How sincere is the conversion to philosemitism and pro-Israelism of the populist, radical and extreme right in Europe and America?

At the inauguration ceremony of the new president of Argentina, Javier Milei, one of the guests was the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to whom the new Argentine head of state gifted an eight-branched Menorah – Hanukiah – on the occasion of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. President Zelensky is the son of Jewish parents although he is not a practitioner of Judaism.

‘It is no coincidence that this inauguration is taking place during the Hanukkah festival, the festival of lights, and that it celebrates the true essence of freedom,’ President Milei said in his speech on the steps of the parliament building in Buenos Aires. ‘The Maccabean War is a symbol of the victory of the weak over the strong, the few over the many, light over darkness and, in general, truth over falsehood.’

President Milei, a self-declared anarcho-capitalist, economic neo-liberal, and right-wing radical, is of the Catholic faith, but is extremely interested in Judaism. His speech was in line with Milei’s unusual relationship with Judaism. The non-Jewish economist studied with an Argentine Rabbi and has expressed interest in converting, although he says he does not believe the role of president is compatible with practicing Judaism. He visited the grave of the Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi in New York on his first foreign trip after being elected and pledged to make Israel – where he promised to move the Argentine embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – his first foreign destination as president, writes the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).

The new Argentine leader is not the only American right-wing politician declared philo-semitic and pro-Israeli. Former United States President Donald Trump was an unwavering ally of Israel during his term (2017 – 2021) and moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Former President of Brazil (2018 – 2022), Jair Bolsonaro, another right-wing radical like his neighbor in Argentina, was also a strong supporter of Israel during his term, promising like Trump and Milei to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He did not manage to fulfill this promise and after his defeat in the 2022 presidential election and the election of leftist Ignacio “Lula” da Silva, relations between Brazil and Israel have become frosty, amid the new Brasilia administration’s support for the Palestinian cause.

Similar philo-semitic and pro-Israeli positions are held by most right-wing leaders in both Americas. In Europe, we encounter the same friendly attitude of populist, radical, and extreme right-wing leaders.

Italy’s most prominent leader, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who leads a party that has its origins in Benito Mussolini’s fascist movement, expressed solidarity with Israel after the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October and severely criticised anti-Semitic demonstrations in Italy afterwards.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally (RN, populist right), the main opposition party leading in opinion polls for next year’s European parliamentary elections, has long since renounced the open and persistent anti-Semitism of her father Jean Marie Le Pen, the former leader of the National Front (the RN’s predecessor), and has taken a firm stand in support of Israel. Recently, Le Pen and the RN took part in a protest march against anti-Semitism in Paris, a gesture criticised by some in the political establishment given the party’s track record, but welcomed among others by Nazi-hunter and Jean Marie Le Pen’s great opponent Serge Klarsfeld (born in Bucharest in 1935).

Further to its right, the Recoucerire party is led by a Jew, Eric Zemmour, convicted several times in court for inciting hatred against Muslims.

In the Netherlands, the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), led by the outspoken Islamophobe Geert Wilders, came out on top in the recent parliamentary elections and is very friendly to Israel, even promising to move its embassy to Jerusalem if it comes to power.

The examples could go on, with most parties of the populist, radical or extreme right declaring themselves pro-Israel and to a lesser extent Jewish-friendly (more on that later).

But first an explanation of this pro-Israel and pro-Semitic stance by parties with troubled, sometimes downright fascist and anti-Semitic backgrounds. How sincere is this conversion?

In the case of leaders like Argentina’s Javier Milei, there is an affinity with Judaism. Other leaders even have family ties: former President Donald Trump’s daughter is married to a Jew and converted to Judaism, and as such the former president’s grandchildren are Jewish. Geert Wilders is married to a Jewish woman from Hungary.

But with most of these politicians, the turn towards philosemitism and especially pro-Israelism has been driven by political considerations and sometimes mirrored the left’s evolution towards a rapprochement with Muslims and more recently the Palestinian cause with Israelophobic and antisemitic overtones.

Trump, Meloni and her right-wing allies, Le Pen, Wilders, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, leaders of the right in the Iberian Peninsula and Scandinavia, and others have been and are vocal opponents of immigration from other continents, which in Europe largely overlaps with the Muslim religion.

