Neo-Nazi Groups Are Attempting to Worm Their Way into Rallies Against the War on Gaza

On Saturday, October 28th, neo-Nazis with the “National Justice Party,” attempted to rally alongside a pro-Palestinian demonstration in front of the White House in Washington DC. The National Justice Party (NJP), includes white supremacist grifters such as Mike “Enoch” Peinovich, host of the fascist podcast, The Daily Shoah, a reference to the Holocaust, and Joseph Jordan, aka “Eric Striker,” a former propagandist at The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website which openly attacks all non-whites with racial slurs, the LGBTQ+ community, and praises authoritarians like Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump and Putin. Both took part in organizing the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, with The Daily Stormer calling for “war” in the lead up to the demonstration and declared that the “final stop” after the rally would be “Auschwitz.”

According to antifascist organizer, Daryl Lamont Jenkins on Twitter, “Looks like the Nazis from the National Justice Party are trying to hijack the pro-Palestinian rally at the White House right now. The rally since moved to BLM Plaza and the boneheads are smart enough to keep their distance, but they are still there.” Other posts on social media show other demonstrators calling out the white supremacists and distancing themselves from them.

This is not the first time that neo-Nazis have attempted to embed themselves within left-wing, anti-war protests and rallies. In 2017, Enoch along with Richard Spencer and Pizzagate conspiracy peddler Jack Posobiec, held a DC rally against US strikes on Syria. In 2018, Unite the Right speaker and white supremacist troll Baked Alaska showed up to a left-wing anti-war rally, seemingly in support of the Assad regime, a darling among the fascist Alt-Right.

Neo-Nazi networks such as Patriot Front and the Nationalist Social Club-131 have also used the current situation to push anti-Semitic narratives, all from a faux position of “solidarity” with Palestine.

With much of the right-wing doubling down in support of Israel, those on the fascist far-Right and within white nationalist circles suddenly find themselves on the opposite side of the issue. By and large, fascist and white supremacist groups follow along with the agenda set by Fox News and the mainstream GOP; rallying around whatever culture war talking point is popular at the time. Yet, foundational anti-Semitism at the core of neo-Nazi and white nationalist ideology has driven them to break with this current – at least for the moment.

As in the past, neo-Nazi, Alt-Right, and white nationalist groups are now putting energy into embedding themselves within left-wing demonstrations and calls to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, while attempting to push their anti-Semitic and racist conspiracies, all under the cloak of “solidarity” with Palestinians.

Neo-Nazi and white supremacist Nick Fuentes laid out this fundamental position on his America First stream, stating, “We’re more antisemitic than we are racist…,” meaning that the movement’s hatred of Jews takes precedence over racism against Palestinians. On an earlier stream, Fuentes stated, “I don’t care that much about this conflict….If Israel’s genocide of Gaza is going to rally international support against them, then once again this becomes a situation in which the enemy of our enemy becomes our friend. We have to recognize there is strategic importance…then we have to support these causes, we have to be strategic about it.”

Neo-Nazis and white nationalists do not oppose the racial and State violence at the center of the settler-colonial project of the Israeli state; in fact, many white supremacists look to Israel as a shinning example of a state organized around authoritarian, ethnic lines. In 2017, Richard Spencer stated:

I have also described an ethno-state in a kind of pettier way that calls upon Zionism, and that’s an ethno-state for the future that would be open for all white people. So it would be open for Scotsmen, it would be open for Italians, it would be open for Russians and white Americans. So it would be something similar to Zionism.

Instead, the fascist far-Right simply sees an opportunity to push its conspiratorial anti-Semitism out to a wider population. They have no actual solidarity with the Palestinians; if they gained power they would murder, displace, and imprison millions. White supremacists simply want to use this moment to spread their hatred of Jews through conspiracy theories and disinformation to a larger audience.

We must also be clear that some of the loudest voices on the far-Right “in support” of Israel are also flirting with open anti-Semities and neo-Nazis themselves. Recently, Ron DeSantis, who has worked directly with far-Right figures and whose campaign has hired on outright neo-Nazis, recently attempted to ban a Palestinian student group and declared that all Palestianians were “anti-Semitic,” and thus should be barred from entering into the United States. Pro-Zionist groups like the Anti-Defamation League have attacked anti-Zionist groups led by Jews along with the BDS movement. Meanwhile, even the far-Right Netanyahu government of Israel has made tactical alliances with far-Right parties across the world, while painting resistance to its regime as “anti-Semitic.” Netanyahu also recently met with and praised Elon Musk, who anti-Semites like Andrew Torba of Gab also hold up as a supporter.

Those taking to the streets by the millions, many of them young anti-Zionist Jews, must reject and oppose attempts by the far-Right to enter into the movement to liberate Palestine. We must make clear our opposition to both anti-Semitism and settler-colonialism, two of the pillars of the modern white nationalist movement. Antifascists must also put in the work of educating the wider public about these groups, their symbols, and why no one who is fighting for the freedom of Palestinians should align with white supremacists, fascists, and neo-Nazis.