SAME PSYCHOSIS, DIFFERENT OBJECT:

The Norway Shooter's Zionist Streak: Anders Breivik's embrace of Israel is the latest sign of a shift among reactionaries in Europe--with fascism and Zionism going hand in hand, fueled by Islamophobia (Michelle Goldberg, Jul 25, 2011, Daily Beast)

The European far right has long been rooted in Nazism, and for decades, anti-Semitism was its hallmark. But Breivik's embrace of Israel, far from being unique, is just the latest sign of a great shift among the continent's reactionaries. Indeed, in European politics, fascism and an aggressive sort of Zionism increasingly go together.

You can see it in country after country. While Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's ultraright Front National, is a Holocaust denier, his daughter and successor, Marine Le Pen, is working to cleanse the party of its reputation for Jew hatred, telling the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that it "has always been Zionistic." In the early 1990s, the British National Party organized a violent neo-Nazi gang called Combat 18. In 2009, the party's leader, Nick Griffin, boasted that his was the only British party to support Israel's war "against the terrorists" in Gaza.

Earlier this year, Newsweek ran a story about this phenomenon titled "Europe's Extreme Righteous: Far-right European politicians find love--and common cause--in Israel." It opened with three politicians, "a Belgian politician known for his contacts with SS veterans, an Austrian with neo-Nazi ties, and a Swede whose political party has deep roots in Swedish fascism," visiting the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. They met with members of the Knesset and signed something called the Jerusalem declaration, which affirmed, "We stand at the vanguard in the fight for the Western, democratic community" against the "totalitarian threat" of Islamic fundamentalism.

Obviously, Islamophobia is responsible for the bizarre alliance between Israel and European white nationalists. Muslims have come to occupy the place Jews once held in the reactionary European imagination; they're seen as agents of an apocalyptic conspiracy that threatens Europe's very survival. The specter of the coming caliphate has crowded out the old myth of the scheming elders of Zion. Naturally, the self-described agents of the counter-jihad see the enemy of their enemy as an ally. It's the inverse of the anti-Semitic alliance between Hitler and Haj Amin el-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem.

And in a few years decent folk will be just as ashamed of having truckled with them.

Posted by oj at July 26, 2011 7:58 AM
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