Front Groups working with Zionist actors are promoting Islamophobia

Australian front groups have been working to promote the idea that the Greens make many cultural identities less safe. It's - loosely - part of a global Islamophobia industry.

Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon are tracking the Zionist disinformation strategies that have been at work in the Australian local, state and federal political information space recently.

In this information project, any speech act or protest supporting peace and rights for Palestinians is depicted as an “antisemitic” threat that frightens Jewish people. The Greens are being tarred with the accusation that they pose a threat to many multicultural identities, not just Jewish. This of course distorts the fact that the Greens are the strongest party voice against prejudice in Australian politics - which includes opposing Zionist prejudice against Palestinians as well as antisemitism.

Protest is a speech act and must be protected - particularly when it is directed against matters as urgent as the climate catastrophe and genocide.

The Western Islamophobia project

The project being carried out by the front groups investigated by Bacon and Aharon functions to foster anti Muslim sentiment. That work is inherent to the current shape of the transnational Right. Demonising Muslims in Australian politics is not new: in 2010, then Liberal Party MP Scott Morrison proposed targeting Muslims for political gain. His colleagues attempted to shame him for the divisive suggestion, but in the years since, that tactic has become mainstream for the political and media Right in Australia as well as abroad.

This is part of an extensive global project steered by a network of networks; that is tracked by Nafeez Ahmed in his book Alt Reich: the network war to destroy the West from within. The Islamophobia industry is dependent on Samuel Huntington’s incorrect theory that the Western and Muslim “cultures” are essentially different and incompatible. A core message is the Great Replacement panic that suggests (Jewish) elites are importing non-White/Muslim people to replace domestic populations.

The Atlas Network’s partners and its funders appear regularly throughout this architecture of influence. That is not to suggest that the Network itself is Islamophobic, and some or most partners may well be appalled by the involvement of other partners or mutual donors. Some Atlas Network partners have a history of promoting intervention in the Middle East, with the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) neocons probably being the most influential in promoting “regime change” from within the White House. The AEI personnel-linked Project for a New American Century (PNAC) argued influentially that controlling Middle Eastern oil was an important goal for American foreign policy.

The Heritage Foundation claims to be no longer affiliated with the Atlas Network after decades of acting as one of its major partners. It too is engaging strongly in culture wars over purported antisemitism with the Christian Zionist Project Esther. As Axios observed, the project was as much about crushing Americans’ ability to protest. Jewish commentators also fear that the mechanism will cause blowback against Jewish Americans. As a part of the Christian Nationalist project, Esther’s strategy has been summarised as “a sweeping program of surveillance, propaganda, deportation, and criminalization.”

Two Atlas partners - the Young America’s Foundation and the Young Briton’s foundation it spawned - have both been significant in trafficking this kind of messaging. This was an important conduit for Steve Bannon into British rightwing circles, and Mercer foundation money is significant to these projects as well as, over the decades, to Atlas’s Heartland Institute, Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute and (former) Heritage. This article claims that the Mercers have stepped away from funding the climate denial work there.

The Council for National Policy (CNP) network is the primary driver of the Christian Nationalist project in America. It was founded in the same year as the Atlas Network made its partner organisations’ networking official, 1981. Roughly twenty of the partner organisations attached to Atlas are also part of (or emerged from) the CNP, particularly the Heritage Foundation. Christian talk radio, one of the central planks of CNP activity, has been a significant promoter of Islamophobia in the US. Two of the key families funding the CNP are the DeVos/Prince united clans. The Nation reported that: “Sworn statements filed in federal court allege that Blackwater founder Erik Prince launched a “crusade” to eliminate Muslims and Islam.”

