Antisemitism and Counter-Islamism: The Industry
How the same networks profit from hatred of Jews and hatred of Muslims — and why they need both
Here is a question that should trouble anyone who has been paying attention.
How does the same political ecosystem simultaneously present itself as the world’s greatest defender of the Jewish people and the world’s most aggressive demoniser of Muslims — while profiting from both antisemitism and cultural racism against Muslims?
The answer is simpler than it should be. It profits from both because the two bigotries serve the same strategic function. Both manufacture enemies. Both justify military intervention. Both sustain the surveillance state. Both redirect public attention away from the actual power structures that benefit from permanent civilisational conflict. And both — this is the part most people miss — are cultivated by overlapping networks, funded by overlapping donors, and amplified by overlapping media pipelines that treat hatred not as a problem to be solved but as a product to be sold.
In “Holy War: How Evangelical Christianity Captured American Foreign Policy,” I traced the theological infrastructure that delivered American foreign policy to a dispensationalist agenda.¹ In “Just for Fun: The War in Iran,” I documented the illegality of a war launched without legal authority and sustained by arguments that collapse under examination.² In “Jews in History — Who Protected Whom,” I inverted the historical record that both of those articles operate within — the assumption that Islam and Judaism are locked in an ancient civilisational conflict.³ They are not. The evidence is overwhelming, and the people who need you not to know that evidence have spent decades building the machinery to ensure you never encounter it.
This article names the machinery.
It names the think tanks that manufacture anti-Muslim narratives. It names the foundations that fund them. It names the media figures who amplify them. It names the governments that benefit from them. And it traces the documented connections between the counter-Islamism industry and the exploitation of antisemitism — because the same networks that inflate the threat of Islam also instrumentalise the suffering of Jews, and they do both for the same reason: to sustain an environment of permanent fear in which military budgets expand, civil liberties contract, and the question of who actually benefits from all this conflict never gets asked.
I am not speculating about how influence operations work. I was an operative in federal counterterrorism. I have seen narratives constructed, targets cultivated, and ordinary people moved toward extremism by people with agendas those people never fully understood. When I look at the networks documented in this article, I recognise the architecture — not because I read about it in a report, but because I have been inside operations that use the same mechanics. The scale is different. The pattern is the same.
The question that runs through everything that follows is the oldest question in intelligence work: cui bono? Who benefits? Follow the money, follow the influence, follow the outcomes — and you will find that the people who benefit from both antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred are not the Jews who live in fear or the Muslims who face discrimination. The beneficiaries are the defence contractors, the surveillance firms, the political actors who need permanent enemies, and the governments that use civilisational conflict as a management tool.
The industry does not fight hate. It farms it.
The Network
In 2011, the Center for American Progress published a report called “Fear, Inc.” that did something no one had done before: it mapped the counter-Islam industry in the United States as a network — with identifiable nodes, traceable funding, and a documented pipeline from think tank to media to legislation.⁴ What the researchers found was not a vast conspiracy. It was something more effective: a small, tightly connected group of organisations and individuals, funded by a handful of foundations, whose manufactured claims about Islam were amplified through conservative media and converted into policy by sympathetic legislators. The network did not need to be large. It needed to be well-funded, well-connected, and relentless.
The numbers told the story. Seven charitable foundations spent $42.6 million between 2001 and 2009 funding the intellectual core of the counter-Islam network.⁵ By 2014, a follow-up analysis by the Council on American-Islamic Relations documented that the inner core organisations alone had access to at least $119.6 million in total revenue between 2008 and 2011.⁶ The money flowed from foundations like the Donors Capital Fund, the Richard Mellon Scaife Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and others — into a cluster of think tanks that produced the reports, the talking points, and the manufactured expertise that made cultural racism against Muslims look like national security analysis.⁷
The think tanks form the intellectual engine. The Center for Security Policy, founded by Frank Gaffney, has spent decades promoting the claim that Islamic law — Sharia — represents an existential threat to the American constitutional order.⁸ ACT for America, founded by Brigitte Gabriel, built a grassroots army — the organisation now claims 2.8 million members — dedicated to opposing what it calls “radical Islam” but in practice targets the religion itself.⁹ The Southern Poverty Law Centre has designated it the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group in the United States.¹⁰ Gabriel, a Lebanese-American Maronite Catholic, was awarded the Menachem Begin Prize by the State of Israel in 2025 — a detail worth remembering when we reach “The Convergence” later in this article.¹¹ The Middle East Forum, run by Daniel Pipes, functions as both a think tank and a funder of other organisations in the network, including $1.24 million to Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism and $450,000 to MEMRI — the Middle East Media Research Institute — between 2009 and 2011.¹² The David Horowitz Freedom Center provides a platform for anti-Muslim voices and has published defences of far-right figures across both sides of the Atlantic.¹³ The Gatestone Institute, an Israel-focused think tank, does the same.¹⁴
Then there are the individuals who give the network its public face. Robert Spencer — not the white nationalist, a different Robert Spencer — runs Jihad Watch and co-founded the American Freedom Defense Initiative with Pamela Geller. Spencer’s writings were cited 162 times in the manifesto of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist who murdered 77 people in 2011.¹⁵ Geller’s blog was cited twelve times.¹⁶ Spencer was banned from the United Kingdom in 2013 as an extremist.¹⁷ None of this has diminished his status within the network. He remains a source cited by mainstream conservative commentators, including in the endnotes of Ann Coulter’s bestselling books.¹⁸
The pipeline from think tank to policy is not theoretical. It is documented. David Yerushalmi, a lawyer affiliated with Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, drafted model anti-Sharia legislation that ACT for America’s grassroots network then introduced in state legislatures across the country.¹⁹ Frank Gaffney himself described ACT for America as a “force multiplier” for this legislative agenda.²⁰ By December 2025, this pipeline had produced the Sharia Free America Caucus in the United States Congress — founded with forty-seven members from twenty-two states, co-founded by Representatives Keith Self and Chip Roy of Texas. Three months later, it has fifty-seven.²¹ In its first months, the caucus introduced seven bills, including the designation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations — the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organisation — as a terrorist organisation.²² CAIR responded by designating the caucus an anti-Muslim hate group — the first time in its thirty-two-year history it had designated a congressional caucus as an extremist body.²³
This is the assembly line. A think tank produces a claim. A media figure amplifies it. A grassroots organisation mobilises around it. A legislator introduces a bill based on it. And a community of 3.5 million American Muslims lives with the consequences.
