When Zionism Meets Fascism’s Colonial Logic

A new essay by sociologist Alana Lentin argues that the Zionism–fascism relationship makes more sense when “fascism” is understood as racial colonial power, not just jackboots and dictators. That framing is controversial—and worth unpacking carefully.

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Why this debate keeps returning

On December 28, 2025, Mondoweiss published Alana Lentin’s “Understanding the relationship between Zionism and Fascism,” adapted from a paper delivered at Riverway Law’s December 9 online seminar, “Is Zionism fascist? What will judges think?”[1] The timing is not accidental. Across the world, far-right politics are on the march. In Israel, figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir—linked to the Kahanist tradition and long associated with anti-Arab incitement—have become central rather than fringe.[2][3]

But the bigger reason the question keeps resurfacing is that “fascism” is a slippery word. People use it as (1) a strict historical label for specific interwar European regimes, (2) a general warning sign for authoritarian politics, or (3) a deeper theory of how race, empire, and modern state violence work together. Lentin’s argument is mainly (3).[1]

What “fascism” means depends on who’s defining it

Mainstream definitions often treat fascism as a nationalist-authoritarian phenomenon that erupts in Europe “between the wars,” then disappears into history books. That approach can be useful for precision—but it can also hide fascism’s colonial DNA.

Historian Robert Paxton’s widely cited definition emphasizes crisis, victimhood narratives, “unity/purity,” elite collaboration, and “redemptive violence.”[4] Umberto Eco’s famous “Ur-Fascism” checklist highlights recurring traits like fear of difference, conspiratorial thinking, contempt for the weak, and a cult of machismo.[5][6] Those frameworks matter because they help people argue about whether a modern state is “fascist” in a meaningful way—or simply authoritarian, ethnonationalist, or militarized.

Paxton’s “warning lights” version of fascism focuses on crisis, humiliation, unity/purity myths, and violence that shrugs off legal restraint.[4]

Lentin leans on a different intellectual lineage: Black radical thought (think W.E.B. Du Bois, Aimé Césaire, George Jackson, Cedric Robinson) that treats fascism less as a European “exception” and more as a predictable outgrowth of Western racial empire.[1][7][8]

The Black radical lens: fascism as “empire turned inward”

Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism makes a scorching point: Europeans were horrified by Nazism partly because colonial methods were being applied inside Europe rather than “over there.”[8] Du Bois similarly argued that the colonial methods of major powers resembled fascist methods—an analysis that scholars continue to examine in detail.[9]

In this tradition, the question is not “Does it look exactly like 1930s Italy?” but “Does it operate through racial hierarchy, eliminationist violence, and civilizational supremacy?” Lentin’s claim is that when fascism is defined this way, Zionism’s affinities with fascist projects become easier to see—especially in how race and colonial rule structure life for Palestinians.[1]

Zionism’s “civilizational” pitch: Europe’s outpost logic

Lentin points readers back to early political Zionism’s own language about Europe, civilization, and “the East.” In The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl famously imagined a Jewish state as part of Europe’s frontier project.

Herzl described the project as “a rampart of Europe against Asia… an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.”[10]

This “outpost” framing matters because it links Zionism to a broader imperial worldview: Europe as “civilization,” non-Europe as “barbarism,” and colonization as the vehicle of progress. That doesn’t automatically make Zionism “fascist,” but it does place it inside the ecosystem of Western colonial ideologies.

Lentin also highlights Herzl’s diary entry describing antisemites as politically useful to Zionism—an ugly but documented political calculation. (This is precisely where careful writing matters: acknowledging a historical quote is not the same as turning it into a conspiracy theory.)[11]

Race science, “new Jews,” and the modern obsession with engineered identity

Fascist movements often try to manufacture a “new man”: physically disciplined, loyal, militarized, and spiritually fused with the nation. Zionism had its own version of this modernist body project. Max Nordau’s idea of “muscular Judaism” argued for physical regeneration as part of national revival.[12][13]

There’s also a serious scholarly literature on how Zionist thinkers engaged (to varying degrees) with the race science of their time—including eugenics discourse that was tragically mainstream across Europe and North America in the early 20th century.[14][15] Arthur Ruppin—an influential Zionist official and social scientist—appears repeatedly in this scholarship as an example of how “scientific” racial thinking shaped parts of the Zionist project.[14][15]

None of this implies “Zionism = Nazism” (a lazy and historically incoherent slogan). It does support a narrower point: Zionism, like many modern nationalist projects, developed alongside—and sometimes borrowed from—the era’s racial and biological social theories. That overlap is part of Lentin’s pathway from “colonial” to “fascistic.”[1][14]

Historical contact zones: Revisionist Zionism and Italian fascism

One of the strongest historical sections of Lentin’s argument is about interwar Palestine and the ways some Zionist currents interacted with fascist Italy. Dan Tamir’s research documents a “Hebrew fascism” current within Zionist circles in the 1920s–30s, tied especially to Revisionist milieus and figures like Abba Ahimeir.[16][17]

There’s also a documented episode that reads like satire written by history’s cruelest comedian: the Betar Naval Academy, established in 1934 in Civitavecchia with Mussolini’s approval, training Revisionist Zionist youth in a fascist state.[18][19] This doesn’t mean “Zionism as a whole was fascist.” It does mean that admiration, tactical collaboration, and ideological cross-pollination existed in specific corners at specific times—exactly what Lentin says we should stop pretending is unimaginable.[1][18]

The antisemitism problem—and why it complicates everything

The most common objection to calling Zionism “fascist” is obvious: European fascism, especially Nazism, was violently antisemitic. Many people therefore conclude the label can’t apply to a Jewish national project. Lentin’s counter is not “antisemitism doesn’t matter,” but “fascism is not only antisemitism; it’s also racial empire.”[1]

This is where we should be blunt and precise: antisemitism is real, deadly, and rising globally. Any serious analysis must reject the idea that Jews, as Jews, are the enemy. Critiquing Zionism or Israeli state policy is not inherently antisemitic—but it becomes antisemitic the moment it slides into collective blame, dehumanization, or recycled bigot myths.

