Reform, Restore and the debate over Jewish inclusion in the radical right

Is Nigel Farage owned by the Jews?

Most people would be able to identify anyone asking this question as someone who has left reality behind. Yet, this is what one of the co-founders of Restore Britain – Charlie Downes – appears to have implied, as a part of an escalating split between the Britain’s two leading far-right parties, around questions about Jews and their involvement in far-right politics.

Debate about Jewish inclusion has a long history on the far-right.

For the National Front, or British fascist groups which existed before 9/11, Jewish inclusion was a non-starter. While there was a diversity of opinions regarding the strategic usefulness of expression of open neo-Nazi sentiment, it would have been beyond the pale to suggest that the far-right include Jews. Their views of Jewish people were along the lines traditional for neo-Nazis, that they were a threat to white Christendom. Support for Israel would have again been a non-starter, as it was seen as representative of international Jewish capital.

9/11 led to a centring of Muslims within international far-right thought. While the British National Party (BNP) embraced open neo-Nazism, European far-right parties took a different trajectory. The success of Islamophobic political parties like Geert Wilders’ PVV party in the Netherlands and Jorg Haider’s FPÖ triggered a change in outlook for some in British far-right, who sought to emulate their success. These parties rejected street violence and neo-Nazism and embraced token diversity. For European fascists, Israel became seen as a European bulwark against Islam, and as a potential ally of far-right movements. Some Jews were seen potential allies in the broader fight against Islam and symbols of their more modern and socially acceptable outlook.

The English Defence League (EDL) was amongst the earliest British far-right organisations to embrace Israel and token Jews. Support for Israel was a symbol that they had transcended their roots as an offshoot of the BNP and significant of Israel’s new place within the global far-right. However, their mainstream success was limited by their activists’ passion for taking tremendous amounts of cocaine and rampaging through town centres like angry bulls.

The rise of Farage vehicles; UKIP, Reform and the Brexit party were very much in the tradition of the new European far-right parties, like the Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France. They reject overt neo-Nazism and antisemitism and have built a political coalition with factional exiles from the mainstream right Conservative Party.

A key part of this is based on the rejection of overt antisemitism and explicit biological framings of racist ideas, instead preferring a euphemistic rhetoric of ‘legitimate concerns’. Unlike the EDL, they also don’t tend to engage in street violence. The inclusion of token Jewish people within Reform, including the Reform Jewish Alliance (nothing to do with Reform Judaism, a liberal religious movement) is part of this. It signifies that they are a mainstream party.

The development of Farage parties doesn’t mean that antisemitic currents have died within the far-right. Smaller antisemitic and neo-Nazi factions, such as the now banned Patriotic Alternative and Generation Identity rejected modernisation, alliances with mainstream conservativism, support for Israel, and Jewish inclusion.

Since 2022, overtly antisemitic groups and individuals have found a patron and a mainstream outlet in Elon Musk. The US political environment has also been sympathetic, as some on the far-right have grown disenchanted with Trumpism and critical of US engagements abroad. Figures like rumoured 2028 presidential candidate Tucker Carlson, neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes and Turning Point alumnus Candace Owens see Trump’s project as being compromised by support for Israel and Jews.

It is these US-centric international political networks that seem to inspire Downes and other younger members of Restore, who – with their large number of members from older neo-Nazi formations – appear to want to see an explicitly Christian white society. They see Reform as having sacrificed too much to a multi-cultural society, and their attitude to Jewish people is symbolic of this.

Both Reform and Restore see Jews as outsiders to British society. Reform connect Jews to Israel, which it sees as an ethnostate on the model it would like to create, and an important strategic ally in what the director of the Reform Jewish Alliance director described as a civilisational war against Islam. For Downes at Restore, being British ‘more than anything is about Christian faith’, with those who don’t have ‘Christian principles’ being ‘less British’. Jews, therefore cannot be fully British, because by definition they do not fit that category.

Both Reform and Restore are a threat to the maintenance of a healthy and thriving Jewish community in the UK. They have brought white supremacist politics into the political mainstream, and their debates about Jewish questions, although ultimately they come up with different answers, demonstrate this.

Right image credit: Owain Davies – Creative Commons