Jewish fascism. It's a term that seems cruelly oxymoronic, a mockery of the memories of millions of people who were slaughtered by Adolf Hitler. And yet, Jewish fascism is real thing, an incredibly strange and hateful movement that's growing in both Israel and the United States.
But what does Jewish fascism look like, and why is it a thing? In this episode, I’m joined by Ben Lorber, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a progressive organization that studies right wing extremism. Our discussion is centered around his recent article for Religion Dispatches entitled “Meet the ‘Bronze Age Zionists,’ far-right Jews embracing fascism in the wake of October 7.”
The video of our March 6, 2024 conversation is available. The full transcript of the episode is below.
Cover photo: A meme illustration circulated among far-right Jewish online activists showing an extremely muscular Jewish man being admired by a group of women in what appears to be ancient Rome.
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Audio Chapters
00:00 — Introduction
09:07 — Why some far-right Jews see themselves as similar to neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates
11:48 — Partial reconciliation between some white nationalists and Jewish fascists
17:54 — Why many political uses of the term “Judeo-Christian” represent fake pluralism
21:50 — “Bronze Age Pervert” and Jewish fascists’ struggles against antisemitic white nationalists
28:53 — Ben Shapiro’s antisemitism and the insidious concept of “bad Jews”
37:12 — Antisemitism is integral to right-wing politics, no matter what pro-Trump advocates may claim
43:48 — Building solidarity: The only effective way to combat antisemitism
Audio Transcript
The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been corrected. It is provided for convenience purposes only.
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Ben.
BEN LORBER: Thanks, Matthew. It's good to be here.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So I did want to mention to the audience that you have recently written an article over at Religion Dispatches about the phenomenon of Jewish [00:02:00] fascism. So if anybody wants to dig in even further than what we're going to do in this episode, I definitely recommend people check that out.
I guess this is a very strange topic to a lot of people, as I said in the introduction. So let's maybe first get started on who are these people and what are they doing?
LORBER: Yeah. Well, I think when you have a term like Jewish fascism, could be talking about a, wide range of phenomena, as I'm sure we all know, No there is a really horrific, war, an assault being committed by the far right Israeli government on Gaza right now.
And that's certainly, one locus of it, right? The, extreme right in Israel, largely though, not exc exclusively a religious Zionist, movement has been growing for decades and has been allying itself. With, all kinds of, European ethno nationalist leaders.
And then you also [00:03:00] have minority of the American Jewish community and the, the, global diaspora Jewish community. That's also outlying itself with the far right, around issues, ranging from immigration to black lives matter to, to support for, Israel, to To, the separation of church and state, right?
The, the global Jewish far right, really is very, similar to other far right movements.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's right. And and in regards specifically to the idea of the fascists that we're talking about here, a lot of them are directly connected to the Israeli far right. And they are, doing a lot of memes and things like that in reference to, killing Palestinians and that sort of thing. And it's one of the things that you talked about in the article is that, these Jewish fascists are trying to make connections to other. Right wing extremist group.
So including [00:04:00] people who are explicitly antisemitic, including people who are jihadists or Christian supremacists.
LORBER: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, online, something that myself and other researchers have seen since October 7th that I wrote about in my Religion Dispatches article is really a growth in these alt rights meme accounts that are Jewish.
They're run by Jews. Obviously it's possible that, they're anonymous, so they could be lying that they're Jewish, but it's pretty clear that they have a deep familiarity in Jewish religious iconography, in Israeli history, and Jewish identity.
Like much of the global far right, they're championing themes of, hyper masculinity. They're championing, vitriolic, racism both toward Palestinians and toward, like, Arabs and Muslims more broadly.Like much h of the far right, they're virulently opposed to the ceasefire demonstrations that have been very present across the U S and [00:05:00] many Western countries have in recent months.
They see these ceasefire demonstrations, through racist terms, right? They see predominantly Arab and Muslim and Palestinian led demonstrations as a sign of what they called the Great Replacement, right? What they view as like the dangerous, brown hordes who they see as threatening the stability of white Western Christian civilization, or as they'll call it, Judeo Christian civilization, and they're, and so there are these meme accounts who are championing this, but this is also the kind of of rhetoric that you hear from Israeli far right leaders and that we've been hearing for a long time, right? Folks like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Naftali Bennett or Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli far-right leaders, they always depict Israel as the kind of frontline defender of Judeo-Christian civilization or the West against the Islamic East. And that kind of clash of civilizations.
And you hear this from [00:06:00] former president Trump. You also hear this in many forms from political leaders across the aisle in the U.S.
So we're really at at a dangerous moment where the Israeli right is really a core part of the global ethnonationalist far right, in some ways, leading the way.
