‘Enemy of Our Enemy’: Why the Far-Right Calls for a ‘Free Palestine’

The far-left activist who murdered two people outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. last month, and the Egyptian illegal immigrant who hurled Molotov cocktails at pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder this month shouted the same slogan: Free Palestine.

Why should anyone on the right call for Free Palestine (whatever that means)?

In a troubling twist, their anti-Israel messages are being echoed by hatemongers at the opposite end of the political spectrum: white supremacists, fascists, and neo-Nazis who have seen the proliferation of anger against the Jewish state as an opportunity to broaden and advance their own cause.

Just six days after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, the Holocaust-denying, Gen-Z podcaster Nick Fuentes offered white-nationalist, antisemitic acolytes some simple advice: Support Hamas. Standing before a mock background of the New York City skyline that featured meteors streaking across the screen, the 26-year-old echoed figures on the American left, such as Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has asserted that “Israel has hypnotized the world” and that American Jews have bought outsider influence with their wealth.

The Jewish maximalist Likud party in Israel … has captured our government. They’re responsible for the censorship. They’re responsible for the war in Iraq. And if Israel’s genocide of Gaza is going to rally international support against them, then once again, this becomes a situation where the enemy of our enemy becomes our friend.

Antisemitic white nationalist Nick Fuentes admits that he doesn't actually care what happens to the Palestinians but is siding with them simply because he hopes the current crisis will alienate Israel and diminish its influence: "We have to be strategic about it." pic.twitter.com/OTZ04Lpxh2— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) October 13, 2023

In a June 2024 appearance with Fuentes in Detroit, former KKK leader David Duke said he was advocating on behalf of those who were trying

to save our country and save us from Jewish supremacism because we’re being genocided just like the Palestinians, just [in] a different form.

By “different form,” Duke meant the conspiracy theory which had inspired Robert Bowers to murder 11 Jews at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 – that a shadowy cabal of Jewish overlords worked to perpetuate a “white genocide” in America, wherein white people would be replaced with brown people.

Legitimate critique of Israel is one thing, but…

Most Americans, including critics of Israel’s war in Gaza, reject the radical views of Fuentes and Duke. But the dovetailing of anti-Israel rhetoric among some on the far left, the far right, as well as Islamists, is blurring the lines between good-faith critiques of Israeli military actions and ancient hatreds. Experts on antisemitism say some of the rhetoric of far-left voices opposing Israel – including disputed claims that the Jewish state has engineered a famine in Gaza as part of a campaign of genocide – is not simply anti-war advocacy, but a condemnation that invokes medieval blood libels about Jews’ secret plots to murder children, a conspiracy theory long peddled by the far-right.

The perennial need by many progressives to cast the world in perpetual conflicts between the oppressor and the oppressed has resulted in the proliferation of Islamist ideology in prominent media outlets, widely broadcasting often blatant antisemitic and eliminationist rhetoric aimed at Israel.

As a result, anti-Jewish sentiments long considered beyond the pale have become repackaged and mainstreamed. This is happening amid a sharp rise in antisemitic beliefs and anti-Jewish attacks in the U.S. and around the world, especially after Oct. 7. These include widely reported incidents in which Jewish students were denounced and harassed on campus by leftwing protestors because of their identity. 

Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), an international organization, reports a 107% global spike in antisemitic incidents in 2024, “with over two-thirds driven by far-left sources, often disguised as anti-Zionist activism.”

What Tucker Carlson and John Cusack Share

Roz Rothstein, co-founder of StandWithUs, an international, nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism, said this new landscape has provided fresh opportunities for longtime antisemites.

Demonizing Israel and Zionists is an easier way to spread hate than directly going after Jews. Far-right figures are able to exploit far-left and Islamist narratives on social media and reach millions of people.

Even before the Oct. 7 attack, Duke had been trying to position himself not as a neo-Nazi opposing all Jews, but rather as an advocate of the Palestinians, opposing the “Zionist Occupied Government” while calling for peace. His shift from a “genocide” of Palestinians in Gaza to a “genocide” of whites in America serves as one rhetorical example in which far-left, anti-Zionist rhetoric found new purpose flowing out of the mouths of far-right leaders.

One does not need to search far across Duke’s and Fuentes’ fellow travelers to find even more creative deployments of trendy leftist arguments. Also in attendance that day in Detroit alongside Duke and Fuentes was Jake Shields. The former mixed martial arts fighter has reinvented himself as a podcasting pugilist who broadcasts his views to nearly 850,000 followers on X. He offers a wide variety of antisemitic merchandise on his website, with designs that encode their anti-Jewish messages. One shirt utilizes a font similar to many Black Lives Matter designs to instead proclaim, “Palestinian Lives Matter.” Another features an old-fashioned image of a World War II soldier and the phrase at the bottom, “I’m not dying for Israel.”

Islamists see an opportunity in far-right Free Palestine advocacy

Islamists – some of whom have questioned the Holocaust and called for the destruction of Israel “from the river to the sea” – have seen their views mainstreamed on college campuses and in the media.

