians will oppose the Penguins because they have arrived in their land with the same intentions as the Zionist Jews. Notwithstanding their disparate identities, both are exclusionary settler-colonists entering Palestine under the military protection of a British colonial government. Regardless of why the Jews or Penguins may have launched their exclusionary settler-colonial project, regardless of who they are, both will use terror to expel the Palestinians from their lands. Since the Palestinians are humans, as human as the Jews, no more and no less, their human instincts of self-preservation, their human pride in their history and culture, their human love for their homes and their children will persuade them to oppose both the Jewish and Penguin colonial project. Indeed, they have the right and moral obligation to resist settler-colonialism, no matter who the colons are, no matter the promises the deities may have made to the colons, no matter the national mythologies they believe or pretend to believe in.

We may now summarize the argument of this essay. Since an exclusionary settler-colonialism seeks the total or near total erasure of another people, the natural instinct for self-preservation (common to all forms of life) will propel its victims to resist and repel the settlers. The victims’ instinct for self-preservation is not predicated on any prior hatred towards the settler-colonists; their present revulsion over the past and ongoing actions of the colons will suffice to activate their instinct of self-preservation. In other words, the Palestinians resisted Zionism because it sought their erasure as a people, not because the people who sought their erasure were Jews, real or fictive descendants of the Hebrews.

One has to conclude that Zionist accusation of antisemitism against Palestinians is based on the premise that the latter do not possess the instinct for self-preservation. In the Zionist narrative, the Palestinians opposed Zionists not because they were opposed to their own erasure, but because this erasure would be effected by the hated Jews. They would have welcomed their own erasure if only this were to be effected by any other people – Yemenis, Vietnamese, Nepalese or Australian Aboriginals – or any other species – Penguins, Kangaroos, Koala Bears or Dolphins.

Notwithstanding the pretext of Zionism – claiming that the European Jews were reclaiming their divine patrimony – the mostly secular Zionist leaders must have understood that this was a cover for their exclusionary settler-colonial project. The white settlers who effected the erasure of native Americans also sought cover for their slaughter in divine sources. Many of them thought of themselves as the new chosen race, and of America as their promised land. Other white settlers in North America spoke of their manifest destiny: this was part of God’s plan to create a new freer, Christian society in a new land.

The Jewish Zionists owe their success to brute force, not originally their own, but the brute force of antisemitic Western imperialist powers. This is not to suggest that the results of brute force cannot endure. I will claim exemption from such naïvet&eacute. No doubt, the Jewish Zionists were inspired by the many successful European colonial-settler states in the Americas and Oceania. There were many failures too. I am thinking of the many European settler-colonies in North Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa that were dismantled in the second half of the twentieth century. There were also two settler-colonial states that belong in this category: South Africa and Southern Rhodesia.

Certainly, history will decide whether Zionism belongs in the first or second category of settler-colonialisms, not time that is measured in years or decades, but historical time that is witness to the birth and death of hundreds of states.

Unfortunately, it may be the case – and I may be wrong about this – that the pioneers of Zionism were not thinking of historical time. Smart as they were, they may have been misled by their own recent successes and by their envy of European nation states.

---

Notes

1. Israel also captured the Golan Heights and the Sinai, territories belonging respectively to Syria and Egypt.

M. Shahid Alam is professor emeritus of economics at Northeastern University. He is author of two books of poetry: Intimations of Ghalib (Orison Books, 2018) and Yardstick of Life (KDP, 2024). He may be reached at moc.oohay@06720malaqla.

Are young men drifting to the far-right?

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

Yesterday
Left Foot Forward

For a disillusioned young man, grappling with economic stagnation and political apathy, Trump’s return may seem like an empowering vision.

It’s been a bleak week for politics, with the inauguration of a second Trump presidency commanding the spotlight. Hard-right politicians from Europe, including some from Britain, gathered in Washington, flashing MAGA caps and silly grins. Meanwhile, images of tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, strategically placed ahead of Trump’s own cabinet at the event, was a grim reminder of the growing power of oligarchs. For a disillusioned young man, grappling with economic stagnation and political apathy, Trump’s return may seem like an empowering vision.

But is this part of a broader trend? Are young men really shifting to the far-right, as some studies suggest? And what about Britain, where Labour secured a landslide just six months ago?

In the US, voting trends in the 2024 presidential election point to a drift to the far-right among young men. White, working-class, Gen Z men – mostly less well educated – overwhelmingly supported Trump, with 67% voting for him. In contrast, white working-class Gen Z women were more likely to vote Democrat (47 percent).

This political polarisation among young people however is not confined to the US. In Britain, despite a Labour landslide in the 2024 election, the populist right, led by Nigel Farage, has gained ground, especially among young men.

Financial Times’ analysis of the British Election Study shows that support for Reform UK is now higher among men in their late teens and early twenties than among those in their thirties, and a marked gender gap has opened up among younger voters.