And this is a very dangerous moment for progressive Jews like myself who really have a very different vision of Jewish identity and Jewish safety and all those things.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah that's right. And as you noted, there is a broad cross section of many of these individuals seem to be people with extreme fundamentalist opinions. And they are correct to be able to cite, specific verses in specific books of the Bible to support their ideas, but we do have to make clear that the Jewish tradition and Judaism itself has many conflicting pieces in the Bible has, I mean, has, we don't even know how many [00:07:00] authors the Bible has technically.
But nonetheless, it is the case that many more traditionalist Jewish theologians, are, they're into this idea of authoritarianism. They're into the idea that truth comes from God and they control what God says.
That's a very convenient narrative. And, it's one that. It runs consistently in a lot of religions as well. And it's one of the threads that you do see quite a bit in these individuals that you're talking to.
LORBER: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that's, very much in common with either the Christian nationalist far right, the Jewish nationalist far right, also the Muslim nationalist far right, as they claim, and, not to mention like Hindu nationalists in India, right, really all religious ethnonationalism, they claim to hearken it back to some kind of primordial in truth that they find in their religious scriptures, right?
They claim that they're the inheritors of an [00:08:00] unbroken tradition stretching back into the very foundations of their religion. But I think that's really misleading, right? These are very modern, movements, right? They were built, the Christian right in the U. S. was built, by ideologues in the seventies and the eighties.
The Jewish nationalists, right? In Israel, I'd really strengthened and got kicked off, post 1967, post the Six Day War. We see similar things with the global Muslim far right. These are obviously all very complicated phenomena, but you know, they're modern phenomena and these people don't have a monopoly on what religious texts mean.
They don't have a monopoly on religious truth. I mean, are inspiring. Yeah, in movements within Judaism and Christianity and Islam that's all very different conclusions from our text. And I think it's always a danger that that nationalists and fundamentalists will, cherry pick in various religious traditions to kind of, bolster their political goals.
And it's really [00:09:00] important to remember that there's a great diversity of religious opinions and traditions out there.
Jewish fascists seeking common cause with neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates
SHEFFIELD: So we've got on the screen your Religion Dispatches article. And so, for people who are listening, you've got some of the memes that are, that they are using. And one of them is a meme of a muscular looking Jewish man who looks like a bodybuilder in front of some women who seem to be admiring him quite a bit and they are apparently Romans based on the architecture behind them.
And, it's, this idea of trying to integrate within the other nationalism said that we're talking about, as you were saying, and one of them as people can, let me just scroll down a little bit further here that you know, one of the, the means here I'll describe the first one, and then you can describe the second one.
So we've got a Confederate soldier depicted on the left side in front of a, confederate battle flag. And then we have a somebody who appears to be some sort of Israeli [00:10:00] soldier with a Israel flag in the background behind him. Now, what's, the image below that? The meme that we're, that's depicted there?
LORBER: Yeah. the image below is in many ways, even, more shocking. It shows. A Jewish man with, and you can't really, see it so well with the way that it's cut off, but he has like a, a Nazi yellow star on him, really in an embrace with a white power activist and he has a pin on his chest that says white pride worldwide.
And so the, the, idea was, is it really counter-intuitive, right? Because white nationalists are deeply antisemitic. They have antisemitic conspiracy theories at the core of their ideology, right? Their, central belief is that a Jewish cabal has taken control of immigration, of government, of media in order to wage war against white people.
So, but in the eyes of the Jewish far right, [00:11:00] this is an alliance they would like to see. They'd like to position the Jewish community within the broader far right, they see common enemies, right. They see, look, the state of Israel is under attack in their view, from brown people, essentially. And white people in the U. S. are under attack in their view from brown people. So let's get together and let's build a new traditionalist nationalist kind of vanguard alliance to save the West.
And that is a really a mockery of thousands of years of Jewish history, where it very much has been a European Christian civilization that oppressed Jews for thousands of years.
So to see it reversed now in this kind of, very, visible way is quite disturbing.
Partial reconciliation between some white nationalists and far-right Jews
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. And, it should be noted that, that these outreach efforts while they are rejected by many traditional white nationalist Christian supremacist types, some of them have been reciprocating [00:12:00] and one of them in particular is a guy named Jared Taylor who has been running a magazine and website for many decades called American Renaissance.
And he is very friendly explicitly to to Jews who want to come in and be a member of his organization. And he's had many Jewish people speak at his conferences over the years. And then it's also the case that Richard Spencer, the infamous white nationalist activist had also said for a number of years.