The media amplifiers deserve specific attention because they are the mechanism by which fringe claims enter mainstream political discourse. Ann Coulter — who has referred to Muslims as “ragheads” and “jihad monkeys,” who called Islam “a car-burning cult,” and who wrote days after the eleventh of September 2001 that America should “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” — has been described by David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, as perhaps the most influential single writer on a presidential election since Harriet Beecher Stowe.²⁴ She was one of only forty-five people Donald Trump followed on X.²⁵ She cites Robert Spencer and the white nationalist outlet VDARE in her bestselling books.²⁶ When Coulter shared anti-Muslim videos from the British far-right group Britain First, Trump retweeted them to his tens of millions of followers.²⁷ The pipeline does not stop at the think tank door. It runs directly into the White House.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Katie Hopkins performs the same function. Hopkins — who called for a “final solution” after the Manchester bombing, who called refugees “cockroaches,” who described Islam as “repugnant,” and who called for internment camps for suspected Muslim extremists on Fox News — spoke at a David Horowitz Freedom Center event in March 2017 and has worked with the Center for Security Policy.²⁸ She was amplified by Trump at least eleven times during his presidency.²⁹ She screened a documentary film in Israel in which she described the country as “kind of my natural home” and declared, “It’s my ambition to be Jewish.”³⁰ She marched alongside Tommy Robinson in London in September 2025.³¹ Hopkins connects the American think tanks, the British far-right street movement, and the Israeli political establishment. She is a node in a transatlantic network, not an isolated provocateur.
The single most revealing piece of evidence in this network is a single transaction. In 2008, the Donors Capital Fund made an $18 million donation to the Clarion Fund, which used it to produce and distribute a propaganda film called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” to 28 million voters in swing states ahead of the presidential election.³² A Florida distributor described the DVD as “the single most powerful piece of media over the past five years in persuading average Americans to the Islamist threat.”³³ Eighteen million dollars, one film, twenty-eight million homes. That is not organic public opinion. That is a manufactured product, delivered at industrial scale, paid for by a single foundation.
This is the counter-Islam network. It is not a conspiracy. It is an industry — with funding, personnel, infrastructure, and a product. The product is fear. And the market for it has never been larger.
The Shield
The counter-Islam network described in the previous section is one half of the machinery. The other half does not manufacture hatred of Muslims. It manufactures a shield — a definitional weapon that makes criticism of the State of Israel functionally impossible in public life.
In 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance adopted a working definition of antisemitism. The definition itself is brief: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.”³⁴ That sentence is uncontroversial. What follows it is not. Attached to the definition are eleven illustrative examples, seven of which relate not to hatred of Jews but to criticism of Israel. Among them: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” And: “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”³⁵
Read those examples carefully. Under the IHRA definition, arguing that a state founded through the ethnic cleansing of three quarters of a million people is a racist endeavour is, potentially, antisemitic.³⁶ Pointing out that Israel receives preferential treatment from Western governments — treatment not extended to any other state engaged in comparable conduct — is, potentially, antisemitic. The definition does not merely protect Jews from hatred. It protects a state from accountability. And it does so by collapsing the distinction between Jewish people and Israeli government policy — which is precisely what genuine antisemites do.
This is not my analysis alone. Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the original text that became the IHRA definition, has publicly and repeatedly opposed its weaponisation. In testimony and published writing, Stern has accused pro-Israel groups of turning the definition into a tool to suppress speech on college campuses. He called its use in Donald Trump’s 2019 executive order targeting Palestinian advocacy “an attack on academic freedom and free speech.”³⁷ The man who wrote the definition says it is being used for purposes he never intended and explicitly opposes.
