Germany’s ‘liberal democratic’ claim to have reckoned with its racial supremacist past is fraudulent, proven by decades of supporting fascist regimes
Esad Širbegović is a writer and analyst based in Zurich, Switzerland. He is also a member of the International Expert Team at the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada. In 2022, he served as the Director of the International Expert Team for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, focusing on the Srebrenica genocide denial case at the University of Vienna. Esad’s work is deeply rooted in his personal experiences and centres on the critical issues of Islamophobia and genocide
Cross-posted from Middle East Eye
Germany prides itself on being a denazified liberal democracy.
Yet its unconditional support for Israel is not merely a political position but the core principle of its Staatsrason – a national doctrine holding that support for Israel is central to post-Holocaust Germany, and thus the very foundation of the German state’s legitimacy.
This position is inherently contradictory, as liberal democracy, by definition, cannot be reconciled with support for genocide carried out by a fascist apartheid state – let alone one openly aligned with far-right regimes. It demands a serious reality check.
The reality became glaringly evident when the German Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, Felix Klein, withdrew from an upcoming conference set to be held in Jerusalem on combating antisemitism, upon discovering that fascist figures were among the guests.
“Mr Klein accepted the invitation months ago, unaware of who else would be attending,” his office explained.
Klein’s withdrawal serves as an implicit admission by the German state that Israel maintains alliances with white supremacists, fascists, Nazis and Holocaust deniers.
This, in fact, reveals the core contradiction of Germany’s posture: far-right politics are not only tolerated but directly supported – so long as the facade of a liberal, democratic, and denazified Germany is upheld.
Old foundations
After World War Two, the US swiftly reintegrated former Nazis into West Germany’s government to counter the Soviet Union, despite the USSR playing the decisive role in defeating Hitler. Fear of communism led the West to rehabilitate ex-Nazis, who seamlessly rebranded themselves within the new West German state.
West German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1966-69) exemplified this continuity. Exposed by journalist Beate Klarsfeld, he had deep ties to top Nazis like Joachim von Ribbentrop and Joseph Goebbels, actively engaging in Nazi propaganda and collaborating closely with the SS.
But Kiesinger was far from an anomaly – many of West Germany’s postwar institutions were built on Nazi foundations.
The country’s intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), was led by Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s former head of anti-Soviet intelligence. With CIA backing, Gehlen ran the Gehlen Organisation, an anti-communist espionage network composed of former Nazis, which was officially transformed into the BND in 1956.
After the fall of the Nazi regime, the number of former party members in the West German justice ministry did not decline. On the contrary, their presence increased throughout the 1950s – culminating in 1957, when a staggering 77 percent of senior officials were former Nazi Party members.
Given this deep institutional continuity, it is unsurprising that West Germany actively allied itself with white supremacist, fascist, and Nazi-linked regimes.
Beyond mere complicity, Germany played a direct role in supporting fascist regimes worldwide – an involvement that persists to this day.
West Germany backed apartheid-era South Africa, military dictatorships in Argentina and Chile, and Portugal’s brutal colonial wars in Africa. It maintained close ties with Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in Spain, offering it significant support.
Moreover, West German mercenaries fought alongside Rhodesia’s white supremacist military, further entrenching the country’s role in upholding global fascism.
Strategic alliances
A unified Germany continued this legacy, with Angela Merkel openly supporting Aleksandar Vucic’s authoritarian, fascist regime in Serbia – despite full knowledge of his long record of genocide denial and glorification of the 1990s atrocities and apartheid-like ideologies, in which he was directly involved.
During the Srebrenica Genocide on 20 July 1995, Vucic – then a member of parliament – stood in the Serbian national assembly and issued a chilling threat to deter international intervention:
“If you bomb, if you kill one Serb, we will kill a hundred Muslims. Let’s see if anyone in the international community dares to attack Serbian positions,” he said.
Another figure Serbia has not only rehabilitated but actively glorified is Dragoljub Draza Mihailovic, a convicted war criminal and Nazi collaborator responsible for the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of Bosniaks during the Second World War.
In addition, the country is now in the process of rehabilitating Milan Nedic, who served as prime minister from 1941 to 1944, overseeing a regime that played a direct role in the Holocaust.
Under Nedic’s rule, Belgrade became the first city in Europe to be declared Judenfrei – free of Jews. At the time, Serbian authorities proudly boasted of their “achievement” to the Nazis, seeking to elevate their status.
By the end of the war, approximately 90 percent of Serbia’s Jewish population had been eradicated.
Germany’s unwavering support for both Israel and Serbia reveals its entrenched complicity in global authoritarian and racist alliances. This alliance was made public when Serbian police allegedly deployed a sonic weapon – reportedly supplied by Israel – against peaceful anti-corruption protesters in Belgrade in blatant violation of Serbian law.
Further underscoring this partnership, Serbian arms exports to Israel soared in 2024.
Inviting fascism
One of the most revealing recent examples of these alliances is the invitation of Milorad Dodik to a state-sponsored Israeli conference on combating antisemitism.
Dodik, president of Republika Srpska, is best known for his repeated denial of the Obmana – the genocide of Bosniaks between 1992 and 1995.
