In an ominous incident at Donald Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk performed a gesture widely perceived as a Nazi salute. Much of the world expressed shock and outrage. In response to the criticism, Musk tweeted in jest: “So I am both a zionist AND a nazi?”
He meant it mockingly, but it’s not an outlandish proposition. Musk has expressed support for both Israel and Germany’s far-right AFD party, which has been widely condemned for its attempts to rebrand Nazism. Speaking at an AFD campaign rally this weekend, still reeling from the salute controversy, Musk reaffirmed his support for the party and urged Germans to move past “their guilt.” He also claimed the AFD was the only chance to preserve German culture. Evidently, Musk believes his support for the Israeli state absolves him of ties to the burgeoning neo-nazi movement. But one can in fact be both a white nationalist and a staunch supporter of Israel.
How? Well, the ideology of Zionism – and subsequently the state of Israel – was built on the foundations of antisemitism and ethnic cleansing. Zionism was predicated on the idea that the Jewish people do not fit into the rest of the world and must emigrate to a national homeland in Israel, all while displacing the indigenous Palestinian population already living there. The original founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, even wrote in 1895: “Antisemites will become our [Israel’s] most dependable friends, the antisemitic countries our allies.” Herzl and the antisemites of the time had the same end goal: a massive migration of the Jewish population out of Europe.
Both Zionists and antisemites were violently against Jews assimilating in their home countries. In Israel’s early days, Zionists murdered their own people to encourage the exodus of Middle Eastern Jews to Israel. In 1951, a pair of Jewish Zionists carried out a series of bombing attacks against Jewish sites in Baghdad. They wanted to falsely blame the attacks on antisemitic terror and give credence to the idea that Jews outside of Israel were not safe, and that Israel must exist to protect them. And they were willing to kill Iraqi Jews to make that point.
It’s unsurprising then that Zionists have always been willing to cooperate with unsavory characters to justify Israel’s existence on Palestinian land. Today, they’ve found many allies in the Republican Party and the far-right parties across Europe and Latin America. For instance, American Christian Zionists often parrot racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories while loudly proclaiming their love for the Jewish state. Take Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, who has tweeted outlandish antisemitic conspiracies about “Jewish space lasers” while expressing her support for Israel and voting to fund its Iron Dome.
In another example of the absurd contradictions of antisemitic support for Israel, the American pastor John Hagee – who is the leader of Christians United for Israel – once said in a sermon, “God sent Adolf Hitler to help the Jews reach the Promised Land.” Christian Zionists believe the world’s Jewish population must be concentrated in Israel to fulfill a Biblical prophecy. Much of Christian Zionism involves rabid antisemitism but rarely does the Israeli government, or its supporters, distance themselves from the group – which donates millions to Israel every year. In the wake of October 7th, Hagee was even invited by The Jewish Federation to speak at the March for Israel.
Besides collaborating with antisemitic religious zealots, the Israeli government is openly embracing white nationalist groups with Nazi ties. In 2023, the Israeli ambassador to Romania was widely criticized after meeting with the leader of Romania’s far-right AUR party. The AUR is directly descended from the fascist Iron Guard in WWII, which rounded up and executed Jews in Bucharest. The meeting was part of a larger goal to promote cooperation between Israel and far-right European parties to gain support for illegal settlements in the West Bank.
These incidents are part of a wider pattern of Zionists and the far-right not only aligning but actively collaborating. As long as groups support Israel in its occupation of Palestinian lands, the antisemitism they espouse is forgiven in service of Zionism. This is clearly demonstrated by the Anti-Defamation League, which allegedly exists to monitor and report antisemitism, but has spent the bulk of its time since October 7 harassing pro-Palestine student protesters. The ADL has previously compared a keffiyeh – a Palestinian scarf – to a swastika.
But in response to the Musk incident, the organization called for people to give him the benefit of the doubt. Evidently, a keffiyeh is antisemitic, but a Seig Heil is ambiguous. It’s clear the ADL exists to garner support for Israel, defend its supporters, and silence its critics; it has no interest in countering legitimate antisemitism because much of it comes from allies. If a politician or tech billionaire who espouses support for Israel does something blatantly antisemitic, the ADL downplays the incident. If a college student so much as whispers “Free Palestine,” the ADL brands them a raging antisemite.
As Israel itself is overtaken by its own far-right, the extent it’s willing to collaborate with white nationalists is unsurprising. While much of far-right support for Israel is driven by the desire for the world’s Jewish population to be concentrated in Israel – whether it’s because of Biblical prophecies or racist anti-assimilationist beliefs – there is also the simple fact that the far-right sticks together. Israel’s extensive apartheid system, subjugation of its indigenous population, and belief in ethnic supremacy are greatly admired by white nationalists.
This sentiment is not new. At the beginning of the first Trump administration, well-known alt-right leader and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer made headlines for referring to himself as a “White Zionist” as he advocated for a white ethnostate and a return to slavery. In a 2017 interview with Israel’s Channel 2 following the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, Spencer laid out these connections clearly:
“As an Israeli citizen, as someone who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood, you should respect someone like me who has analogous feelings about whites. You could say that I am a White Zionist – in the sense that I care about my people, I want us to have a secure homeland, just like you want a homeland in Israel.”