The consequences are documented and specific. In 2024, the United States House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act by a margin of 320 to 91, mandating the use of the IHRA definition by the Department of Education.³⁸ Columbia University adopted the definition in 2025 as part of a settlement with the Trump administration.³⁹ In response, Rashid Khalidi — the Palestinian-American historian who held the Edward Said Chair of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia — cancelled his popular lecture course on the history of the modern Middle East. His reason was direct: the IHRA definition, he said, “deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews.”⁴⁰
The consequences extend beyond cancelled courses. Professor David Miller, a sociologist at the University of Bristol, was dismissed in October 2021 after complaints about a lecture in which he described the Zionist movement as one of five pillars driving cultural racism against Muslims in the United Kingdom. The Community Security Trust, a pro-Israel charity, called the lecture a “false, vile antisemitic slur.” Two internal university investigations found no case to answer. Miller was sacked anyway for gross misconduct. In February 2024, a Bristol Employment Tribunal ruled, in a unanimous 108-page judgment, that Miller’s anti-Zionist beliefs qualified as a protected philosophical belief under Section 10 of the Equality Act 2010, that his dismissal constituted direct discrimination, and that he had been unfairly and wrongfully dismissed.⁴¹ The tribunal found that the university’s reason for dismissal was “tainted by discrimination.” Miller’s lawyer called it a “landmark case” that “underscores the issue of weaponising antisemitism to stifle discussions on Zionism.”⁴² A professor lost his job because he named the connection between Zionism and anti-Muslim bigotry. The legal system said the machinery was wrong. But the machinery had already done its work — Miller was out for over two years before the ruling.
These are not isolated cases. Palestine Legal, an organisation that tracks the suppression of pro-Palestinian advocacy in the United States, has documented a pattern of the IHRA definition being used to chill campus speech, cancel events, and target faculty.⁴³ In the United Kingdom, an Israeli Embassy official pressured the University of Manchester into changing the title of a talk that was critical of the Israeli government, invoking the IHRA definition as justification.⁴⁴ Luke Akehurst, a member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee and director of an organisation called We Believe in Israel, circulated an edited version of the definition to British local authorities — with the qualifying phrase “could, taking account of the overall context, include” quietly removed and replaced with “The guidelines highlight manifestations of antisemitism as including.” The conditional became categorical. The shield became a weapon.⁴⁵
Over one hundred organisations have asked the United Nations to reject the definition because, in their assessment, it “has often been used to wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and thus chill and sometimes suppress non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism.”⁴⁶
The mechanism is worth stating plainly because it is the mirror image of the counter-Islam network documented in “The Network.” The counter-Islam industry manufactures a threat — the spectre of Islamic infiltration, Sharia law, civilisational jihad — and uses it to justify policy against Muslims. The antisemitism exploitation apparatus manufactures a shield — the conflation of Israel with Jewishness — and uses it to prevent policy against Israel. One creates fear. The other prevents accountability. Both serve the same geopolitical project. And both harm the communities they claim to protect.
Jews who criticise Israel are labelled “self-hating.” I documented this in “The Greatest Antisemitism” — the erasure of Torah-observant anti-Zionist communities whose theological objections to the state predate its founding by centuries.⁴⁷ When rabbis whose lives are devoted to Torah study and who trace their scholarship through unbroken chains of transmission are dismissed as irrelevant because they refuse to pledge allegiance to a political project barely 130 years old, something deeply antisemitic has occurred. The IHRA definition was supposed to protect Jews from precisely this kind of silencing. Instead, it enables it — because the definition protects not Jews but a state, and any Jew who dissents from that state’s agenda becomes a target of the very machinery that was built in their name.
This is the second half of the industry. The first half manufactures enemies. The second half manufactures immunity. Together, they create a closed system in which Islam can be demonised without consequence and Israel can act without scrutiny — and anyone who objects to either arrangement is labelled a bigot.
The Convergence
If the counter-Islam network and the antisemitism exploitation apparatus were separate operations serving separate interests, they would be troubling enough. They are not separate. They converge — in personnel, in funding, in institutional relationships, and in the direct involvement of the State of Israel. The evidence for this convergence is not inferential. It is documented. And no single figure illustrates it more clearly than Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
Yaxley-Lennon — known publicly as Tommy Robinson — is the founder of the English Defence League, a former member of the British National Party, and a man who has served five prison terms between 2005 and 2025, including for fraud and for libelling a fifteen-year-old Syrian refugee.⁴⁸ He is one of the most prominent anti-Muslim activists in Europe. His rallies draw thousands. His social media reach is enormous. Israeli flags are a regular presence at his marches.⁴⁹
Now follow the money and the institutional connections.
Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum — the same organisation documented earlier as a central node in the counter-Islam network, the same organisation that sent $1.24 million to Steven Emerson and $450,000 to MEMRI — bankrolled three demonstrations in London in Robinson’s defence.⁵⁰ The Gatestone Institute — the Israel-focused think tank also documented in “The Network” — published pieces defending him.⁵¹ David Horowitz — whose Freedom Center provided the platform where Katie Hopkins spoke in 2017 — called Robinson “a courageous Englishman who has risked his life to expose the rape epidemic of young girls conducted by Muslim gangs.”⁵² The Times of Israel reported these connections under the headline: “Why are US ‘pro-Israel’ groups boosting a far-right, anti-Muslim UK extremist?”⁵³ It was a fair question. The answer is that Robinson’s activism serves the same geopolitical project their funding supports.
