Title: The new pro-Israeli clothes of Europe's far right
I receive intense criticism for my hostile stance and opposition to the “New Right” here, which some unknown numbers here advocate for and participate in, and work for media platforms/think tanks promoting a “Rightist” view of the world. My emails go not to change their minds, but only to rebut their “right-wing historical revisionism,” and similar misrepresentation of current events. Which, one glaring example is, of how “National Conservatism,” central to the New Right, represents a “foreign policy of restraint.” Even while its most visible proponents, like J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, Curt Mills of TAC magazine, et al., openly and routinely call for escalating tensions with China to where war with it, becomes inevitable. As China already understand all our force in the Indo-Pacific, added to so heavily by Trump, are not there for U.S. “Defense.” Nor were the war preparations Trump and President Duda escalated and accelerated in Poland and Ukraine, as part of their “Three-Seas Initiative” (which Biden has signed on to now as well, always staying within a step of Trump).
What they don’t conceal, and in fact openly and intensely advocate for, is their support of Israeli fascists, and the genocide they’re currently conducting. From top, to bottom, of the “Western Right,” of Europe and more so, the U.S., zealously supports the Israeli fascists. As this LeMonde article explains pretty well. This fact might be a more important factor for the success of the European Right in recent elections. Between the U.S., European, and Israeli right-wing parties, there is no daylight!
Is that a good thing, when we’re on the brink of nuclear war over Ukraine? With National Conservative favorite here Giorgia Meloni doing her best, with other National Conservative’s/Conservatives (see Heritage Foundation) support to whip up war hysteria in Europe, it should be time to reject the false choice presented as a “Third-Way foreign policy” by the Heritage Foundation and their President Kevin Roberts, allied with Yoram Hazony, et al. In which they call for even more of a military build-up by the U.S. and more provocative actions against all of our “Enemies” of the kind that lead to war, with two world wars as evidence for that. And with the Democrats gaily going along with that.
"Transatlantic movement of national conservatives"
"This evolution has been facilitated by the anti-Islam rhetoric of most European far-right groups, starting with Wilders and Sweden's Jimmie Akesson. In the rhetoric of this far-right movement, the Muslim scapegoat has replaced the Jewish one, against a backdrop of jihadist attacks and immigration from the Near and Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. On May 28, Maréchal set the Israeli-Palestinian question within a worldview inspired by Samuel Huntington's controversial "clash of civilizations" thesis.
"At a time when the far right is increasingly influencing Israeli politics, one figure embodies this unprecedented convergence: political theorist Yoram Hazony. Born in Israel and a graduate of the American universities of Princeton and Rutgers, Hazony worked in the Eli settlement in the heart of the West Bank. Hazony collaborated with Netanyahu on a book published before his first stint as prime minister in 1996.
"Author of the conservative bestseller The Virtues of Nationalism, Hazony is a guardian figure of the transatlantic national-conservative movement highlighted by historian Maya Kandel. His greatest supporter in Europe is another staunch ally of the Israeli leader – his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban. The two men share the same illiberal conception of the exercise of power and particularly the same distrust of checks and balances."
While Israel does not officially maintain relations with many European far-right parties, many of them have become unconditional supporters of the country.
Amichai Chikli, former member of the far-right Yamina formation, and Israeli minister in charge of the diaspora and the fight against anti-Semitism, delivers a speech at a gathering of European far-rights organized by the Spanish Vox party, in Madrid, May 19, 2024. ANA BELTRAN / REUTERS
It's an observation that says as much about the evolution of a significant proportion of the member states of the European Union as it does about what Israel is becoming. The far right is establishing itself as the most unconditional supporter of the country, an evolution not called into question by the carnage perpetrated in Gaza following the Hamas massacres of Israeli civilians.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom signed a coalition agreement with three other parties on May 15. Wilders succeeded in inserting into this agreement an "examination" of moving the Dutch embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – a complete break with the European position that Jerusalem's status must be decided by negotiation.
Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain's far-right Vox party, voiced his opposition to his country's recognition of the Palestinian state on May 28, when he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – vehemently opposed to recognition – in Jerusalem. On the same day, Marion Maréchal, lead candidate of the French far-right Reconquête! party in the European elections, said that recognizing such a state now would be tantamount to creating "an Islamist state, with all the dangers that this could represent for Israel and for the West in general."
A bygone era
For a long time, political movements whose roots could be traced back to the dark hours of the Second World War and the Holocaust kept Israel at a distance. The assessment of the European Parliament's ninth term by the European Coalition for Israel – an influential group founded in 2004 – demonstrated just how far this was a bygone era. The 20 parties whose votes were most favorable to Israel all belonged to the far right and eurosceptics, mainly European Conservatives and Reformists. The top three were Vox, a Czech party and the Sweden Democrats.
A combination of circumstances explains the crumbling of this barrier. After a long time being on the fringes, far-right parties came to believe that a radical change in their discourse on Israel could break down an electoral lock in their quest for power. This was notably the case for the Sweden Democrats, who triumphed in the 2022 legislative elections, and whose founding members had been active four decades earlier in the ranks of the Nordic Realm Party, a neo-Nazi fringe group.
The Rassemblement National (RN) made the same calculation in France, distancing itself from the anti-Semitism of Jean-Marie Le Pen (founder of the RN's predecessor) as well as from the positions of members of the student organization Groupe Union Défense (GUD), then close to Marine Le Pen, who in their time chanted "Deauville, Sentier, occupied territories" or "In Paris like Gaza, Intifada." Also stemming from this new approach is the RN's May 21 breakup with its ally Alternative for Germany (AfD), following remarks by an AfD leader playing down Nazism.
Transatlantic movement of national conservatives
This evolution has been facilitated by the anti-Islam rhetoric of most European far-right groups, starting with Wilders and Sweden's Jimmie Akesson. In the rhetoric of this far-right movement, the Muslim scapegoat has replaced the Jewish one, against a backdrop of jihadist attacks and immigration from the Near and Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. On May 28, Maréchal set the Israeli-Palestinian question within a worldview inspired by Samuel Huntington's controversial "clash of civilizations" thesis.
At a time when the far right is increasingly influencing Israeli politics, one figure embodies this unprecedented convergence: political theorist Yoram Hazony. Born in Israel and a graduate of the American universities of Princeton and Rutgers, Hazony worked in the Eli settlement in the heart of the West Bank. Hazony collaborated with Netanyahu on a book published before his first stint as prime minister in 1996.
Author of the conservative bestseller The Virtues of Nationalism, Hazony is a guardian figure of the transatlantic national-conservative movement highlighted by historian Maya Kandel. His greatest supporter in Europe is another staunch ally of the Israeli leader – his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban. The two men share the same illiberal conception of the exercise of power and particularly the same distrust of checks and balances.
Officially, Israeli diplomacy does not maintain relations with many far-right parties in Europe given the enduring nature of historical events. In reality, this position is being openly challenged by politicians linked to Israel's collection of ultra-nationalists and religious Zionists, who advocate a nationalist-populist alliance.
Eli Cohen, Netanyahu's foreign minister from 2022 until earlier this year, has campaigned for links with the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, which has played down the Holocaust. But nothing says more about this Israeli shift than the presence of Israeli Minister Amichai Chikli at a May 18 gathering of the European far-right in Madrid. Chikli is a former member of the far-right Yamina political alliance and now is in charge of the diaspora and the fight against anti-Semitism. This was Le Pen's first informal meeting with a member of the Israeli government, which is hoping it can count on the far right to defend its interests in Brussels.