History is messy here too. For example, the Haavara (Transfer) Agreement (1933) between Nazi authorities and Zionist institutions enabled tens of thousands of German Jews to emigrate to British Mandate Palestine while transferring assets through trade mechanisms. It remains deeply controversial and has been widely debated by historians.[20][21] The existence of such a deal does not mean the Nazis “supported Zionism” in any moral sense; it means multiple actors made tactical choices inside a tightening vice of persecution and geopolitics.

From theory to present-day power: Ben-Gvir and the mainstreaming of extremism

Even if someone rejects the label “fascism,” Israel’s current far-right turn is not a metaphor; it’s political reality. Major profiles of Itamar Ben-Gvir trace his roots in Kahanist ideology and his political rise from provocation to institutional power.[2][3] Reporting has documented his past admiration for Baruch Goldstein, the perpetrator of the 1994 Hebron massacre, including the long-noted fact that he displayed Goldstein’s photo in his home before later removing it amid political maneuvering.[22][6]

Eco’s “Ur-Fascism” language—fear of difference, conspiratorial politics, machismo, and the delegitimization of dissent—feels uncomfortably relevant to how Palestinians and their allies describe the lived reality under occupation, siege, and apartheid structures. Whether one calls that “fascism” or “settler colonial authoritarianism,” the human consequences are not academic.[5][1]

So… is Zionism fascist?

Here’s the sober version: it depends on your definition—and what you’re trying to explain.

If fascism is treated as a strict historical category (Italy/Germany, interwar Europe, specific party-state forms), “Zionism = fascism” is usually more heat than light. If fascism is understood as a recurring political logic of racial supremacy, elimination, militarized nationalism, and civilizational empire—then Lentin’s argument becomes a serious, if still contestable, framework.[1][4][5]

For Dearborn, this debate isn’t a campus parlor game. It’s about recognizing how ideologies travel: how dehumanization becomes policy, how “security” becomes a blank check, how dissent gets criminalized, and how racism is laundered into law. That’s as true in Michigan as it is in Palestine—especially for communities that have lived through surveillance, infiltration, Islamophobia, and political repression.

Green politics, at its best, refuses all of it: ethnic supremacy, militarism, collective punishment, and the cynical sacrifice of human rights for power. It insists on equal dignity, equal rights, and a future built on repair rather than domination. That’s not utopian. It’s just the minimum we owe each other in a world that keeps trying to normalize cruelty.

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Sources

1. Mondoweiss — Alana Lentin, “Understanding the relationship between Zionism and Fascism,” published Dec. 28, 2025 (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[1]
2. The New Yorker — “Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s Minister of Chaos,” published Feb. 27, 2023 (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[2]
3. The Guardian — “Kahane’s ghost: how a long-dead extremist rabbi continues to haunt Israel’s politics,” published Mar. 20, 2025 (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[6]
4. Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (PDF copy hosted by libcom), 2004 (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[4]
5. Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism” (text hosted by The Anarchist Library), originally published 1995 (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[5]
6. The Guardian (Letters) — “How to spot a fascist the Umberto Eco way,” published Feb. 25, 2025 (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[6]
7. Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (PDF copy hosted by libcom), 1950/1955 editions (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[8]
8. SAGE Journals — K. Aspinall, “W. E. B. Du Bois and European fascism between the wars,” 2025 (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[9]
9. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State excerpt (HistoryMuse), quote on “rampart of Europe… outpost of civilization,” 1896 (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[10]
10. Al Jazeera (Opinion) — Joseph Massad, “Zionism, anti-Semitism and colonialism,” includes diary quote attribution (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[11]
11. Jewish Museum Berlin — “Muscle Jews” essay quoting Nordau (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[13]
12. Association for Jewish Studies — “Muscular Judaism Alla Turca” (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[12]
13. Cambridge University Press — R. Falk, “Zionism and the Biology of the Jews,” Science in Context (1998) (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[15]
14. Park Books (PDF) — “Taking Measures…” reference to Ruppin as statistician/eugenicist (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[14]
15. SpringerLink (PDF) — Dan Tamir, Hebrew Fascism in Palestine, 1922–1942 (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[17]
16. Gale Academic (abstract) — Review/record referencing Tamir’s work and “fascist movement” framing (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[16]
17. Wikipedia — “Betar Naval Academy” overview and dates (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[18]
18. DOAJ / PDF — article on the Jewish Marine School/Betar cadets’ public support actions (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[19]
19. Yad Vashem (PDF) — Yf’aat Weiss, “The Transfer Agreement and the Boycott Movement” (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[20]
20. Le Monde — Jean-Pierre Filiu, on the Haavara/“transfer” agreement and estimated emigration numbers (published Aug. 6, 2023; accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[21]
21. The Times of Israel — liveblog entry on Ben-Gvir removing Goldstein portrait, Jan. 15, 2020 (accessed Dec. 30, 2025).[22]

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and reflects public reporting and publicly available scholarship. It is not legal advice, and Dearborn Blog makes no claim that any single label (“fascism,” “authoritarianism,” “settler colonialism”) is the only valid interpretation of complex historical and political realities. We aim for accuracy, fairness, and accountability. For corrections, updates, or comments you’d like added, please email info@dearbornblog.com.