And then came the invitation. In October 2025, Robinson arrived in Israel at the official invitation of Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli.⁵⁴ The visit was organised by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.⁵⁵ Robinson filmed himself at Ben Gurion Airport declaring he was there to “show solidarity with the Jewish people and the Israeli people.” He claimed — in direct contradiction of the evidence presented in the opening paragraphs of my previous article, “Jews in History” — that Israeli control keeps Christians safe in Jerusalem.⁵⁶
The Board of Deputies of British Jews condemned him. “Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and supporters of far-right extremist organisations like the English Defence League are not welcome at our community’s events,” they said.⁵⁷ The Zionist Federation said the same.⁵⁸ The mainstream Jewish community in Britain does not want this man speaking for them.
The Israeli government invited him anyway. Officially. Through a cabinet minister. Organised by the ruling party.
This is the convergence. An American think tank network — funded by foundations documented in Fear, Inc. — finances a British far-right street organiser. That organiser is then officially hosted by the government of Israel. The mainstream Jewish community in Britain says he is not their ally. The Israeli government says he is. The counter-Islam network and the Israeli state are not merely aligned. They are operationally connected. The money, the platforms, and the diplomatic engagement are documented.
Robinson is not alone. He is the most visible case, but the pattern is structural.
Richard Spencer — the white nationalist who led the Charlottesville march where men chanted “Jews will not replace us” — went on Israeli television in August 2017 and told the audience: “You could say that I am a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland for us and ourselves. Just like you want a secure homeland in Israel.”⁵⁹ He later called Israel “the most important and perhaps most revolutionary ethno-state” and “the one that I turn to for guidance.”⁶⁰ When Israel passed its 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law — which conferred the right to national self-determination exclusively to the Jewish people — Spencer praised it: “Jews are, once again, at the vanguard, rethinking politics and sovereignty for the future, showing a path forward for Europeans.”⁶¹
Spencer is an antisemite. He is also a Zionist. These are not contradictions. They are the same position expressed in two directions. The ethno-nationalist who believes white people should have their own state and the ethno-nationalist who believes Jews should have their own state share a premise: that ethnic groups should be separated into territories, and that coexistence is impossible. Spencer recognises this. He is not being ironic when he calls himself a white Zionist. He is identifying a genuine structural kinship — one that the Haavara Agreement of 1933, documented in “The Greatest Antisemitism,” established long before Spencer was born.⁶²
When Spencer challenged a rabbi who confronted him at Texas A&M University — “Do you really want radical inclusion into the State of Israel? Maybe all of the Middle East could go move into Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Would you really want that?” — the rabbi had no answer.⁶³ He had no answer because the question exposes a contradiction that the IHRA definition was designed to conceal: if ethno-nationalism is wrong when white people do it, it is wrong when anyone does it. Spencer’s argument is repugnant. It is also, on its own terms, logically coherent. And that coherence is the most devastating indictment of the ethno-state model that Israel represents.
Katie Hopkins connects all three nodes. She speaks at Horowitz Freedom Center events in the United States.⁶⁴ She marches alongside Robinson in the United Kingdom.⁶⁵ She screens her documentary in Israel and declares it her “natural home.”⁶⁶ She works with the Center for Security Policy.⁶⁷ She is amplified by the president of the United States.⁶⁸ She is not a marginal figure who happens to appear in multiple contexts. She is a node in a transatlantic network that links American think tank money, British far-right street politics, and Israeli government engagement.
And then there is Brigitte Gabriel — the founder of ACT for America, the largest grassroots counter-Islam organisation in the United States, the woman who received the Menachem Begin Prize from the State of Israel in 2025.⁶⁹ Gabriel has described Israel as “the vanguard in the world’s fight against Islamic terrorism.”⁷⁰ Her executive director, Guy Rodgers, was formerly the National Field Director for the Christian Coalition of America — the same organisation documented in “Holy War” as a pillar of the evangelical-Israeli alliance.⁷¹ The counter-Islam network and the Christian Zionist movement share personnel. The personnel share funding. The funding serves a single geopolitical project.
The thesis of this section can now be stated plainly, because the evidence supports it: being anti-Islam is Israeli foreign policy playing out at the domestic level. The counter-Islam network does not exist independently of the geopolitical project it serves. Anti-Muslim sentiment in Western publics is not an organic cultural phenomenon. It is a cultivated product — manufactured by funded organisations, amplified by media figures with direct access to heads of state, defended by think tanks with documented ties to the Israeli government, and rewarded by that government with prizes and official invitations.
The think tanks mapped in “The Network” do not merely happen to align with Israeli strategic interests. They are, in documented cases, directly connected to Israeli government outreach, lobbying infrastructure, and diplomatic strategy. The hostility toward Islam that pervades American and British conservative culture is not a bug in the system. It is the system working as designed — manufacturing the domestic consent required for the foreign policy described in “Holy War.”
Who Benefits
Cui bono.