Another collection of bodies is the Tanton Network. This group is the root of some of the most organised anti-immigrant and white nationalist messaging in America. It was named for its driver, John Tanton. The infographic below tracks some of the foundations funding both Atlas partners such as the American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute, Hoover Institution, Competitive Enterprise Institute alongside the Tanton nativist bodies. The best known of the Tanton Network partners are Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR, 1979) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS, 1985). The Olin, Bradley and Scaife foundations, names regularly found in Atlas partner records, also donate to the CIS. The Tanton institutions have pivotal funding from the Nazi-affiliated Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund is one of the main sources of money for research into race essentialism: primarily intending to “prove” the idea that the white “race” is better than others. Pioneer-funded researchers were the main “evidence” used in the eugenicist work, The Bell Curve by Charles Murray. (Murray’s career was supported by Atlas’s Manhattan Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.)

The Tanton Network has connections with the more extreme organisations of the white supremacist sphere such as Jared Taylor and his New Century Foundation. Ahmed asserts that Taylor was also on the board of far right Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute. It should be noted for the purposes of this discussion that antisemitic material is found in both Tanton Network and the more overt groups’ publications. Tanton also brought Peter Brimelow “into the nativist fold.” His VDare site contributor list is “a Rolodex of the most prominent pseudo-intellectual racists and anti-Semites.” Brimelow was noted for reporting directly to Rupert Murdoch at Fox News.

Ahmed’s Alt Reich also tells the story of the development of a distinctive Islamophobia network (as one theme of several important threads in the book). Ahmed cites Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz as key actors in the Zionist aspect of this work. Pipes emerged out of Atlas partners such as the Foreign Policy Research Institute (where he founded his Middle East Forum (MEF) before taking it independent in 1994). He was also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution between 2008-12. Horowitz runs the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC) where he fostered the thought of Trump’s unofficial prime minister “white nationalist” Stephen Miller. Another Zionist aspect of this is Nina Rosenwald’s Gatestone Institute.

The other faces of the Islamophobia project include Frank Gaffney who founded the neocon Center for Security Policy (CSP) in 1988. It has overlaps with AEI/PNAC personnel with John Bolton, Trump’s erstwhile National Security Advisor, in all three. Richard Perle is another. It has had longterm funding from many notable weapons manufacturers. Another face is Steven Emerson (Investigative Project on Terrorism 1955). Both men have been mainstreamed into American government agency advisory roles despite their anti-Muslim work being largely discredited. Another activist body that fosters people brought in to advise on government policy is the Clarion Project.

The Center for American Progress produced its Fear Inc reports in 2011 and 2015 tracking the Christian and Jewish Zionist projects promoting fear of Muslims since 2001. Their work backs up the investigative research in Ahmed’s Alt Reich. The top three listed donors have strong links to funding Atlas Network partners. Both Bradley and Scaife family foundations are found in the list of donors to the Christian Nationalist Council for National Policy. They are also found in lists of donors to the nativist Tanton Network. Donors Capital Fund funnels money to Atlas and CNP as well as Tanton affiliates.

One British hub is the Henry Jackson Society. The original manifesto of this body was published by preeminent British Atlas partner the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in its Social Affairs Unit, the founding of which was fostered by the Heritage Foundation’s Ed Feulner according to Ahmed. Alt Reich relates that the Society moved much father right and towards a fixation on Islam under the influence of Dr Alan Mendoza and Douglas Murray. (Murray is also tied to Gatestone in the US.) Michael Gove, senior Tory politician, has a close relationship with the Society. Priti Patel was on the HJS’s political committee while in government. The Society has an incorporated arm in the US which funnels American dark money into the project.

Political groups are also a feature of networking this messaging. The European far right and centre right parties within their nations, and as factions in the EU parliament, also traffic in this messaging. Nigel Farage and his UKIP in the UK are central to it.

In France, the fearmongering about the existence of an Islamogauche - Islam-loving left - is a strong strain on the nativist Right, that has been uncritically mainstreamed. Politics professor Phillippe Marlière described its roots: “The neologism was originally forged to point to the alleged political convergence between leftist ‘alter-globalists’ and Muslim extremists fighting ‘Americano-Zionist’ partners. The two unlikely groups allegedly joined forces to fight imperialism and neoliberal globalisation. Furthermore, what seemingly united left-wing groups and Islamists was a virulent anti-Zionism.” He notes the “common fight for a free Palestine” as the uniting cause to be rejected.