On 14 March, Bosnia’s state prosecutors issued arrest warrants for three top Bosnian Serb officials, including Dodik himself. Despite this, Dodik is listed as a speaker on the Israeli conference’s official website.
The two-day event, scheduled for 26-27 March and organised by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, aims to bring together hundreds of experts, activists, government officials, civil society organisations, Jewish community representatives, researchers, and students from Israel and abroad to discuss contemporary antisemitism.
Eli Tauber, a historian and member of the Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, criticised Dodik’s invitation: “What is he doing there? Those who invited him should have known who he is and what he stands for. Whether they overlooked this intentionally or by accident, the responsibility lies entirely with them.”
Tauber further argued that Dodik’s participation serves to push Islamophobic narratives about Bosnia. “Dodik has no place at a conference on antisemitism,” Tauber concluded.
Tauber’s critique, however, misses a deeper historical reality: Israel’s invitation of fascist figures like Dodik is not a mistake, but a continuation of a political strategy rooted in the very foundations of Zionism.
Weaponising antisemitism
Theodor Herzl, the founding figure of political Zionism, famously wrote in his diaries: “The antisemites will become our most dependable friends, the antisemitic countries our allies.”
This was not a moment of cynicism or despair, but a clear articulation of Zionism’s strategic logic.
Herzl understood that the very forces seeking to expel Jews from Europe could be leveraged to support the Zionist project of Jewish colonisation in Palestine.
By aligning with antisemites who wanted Jews out of Europe, Zionism positioned itself as a “solution” to the so-called “Jewish Question” – not by demanding equality within Europe, but by facilitating Jewish removal and resettlement elsewhere.
Arthur Balfour, the British statesman behind the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917, exemplifies this dynamic.
A known antisemite, Balfour had earlier sponsored the 1905 Aliens Act – the first British law explicitly aimed at restricting Jewish immigration, particularly of Eastern European Jews fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire.
Seeing these Jews as a destabilising presence, Balfour sought to exclude them from Britain. Yet it was precisely this exclusionary mindset that made him a natural ally of the Zionist movement.
By backing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Balfour could rid Britain of unwanted refugees while appearing to champion Jewish self-determination.
The Zionist movement embraced Balfour – and the British Empire – not despite his antisemitism, but because of it. The Balfour Declaration was never an act of humanitarianism – it was a colonial project rooted in imperial interests and antisemitic logic.
Far-right friends
This historical pattern did not end with Herzl or Balfour. To this day, the Zionist movement and the Israeli state have consistently aligned themselves with far-right and antisemitic forces to advance their geopolitical goals.
Israel’s far-right “friends” have included former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, infamous for his racist, homophobic, and antisemitic remarks – among them favourable comparisons to Hitler and mockery of Holocaust victims.
Despite this, he visited Israel, participated in a memorial at Yad Vashem with Netanyahu, and signed new oil and arms deals. On 14 March, he made his first appearance at the International Criminal Court to face charges of crimes against humanity over his deadly war on drugs.
Across the world, right-wing movements idolise Israel as a model of European domination over indigenous populations. They view its demographic policies – from deportations and incarceration to apartheid walls – as a blueprint for their own nationalist agendas.
In Europe, far-right parties like Austria’s FPO and Germany’s AfD incorporate Zionism into their racist ideologies while glorifying Nazi collaborators.
The FPO uses Zionism as a concealment strategy for being “antisemitic to its core“, yet its true character repeatedly surfaces – from torchlight processions and Nazi songs to leader Herbert Kickl downplaying SS crimes and styling himself as “Volkskanzler” in imitation of Hitler, to members giving Nazi salutes.
Germany’s AfD is not far behind: leaders like Bjorn Hocke and Alexander Gauland have mocked Holocaust remembrance, praised German soldiers in both world wars, and dismissed Nazi atrocities as a “speck of bird poop” in German history.
Party members were also caught attending secret meetings with extremists to plan mass deportations.
Figures like Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders and Sweden’s far-right Democrats champion Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements as the vanguard of western Judeo-Christian civilisation and frame Islam as a shared enemy.
Wilders has even publicly advocated for the expulsion of Palestinians.
No anomaly
Herzl’s chilling prediction that antisemites would become Zionism’s “most dependable friends” was not an anomaly.
It remains a core strategy of Zionism today. From Balfour to Orban, from Duterte to Dodik, Israel’s alliances with the far right continue to support its colonial domination over Palestinians – all while claiming to represent global Jewish safety.
At their core, critiques like Tauber’s, which suggest that such alliances are aberrations or mistakes, fail to understand Israel and overlook the deliberate logic behind its invitation to Dodik.
Dodik fits seamlessly into the mould of Islamophobic fascists, white supremacists, and Holocaust revisionists whom the Israeli state has openly embraced.
His presence at the conference only reinforces a deeper truth: Germany is not denazified.
The Nunzis – the Nazi grandchildren who claim to uphold liberal democracy while preserving the ideological legacy of their forebears – merely maintain the illusion of a transformed state.
By supporting Israel unconditionally, Germany does not merely tolerate its far-right alliances – it helps legitimise them on the world stage. In doing so, it embraces – whether it admits it or not – the very fascist forces it once claimed to oppose.
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