ANTISEMITISM AND THE FAR RIGHT TODAY
Anti-Semitism has a long history in Europe. Historically it is connected to the role Jews played in the death of Christ and to the role they played as money lenders, because Judaism, unlike Christianity and Islam, didn’t prohibit usury. A racist dimension was added to anti-Semitism in the nineteenth century by the development of so called ‘scientific racism’. Jews were then also targeted because of their supposed biological characteristics. Anti-Semitism also had a political dimension as Judaism was associated with revolutionary politics, particularly after the Russian Revolution, because of the large number of Jews amongst the Bolshevik leaders.
The murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust is the most infamous example of anti-Semitism. Of the 9 million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust approximately two-thirds were killed. We of course have to remember that it wasn’t only Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Other victims included gypsies, communists, trade unionists, anarchists, gays, Jehovah Witnesses, priests, Poles and other Slavic peoples. Romany gypsies were the second largest group killed on racial grounds. Up to 1.5 million died, which as a proportion of the total number of gypsies is higher than the proportion of Jews who died.
Only a few years ago, many of Western Europe’s far-right parties were openly anti-Semitic. More recently, however, the far right have attempted to build their base by riding the tiger of Islamophobia. As Islamophobia became their trump card some leading European fascists even declared themselves ‘friends’ of Israel. The shift away from anti-Semitism towards support for Israel is best documented in the so called ‘Jerusalem Declaration’. It was signed in late 2010 by a group of right wing politicians who had been invited to Israel by an Israeli businessman named Chaim Muehlstein. They visited Yad Vashem, drove through Palestinian villages in a bullet proof bus to meet Jewish settlers, and met members of the Knesset. The Document says “We stand at the vanguard in the fight for the Western, democratic community” against the “totalitarian threat” of “fundamentalist Islam”. Amongst the group was Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the Austrian Freedom Party. A photo which surfaced in 2008 showed him with leading Austrian neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. It was apparently taken around 1990 when Stache was reportedly active in Viking Youth an illegal neo-Nazi group. Filip Dewinter, head of Belgium’s ultranationalist Vlaams Belange; Rene Stadkewitz.founder of the German Freedom Party and Kent Ekeroth, the international secretary of the Sweden Democrats were also in the group. Until 1995 the Sweden Democrats was headed by Anders Klarstom, who had previously belonged to the openly fascist Nordic Reich Party. He was convicted in 1986 for illegal possession of firearms and death threats against a Jewish actor, whom he called a “Jew pig”. Klarsrom was one of dozens of officials and members expelled by the party in the 1990s. Still, Lena Posner-Korosi, president of the Official Council of Jewish Communities in Sweden, describes the Sweden Democrats as a “Neo Nazi party”.
It is not surprising, therefore, that leading members of political parties such as the French Front National and the Austrian Freedom Party, who in the past have been identified with anti Semitism, were among the few politicians who welcomed the success of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party’s in the elections in March 2015. Gert Wilders, the Dutch neo-Fascist for example, said of Netanyahu: “We share his criticisms of Iran … and his opposition to a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria”, thereby questioning the existence of Palestine not Israel.
The above examples suggest that in Western Europe the strategy of the far right in the 21st century has shifted from anti-Semitism to Islamophobia. I want to examine whether this means that anti-Semitism no longer plays any role in far-right politics in Western Europe. Also as Central and Eastern Europe have been identified with anti-Semitism to a greater extent than Western Europe I want to see whether there are any signs that a similar shift is happening there before concluding that there has been a universal shift from anti-Semitism to Islamophobia in far-right politics. To do this properly would require a detailed study of many European and non-European countries which is obviously impossible here. In fact all I can realistically do is four brief case studies. These are of France, Hungary and Greece because they are countries in which the far right has recently enjoyed some electoral success and the UK because it is most relevant to us.
France is the obvious place to begin because of the success the Front National had in the recent regional elections. They got more votes than any other party in the first round. In the second round, however, because of tactical voting and an increased turnout they didn’t win a single region.
