Why Jews join the German far right – Haaretz

When Germans went to the polls last week, voters in Berlin faced an unusual candidate on their ballot sheet: A Jewish, gay ex-IDF soldier.

However, Marcel Goldhammer was not running for any of the mainstream center-right or center-left parties between whom power traditionally fluctuates in Germany, or even for the insurgent Greens: the kippah-wearing contender belonged to the radical right, fiercely xenophobic Alternative for Germany.

Emerging out of a wider climate of Euroscepticism in 2013, the AfD soon radicalized and, tapping an anti-immigrant wave, became the strongest opposition party following the 2017 elections, with the third largest bloc in the Bundestag. Last weeks Federal election saw AfDs support slip in western Germany, but it was able to win around a quarter of votes in parts of the formerly Communist east.

The AfD is largely ostracized by mainstream politicians, and has been consistently opposed by the organized Germany Jewish community. Its extremism led the countrys domestic intelligence service to place it under surveillance earlier this year, on suspicion of trying to undermine Germany's democratic constitution, a move that was later suspended before the recent elections.

So why would Marcel Goldhammer find a political home there?

The AfD is part of an emerging trend across Europe of radical right parties which declare that their anti-Muslim and anti-migrant stances actually benefit Jews by combatting the antisemitism that, they claim, has risen in tandem with the Islamist invasion of the continent.

Thus the radical right which, at least in the case of Germany and Austria, has won endorsements from neo-Nazi elements for its commitment to nationalism and xenophobia, proclaims it is protecting Jews. In Goldhammers words: "Only the policies of the AfD protect Jewish life in Germany."

The AfD have tried to institutionalize this claim by formally welcoming Jews into the party. It launched a Jewish branch in October 2018. The attendees, though, were outnumbered 20 to one by a counter-rally held by an unprecedentedly unified German Jewish community, led by the Jewish Student Union of Germany.

The communitys representative body, the Central Council of Jews in Germany, declared, that, "The AfD is not a party for JewsThe AfD is a party in which hatred of the Jews and the denial of the Holocaust have a home. The AfD is antidemocratic, inhumane and, in many parts, right-wing extremist."

However, the Jews in the AfD branch soon found success, with the election of Dimitri Schulz to the Hesse state parliament. Despite wearing a kippah during a trip by German parliamentarians to Israel, Israeli government officials refused to meet with him, abiding by its boycott of the party.

The then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus son, Yair, didnt consider the boycott binding when he engaged warmly with a leading AfD legislator on Twitter, echoing AfD language by calling for Europe to be rid of the "evil, globalist" EU and return to being "free, democratic and Christian."

Goldhammer is the latest in this string of Jewish AfD candidates, a fervent right-winger who pushes his Jewish identity for maximum shock value and effect.

His kippah and Hebrew phrases are given prominent positioning on his election-posters, a transparent attempt to present AfD as a Jew-friendly party, while he burnishes his rightist credentials by backing Donald Trump, Orbn's Hungary, alt-right media favorite Breitbart News, and appearing on YouTube with German far right conspiracy theorist Oliver Flesch.

During the campaign, Goldhammer tweaked the AfD's election slogan, "Germany. But normal" to "Jews. But normal," attempting to position himself as therealrepresentative of the Jewish community. That was an attempt to grandstand an unusual pre-election public statement by 60 Jewish representative organizations against the AfD who declared they were united in their "conviction that the AfD is a danger to our country."

Goldhammer responded aggressively, deriding the AfD's Jewish opponents as "government-funded 'professional Jews,'" language some consider resonant of antisemitic conspiracy theories as well as an accusation of self-serving betrayal.

Goldhammer did not win enough votes to sit in the Bundestag. However, his candidacy is symbolic of attempts by the AfD, and other radical right parties, to instrumentalize Jewish identity and lived experiences to their advantage.

And there is another instrumentalizing dynamic the radical right uses in relation to the Jewish community: the issue of Israel. Goldhammer himself claimed the AfD would "stand by Israel" and that he himself had "defended Jews [by serving] in the IDF."

Over-emphasis of support for the Israeli state is utilized to deflect accusations of racism. In the same way, Brazils hard right President Jair Bolsonaro waves the Israeli flag at his rallies (and is intensifying his relationship with the AfD); UK anti-Muslimagitator Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, attended a pro-Israel rally during this summers Israel-Hamas conflict, using the same tactic to present as philosemitic.