This trend is also visible across Europe, where the far-right is gaining traction among young voters.

In the 2024 European Parliament elections, Germany saw an 11% increase in the share of young voters (aged 24-30) supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party gained 30% of the youth vote, a 10-point rise compared to 2019.

This raises a critical question – why are Gen Z and young Millennials, particularly men, drawn to the far-right and moving away from the liberal politics of previous generations? Or are these trends being exaggerated, and are we misunderstanding the complexities of today’s youth?

Factors behind the shift

In the Scientific American, Adam Stanaland, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Richmond, argues that young, white, working-class men are drawn to figures like Trump because they embody a specific brand of masculinity, one defined by aggression, and anger. There is a real danger that it becomes a hegemonic process, whereby what the likes of Trump say is seen as commonsense by this particular group of voters.

Drawing on decades of research, Stanaland identifies conformity, motivation, and threat as key psychological drivers. The pressure on young men to conform to traditional ideals of masculinity, coupled with feelings of alienation and frustration, often manifests as political discontent.

The FT points to the economic stagnation that has particularly affected young men in the west. As their socio-economic status continues to decline, especially relative to young women who are said to be leaving men behind, a sense of disillusionment has led some to seek solace in anti-establishment narrative, which is readily offered by far-right parties and figures.

Yet it’s not just young men that are moving to anti-establishment parties. In the UK, young women shifted heavily to the Greens. Research by the King’s College London found that the gender voting gap was particularly stark among the youngest voters – those aged 18-24, with 19.7 percent of women voting Green compared to 13.1 percent of men. At the opposite end of the scale, 12.9 percent of young men voted for Reform UK, compared to just 5.9 per cent of women.

This pattern could be partly explained through a study by the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. It found that young adults in the west are increasingly dissatisfied with democracy, with their level of disillusionment far outpacing that of older generations.

A new poll by the More in Common think-tank, found that three in five Brits have a negative view of Trump. When asked to describe the Republican in one word, the most popular responses were “idiot” and “dangerous.” But alarmingly, the poll also found that Trump is popular among men aged under 35, with 53% saying they would have voted for him if they could.

Changing media landscape

The changing media landscape is playing a crucial role in shaping young people’s political views. Social media platforms like TikTok and the so-called ‘bro-vote’ have provided a direct avenue for populist figures to bypass traditional media channels and speak directly to young voters.

Ahead of the 2024 general election, Farage’s punchy, direct and even humorous social media clips gained more attention than many of his more straight-laced political rivals. The Reform leader appeared on podcasts that appealed especially to young men, some of which were hosted by right-wing controversialists with large social media followings. In the Strike It Big podcast, which has 200,000 followers, Farage praised the “important voice” of self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate in standing up for male culture.

Other guests on Strike It Big include David Icke, the conspiracy theorist, and a “testosterone expert” (yes really!) called Jack Hopkins who advises on “how to get rich FAST & become a real man.”

Not all men

But while these online communities may be successfully encouraging political engagement, it’s important to note that not all young people are translating online engagement into votes, and not all young men are flocking to the far-right.

My two TikTok-obsessed sons (16 and 18) are well aware of Farage’s appeal but would never consider voting for his party. Then again perhaps that’s because they’ve been brought up by parents and grandparents who actively espouse left-wing politics. Perhaps young men from more politically apathetic households may be more likely to give figures like Farage a chance, but even then, the far-right has yet to see mass success in the ballot box, at least not in Britain.

A YouGov poll published this week on the likeliness of Farage becoming PM found that just 5% think it’s very likely, and 38% think it’s very unlikely.

Not only does our first-past-the-post electoral system stand in Farage’s way, but the other problem is how often members of the party make fools of themselves. Reform MP Lee Anderson was widely ridiculed for a bizarre X post likening the First World War’s brutal Battle of the Somme with periods, pregnancy and menopause.

And let’s not overlook some of the most jarring images from Washington this week, many of which featured women from Britain. Suella Braverman was filmed arriving in DC sporting a hat emblazoned with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) slogan. The former home secretary described it as an honour to be in Washington for the ceremony. She was joined by Priti Patel, Liz Truss, and, of course, Nigel Farage. These unsettling images highlight the paradox that, while more women than men voted for Kamala Harris, Trump still appeals to female voters, particularly those over the age of 45

.

But Britain isn’t America, and while figures like Nigel Farage are gaining traction – particularly among young men – support for far-right figures in the UK may follow a pattern similar to that seen with Jeremy Corbyn. Despite fervent backing at rallies, a strong presence on online platforms, and a surge in Labour membership, Corbyn’s popularity never fully translated into widespread electoral success.