Jean Le Pen, the leader of the FN until January 2011, was openly anti-Semitic. In January 2011 his daughter Marine Le Pen became its leader. She has led a movement to detoxify the NF’s image. FN supporters who used the Hitler salute have been expelled. In recent elections the phalanx of skinheads who often accompanied her father to campaign rallies has been replaced with family-friendly faces. The nostalgic sentiments for Vichy and a French Algeria that once helped to galvanise the extreme right have been jettisoned. Whereas Mr Le Pen faced calls for his prosecution in 2009 after he described the Nazi death camps as a “detail of second world war history”, his daughter says the Holocaust represents the “summit of human barbarism”.
Marine le-Pen regularly draws parallels between Islam and National Socialism. During a speech to the party faithful in Lyon on 10 December 2010 she said that the weekly illegal blocking of public streets and squares in multiple French cities for Muslim prayers was comparable with an occupation of parts of French territory. Specifically, Le Pen said, “For those who want to talk a lot about World War 11, if it’s about occupation of territory … It is an occupation of sections of the territory, of districts in which religious laws apply … There are of course no tanks, there are no soldiers, but it is nevertheless an occupation and it weighs heavily on local residents”. In speeches like this Marine le-Pen by portraying Europeans as victims along with Jews of the Islamic threat manages to position herself both as a fighter against the ‘Muslim threat’ and as a defender of Jews.
Under her father’s leadership the FN was often persona non grata for many right wing parties because of its perceived extremism. As a result of its shift from anti-Semitism to Islamophobia it has become more acceptable as a partner for formal cooperation. Marie Le Pen even became the head of the European Alliance for Freedom. The group was reported to have the support not only of the FN, but also of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the Flemish Vlaams Belang (VB), the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), the Sweden Democrats (SD), the Slovak National Party and the Italian Lega Nord (LN). The Danish People’s Party’, ‘UKIP’ and the ‘Alternative for Germany’ refused to join it, while the more radical and anti-Semitic Greek Golden Dawn and Hungarian Jobbik were excluded.
France has the biggest Jewish community in Europe, numbering more than half a million. A study of anti-Semitism in France in 2014, found that although anti-Semitism had little foothold in French society as a whole there was still a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitic feeling among the NF electorate. While 84% of those questioned thought that a French Jew was just as French as any other French citizen, the figure was 61% among NF supporters. 53% of NF voters would not be happy to vote for a Jewish President compared to 21% of the overall population, and 22% would actively avoid having Jewish neighbours, compared to 6% of French citizens. The report also found more anti-Semitism amongst French Catholics than the general population. Twenty two per cent of practising Catholics said there were too many Jews in France, while 16 per cent of all those surveyed answered that way.
On the eve of ‘Holocaust Day’ last year right wingers marched through the streets of Paris in a protest against the Socialist Government of Francois Hollande. Their ‘Day of Anger’ not only included attacks on defence cuts, rising crime and the destruction of the family, but also on Jews. Along the march a Nazi hardcore, up to 200 strong, shouted “Shoah! Shoah! Ha-ha-ha!” Another favourite chant was, “Faurrisson is right! Gas chambers, they’re bullshit!” Robert Faurisson is a notorious Holocaust denier. The inverted fascist salute, the ‘Quenelle’, adopted by the anti-Semite ‘comedian, Dieudonne was on full display.
In France, therefore, overt anti-Semitism has been pushed to the margins of the far right. It is difficult, however, to believe that long standing members of the NF are genuine when they deny they are anti-Semitic. This is supported to some extent by the 2014 study of anti-Semitism in France which found NF supporters were more anti-Semitic than French people in general.
Britain is different from France in that the far right has recently been unable to make any kind of electoral breakthrough. Even the less extreme UKIP has recently lost control of Thanet council. In the recent past the most prominent far right groups in Britain, such as the BNP and the EDL have fragmented and haemorrhaged support. The vacuum left by this, however, is producing potentially new threats. Britain First is perhaps the most dangerous of these.
