Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.
– Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Known plagiarist, dog cloning enthusiast, and chainsaw-wielding Argentinian president, Javier Milei, visited Israel on June 9. He cried at the Wailing Wall, he hugged both Netanyahu and Herzog, called the former a brother, spoke at the Knesset, giving his undying support to Israel, invoking biblical cliches, and engaging in another of his favorite hobbies, chastising the left. When he returned to Argentina, he announced that his government would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move notoriously promoted by Trump during his first administration. This saccharine show of affection is coupled with the already established commitment to cooperation in matters of security and military intelligence and technology that Milei had promised in the past years. The Milei government would later deny entry to a family of Palestinians, despite all their legal documents being in order. Milei, whose affection towards Israel borders on the sexual, is all but the most histrionic leader in a global trend of ultra-rightists who see in Israel the embodiment of their wildest political fantasies, not only an entity free of reproach but as a global model to reproduce. Meloni, Wilders, Bolsonaro, Bukele, Trump, Orban, Modi, and many other figures within the global right have sung the praises of Israel. The reasons are not surprising, and while Israel continues to commit genocide, it has consolidated its influence among the extreme right.
There is no doubt that within the global right in the past Zionism has played an important role, integral perhaps, in the continuation of the reactionary hegemonic forces in the world, first in providing security, military, and technical assistance to reactionary governments in the global south and now as a supporter of the new permutations of right-wing political parties worldwide. Since its inception, Zionism has always been cut from the same cloth as previous vanguards of the imperial reaction, whether colonialism, apartheid, or fascism, from Herzl’s modeling of colonialism, Jabotinsky’s love affair with fascism, and Ben-Gurion’s calculated and cynical ethnic cleansing. But in the past, Zionism did exactly that, follow the reactionary trends and borrow from them in order to create its own ideological structures. What we now see is that Zionism is no longer following the previous reactionary models but shaping the new iterations of the right, converting itself into the vanguard of the reaction.
Genocide is not only the tool of the fascist, but of the so-called liberal imperialist as well, democracies such as England, Belgium, or France in the past. Zionism borrowed from all these previous models of reaction, and although some would claim that the terminal conditions in which Zionism has put Palestinians is a radical departure or “out of the ordinary” and more so a sign of late fascist models that have become apocalyptic, the seed for the ongoing genocide has always been deeply ingrained within Zionism itself.
Zionism began as a colonial political project, which was promoted as such by the likes of Herzl and others, and looked for the support of other imperial nations to realize said project. It was, in many ways, a reproduction of those colonial projects and, in the eyes of Europe, an extension of them. When it began to form in its more ideological capacity, Zionism borrowed heavily from both Italian and German fascism. One only has to read the writings of Ze’ev Jabotinsky during the 20’s and 30’s to understand the degree of osmosis between the European fascist and colonialist model and the nascent zionist model as a colonial projection, Jabotinsky’s mistrust of democracy, his love for militarism, and his disdain for the “other.” It is true that Zionism does not exist in a bubble; it existed, and continues to exist, as a form of outpost for British and later U.S imperialism in the region. But it is also true that Zionism, as an ideological model, is now the most visible outpost of the imperial tradition, and its own internal logic wishes to be replicated in other reactionary models throughout the world.
This project would continue not only borrowing from fascist and reactionary circles but abetting those who once stood at the vanguard of reactionary movements and political projects everywhere. Zionism provided technical and military training in a myriad of Latin American juntas and military dictatorships in places like Stroessner’s Paraguay, Pinochet’s Chile, and Videla’s Argentina. In the case of Paraguay, where Stroessner was a known Nazi sympathizer, Mossad reached an agreement with the fascist dictatorship where 60,000 Palestinians would be resettled in Paraguay, continuing the ethnic cleansing campaign that Zionism promised and that had started in 1947. In many of these places, elements of the opposition were Jewish scholars and intellectuals; Zionism did not care for their disappearance and torture, similar to its stance in the past. While the Russian Jewish population was murdered by the thousands in the pogroms of the early 20th century, members of the World Zionist Organization were courting tsarist officials to support the Zionist project, goading their antisemitism.
Zionism also provided scientific know-how to apartheid South Africa in their development and creation of nuclear weapons, while apartheid South Africa provided them with the uranium they needed to continue the race towards catastrophe, a marriage built on oppression and apartheid.
Zionism existed as an abettor of the international reactionary movement, despite the latter’s virulent antisemitism; in them, they saw a potential ally against democratic and leftist forces that demanded the end of the occupation. For Zionism, there was no contradiction between antisemitism and Zionist goals.
Zionism as an edifice is not a centralized monolith. It goes from the secular to the liberal to the religious, yet it is all built on the same foundation that holds all these different variants together: the construction of an ethno-religious state.
