The Peculiar Progressive-Islamist Alliance

After Congresswomen Ilham Omar’s and Rashida Tlaib’s incendiary anti-Semitic rants directed at Jewish Americans and American ally Israel, the Democrat House “progressive caucus,” led by Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, rallied around to protect and support them. The progressive media chimed in, supporting the Islamist congresswomen. Even after Rep. Omar dismissed the 9/11 attacks as “someone did something,” Democrat progressives defended her, accusing the president of religious bigotry when he objected.

Not to be outdone, the ever more progressive and pro-Islamist New York Times published a political cartoon that even they admit is anti-Semitic, as well as an article claiming that Jesus was a Palestinian, which was applauded by Ilhan Omar! The anti-Semitic congresswomen and media were right in tune with the powerful “Women’s March” leaders, who allied with notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, calling him “The greatest of all times.”

Progressive leftists, who wish to bring socialism to America, and Islamists, who wish to bring Sharia law to America, are strange bedfellows indeed. Despite opposite political philosophies, they have found common cause in anti-Semitism.

Progressive leftists range from moderate progressives through social democrats to democratic socialists, to socialists and communists. All aim to perfect society, to bring it closer to perfection, by reform or by revolution. The farther left one goes, the farther from liberal democracy and the more totalitarian the governance. The historical examples of European laborites, socialists, and communists, and of Soviet, Chinese, Cambodian, Cuban, and Venezuelan communist regimes, provide very clear guidelines as to what to expect, which is one hundred million individuals of unfavored classes and opinions murdered in the name of the “people.” Progressive leftists all pursue the goal of advancing absolute equality of results, everyone to end up with the same level of assets, even at the expense of freedom, prosperity, democracy, and human rights. This utopian goal has been proven illusory, not least by the special benefits enjoyed by the ruling class and their enforcers.

The German National Socialists were also leftist utopians, although their vision of perfection was race purity rather than economic equality. Fascism is, after all, just another form of leftist collectivization. For the Nazis too, their utopian goal justified an increasingly totalitarian dictatorship as well as the “elimination” of tens of millions of “unsuitable” citizens. The Nazis and Communists were kissing cousins, until expediency led to conflict, just as the communists, socialists, anarchists, and Democrats fought each other during the Spanish Civil War, although they were supposed to be fighting the fascists.

Islamists, in contrast to leftists, are paradigmatic traditionalists who follow religious texts from the 7th century. The Muslim idea of the perfect society is society as it was during the life of their beloved prophet Mohammed. For Muslims, perfecting our society is to reproduce in America and around the world the life of 7th-century Mecca. Their guidelines are very clear, set out in Islamic Sharia law. The Islamist approach is set out in the motto of the most powerful and pervasive Islamist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” We do not have to speculate what this means, because we can consult the history of Islamic expansionism, imperialism, and colonialism over fourteen centuries. The contemporary version is the Islamic State, with its extraordinary expansion and brutality.

The Western right and far right, like the Islamists, are traditionalists and want to protect and live in their civilization. Eastern Europeans want to live, as in the past, in Catholic and Orthodox Christian societies; American far-rightists want to live, as in the past, in a white, Protestant Christian society. In both cases, traditionalist Jews are despised for having murdered Jesus, and for insisting on maintaining their pre-Christian culture. As with the utopian left, the traditionalist right becomes increasingly totalitarian as the purity and strength of vision increases.

Islamists see the world divided between Muslims and infidels, and in conflict as Islamic supremacists follow their duty to bring the entire world under Allah. The left sees the world in terms of class conflict: capitalists oppressing workers; males oppressing females; whites oppressing people of color; heterosexuals oppressing LGBTs; Christians and Jews oppressing Muslims. The Islamist war against Christians, Jews, Hindus, and all infidels is ignored by progressives.

The left champions females, people of color, and LGBTs, while Islamists despise females and mandate their control by males, have for centuries enslaved black Africans, and execute LGBTs, facts systematically ignored by feminists, LGBT activists, and other leftists. Progressives dislike Jews, as they did in the USSR, because Jews are the carriers of a traditional culture, and traditional cultures must be snuffed out to make way for socialist values and laws. Islamists and Muslims generally hate Jews because their holy books, the Quran, the Traditions, and the commentaries, tell them that Jews are enemies of Allah, of Islam, and of Muslims, and are low, deceitful, evil people — views that are repeated around the world by Mosque imams in holy sermons.

The progressive left hates Israel because leftists claim that Israel is a colonial settler society, a white society oppressing people of color, an apartheid society. Facts are not of interest to the left; vilifying slogans are self-verifying. The unwelcome reality is that Jews have returned to the Holy Land which they occupied prior to the Roman invasion, as we know well from Roman accounts. What metropolis is it supposed to be a colony of? Half of the population of Israel are Arabic-speaking Jews from Middle Eastern countries, plus Ethiopians, plus millions of Muslim Arabs; Israel is not white, but the most multi-racial country in the world. And it would be an apartheid society if Muslim Arabs did not have full legal rights, and were not integrated into every sector of society, up to and including the Supreme Court. Israel is a remarkably successful nation, but nations are the enemy of international socialism, so the progressive left hates it. And the left deems Palestinians to be victims, not of their corrupt leadership or fanatical terrorism, but of selfish Israelis who prefer not to submit to death by Arabs.

Muslims around the world hate Israel because of the Jews. For fourteen centuries Muslims have conquered lands occupied by Jews, and treated them as dhimma, fourth-class subjects who had to pay a tax not to be murdered, who were obliged to be ritually humiliated according to Sharia law, and who suffered endless depredations. Jews were deemed the lowest, weakest, and most corrupt people in the world. The Muslim establishment took the view that the existence of Israel on land once controlled by Muslims was a violation of the law of religious endowment, which claimed that land once occupied by Muslims was Muslim land for all time. If that were not enough, Israeli Jews have repeatedly shamed the Arab warriors by besting them in defensive wars against invading Arab armies. For Muslims, this is a dishonor. It is the world turned upside down.

The unholy marriage of the progressive left and far right Islamists is seen nowhere clearer than on university campuses, where the anti-Semitism of the leftist Students for the Liberation of Palestine and the Muslim Students Society encompasses both Jews and Zionists, examples here, here, here, here, here, and here. Today, on campuses, Jewish students and professors, those who do not support anti-Semitic initiatives, are under attack from progressives and Islamists. Hating Jews is the glue that holds together the progressive—Islamist (or red—green) alliance, which now shares anti-Semitic attitudes with far-right racists and neo-nazis. This is what they call “social justice.”