Eli Kane explores anti-Semitism today, arguing that its political weaponisation by Zionism obscures the real and dangerous threat from growing far right and fascist ideologies.
Anti-Semitism, perhaps the form of racism most readily associated with genocide, naturally raises alarm bells wherever it appears.
One of the oldest forms of othering known to humanity, anti-Semitism has roots in the white European Christian tradition of justifying prejudice and oppression on the basis of a spurious hierarchy of races. The tragedy of the Holocaust immediately springs to mind as a danger of anti-Semitism, but this form of racism has a long history of producing violence against Jews from the anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries to regular attacks on Jewish graves.
Anti-Semitism has also given rise to enduring conspiracy theories such as the blood libel, which continue to be used by anti-Semites to justify their horrendous attacks. For instance, the White Supremacist shooter in the San Diego synagogue attack of 2019 referenced blood libel in his manifesto. Significantly, this shooter had previously targeted Mosques in San Diego.
Condemnation of anti-Semitism should, therefore, be incontrovertible. However, the current political climate surrounding questions of anti-Semitism makes such statements politically charged. An example of this phenomenon occurred in December 2023 when three presidents of US universities were asked whether calling for genocide against Jewish people contravenes university rules. Rather than simply confirming this, their replies were convoluted and lacking in clarity. The presidents had fallen into a trap set by a rightwing GOP representative, who was mobilsing culture war tactics to attack the on-campus solidarity campaigns for Palestine.
Weaponising Anti-Semitism
The roots of anti-Semitism lie in European Christian racial heritage and have since been taken up and developed by the far-right and fascist movements that have emerged under capitalism. Anti-Semitism still lies at the heart of these movements – think of the fascist protest in Charlottesville in 2017 when torchlit protesters echoed the chant “Jews Will Not Replace Us.” However, populists and the far-right have found a way to use anti-Semitism, which emanates from their own ranks, as a charge against the left.
As commentator Rachel Shabi says, anti-Semitism has become “a stick with which the right clobbers the left.”
For example, in recent times, charges of anti-Semitism are most commonly brought against pro-Palestine movements and protests. In this context, the question of anti-Semitism is used as a tool of propaganda. Recent examples of this include false fear around Palestine solidarity encampments in colleges and universities, particularly those in the United States, and the Anti-Defamation League’s inclusion of anti-Zionism in its anti-Semitism statistics.
Zionists dominate the narrative on anti-Semitism in countries like Germany and the US, and their influence is increasing in Ireland as well. During his address at the Holocaust Memorial Day event, Irish President Michael D. Higgins was targeted by Zionist protesters who decried his drawing of parallels between the horrors of the Holocaust and the horrors of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as anti-Semitic. The official Irish government position is increasingly aligned with the view that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
The new Programme for Government proposes to adopt the working definition of anti-Semitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The IHRA includes, as an example of anti-Semitism, “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” This definition has been used by the governments of Germany and the US in attempts to enshrine support for Israel into national law. It appears that Ireland may be headed in this same direction.
Thus, it is no surprise that the discussion frequently veers away from the subject of anti-Semitism itself in an attempt to expose this blatant manipulation by the Zionist propaganda machine. Activists from the political left, when confronted with arguments about anti-Semitism, commonly direct their analysis, energy, and polemics against colonialist interpretations of the term in support of the Palestinian cause. Therefore this cycle of Zionist crocodile tears and the necessary reaction by anti-Zionists–a cycle perpetuated entirely by the Zionists and their supporters–often leaves little room to understand and address the real increase in anti-Semitic ideology occurring in our culture.
This obfuscation allows dangerous ideologies to increase their influence unchallenged. One such example is the close allegiance of Jewish Zionists with a powerful and reactionary segment of American politics–the Christian Zionists. Christian Zionists are evangelicals who hold the belief that Jews must return to Palestine and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem to fulfill a Biblical prophecy. These interests currently form the largest pro-Israel lobby group in the United States; therefore, their separationist and anti-Semitic ideology is overlooked by Jewish Zionists.
With pro-Zionism as an entry point to US politics, evangelical Zionists have a platform for the entirety of their right-wing programmes. Jerry Falwell Sr., a prominent leader of the Christian Evangelical and Christian Zionist movements, also spearheaded a group called Moral Majority. Moral Majority advocated racial segregation in Christian schools, curtailment of LGBT rights, and banning abortion.
Zionist hegemony in the discussion of anti-Semitism means that all focus is leveled on pro-Palestinian elements. In contrast, racist and regressive forces are completely ignored, so long as they support Israel. Thus, it is important to look past the reactionary Zionist arguments around anti-Semitism and investigate whether the true source of anti-Semitism–the political right–is increasing its influence.
A Resurgence of Holocaust Denial
There are reasons to believe that anti-Semitism is indeed on the rise. Somewhat quietly, far-right elements are inflaming old stereotypes, propaganda, and conspiracy theories aimed at Jews.
These efforts can be seen in the revival of online interest in British neo-Nazi David Irving. Irving built a reputation and academic career as a historian writing books about the World Wars. Irving used this platform and reputation to peddle first ‘soft’ Holocaust denial and, later, full-blown Holocaust denial. This began with a 1977 book titled Hitler’s War in which Irving claims that Hitler knew nothing of the destruction of European Jews by the Nazi military. Irving went on to deny all aspects of the Holocaust.
In 2000, Irving famously lost a libel case against Penguin Books and American scholar Deborah Lipstadt when he could not defend himself against claims of Holocaust denial in court. In 2006, Irving was convicted and sentenced to a 3-year prison term in Austria for his assertions that the gas chambers in Auschwitz were not used by Nazis, but were rather built and used by the Soviets who later controlled the region.