Britain First primarily campaigns against mass immigration, multiculturalism and what it sees as the Islamisation of the United Kingdom. It advocates the preservation of traditional British culture, whatever that means. It is notorious for making protests outside homes of Islamists, and conducting what it describes as ‘Christian patrols’ and carrying out ‘invasions’ of British mosques. During the 2014 European elections it put up candidates in Wales and Scotland, but gained no seats. Paul Golding, its current chairman, has announced he is going to stand in the London Mayoral elections.
Like the NF in France Britain First is reaching out to support the Jewish community. In January the group conducted a ‘solidarity patrol’ in support of Jews living in Golders Green in the borough of Barnet. Golders Green has a large Orthodox Jewish community. In a video made by the organisation to document the patrol, its leaders cited anti-Jewish passages in the Quran, and expressed their ‘heartbreak’ over the fact that rising anti-Semitism is causing increasing numbers of the 300,000 strong British Jewish community to consider emigrating. Golding claimed that there are Jews among Britain First’s ranks and that the party has more activities planned to demonstrate solidarity with the Jewish community. In spite of this many leading members of Britain First have strong links with the BNP an anti-Semitic party. Britain First was formed in 2011 by Jim Dowson who ran a call centre in Donaldson, East Belfast, for the BNP. Paul Golding its current chairman was a BNP councillor in Sevenoaks, Kent, from 2009 to 2011, as well as the BNP’s communication officer. Others involved in Britain First include the former South East regional organiser of the BNP, Andy McBride, and Kevin Edwards, a former BNP councillor and organiser in Wales. It is difficult to believe that they didn’t share the anti-Semitism that pervaded the BNP and its forerunner the National Front.
Nick Griffin the former leader of the BNP has a history of anti-Semitism. He often referred to the Holocaust as ‘the Holohoax. In 1997, he told an undercover journalist that he had updated Richard Verral’s booklet ‘Did six million really die?’ and in the same year, he wrote ‘Who are the mindbenders?’ about a perceived domination of the media by Jews. Writing in ‘The Rune’, a magazine owned by John Tyndall another BNP member, Griffin praised the wartime Waffen SS.
Griffin later tried to modernise the BNP to make the party electable. Part of this process involved denying the BNP’s anti-Semitism. Griffin explained that ‘Holocaust Denial’ and open anti-Semitism would deny the BNP electoral success. Griffin even declared himself a fiend of Israel. Street protests were replaced by electoral campaigning and some policies were moderated, for example, the repatriation of ethnic minorities was made voluntary instead of compulsory.
In spite of these tactics the BNP has been almost obliterated in recent elections, but as the ballot box receded, the party has returned to its old Nazi style anti-Semitic heritage. At times its language targets Zionists, neo-Cons’ capitalists and globalisation. Even if it uses the word Zionist this is old style anti-Semitism which blames Jews for nothing less than the destruction of European nations. It echoes Mein Kampf and Der Steurmer.
Jack Renshaw when he was the BNP’s youth leader wrote “World Jewry is the disease, whilst its product ideologies are just the symptoms. Beat the symptoms and they’ll return or be replaced – but beat the disease and you’ll eradicate the symptoms. The Jew aims to bastardise and mongrelise our race through Multiracialism and Multiculturalism … The Jew has declared war on our people and we should – and in time we will – return the favour”. It is not just the BNP which today is espousing anti-Semitism. The far right New Dawn Party in July last year planned a rally in Golders Green, the heartland of the London Jewish community, against what it called the "Jewification of Britain". The protest followed a similar demonstration in Stamford Hill, north London, the home of the capital's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and the largest of its kind in Europe. It was barred from taking place in the traditionally Jewish area by the police, who movied the rally to Whitehall in central London. Police far outnumbered the neo-Nazi group, with eyewitnesses reporting that just 20 to 30 had turned up. In comparison, at least 200 anti-fascist activists were at the protest.
Another such group is National Action. It was founded in 2013 by Benjamin Raymond, who graduated in politics at Essex University, and Alex Davies, who is a former member of the BNP. Its members are mostly young men in their late teens. They are avowedly Nazi. They have spread propaganda on at least 12 university campuses. They were behind a violently anti-Semitic campaign against the Labour MP Luciana Berger after a sympathiser, Garron Helm, was jailed for posting an image of the politician with a Nazi-era yellow star on her forehead and the hash tag ‘Hitler was right’. She was subject to more than 20 death threats on Twitter and over 2,000 hate messages.