Another baseless characterisation used by the Islamophobes is that there is a plan to make Europe into Eurabia.

One space where the Islamophobes of many of these groups come together is National Conservatism (NatCon). This is the religio-ethnonationalist ideology that substitutes a faith tradition for “race.” It makes racism polite when culture (or faith) is the rejected attribute. In this network, Christian Nationalists, Israeli Jewish Nationalists work together with Indian Hindutva nationalists to reinforce their projects. The NatCon project is backed by the Edmund Burke Foundation which has important Zionist connections, including Atlas Network partners who founded the Shalem Center. Watch Daniel Pipe’s presentation at NatCon 2019 for insight into his myth-filled fearmongering and Great Replacement talking points. He gives groups literally including Neo Nazis the praiseworthy category of “civilisationalist.”

The substitution of “culture” for “race” as a site of prejudice is a notable development in rightwing nativist rhetoric. Quinn Slobodian’s new book Hayek’s Bastards tracks the centrality of the “cultural” v “genetic” superiority debate in Mont Pelerin Society debates. (The MPS is described as the functional steering committee of the Atlas Network. It is central to the neoliberal architecture of influence, and one of its major roles in recent years has been promoting climate denial. It is also since its first meeting in 1947, concerned with the connections between capitalism, Western Civilisation and Christianity.)

It is noteworthy that the UK suffered serious anti-Muslim violence in recent months, promoted by some of the figures in this list. Former Conservative politician Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has written in Muslims Don’t Matter of the imminent danger resulting from the extensive Islamophobia in Britain, much of it promoted by her Conservative colleagues. This might well be connected to the secretive anti-Islam group within the UK parliament that is connected to some of the projects listed above: the New Issues Group.

The British Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has just echoed the nativist “Rivers of Blood” speech of Sir Oswald Mosley in an anti-immigrant speech.

Australian links to the Islamophobia industry

There are several connections into Australia from these networks.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is one. Murdoch owns the country’s only national broadsheet, and it has platformed Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes approximately 80 times since 2001. Rupert Murdoch is reported to have worked personally with Tanton Network-affiliated Peter Brimelow. Another of Murdoch’s controversial contacts is his erstwhile speechwriter, Michael Anton, senior at the radicalised Atlas partner the Claremont Institute. That body has been described as becoming a “racist fever swamp.” There is constant pro-Israel messaging in Murdoch’s platforms, and considerable hostility towards Islam. A 2017 study found that Murdoch’s Australian mastheads targeted Islam and Muslims on average eight times per day.

Murdoch is also described by Ahmed as mainstreaming eugenicist Charles Murray through his newspapers last century. Murray is not merely an historic figure in this context. He was platformed by James Orr at Cambridge University in 2021. As well as being the UK Chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation (that underlies NatCon), Orr is an Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) Advisory Board member alongside several past and serving Australian politicians. Noted anti-Islam activists Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Douglas Murray are both on that board too. (Mosley’s grandson and Erik Prince appeared at the recent ARC conference.) ARC appears to be interlinked by personnel and message with the NatCon project, and is the version where Australian figures are more integrated.

Tony Abbott was an advisor to Advance, one of the front groups discussed below. Abbott is a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlas partner Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) as well on the ARC Advisory Board alongside several other past and serving Australian politicians.(2) He is also serving as a Senior Visiting Fellow in the Orbán network’s Danube Institute. ARC co-founder John Anderson AO has posted this disturbing interview about Israel and Islam with ARC Board member Douglas Murray on his YouTube channel.(3) ARC is a strongly climate denial project.

John Anderson is also a council member at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), the country’s defence think tank, which advises the government on defence issues while being funded by some of the world’s major weapons and IT contractors. Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman are amongst those who have supported ASPI and the neocon, Islamophobe CSP.

