The far-right's pretend fight against antisemitism is a perfect political strategy

The Guardian

19-03-2025

The detention of Columbia university student, Mahmoud Khalil, is unequivocally chilling. Khalil, who helped lead the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia university last year, was targeted for his politics. His unlawful arrest by the US immigration enforcement agency comes amidst relentless smears lobbed at protesters of Israel's war on Gaza. This McCarthyite abduction of a Palestinian Green Card holder is a trial balloon, a test of what society might tolerate and a threat of more to come. And the added horror-show twist to this assault on free speech is that it is being done in the name of Jewish people under the pretence of tackling antisemitism.
Such egregious claims are easily refuted. Most American Jews didn't vote for Trump and don't back his crackdowns. As Amy Spitalnik of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, one of multiple Jewish groups opposing Khalili's detention, said: 'The Trump administration is exploiting real concerns about antisemitism to undercut democracy.' Meanwhile, it is grotesque to pretend that Team Trump, home to antisemitic conspiracy theories, Nazi salutes and Holocaust denialism, is fighting antisemitism, rather than actively reproducing it.
But while Khalil's arrest fits into longstanding attempts to silence pro-Palestine protesters, it is also part of a wider global authoritarianism. US students protesting Israel's decimation of Gaza have faced relentless bi-partisan furore over antisemitism claimed to be rife within such movements. And pro-Israel groups have lobbied hard to provoke these accusations. But to locate Trump's crackdown purely within this political arena is to misunderstand the full force of far-right ideology in all its mechanisms.
That pro-Israel Jewish groups, or the Israel government are cheering this assault on free speech does not substantively change the dynamics of power at play here. This is not about the impact of pro-Israel Jewish university funders, or aggressively anti-Palestinian alumni groups, or even the prominent Anti-Defamation League. We can – and should – criticise their actions and their abject moral failure in lining up with Trump. But we can do so without inflating their influence to suggest that authoritarianism in supposed defence of Jewish people is actually being led by Jewish people. For that would be to fall into a divisive trap set by Trump and the global far-right.
A key element here is that the far-right has found in its pretend fight against antisemitism the perfect political strategy, a way to divide progressives while at the same time clobbering them. The far-right is using this wedge not just to shut down voices critical of Israel's serial violence against Palestinians and a war on Gaza described by experts as genocidal, but also to attack so-called wokeism, critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, 'liberal elites' at universities – in short, all the political enemies in its constructed culture wars.
This has long been clear across Europe, where far-right figures from Hungary's Victor Orban to France's Marine Le Pen have rehabilitated their political fortunes in part by performatively proclaiming to care about Jews. This has been achieved by best-friending Israel, bear-hugging its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a shield against accusations of antisemitism. Wrapped in the Israeli flag, far-right parties with fascist roots and current displays of antisemitism cast themselves as defenders of Jews against an antisemitism claimed to be coming from Muslims and migrants.
It's a terrifically self-serving formulation, since hating Muslims and migrants is the main ideological obsession and rallying cry for the resurgent far-right. We see the same brush strokes in the Heritage Foundation's Project Esther, a blueprint for Trump's repressive crackdowns starting with pro-Palestine protesters, penned by Christian Evangelists and in a claimed defence of Jewish communities.
Rolling out this McCarthyist crusade carries an additional and dangerous undercurrent. By stating that authoritarian measures are deployed to fight antisemitism, Trump is scapegoating Jewish people. Creepily, the White House announced its detention of Khalil on X using the Hebrew for goodbye in the all-caps message: 'Shalom, Mahmoud.' This narrative, with those in power deflecting blame onto Jewish people, is itself characteristic of antisemitism. And if repressive measures are supposedly about protecting Jews, it inevitably risks generating resentment of Jewish people. All of which is more reason for progressives to not lose sight of who is both instigator and executor of this current crackdown.
Jelena Subotić, a professor of political science at Georgia State university who has written about far-right pro-Israel antisemitism, told me that Khali's detention is 'incredibly pernicious because it is pitching Jewish students, or faculty, or anyone identified as Jewish, as the cover for totalitarianism. It is splitting groups along identity lines and dividing people who should be allies.'
In the midst of a multi-spectrum assault on democracy, this tests the cohesion of progressive movements. It calls for a firm stand in solidarity with Palestinians while resisting attacks on all minorities, even while one racialised community is set up as the 'good' minority in need of protection from the others. As Subotić puts it: 'Nobody wants to be the model minority for a fascist regime.'
Progressives must now grapple with the way both antisemitism itself and the fight against various political movements labelled as 'antisemitism' is being used by the far-right, thereby countering anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-migrant hatred, while also combatting antisemitism. It's a lot. But every part of it is essential to building an inclusive progressive tent. And keeping everyone together, inside the tent, a mosaic of forces pushing in one direction, is the only rational way to combat fascism.
Rachel Shabi is the author of Not the Enemy – Israel's Jews from Arab Lands and Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism