Who hates the Jews now?

Spectator, The, Nov 29, 2003 by Strauss, Mark

Like the anti-globalist Left, far-Right activists have also embraced their own form of anticolonialism. For them, globalisation is synonymous with 'mongrelisation', an attempt to mix races and cultures and destroy unique heritages. When the Birkenstock crowd preaches the virtues of 'localisation', a hearty amen echoes among the brownshirts, who seek to insulate their countries against the twin evils of human migration and foreign capital. The far Right sees nationalist movements and indigenous rights groups as allies in the assault against the multiculturalism of the new world order. And it sees the Palestinians, in particular, as a resistance movement against the modern-day Elders of Zion.

In his OIC speech, Mahathir claimed that Jews invented socialism so that they could enjoy equal rights with others. But Mahathir and others like him have merely reinvented an age-old canard that blames Jews for the ills of capitalism. A century ago, the German sociologist August Bebel had a name for it: the socialism of fools.

Mark Strauss is a senior editor at Foreign Policy magazine, where a longer version of this article appears in the November/ December 2003 issue.