Same wine, different bottles

London, 1962: the National Socialist Movement, a bunch of Nazi wannabes and Hitler worshippers, held a rally in Trafalgar Square under the slogan “FREE BRITAIN FROM JEWISH CONTROL.”

Leeds, 2025: a ‘Northerners Demo For Palestine’ in Leeds, organised and promoted by Yorkshire Palestine Collective, Leeds Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others, features a speech by a UK-based Palestinian-Jordanian doctor, Rahmeh Aladwan, that talks about holding Jewish communities in Britain to account for what is happening in Gaza; and when the video of her speech was posted on X, Aladwan replied with the slogan: “FREE BRITAIN FROM JEWISH SUPREMACY.”

It’s almost identical language, 63 years apart, one from neo-Nazis and the other from an anti-Zionist. The meaning is clear: Britain is unfree because it is dominated by the Jews. It’s hard to think of a simpler example of antisemitism than this.

This is the central claim of all modern antisemitism, from the Rothschilds conspiracy theories of the 19th century, through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, up to the modern day. It even has its own acronym, ZOG, standing for Zionist Occupied Government. This was popularised on the American far right in the 1990s and spread to all corners of the conspiracy multiverse. According to a 2010 study by Demos of over fifty extremist movements, covering far right, far left, religious extremists, eco groups and cults, “The most commonly held conspiracy theory was variants on ZOG, the belief that Jews secretly control major world governments.”

In other words, this kind of thing, seen on a banner outside court during a hearing for Palestine Action members:

The use of “Zionist” as a euphemism for “Jewish” in this conspiracy theory is very familiar, and has been around for longer than you might think. Early promoters of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the bible of modern antisemitism, claimed that the meetings of these fictional Elders of Zion happened on the sidelines of the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897 - making the Zionist movement a supposed front from the global Jewish conspiracy from the start. There’s a reason why the Hamas Charter quotes from the Protocols and claims that the Zionist movement was behind the French Revolution, even though modern Zionism did not take shape until a century after the fall of the Bastille. This conspiracist antisemitism might dress up as anti-Zionism but it’s the same old hatred in new clothes.

Except now, people are increasingly willing to say openly that it is Jews, not Zionists, who are the problem. In her speech in Leeds, Aladwan said that “Western governments” are “occupied by Zionism, which is Jewish supremacy, OK, that’s the definition of Zionism.”

The next day, CAGE International tweeted: “The DeZionization of British society is now an urgent priority. The genocide has exposed jewish supremacist led destruction of the most basic human values that even German Nazis were too ashamed to publicise.”

The most excitable advocate of this new approach in Britain today is David Miller, who is obsessed with the idea that every part of British society - and indeed, much of the world - is under the spell of Jewish supremacy. “Europe is already occupied by both this ideology and the financial networks that underpin it”, he wrote in October 2024”, warning: “the entryist, subversion and surveillance networks that allow for complete Jewish supremacist dominance over our politics in Europe and the US … must be destroyed.”

The danger of this is obvious. Aladwan’s speech in Leeds moved seamlessly from naming “Jewish supremacy” as the problem, to a call for people to “hold their Jewish communities accountable”, with synagogues and schools singled out. Miller has done this for years, smearing Jewish community institutions, synagogues, schools, charities, youth movements and even interfaith initiatives as genocidal racists, and it seems like others are following suit. This is the pathway for anti-Israel rhetoric to divert towards local Jewish communities, at a time when antisemitic hate crimes are at unacceptably high levels. It’s irresponsible, to say the least.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are now seeing the influence of Miller’s thinking on the wider pro-Palestinian movement. He has fallen out with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, after PSC’s chair Ben Jamal recently labelled Miller an antisemite and a racist (in response, Miller said that PSC has been “infiltrated by Zionists”). PSC has even sent an anti-Miller briefing to its branches to try to stop them giving him a platform; but it isn’t hard to see where the direction of travel, the energy and edginess, lies in that movement. As for PSC, given their reluctance to stop people with antisemitic placards and chants from attending their marches and meetings, it’s a case of too little, too late.

Asking why this new fashion for attacking “Jewish supremacy” appeals to anti-Zionists might be like asking why the Pope is a Catholic. As the Holocaust survivor Jean Améry wrote, “anti-Zionism contains antisemitism like a cloud contains a storm.” But it’s still worth considering. After all, it is perfectly possible to support Palestinian rights in ways that aren’t antisemitic, even if so many people find it beyond them.

Perhaps this is simply a consequence of how long the war in Israel and Gaza has gone on, with its endless images of suffering and stories of painful loss. Feelings of powerlessness lend themselves to conspiracist explanations, and there are plenty of people willing to whisper that if only the government or the BBC hadn’t sold out for a pile of shekels, this would all be over.

There’s probably also some seepage from the latest fashion in anti-racist language. As the Black Lives Matter movement taught people to see inequality and oppression as a consequence of white supremacism, it isn’t much of a leap to then view Gaza as a problem of Jewish supremacism - and from there, to use the same framing to focus on Jews anywhere. The fact that, for several decades previously, this phrase was most associated with former Klan leader David Duke - he even titled one of his books “Jewish supremacism : my awakening on the Jewish question” - only adds a darkly ironic twist.

It all comes back to the difference between being anti-Zionist and being pro-Palestinian. Are you motivated by concern for Palestinian suffering and a genuine wish to see Palestinian national rights fulfilled, or do you enjoy seeing Jewish national identity trashed and dream of the world’s only Jewish state being eradicated? Is it compassion for Palestinians or hostility to Jews that shapes your thinking? “Our cause is not to establish a Palestinian state, but to dismantle Israel,” David Miller tweeted in August 2023. Only someone who believes Jewish power is a fearsome and malevolent force standing in the way of humanity’s progress would say this.

Back in 2003, John Tyndall, at that time the leader of the British National Party and Britain’s leading neo-Nazi, defined “Zionist” as:

“One who regards the Jewish race as God’s ‘chosen people’, destined to prevail above all other racial and religious groups. He/she is always primarily the servant of Jewish interests whatever his/her role in the host society, but will naturally conceal this order of priorities as a matter of expediency”.

As for ZOG, Tyndall wrote, "this “can be held to exist wherever Jews occupy senior positions in a political establishment in large numbers and wield considerable power.”

Tyndall was writing in Spearhead, the house journal of the BNP, which had a tiny readership made up of the (not very large) intellectual wing of the British far right and the diligent anti-fascists who kept tabs on them. Tyndall didn’t live to see it, but he would be delighted to know that large swathes of the anti-Israel movement, supposedly on the left and anti-racist to their core, now share his definition of Zionism and the anti-Jewish conspiracy beliefs that underpin it.