Could the same dynamics play out for far-right figures in Britain? We can live in hope. Meanwhile, the challenge for Labour is to ensure young people, men and women, are provided with a broader, more inclusive political narrative, one that transcends anger and division and offers hope for the future. Starmer clearly recognises that he has to renew trust in politicians, although it has to be said that the lack of trust in authority extends much more widely than politicians. He is pinning his hopes on economic growth delivering material benefits to young men along with the rest of the population. Labour also recognises that they need to much more social media savvy.

Yet the success of Farage and Trump suggests that there are factors beyond this. What is really needed is an alternative version of masculinity that young men can recognise and value. It already exists in the good work that so many young men do in their communities and for their families. But it needs to become visible and get a hold on politics.

Right-Wing Media Watch – Tabloids silent on Prince Harry’s legal victory,  over Murdoch Press

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

Today

Left Foot Forward


As we've pointed out in previous editions of Right-Wing Media Watch, sometimes what the press doesn't cover is just as revealing as what it does.

As we’ve pointed out in previous editions of Right-Wing Media Watch, sometimes what the press doesn’t cover is just as revealing as what it does.

This week, we saw that in full effect.

News Group Newspapers (NGN), publisher of the Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, finally admitted to unlawful actions against Prince Harry.

They offered both Harry and his only remaining co-claimant Tom Watson, a “full and unequivocal apology” for activities carried out by the newspapers.

In a joint statement, Harry and Watson, hailed the settlement as a “monumental victory,” exposing years of lies and cover-ups.

“Today proves that no one stands above the law,” they said.

The case, which was set to go to trial this week, accused NGN journalists of unlawful information gathering, including the use of private investigators. But just before the trial was due to begin, NGN settled and apologised for violating Harry’s privacy and that of his late mother. The group also admitted targeting Watson during his time as a junior minister under prime minister Gordon Brown.

The publisher will also pay “substantial damages” to both men as part of the settlement.

You would assume that such a historic settlement, featuring a prince and a former Labour government minister, would dominate the news, especially considering the media’s usual obsession with anything related to Prince Harry. Yet, the story was conspicuously absent from the headlines the following day.

However, there was one right-wing figure who couldn’t resist making a noise – Dan Wootton.

The former Sun columnist and GB News presenter immediately took to social media to mock Harry, despite the settlement being widely regarded as a legal victory, primarily for the publisher’s admission of guilt, rather than the financial compensation.

Wootton, who had offered to testify against Harry in court, called him “self-obsessed” and claimed the settlement meant the prince had “bottled it.”

But Wootton’s gleeful posts, including one asking, “Has Prince Harry become the p***y prince?” were met with mockery online, with many pointing out the absurdity of Wootton’s self-importance.

One comment sarcastically noted: ““Oh I’m sure he’d have been shaking in his shoes facing you in court… You sound absolutely terrifying. Pathetic.”

Another said: “I think you are totally deluded if you think he is worried about facing you. The fact that they are all being ‘paid off’ shows how guilty the media is.”

“Terrified of YOU?! You really are pathetically delusional!!” was another comment.

Wootton, a long-time critic of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has made headlines for breaking royal “scoops,” including a 2018 story in the Sun claiming there was a confrontation between Harry and Queen Elizabeth II over a tiara Meghan Markle was supposed to wear on their wedding day. While Harry confirmed in his memoir there were tensions over the tiara, his account of events differed from Wootton’s version.

Sigh, while Harry’s legal victory exposes the depths of the Murdoch media empire’s wrongdoings, it also shows the ridiculousness of figures like Wootton, who seem more interested in petty mockery than in the serious issues of privacy invasion and media accountability. Meanwhile, the media’s glaring absence in covering the story only serves to reinforce the very problem Harry has been fighting against.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch, and an editor with Left Foot Forward

Brock University launches review after professor compares Israel to Nazi Germany

ETHNIC CLEANSING, GENOCIDE, MASS MURDER, 

NOPE NO COMPARISSON

Story by Ari Blaff 

Tamari Kitossa references the PhD thesis© Provided by National Post

Brock University has launched a review after a professor praised Hamas’s October 7 atrocities against Israeli civilians, compared the Jewish state to Nazi Germany, and cited antisemitic conspiracy theories in a series of blog posts.

Tamari Kitossa, a decolonization and anti-racism scholar at Brock University , where he heads the critical sociology department, wrote a four-part series written following the Hamas atrocities, which Kitossa describes as “ miraculous .” He argues that Zionism and Nazism are one and the same.

“Zionism is a colonial project that intended from the start on lebensraum, a project of ethnic cleansing that preceded the coalition of German industrialists, US bankers and Hitler’s gang of thugs that formed the Third Reich,” writes Kitossa in a blog post on his personal website.

The posts were originally supposed to be published in the Journal of State Crime but were rejected “by the managing editor for reasons entirely unpersuasive,” Kitossa explains in the endnotes to a blog post. The Journal of State Crime declined to comment.

