Finchley against Zionists

Wednesday night saw the largest national mobilisation against the far right in years, following the violent, racist riots that have rocked the UK since the horrific murder of three children in Southport last week. Counter-protests were called across country, one of which was in Finchley, a neighbourhood of north London with a large Jewish population. To promote this protest, a group called Finchley Against Fascism (who do not seem to have been the original organisers of the counter-protest, but mobilised people to join it) circulated an online advert under the following slogan:

GET FASCISTS, RACISTS, NAZIS, ZIONISTS & ISLAMOPHOBES OUT OF FINCHLEY!

It’s a chilling message, given the number of Jews living in Finchley who would consider themselves Zionists, and soured things for many who wanted to support the counter-protest. Whether the person who came up with that slogan had any idea what it would mean to Jews in Finchley is unknown. But the idea that Zionists would naturally be on the side of the far right in the great division of protest in Britain over the past week is a sign of just how far parts of the anti-racist movement have lost touch with what the average British Jew thinks about Israel, or what they think of racist thugs that torch refugee hotels. It’s a consequence, in part, of months of anti-Israel marches, meetings and social media narratives portraying Israel as genocidal and Zionism as akin to fascism; and it is feeding a conspiratorial explanation of why these riots are happening at all.

The racist riots targeting mosques, asylum seekers and immigrants in general have swept across the country with alarming speed and apparent lack of central organisation, leaving many people grasping for explanations. At times of social unrest and division some people will always find a way to blame Jews, and David Miller, unsurprisingly, was quick out of the blocks. He claimed that the riots were “an Israel-sponsored anti-Muslim pogrom”, a “flexing of Zionist muscle” in which the rioters were mere patsies, to punish the UK for adopting a more critical position towards Israel since the General Election:

Claiming that Israel has directly orchestrated the riots might seem insane, but Miller is not the only person to give it credence. “Israel Is Attacking the UK” is the title of a video from British Muslim TV that has been shared widely on WhatsApp this week (don’t be fooled by the low number of Twitter views: WhatsApp is where these videos get their audience). CAGE International suggested that “Friends of Israel lobbies” have incited “civil disorder” to justify a power grab. “This is not organic”, wrote Matt Kennard of Declassified UK; “Follow the money. Who funds Tommy Robinson?” For the Islamic Human Rights Commission, it’s “Zionist financiers abroad” who are to blame. A viral video from a former member of the now-banned Hizb ut-Tahrir that was ostensibly a call for coexistence between Muslims and Christians, claimed that the riots are happening because Tommy Robinson’s “Zionist Backers” have got “a certain agenda”.

The theory is based on the fact that Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the now-defunct English Defence League who has been using Twitter/X to encourage the riots, says he supports Israel and in the past received funding from right wing, north American pro-Israel sources who should know better (he has also been roundly and repeatedly condemned by the UK Jewish leadership, all of whom are Zionists, and shunned by the wider community). Even if Robinson’s affection for Israel is genuine - which I doubt - neither Miller nor anyone else has produced any evidence that Israel has any connection at all to these protests. No smoking gun emails instructing racists in Southport to attack their local mosque; no clandestine meetings where shady Mossad agents give the rank and file of British fascism their secret orders. No evidence has been produced because none exists; but from such thin gruel a conspiracy theory is made. It’s the hidden hand of Zion, yet again pulling everyone’s strings.

As the online advert from Finchley indicates, this improbable conspiracy theory has found a home within parts of Britain’s anti-fascist movement. Anas Altikriti, co-founder of the recent Muslim Vote campaign in the General Election, made exactly this argument in his speech at the protest in Harrow on Wednesday:

“Tommy Robinson and those who finance him and those who have planned this… these are organisations, capitalists, individuals, corporations that are directly linked to the Zionist state of Israel. (Cheers). This is their payback for Gaza. This is the payback for our demonstrations, for our stands, for our solidarity, for our opposition to the genocide. This is how they threaten to pay us back. This is their retribution.”

Altikriti doesn’t just say that the riots serve Israel’s interests, or that Robinson and Zionists are ideological bedfellows - he claims that Zionist capitalists, corporations and individuals have planned the riots from the beginning, as revenge for all the pro-Palestine demonstrations since October 7.

As I said, it’s insane. So insane, in fact, that American white nationalist Nicholas Fuentes came up with exactly the same theory, and he is definitely an antisemite. Hopefully most people on these counter-protests don’t go along with this, and it is notable and welcome that the organisers of the Finchley demo distanced themselves from it. Still, it shows how far some parts of the British anti-fascist movement have become detached from its mythological heritage of Cable St and the great anti-racist mobilisations of the 1970s. Anyone claiming at Cable St that Mosley’s Blackshirts were puppets of Zionist manipulators would have been run out of town. Today you get applause and a speaking slot.

On the other side of the barriers stand a far right that has a different conspiracy theory blaming Jews over this same issue. In their case it is the Great Replacement Theory, which accuses Jews of engineering mass immigration into western societies to undermine, dilute and ultimately destroy the white race. This belief is very widespread, found in diluted measures in mainstream right wing politics as well as its more extreme and overtly antisemitic version, and it can be lethal. This was the fantastical notion that motivated Robert Bowers to murder eleven Jews at prayer in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. The far right riots may not have targeted Jewish buildings or people (yet), but the online forums where they are planned are riddled with antisemitism.

Antisemitism might seem weird and stupid but it can sometimes also be appealing and useful. If Britain feels like it is tearing itself apart, with far right mobs attacking mosques and groups of young Muslims gathering to fight back, there’s an obvious utility in telling both sides to stop hating each other because it’s really the Jews who are to blame for everything. And framing these conspiracy myths as being about “Zionists” rather than Jews doesn’t remove the conspiratorial element. It just updates it to be as contemporary and relevant as possible, which is what antisemitism has always done.

Beyond the conspiracy theories, this also reflects the way that Jews in the past, and by extension Israel and Palestine today, are symbols of much broader political positions. A lot of the anti-fascist protests have featured Palestinian flags and chants of “Free Palestine”. The chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” was heard in Finchley, even though a lot of Jews consider it to be an antisemitic call for Israel to disappear. In Birmingham, when a gang of sinister, masked men threatened a Sky News journalist and slashed the tyres of her van, they kept shouting “Free Palestine” at the camera. It’s as if fighting fascism in Britain is the same as campaigning for Palestine, and a whole host of other issues as well, all merged together in one single stance against oppression. In late 19th/early 20th century German politics, ‘antisemitism’ and ‘philosemitism’ were labels used to denote entire political camps straddling a range of policy areas and positions, many of which had nothing to do with Jews. Perhaps something similar is happening with Zionist/anti-Zionist in British politics today.

I’ve written before about the symbolic power that Jews and Israel have in our world, and this is another example of it. None of the issues that led to the far right riots or the anti-fascist response have anything to do with Israel or with Jews. Nevertheless, both sides struggle to keep Israel and Palestine out of their discourse, and “Zionist” and “Free Palestine” are labels that have come to mean a whole set of things that have nothing to do with Zionism or Palestine. It is as if what they are arguing over doesn’t seem so important unless it can be linked to the great symbolic cause that overshadows all.