The foundations that funded the counter-Islam network spent over $119 million in documented revenue between 2008 and 2011 alone. One single donation — $18 million — put a propaganda film into 28 million American homes before a presidential election. The think tanks that received those funds produced the intellectual framework that became model legislation, that became state bills, that became a congressional caucus with fifty-seven members and growing. The media figures who amplified those talking points had direct access to the president of the United States — and used it. The IHRA definition, designed to identify hatred of Jews, was turned into a tool to suppress criticism of a state — and its own author says so. A professor lost his job for naming the connection between Zionism and anti-Muslim bigotry. A historian cancelled his own course rather than teach under a definition that criminalises honest description of Israeli policy. And a far-right street organiser with five criminal convictions was officially invited to Israel by a cabinet minister while the mainstream Jewish community in Britain said he does not speak for them.
None of this serves Jewish safety. Antisemitic incidents rise in direct correlation with Israeli military operations — a pattern documented by anti-Zionist Jewish organisations and acknowledged by researchers on both sides of the debate.⁷² The industry that claims to fight antisemitism generates it, because the conflation of Israel with Jewishness ensures that every act of Israeli violence produces a backlash against Jewish communities who had no part in the decision. The machinery does not protect Jews. It uses them.
None of this serves Muslim communities. The 3.5 million Muslims in the United States and the nearly four million in the United Kingdom live under a manufactured narrative that treats their faith as an ideology of conquest, their religious practice as evidence of infiltration, and their civil rights organisations as terrorist fronts. Forty-seven members of Congress thought that was a reasonable enough premise to found a caucus around. Fifty-seven now.
The people who benefit are not the communities named in the hatred. The beneficiaries are the defence contractors who need permanent enemies to justify permanent budgets. The surveillance firms that need permanent threats to justify permanent monitoring. The political actors who need civilisational conflict to sustain their relevance. And the governments — in Washington, in Jerusalem, and in the capitals of every country that has adopted the IHRA definition or passed anti-Sharia legislation — that use fear as a management tool.
This article has named the machinery. “Holy War” named the theology. “Just for Fun” named the illegality. “Jews in History” recovered the history that was erased. Together, these four articles document a single system: a system that captured American foreign policy for a theological agenda, launched an illegal war to advance it, inverted a thousand years of history to justify it, and built an industry to ensure that no one is allowed to say so without being called a bigot.
The industry does not fight hate. It farms it. And until we name the farmers — the foundations, the think tanks, the media amplifiers, the legislators, and the governments that profit from permanent civilisational conflict — we will never harvest anything but more of the same.
This is the fourth and final article in the Fireline Press series. “Holy War: How Evangelical Christianity Captured American Foreign Policy” documented the theological infrastructure. “Just for Fun: The War in Iran” documented the illegality. “Jews in History — Who Protected Whom” recovered the history. This article named the machinery.
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James S. Coates writes about geopolitics, international law, and the decline of civilisational accountability. His books include A Signal Through Time, The Threshold, The Road to Khurasan, the memoir God and Country (published under pen name Will Prentiss) and his forthcoming Neither Gods Nor Monsters. He publishes regularly on Fireline Press and The Signal Dispatch, and his academic work appears on PhilPapers. He lives in the UK, with his family and dog who has no interest in any of this.
© 2026 James S. Coates All Rights Reserved. Fireline Press · fireline.press
Endnotes
¹ James S. Coates, “Holy War: How Evangelical Christianity Captured American Foreign Policy,” Fireline Press, 18 March 2026.
² James S. Coates, “Just for Fun: The War in Iran — Parts I & II,” Fireline Press, 24 March 2026.
³ James S. Coates, “Jews in History — Who Protected Whom,” Fireline Press, [date TBC] 2026.
⁴ Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and Faiz Shakir, “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” Center for American Progress, 26 August 2011.
⁵ Ibid. The seven foundations identified were: Donors Capital Fund, Richard Mellon Scaife Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Newton and Rochelle Becker Foundation, Russell Berrie Foundation, Anchorage Charitable Fund/William Rosenwald Family Fund, and Fairbrook Foundation.
⁶ Corey Saylor, “The U.S. Islamophobia Network: Its Funding and Impact,” Council on American-Islamic Relations, April 2014. The report documented $119,662,719 in total revenue for inner core organisations between 2008 and 2011. Note: the source reports use the term “Islamophobia.” This article uses “cultural racism against Muslims” and “counter-Islam bigotry” as more precise descriptions of the phenomenon. Where the source terminology appears, it reflects the language of the cited organisation, not the author’s.
⁷ Fear, Inc. (2011). The Donors Capital Fund’s contribution included an $18 million single donation in 2008, detailed later in this section.
⁸ Frank Gaffney founded the Center for Security Policy in 1988. The SPLC has described it as an anti-Muslim hate group. Gaffney has promoted the conspiracy theory that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the US government. See “Frank Gaffney,” Southern Poverty Law Center; “Center for Security Policy,” Islamophobia Network (islamophobianetwork.com).
⁹ ACT for America claims 2.8 million members as of 2024. See “Breathtaking Achievements,” ACT for America Substack, June 2024. Earlier claims of “five million” appear on Gabriel’s official biography page. The SPLC, BuzzFeed News, The Guardian, and the Center for American Progress have all described the organisation as anti-Muslim.