And, he's perhaps changed his public stated views recently, but for the longest time, he said that Israel was a model for what he was trying to do. States. So, I mean, how's, how serious do you think the white nationalist community, if you will, is responding to these overtures by Jewish far right?
LORBER: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of different factors at play. When we say the white nationalist in a community, that might mean very many [00:13:00] different things, right? There are neo-Nazis on the Internet who never want to ally with any Jewish people. They see Jews as the prime enemy.
And many of the neo-Nazis or other white supremacist groups like the America First Corporate Movement, they're actually very, anti anti Israel anti Zionist, but not out of any progressive politics or any real sympathy with Palestinians. It's really like a feature of their antisemitism.
But for others, right, like you mentioned, like Jared Taylor and the MAGA movement more broadly, if you want to consider the, MAGA movement kind of part of white nationalism, they're very welcoming to Jews, right? I mean, the MAGA movement has always tried to recruit different minorities into its coalition, right?
At its core, the base is white, evangelicals, and it very much You know, trades on white grievance and on Christian nationalism, but they've also been very adept at outreach, to African American [00:14:00] communities or to Latinx communities or to Jewish communities. And of course, many Jews in America are also white, but there are also, many Jews of color.
And Jews who are part of these other groups as well. But the global far right is, has always, had multiracial components and, multi-religious components. So I think it's important, to see these overtures, between Jewish nationalists and other, varieties of nationalists as part of this, kind of, diverse global nationalist coalition that that has room for Hindu nationalists.
It has, room for some conservative Muslims. It has room for folks like Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro, right? It's a diverse, movement. And I think more attention has to be paid to the subtle and clever ways that, the MAGA movement tries to make room for for religious and racial minorities.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, it is very important. But it's also worth noting that the way that they make this room, it is for people who know their [00:15:00] place that, you know, so for, so Israel is the place where Jews need to be, and India is the place where Hindus need to be, but within those confines of those states, they should have untrammeled power and have not have to have any regard for human rights or, minority rights of any kind. And and then of course you see that with as well with, far right, black politicians and activists like Candace Owens or many of these up and coming podcasters out there as well that are, black far right individuals. And of course, it's worth noting that that Enrique Tarrio, the former head of the Proud Boys is a Black Hispanic man. He uses that as a way to sort of shield his organization from accusations of racism.
LORBER: Yeah, no, that's definitely true. And there's another movement that's worth mentioning here that The National Conservatives, National Conservative [00:16:00] Movement.
They hold conferences every year. Yeah, National Conservatism, they're, primarily based in the U. S., but they've also held conferences all across the West. And, they, are hard-line Christian nationalists, right? They think the U. S. should become a Christian, nation with a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity, right?
Encoded in our laws and our policies and the identity of this country. But ironically enough national conservatism was started by an Israeli Jewish philosopher named, Yoram Hazony. And there are many there are many traditionalist, Jews in that coalition. And I've talked to some of them, like I went to the national conservatism conference in 2022 in Florida.
And I talked to many right wing Jews at that conference who said openly, we want to live in a Christian nation. We don't see it as a threat to us. If the dominant character of the United States is no longer, pluralistic [00:17:00] and there's no longer a separation of church and state. But if if fundamentalist Christianity is enshrined as the law and the culture of the land.
And some even said to me, I'd rather my kids be educated in a Christian private school than in a secular public school, because at least in the Christian private school, they won't be exposed, to liberalism or to transgender rights or to racial justice movements. So, and that was really shocking to me as someone, I mean, Christians have been trying to convert Jews and, trying to convert everyone else for a really long time.
So it's would you really want your. own child to go to a Christian private school for eight hours every day. And these, people were like, yes, because, to them, the greater enemy is the left. I thought that was a really disturbing, but fascinating look into their view.
Why many political uses of the term "Judeo-Christian" represent fake pluralism
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And one person who I think who really kind of. popularized that opinion among American Jews is [00:18:00] Dennis Prager, who is a radio host with a Christian supremacist company named Salem Media. And his interpretations of, Judaism are I mean, he actually has said explicitly that, The role of Judaism now in the 21st century is to convert people to Christianity because we have to preserve the Abrahamic values on DSO.
Since Judaism is not evangelical, well, then, I guess. Making people be Christians and helping Christians sign people up. That's what Jews should do. And like, like, and I, think to some degree, people who are, let's say more devoutly and more traditionally Jewish, they might have a general affinity for somebody like Dennis Prager, but not understand what he's actually trying to do to Judaism, which is destroy it.
LORBER: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating because people talk a [00:19:00] lot on the right about a Judeo Christian West, right. As if there's this unbroken continuity. In the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament, together really formed, the bedrock of whatever, like, we're calling Western civilization.