The alluring elements of Zionism to the more modern right-wing parties lie in the very same notions that attracted them to the previous fascist models, only now through the guise and viability of a political model that seems sustainable to the West.
Zionism has been, for many years, fostering alliances with not only fascist states but also global reactionary ideological movements, aligning itself with evangelicals and Christian nationalists from all over the world and advancing Islamophobia as a viable state project. The neo-fascist or post fascist movements cannot so openly reclaim their European fascist identity. Through media training and public relations campaigns, they have learned that to evoke the old fascist movements would only mean defeat in the ballot box, but they see in Zionism an alternative in speech and language while maintaining the central tenets of reactionary politics within their discourse. Many of these reactionary European parties, like the National Rally in France or Vox in Spain, have seen the 2018 Nation State law in Israel and have recognized a model to reproduce. Some of these parties in the past peddled antisemitic conspiracies and holocaust denialism, yet today call Israel their greatest ally. Zionism for them is no longer a “Jewish” project, but an ethno-nationalist one, shrouded in the rhetoric of the defense of Western civilization against the invading barbaric Islamist hordes, while at the same time playing on their own antisemitic fears, wishing their Jewish population would leave for Israel. For them, there is no contradiction. They invoke Israel as a symbol of European resistance against Muslim immigration and what they perceive as the threat of Islamization. In this context, Israel is often seen not just as a Jewish state, but as a “fortress” that aligns with their own anti-immigrant, Islamophobic rhetoric.
Those who masquerade their Islamophobia and fascism under the guise of nationalism applaud Israel as a model. In India, the Modi government has engaged in the demolition of thousands of houses in Muslim neighborhoods, seeing what Israel has engaged in for decades in the West Bank, not only as a framework but as proof that the international community is unable (in all honesty, unwilling) to stop such abuses. Since October 7, a litany of right-wing parties have shown their support to Israel so far as claiming that “Israel is the West in an environment that rejects and fights the West. When we stand with Israel, we are also defending our way of life,” as Alexander Gauland, honorary AFD chairman, has stated. On February 8 this year, an event was organized in a fancy hotel in Madrid where some of the biggest names in the European right wing were present. Abascal, Salvini, Orban, Le Pen, all were shouting at the top of their lungs against the Islamic infiltration of Europe, and of the need for a new reconquista. The Likud was, of course, welcomed as an international observer to this reactionary get-together.
In a recent interview on Democracy Now! Adam Shatz elucidated on this right-wing attraction to Israel and to the Zionist political model.
“I think what we also have to emphasize is that there is a deep attraction on the part of far-right leaders and movements to Israel as a state, because Israel is an ethnonational state based on racial exclusion, based on policies of oppression, of dispossession, of apartheid. And for that reason, Israel has a strong appeal to these right-wing organizations — right? — and leaders, who love deportations, who love building walls. Israel is seen as a kind of model”.
The Nakba has gone global, like Starbucks, Amazon, or Carrefour.
Zionism had to be a form of parasitic entity to the more established reactionary forces around the world. From colonialism to fascism, it fed on their blood and support, it learned from their genocidal accomplishments and their mistakes. It was happy when being the tool of global imperialism, a technical facilitator of weapons and training to the spears of colonial and reactionary powers in Latin America, Africa, or Asia, the knave the great powers called when they did not want to get their hands dirty. Now it has grown and feeds from its blood new parasites of its own. It is building new relations with the modern right-wing wave and has now become a sponsor of sorts for the legitimacy of these reactionary parties.
Even Trumpism has seen some sort of schism during these times, from “America Firsters” like Tucker Carlson to Zionist apparatchiks like Ben Shapiro and Ted Cruz. When Orban or Salvini, or Cristian keep pushing for their ethnic racial models, it is no longer Trump who they reference, it is Netanyahu, so much so that when Yoram Hazoni (president of the Herzl institute and exponent of National Conservatism) was invited to Hungary last year Orban openly admitted his admiration for the Israeli model of ethno-nationalism and cultural homogeneity.
The continued survival of Zionism has been sustained by the veil of legitimacy provided by Western powers. Where fascism and colonialism had stopped being vogue within the lexicon of power, Zionism proved a model that could carry that legacy of reaction. Only Zionism truly remains, and with years of propaganda, mythologizing, and financial support, it is still portrayed as a legitimate political construction by Western media and their imperial allies.
Zionism is no longer hiding in the shadows, facilitating the global reactionaries with training and support, they find themselves on the front lines of colonial and imperial ambitions. The last attack on Iran (unimaginatively named the 12-day war) and the more recent bombings in Damascus only prove it so. In the past, Zionism would have waited and prod to create the conditions for its continued survival; now it has taken center stage in its blunt, bellicose nature and destruction. Through years of learning, assimilation, and borrowing, Zionism has now taken its rightful place as the vanguard of the right, and all reactionaries must follow.