¹⁰ Southern Poverty Law Center designation of ACT for America. See also Center for American Progress, Fear, Inc. (2011).
¹¹ Brigitte Gabriel was awarded the Menachem Begin Prize in 2025 “in recognition of her significant contribution to the people and the State of Israel.” See actforamerica.org/aboutbrigitte.
¹² Saylor (2014): “Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum granted $1,242,000 over three years to Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism” and “between 2009 and 2011 MEF sent Yigal Carmon’s Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) $450,000.”
¹³ The David Horowitz Freedom Center has been described by the SPLC as specialising in “giving anti-Muslim voices and radical ideologies a platform to project hate and misinformation.” David Horowitz earned $488,953 in 2011. Saylor (2014).
¹⁴ The Gatestone Institute published “Swift Injustice: The Case of Tommy Robinson” in defence of the far-right British activist. See Times of Israel, “Why are US ‘pro-Israel’ groups boosting a far-right, anti-Muslim UK extremist?” 24 January 2019.
¹⁵ Anders Breivik cited Robert Spencer’s blog Jihad Watch 162 times in his 1,500-page manifesto before murdering 77 people in Norway on 22 July 2011. Fear, Inc. (2011).
¹⁶ Pamela Geller’s blog Atlas Shrugs was cited twelve times in Breivik’s manifesto. Fear, Inc. (2011).
¹⁷ Robert Spencer was banned from the United Kingdom in June 2013 alongside Geller, on the grounds that their presence was “not conducive to the public good.” SPLC, “Ann Coulter Cites White Nationalists, Anti-Muslim Activists and Other Racists in New Book,” 29 June 2015.
¹⁸ Coulter cites Robert Spencer in her book ¡Adios, America! (2015). She also cites VDARE, a white nationalist outlet, and Peter Brimelow, its founder. SPLC (2015).
¹⁹ David Yerushalmi drafted model anti-Sharia legislation that was introduced in multiple state legislatures through ACT for America’s grassroots network. See Fear, Inc. 2.0 (2015); “ACT for America,” Wikipedia.
²⁰ Frank Gaffney described ACT for America as a “force multiplier” for the anti-Sharia legislative agenda. Cited in The New York Times; see “ACT for America,” Wikipedia.
²¹ The Sharia Free America Caucus was founded on 18 December 2025 with forty-seven members from twenty-two states, co-founded by Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX). By 18 March 2026, Self announced the caucus had grown to fifty-seven members, with sixteen from Texas alone. See “Anti-Muslim Rhetoric from US Government Officials & Political Figures,” compiled by James S. Coates, March 2026; Rep. Keith Self (@RepKeithSelf), X post, 18 March 2026.
²² The caucus introduced seven bills including HR 4097, which would designate CAIR as a terrorist organisation. Ibid.
²³ CAIR designated the Sharia Free America Caucus an anti-Muslim hate group on 18 February 2026 — the first time in CAIR’s thirty-two-year history it designated a congressional caucus as an extremist organisation. Ibid.
²⁴ Coulter’s post-9/11 statement appeared in her column for National Review Online on 13 September 2001; she was subsequently fired. She doubled down in her book How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) (2004). “Ragheads” and “jihad monkeys”: see “Ann Coulter,” Islamophobia.org. “Car-burning cult”: Media Matters, “Coulter: Islam is ‘a car-burning cult,’” 8 February 2006. Frum’s comparison to Harriet Beecher Stowe: see “Ann Coulter,” Islamophobia.org.
²⁵ Coulter was one of only forty-five accounts Trump followed on X (formerly Twitter). See “Ann Coulter,” Islamophobia.org.
²⁶ SPLC, “Ann Coulter Cites White Nationalists, Anti-Muslim Activists and Other Racists in New Book,” 29 June 2015.
²⁷ Coulter shared anti-Muslim videos from Britain First, which Trump then retweeted in November 2017, provoking an international incident with the British government. See Haaretz, “Ann Coulter, Who First Tweeted Trump’s anti-Muslim Videos: Source and Credibility ‘Irrelevant,’” 30 November 2017.
²⁸ Hopkins tweeted “We need a final solution” on 23 May 2017, following the Manchester Arena bombing. She was fired from LBC. She called for internment camps on Fox News’ Fox & Friends in June 2017. She called refugees “cockroaches” in The Sun in 2015. She spoke at a Horowitz Freedom Center event in March 2017. She has worked with the Center for Security Policy. See “Katie Hopkins,” Wikipedia; Media Matters, “Trump keeps amplifying far-right racist Katie Hopkins,” 2019.
²⁹ Trump amplified Hopkins at least eleven times as president, including retweets calling Baltimore a “sh*thole” and attacking the “Mayor of Londonistan.” Media Matters (2019).
³⁰ Hopkins screened her documentary Homelands in Tel Aviv and stated: “It feels like Israel is kind of my natural home... It’s my ambition to be Jewish.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 22 July 2019.
³¹ Hopkins marched alongside Tommy Robinson in central London on 13 September 2025. See AFP photograph captioned in Times of Israel, 15 October 2025.
