It’s now standard behaviour for far-right parties and governments to disregard Netanyahu's ongoing genocide and loudly declare their undying loyalty to Israel, alongside many nominally centrist peers. This is done even while pushing Soros conspiracies and promoting the neo-nazi ‘Great Replacement’ theory - according to which Jews are engaged in A Fiendish Plot to send Muslim and non-white immigrants to Europe to ‘replace’ white Europeans - as a policy base. Other white supremacists pose as supporters of Palestinian freedom, while sharing the same racist conspiracy theories and memes as their pro-Israel peers.

At first glance, those two positions might seem to clash. But dig deeper and they converge seamlessly on a single, brutal principle: only some people’s lives matter — everyone else is expendable 'collateral damage'.

The Zionist far-right in the West and globally has spent years waving Israeli flags as shields and fig-leaves. From Viktor Orbán to Narendra Modi, Geert Wilders to Javier Milei, they hail Israel as a model ethno-state—fortified, militarised, and unapologetic. They praise its ‘civilisational courage’ even as the war crimes charges against Netanyahu and his accomplices grows longer by the day. Their support for Israel’s carnage is, of course, nothing to do with any solidarity with Jews, but stems from admiration for and envy of Netanyahu's ability to literally get away with mass murder, to impose apartheid and normalise naked murderous authoritarianism with a democratic veneer. Israel has reciprocated this adulation, cultivating ties with far-right figures in Europe and globally to gain leverage in international bodies and the EU.

Meanwhile, the more overtly white supremacist far-right’s supposedly pro-Palestine fringe - including David Duke, Nick Griffin, Matthew Heimbach, and Jim Dowson—parrot support for Palestinians in Gaza to rationalize a proxy war against Jews, liberals, and globalism. Their solidarity with Palestinian pain is skin-deep and blood-soaked—just another mask for the same fascist fantasy.

For all the above, the peoples of Palestine, Syria, and indeed Israel are ultimately ciphers, one-dimensional weapons in their larger war against universal freedom, justice and dignity.

And now, as Israel escalates its killing—gunning down Palestinians in Gaza seeking food, bombing more homes and hospitals there daily, expanding illegal settlements in the West Bank, and striking inside Syria under the guise of “protecting the Druze” or “opposing Iranian miltias”(as though Syrians who just defeated Assad’s Iranian-backed regime were cheering for the latter) —these contradictions aren’t weakening. They’re hardening.

As Palestinians bury more children every day and churches burn in the West Bank, governments in the West – and, shamefully, not just those on those far-right – continue to proclaim their ‘Christian’ support for Netanyahu’s slaughter and echo hasbara talking points, rushing to defend a state waging a campaign of annihilation while criminalising protest against it.

The authoritarian far-left, too, has had its moments of moral collapse—backing the Assads’ murderous dictatorship and genocidal 13-year war on the Syrian people alongside the far-right, hailing Bashar’s Russian and Iranian backers and embracing the illusion of sundry ‘anti-imperialist’ strongmen, in the name of ‘fighting terrorism’, like some obscene hybrid of Che Guevara and Dick Cheney.

What unites all the above is not love of Syria, Israel, or Palestine, but of authoritarianism itself — of a world where state violence is virtue and human rights are optional. This world is personified by Vladimir Putin, the hardman idol of both ethnonationalists and Tankies. He recognised early the War on Terror’s power as a geopolitical tool, wielding it to crush Chechnya, prop up Assad, and win Western indulgence and far-right admiration, as well as leftist support for supposedly ‘opposing Western imperialism’.

The War on Terror's usefulness for authoritarians has made it the global go-to for justifying murderous repression: a catch-all excuse for mass surveillance, torture, ethnic profiling, and collective punishment—all under the sanitised banners of “security” and “fighting terror.” It taught the world that Muslims and Arabs, more particularly Sunnis, could be dehumanised and killed with impunity, and their murderers lauded as heroes vanquishing a ‘terror threat’.

But evil exported never stays exported. What’s unleashed abroad in the name of stability always returns home. Once the idea that some lives are expendable is normalised, the list of expendables grows. Borders are militarised. Refugees become invaders. Surveillance becomes default. Cruelty becomes policy. And soon, you’re governed by men (and sometimes by women) whose politics—and sense of humanity—were shaped by drone footage and torture memos.

Fascism has never arrived with fanfare. It seeps in through excuses—the quiet rationalisations of distant violence. Nazism didn’t begin in Berlin. It began in the unquestioning acceptance of the logic of empire: in slave ships, in rubber plantations, in colonial prisons and killing fields that existed long before Auschwitz. The War on Terror revived that logic and gave it global PR.

Excepting outliers like Pete Hegseth, today's far-right mostly doesn’t go in, at least publicly, for swastikas and overtly fascist iconography, which are generally bad for PR; it doesn't need to. Instead, it wears expensive suits, waves flags, and claims to be defending “civilisation.” Its public slogans speak not of race war, but of “immigration control,” “terror threats,” and “protecting our borders.” But the poison is the same. And it’s spreading.

This isn’t some futuristic dystopia. It’s now.

Supporting freedom for others, universally, isn’t just a moral duty — it’s the price of keeping our own freedom. For all of us.

By Ruth Riegler
Radio Free Syria

Image: Chantal Jahchan/Getty Images