Fascism's fanzines

New York, NY -- Earlier this week, the United States Department for Homeland Security announced that it will “begin considering aliens’ antisemitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals as grounds for denying immigration benefits requests.” (In the US, “immigration benefits” include granting citizenship, permanent settlement, and providing the right to work to noncitizens). This guidance goes into effect immediately, and applies to both those applying for legal status and those currently affiliated with universities. 

This announcement is less a new development than a belated effort to make official guidance align with an already existing reality. Over the last month, the Trump administration has made every effort to perpetrate the extra-legal abduction and disappearance of at least nine university students and professors for their alleged “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”. None have been charged with a crime because they have not committed a crime. And, for the record, none have done anything antisemitic, either.

Such authoritarian repression, plainly designed to stifle present and future dissent, is in many ways a straightforward case of the boomerang returning home. For over 100 years, Christian Zionists have pursued heinous imperial aims in Palestine under the guise of anti-antisemitism. Now, new breeds of Christian Zionist are using the same pretence to remove any obstacles in their path as they dismantle the metropole and plunder what remains. 

But this assault on the protections of the First Amendment, the established rights of permanent residents, and the general existence of academic freedom is not purely a Christian Zionist effort. The American Jewish right is playing its own role in shaping these events, adding a shameful new chapter to the long tradition of reactionary Jewish politics. 

Unlike the Jewish fascist movements that have pledged total fealty to MAGA, I have been struck by the ways in which the rightwing Jewish press has successfully worked both alongside and against the Trump administration to pursue its own ideological aims in this time of chaos and upheaval. Two publications in particular have been unusual in their ability to exert influence over the direction of American decline and explicitly challenge the regime. 

Jewish Insider (JI) began in 2011 as a daily newsletter by an aide working on Jewish outreach for the presidential campaign of Mormon Republican Jon Huntsman Jr. Today, it is a leading neoconservative force fighting against “isolationist” foreign policy within the MAGA movement. 

Since Trump’s reelection, JI’s reporting has shaped two intelligence and defense appointments and mobilised currents of (anonymous) Republican dissent against Trump officials who appear, to them, to waver from a position of unqualified support for Israel. 

Specifically, JI’s 12 March exposé of Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, recently hired to be the deputy director of national intelligence, reportedly got him fired later that same day after stirring outrage about his views on Israel. JI’s report described Davis as “senior fellow at the isolationist Defense Priorities think tank with a record of strident criticism of Israel” who has “lambasted US support for the war in Gaza as a moral and strategic mistake.” 

The article also sounded the alarm on a broader phenomenon of “a growing series of appointees in key positions across a number of national security agencies who fall far outside of the mainstream on Israel and Middle East policy, several of whom, including Michael DiMino, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, and Dan Caldwell, a Pentagon senior advisor, are also alumni of the Koch-linked Defense Priorities.”

Elsewhere, JI has played a role in forcing an appointee’s hand. Starting all the way back in November, the publication began hounding potential Trump national security pick Elbridge Colby for his “dovish views on Iran” that, according to their conversation with one unnamed former Trump official, were “almost indistinguishable” from Barack Obama’s. 

Once Colby officially became Trump’s pick for undersecretary of defense for policy, JI doubled down, publishing “Elbridge Colby’s Pentagon nomination generates concern among key Senate Republicans”, “Trump’s embattled Pentagon pick Colby holds close ties to Obama’s foreign policy advisors”, and “Consequences of striking Iran worse than Iran getting nuclear weapons, Colby said in 2012”, in consecutive weeks. 

JI provided granular coverage of Colby’s nomination process, but ceased criticism once he backpedaled on his former views on Iran during the confirmation hearing – a move that was “satisfactory to address Republicans’ concerns, multiple GOP senators told Jewish Insider.”

The publication then burst into mainstream public consciousness in the wake of Signalgate. On 27 March, JI reported that “Republican senators are privately expressing frustrations over Vice President JD Vance’s suggestion in a leaked group chat that the Houthis are more of a problem for Europe than the United States and his voicing of doubt that it was in the U.S.’ interest to strike the Iran-backed group in Yemen.”

Vance responded publicly, posting on X to his 4.1 million followers:

Vance, it seems, represents something of a pivot point in the rightwing Jewish press. Days later, his wife, Usha Vance, gave her first interview as Second Lady to another stalwart of the reactionary Jewish media landscape: Bari Weiss’s The Free Press. 

While Jewish Insider has focused on holding the new regime to a pro-Israel defence orthodoxy in the midst of genocide, The Free Press (FP) has made its core contribution by advancing the assault on protestors and universities.

FP has relentlessly published stories about alleged campus antisemitism stories and has been a key driver of stories on Columbia in particular, publishing leaked transcripts of university administrators and breaking news with information delivered directly from Trump officials, including the initial report that Trump was cancelling $400 million in grants to the university.  

Like Jewish Insider, however, divides persist between the publication and the administration. Despite their extensive efforts to manufacture public consent for the persecution of Palestine solidarity activists, FP published an editorial denouncing the government’s suspension of due process after the abduction of Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk.

It’s important to not confuse this editorial for any kind of substantive objection on the grounds of civil liberties: the editorial fully accepts the premise that protesters can be justifiably deported, and states that “It may turn out that Ozturk and Khalil have coordinated their activism with Hamas, or encouraged or participated in riots or other activities that are more than sufficient grounds to expel them from the country.” 

But even in its weak, procedural call for a more communicative deportation force that would be fine if only it would, at some point, actually present evidence against its abductees, FP offers a Vance-like takedown of the administration’s competence and omnipotence. 

“[The government’s approach to Khalil] is the kind of sloppiness that is typifying the Trump administration’s deportations thus far… This haphazard approach isn’t just bad politics, undermining confidence in the government’s immigration policy. It’s also a breach of a vitally important principle. Due process is not a privilege for the guilty. It is a protection for the innocent. It is a hedge against the prospect that sometimes the state gets it wrong.” 

Indeed, sometimes the state does get it very wrong. But at least when it does, we can rest assured that Jewish right media will be there to reinforce the pro-genocide, pro-repression views that keep America great. ▼

Evan Robins is an editor at Vashti.