Forward: White nationalists are using the Israel-Gaza conflict to spread antisemitism online
By: Integrity First For America News Coverage
By Molly Boigon
Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and election-theft conspiracy theorist, delighted and surprised some of his far-right followers on Twitter Tuesday night with a tweet:
“Palestine isn’t the only country under Israeli occupation,” he wrote, trumpeting a conspiracy theory about Jews controlling governments.
As Israel and Gaza continue to trade rockets across their borders, many, like Fuentes, in the far-right corners of the internet, have seized on the conflict to foment antisemitism, according to groups and individuals who track hateful activity online.
Twitter users praised Fuentes’ tweet as “based,” a far-right term meaning impressive or enlightened, and some replied with antisemitic memes about the number of President Joe Biden’s appointees who are Jewish and antisemitic depictions of Jews emerging from underneath carpets.
It might feel like a contradiction that a man who celebrates the “Trump Revolution in 2016” and called Islam “a barbaric ideology that wanted to come over and kill us” is opposed to American support for Israel.
Not necessarily.
“This isn’t about these white supremacists actually believing in Palestinians’ right to dignity or to a state of their own; it’s using the Palestinians and the conflict as tools to advance their antisemitism and their white supremacy,” said Amy Spitalnick, the head of Integrity First for America, the nonprofit behind a lawsuit targeting the organizers of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, which Fuentes attended.