³² The Donors Capital Fund donated $18 million in 2008 to the Clarion Fund for distribution of the DVD “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” to 28 million swing-state voters. Fear, Inc. (2011).
³³ The Florida distributor’s description of the DVD as “the single most powerful piece of media” is cited in SPLC, “New Report Details Funding Sources Behind Anti-Muslim Fearmongers,” 2011.
³⁴ International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, “Working Definition of Antisemitism,” adopted 26 May 2016, Bucharest. The full text and examples are available at holocaustremembrance.com. The US State Department adopted the definition and encouraged other governments and international organisations to do the same.
³⁵ Ibid. The eleven illustrative examples are presented as guidance: “Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to...” Seven of the eleven examples relate to Israel.
³⁶ The Nakba — the displacement of approximately 700,000–750,000 Palestinians during 1947–49 — is documented in endnote 73 of “Jews in History — Who Protected Whom” (Fireline Press). See Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
³⁷ Kenneth S. Stern, “A Bad Deal: By Adopting the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, Universities Are Sacrificing Academic Freedom,” Knight First Amendment Institute, Columbia University. Stern wrote: “Many pro-Israel Jewish groups eventually weaponized the definition to suppress student speech and to go after faculty for what they said, materials included in their courses, and speakers they invited to campus.” See also The Nation, “How a Leading Definition of Antisemitism Has Been Weaponized Against Israel’s Critics,” 27 December 2023.
³⁸ The Antisemitism Awareness Act passed the US House of Representatives on 1 May 2024 by a vote of 320–91, mandating the use of the IHRA definition by the Department of Education in evaluating complaints of antisemitism on campuses. See “IHRA definition of antisemitism,” Wikipedia.
³⁹ Columbia University adopted the IHRA definition in 2025 as part of its settlement with the Trump administration. See “IHRA definition of antisemitism,” Wikipedia.
⁴⁰ Rashid Khalidi, then Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia, cancelled his fall 2025 lecture course on the history of the modern Middle East. He stated the IHRA definition “deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews.” See “IHRA definition of antisemitism,” Wikipedia.
⁴¹ Miller v University of Bristol (Case No. 1400780/2022), Bristol Employment Tribunal, judgment delivered 5 February 2024. Regional Employment Judge Rohan Pirani. The unanimous 108-page judgment found Miller’s anti-Zionist beliefs qualified as a protected philosophical belief under Section 10 of the Equality Act 2010, that his dismissal constituted direct discrimination contrary to Section 13, and that he was unfairly and wrongfully dismissed. See judiciary.uk; Al Jazeera, “UK tribunal says academic discriminated against due to anti-Zionist beliefs,” 6 February 2024; Times Higher Education, “’Anti-Zionist’ Bristol professor unfairly dismissed, judge rules,” 6 February 2024.
⁴² Zillur Rahman, partner at Rahman Lowe and Miller’s legal representative, described the ruling as a “landmark case” that “marks a pivotal moment in the history of our country for those who believe in upholding the rights of Palestinians” and that “underscores the issue of weaponising antisemitism to stifle discussions on Zionism.” Al Jazeera (2024); Jewish Voice for Labour, “David Miller Verdict,” 5 February 2024.
⁴³ Palestine Legal documents the use of the IHRA definition to chill campus speech, providing examples from multiple universities. See Palestine Legal (2020); “What Is Wrong with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Definition of Antisemitism?” PMC/National Library of Medicine, 2022.
⁴⁴ Gayle (2017), cited in “What Is Wrong with the IHRA’s Definition of Antisemitism?” PMC (2022): Michael Freeman, Counsellor for Civil Society Affairs at the Embassy of Israel in the UK, pressured the University of Manchester into changing the title of a talk critical of the Israeli government, invoking the IHRA definition.
⁴⁵ Luke Akehurst, director of We Believe in Israel and member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, circulated an edited version of the IHRA definition to British local authorities. The qualifying phrase “could, taking account of the overall context, include” was replaced with “The guidelines highlight manifestations of antisemitism as including.” See Cushman (2017), cited in PMC (2022).
⁴⁶ Over 100 organisations asked the United Nations to reject the IHRA definition. The Nation, “How a Leading Definition of Antisemitism Has Been Weaponized Against Israel’s Critics,” 27 December 2023.
⁴⁷ James S. Coates, “The Greatest Antisemitism,” brjimc.com, 2026. The article documents the theological and ethical arguments of Torah-based Jewish anti-Zionism, including the erasure and delegitimisation of anti-Zionist Orthodox communities.
⁴⁸ Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson) founded the English Defence League in 2009 and was previously a member of the British National Party. His convictions include fraud, assault, drug offences, and contempt of court. In 2021, he was found liable for libelling Jamal Hijazi, a fifteen-year-old Syrian refugee, and ordered to pay £100,000 in damages. See “Tommy Robinson (activist),” Wikipedia; Times of Israel, “Why are US ‘pro-Israel’ groups boosting a far-right, anti-Muslim UK extremist?” 24 January 2019.
⁴⁹ Israeli flags were prominently carried at Robinson’s London march on 13 September 2025, by both Jewish and non-Jewish supporters. See Jerusalem Post, “Tommy Robinson on Israel, the UK, and the Middle East,” 19 September 2025.