When reached for comment and asked whether his writings were based on robust scholarship or if they could be viewed as antisemitism, Kitossa replied: “I have no response.”

“You have already staked out your position,” Kitossa wrote.

As a Brock prof, I don't want a 'woke class' telling me what to say

How one Twitter account caused an ‘Indigenized’ university to unravel

In an email, Maryanne St. Denis, manager of content and communications at Brock University, said the school was unaware of Kitossa’s blog posts until National Post brought them to the school’s attention. “We are currently reviewing this matter,” the school said.

St. Denis added that Brock has a “range of policies in place to ensure a safe and welcoming campus environment. There is absolutely no place on our campus for hate of any kind.”

The series repeatedly references “Rothschild Zionists” and “banker-cabalists” supposedly responsible for sparking the First World War, and cites Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist David Icke.

Kitossa’s most recent post is directed at the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a non-governmental organization that developed a non legally binding “working definition of antisemitism” that has been adopted by dozens of countries, including Canada, Israel and the United States. The definition says that “rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism” can be “directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

In the post, Kitossa argues that the IHRA has been “successful in criminalizing” anti-Zionist thought via “gaslighting which treats as equally repugnant criticism of the Zionist State of Israel with hatred of Jews because they are Jews.” The “canard” which lies “at the heart of (a) hateful regime of Zionism,” Kitossa writes, is that “if the Jew does not exist as an object of hate, the Zionist must create her or him to rationalize the raison d’être of Zionism.”

Kitossa’s writings cover a wide scope of subject matter, including Israel’s research during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kitossa describes this as selling “Jews out to be the lab rats for Pfizer,” he writes in his first essay , and calls it “ a project so diabolical that not even Hitler, Eichmann, Mengele or even Henry Ford could have dreamt it.

His writings often blur the line between strident criticism of Israel and dabbling in antisemitic rhetoric.

“ I see that rank-and-file Jewish Zionists, in making a ‘Holy Calf’ of the State of Israel, are not only slaves of the only Jewish State, but they have abdicated their humanity in the process in cheering on holocaust of Gaza,” he argues in his latest article on his personal website.

In another, Kitossa concedes there are still areas in which the Jewish State has an edge over its prospective enemies. In doing so, he cites, for example, Israel’s cyber-warfare ability, but also apparently references the unsubstantiated idea that Israel was involved with what he terms “the espionage honeypot sexcapades of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.”

(Maxwell is a British former socialite convicted of sex trafficking offences; Epstein, a former financier, committed suicide in a New York jail cell after being arrested on alleged sex-crime offences. Conspiracy theories have proliferated online claiming that Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset.)

The subsequent chapter in Kitossa’s blog posts seeks to highlight supposed similarities between Zionism and Nazism, and is dedicated to the criticism of two distinguished Jewish Holocaust scholars — Raphael Lemkin and Raul Hilberg — because they had varying degrees of Zionist sympathies. Lemkin coined the term “genocide.”

The third post strives to “ delink ” the Zionist “tools of history, sociology, and socio-legal studies which serves the myth of Jewish exceptionalism at the expense of the Palestinians.”

“The destruction of Palestinians, their very erasure to create a ‘greater Israel’ is encoded in the DNA of Zionism, whatever its variants,” writes Kitossa in that post .

In another, he argues that Jews “have a duty to blow Zionism to the winds.” “This alone will make them worthy of their dead, who were used and betrayed by Zionists, and, for the rest of humanity of whom their dead were a part,” it concludes.

In his writings, Kitossa specifically highlights the work of Max Blumenthal, a left-wing journalist who has been accused of dabbling in conspiracy theories and downplaying Hamas atrocities on October 7, and Jonas E. Alexis , who contributes to the antisemitic website Veterans Today .

Zionism, Kitossa argues in the series conclusion , “thrives on — and encourages — the idea that the jew is an eternal victim of the ‘goyim,’ Zionists are happiest most when non-Zionist Jews encounter racio-religious discrimination.”

“Zionism is deeply contemptuous and hateful of Jews,” he elaborates in his most recent article . “This meant that before State formation, Zionists actively cheered on both discrimination against Jews in Germany and Austria and the death camps and squads in the occupied lands.”

The blog posts also cite several other controversial scholars. Kitossa cites approvingly from the PhD thesis of “Lebanese scholar Mahmoud Abbas,” not noting Abbas is the Palestinian president and not Lebanese. (Abbas’s thesis contends that Jews shared a portion of the blame for the Holocaust.)

Kitossa also cites Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian whose work has been criticized by other historians for intellectual dishonesty , and Arthur Koestler, some of whose work has been discredited but still used by neo-Nazis and some in the Arab world to claim that Jews are not indigenous to the region.

Gil Troy, a McGill University history professor, reviewed Kitossa’s writings and underscores that while he would “ bend over backward to defend free speech and academic freedom,” the series of articles “are unhinged, wildly inaccurate, sloppy, and offensive,” he told National Post by email.

