We Stand Up for Jews. So How Can We Be Called Fascists? The Double Game of the Far Right in Europe and the US

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Do you wonder why the rapper Ye, an open admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazis who tweeted a year ago about his desire to kill Jews, has now apologized to Jews on Instagram...in Hebrew? Are you surprised to see the far-right GOP become a vigilant policer of antisemitic speech? You shouldn't be.

The far-right playbook of denouncing antisemitism to seem more mainstream at the very moment extremist ideas and policies are being elevated has a history in Europe. Now the U.S. right is following along by positioning itself as a protector of Jews —a tactic made more urgent by the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion and massacres in Israel. Yet Donald Trump continues to denounce "globalists," and the GOP continues to harbor and partner with neo-Nazi sympathizers.

At a time of skyrocketing antisemitism in America, some will say that Jews need all the allies they can get. Yet all too often GOP support for Jews is providing cover for the party's broader racist and illiberal agendas, from the embrace of militant Christian nationalism to the shredding of diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives on and off campus, to its silence at Trump calling people “vermin” in the Fascist tradition.

Memorial outside of the Tree of Life Congregation, Pittsburgh, PA. A mass shooter killed eleven people in Oct. 2018. Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

We stand up for Jews. So how can we be called Fascists? This is the mantra of the far right in Europe and America.

Not everyone is cooperating with the talking points. Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, who dined with Donald Trump and Ye at Mar-a-Lago in Nov. 2022, recently called for the death penalty for Jews if Trump returns to the White House. But Ye, who is releasing a new album on Jan. 12, apparently got the message.

Fascism is inextricably linked for many people with its endpoint of Jewish genocide. So, one route those who wish to rehabilitate Fascism have taken over the years is Holocaust denial. If the Holocaust never happened, or was vastly exaggerated by Jews and their allies, then Fascism might be more palatable.

And so, far-right governments in countries that collaborated with the Nazis try and dissociate themselves from collaboration with genocide. The Polish Law and Justice party, in power from 2015 to 2023, passed laws to try and silence the history of Polish enabling of Nazi exterminations.

Yet it was the Italian neo-Fascists, who shared power with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 1994, 2001-2006, and 2008-2011, who pioneered the condemnation of Holocaust collaboration to rehabilitate other aspects of Fascism. In 2003, Gianfranco Fini, then the leader of Italy's National Alliance party, visited Israel and condemned the Nazi puppet state Mussolini headed (the Republic of Salò, 1943-1945, which collaborated with the Nazis on Jewish extermination) as "shameful."

"The racial laws were the worst fault of Mussolini as a leader, who in so many other ways did well," Berlusconi said on International Holocaust Remembrance Day a decade later, making the argument explicit.

Italy's current neo-Fascist prime minister, Giorgia Meloni has criticized Fascism's "ignominious anti-Jewish laws" while retaining the xenophobia and conspiracy theories about White Christian extinction proper to Mussolini's regime. Others in her Brothers of Italy party are more candid: Co-founder Ignazio La Russa has a history of honoring the soldiers of the Republic of Salò —the soldiers who served Nazism and carried out deportations of Jews on Italian soil.

In 2019, it was the German far-right's turn to become the Jews' champions. American propagandist Steve Bannon advised the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to sell itself as a supporter of Israel and foe of antisemitism, hatred for Jews being an issue of major sensitivity in that country. That is how AfD came to rhetorically prioritize pro-Jewish positions, spearheading a resolution (passed by German Parliament in May 2019) that criticizes the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign against Israel as antisemitic, while delivering a steady stream of anti-immigrant racism.

Now the GOP seems to be following this playbook, although Trump always played this double game. He has combined support for Israel with support for neo-Nazis and a practice of publicly echoing antisemitic stereotypes and tropes that have long incited hostility against Jews. Unsurprisingly, antisemitic attacks reached a record high during his presidency.

Trump gave Holocaust deniers a big sign of solidarity at the very start of his presidency: his White-nationalist administration, which inlcuded Bannon, released a Holocaust Remembrance Statement that did not mention Jews, an omission that Trump's then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus justified as recognizing "everyone's suffering in the Holocaust" —a nod to those who believe that Nazi perpetrators had their reasons to do what they did.

Add in the presence in the GOP of White nationalists like Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who associates with antisemites and Holocaust deniers (Gosar spoke at a conference Fuentes organized in 2021) and the GOP's close relationship with Viktor Orban, the antisemitic Hungarian leader who has made a career of being the enemy of George Soros, and you have a propitious situation for the use of antisemitism as a political tool.

"I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis," said Ye to Alex Jones during a Dec. 1, 2022 interview on Jones' Infowars show. Ye may have apologized to Jews for this and other comments, but don't expect such double-edged positions to go away anytime soon. Defending Jews rhetorically, while creating the conditions for new waves of violence against them and other non-Christian peoples, is central to far-right propaganda and politics from Milan to Munich to Mar-a-Lago.