As Mark Oppenheimer, who teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, noted earlier this month in the Wall Street Journal:

Tucker Carlson has featured Nazi apologist Darryl Cooper on his TV show. Candace Owens, who used to host a web video show for the right-wing Daily Wire, has promoted conspiracy theories about a “small ring” of Hollywood Jews. … [podcaster Joe] Rogan has interviewed a conspiracy theorist who believes the Jews were behind 9/11, and he said last month that “if you talk about Jewish people…they’re going to remove you from everything,” because the Jews “run everything.”

The actor John Cusack, who has campaigned for Bernie Sanders and lent vocal support to many progressive causes, apologized for tweeting a meme that showed a Star of David crushing people, alongside a neo-Nazi slogan blaming Jews for controlling discourse.

Ryan Mauro, who monitors extremist groups for the Capital Research Center think tank in Washington, D.C., said these examples show how ugly ideas have gained new currency and acceptance. “It all comes back to this depiction of a global Jewish octopus whose arms puppeteer all institutions of power, though they have modernized their tropes to say ‘Zionist’ and ‘neocon’ instead of ‘Jew’ for the sake of effectiveness.”

Agreeing with Mauro, Dr. Charles Asher Small, executive director for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, said that “One key antisemitic trope shared by the extreme left, extreme right, and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood is the notion of Jewish global control. Though framed differently, this idea serves as a common ideological thread of hate.”

Small explained how

Far-right extremists for example will invoke classic conspiracies like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, claiming Jews control banks, media, and governments to undermine Christian or white societies. Far-left activists will frame the same trope as Israel as the spearhead of imperialism, accusing “Zionists” of manipulating Western powers or oppressing global South movements – implicitly echoing the idea of disproportionate Jewish influence.

Uniting Left, Right, and Islamic Hate

Extremists on both the far left and the far right have seized upon anger toward Israel. In an April article headlined “Riding Rage Over Israel to Online Prominence,” the New York Times profiled a self-described “Maoist and Stalinist” 25-year-old named Jackson Hinkle who now has more than 3 million followers on X. In April, for example, Hinkle tweeted: “🚨🇮🇷 DROP A LIKE if you stand with IRAN in the face of ISRAELI TERRORISM!” That same month, the Times reported,

he addressed the Houthi leadership in Yemen over video, praising the [U.S.-designated terror] group for its attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

Steven Stalinsky, executive director at the Middle East Media Research Institute, said that “Hinkle recently toured the Middle East, visiting Qatar, where he interviewed designated terrorist Hamas political bureau members Bassem Naim and Osama Hamdan, and Lebanon, where he attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah in Beirut.”

Stalinsky said that Hinkle is “playing a key role in uniting left, right, and Islamist factions.” In this support of countries and groups actively opposed to the United States, Hinkle echoes far-right figures such as Fuentes, who has said,

America is the seat of the liberal empire that controls the world. And we are enemies of that liberal order because of our “old world views.” And so, to the extent that Russia is rolling that back, or China is rolling that back, to the extent that Israel is being led into a trap which will alienate it from the world and diminish its influence, then we have to support these causes. We have to be strategic about it.

Mauro said elements of far-left, far-right, and Islamist rhetoric increasingly echo each other in their mutual animosity against the Jewish state.

Some prominent far-left figures have been using terms like “Zionist Occupied Government” that have previously been only used by the far-right. And then these far-right figures adopt far-left narratives like supporting BDS [the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement] and describing Israel as a colonialist, warmongering power.

Simon Plosker, editorial director at the HonestReporting media watchdog group, said that

When you look at the anti-Israel social media content of supposedly right-wing influencers like Jackson Hinkle or Candace Owens, there is barely any difference between them and the far left. And their antisemitism has become legitimized under the cover of hatred towards Israel.

Free Palestine is an opportunistic attitude

Support for the Palestinian cause, especially on the far right, appears to be an alliance of opportunity. Stalinsky said the far right has no love for Islamists. In a 2022 article on posts to Telegram channels favored by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, he reported that

Many posts online referenced Hitler and other Nazis on the subject of Palestinians and recommended to
“get over” distaste for collaborating with Arabs, even while acknowledging that they care nothing for the Palestinians.

Stalinsky also reports that one leading neo-Nazi posted an “open letter” on Telegram pleading for support of Hamas while another neo-Nazi urged followers to support “literally the only people today” who are physically attacking Jews today, the Palestinians. The neo-Nazi:

If you consider yourself an enemy of world Jewry and want to see it destroyed, how could you not support their fight?

Antisemitism experts worry that the growing anger against Israel will continue to create unlikely and dangerous alliances that are spreading from the fringe to the mainstream.

Austin Parcels, research and advocacy manager for B’nai Brith Canada, told RCI that

The convergence of far-right conspiracy theories and far-left anti-Zionist rhetoric has made antisemitism more socially acceptable and institutionally embedded. By using the language of activism, antisemitic ideas now enter universities, unions, and media under the guise of equity and human rights.

Zachary Schildcrout, Research and Data Manager for Combat Antisemitism Movement, said that

The growing fusion across fringe ideologies is amplifying the risk to Jewish communities worldwide. The Jewish community is being targeted from all directions, and the world must understand that antisemitism cannot be attributed to one political side.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.