And that's, kind of an unbroken, 2000 year old, tradition, but really, like I was saying before the whole idea of a Judeo Christian West is. There's also a very recent, very modern invention. It was initially formed right after World War II, after the Holocaust, as a way to kind of make atonement for what, Europe as a whole, and Germany in particular, had just done to the Jews.
And to say, Hey, now the main enemy is communism, right? So we are the Judeo Christian West, and our enemy is communism in the East. And then once the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the enemy became Islamic fundamentalism, [00:20:00] right? So Judeo Christian has always really functioned more to signify who we aren't rather than who we are.
And yeah, I mean, I think it's very disturbing especially given that Christian nationalists, ultimately even though, Orthodox and right wing Jews are, in their coalition. The laws they want to make the laws of the land are disastrous for religious Jews as well. Religious Jewish law is not so anti abortion as, Christian nationalism is, right?
Halakha or traditional Jewish law tends to place a lot more priority on the health and the safety of the birthing parent, right? That's just one example of how if the Christian Nationalist vision really becomes a law of the land, even Orthodox Jews are not going to be unable to fully fulfill their own teachings.
So [00:21:00] it's really mind boggling how this coalition has come to pass. And it's a minority of American Jews, who feel this way, right? Over, over 75 percent of American Jews have voted for Democrats, broadly adhere to liberal values. And it's always been a minority that's willing to cast its lot with the Christian right, but it's a very, vocal minority and a very well funded minority.
So they've been able to capture a lot of the national conversation.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and in addition to Dennis Prager, I think the two other most prominent far-right Jews in the United States are probably a guy who goes by the name of Bronze Age Pervert, and then also Ben Shapiro, the YouTuber and columnist.
"Bronze Age Pervert" and Jewish fascists' struggles against antisemitic white nationalists
SHEFFIELD: So let's first talk about Bronze Age Pervert. Why, are we even having to talk about someone with such a ridiculous pseudonym, and it should be noted. He's. [00:22:00] as we know who this guy is, so but who is he? Who is he and how popular is he?
LORBER: Yeah, I mean it's interesting, the, I'm not sure Bronze Age pervert, I mean he sometimes identifies as, Jewish, I think it was, initially other people on the radical, right, who outed him as having some Jewish ancestry as a way to discredit him, like in their antisemitic worldview, right?
But but he I think it's fascinating that he is at least partially, Jewish because he is a fascist he's part of the manosphere. He, he advocates for a really triumphalist, chauvinist masculinity, virulent hatred of basically every other imaginable under the sun. He explicitly, calls for the rebirth of a kind of like warrior state in the West.
He's just basically as hard-line fascist as you can get, but he's been influential on [00:23:00] his book, Bronze Age, Mindset, which. Basically, counsels, men to kind of embody like a warrior ethos. It was read by members of the first Trump administration. It's read by a lot of the, especially the young, more Gen Z, millennial far right activists who are shaping the policy of a future conservative administration.
And he has a big online cult following. And yeah, a lot of these Jewish fascists who I mentioned it. in my article are sympathetic to Bronze age pervert. And as the memes that you were showing demonstrated, they also believe in this, kind of like ultra masculinist, ultra misogynist warrior mentality that they imagine will lead to the rebirth of the Jewish nation or whatever.
And, there's a lot to be said about the, the crisis of masculinity that's been commented on a lot, in our discourse that could lead a lot of men to, to think that, by going to the gym a lot and by being macho [00:24:00] assholes and by, being completely chauvinist, they will kind of redeem themselves and redeem their people.
There's a lot to be, to be said there, but yeah, he is a very disturbing far right thought leader.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, he's. It's constantly in tension also, it should be said, as you kind of alluded to earlier with these, avowedly antisemitic individuals like Nick Fuentes and some of the other ones that basically, they're trying to, they're having a really prolonged dispute of how, how much antisemitism is the right amount, because, it is also the case that Bronze Age Pervert and we should also say his name, Costin Alamariu.
He's also not explicitly philo-semitic either. And that's another commonality that he has with some of these other online Jewish fascists.
He trots that out [00:25:00] every so often as a way of trying to push back against the Fuentes types to say: ‘No, look, I really do hate some Jews. I promise they're not all good.’ Like that's and then that's the precarity that all of these people have is that, to what you were saying earlier that, they're trying to carve out a space for themselves among people who hate Jews and they can't see or don't seem to be perturbed by that precarity.