The connection of a number of Australia’s leading “statesmen”, senior journalists and “think tank” figures to the Orbán thought space is noteworthy. The probable first Australian Islamophobic Orbán event took place at the Melbourne Club in 2015. It was an event integrated with the rightwing Quadrant journal circle. One of the editors of Quadrant has been John O’Sullivan, an early advisor to the Heritage-IEA Social Affairs Unit. O’Sullivan was present at that Melbourne event. O’Sullivan’s list of Atlas partner and similar activities include being founding president of the Orbán-supported Danube Institute. Orbán has been at the forefront of the “Muslim ban” policy movement.

Two of the figures that Ahmed discusses affiliated with the Tanton Center for Immigration Studies have been interviewed on the National Conservatism Institute of Australia podcast. One is Mark Krikorian. The other is the “discredited race scientist” Jason Richwine who was mentored by Charles Murray and removed from his Heritage Foundation position for being too controversial. The NatCon Oz body has Dan Ryan as Executive Director. Ryan is also a director of the Atlas partner the Australian Institute for Progress. Another director at NatCon Oz is Jordan Knight, the one-man nativist operation called Migration Watch Australia. Gerard Holland is the executive director of the Page Research Centre (whose chairman is former deputy prime minister John Anderson, and which appears at co-branded events with Atlas partners), and a “key organiser” of the ARC conference, agreed to appear on the podcast with controversial Knight recently. There are many other troubling figures interviewed on the NatCon Oz podcast including Romain Bacri to discuss the nationalist Right in France which Ryan describes as “Young, sophisticated and winning elections” or Deiuwe de Boer on New Zealand nationalism.

Recent front group activity in Australian politics

Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s role in suggesting Islamophobia as a political strategy flags the importance of Christian Zionists to this mission in Australia too.(1) There are likely several motivations here: one role is simply to help Australia’s “conservative” politicians win elections, with bigotry having been successfully deployed in several campaigns. It is also potentially to keep out the Greens (and independents known as “teals”) to prevent genuine climate action, since the Labor Party appears to be constrained by state capture.

The focus on Israel in the activity might be for Jewish Zionist interests or as part of the Christian Nationalist project aiming to control Australian politics. The Never Again is Now body speaks to that last motivation. (The leader of that body, former Minister Mark Leach has also been interviewed on the NatCon Oz podcast.) Forging a Judeo-Christian civilisational identity against Islam as a central focus of the Western chauvinist transnational right is apparent in the messaging of some Australian Atlas Network partners and interlinked projects like CPAC Australia (out of Atlas partner LibertyWorks).

Advance - which was so active against the First Peoples’ Voice to Parliament and then committed over the last few months to destroying the Greens and “teal” independents - has been shown to have personnel links with Atlas Network partners in Australia. Advance has also received funding from the Liberal Party through the party’s Cormack Foundation.

Maurice Newman, who has a long track record of action around Atlas Network partners in Australia, was a Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) member from 1976. Newman was also listed in 2014 as one of Australia’s 12 “most influential” climate deniers who used his time as ABC chairman to skew the coverage of the science. Newman was an “early driver” of Advance. In March this year, Newman described pro-Palestinian encampments on university campuses as one sign that “ideology” (rather than a moral compass) is taking over and stated, “We might as well be in communist China.” Newman has a series of articles in The Australian and The Spectator about Muslims.

David Adler was a “founding board member and advisor” of Advance. He is best known as having founded the extreme Australian Jewish Association, a “private advocacy group” mimicking a peak body. Adler has spoken on rightwing media against doctors being vocal on the substantial threat that the climate crisis poses to health as leftist posturing. He disdains climate science as comparable to “gender issues.” Adler has recently stepped down as AJA “president.”

The degree to which Adler is a fringe figure in Jewish Australian opinion is conveyed by rejections such as this survey in The Australian Jewish News:

“Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council national chairman Mark Leibler, a prominent Indigenous rights activist who co-chaired the Referendum Council, said that due to the AJA’s “misleading name”, it is very important for people within the Jewish community, but also people outside the Jewish community, to “understand that this organisation and this person, they do not speak for us”.