In this context, Jews, but especially Israel, have become the friends of the Euro-Atlantic right on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Now I return to the exceptions to the trend, and the most notable is the far-right party in the largest country of the European Union, Alternative for Germany (AfD), currently rising to 22 – 23% in opinion polls for next year’s European Parliament elections. In this party, there are nostalgias for the Nazi past, sometimes poorly masked, which are accompanied by anti-Semitic positions. It is not surprising, given that AfD is the leading party in the polls in the eastern states, where the former Communist Germany rejected any responsibility for the Holocaust and where, after the collapse of the communist regime in 1990, ideas from the Nazi period (1933 – 1945) reappeared.

Another feature is the sometimes pronounced difference between the philosemitism and pro-Israelism of the leaders of the populist, radical, and extreme right, and the attitude, sometimes completely different, as one descends in the hierarchy.

The Republican Party in the United States is firmly pro-Israel, but many activists from the right wing express contrary views, the most prominent being Marjorie Taylor Greene, a member of the House of Representatives and a fanatical supporter of Trump, who regularly ventilates anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Recently, the anti-Semite George Santos became only the sixth congressman in history to be expelled from the House of Representatives, for reasons including fraud and diversion of electoral funds, among other things lying about a false Jewish origin. In fact, even Trump sometimes speaks out of turn, such as on the most recent Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) when he attacked American Jews who did not vote for him that they ‘want to destroy America and Israel,’ a statement that was labeled anti-Semitic.

The most reliable segment of the Republican Party’s electoral base is constituted by neo-Protestants, who show solid support for Israel. However, they are viewed with suspicion by many Jews, due to their missionary work which, at its limit, represents anti-Semitism through their desire to convert Jews to Christianity.

In Europe, in some populist, radical, and extreme right-wing parties, there is a divergence between the pro-Israel attitude and the attitude towards Jews. This is most clearly evident in Scandinavia where the Swedish Democrats (supporting the center-right coalition) and the Finns (part of the coalition government alongside center-right parties) have been forced to exclude leading members for anti-Semitic statements. In Italy, journalist Marcello de Angelis was forced to resign from a position as head of institutional communication in the Lazio region (led by allies of Prime Minister Meloni) when it was discovered that he authored the lyrics of a song stating that Jews are „a race of merchants.” And the examples can continue.

In the meantime, another factor has emerged, relatively situational: the election in Israel last November of a parliamentary majority that invested a government of the nationalist/extreme/ultra-Orthodox right, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most right-wing in the 75-year history of the modern state.

Netanyahu’s government, deeply unpopular in many European states, has tried to find allies, even in countries where attitudes towards Jews are ambiguous. For example, in Poland, where the Law and Justice Party (PiS) legislated the criminalization of statements regarding Polish collaboration in the Holocaust during the Nazi occupation and opposed the restitution beyond a certain period of Jewish properties looted by Nazis and later by Communists.

Jerusalem has a friendly attitude towards the Hungarian government despite the anti-Semitic overtones of the campaign against the American magnate of Hungarian-Jewish origin, George Soros, a common adversary of Netanyahu and Orban.

This summer, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen ordered Israel’s ambassador to Bucharest to meet with George Simion, leader of the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) party, which is trying, so far unsuccessfully, to be noticed by Europe’s populist/radical/extreme right confederacy.

Shortly before, the AUR leader had managed to embarrass a journalist from Israel Hayom, the newspaper with the largest circulation in Israel, explaining to him, in addition to his great love for the State of Israel, why it is not good for Romania to teach the history of the Jews and the Holocaust. This is in addition to the regular apologetic interventions in the Senate against the Legionary Movement by the party’s intellectuals, Sorin Lavric and Claudiu Târziu. Said and done. After the meeting with Ambassador Reuven Azar, Simion turned around three times and suddenly declared himself in favor of teaching the compulsory subject of Jewish and Holocaust history.

For the time being a growing number of Jews tend to express their support for those parties that declare their support for Israel and condemn anti-Semitism. But other Jews are sceptical and vigilant.

„No matter what a politician might say – he might say he loves Jews and wants to protect Jews – we all know from our history, from our DNA, that we are in danger when there is a far-right, anti-constitutional leader,” says Lievnath Faber, founder of Oy Vey, a progressive Jewish group, quoted by JTA.