The Far Right Is Seizing On Israel-Palestine
White supremacists are leveraging Israel's brutal military campaign against Hamas and the wider terror campaign against Palestinians to peel off the angered and impressionable into their web of lies
Nearly a month into Israel’s criminal terror campaign of collective punishment against the people of Gaza—under the cover of “eradicating Hamas”—white supremacists’ war of disinformation is in full swing. Neo-Nazis and white nationalists are using growing anger against the Israeli government as an opportunity to spew antisemitic and anti-immigrant conspiracy theories, launder them into the mainstream, and drive recruitment.
Neo-Nazis and white nationalists are showing up at pro-Palestine protests in an attempt to push antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes into the mainstream, including Mike Peinovich, a long-time white nationalist personality who previously used the alias “Mike Enoch,” and was one of the architects of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Israel “is a pure genocidal state, make no mistake,” Peinovich told rally attendees over a PA system. “We Americans have been snookered into supporting [Israel] by Jewish control of our banks, our media, and our politicians, but we have to say enough and rise up as a people.”
Tess Owen, writing for VICE News, wrote, “Their small demonstration was dwarfed by the hundreds-strong protest that flooded the streets of Washington D.C. But Peinovich’s rhetoric is an example of how far-right antisemites are trying to use the pro-Palestine movement, hijack some of its language criticizing the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, and then use that as a vehicle to push anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and tropes into the mainstream.”
The pro-Palestine protesters at this particular rally made it clear that the masked neo-Nazis were not welcome, chanting “Nazis Go Home,” and “show your faces, you fucking cowards,” the Daily Montanan reported.
Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism told VICE News:
They’re not pro-Palestine, they just hate Jews, and they see this moment as an opportunity to get attention, get coverage, put their banners, their images, their ideas, into reporting patterns. Nine out of ten of them would probably happily commit a hate crime against anyone [at the pro-Palestine protest].
Over the last several weeks, scrolling through Instagram Reels and TikToks, I have seen a number of clips posted by far right accounts—garnering considerable traction in the algorithms—that feature known antisemites like Rick Wiles, who regularly refers to the United States as “Bolshevik, Zionist America” and spews debunked, antisemitic conspiracy theories like the one alleging Israel was behind the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States. Wiles, a Florida pastor (because of course he is), referred to Trump’s first impeachment as the “Jew coup” in 2019, falsely alleging that Jews were orchestrating the “Trump impeachment lynching,” as he put it.
Not only have I seen clips of Wiles and others posted by obvious white supremacists on social media, but I’ve seen these clips posted by accounts with tens of thousands of followers operated by those ostensibly on “the left” and by Arabs and Muslims. This seems to indicate that antisemitic content and conspiracy theories are reaching a wider audience than just white supremacists.
Remember: These conspiracy theories don’t have to make sense. They are not intended to be believed, necessarily. They are meant to sow doubt, confusion, mistrust and general cynycism in the public.
Critically, fascists showing up to pro-Palestine protests and posting clips of prominent antisemites on social media shouldn’t be seen as an indication that there is some kind of kinship between them and the wider pro-Palestine movement. Fringe extremists are opportunists who will leap at any chance to insert themselves into popular leftist movements and messaging. In 2020, for example, the Boogaloos—a decentralized group of white supremacist and anti-government exrtremists—tried and failed to latch onto Black Lives Matter by claiming they shared similar goals.
Antisemitic 9/11 “Truthers”
The September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States were blowback—the unintended adverse results of a political action or situation—for disastrous foreign policy decisions and imperialist wars across the Arab world going back many decades by Western powers, namely the U.S. and Britain, but the West generally.
Israel, in its capacity as a de facto U.S. military base in the Middle East and a destabilizing force in the region to maintain Western hegemony, is also partly responsible for the blowback on 9/11 with its barbarous treatment of Palestinians. Of course, Israel has the blessing of the United States and Britain, making Israel a part of Western hegemony. Those who say Israel benefited from the U.S.-led wars after 9/11 are telling the truth. Current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israeli history, said so himself.
The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv in 2008 reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel. "We [Israelis] are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma’ariv quoted the then former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."