“S ome of the statements, especially the broad launching of gross, and quite familiar, anti-Semitic stereotypes, cross a line that would not be tolerated in speech characterizing any other group,” Troy wrote.

Troy was especially struck by Kitossa’s depiction of Jewish heritage trips — basically trips where Jews in foreign nations receive free trips to Israel to explore their roots. Kitossa called them “ an act of positive eugenics,” and described them as “sex junkets for foreign Jews to Israel” funded by the government “and rich Jews.”

“ This sentence is the most problematic because it — like all the Rothschild references — traffics in traditional anti-Jewish stereotypes of rich, manipulative Jews who are sexually deviant,” Troy explained. “You have to follow the footnote, and dig deep into the article cited, to see that these nefarious supposed ‘sex junkets for foreign Jews to Israel,’ are educational programs to build Jewish and Zionist identity, such as Birthright Israel.”

Troy said that Kitossa’s writings make “a mockery of the word ‘academic'” and questioned whether similar rhetoric against other minority groups would be tolerated by college administrators.

“This kind of ranting and bile is not a jailable offence in a democracy. But it certainly should trigger some serious conversations among administrators and leaders of Brock University,” he concluded.

Escape from the rabbit hole: the conspiracy theorist who abandoned his dangerous beliefs

For 15 years, Brent Lee spent hours each day consuming ‘truther’ content online. Then he logged off. Can he convince his former friends to question their worldview?

Amelia Gentleman
THE GUARDIAN

Brent Lee struggles to explain why he used to believe that a cabal of evil satanic paedophiles was working to establish a new world order. He pauses, looks sheepish, and says: “I cringe at all this now.”

For 15 years, Lee collected signs that so-called Illuminati overlords were controlling global events. He convinced himself that secret societies were running politics, banks, religious institutions and the entertainment industry, and that most terrorist attacks were actually government-organised ritual sacrifices.


He was also inclined to believe in UFOs, and that Stanley Kubrick staged and directed the filming of the moon landing. He saw satanic symbols in the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony and spent most of his time discussing these theories with an online community of fellow believers. But in 2018 something shifted, and he began to find the new wave of conspiracy theories increasingly implausible. “I was sick of it. I felt, I can’t deal with hearing this any more because it’s no longer what I believe, so I just logged off the internet,” he says.

Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot for Apollo 11, on the moon on 20 July 1969 … conspiracists claim the footage was faked by Stanley Kubrick. Photograph: NASA/Reuters

Now Lee is trying to help other conspiracy theorists to question their worldview. He will address a conference in Poland on disinformation in October, and has launched a podcast unpicking why he held these beliefs so fervently and why he was so deluded.

Amiable and articulate, Lee is disarmingly willing to admit that he got things spectacularly wrong, but it is still challenging to have a conversation with him about his abandoned belief system. Most of the theories seem so preposterous that the process of trying to understand them becomes exhausting. When I strain to follow the logic, he says: “Don’t try to get me to make it make sense because it doesn’t. This is why I get so embarrassed about what I believed. You just buy into this ideology and think that’s the way the world works.”


His reasons for abandoning the “truther” movement (truthers believe official accounts of big events are designed to conceal the truth from the public) are also hard to slot into a conventional worldview. Lee veers between feeling ashamed and amused by his own convictions while also pointing out that it would be a mistake to dismiss these ideas with an impatient eye roll, because they are very dangerous.
A 2020 poll found that 17% of Americans believed ‘a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media’

Versions of the same ideas have gained greater currency in the years since he stepped away from them. In the US, the influence of QAnon has shifted from the fringes to the mainstream, and social media has been flooded with the group’s misinformation. A 2020 Ipsos poll found that 17% of Americans believed that “a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media”.

In 2003, Lee was 24, a musician working behind the till in a garage in Peterborough, when he downloaded a series of videos from the internet that offered alternative perspectives on 9/11 and suggested the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York in September 2001 was self-inflicted by the US government, as a way of justifying military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. His starting point was a strong anti-war stance and a healthy scepticism about politicians’ motivations, but from there he came to believe that a network of secret societies and cults was running the world.

Supporters of Donald Trump, including QAnon member Jacob Chansley, AKA Yellowstone Wolf, centre, enter the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images


It is hard to summarise precisely why he made that step – and harder still to fathom his later preoccupation with paedophiles and ritual murders. He attempts to explain when we meet on a weekday afternoon in an empty Bristol wine bar (idle waiters keep glancing over, startled by fragments of conversations about satanic lizards), but I have to email him a few days later to ask him to try to explain again.

