In a recent paper you published on the continuing role of antisemitism as an anchoring ideology of the global far right, you write that “the biggest point of departure of contemporary far-right antisemitism from its earlier manifestations — [is] the growing decoupling of attitudes towards Israel from antisemitism against diaspora Jews, the pro-Israel policies of otherwise antisemitic populist parties and movements, and their embrace by Israel.” What do you see as the root of what you call “pro-Israel antisemitism,” and can you put it into context in terms of the praise Orbán received from an Israeli settler leader at CPAC?
There are a few reasons why [far-right] parties have a favorable attitude toward Israel. The first one is very cynical: that if they get support from Israel, it covers them for charges of antisemitism. So some of it is purely transactional: “We’re going to be friends with Israel, and then no one can accuse us of being antisemites.” That works really well for all of these groups, and it’s sort of like how [Donald] Trump says, “My daughter married a Jew [Jared Kushner], so I’m not an antisemite,” but at a [national] level.
The second one is that they bond over Islamophobia. They perceive Israel as being a very militaristic country that is successfully dealing with their “Muslim threat,” and this is something they would like to introduce in their own countries so they can address what they see as their own “Muslim threat.” They admire how Israel doesn’t care about being perceived as Islamophobic.
Another aspect brings us to that tweet [by Yishai Fleisher]: they bond over the idea of what a nation-state should be, and over their strong feeling that nationalism is a good thing, and multiculturalism a bad thing. That’s why American conservatives, including CPAC, like them as well. This is the common language they understand: nations should have their own states; the state and the nation are one; there should be one state religion (and they don’t care that it’s Judaism in Israel); and enemies of this view of nationalism need to be eliminated — the “globalists,” the cosmopolitans, the multinationals, the multiculturals, the diaspora, the gays, the feminists.
There’s also something to be said about how all this is undergirded by a certain form of antisemitism. I think we can bluntly say that leaders of Hungary or Poland are perfectly fine with Israel, because then Jews can just go over there, and not bother them in Budapest or in Warsaw, so they don’t have to deal with integrating whatever’s left of the Jewish communities in their countries.
I’d also throw in that this admiration on the Israeli side is partly fed by the determination not to be “the Jew” that is the subject of antisemitism. It’s a way of assimilating into Western masculinity.
Yes. I don’t work deeply on this history, but it’s partly also [down to] the different construction of what an Israeli Jew is versus what a diaspora Jew is: someone who’s uber-masculine and a fighter, versus someone who’s weak, and pathetic, and who’s “messing us up” and bringing all these immigrants. That seems to be a theme, especially among the American antisemitic far right, like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter — that Jews are undermining our national body.
Right. They’re the ones who still transgress borders, while Israeli Jews know what borders are and respect them.
Yes, exactly.
