Paul Gottfried

January 19, 2009

Contrary to the impression that may have come from my discussion of Ilana Mercer?s comments about the American Old Right and the European nationalist Right on the question of Israel and Hamas, there are in fact rightist groups in Western Europe which stand emphatically with the Palestinians in Gaza. A breakaway faction of the Front National, R?sistants au nouvel ordre mondial, a group that has a widely frequented website, is now joining the pro-Muslim Left in a ?manif de solidarit?? for the Palestinian people against their Israeli oppressors. I would also be profoundly surprised if the anti-American father of the European New Right, Alain de Benoist, were not where he and his followers have always been on Middle Eastern politics, that is, on the side of the anti-American Palestinians.

The difference that can be seen in the American and European Rights in their relation with Israel is often one of degree rather than of kind. European rightists are less peeved by Jewish anti-Christian and anti-Western organizations than are their American counterparts. The reasons, as I explained yesterday, are the shared Muslim enemy of European nationalists and Israelis and the protracted war between the American Right and the neocons. But there are certainly prominent European rightist and rightist organizations that sound exactly like Taki and Pat Buchanan on the current war in Gaza.