US foreign-policy objectives are uniting support for the far right and Israel in a deadly but vulnerable alliance, argues Chris Nineham

One of the remarkable developments of the last two years has been the alignment of much of the far right with Israel. To the discomfort of some Zionists here, it reached peak visibility with Tommy Robinson’s enthusiastic welcome in the Israeli capital in October, on a visit organised by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister.

On reflection, this shouldn’t really surprise us. Robinson may have a record of antisemitism but he has made his name attacking Muslims. Fascist and far-right organisations feed off establishment racism and the whole history of establishment racism is deeply shaped by the pursuit of interests abroad. The emergence of biological racism was closely tied to justifications for the slave trade. Racism hardened in the second half of the nineteenth century in response to resistance to empire in India and the Caribbean and as a result of the barbaric scramble for Africa.

Islamophobia is now the most intense and widespread form of racism in the West, and this is, more than anything, because of the nature of today’s imperialism. The Palestinian writer Edward Said traced the rise of modern Islamophobia to the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the attacks on US marines in Lebanon in 1983. It was turbocharged by this century’s wars in the Middle East which were justified as responses to Islamic terrorism and supposedly terrorism-supportive regimes. The useful spin off was that anyone opposing these wars could be accused of backing terror groups themselves. As a result, Muslims became objects of suspicion and treated as an enemy within.

Israels’ genocide against Palestinians has led to a new round of attacks on anyone who resists. People protesting a genocide are denounced as terrorism supporters, hate marchers and routinely treated as antisemitic. Prejudice against Muslims is an integral part of this assault.

Tommy Robinson is well aware that Israel is at the intersection of imperial policy and racist ideas. For him, Israel is: ‘An ally … a partner … a beacon of freedom and democracy, of rights, of all that we as British people hold dear, and all the places surrounding this are human rights violations [sic] terror states and jihad states.’

Washington comes clean

The Trump regime is now openly making links between its global interests and the propagation of right-wing ideas. The extraordinarily explicit new US National Security Strategy published last week goes further than ever in embedding racist and authoritarian ideas in its foreign policy. Using language straight out of the Islamophobic great replacement theory, it warns of ‘civilisational erasure’ in Europe, and the danger that some Nato countries will become ‘majority non-European’ within a few decades.

Migration policies, it claims: ‘are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.’

In the minds of those writing the document, these things are directly linked to the failures of the West to play its part on the world stage: ‘Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.’

The document openly calls for US interference in Western politics. Its writers find ‘the growing influence of patriotic European parties… gives cause for great optimism’ and go on to commit to cultivating ‘resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.’ The leaked, longer version talks of encouraging ‘parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life’.

Resisting the right

If this open tie up between the far right and a more and more brutal US foreign policy has a clear logic, it is also a liability. It is taking place at the very moment when Israel has become isolated on the world stage, when many millions of people have understood its reactionary role and its links to Western imperialism and when many have turned against foreign wars. Even in the US, 59% now hold an unfavourable opinion of the Israeli government, up from 51% in early 2024.

One outcome of this is confusion in far-right circles There has for example recently been a very public falling out in the US between far-right Zionist influencer Ben Shapiro and the equally toxic radio host Tucker Carlson reflecting discontent within the Maga base over Trump’s support for Israel’s forever wars. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s appalling antisemitism sits awkwardly alongside his party’s enthusiastic support for Israel. More generally, all this provides an opening for the movement against the far right. We should be denouncing the far right for their support for Israel and for Trump’s other foreign wars. But we should also be putting the case that the whole of the Palestine movement needs to mobilise against the far right as a matter of urgency. Because the Palestine movement is in their sights.