Tag: Far-right politics

NEW YORK (JTA) — An American Orthodox Jewish group is defending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to work with a far-right political party. It is the first statement by a major American Jewish organization defending Netanyahu’s decision. Last week, Netanyahu orchestrated an agreement between the extremist Jewish Power and Jewish Home, a religious Zionist party. “We understand what Prime Minister Netanyahu did, and he did it to have ministers of the national religious and national union parties in his coalition.” The statement stands in contrast to an alphabet soup of major Jewish groups that have condemned Jewish Power — from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to the American Jewish Committee to the Anti-Defamation League. “You have to take into consideration all of the ramifications and all of the concerns.” With Netanyahu’s intervention, Jewish Home agreed to include on its slate in April’s elections Michael Ben-Ari and Itamar Ben-Gvir, self-professed followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the expulsion of the Palestinians from territories controlled by Israel and a near theocratic state of the Jews. Netanyahu would need the support of successful right-wing parties in addition to his own Likud to form a government. The Young Israel statement likened Netanyahu’s decision to the 1993 vote on the so-called Oslo II accords, when a left-wing government relied on votes from Arab-Israeli political parties to secure passage of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. That argument echoes one made Saturday by Netanyahu himself on Twitter. The ZOA statement did not discuss the actual positions of Jewish Power, except to say at one point that its critics were engaging in “Nazi-name-calling against Jewish candidates.” “It is also mystifying that these Jewish-American groups condemned Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for encouraging small right-wing Israeli parties to merge, so that Israeli voters on the right are not disenfranchised,” the ZOA statement reads, telling other American Jewish groups to “direct their condemnation to those who oppose the State of Israel, and are truly racist and reprehensible, and a danger to the Jewish people and the Jewish State.” The Young Israel statement also contrasts with statements condemning Jewish Power from the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements. RCA responded that it doesn’t comment on Israeli politics.

On Sunday afternoon, members of a far-right group led by a Republican Senate candidate engaged in running brawls with leftist counter-protesters in the streets of downtown Portland. One rightwing protester was dragged away by police with a bloodied nose and face. Over almost three hours, Patriot Prayer staged a series of marches through surrounding streets. Each time, antifascists pursued them and fights broke out on sidewalks, in a parking garage and in a waterfront park. Participants on both sides were knocked to the ground, hit with missiles and visibly incapacitated by pepper spray. The rally was ostensibly staged as a farewell for a prominent Patriot Prayer member, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, who says he is returning to his native Samoa. Police deployed a range of tactics. The event took place a day before the first anniversary of a much larger Patriot Prayer event that featured many celebrities from the “alt-right” movement and drew thousands of counter-protesters. It was staged just over a week after a double murder on a Portland commuter train police say was carried out by Jeremy Christian, a man who had attended a Patriot Prayer event. On Sunday, along with several members of the “Proud Boys” group, the Patriot Prayer event attracted members of the far right “Hell Shaking Street Preachers”, whose banners and T-shirts carry homophobic slogans.

Far-right political groupings are a constant feature on the fringes of Australian politics. In the 1950s and 1960s, they included the League of Rights and minuscule neo-Nazi parties. In the 1980s, there was National Action, the Australian Nationalist Movement, Australians Against Further Immigration and the Citizens Electoral Council. The 1997 book The Truth, issued in Pauline Hanson’s name by a group of her followers, revealed “the internationalist elite of The New World Order” that was plotting the destruction of Anglo-Saxon Australia through “immigrationism, multiculturalism, Asianisation and Aboriginalism”. In contemporary Australia, far-right movements focus on Islam. Hostility to immigration The distinctive mindset that characterises supporters of minor political parties of the right is evident in public opinion surveys, but findings on members of fringe political groupings are less reliable because their numbers in national surveys are very small. When asked for their view of the level of immigration, 86% of One Nation supporters indicated that the intake was too high, compared with just of 37% of the national sample. Heightened concern over immigration links to nationalist values. An overwhelming 92% of One Nation voters strongly agree that “in the modern world, maintaining the Australian way of life is important.” Expanding reach While there is consistency over time in far-right values, in one respect there has been change. The emphasis on the perceived threat of Islam has been a crystallising issue for the far-right in recent years, helping it to grab headlines and recruit followers.