⁵⁰ Daniel Pipes confirmed that the Middle East Forum bankrolled three demonstrations in London defending Robinson. Pipes denied paying for Robinson’s legal defence but verified the demonstration funding. The Guardian reported the MEF connection; Pipes pushed back against allegations that Robinson is an anti-Muslim bigot. Times of Israel (2019).
⁵¹ The Gatestone Institute published “Swift Injustice: The Case of Tommy Robinson” in defence of Robinson. The piece’s author, Bruce Bawer, did not respond to requests for comment. Times of Israel (2019).
⁵² David Horowitz emailed The Guardian: “Tommy Robinson is a courageous Englishman who has risked his life to expose the rape epidemic of young girls conducted by Muslim gangs and covered up by your shameful government.” The SPLC has said Horowitz’s organisation specialises in “giving anti-Muslim voices and radical ideologies a platform.” Times of Israel (2019).
⁵³ Times of Israel, “Why are US ‘pro-Israel’ groups boosting a far-right, anti-Muslim UK extremist?” 24 January 2019.
⁵⁴ Robinson arrived in Israel in October 2025 at the official invitation of Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli. Times of Israel, “British anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson arrives in Israel,” 15 October 2025.
⁵⁵ The visit was described as “an official visit organized by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.” Jacobin, “It’s No Surprise That Tommy Robinson Loves Israel,” November 2025.
⁵⁶ Robinson claimed in Israel that Israeli control keeps Christians safe in Jerusalem. This claim is directly contradicted by the documented pattern of attacks on Christian clergy in Jerusalem detailed in “Jews in History — Who Protected Whom” (Fireline Press), endnotes 1–6, citing Haaretz, CBN News, the Rossing Centre, Middle East Eye, and the Armenian Weekly.
⁵⁷ Board of Deputies of British Jews: “Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) and supporters of far-right extremist organisations like the English Defence League are not welcome at our community’s events.” Middle East Monitor, 24 May 2021; repeated in multiple subsequent statements.
⁵⁸ The Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland also distanced itself from Robinson. Middle East Monitor (2021).
⁵⁹ Richard Spencer, interview with Channel 2 News (Israel), 16 August 2017. Reported by Times of Israel, Haaretz, +972 Magazine, and the Forward.
⁶⁰ Spencer described Israel as “the most important and perhaps most revolutionary ethno-state” at the University of Florida. See Foreign Policy In Focus, “Israel’s New Admirers: The White Nationalist Right,” 3 March 2021; MERIP, “The Old ‘New Anti-Semitism’ and Resurgent White Supremacy,” February 2018.
⁶¹ Spencer tweeted his praise of the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law: “I have great admiration for Israel’s nation-state law. Jews are, once again, at the vanguard, rethinking politics and sovereignty for the future, showing a path forward for Europeans.” Haaretz, “White Nationalist Richard Spencer Backs Israel’s Contentious Nation-state Law,” 22 July 2018.
⁶² The Haavara Agreement of 1933 — a formal arrangement between the Zionist Organisation and the Nazi regime to facilitate the transfer of German Jewish assets and emigration to Palestine — is documented in James S. Coates, “The Greatest Antisemitism,” brjimc.com, 2026. The structural alignment between ethnic separation movements is not a modern phenomenon.
⁶³ The exchange between Spencer and Rabbi Matt Rosenberg at Texas A&M University is documented in Current Affairs, “Why Israel Is Richard Spencer’s Favorite Argument,” November 2017; MERIP (2018).
⁶⁴ Hopkins spoke at a David Horowitz Freedom Center event in March 2017. See endnote 28.
⁶⁵ Hopkins marched alongside Robinson in central London on 13 September 2025. See endnote 31.
⁶⁶ Hopkins screened Homelands in Tel Aviv. See endnote 30.
⁶⁷ Hopkins has worked with the Center for Security Policy. See “Katie Hopkins,” Wikipedia.
⁶⁸ Trump amplified Hopkins at least eleven times as president. See endnote 29.
⁶⁹ Gabriel received the Menachem Begin Prize in 2025. See endnote 11.
⁷⁰ Gabriel described Israel as “the vanguard in the world’s fight against Islamic terrorism” at a conference sponsored by the UN Permanent Mission of Palau and the Aja Eze Foundation. See “Brigitte Gabriel,” Wikipedia.
⁷¹ Guy Rodgers, executive director of ACT for America, was formerly the National Field Director for the Christian Coalition of America in the 1990s. The Christian Coalition’s role in the evangelical-Israeli alliance is documented in James S. Coates, “Holy War: How Evangelical Christianity Captured American Foreign Policy,” Fireline Press, 18 March 2026. See “ACT for America,” Wikipedia.
⁷² The correlation between Israeli military operations and spikes in antisemitic incidents globally is documented by multiple sources. Anti-Zionist Jewish organisations, including those documented in “The Greatest Antisemitism” (brjimc.com, 2026), argue that Israel’s claim to speak for all Jews makes every Jewish person a potential target for backlash against Israeli state actions. The Community Security Trust’s own annual reports show spikes in UK antisemitic incidents during periods of Israeli military operations in Gaza.