The new populism of the Judeocidal left
The radical poised to become New York’s mayor embodies an alliance between reactionary Islamism and progressivism
In the 12-day war with Iran that ended this week, 28 Israelis were killed by Iranian missiles, more than 3,000 were injured, and much of the country was repeatedly forced into safe rooms and shelters.
Yet it was the Jews of Britain who Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli said were in such danger that they should leave the country and immigrate to Israel.
Chikli accused the Labour Government in the United Kingdom of fuelling antisemitism and claimed that its voter base consisted of “Hamas sympathisers”. He told the Daily Mail: “Without a dramatic change of course by Britain’s political leadership, I see no future for Jewish life in England.”
Jews are being subjected to a tsunami of antisemitism throughout the countries of the West. Chikli singled out Britain because it is considered the worst of them all.
That’s because what can only be described as the deranged belief that Israel is the epicentre of global evil has now become a default narrative across Britain’s political and cultural establishment.
The Co-op, a grocery store chain, is banning Israeli produce from its stores. Films, books and other expressions of Jewish culture are being blocked and erased from public space. At this week’s annual conference of the doctors’ trade union, the British Medical Association, no fewer than 43 motions were put forward to denounce the Jewish state over the war in Gaza.
Although this lunacy stretches across a liberal-dominated society, the energy behind it comes from Islamists. This Judeocidal alliance has been given traction in the West by left-wing governments that subscribe to the false and libellous narrative about Israel and refuse even to criticise the Islamic world.
Left-wingers and Islamists marching together in support of “Palestine” — and now the Islamic regime of Iran — make common cause over the destruction of the West and hatred of Israel and the Jews.
Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is disgracefully riding this tiger. Under pressure from an increasingly powerful Muslim political bloc and with the hard left in his own party always one round-robin away from deposing him, he refused to back either Israel’s or America’s attack on Iran and called instead for “de-escalation”.
His new decision to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist group inadvertently demonstrates the political paralysis that arises from this unprincipled position. The last straw in this group’s “long history of unacceptable criminal damage” came when it broke into RAF Brize Norton, the military airfield in Oxfordshire, and damaged two military aircraft.
Government officials are now investigating the possibility that Palestine Action is funded by Tehran. Yet around 11 of Starmer’s own members of parliament have supported this terrorist group.
Now America is facing a similar nightmare in the shape of Zohran Mamdani, whose victory over former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic Party primary this week puts him in pole position to become mayor of New York. This spells a potential catastrophe for the iconic citadel of American cultural and financial power, and a security disaster for the city’s Jewish community, the largest outside Israel.
Mamdani is an extreme leftist who four years ago tweeted: “Queer liberation means defund the police.” In his campaign, he ran on taxing the rich, government-run grocery stores, free bus travel and a freeze on rent. Such policies are unworkable but offer New Yorkers what many want to hear — a programme of left-wing, anti-capitalist populism.
He also has a deep hatred of Israel. He supports a boycott of the Jewish state; he has refused to condemn the Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on October 7, 2023; and he has sanitised the slogan “Globalise the intifada,” which is a call to murder Jews around the world.
As a result of all this, and his charismatic and telegenic personality, he’s become an overnight rock star.
The kind of people who drape themselves in the keffiyeh and mindlessly parrot Hamas propaganda about Israel’s supposed “genocide,” young, college-educated progressives and the vacuous narcissists who people the entertainment industry, are going wild for him.
The support by such people for such a man is bizarre. Mamdani isn’t just a Muslim. He is a practising member of the Islamic Shia Twelver sect, which holds that an apocalypse will bring down to earth the Shia messiah, the Twelfth Imam.
The most prominent member of this sect is Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the genocidal fanatic whose defining slogan is “Death to America!”
Given Mamdani’s affiliation to such an uncompromising jihadi sect, one does wonder about his pledge to create an “office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs” at City Hall.
Whatever the theological legerdemain behind such contradictions, Mamdani represents the alliance between reactionary Islamism and left-wing progressivism that we have seen on the streets of Western cities. This has produced the surreal spectacle of liberals marching alongside Islamists who, should circumstances be different, would remove these liberals’ progressive heads from their shoulders.
As with Britain’s Labour Party, Mamdani represents the deeply disturbing future of progressive politics in Britain and America — a movement that has Zionism, capitalism and the West in its sights under the banner of human rights, humanitarianism and anti-racism.
While its followers demonise and dehumanise the Jewish targets of extermination, they are, astoundingly, moralising as conscience an agenda for exterminating the Jews.
This shocking mindset now has a large and growing following among younger voters. They are the products of an education system that has progressively destroyed their ability to think, fuelled by a sulfurous cocktail of resentments over perceived racial, ethnic, sexual and economic marginalisation.
Twelver Shi’ism is noted for its encouragement of political activism. Israel may have smashed the Shia axis in the Middle East, but the Islamic revolutionary regime in Tehran has seeded it throughout the West.
Yet those who have drawn attention to Mamdani’s religious background have been denounced for “Islamophobia”. Those accusers are the useful idiots who are facilitating the rise of Islamic extremism in Britain, Europe and now, increasingly, in America.
They are also weakening the ability of the West to defend itself against the most dangerous of the Islamist groups waging war on the West: the Iranian regime.
Although Israel and America have won a great victory against that regime, the war against it is far from over. While it remains in place, it still poses a grievous threat to Israel, America and the West.
In Israel, there’s concern that President Donald Trump, after his great act of boldness and tactical brilliance in destroying Iran’s principal nuclear sites, may nevertheless think he has thus destroyed Iran’s ability to continue its genocidal war.
This belief may not be accurate. There are concerns that supposedly 400 kilograms of enriched uranium may have been transported to other secret sites before the US attack.
The Tehran regime has an unrivalled record of deceit and manipulation with which it has bamboozled the West for decades and hidden parts of its nuclear programme from United Nations inspectors. Trump seems to believe he can now dragoon a greatly weakened Iran into verifiably destroying the remainder of that programme. Few others would bank on that.
Aside from the nuclear threat, the regime has long installed thousands of sleeper cells across the West. Britain’s security service, MI5, says Iranian terrorism is now a principal threat to Britain. And along with Hamas operatives, Iranian groups have been instrumental in organising the menacing pro-jihadi demonstrations on Western streets.
Israel is still locked into a terrible war in Gaza with Iran’s proxy, Hamas. Hostages remain incarcerated in the Strip, both living and dead. The threat posed by Iran itself remains unfinished business.
Nevertheless, Jerusalem has inflicted astonishing damage on its mortal enemy. It’s achieved this by recognising the threat and using immense courage, brilliance and boldness to fight it. So did Trump.
By contrast, the West’s elites are paralysed in the face of the same threat because they remain gripped by their drive toward cultural suicide.
Israel, despite or perhaps because of its embattled state, is far safer. That’s why Chikli’s warning to diaspora Jews is on the button.
*** My new book The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West – and Why Only They Can Save It, can be bought on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk