The Far Right, the Far Left: The Anti-Semitic Connection

What connects actor Javier Bardem with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in their conversations with Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper?

What connects Podemos leader Pablo Fernández with far-right podcaster Candace Owens? And what connects Gustavo Petro with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones?

Or, to put it all together, what connects the ideology of the far right with that of the far left? The blunt answer is unequivocal: they are united by their hatred of Israel. Or, to put it in the terms defined by the IRHA, they are directly united by antisemitism.

Of course, the analysis requires some nuance, but the facts are compelling, given recent events. From the war against Hamas in Gaza to the war against Iran, including the invasion of Ceuta, everything that has been happening—whether Israel’s involvement is real or fictitious—has revealed an unequivocal convergence between the anti-Israel positions of the far-right, now dubbed “the woke right,” and the anti-Israel positions of left-wing wokism.

From white supremacy to revisionist communism, the two ideological poles have found common ground in the same disinformation, the same conspiracy theories, and the same demonizing rhetoric toward the Jewish state. This ideological convergence has been evident for years, though consistently denied by both extremes, and yet fully confirmed by the thousands of examples that support it.

The latest chapter—the influx of more than 100,000 migrants from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta—has been particularly illustrative in this regard.

The most revealing examples unequivocally link these ideological poles, which, from the very first moment of the invasion, subscribed to the Israeli conspiracy theory—with the Mossad as the architect of the Ceuta crisis—despite the fact that there was not the slightest evidence to support it.

This was confirmed by the Barcelona Center for International Affairs (CIDOB) and the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, which categorically denied any connection, but this did not prevent theories claiming that Israel was responsible from spreading widely.

For example, Egyptian political scientist Nadia Helmy posted on X that it was a “hybrid war” intended to punish Pedro Sánchez, and her theory reached millions of users, according to the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ARC). The theory was quickly “bought into” by far-left leaders and opinion makers, such as radical activist Ana Kasparian (who routinely describes Israel as an “evil state”) or Esquerra Republicana MP Gabriel Rufián, and was subtly endorsed by Socialist Minister Óscar Puente himself. But that’s not all.

For example, the ineffable Javier Bardem posted the following statement on his X account, which has 1.5 million followers: “We know who benefits from a weakened and destabilized Spain: Israel,” and Podemos spokesperson Pablo Fernández wrote: “The Morocco-U.S.-Israel axis is the one that organized the operation,” while accusing the People’s Party of being “collaborators with the Zionists and their Moroccan and American allies.”

Equally explicit, Podemos leader Irene Montero asserted that “if you pay a dictatorship like Morocco to do your dirty work, when Morocco wants more, or when the United States and Israel order it to, it stops doing so to blackmail you.”

Along the same lines, former Colombian President Gustavo Petro went so far as to claim that “Netanyahu pays for poor people to risk their lives to reach Spain” and added that Morocco “has surrendered to the will of a fugitive genocidal maniac.” To top it off, the famous left-wing streamer Hasan Piker also weighed in, claiming on his account with three million followers that “Israel and the United States managed to get the Moroccan government to send some 40,000 people to the territory administered by Spain.”

While spreading the “Israeli conspiracy” regarding Ceuta has been the far-left’s “song of the summer,” the far-right has turned it into a hit, narrowing the gap between the two poles to virtually nothing.

The examples are equally revealing, with far-right podcaster Candace Owens and former Fox News anchor Tucker being major propagators of the conspiracy.

Owens, in line with her classic anti-Semitic views, shared a post linking “Israeli-funded think tanks” to the invasion of Ceuta, and her post garnered 1.6 million views.

Tucker, accompanied by Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper, promoted on his podcast the anti-Semitic version of the Great Replacement theory, which claims that Israel is promoting mass migration of Muslims to Western countries in order to harm the white population.

The description of the podcast episode on YouTube stated that “The Great Replacement is no longer a theory” and surpassed 2.5 million views. Meanwhile, InfoWars founder Alex Jones endorsed the theory, claiming that “Israel has launched an Islamic invasion against Spain.” His post on X reached more than 500,000 accounts.

In total, according to the Combat Antisemitism Movement report, “in the 72 hours following the first incidents of the invasion in Ceuta, the number of readers of the posts uploaded to the X platform reached 103 million,” causing the conspiracy lie to go viral and fueling hatred toward Israel.

And although the hoaxes had various nuances, depending on the obsessions of each ideological side, they all converged on the “Israeli conspiracy”—a modern version of the old “Jewish conspiracy” of classic antisemitism. New times and new language, but the same old anti-Jewish prejudice as always, fueled on both sides of the ideological divide.

Whereas in the past it was Jewish bankers in Central Europe who conspired to dominate the global economy—from the Protocols fabricated by the Russian Okhrana to Nazi myths—today it is the Jews of Israel and Wall Street who are said to be attempting to dominate it. Whereas in the past Jews were said to drink the blood of Christian children, now it is Jewish soldiers who are said to take pleasure in murdering children.

If in the past Jews were said to have a plan to take over the world, today it is Israel that is destabilizing states, instigating invasions, and seeking to destroy white Europe… These are myths and historical falsehoods that have been reinvented, modernized, and spread virally across the globe in a disturbing and massive display of collective stupidity. And nothing is coincidental.

As Matthew Witkin, a researcher at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), wrote, this convergence between ideological poles is no coincidence, but rather “reflects an enduring feature of modern antisemitism: Israel serves as a universal explanation for crises that are unrelated to one another, absorbing the blame for migration, economic instability, and political dysfunction, regardless of one’s ideological starting point.” 

Javier Bardem and Candance Owens, on the right and the left, from communism to white supremacy: the same conspiracy-theory lie, the same hatred of Israel, the same abject stupidity.