Pro-Israel radical right sentiment is based on an essentialized conception of Israel as the resolute last frontier of Europe against a perceived homogenous, hostile, violent, repressive Muslim and Arab world. This fragile friendship likely rests on support for right-wing Israeli administrations and their policy agendas and does not represent an endorsement of Jewish self-determination across the breadth of Zionist expression.

For Jews in the AfD like Goldhammer, the adoption of this view represents a reprioritization of different elements of their Jewish identity where pro-Israel collective identities overpower others. Its a process that sociologist David Snow calls identity salience hierarchy.

One cause of a new Jewish-far right partnership is the deliberate misrepresentation of the sources of antisemitism, attempting to marry anti-antisemitism with Islamophobia.

Clearly the issue of antisemitism is problem for Jews enamored of the far right, and so a solution is found: To declare that todays antisemites are exclusively Muslims. That requires a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts (antisemitism is present across the political spectrum) but also an ideological commitment to marrying the fight against antisemitism with Islamophobia.

Not only that, Jews are extremely useful for the far right as unimpeachable talking heads who can openly blame Muslims for bigotry, thus justifying a wider hostility towards and exclusion of Muslims as party policy. The open letter signed by German Jewish community institutions correctly identified that, "In the AfD's program, Jews serve solely to express the party's anti-Muslim resentment," whereby Jews who express liberal or anti-racist values are cast aside or condemned as illegitimate.

This stems from a fundamental reimagining of Jewishness, where Jews are perceived to be a pro-Israel, white, anti-Muslim, assimilated, right-wing monolith and can thus be welcomed as members of their perceived "in-group."

That goes hand-in-hand with the construction of a European "Judeo-Christian" culture to explicitly exclude Muslims and migrants, ignoring the existence of non-European or immigrant Jews, negating the centuries of antisemitism perpetrated by the Church.

The radical right does not like Jews for what theyare; they like Jews for their idea of who theywantthem to be.

While Jews in the AfD remain a small fringe group, and Goldhammer ultimately was unsuccessful, the ways in which Jewish causes have been instrumentalized in a national election, and the fielding of a Jewish radical right candidate for the Bundestag, highlight the potential salience of their narratives on a national scale.

If hed succeeded, Goldhammer could have been the only Jewish lawmaker in the Bundestag, thereby claiming to "represent Jews" at the highest levels of German democracy.

A pro-Israel candidate may be attractive to some Jewish voters, but it is vital that communities understand how Jewish issues are being misrepresented and abused to promote insidious anti-Muslim and anti-democratic values.

The far-right in Germany has changed; they no longer look like they did in the 1940s, or even the 1990s. The stereotype of skinheads, brown uniforms and steel-toed boots are few and far between, and while swastikas and Hitler salutes are still practised by overtly neo-Nazi groups they are no longer the rallying cries of parliamentary racists and fascists.

Todays radical right plays a highly stylized, carefully constructed PR game, casting out unfashionably explicit antisemitism in favor of more widely-accepted Islamophobia.

However, antisemitism continues to pervade the AfD and similar parties, evidenced in the employment of "Great Replacement" conspiracy theories, the idea that a cabal of powerful Jewish influencers and funders are masterminding a non-white, non-Christian demographic invasion of Europe, in which anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish narratives are united.

The Jewish community cannot be fooled into thinking that these people are allies or merely politically incorrect friends that Jewish communities can politely ignore.

The future of Muslim, and Jewish, life in Europe, rests on robust, principled and astute opposition to the demagoguery and incitement of the far right, whether the perpetrators are neo-Nazi street gangs, political leaders, or even members of our own community.

Ruben Gerczikow is a Jewish reporter and columnist based in Germany, researching far-right extremism, antisemitism and conspiracy ideologies, including the past years anti-vaxxer protests in Berlin. Twitter:@RubenGerczi

Hannah Rose is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College London, where she is pursuing her PhD on far-right extremism and antisemitism. She is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Freedom of Faith and Security in Europe. Twitter: @hannah1_rose

Go here to read the rest:
Why Jews join the German far right - Haaretz