His answer remains confusing, but begins with George W Bush and Democrat John Kerry’s membership, when at Yale University, of the Skull and Bones club, a secretive student society that conducts bizarrely morbid rituals. This led him to believe that there were evil politicians interested in satanic rituals. “Once you’ve been swayed by these arguments, it’s easy to just keep going down the rabbit hole, finding more dots to connect,” he says. “Once you have such a skewed view of the world, you can be convinced of other stuff.”

The tone of his podcast is disconcertingly upbeat, chatty and jokey with other ex-truthers who join as guests. “If I’m laughing at conspiracy theorists, it’s because I’m laughing at myself,” he says. “It is funny – that you’re adults who believe in Santa Claus or something equally ridiculous.”

George W Bush as a student at Yale University, where he belonged to the Skull and Bones society. Photograph: AP

It feels peculiar to be jolly about something that soaked up his life for so many years so devastatingly – to the exclusion of forging a career or starting a family. It also seems a glib response to an environment that has a powerful streak of antisemitism and white supremacy running through it. Lee says he only fully understood the antisemitism when he stepped away.

What made him vulnerable? Partly, he blames his education. “I wasn’t taught how to assess information or how to do research,” he says. “I don’t think I lacked intelligence but I was very naive about politics and how the world actually works.”

He had a disrupted education: first, at a US high school on the Frankfurt military base where he spent much of his childhood with his English mother and American stepfather, who was serving in the US air force; later, at a college in England, from which he was expelled (for smoking weed) and started playing in a band. He spent hours on music production on his computer and developed sophisticated internet skills, at a time when most people were barely online. This gave him early access to sites run by conspiracy theorists such as David Icke; soon he was spending nine hours at a stretch consuming truther content online.


His friends, family and fellow band members were bored by his obsessions and he gradually withdrew to focus on online friendships with people who were also ready to believe that the Illuminati and Freemasons had infiltrated global governments.

When the 7/7 attacks took place in London in 2005, killing 52 people, Lee was online, searching with fellow truthers for evidence that the terror attack was orchestrated by the UK government. They examined footage of the attackers going to the train station in Luton and were made suspicious by the way railings appeared to slice through the leg of one of the attackers; they decided the image had been Photoshopped before being released by the police. Now he acknowledges that the glitches might simply have been the result of shaky CCTV technology rather than the work of cultist masterminds.

He spent months building an alternative explanation for the attacks and disseminating his theories through his blog. “I’m ashamed of putting so many lies out there. I didn’t mean to lie, I just had the wrong picture.” He maintains this came from a good place. “I wanted to find the real people who had organised the attacks; I wanted justice for the victims. But I was wrong and it took away guilt from the real perpetrators, people who did something atrocious.”


Naomi Klein examines the mushrooming of conspiracism in her new book Doppelganger, noting that people often come under its sway because they are searching for a practical solution to a sense of unfairness. Conspiracists have a “fantasy of justice”, hoping that the evil-doing elites can be arrested and stopped. “Conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right,” she writes. “The feeling that every human misery is someone else’s profit … the feeling that important truths are being hidden.” She quotes digital journalism scholar Marcus Gilroy-Ware’s conclusion that: “Conspiracy theories are a misfiring of a healthy and justifiable political instinct: suspicion.”

A slice too far … police shut down the Washington DC ‘Pizzagate’ restaurant that became a focus for conspiracy theorists. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Lee’s appetite for conspiracies started to wane when the “alt-right” US broadcaster Alex Jones began claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, that no one died and the parents of the 20 children who died were “crisis actors” – hired to play disaster victims. Lee found this implausible and felt irritated by other wild theories swirling around the internet – that Justin Bieber and Eminem were Illuminati clones, that a paedophile ring, involving people at the highest level of the Democratic party, was operating out of a Washington pizza restaurant. “I looked at Pizzagate and thought, ‘Well that’s just stupid.’” (He spends six podcast episodes debunking the Pizzagate conspiracy; this seems a pithier summary.)

When Covid triggered a popularity surge for conspiracy theorists, Lee was already done with it, and simply noted that if there really was a global movement working to establish a new world order through the pandemic, they were going about it in a strikingly ill-coordinated and muddled manner. “The governments weren’t acting in lockstep with each other. There was no well-oiled machine; it was disorganised. No one was in charge.”


He understands why other people were attracted to the idea: “Just like 9/11 brought people into conspiracies, Covid was another moment when people were scared and wanted answers, and they found conspiracy influencers saying: ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s not real.’”