Although these groups are very small there is some evidence that anti-Semitic views are held by a wider cross-section of the British public. Just over a year ago ‘You Gov’ carried out research into anti-Semitic attitudes in Britain. Of 3,411 adults in the survey, one in six felt Jews thought they were better than other people and had too much power in the media, while one in ten claimed Jews were not as honest in business as other people. One in five believed their loyalty to Israel made British Jews less loyal to the UK, while ten per cent would be unhappy if a relative married a Jew. Of those polled men were more likely than women to believe at least one of the statements they were given. The survey also found UKIP voters “consistently believed more anti-Semitic statements to be true” by an average margin of 9 per cent.
After the fall of communism an extreme- right subculture emerged in Hungary. This fed on the undercurrent of anti-Roma and anti-Semitic feelings in Hungarian society. Many Neo-Nazi ‘nationalist’ rock bands came into being. They perform at illegal concerts as well as at the infamous Hungarian Festival. These events typically involve the use of banned symbols, uniforms, banners, signs etc. Another segment of the subculture is nationalist associations, such as the Goy motorists and the Scythia. motorcyclists. Other elements included the more orginised group Pax Hungarica and the illegal Hungarian National Front. This subculture is linked with demands for the revision of the Trianom Treaty which settled Hungary’s borders after the First World War. Followers of this culture have their own syncretic religion, which merges pre-Chritian Hungarian paganism with Christianity.
The Jobbik Party grew out of this subculture. After the 2008 financial crash it held a protest outside the World Jewish Congress in Budapest against “a Jewish attempt to buy up Hungary”. Jobbik won 16% of the vote in the 2010 parliamentary elections. Its deputy leader demanded a state register of Jews, claiming they pose “a national security risk”. An MEP candidate called for “armed battle against the Jews. Its deputy chairman, Elod Novak, claimed that funding from a Hungarian film board for the Golden Globe winning Holocaust drama ‘Son of Saul’ is evidence that the ‘Holocaust industry’ is flourishing. In the parliamentary elections on 6 April 2014 Jobbik secured 20.5 per cent of the vote making them the third largest party in the National Assembly. By April 2015 Jobbik was Hungary’s second largest party according to the ‘Jewish Chronicle’. Worryingly much of the growth in their support has been among younger voters.
More recently Jobbik has copied the tactics of Marine Le Pen. Like Le Pen the Jobbik leadership consciously tried to de-toxify its brand. Overt anti-Semitism is no longer part of its pitch. Instead it deals with bread and butter issues, focusing on jobs and the international creditors that, it claims, hold the country to ransom. The party’s original base was among the headbanging neo-Nazi element in Hungarian society. Today, the local party leader in the agricultural villages where the party is strongest is likely to be a schoolteacher or a small businessman. This, of course, doen not mean they are not anti-Semitic, and it should be pointed out that the Nazis in Germany found a lot of their support amongst the petit-bourgeoisie and in rural areas.
A poll carried out by Median, one of Hungary’s top polling firms, showed that the number of Hungarians who are seen as rejecting Jews on a purely emotional level increased from 9% in 2003 to 23% in 2014. The dramatic increase in these numbers started in 2010 when Jobbik made its electoral breakthrough. When it comes to the combined total of ‘strong’ and ‘moderate’ anti-Semites in Hungary the proportion was 32% of the Hungarian population. The study also explored levels of anti-Semitism among the supporters of different parties. In the case of Jobbik supporters it found that 54% of the party’s base is strongly anti-Semitic, and a further 15% harbours a ‘mild’ prejudice against the Jewish populatiion. Anti-Semitism is alarmingly high in Budapest. According to Median 49% of Budapest residents are anti-Semites, still below the percentage of Jobbik supporters, while in rural Hungarian towns the average proportion is 24%.