LORBER: Yeah. I mean, one way they do it is by saying like, look, we agree with, white nationalists like Nick Fuentes, that, that liberal progressive Jews are a big enemy and a big threat, right?
they say we also are deeply opposed to, to, to liberal Jews who have, been involved in labor unions or who have been involved in movements like Black Lives Matter, right? But we do like the strong, muscular, militant chauvinist, Israeli leaders [00:26:00] who are currently, proving their manhood by pummeling Gaza to pieces.
Right? And so they try to say, look, these are the good Jews. The Israelis are sometimes, the, the ultra Orthodox Jews in America who are aligned with the Christian Right. But these are the "bad Jews," right? The globalists, the, the cultural Marxists. And so they try to do that. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
I should say that Israeli leaders themselves, also try to play into this dichotomy, right? You have Israeli leader, District Benjamin Netanyahu, who scapegoats George Soros. as the mastermind, behind African refugees and immigrants in Israel, who he's worried are destroying the Jewish majority, right?
So it's really an identical anti Soros scapegoating that's deeply antisemitic that you also see from Viktor Orban in Hungary or Donald Trump in the U. S., right? So, so Bibi Netanyahu is doing his own, like, right? We are the good Israelis who are going to [00:27:00] help lead this, global nationalist coalition, but George Soros or liberal Jews in the U S they are the "bad Jews," right?
So that's one way that they try to integrate themselves in the global far right.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And they also try to, play into racism as well as to use as a shield against antisemitic. and in fact, that is one of the key complaints that they have, I think, have, been somewhat effective against Nick Fuentes to say that, well, Nick Fuentes is not racist enough. He doesn't hate black people the way that we do. And he doesn't regard them as genetically inferior and, deserving to be cast out. And and, it's effective to some degree. And that's part of why I think that he hates. Bronze Age perverts so much for that reason.
So it's, it's worth noting, I think, also.
LORBER: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, definitely. And it, it should be said that that really there's a great divide right now in the global [00:28:00] Jewish community. I mean, I've been an advocate for Palestinian, rights. With groups, the Jewish Voice for Peace for almost a decade, now and, progressive, Jews in the U. S. and around the world, including in Israel, have long, fought for civil rights at, And I believe we are, still the majority of the global Jewish community. But I think you see this across many different faith communities, right? There's a reckoning happening within many Christian communities in the U. S. and many denominations around, like, what direction are we going to take? Are we going to side with Christian supremacy and nationalism, or are we going to fight for equal rights? And I think that same argument this playing out in American Jewish communities around the war in Gaza and in the global Jewish community.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Ben Shapiro's antisemitism and the insidious concept of "bad Jews"
SHEFFIELD: And then, so I mentioned earlier the other most prominent far right Jew in America is Ben Shapiro. And I, [00:29:00] it's regrettable. I think that a lot of people do not know that Ben Shapiro is antisemitic, severely so, against people that he considers to be "bad Jews." And we'll talk about that concept later, the idea of the "bad Jew" further, but he explicitly showed where his racism and his antisemitic ideas come in a 2014 appearance that he made on a far-right white nationalist antisemitic podcast, which is run by one of the most popular white nationalists in the world, Lana Lokteff, and he did an interview with her to promote a book that he had written and he just went on with her at great length.
(Begin audio clip)
BEN SHAPIRO: There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood that they have a perverse leftist view of history pushed by the Soviet Union that what really destroyed Europe was Christianity. It was not fascism, it was not communism, it [00:30:00] was not leftism, it was Christianity. And therefore, the cure to intolerance is to bash the hell out of Christianity.
And so, there's a war, there certainly is a war on Christianity, it's coming from some people who are secular Jews, it's coming from a lot of leftists. But yeah, I mean, there's no question that evangelical Christians support Israel at a much higher clip and much more substantially than most Jews in America do. Because most Jews in America don't care about Judaism.
(End audio clip)
SHEFFIELD: And then he also went on to complain about putting black characters in films.
(Begin audio clip)
SHAPIRO: I mean, everybody who's bad is by nature a member of the white patriarchy, and everybody who's good is by nature a member of a minority group. This is why you have the stock character who is the wise black friend, right?
It's never the wise white friend, it's always the wise female friend, or the wise gay friend, or the wise black friend.
Because the impression is that the only wise people in our society are members of minorities. Which is not to say, of course, that there are not wise black people. There are plenty of them, right?
I mean, Thomas [00:31:00] Sowell is a very wise black man. But the idea that every person on television who is wise must be of minority persuasion is really very subtle war on the white males in our society. Which, of course, white males can take, but it does pervert the American mind as far as how we view certain segments of the population.
LANA LOKTEFF: Conservatives are always racist, sexist, homophobic. Right now, they're pushing this anti-nuclear family, anti-white, anti-Christian, so what is it that they want here?