Lee was an early adopter of ideas that have surged in popularity as people spend more time online, and as trust in the mainstream media falters with the suggestion (much propagated by the former US president Donald Trump) that they are spreaders of fake news. The emergence of QAnon (which propagates the baseless theory that Trump was battling a cabal of sex-trafficking satanists, some of whom were Democrats) has attracted more people to this world. Lee’s interests preceded the arrival of powerful opinion-shaping algorithms pushing people into closed loops of fact-free narratives. Since leaving the fold he has developed a sharp clarity about the self-interested financial motivations of conspiracists who work to monetise their online presence with increasingly wild, clickbaity dispatches.
We’re no longer talking about minor fringe movements – radicalisation is spreading through a complex system of beliefs

“It’s a big problem that’s getting much worse. People are being manipulated with misinformation,” he says. He was disturbed by the death in 2021 of Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot by a police officer during the 6 January riots inside the US Capitol. Her Twitter feed was full of references to QAnon conspiracies. “That could have been me or my partner,” he says of Babbitt. “She believed what we believed. That’s what made me think I should speak out, tell my story to help bring other conspiracists out, so they don’t become the next Ashli.”

Lee now has a factory job (he has been asked by his employers not to mention the company name) but spends every lunch break and evening analysing new waves of misinformation. The process of detoxing has sucked him further into the world he rejected. “I want to combat them and challenge them. I am totally obsessed with explaining what they are.”

Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of EU DisinfoLab, a Brussels-based NGO, has invited Lee to speak to academics and regulators at a conference on tackling the spread of online misinformation. “Policy researchers sometimes forget the real impact on human lives. We’re no longer talking about minor fringe movements; radicalisation is spreading through a complex system of beliefs. It’s not something that should be taken lightly,” he says.

Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says that social media platforms have boosted engagement with extreme ideas. “Conspiracies can appear ridiculous to non-believers, whether it’s David Icke’s claims about a reptilian takeover or QAnon claims about a global cabal of paedophiles. But what makes this dangerous is that someone can start by sympathising with David Icke’s attacks on ‘the establishment’ and end up buying into his grotesque conspiracies about the Holocaust,” he says.

‘Perhaps it’s not actually what’s happening’ … Lee favours an empathetic approach to conspiracists. Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Guardian


As a former conspiracist, Lee hopes he will be better equipped to help people still caught up in these beliefs. Rather than antagonising them, he is able to take a more empathetic approach. “These ideas aren’t alien to me – they are second nature. Most conspiracists want a better world. They think something bad has happened, and they want to expose it. I think if you can lean into that with them, and say: ‘Yes, I understand why that would worry you, but perhaps it’s not actually what’s happening.’ I think that’s a better way to approach it.”


It's only fake-believe: how to deal with a conspiracy theorist

He says it takes time and energy to help people dismantle the many layers of complex theories. Concerned about the implications for free speech, he is not certain that greater online regulation is part of the answer. “I usually tell friends and family members: ‘You are the best person to do it. They will trust and respect you more than any stranger who challenges them, so you are going to have to familiarise yourself with their beliefs. You also know how far you can push them before they get annoyed, don’t cross that line. Keep them close, be respectful and remind them that you value their concerns’.”

So far, Lee’s attempts to save others have had limited success. He has been ostracised by his former online community. “My first intention was just to bring my friends back out of the rabbit hole – that backfired on me. They have completely cut me off, treated me like a pariah.” Some have suggested that he has been paid off by “the elites”, but he is determined to persist. “There are friends and family of people caught up in this who contact me to say: ‘Thank you for sharing this: you really believed in all this craziness, you were super deep but you came out – and this gives us hope.’”

 

Elon Musk is the most dangerous antisemite in America

In his tenure as Twitter CEO, Musk has amplified antisemitic rhetoric and made the social media platform fertile ground for extremist recruitement

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Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue

Elad NehoraiJune 8, 2023

“I’m not trying to compare this s*** to Aum Shinrikyo or even Rwanda but I’m gonna be totally honest with you Elad, I’m scared scared this time.”

I got this text from my friend Sarah Hightower, an independent researcher who specializes in the far right and online extremist movements. I had been spending a year warning people about Elon Musk’s increasingly overt antisemitism, but I wanted to know if she felt his most recent Twitter interaction was as alarming as I thought it was. 

🚨 Elon Musk has gone beyond dogwhistles and has now engaged with an explicitly antisemitic tweet.

“Js” here refers to Jews. The implication is that Mel Gibson is buff because he hates Jews. And that Biden drinks the blood of children (blood libel).

This is beyond dangerous. pic.twitter.com/Ldtr4mcY4T

— Elad Nehorai (@EladNehorai) June 7, 2023

Musk replied to an initial tweet that uses the word “Js” to refer to Jews, while referencing a modern blood libel conspiracy theory about the chemical compound adrenochrome, which alleges that “global elites” torture children to extract the chemical from their blood for the purpose of maintaining their health and youth.

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At no point in Musk’s response did he call out this blatant antisemitism. As is common for him when interacting with bigotry, Musk responded obliquely, referencing Mel Gibson’s physique while ignoring the substance of the tweet. While this could theoretically be construed as an oversight, Musk consistently finds himself chatting it up with Twitter’s best-known antisemites; what happened this week was just more explicit. 

