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A Tale of Two Phobias: Islamophobia and Naziphobia

Hitler hosts Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini in 1941 in Germany.

By John Zmirak Published on July 10, 2025

First, let’s define the word “phobia.” I don’t always trust experts, but the official diagnostic manual used by mental health professionals, the DSM-5-TR, uses the following language to describe the psychological problem:

  1. Marked fear or anxiety about a specific object or situation (e.g., flying, heights, animals, receiving an injection, seeing blood).
  2. The phobic object or situation almost always provokes immediate fear or anxiety.
  3. The fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context.
  4. The phobic object or situation is actively avoided or endured with intense fear or anxiety.
  5. The fear, anxiety, or avoidance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

We can work with that. Given the definition above, how should we evaluate the common claim that conservatives and Christians display, indulge in, and foment “Islamophobia”? The prime minister of Britain, Keir Starmer, has declared this phobia a national crisis and is promoting laws that would forbid criticism of Islam — amounting, critics say, to the kind of “blasphemy” laws extant in officially Muslim countries such as Pakistan.

The same kinds of leftists who warn us about Islamophobia are equally alarmist on the danger of “far-right” or “populist” movements they label as “extreme” threats to democracy. They seek to outlaw them using the same legislation that bans outright Nazi parties. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) currently faces a possible ban by the German government under such laws. Joe Biden, in his infamous “Darth Vader” speech at Independence Hall in 2022, warned that the half of America that supported Donald Trump might be “quasi-fascists”; meanwhile, his FBI labeled PTA moms opposed to transgender groomer porn in schools as “domestic extremists.”

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Who’s the Nut with the Phobia?

So let’s consider whether men like Keir Starmer are right about popular reactions to Islam, or whether they might in fact be suffering from a comparable phobia — a panicked, evidence-free obsession with a phantom threat. They might be unhinged Naziphobes.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m willing to apply the DSM-5 test to myself. And right out of the gate, I’ll cop to exhibiting symptoms 1 and 2 above. In fact, I’ll go further: I also experience symptoms 4 and 5. So do millions of other people in most Western countries. Are we all mentally ill?

It’s theoretically possible. Mass delusions have swept countries before, as have waves of unjustified fear and hatred aimed at minority groups. In fact, the enablers of mass Islamic colonization of Western nations consistently point to the Nazis’ baseless, systemic hatred of Jews to discredit critics of Islam — and the tactic proves quite effective, at least among elites and those desperately eager for elite acceptance and approval.

One Teensy-Weensy Problem

There’s just one fly in the ointment, one dead rat that floats in the punchbowl. It’s symptom 3, which we should go back and reread:

The fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context.

Yeah, that’s the kicker. Whether or not a pervasive fear, hostility, and avoidance constitutes a psychiatric symptom or a perfectly rational response really does hinge on the reality of the threat. When a smallpox epidemic is raging, you don’t accuse people who use a lot of hand sanitizer and maybe wear N95 masks of being unhinged “germophobes.” But people who do that in normal times maybe will raise your eyebrow.

In Britain, the nation is still reeling from the exposure of massive, organized rape gangs of Pakistani men who preyed on hundreds of thousands of native-born British girls, with the connivance of police who refused to investigate lest they get canceled for “racism.” Britons who criticize immigration can and do face prison terms, while radical jihadis march unhindered through the streets demanding “Sharia Law for the U.K.”

Scenes like the one in the social media post below are increasingly common in British cities:

In 2024, the BBC reported that the most common boy’s name in Britain is now Muhammad. The British Labour Party relies heavily on Muslim votes to win majorities in Parliament, and even conservative parties (the Tories, Reform) are hesitant about seeking real restrictions on immigration. They don’t want to get cancelled or even (these days) threatened with prison.

In Australia, organized mobs of aggressive Muslims have surrounded a Christian cathedral in a mass display of power — the kind of gesture now seen in Western cities around the world.

Now, if Islam were just a religion of peace, a harmless non-Christian faith like Bahaism or Zoroastrianism, then hostility and fear directed toward it might still be irrational. But does anyone outside the Bush clan or the bought-off Jesuits at Georgetown University really believe that? The Christians being hunted by Muslims in Nigeria, Egypt, Syria, Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Pakistan certainly don’t. Spend 15 minutes reading the archives of our frequent contributor Raymond Ibrahim for searing documentation of the fact that Islam is inherently a religion of conquest, pillage, and even rape — starting with its founder and continuing, unreformed, ever since.

Is It Nazi for Israel to Limit Immigration?

Let’s turn the inquiry around. There is a wave of evidence-free, irrational, groundless, and socially damaging fear that cripples the West. It focuses on an evil that is all too genuine: the vicious, groundless, racial hatred the Nazis and their allies once spread all through Europe. I certainly don’t mean to undermine in any way our righteous rejection of that pagan ideology and the demon-driven antisemitism that lies at its very heart.

But are objections to mass immigration, the colonization of countries by people with alien cultures and hostile religions, genuine symptoms of Nazism? Are Israelis acting like Nazis when they reject the mass influx of Palestinian “refugees”? (Many Leftists at places like Columbia University and Harvard actually say they are.)

Are pro-Israel Germans (such as the leaders of the AfD) exhibiting Nazi-like tendencies when they reject Jew-hating jihadis flooding in from Syria? Were the fathers of the girls raped by Pakistani migrants dabbling in Nazi hatred when they complained to the police? The police certainly acted as if they were, which is why they ignored their reports.

But finding fake Nazis under every bed and slandering innocent people with the ugliest charge available isn’t the mark of a sound, rational mind. In fact, it sounds like a symptom of a debilitating phobia.

There is a real upsurge of paranoid, conspiratorial antisemitism among some figures on the Right, and we ought to reject it completely. But it has absolutely nothing to do with populist politicians like Donald Trump or activists like Britain’s Tommy Robinson, who are alarmed by the foreign conquest of their countries. Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle opposed that, too.

Maybe Keir Starmer thinks they were secretly Nazis as well.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.