“They do not communicate what, in any sense of the term, can be regarded as Jewish values,” Leibler said.

“Some of the things that Adler has said are frankly nothing short of horrific.”

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim said Adler’s comments “are wrong, offensive and bigoted, and indicate that he lacks the same sensitivity to other forms of racism that he has for antisemitism”.

“These comments do not in any way represent or reflect the views of the mainstream Jewish community in Australia. They are contrary to Jewish values, and the teaching ‘That which is hateful to you, do not do to others’,” Wertheim said.

“Despite its misleadingly generic name, the Australian Jewish Association is a private group led by a small number of unelected people promoting marginal, ideologically-blinkered views. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has been the peak, representative body of the Australian Jewish community since 1944.”

Given that none of the older peak bodies have been what might be described as particularly supportive of justice for Palestinians (leading to the formation of the progressive Jewish Council of Australia to fight for both Jewish and Palestinian safety), this condemnation speaks to the fringe nature of the AJA’s politics.

Bacon and Aharon have been tracking down several Zionist front groups. Better Australia began as Better Councils where the “Israel lobby,” as Bacon termed it, appeared to be attempting to disrupt and influence Sydney council elections. The pair have found connections with Liberal Party affiliates such as Alex Polson who owns Better’s ABN. He is a Liberal Party member and previously worked for Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham. Bacon and Aharon have also investigated the Queensland Jewish Collective (QJC) which appeared to be a reasonably significant player in the 2024 Queensland state election.

The Minority Impact Coalition (MIC) is a creation of the QJC. Alex McKinnon has reported some of the extremity of that body’s social media posts. The Australian depicted the group as a grassroots immigrant movement against Labor and the Greens.

Bacon and Aharon have tracked down loose connections of various kinds between Advance with the Zionist-affiliated groups. QJC accepted help from Advance. QJC’s MIC has claimed very limited connection with Advance. Better may have had early plans to work in cooperation with Advance. Bacon and Aharon have noted that Advance or AJA boost the social media posts of these micro bodies, creating the only occasions when their posts achieve traction. This suggests some degree of cooperation.

In her reporting on the Queensland election campaign, Bacon illustrates a graphic from the AJA that was used to advertise a webinar to introduce its members to Advance. That same image was later used on QJC billboards as well as on the MIC’s website.

The image features three individuals targeting the Greens as a “divisive hate group” for the represented ethnicities or cultural identities. One of the three is posed as representing a “Jewish Queenslander” who doesn’t feel safe in her own cities because of Greens repeating “slogans of the terrorists that wish [her] dead.”

Strategists uniting segments of cultural groups against Muslims

The other two represent an identity coalition that the QJC (alone?) was forging in a “multicultural impact network meeting.” The second individual is a “Hindu Queenslander” who is quoted on the graphic as asserting “The Greens glorify those that terrorise us. They make me scared for the future.” This is not an outlier. The shared work of linking Muslims with terrorism is central to the Hindutva nationalist project, just as it is to Israel. Prime Minister Modi, for example, declared that both Israel and India face a shared threat from “radical Islam.” The recent attack in Kashmir has led to calls to use the “Israel model” in Kashmir with suggestions that both Kashmir and Pakistan should be “flattened” like Gaza.

There is no inference made that the woman pictured supports Hindutva ideology.

It appears the Hindu Council of Australia (HCA) had a speaker at the QJC event in June 2024. The HCA may have no interest in the religio-ethnonationalist Hindutva ideology. It is noteworthy, however, that the HCA site hosts a post suggesting that an attempt to tackle Hindutva extremism is actually about “dismantling Hinduism” and an attempt to spread fear mongering against Hindus.

The MIC site claims to have the group Hindus of Australia as an endorsing body. That link is backed up by an Indian-Australian news site, which depicts MIC as protecting Australia from “imported hate.” In the aftermath of the election, the Hindus of Australia X account reposted a QJC post, with additional comment that the Greens had brought “degeneracy” to “Australian political and social lives.” It also made the strange claim that the Greens had “put targets on the backs of Australian Jewish and Hindu communities so that the terror and criminal elements now consider our communities soft targets.”