Irving’s influence in the far-right did not stop at publishing and profiting from anti-Semitic lies. Throughout his career, Irving established connections with and provided ideological support to a number of dangerous far-right and neo-Nazi groups. These groups included the US-based National Alliance, the German People’s Union, and the British National Party. Irving has also been recorded speaking and spreading anti-Semitic lies at events hosting prominent right-wing and neo-Nazi individuals in British society.
David Irving expanded his anti-Semitism beyond Holocaust denial. In a recorded speech (date unknown), which has been posted various times on Youtube and other social media platforms, David Irving is seen discussing the 1956 Hungarian Revolution against the then-Soviet Hungarian state. In this video, Irving claims that the Hungarian Revolution began as an “anti-Jewish revolution” and that the Hungarian people “regarded their government as a Jewish government.”
Irving states that the Red Army imported Jews into Hungary and gave them “plumb jobs as secret police and torturers,” and that the Hungarian people then “regarded [Jews] as the people who had inflicted this nameless misery upon the Hungarian people.” Irving goes on to report that the Soviet military “using mostly Jewish officers” carried out a program of “liquidation and purge” in Hungary and neighboring countries. In essence, this speech by David Irving not only denies the Holocaust but justifies the extermination of European Jews as a righteous retribution for a campaign of terror carried out by a so-called “Judeo-Soviet” conspiracy.
The Relevance of Holocaust Denial Today
But why do the ravings of a repeatedly disgraced criminal, whose influence was largely quashed in the 1990s, matter in 2025?
It seems that, though Irving himself is largely broke, ostracised, and forgotten, his lies live on. The speech discussed above, which constructs a fantastical history of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, has been revived with contemporary captioning and editing and is being spread around the internet as a short-form video. Thus, David Irving’s lies are revamped for a new audience.
Irving may be an important ideologue for neo-Nazi Holocaust denial, but online support for Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism more broadly does not stop with him. Indeed, these same ideas have been translated into popular ‘meme language’ that appeals to younger generations.
One alarming video, posted to Instagram Reels and enjoying nearly 600,000 ‘likes,’ contains an English translation of a supposed speech by Adolf Hitler. In the purported speech, a voice (either a voice actor or AI-generated) justifies the Nazi invasion of Poland, stating that Hitler refrained from dropping bombs on Paris, “asked for surrender five times” from Poland, and asked that “women and children be sent out of the area.” The video is captioned “POV: There is a reason we never heard his speech” and the audio plays over a clip of the character Patrick Bateman from the film American Psycho, a common symbol of scorned masculinity in far-right internet circles.
The significance of this video and its popularity is profound. The video engages in the same exoneration of Hitler as David Irving does in his 1977 book Hitler’s War. Similar videos–using dodgy statistical analysis to question death figures from the Holocaust, blaming Jews for violence in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere, or establishing patterns between Jewish individuals and, in the most ludicrous examples, weather patterns–are readily available on Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, and X. These videos trace the writings of David Irving and other neo-Nazi ideologues closely, and present the dangerous propaganda in new ways for a new audience.
Ideological Support for Fascists
Of course, anti-Semitism is abhorrent and dangerous in its own right. Anti-Semitism has also historically been, and continues to be, on the leading edge of fascism. That anti-Semitic ideology is finding new purchase in online circles is closely tied to material political changes around the world. In January 2024, a video circulated of hundreds of Italian fascists attending a rally in Rome, where the neo-fascist Georgia Meloni has served as Prime Minister since 2022. The German far-right party Alternative for Germany (AFD) is the country’s second-largest opposition party. France’s National Rally party (formerly Front National) came in 3rd in the 2024 parliamentary elections, after winning the first round of voting.
Last year, thousands of supporters of Britain’s Tommy Robinson gathered in Trafalgar Square in a far-right rally, two months after racist pogroms spread across Britain. In the United States, eight years after the fascist Charlottesville riots, Donald Trump won the 2024 Presidential Election and his allies took control of both houses of Congress. In Ireland, the nascent fascist National Party won its first local election in 2024, though it did not see success in the 2024 General Election.
In combination with these material gains by Europe and the United States’ most reactionary layers, the quiet rise in online anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and propaganda can be seen as an intensification of the global slide towards far-right politics and an alarming portent of things to come.
A Threat to the Left
For fascists, anti-Semitism not only provides a scapegoat and a convenient minority against which to target blame and violence. It also allows these elements to bludgeon the left. As can be clearly seen in David Irving’s anti-Semitism, Jews are identified with Communists to give both a stronger appearance of conspiracy and evildoing. This tradition dates back at least to the longstanding conspiracy theory of Judeo-Bolshevism, which claims that Communism is a Jewish plot to destroy Europe.
Ordinary people’s lives continue to get harder under flailing neoliberalism, the climate and planet are breaking down in an anthropogenic global catastrophe, Europe creeps towards broader wars, and genocide has raged uncontested in Palestine for over a year. In the face of the natural anger of the world’s citizens against these crimes of capitalism, the far-right is desperate to provide answers. It appears that they have turned to a familiar cudgel, anti-Semitism, to help.
Reacting to capitalist and landlord inspired pogroms against the workers’ and peasants’ revolution in Russia in 1919, Lenin was unequivocal:
It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism.
Therefore, as socialists, it is imperative that we observe and fight anti-Semitism. Not only must we do so to, in the words of Lenin, “react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression,” but we must also treat anti-Semitism and its association with fascism as a grave threat to the struggle of workers worldwide for their liberation.