Musk’s history of amplifying antisemites and antisemitic rhetoric on Twitter, along with his control of the social media platform itself, make him the loudest, and most powerful antisemite in American history.

Elon Musk has 140 million followers. That’s 40 times more of an audience than Tucker Carlson’s average viewership on Fox News. That alone makes him a massive cultural influencer, able to shape conversations on an international scale in the way traditional media could only dream of. Unfortunately, due to the traditional primacy and respect accorded totelevision and mainstream media, it is easy for Musk’s power on social media to be overlooked.

Elon Musk’s behavior is part of a larger pattern that puts all Jews in America in urgent danger. Musk is engaging in essentially a scaled-up, far more widespread version of rhetoric that has directly led to violence against minorities.

“This isn’t just endorsement by omission,” Hightower said of Musk’s most recent Twitter activity. “He’s positively, unapologetically engaging with the sort of rhetoric that’s written multiple blank checks for genocide in the past.”

Hightower referenced Aum Shinrikyo and the 1994 Rwandan genocide as two instances that embody the devastating potential of inflammatory rhetoric propagated through media, triggering violence on a mass scale.

In Aum Shinrikyo’s case, the Japanese cult effectively weaponized media to enthrall followers and justify their apocalyptic vision. From publishing their own magazines to engaging in public relations campaigns, they were able to use coded media messaging to recruit and eventually mobilize their members. Perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide used extremist messaging on radio stations to drum up hatred against the Tutsi minority, which ultimately led to the murder of at least 500,000 people.

In both cases, there was an earlier coded stage, in which messages were spread through conspiracy theories, drumming up terror of the “other.” As these coded ideologies spread, the hatred became more explicit, leading to mass violence. 

I made a similar point almost a year ago in reference to the rise of hateful rhetoric targeting the transgender community in America. I drew parallels to pogroms targeting Jews, describing how they often started with conspiracy theories. This grew and evolved, leading to violence, sometimes followed by genocide.

Today trans people are more targeted than ever.

Musk frequently cloaks his antisemitic rhetoric in the language of conspiracy theories. Whether he’s claiming it is “accurate” that George Soros is a “Lizard God-King of the world” who controls the fate of each business on earth, or linking Soros with the Rothschilds (one of the most overt and well-known antisemitic conspiracy theories in recent history), or engaging in the New World Order conspiracy theory that claims a small elite (Jews) are on the verge of turning the world into a single government, or interacting with those who spread the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, Musk is regularly spreading the kind of coded messaging that leads to the spread of antisemitism. 

Whatever his intentions, the simple reality is that Musk is amplifying and spreading antisemitic hate speech.

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The potency of the conspiracy theories Musk endorses lies not in their validity, but in their ability to tap into existing prejudices and fears, providing a convenient scapegoat for complex societal issues. When Musk links Soros to the Rothschilds or implies a shadowy elite are controlling the world, he isn’t simply making an offhand comment. He’s tapping into deep-seated antisemitic tropes. In doing so, Musk emboldens those who already hold such prejudices, while also subtly introducing these harmful stereotypes to a broader audience.

However Musk is not just a popular influencer, which would be harmful enough already, but is the owner of the social media platform where he trollishly wields that influence. This means Musk dictates the rules of Twitter’s online environment, getting to rule over what is considered hate speech, who gets amplified and who gets suspended.

He has wielded that power with gusto. Musk has gone out of his way to reinstate some of Twitter’s most notorious antisemites, including David Icke (who argues that the world is run by a cabal of lizard people who funded the Holocaust) and Andrew Anglin, the founder of neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer.

In less than a year as Twitter CEO, Musk has decimated the content moderation teams, with the trust and safety division, the team responsible for content moderation, not even having anyone to run it after its most recent resignation. Even if Twitter had a robust content moderation division in place, Musk has made it explicit that he doesn’t believe antisemitic conspiracy theories are antisemitic.

The results have been quicker than even many of us expected: Antisemitic messaging has doubled since Musk took over eight months ago. According to the same analysis, hate speech as a whole has tripled, with a “sustained volume of antisemitic hate speech” on the platform. 

More to the point, extremists have made it clear that they see this as an opportunity to recruit. Organizing in places like 4chan, they have coordinated Twitter campaigns since the day Musk took over. They celebrate his attacks on figures like Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL and use Musk’s trolling to find new followers.

Combined with Musk’s validation of their conspiracy theories along with essentially nonexistent content moderation, Twitter now offers the best opportunities for extremists to recruit and for antisemitism itself to become mainstream.

This makes Musk the most dangerous antisemite in America, and possibly the most dangerous antisemite in American history. No other person has ever had this much power over media and to spread a message.  

On top of the already rising antisemitism in America prior to Musk’s takeover, we are now in an especially precarious moment. And we need to all collectively face it before it gets darker than ever.

To contact the author, email opinion@forward.com.