Golden Dawn in Greece is another party with an infamous reputation for anti-Semitism. When it was founded in the early 1980s it was a fringe movement. By the mid 2000s Golden Dawn had redirected its attention to opposing non-European, and particularly Muslim, immigration into southern Greece and Athens. In 2005 Golden Dawn was absorbed by the Patriotic Alliance, but this collapsed in the spring of 2007 when Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn’s leader, withdrew his support. Golden Dawn then resumed its political activities and its popular appeal began to increase.
It wasn’t until 2012 that it made a national breakthrough. On May 6th Golden Dawn won 21 seats in the parliamentary election. The election however was inconclusive and another election was held in June. This time Golden Dawn only won 18 seats. Golden Dawn ran a campaign based on concerns about unemployment, austerity, the economy, and immigration. In the national elections in January 2015, the party remained the third largest in Parliament, in spite of the number of their seats being reduced to 17. In the September election Golden Dawn got 500,000 votes, which was 6.8% of the total votes cast, despite most of its leaders being behind bars. Turn out was exceptionally low. This gave it 18 MPs in the 300 seat house. The organisation performed particularly well in Attica, the greater Athens region and the Aegean islands of Lesbos and Kos.
Anti-Semitism has pervaded Golden Dawn since it began. The party uses the Roman salute which was used by the Italian Fascist and the German Nazi movements. Likewise, the Golden Dawn’s meander symbol is similar to the German swastika. Golden Dawn, like the Nazis, seeks to control the streets through demonstrations and violence.
In 1987 Michaloliakis published an article in the Golden Dawn magazine titled “Hitler for 1000 years” In this he wrote “We are the faithful soldiers of the National Socialist idea and nothing else, and continue the battle, the battle for the final victory of our race”. He ended the article, “We shout full of passion, faith to the future and our visions: Heil Hitler!”. On 20 April 2011 Ilias Kasidaris, a spokesman for Golden Dawn, wrote an article in the same magazine in which he argued that if Hitler hadn’t been defeated “fundamental values which mainly derive from ancient Greek culture would be dominant in every state and would define the fate of peoples. Romanticism as a spiritual movement and classicism would prevail against the decadent subculture that corroded the whiteman”. In the same article, Adolf Hitler is characterised as a “great social reformer” and “military genius”. In the 2012 election Golden Dawn ran under the slogan “So we can rid the land of filth”. In his post election address, Mickaloliakos placed a marble eagle on his desk similar to the eagle of the Nazi Third Reich. After the elections, Eleni Zaoulia, a Golden Dawn MP, wore an iron cross ring during her inauguration. Another Golden Dawn MP. Artemis Matthaiopoulus is, or was, according to a website connected to Syriza, the frontman of the Nazi punk band ‘Pogram’. The lyrics in the band’s song ‘Aushwitz’ include the words “fuck Anne Frank” and “Jews out”.
After the second Greek parliamentary election in 2012 Ilias Kasiadaris who has a swastika tattoo on his arm quoted ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ when arguing against lifting his parliamentary immunity over his assault of Kanelli, a communist MP, on television. He quoted Protocol 19: “In order to destroy the prestige of heroism we shall send them to trial in the category of theft murder and every kind of abominable and filthy crime.” On 6 June Michaloliaskos in a parliamentary debate on whether he was a Holocaust denier,denied the existence of gas chambers and ovens in the German extermination camps.
In April 2014 Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros described Hitler as a “great personality, like Stalin” and denounced homosexuality as a “sickness”. Panagiotaros described immigrant Muslims as “Jihardists; fanatic Muslims and stated that, “If you are talking about nation, it is one race”. In January 2014 thousands of anti-Semitic pictures and videos were found in the possession of a Golden Dawn MP. On 2nd January, 2014, a doctor who is a member of Golden Dawn, put up a plaque which said in Gernan, “Jews Not Welcome”. The anti-Semitism of Golden Dawn is not surprising. The eminent position of the Orthodox church, as well as the nationalist ideas that have dominated public discourse for the last century in Greece, left little space for ethnic, cultural or national diversity. In the recent survey global anti-Semitism, published by the Anti-Defamation League, Greece was found to be the most anti-Semitic country of those surveyed. With 69% of Greeks espousing anti-Semitic views according to the survey Greece was on a par with Saudi Arabia, more anti-Semitic than Iran (56%) and nearly twice as anti-Semitic as Europe’s second most anti-Semitic country, France (37%).
