Is Israel's ambassador to the US a conspiracy theorist?

To call Frank Gaffney a wild man of the neoconservative movement is an understatement. Like many neoconservatives he began his career as an aide in the office of Democrat Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who posthumously inspired Britain’s amateurish anti-Muslim think tank, the Henry Jackson Society.

While working under the fervent anti-communist Jackson, Gaffney hooked up with another employee, Richard Perle, the businessman-cum-political activist who later profited, incidentally, from the Iraq war. Together, they would drift through Washington. Back then, the name of the game was ignoring the fact that the ailing Soviet Union was facing popular revolt in Poland, an expensive and disastrous war in Afghanistan and a collapsing economy, while spreading conspiracy theories about communist control of America and the need for astonishingly expensive missile defence programmes to counteract a communist threat that had largely evaporated by the time Ronald Reagan moved into the White House.

Gaffney was brilliant at spreading these kinds of conspiracy theories. Eventually, he found himself as Deputy Secretary of State for Defence before a conspiracy – a real one this time – materialised within the Pentagon in late 1987 to have him ousted on the grounds of incompetence and a propensity to fantasy. Getting yourself thrown out of the Reagan administration for being an over aggressive war nut is quite an achievement, but somehow Gaffney managed it.

Now sixty-three, Gaffney has spent his time since 2001 making up the same kind of conspiracy theories about Muslims as he once did about communists. One organisation recognised as expert on conspiracy theories aimed at religious minorities is the Anti-Defamation League, an American anti-Semitism watchdog which would be utterly brilliant were it not for its belief that criticising Israel equates to the said anti-Semitism.

As you might expect, Gaffney takes the pro-Israel cause very seriously, so you would also expect him to take the words of the ADL equally seriously, but perhaps not. The organisation has described Gaffney repeatedly as a “conspiracy theorist” in a detailed profile published in early November. “Gaffney has promulgated a number of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories over the years,” the ADL profile begins. “Gaffney has articulated,” it continues, “a vision of an Islamic Fifth Column in the United States… working from the inside to undermine the country.” Gaffney has “drummed up” “birther” conspiracy theories“, noting that he has questioned whether Barack Obama “is a natural born citizen of the United States.” The ADL described how his weekly radio show – Secure Freedom Radio — was “dedicated to advancement of myriad conspiracy theories.”

It is most surprising, therefore, that the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer – who hails from a country which was founded in the wake of pernicious and ultimately deadly conspiracy theories about Jews – was last week apparently perfectly happy to receive a “Freedom Flame Award” from Gaffney’s conservative think tank, the Centre for Security Policy; it’s an organisation dedicated to spreading pernicious and ultimately deadly conspiracy theories about Muslims.

As a diplomat, Dermer was careful to say that “Islam” itself isn’t a threat, but that “militant Islam” (whatever that is) is the real problem. He praised the murderous Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, and called conspiracy theorist Gaffney a “steadfast friend of Israel”; the ambassador thanked him for “standing up for all of us.” This is Gaffney, the man who hilariously believes that the new logo of the US Missile Defence Agency looks a bit like an Islamic crescent, and that this is evidence of the Islamic Fifth Column that he can’t stop banging on about. By choosing to accept this award, it does look and sound a great deal like the Israeli ambassador is a conspiracy theorist too.

Dermer has not reached his much-coveted position in Washington after a professional career in the diplomatic corps; he has been sponsored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Bibi is, of course, a mad conspiracy theorist himself. He believes that the Holocaust was not Hitler’s idea, but came from the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He has supporters on this; the propagandist bullies at the American organisation CAMERA, who see it as their right to censor the press (even here in Britain) through co-ordinated acts of media harassment, came running rather pathetically to his defence when he came up with this astonishing act of Holocaust denial not long ago. At the last election, Netanyahu also famously believed there was a “worldwide” conspiracy to unseat him as prime minister, in which the international media was ganging up against him.

There is a deeply depressing historical ring to all of this. I don’t doubt that had Gaffney been alive in America or Europe before the Second World War, Muslims would not have been the target of his conspiracy theories, but the Jews would have. Instead of an arch-Islamophobe, he would more than likely have been a fanatical anti-Semite. Just as there were always people who got very over-excited about the threats posed by communists, the same kind of people – the paranoid type – long ago once got over-excited about Jewish immigrants and their perceived threat to the American way of life. Gaffney may now be a strong friend of Israel, but who is to say that an early twentieth century Gaffney wouldn’t have been a strong friend of Adolf Hitler?

There is good reason to believe that he would have: he tells the same set of lies about Muslims as were once told about Jews – that Muslims sympathise en masse with terrorism; that Muslims en masse are incapable of “integrating”; and that Muslims are attempting en masse to infiltrate Western governments. History has a way of repeating itself. It’s astonishing that Israel is propping up the same kind of anti-religious minority conspiracy theorists of which it, of all countries, should be extremely wary. The bad news is that Gaffney is back near the levers of power for the first time since the Reagan era, as an informal adviser to Donald Trump.

It was around the time of his appointment that the idea of a “Muslim registry” surfaced. Was Gaffney responsible for this suggestion? We will probably never know for certain. However, it’s an idea that is still being taken seriously. Moreover, if it did spring from his warped mind, it’s certainly a policy that suggests that Frank Gaffney would indeed have been very welcome in Berlin circa 1939.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.