Anti-Semitism & The Revolutionary Right

The revolutionary white right in North America is built on two beliefs: that white people form an objective biological group superior to all others, and that as a collectivity whites are in a state of perpetual competition with all others. The Hobbesian vision of nature, in which all are at war with all, is brought to a different level where “races,” not individuals, vie in permanent and total conflict.

These “facts” do not sit well with a third dogma held by the revolutionary white right, namely that whites are an oppressed and exploited group, who have gotten the raw end of the deal and suffer from “reverse discrimination” in almost all aspects of American life. This third tenet, the myth of the oppressed white man, was largely underdeveloped a hundred years ago. The U.S. power structure had a far more ambiguous relationship to groups like the Klan back then, and fascism – which is a radical and revolutionary movement from the right – had yet to enter the game. Whites not only benefited from the structural oppression of Blacks, but they had no compunction in admitting this and insisting that this was the way things were supposed to be.

Things have changed over the past century, and today the myth of the oppressed white man is one of the white right’s favourite sales pitches.

All of which sits uneasily together. After all, if whites are superior to other races, how did these others manage to get the upper hand? If nobody disputes that whites used to be in charge, how did these superior rulers lose their grip? It all kind of goes against that “survival of the fittest” bs they’re so into…

Under neo-colonialism the less powerful whites lose some of the privileges they were previously guaranteed. The class interests of a growing number of white people diverge more and more from those of the ruling class. The revolutionary right, not the left, is the most dynamic force organizing amongst downwardly-mobile whites. As the ruling class and the racist right move further apart, the question as to how the supposedly superior white man could be losing more and more ground becomes more and more pressing.

There is a need for a worthy opponent in the conscious racist’s mental universe. An ideology based on ethnic pedigree needs a racial villain. A white racist ideology, in a white supremacist society where the far right remains oppositional, and has a downwardly mobile class perspective, needs an elusive opponent, one who can wear a disguise and hide their origins.

Enter the Jews.

Reading their literature, it becomes clear that in the eyes of North American fascists, Jews are enemy #1. This did not use to be the case – prior to the 1970s Blacks were the racist right’s chief enemy. With the triumph of neo-colonialism as a world strategy of the ruling class, and the subsequent formal decolonization of two thirds of the planet, anti-Semitism came to the fore. This process saw the rise of clearly oppositional phenomena like the bonehead movement amongst white working class youth and the nazification of the racist right, officially acknowledged by the Klan as the dawn of a new era (the so-called “Fifth Era” of the KKK).

Today the grandchildren of European immigrants who may themselves have been the targets of nativist hostility can be found within the ranks of the revolutionary white right, and are just as eager to identify with the myth of the oppressed white man as their WASP comrades. These whites identify Jews as the bad pseudo-white guys, the ones responsible for the new harsher realities of the neo-colonial age, the loss of yesterday’s white pride and the fall from white grace.

Unlike anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-Slavic and other racisms which used to be trumpeted by the far right, but which have melted away as these groups have been integrated into the mainstream of white America, anti-Semitism within the far right has increased as Jews have become more closely integrated into white America. To use the concept i put forward in my previous post on ideological racism: as popular anti-Semitism has decreased and any structural anti-Semitism has disappeared, ideological anti-Semitism has become more and more important within the ranks of the revolutionary right-wing.

In the world of the revolutionary right, Jews are not just another ethnic group. As spelled out by Hitler in a very different context, Jews are an evil master race to rival the good “Aryan” master race. They are literally the anti-Aryans. Actually gentile bad guys ranging from Mikail Gorbachev to Queen Elizabeth to Bill Gates are “outed” as being Jewish. Even Adolf Hitler has been accused of being Jewish by Christian Identity stalwart Jack Mohr, which of course got Mohr accused of being Jewish by other Identity groups, for as the Christian Separatist Church Society puts it: “it is common knowledge among Christians that the straight nosed Jew is the first one to call the hook nosed Jews the real Jews in an attempt to conceal his own identity.”

In the theories of the revolutionary right, Jews emerge as a plasticene ethnic group. Disquieting evidence that racist theories do not hold water – i.e. a white power structure NOT looking after the white masses, a society where power is in the hands of an absolute minority of super-rich white people who are not oppressed, an absolute majority of white people who remain indifferent or hostile to the revolutionary racists’ agenda – all of this is explained away by use of the Jewish trump card. The white power structure and super-rich are transformed into a Jewish ruling class which is screwing the white masses, using “straight nosed Jews” to lead astray even those who have recognized their enemy in the “hook nosed Jew.”

There have been other equally flexible and reality-defying devices used by the far right. Specifically, theories surrounding the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Jesuits, and more recently the Reptilian/Draconian extra-terrestrials, also known as the “greys,” all seem ludicrous unless you actually accept the premise that they are true, at which point they become both irrefutable and essential to understanding everything in human history and contemporary events. These conspiracy theories are all shaped by the questions of their day, for like true plasticene they fill whatever mold they are pushed into. Coming out of a specific intellectual tradition, that of European reaction and then fascism, they build upon each other, and their different aspects are interchangeable. This explains how certain members of the Patriot movement could “abandon” anti-Semitism (which previously explained everything) while keeping their entire worldview intact: the name they gave to their plasticene changed from “Jews” to “Illuminati” or “Bilderbergers,” but the plasticene remained the same.

These conspiracy theories answer questions that the rational parts of far right ideology cannot, and as such their logic and details can only be explained by these shortcomings, not by surveying any historical evidence or using normal means of logical deduction. That’s why conspiracy theories, while amusing (who didn’t like the X-Files?), are such an unsound basis for any coherent or rational analysis.

As a plasticene ethnic group, there are no limits to how useful “the Jews” can be to those who adopt anti-Semitism as an ideological device. In a country like Poland, with a Jewish population of only 10,000 in 1990, anti-Semitism remains a key element to far right groups. Even in Japan, with a Jewish population of 600 and no significant historical Jewish presence or history of anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories about Jews have been adopted by many fascist and far right groups. As one J.P. Sartre put it many years ago, “If the Jew did not exit, the Anti-Semite would invent him.”

Given these precedents, it seems likely that anti-Semitism will continue regardless of any historical events unrelated to the far right itself. Even the complete extermination of every last Jew would not staunch this wound, for the belief in “Jewish conspiracies” would still make at least as much sense as current UFO conspiracies, which obviously bear no relationship to the actual population of Martians!

Likewise, it is ludicrous to suggest that any resolution to the problem of Zionist crimes being committed in Palestine would cause the far right to reject anti-Semitism. Like, since when was the far right so opposed to colonialism and the oppression of Arabs? While the fascists may oppose Israel, they do so despite Zionist atrocities, which if anything approximate those which the fascists dream of inflicting on “their own” subject peoples. Indeed, principled left opposition to Israel is based largely on the same values which lead us to reject fascist solutions; and non-Jewish fascist support for Israel – extremely rare as it may be – is predicated on this approval of ethnic slaughter.

I might even go so far as to say that the revolutionary white right pretends to be pro-Palestinian because Jews are overwhelmingly pro-Zionist today, but were Jews to overwhelmingly reject Zionism the radical right would most likely start holding “Solidarity with Israel” marches!

What do you think?

Categories: anti-semitism, fascism, racism