SHAPIRO: Well, I mean, what they want is they want to destroy the foundations of American society. And there's no question that this is what they want.
I mean, this has been the case for the left since the 1960s, and they're just part of the broader left culture, which suggests that American culture is deeply evil, that bourgeois are deeply evil.
(End audio clip)
LORBER: There's a popular conception that can be very appealing to, a lot of Americans who are Christian, or maybe who are raised, Christian, that if you see a guy with a [00:32:00] kippah, a guy who who follows Orthodox, Judaism he must be kind of an authentic Jew in a way.
So he can't possibly be antisemitic. Look at him. He wears his Judaism on his, sleeve. No one can confuse him for anything other than a Jewish person. But the reality is that, people like Ben, Shapiro have kind of imbibed, And, reproduced a lot of the antisemitic tropes that you see in the white nationalist movement, right?
Like we were, saying, like one of the central beliefs of the far right, is that, a Jewish cabal or the, they might say a globalist or a cultural Marxist cabal has infiltrated, Hollywood media in Black Lives Matter immigration as part of some diabolical, plot to destroy the white Christian in the West.
And essentially, folks like Ben Shapiro reproduced that ideology, but, whereas in a prior, in a century, the Nazis said these folks are all too [00:33:00] Jewish, or these folks are all Jews. And today folks like Ben Shapiro are saying these, folks, these globalists aren't the real Jews.
I'm the real Jew. Real Jews are the ones who follow like one particular interpretation of Judaism. Real Jews are the ones who follow Israeli ultranationalism. And anyone who dissents like you're saying is a "bad Jew," right. And, Donald Trump, says this too, right.
(Begin audio clip)
DONALD TRUMP: I think they hate Israel. And the Democrat party hates Israel. Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel. And they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.
(End audio clip)
LORBER: About a year and a half ago, he had a Truth Social post where he said evangelicals are some of the best friends Israel has ever had, and American Jews who don't support Israel like the evangelicals do, you better get your act together before it's too late, right? So we really see this ideology really runs [00:34:00] right through the heart of the MAGA movement.
SHEFFIELD: It does. And, and I think perhaps one of the other reasons why Shapiro's racism and antisemitism aren't as widely known is that he's like Mitch McConnell in one sense, that he will, kind of push back on Trump's rhetoric occasionally, but never actually push back in any meaningful way to say, look, this guy is an antisemite or he is a racist or whatever, or he's a moron, whatever criticism he might make, which he does occasionally.
It never means anything, because he never tells you to actually stop supporting the guy. And Mitch McConnell actually endorsed Donald Trump after being subjected to years of, violent lies like Trump literally said, he has a death wish to oppose me and, engaged in all sorts of, horrible racism against Mitch McConnell's wife.
And none of that mattered because Mitch McConnell ultimately says, well, I support the [00:35:00] same shared far right agenda, and it doesn't matter what kind of abuse that I have to endure in order to see that happen. And Shapiro, in the same way, I would say.
LORBER: Yeah, and the irony is that if you go back the clock to 2015 or 2016, Ben Shapiro and Mitch McConnell and a lot of the other more establishment Republicans, they weren't necessarily all gungho for Trump right from the very, very beginning, right?
A lot of the conservative establishment has been afraid of Trump, right, but it's, a combination of his own personal charisma, his own bullying, and at the end of the day, These folks have to follow the base, right? Ben Shapiro runs a media empire. He needs views on his platforms. He needs and the base is with Trump, right?
So influencers like Ben Shapiro have to go where the GOP base goes. And so, people like Nick Fuentes have long hated Ben Shapiro, not only because he's Jewish, but also because he wasn't always pro Trump as far as I understand. But it's been really fascinating to see [00:36:00] these guys get in line, right, driven by, by social media algorithms, driven by the right word, drift that we see all over the, conservative movement.
I mean, I've been tracking far right discourse for many years now. And I remember even during the first Trump presidency, hopefully the only Trump presidency It was very controversial to scapegoat George Soros.
Every time, Fox News would say, oh, George Soros controls Black Lives Matter, there would be headlines, there would be accusations of antisemitism. They would even have to retract it and apologize sometimes, but it's become so normalized now that nobody bats an eye.
And same thing with the white nationalist great replacement a conspiracy theory, right? That, that, an elite cabal is trying to replace, quote, unquote, Native Americans with immigrants. That used to be a fringe view. Now it's mainstream and same with Christian nationalism, right? All of these things really over the last few years, right? During the Biden presidency.[00:37:00]
All of these, views that used to be relegated to the fringe of right wing discourse are now enshrined right in the center.
Antisemitism is integral to right-wing politics, no matter what pro-Trump advocates may claim
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and speaking of the center there is another tactic that is increasingly common among some of these far right Jewish people, which is to say that the Democrats actually are the extreme and that Joe Biden and or, particularly supporters of Palestinian rights that they are all Nazis and they want to exterminate Jews.
And one person in particular, I think, who is really kind of embrace that and been propelled forward very much so by the, right wing Christian supremacist machine is this woman named Batya Ungar-Sargon.
And she portrayed this, idea pretty handily, I think during an appearance on the Bill Maher show, and I'm going to play a clip here for everybody to hear and watch it.
(Begin video clip)
BATYA UNGAR-SARGON: You and to most [00:38:00] Democrats, Trump is an extremist, but to Trump supporters, he is a liberal and they like that about him.
BILL MAHER: Yes.
UNGAR-SARGON: So for example, if you look at his position on abortion, 16 weeks. Okay, that used to be like the Democrat position on abortion. I agree his position on immigration. That was the Democrats position in the 90s.
He's pro-gay, and he's courting blacks actively, and all of this is stuff that his supporters love about him. So we are, on the liberal side, the liberal media is misunderstanding how he comes off to his supporters because of how they see him.
MAHER: I totally agree with that. They don't get him at all.
(End video clip)
SHEFFIELD: So, needless to say everything that she said there was a lie.
Literally everything was a lie. And including her trying to subtly claim that she's a liberal. This is somebody who, continuously advocates for Donald Trump and attacks Joe Biden [00:39:00] and other people on the center to left continuously. And, but it's, this is a talking point that really. I mean, it's almost inescapable, especially if you're somebody who listens to anybody remotely connected with the Joe Rogan podcast universe, right?
LORBER: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's clear from that clip that Batya Ungar-Sargon is in Mirror World, right? I was an activist for Palestinian rights, I still am, back in like 2017, 2018, when, she was an editor at the Jewish Daily Forward and did have a mostly liberal views at the time. And it was really, her far-right transformation really began when she jumped on the bandwagon of this narrative that the left is the biggest antisemitic threat to Jews, right?
For, she was one of the main voices out there who was attacking like Linda Sarsour, Ilan Omar, [00:40:00] for, perceived antisemitism. And for a while you would hear her say, well, both sides have a lot of antisemitism. But now I think, I haven't listened to her, so I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if she joined a lot of other commentators and saying that the left is the main antisemitic threat.
And to me, as a Jew, who's been part of leftist and progressive movements for a long time, this is an absurd kind of mirror, mirror world, discourse, sure. There's some antisemitism and some, left wing, movements. There's also some racism and some misogyny, all kinds of oppression, right? It's part of the air we breathe in our deeply flawed society.
But, people like this miss that that antisemitism is part of the core driving engine of the global fascist movement of white Christian nationalism, right? There are antisemitic conspiracy theories animating every level of the MAGA movement.
And these are [00:41:00] the folks who are closest to winning power in our country and by and large, yeah.
SHEFFIELD: Oh, and I'm sorry. And also, I mean, Donald Trump, of course. Had a very nice chummy dinner with Nick Fuentes and, and, Kanye West.
Needless to say, Joe Biden does not have chummy dinners and does not, Donald Trump actually never said: ‘I shouldn't have done that. He is a terrible person who is an antisemite, and I condemn antisemitism.’ Donald Trump never said anything remotely similar to that. And that's because he's afraid. He needs the people who have that viewpoint.
If he actually cared about antisemitism, if Republicans cared about it, they would have forced him to apologize for what he did with hanging out with Fuentes and West. And they didn't.
LORBER: Yeah, I mean, it was the same, yeah, no, it was the same during his first presidential campaign when he refused to disavow David Duke, it was the same in [00:42:00] 2017 after the, Unite the Right rally, right, in Charlottesville, when there were cries of Jews will not replace us and Donald Trump said, there are very fine people on both sides, right?
You're totally right. He needs them as part of his base, and there's a lot of folks out there who are really, overhyping up the problem of antisemitism. In Palestine solidarity spaces, right? I've been in these spaces, it's not antisemitic to, To call for fundamental change in Israel, right at the moment of this, what I consider to be a genocidal assault on Gaza.
It's not antisemitic to call for that to stop. And there are many, Jews who are vibrant part of movements for Palestinian freedom. And I think it's a very dangerous narrative out there that has some appeal for portions of the, of liberals, right? Some Biden voters, right? There's a, the, front page cover of the Atlantic, new issue is basically [00:43:00] saying are Jews safe in America because of these Palestine solidarity protests, right?