This is what happens when you build an ethnostate, in which citizenship, power, and influence are determined along racial lines. The white nationalists are listening, and Israel is an inspiration to them.
The ways Israel has subjugated the Palestinians in service of ethnic supremacy and “securing the homeland” offers a clear blueprint for the way forward. Zionists also understand how their cooperation with the far-right is leading to its legitimization, but they look away in service of nationalism. Theodore Herzl’s dream is being realized: Israel is embracing the groups that seek to destroy its people, but strengthen its state.
As early as 1919, Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s theoretician, wrote that ‘Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destination’.
Zionism’s belief in Jewish racial purity is just as strong as the Nazis’ were. That was why thousands of Yemeni babies were stolen from their parents to be put in ‘good’ Ashkenazi hands. That was why, as Hannah Arendt wryly observed, the condemnations of the Nuremburg Laws of 1935 at the Eichmann trial were hypocritical since in Israel too it was forbidden for a Jew and non-Jew to marry.
That is also why talk of ‘extermination’ of the Palestinians in Israel is so common.
The Zionists were the only ones to welcome the Nuremburg Laws and they were the favoured children of the Nazis from 1933 to 1939.
So yes Mr Musk it is indeed possible to be a Zionist and a neo-Nazi!
“Musk tweeted in jest: “So I am both a zionist AND a nazi?” ”
It was Yeshayahu Leibowitz who coined the phrase ‘Judeo-Nazi’. The first paragraph in his Wikipedia page says it all:
Yeshayahu Leibowitz (Hebrew: ישעיהו ליבוביץ; 29 January 1903 – 18 August 1994) was an Israeli Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish public intellectual and polymath. He was a professor of biochemistry, organic chemistry, and neurophysiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a prolific writer on Jewish thought and western philosophy. He was known for his outspoken views on ethics, religion, and politics. Leibowitz cautioned that the state of Israel and Zionism had become more sacred than Jewish humanist values and went on to describe Israeli conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories as “Judeo-Nazi” in nature while warning of the dehumanizing effect of the occupation on the victims and the oppressors.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshayahu_Leibowitz
So not only can you be both a zionist and a Nazi, you can be both an Orthodox Jew and an anti-Zionist!!!
The Shapell Manuscript Foundation notes: The founder of the modern Zionism and the visionary of the Jewish State spoke neither Hebrew or Yiddish, had no Jewish education, and was thoroughly secular.
Mauschel was written and published by Theodor Herzl in 1897. The text appeared in his newspaper, Die Welt, which was to become the principal outlet for the Zionist movement down to 1914, and was published roughly a month after the conclusion of the First Zionist Congress.
Herzl stated that there were two types of Jews, Jiden (Yids) and Juden (Jews), and considered any Jew who openly opposed his proposals for a Zionist solution to the Jewish question to be a Mauschel. The article is considered an example of a Zionist having an antisemitic rant.
Zionists have always been eager to enter into business partnerships with anti-Semites to excute population and property transfers. The Zionist Organization’s plan outlined in Jer Judenstaat is the same scheme executed by the Nazi and Zionist Organization under their business partnership, the Havaara Agreement:
“I have already mentioned that honest Anti-Semites, whilst preserving their independence, will combine with our officials in controlling the transfer of our estates.” — Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat.
We need to jettison the conceit that there is some contradiction between Zionism and antisemitism, or that it’s ironic that a Nazi can be a Zionist. They are not just compatible ideologies – they are the same racist ideology.
The other side of the coin is that we need to stop apologising for antiZionism as if it were surprising that principled antiracists reject racism. When we bleat, ‘But antiZionism is not necessarily antisemitic’, we are ceding framing rights to the bigots and placing ourselves on the defensive. Furthermore, as the IHRA ‘working definition’ becomes increasingly hegemonic, it will render such protestations meaningless. They will just be a petty quibble with the ‘gold standard’ definition, and ‘antisemitism’, as defined, will become a virtue.
As Tony has declined to plug his book Zionism During the Holocaust: The weaponisation of memory in the service of state and nation, here is a link. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any other supplier than Bezos.
From a speech given by Adolf Hitler to the German Reichstag, April 28, 1939:
” Similarly the fact has obviously escaped Mr. Roosevelt’s notice that Palestine is at present occupied not by German troops but by the English; and that the country is undergoing restriction of its liberty by the most brutal resort to force, is being robbed of its independence and is suffering the cruelest maltreatment for the benefit of Jewish interlopers.
The Arabs living in that country would therefore certainly not have complained to Mr. Roosevelt of German aggression, but they are voicing a constant appeal to the world, deploring the barbarous methods with which England is attempting to suppress a people which loves its freedom and is merely defending it.”
Such an opinion would of course be welcome in any of Mondoweiss’ Comments section today. It could not be more “anti-Zionist.”