You cannot be right-wing and a Zionist

Zionism is wokeness for Israel.

Candace Owens, who was fired from The Daily Wire.

Last Friday, The Daily Wire fired Candace Owens, a popular journalist and political commentator. Her mistake, apparently, was opposing Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza. Daily Wire founders Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing are ardent Zionists, and Boreing confirmed on a recent Twitter/X stream that he does not want anti-Israel commentary on his platform.

This set off a rift in the right-wing over free speech, Zionism, and anti-Semitism. In particular, a segment of the right claims that supporting Israel is an inherently conservative position. Boreing, when asked why he would never hire an anti-Zionist at The Daily Wire, said the following (around 3 hours into Lauren Chen’s X stream):

Can you think of a single prominent national conservative who supports universal healthcare and abortion-on-demand? Well, no, because those aren’t conservative ideas. It’s one thing to say that one can be critical of Israel. It’s another thing to say that we aren’t capable of moral reasoning enough to conclude that when terrorists murder 1,200 innocent people, that… somehow Israel has no national interest in protecting its citizens or responding to that attack.

In addition to Boreing, New Founding managing partner Nate Fischer proposes that Zionists are ‘co-belligerents’ with conservatives; both can unite against the radical left. I challenged Fischer on this premise, and he politely responded:

Regardless, I do not address Israel’s actions in this article; the nation’s misbehaviour has been tackled elsewhere. The fact that Israel is pro-LGBT, pro-abortion, and imposed widespread medical tyranny on its own population also have no bearing on my arguments.

Instead, I argue that Zionism itself is a parasite in the dissident right, and has nothing to do with conservatism. Despite its historical, ethnic, and religious claims, Zionism is a fundamentally utopian, liberal, and revolutionary ideology which has no compatability with conservative values of pragmatism and tradition. There is nothing ‘based’ about Zionism.

If you enjoy my writing, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

No Enemies On The Right

Before we tackle Zionism directly, we need to clarify what it means to be ‘on the right’ politically.

In the midst of the controversy stemming from Candace Owens’s firing, Charles Haywood fired off the following Tweet:

Who does Haywood consider to be ‘right-wing?’ Anyone who is not on the Left, where Leftism is defined by two Enlightenment beliefs:

1. Forced equality.

2. Total emancipation from bonds which are not continually chosen.

The first principle, forced equality, is clear to those who look around — women are given traditionally male jobs; trans ‘female’ athletes compete with women, and illegal immigrants are granted more benefits than American citizens. If equality is not evident in reality, then it can be forced — witness New York City’s treatment of landlords as criminals, because squatters have ‘rights.’

The second principle, total emancipation from unchosen bonds, suggests a completely ‘free’ individual who has no ties to land, race, religion, or family. The individual should be completely atomized, and in this way, he is free to ‘find himself/herself/zer-self',’ to experiment sexually, and to even transition to another gender. Consumerism, amorphous ‘global values,’ and even fringe interests on Reddit are the only things that unite.

What Leftism seeks.

Ultimately, the Leftist project seeks its own paradise on Earth. There is no room for inherited wisdom, tradition, or even plain facts in Leftist utopia. Religion — especially Christianity — is dead, and people can pursue their own ‘spiritual but not religious’ ends.

In theory, Zionism is anti-Left. It elevates Jews to the status of G-d’s Chosen People, above other religious and ethnic groups. It also makes a historical claim: The land of Palestine is the ancient homeland of the Jews, and it is thus only right that Jews inhabit that land.

However, these claims are easy to dismantle. Modern Zionism was started by irreligious Jews who had little in common with their purported ancestors. The ideology was birthed in the midst of Enlightenment liberalism.

Zionism’s Strange Founding

David Ben-Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel, speaking under a portrait of Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism.

The founders of Zionism — Theodor Herzl, Moses Hess, Chaim Weizman, David Ben-Gurion — were not religious Jews. Their zeal was born from a desire for Jews to escape discrimination in Europe and have their own homeland. To wit, they decided that a secular, liberal, and nationalist movement would have the greatest chance of success.

To be sure, other Zionists promoted a religious or cultural impetus for a Jewish state, but they failed. Modern Israel is fashioned after a Western liberal democracy with a core, secular Jewish identity. As Israeli author Micah Goodman put it,

Zionism was a modern ideology. As Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once noted… Zionism was a revolution of Jews against themselves. Long before Zionists waged a military struggle against the rule of a foreign power, they waged a cultural struggle against the rule of the past. And indeed, some of the main Zionist thinkers saw Zionism as a Jewish revolt against Judaism [emphasis my own].

In other words, Zionism is a child of Enlightenment thought, which is the basis of Leftism with all its contradictions. It seeks to deracinate Jews from their Jewishness. The father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, was not wedded to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine; he also proposed Argentina and Uganda as potential destinations for Jewish settlement.

Members of Neturei Karta at a pro-Palestine rally in England.

Traditional Jewish faith is incompatible with modern Israel. Ultra-orthodox Jews generally oppose Zionism; they believe that only The Messiah (a prophesied Jewish saviour) can draw Jews back to Palestine and re-establish the Kingdom of Israel:

In the words of the Midrash (as expounded by Rashi), the people were adjured not to return collectively to the Land of Israel by the exertion of physical force, nor to “rebel against the nations of the world,” nor to “hasten the End.” In short, they were required to wait for the heavenly, complete, miraculous, supernatural, and meta-historical redemption that is totally distinct from the realm of human endeavor… “Unless the Lord build the house, its builders labor in vain; unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman keeps vigil in vain” (Psalms 127:1).