But this is not where the main threat to Jews is. Some Jews might disagree strongly about, the some views about the state of Israel, and that's okay. Like we can disagree. That might feel very uncomfortable, but that's a far cry from the murderous and conspiratorial antisemitism on the right, right?
No, no Palestine Solidarity activists have shot up a synagogue. They, no Palestine Solidarity activists It's the same Jews are controlling the world or very, few of them. There are a few, unfortunately, but very few. This is a core belief on the right. And we just don't see that on the left.
And so it's really important for folks to make these kinds of distinctions.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, definitely.
Building solidarity: The only effective way to combat antisemitism
SHEFFIELD: Well, let's let's maybe wrap up by talking about the book that you are working on. And I, it's very clearly a contrast with these approach that we have been discussing today of far right Jews [00:44:00] claiming that it's better for Jews to take refuge among people who despise them.
And your book has a different thesis.
LORBER: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, my book is forthcoming in June. It's called Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism.” It's co-authored with Shane Burley, who's a great journalist and author himself. And basically we're saying that the way to fight antisemitism today is not to build higher walls, is not to double down on militarism or nationalism, but it's to build solidarity with, other oppressed and marginalized communities.
Groups, it's to join social justice struggles. It's to see the connections that exist between antisemitism and anti-immigrant xenophobia and anti-Blackness, anti-LGBTQ bigotry. And it's to build coalitions like we're seeing right now to [00:45:00] defend and preserve democracy, to defend the rights of people.
Of immigrants to defend the rights of Jewish people to live in a pluralistic, republic to, to defend Palestinian rights. These are all part of ultimately the same struggle for justice for all. And And it can be difficult. As I said, there are real sticking points and real divisions that can exist, right?
And no one says it's always easy to build solidarity and build coalitions right between other groups. At the end of the day, this is our best, our best bet for the long term safety of the American Jewish community, and for Jewish values, for Jewish ethics, right? So for the many, American Jews And other folks around the world who are horrified at what's going on in Israel right now, who are horrified at what, frankly, the Biden administration is doing to support what's going on in [00:46:00] Israel, but who are also horrified by the prospect of a second Trump administration, I think it's really important to.
To try to build these coalitions of solidarity with other groups and to, fight for a multiracial democracy where all of us can thrive. It's really the only shot we got.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's right. And it's an important concept to develop because the American right from its very beginnings, the reactionary right in the 1960s, they developed this idea that they call fusionism, which is basically a right-wing version of what you just said.
That for them, they wanted everybody in their coalition to understand that they had a shared struggle. So even if you weren't into the idea of opposing communism outside of the United States, and you were more interested in Christian supremacism in the United States. Those things actually were related according to them.
And, they were right to say that. But people who [00:47:00] have a more progressive outlook need to understand that the right wing was correct about that. And that we need to come together and work together and share in people's passions, and help elevate voices that maybe you may not fully understand what they're talking about, but understand that a struggle for liberation has to include everybody, no matter who they are, where they might be coming from.
LORBER: Yeah, I definitely agree. You're right about that. I mean, I think I, we see a lot that the right for many decades has had a long range view. They're really focused on building the broadest possible coalitions. on their side to win, right? They, don't want to infight, at least publicly. There's plenty of infighting and divisions, but at the end of the day, they don't want to cancel each other.
They want to say, join us. There's room for you here, for every, they're constantly, looking at groups who have been neglected or despised by the left. And they're saying, [00:48:00] come join us, right? This is our home for you.
But, too often folks who are, progressives tend to be at at each other's throats and focusing on our differences rather than what might unite us. And I think it's really important, as you're saying, to build the biggest possible coalitions in our country of people who want to defend and and extend our multiracial democracy for it to survive, frankly.
And we have to have the kind of long range view they have.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the reality is the only way to protect democracy is to expand it. Because the people who are working to destroy it, they're coming together, and so we have to do the same.
LORBER: Yeah.
SHEFFIELD: Alright. Well, Ben, this has been a great discussion. For people who are looking to keep up with you, what places are you on with this handle?
LORBER: Yeah, that's my Twitter handle. That's where I'm at most of the time. You could also [00:49:00] follow me on Instagram. And my organization is at politicalresearch.org. We're publishing a lot of great content all the time looking at different far-right movements and helping progressives to fight back.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And for those who are listening, his handle is Ben Lorber. That's B-E-N-L-O-R-B-E-R-8, number eight. So you can find Ben over there and I encourage everybody to do that and to check out the book when it comes out. So, thanks a lot.
LORBER: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation. And if you want more episodes, you can always go to theory of change that show where you can get the full archives. And if you are a paid subscribing member, you have complete access to all the material.
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