There’s no question that Israel has benefited from having the United States invested so heavily in the Middle East. What Netanyahu said isn’t wrong. The Zionist project that is the state of Israel relies on continual expansion and land annexation of territories far outside the current Israeli borders. By leveraging U.S. foreign policy doctrine of continued utilization of Israel as a military base in the Middle East for its retributive and cyclical wars against Islamic extremists, Israel’s right wing government believes that it can continue to conduct itself however it wishes. And every indication, including the latest multi-billion dollar military aid package from the U.S. to Israel, seems to prove them correct.
But those who have propagated the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Israel was behind 9/11 (as in literally did it, played a direct role, or allowed it to happen) are either antisemites or were duped amidst the never-ending onslaught of online mis- and disinformation. Just because Netanyahu and others are on record admitting that 9/11 benefited their Zionist project doesn’t mean they plotted and carried out the attacks, as antisemites would have you believe.
The debunked conspiracy theory that Israel carried out 9/11—either on its own or with the help of the Bush administration—hinges on something rather racist: That nineteen Muslims armed with nothing but ideological passion, some cessna pilot training, and a little cash couldn’t have possibly pulled off such a large scale attack under the nose of the world’s most sophisticated security apparatus. The idea that the U.S. intelligence community is effectively infallible, and that any circumvention of it must have been planned internally, is magical thinking.
Ken Klippenstein in his Substack post on October 7, 2023 wrote this:
I’m going to let you in on what is perhaps the intelligence world’s best kept secret: they’re not that smart. As a national security reporter, a lesson I’ve learned again and again is how much less intelligence agencies resemble Jason Bourne than Burn After Reading. But you don’t have to be a natsec reporter to see it. Basic history is replete with stunning intelligence failures.
Ken also wrote, “People’s belief in the omniscience of the intelligence community is big part of the reason they’re afforded the awesome powers that they are. The problem is, there isn’t much evidence for it.”
The truth about what happened on 9/11 is more along the lines of Naomi Klein’s definition of the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism. Here’s how Klein defines those things in an interview for VICE News in 2020:
The way I define disaster capitalism is really straightforward: It describes the way private industries spring up to directly profit from large-scale crises. Disaster profiteering and war profiteering isn’t a new concept, but it really deepened under the Bush administration after 9/11, when the administration declared this sort of never-ending security crisis, and simultaneously privatized it and outsourced it—this included the domestic, privatized security state, as well as the [privatized] invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The “shock doctrine” is the political strategy of using large-scale crises to push through policies that systematically deepen inequality, enrich elites, and undercut everyone else. In moments of crisis, people tend to focus on the daily emergencies of surviving that crisis, whatever it is, and tend to put too much trust in those in power. We take our eyes off the ball a little bit in moments of crisis.
The reality of 9/11 is that it was an intelligence failure—a big one—and was carried out by Islamic religious extremists to exact revenge for what Western powers had done to the Arab and Muslim world for decades. The ensuing loss of life and civil liberties that came after 9/11—namely the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the powers granted to the U.S. intelligence community through legislation like the Patriot Act—were carried out opportunistically. No “inside job” conspiracy required.
The Elon Problem
Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) is filled with blue check mark subscribers spreading conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States. These conspiracy theories, from “verified” users, include debunked lies that Jewish people were responsible for the attacks, including the debunked “dancing Israelis” story, falsely alleging that Israel had a hand in orchestrating the attacks.
Under Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino's leadership, X has reinstated known white nationalists and antisemites on the platform and permitted advertisements from major companies to appear on pro-Hitler accounts. Musk has also engaged with some of the reinstated antisemitic accounts, amplifying their reach and the antisemitic conspiracy theories they peddle.
In September, Musk engaged in a right-wing hate campaign against the Anti-Defamation League and indicated that he would likely sue the organization, claiming that he has “no choice” as the ADL “has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.” Right-wing media figures have been encouraging him to fight the ADL and other "activists" since he took over Twitter in October 2022.
There are valid criticisms of the ADL, foremost being that it routinely runs interference for the right wing Israeli government when it kills Palestinians—including children—with its routine war crimes of collective punishment, and its ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide to expand its ultra-nationalist ethnostate. The ADL is also actively defaming Palestinian students as terrorist supporters, urging hundreds of colleges to investigate Students for Justice in Palestine for material support for terrorism.
In May, ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, speaking at the organization’s national leadership summit, said that “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” promising that the ADL would apply “more concentrated energy toward the threat of radical anti-Zionism.” He described Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)—all of which advocate for Palestinian rights—as “extremist” and the “photo inverse of the extreme right,” and implicated them in a rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes. ADL staffers dissented after Greenblatt’s comments comparing Palestinian rights groups to right-wing extremists, according to audio obtained by Jewish Currents from an internal Zoom meeting held shortly after Greenblatt’s speech.
But Musk and his army of froth-mouthed, antisemitic blue checks on X are not supporting leftist anti-Zionists in their fight for freedom, representation, and autonomy for Palestinian people. They are using this moment to foment hatred against Jewish people. The right is fairly adept at adopting popular leftist messaging, twisting and mutilating it for their own ends. They are not allies of Palestinian nor Jewish people. People like Musk and his ilk are self-interested white supremacists. Musk scapegoated the ADL for his own catastrophic business decisions, and he knew his rabid following of antisemites would help him run the interference, distracting from his own faults, as antisemites have done for many hundreds of years.
Jewish people have been used as a convenient scapegoat to blame for real or perceived problems since antiquity. Antisemitism is one of the world’s most ancient forms of hatred, perhaps the oldest and most pernicious form of racism that has over and over again led to violence, murder and genocide against Jewish people. From around 70 AD to present, Jewish people have been displaced, robbed, tormented and murdered all across Europe and Russia.
Because of this sorted history of torment and genocide, it is not a mystery as to why so many Jews are Zionists today, determined to preserve the Jewish nationalist movement that emerged in the 19th century to establish a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine. The fatal flaw in this project is that it necessitates the racist, undemocratic, and violent expulsion of indigenous Palestinians, not only from Israeli society and government, but expulsion from their land entirely. This is the only valid reason anyone should be in opposition to Israel’s expansionist project. It’s not about Jews, it’s about the abhorrent actions of the Israeli State.
Not just X, not just antisemitism
It’s not just X that has an antisemitism problem. There is a noticeable spike in antisemitic hate speech on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and other social media websites, with content moderators dismally failing to take down obvious hate speech and sufficiently differentiate between it and anti-Zionist/pro-Palestinian rights activism. We are also seeing a significant spike in real-world violence against Jewish people.
And it’s not just antisemitism. On November 2, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue published an article in their digital dispatches blog showing that, following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza, there was a 422 percent increase in language associated with anti-Muslim hate on X, alongside major spikes in anti-Muslim keywords on right wing alt-tech platforms such as Patriots.win, Bitchute, Gab and Odysee.
Beyond tragic loss of life and the intensification of conflict directly in Israel and Gaza, Hamas’ 7 October terrorist attack has had global repercussions. During conflicts like this, it is not unexpected to see increased manifestations of hate, in this case anti-Muslim hatred and antisemitism, both on- and offline. Muslim and Jewish communities have consistently received blame for events in the Middle East, based on stereotyping of whole communities and their perceived connections to foreign conflicts.
Between 7 and 29 October, anti-Muslim incident monitoring organisation Tell MAMA received 515 cases (268 online, 247 offline) in the UK, constituting a six-fold increase from the same period the previous year. Of the 268 online cases, Tell MAMA found a majority contained dehumanising language and tropes, including content equating Muslim communities with violence and terrorism. The offline dangers of anti-Muslim hate were highlighted by the killing of a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy in the United States on 14 October, reportedly connected to the suspect’s consumption of radio news about the terrorist attack and subsequent conflict. The suspect is now facing murder, attempted murder and hate crime charges. This trend has emerged in the backdrop of rising anti-Muslim hatred on social media and offline, including a more than doubling of anti-Muslim incidents in the UK in the last decade, and a rise in discrimination against Muslim communities in the US.
The global far right, whether it’s white/Christian supremacists, Jewish supremacists, Islamic supremacists, or secular ultra-nationalists of any kind, are driving themselves to violence against one another with innocent bystanders caught in the middle. Let’s not allow them to influence us with their incessant spewing of outright lies to pit us against any one group. This is a fight against fascist supremacism, no matter what form it may take and no matter where in the world it rears its ugly head.