The far right is all over the Gaza solidarity movement

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It seems Israel Derangement Syndrome has brought together the crazies on both the far right and the far left. I humbly submit that Israel should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for pulling off this unlikely feat.

Turning Point USA’s ‘People’s Convention’ conference was held at the weekend in Detroit. It was a marquee event for the stars of American conservatism and the people who love them. Big names from the right of American politics were in attendance. Among those not invited was white nationalist Nick Fuentes, although he and his followers tried to gatecrash it, hoping for the opportunity to preach lies about Israel committing genocide against Palestinians. He managed to make it inside the building, but was quickly removed.

Fuentes describes himself as a ‘Christian reactionary’ and ‘the most cancelled man in America’. Personally, I’m confused by him. I don’t even understand why people on the far right listen to this slight, strange young man. He is not tough or hard, like you might expect one of their leaders to be. He’s mean, but in a bitchy kind of way, and glibly provocative.

He is obsessed with Jews. Speaking to a crowd after he was ejected from the TPUSA conference, he called Israel the ‘Devil’s land’, which is just the latest in a long line of deranged and hate-filled comments he has spewed.

Among the terrible things Israel is supposedly responsible for, according to Nick Fuentes, is putting gay porn on Nick Fuentes’s computer. Because the IDF doesn’t have enough to do, it also needs to make sure that young Mr Fuentes – public enemy No2 for the Jews, after Hamas – appears gay to his followers. There is obviously no other plausible explanation.

His biting and up-to-date political analysis outside TPUSA included such gems as: ‘You are not allowed to say, for example, that Jews killed Jesus Christ! We all know, they did!’ Someone in the crowd then countered: ‘The Romans killed him!’ But Fuentes would not back down: ‘No, they said, “Crucify him! Crucify him! Give us Barabas.” That was the Jews, not the Romans!’

This exchange actually happened. Not in a Monty Python sketch, but in Detroit at the weekend.

What Fuentes would probably rather not admit is that by jumping on the ‘Israel is a genocidal state’ bandwagon, he now finds himself standing side by side with those trans-flag-waving Columbia students he claims to hate so much.

There are more similarities. The levels of dorkiness surrounding Fuentes are extremely high – among the highest I have ever seen. Where the loony left kids give off vibes of having mental-health diagnoses and allergies, Fuentes’s crew, the ‘Groypers’, bring to mind prep-school virgins with a touch of autism. Just look at those baby-faced far-righters dashing through the TPUSA convention, some wearing Hawaiian shirts, some wearing suits, gleefully shouting, ‘America First!’, before getting ejected. They looked like this was the first time their mothers let them go out unsupervised.

In some ways, it’s hard to take this little Fuentes chap seriously. In one especially awkward clip, from an internet livestream a few years ago, he responded to a female who asked him out by demanding to know: ‘What part of what you know about me would make you think that I’d want to be propositioned by a woman?’ Fair question. While saying this, he began to do what can only be described as aggressive jazz hands.

His little Detroit roadshow became even more sinister when avowed racist and former KKK grand wizard David Duke came to support him at the weekend. In an interview outside the TPUSA conference, Duke called Fuentes ‘a comrade’ who is working to resist ‘Jewish supremacism’ in the United States. ‘We [whites] are being genocided just like the Palestinians, just a different form’, he said.

As abhorrent as these views are, they are mercifully fringe. It is just not true, despite what the mainstream media would have you think, that Fuentes and his ilk are a core element of Donald Trump’s base. In 2022, Fuentes crashed a dinner that the former president had with Kanye West, organised by the ‘notoriously theatrical’ Milo Yiannopoulos. This predictably led to a media frenzy, with claims that Fuentes was somehow close to Trump. But this has never been the case.

Still, that doesn’t make what Nick Fuentes is saying any less disgusting. His comrades on the Israelophobic left should be asking themselves how they found themselves on the same side as this racist, Jew-hating brat.

Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here.