Modi and his party have a long history of targeting Muslims, including Modi campaigning on the fear of being outbred by Muslims at the last election.

Israel and India are bonded over these parallels.

The third individual on the AJA graphic represents Iranians. A speaker at the event is reported to have represented the Iranian Novin Party (INP). Hesam Orujee, a member of the INP, is featured on the AJA Facebook page as a member of the QJC.

The Iran Novin Party is “Pahlavist.” That is, they support the Pahlavi family to replace the Iranian Islamist regime. The QJC site claims that the Greens “support the Iranian regime’s terror proxies.” This is, of course, nonsense. (The MIC site also targets Labor for not attacking these groups’ issues aggressively enough.)

The Iranian monarchist community is connected to the NatCon religio-ethnonationalist project. The last conference in Washington (where JD Vance was soft launched at the final dinner just before being announced as Trump’s running partner) featured Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.

Iranian monarchists are reportedly working with Israel in their efforts to overthrow the regime and reinstall their Shah.

It is also reported that the controversial Iranian MEK group has funnelled Saudi money into the creation of the Spanish Far Right Vox party that is militantly Islamophobic as well as socially ultra-conservative.

The J-United group from Melbourne is on record as being backed by Advance in its targeting of Greens candidates. Australian Jewish News described J-United’s political campaign as having “received support from diverse community groups including Iranian, Hindu and Christian organisations.”

Letters were circulated in the electorate of Goldstein shortly before the election recently falsely accusing climate independent (“teal”) Zoe Daniel of being antisemitic in conspiracist terms. It is not known which individual or group circulated the anonymous letters.

Daniel’s Liberal Party rival was affiliated with the Atlas partner IPA and was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society the last time the list was leaked. Tim Wilson’s most significant moment with the international Atlas Network-connected activity was breaking Australia’s carbon price mechanism. In recognition of this, his IPA team was shortlisted for the Atlas Network’s most prestigious global prize.

Advance and the AJA have several reasons for welcoming losses of Greens seats in parliament. For the former, this signals fewer politicians to defend climate action and social justice. The AJA rejects politicians supporting a peaceful resolution for Palestine. The work of the front groups suggests both groups to be loosely part of the NatCon project that aims to unite Christian Nationalists, Israeli Jewish Nationalists and Hindu Nationalists against Muslims, against modernity and against climate action. The Iranian monarchists’ role in that coalition is noteworthy.

The fact that Advance is so closely connected with a Zionist group such as the AJA, which real Jewish peak bodies depict as “marginal” and “ideologically blinkered,” not to mention expressing “horrific” views, is a significant alliance for understanding Advance.

It is natural that immigrant and other minority groups will hold opinions on ways nations they are affiliated with could be better. It is also to be expected that some fringe elements will hold views that incorporate prejudice.

Australia’s multicultural project is, however, a precious and vulnerable experiment. It is reckless to allow strategists to undermine it for political goals. The Australian majority was revealed in this election to reject divisive culture war games: we cannot ignore the inherent anti-Muslim bigotry that is core to the transnational Islamophobia industry and the religio-ethnonationalist NatCon ideology. It is even more dangerous when bodies founded to foster dis- and misinformation bring together those fringe elements of our multicultural communities, promoting the demonisation of one category of Australian citizen. The divisions are dangerous and difficult to reverse.

(1) For international readers, former Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison was a Pentecostal Christian who claimed to be laying on hands when he shook hands with disaster survivors and claimed the devil was in the internet. While the Liberal Party was originally centrist, it has since moved to fill the slot left vacant by the demise of a Conservative Party. The Liberal and National Parties work through most of Australia as a Coalition faction.

(2) Tony Abbott was former Liberal Prime Minister.

(3) John Anderson was head of the rural National Party and Deputy Prime Minister.