Anti-Semitism in Greece has a religious dimension. While the Orthodox Church formally condemns anti-Semitism it has yet to officially absolve Jews for the death of Jesus. Holy Thursday and Good Friday liturgies still contain verses in which collective guilt for the death of Jesus is ascribed to the Jews. Anti-Semitism is also retained in popular Easter customs. According to Professor Abatzopoulou of the University of Thessaloniki, the burning of Judas chariot on Holy Thursday is the “most familiar and widespread manifestation of traditional anti-Semitism in Greece. She says that anti-Semitic scapegoating goes onto construct the “Jew as guilty not only for ‘theoktonia’ but for all the suffering in the world as well”.
Some elements in the Church still espouse anti-Semitic views. In 1980, Panteleimon Caranikolas the Metrapolitan of Corinth published an anti-Semitic book. In this he wrote about the “power of the Jews who suck the blood of the people”. He blamed the Jews for any prejudice against them and cited ‘The Protocols of Zion’ as a source for many of his arguments. Some ostensibly religious organisations such as Kosmos Flamiatos and St Agathangelos Esfigmenites have published circulars which claim to have uncovered “anti-Greek, Zionist or Jewish conspiracies in the past, and have urged the deportation of traitors such as the Jews, Masons and Jehovah Witnesses from Orthodox Greece.
We have seen that anti-Semitism is still an element in far right politics in the four countries we briefly examined, even if in the case of Britain and France the focus has shifted to taking advantage of the Islamophobia which is so prevalent in these countries. This has also happened to a lesser extent in the other two countries. There is no reason to assume that we would find anything different if we looked at other countries. The visibility of Muslims make them an obvious target in a way Jews no longer are. Fascism is opportunistic. It focuses on those groups which, for whatever reason, are seen by large numbers of people as being a threat to their way of life.
This does not mean that anti-Semitism is no longer part of their armoury. Fascism requires an ideology that can vent the hatred for financial institutions and big business that many people feel, but divert it away from the capitalist system itself. An example of this comes from Greece. When an American Jewish Committee leader visited Greece, Golden Dawn said, “The only solidarity of this gentleman is to his compatriots – the international loan sharks who are humiliating the Greek people … We do not need the crocodile tears of a Jew”. Anti-Semitism and notions of ‘Jewish finance capital’ fulfil a role that the Roma or Muslim cannot. We have also seen that Fascists often when they seek to phyically confront their opponents do not hide their anti-Semitism.
You can only define someone as the ‘other’, as a threat to a person’s ‘way of life’, if you define what isn’t the ‘other’. This is why the left everywhere must oppose attempts to establish a national identity based on race, values, culture and religion etc. as this can only exclude groups who do not comply with this national identity and lead to them being defined as the ‘other’. In Britain this means we not only have to defend multi-culturism, but we must also vigorously question attempts to define what it is to be British.
If fascists were to gain power any group of people they see as the ‘other’ would be in danger, as would any body of people who might challenge their power. This includes Jews as well as Muslims etc. because as we have seen in the countries we examined anti-Semitism is still prevalent amongst supporters of the far right and to some extent amongst ordinary people. We, therefore, must do everything we can to combat anti-Semitism as well as Islamophobia. This makes it essential that those on the left who are critical of the Israeli State never express their criticism in a way that can open them to accusations of anti-Semitism.
Racism in government policies and media culture interacts with the anti-Muslim, anti-refugee, and anti-migrant racism of the far right. It makes it not only more believabe, but also more acceptable. Defining Muslims as the other is made much easier. The Government and media, therefore, must always be challenged whenever they make racist statements or introduce racist legislation. We must recognise, however, that the Government’s and media’s racism isn’t an accident. It is done deliberately to divide us. How could the one per cent who have so much survive if the ninetynine per cent were united? Racism is, therefore, embedded in the capitalist system. To end it we have to end capitalism.