Some Jewish groups, like the Neturei Karta and Satmar Hasidim, are actively anti-Zionist, and often show up at pro-Palestine protests.

That being said, Israel is nevertheless Jewish — it is ostensibly based on identity and a historical claim to the southern Levant. A non-Jew would find it near impossible to become an Israeli citizen. Israelis have a shared character based on ethnicity and land.

Yet here we run into the Palestinian problem.

Palestinians Have a Stronger Claim to Nationhood

Medieval Palestinian art, circa 735 AD.

Zionists claim that Jews have an ancient right to a homeland in Palestine, based on the Kingdom of Israel (1047-930 BC), which reached its peak under Solomon. After the Romans destroyed the Second Temple of Jerusalem in AD 70, Jews were allegedly exiled from Palestine, with only a tiny remnant remaining.

This narrative is largely myth: among modern ethnic groups, Palestinians are genetically closest to ancient Jews. Indeed, a number of Palestinian families can trace their roots back thousands of years, and those who were were ejected from Israel after the 1948 ethnic cleansings even have property deeds. As far as I can discern, Palestinians — who built and maintained an ancient civilization — have a clearer case for nationhood than Jews who arrived in the past 150 years.

The Church of St. Porphyrios, Gaza, first built in 425 AD.

Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that none of the above were true, and that Jews were indeed the ancient inhabitants of Israel, the Zionist narrative still falls apart. The ancestors of today’s Jews — the ancient Hebrews — pushed out the Canaanites in the 2nd millennium BC, according to Judaism’s founding tales. The descendants of those ancient Canaanites are today’s Palestinians.

Palestinians are indigenous to the southern Levant, and have a stronger claim to statehood than Jews, having built and maintained a civilization for thousands of years. A Zionist ‘conservative,’ to be consistent, would need to claim that indigenous Anglo-Saxons have no claim to England, or that native Celts have no right to Ireland.

Zionism Is Not Conservative

‘Hello fellow BASED conservatives. Remember to send money to Israel this Easter season.’

Leftism affirms emancipation from unchosen bonds — those to religion, ethnicity, and land. Zionism, as I have shown here, also affirms this:

1. Zionism has little to do with religion or ethnicity. I have already addressed the fact that Zionism is irreligious.
   As for ethnicity, anyone with a Jewish mother can acquire Israeli citizenship. However, this is negated if the person is a Jewish convert to Christianity; you can be a Jewish Buddhist or even an atheist and make aliyah, but G-d forbid you be an ethnically Jewish Christian!
   Religion and ethnicity don’t seem to matter.

2. Zionism has no concern for ties to land; Jews have no historical claim to Palestine. Palestinians, by contrast, have a strong claim to nationhood.
   Israelis, in expelling Palestinians from their indigenous territories, have violated both property rights and ancestral claims. They have proven themselves to be the worst kind of liberal interventionists.

3. Israel is a leftist, multicultural ‘democracy,’ which affirms that “all Israelis are treated equally under the law, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion or ethnicity,” as AIPAC (The American Israel Political Action Committee) boasts. Tel Aviv is even a global LGBT destination.

In the end, Zionism is ideological, not practical. It takes on a utopian character, as University of Tel Aviv professor Yosef Gorny writes,

Zionism was the most utopian of the national and social movements that emerged in Europe in the nineteenth century. The task that other social or national movements set themselves was to achieve a political or social transformation, but Zionism set out to build a new Hebrew society… Contemporary Israeli society, despite its unabashed materialism, is not free of utopian yearnings.

Utopianism is diametrically opposed to conservatism or any kind of right-wing ideology which is based on pragmatism and tradition.

Conclusion

The rightful rulers of Israel should be Orthodox Christian monarchs.

In the Twitter/X space about Candace Owens’s dismissal, some participants suggested that The Daily Wire is being hypocritical; after all, the Wire promotes degenerate homosexuals like Dave Rubin and feminists like Chaya Raichik. Surely, then, The Daily Wire is not as conservative as it claims to be, and firing Owens is a contradictory stance.

It doesn’t matter; outlets like The Daily Wire and Rebel News are Zionist, and Zionism can take whatever form it needs to. It befriends gays and transsexuals, mysognist atheist larpers, and Catholic pro-lifers. As long as one does not criticize the holy State of Israel, anything is permitted. Zionism is amorphous.

Furthermore, Zionists have cancelled and suppressed many voices on the dissident right. Haywood’s NEOTR paradigm suggests that a right-winger who cancels or criticizes another conservative should be banished from the conservative movement. The fact that hardly any Zionists have opposed Owens’s deplatforming implies that Zionists are our enemies.

This in no way excludes Jews from the right, provided they disavow Zionism. There are a number of Jews, such as Nate Smith and Ron Unz, who are right-wing and hate Zionism. There are even Jews like Norm Finkelstein and Glenn Greenwald who are potential allies, although they come from a liberal persuasion.

As for Israel itself, I make no recommendations on what to do with that rogue state. Ideally, the Levant should be ruled by an Orthodox Christian emperor, as it was during the Byzantine Empire. Barring that, we on the dissident right can make a firm committment to refrain from ever associating with Zionists and their ilk.