Strange Bedfellows: Antisemitism and the European Far Right Today

Illiberalism Studies - George Washington University ^ | 2025 | Elisabeth Zerofsky

[CondoleezzaProtege]

In France, the National Front was co-founded in the 1970s by the avowed anti-Semite Jean-Marie Le Pen, along with a former member of the Waffen SS, and a member of the Vichy parapolice.

Jean-Marie’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, took over the party in 2011...During her 2017 presidential campaign, she said that France was not responsible for the July 1942 roundup in which French police arrested and deported approximately thirteen thousand Jews.

“I think, generally speaking,” she said, “if there are people responsible, it’s those who were in power at the time-not France.” ...

By the time snap parliamentary elections were held in France last summer, some 9 months after the October 7 attacks in Israel, Marine Le Pen was arguing that French voters should choose her and her party as a bulwark against what she claimed was rampant antisemitism among both French Muslims and the French left...

As usual, the German case is a little different. After 1990, all of civil society in East Germany, which had previously been run by the socialist state, collapsed. And at this moment, many neo-Nazi groups that had long been taboo (and illegal) in the West moved into the vacuum in the East.

Still, a far-right party could not gain a foothold until the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was founded after the 2010 euro crisis...

As the AfD grew, it became a catchall grievance party and, additionally, a magnet for some who felt that Germany’s Erinnerungskultur, or “culture of remembrance,” distorted German history and prevented appreciation of the great achievements of German culture before and after National Socialism.

At the same time, however, current AfD leader Alice Weidel has said that she accepts the consensus of Germany’s “raison d’état,” which includes the security of Israel...

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TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: afd; antisemitism; europe; eussr; fourthreich; france; germany; holocaust; lepen; notrightwing

[PGR88]

this is Brussels / globalist garbage

Despite the spin of this article - it is not the “right” in Europe that is pro-palestinian, pro-Hamas, open-borders for muslims, allowing attacks on synogogues and schools in Western European cities, etc....

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Just another globalist propagand article pretending conservatives are Nazis.

[HYPOCRACY]

Nazis have always been leftists.

[ek_hornbeck]

I've interacted with quite a few "far right" (i.e. nationalist) Europeans from various countries. Contrary to what the usual hysterics say, their views on Jews and Israel range from complete indifference to some extent of sympathy and support for Israel because of a common enemy in Islam. The older Neo-Nazi generation (e.g. Jean Marie LePen) for whom Jews were an unconditional enemy doesn't dominate the European right today, not least because there are too few Jews in most of Europe for anyone to get worked up about.

That isn't to say that the AfD or Fidesz love Jews or Israel unconditionally like some US Evangelicals, but "don't care" isn't exactly Reinhard Heydrich.

[joshua c]

yes

fascism is a collectivist ideology

the state is primary

[alternatives?]

Most US and European Jews are socialists. Ditto anti-Semitics. That is the strange bedfellows. The left says the right is anti-Semitic. That is not true, they are anti-socialists.

[TheThirdRuffian]

The problem with that thesis is UK Jews are decidedly more conservative than the average Brit voter. Not a monolith block by any means but they sounded rejected Labour last go around.

[Uncle Miltie]

Just another split the conservative movement article.

Just like a paid Soros troll would do.

[vpintheak]

Absolute pant load! Anyone with 1/2 a brain and a sliver of honesty KNOWS tue left is home to hate.