The Strange Alliance
I'd like to dip my toes in the waters of Ricochet by commenting on Andrew C. McCarthy's column about the strange alliance between the Left and Islam. That the Left and Islam can only be allies when they are scapegoating a common enemy is manifest and I appreciate his emphasis on this fact, but if I'm reading him correctly, I believe I find disagreement with him when he attributes the strange alliance to the two factions finding common ideological ground. The fact of the matter is that both Islam and the Left are against America and Israel, and the question is: Why?
Neither Islam nor the Left are against Israel because of their embrace of socialist ideology. Perhaps those who know more can correct me, but it's my understanding that Israel was flat out socialist during its formative years and still retains a lot of socialist policy.
It strikes me Islam's hatred of Israel is explainable entirely on religious grounds, but the Left is not religious in any sense other than the sense that Leftism can be seen as a religion in itself. So then, why does the Left hate Israel? I do not think McCarthy looks at this correctly.
- Comment (32)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (4)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
Feb '11
Re: The Strange Alliance
Islam's sacred texts preach hatred of the Jews. That's obvious to anyone willing to honestly look at the texts. This angle continues in the words and actions of mainstream Islam, both in the Mideast and globally, against Israel. (This is bonus-animus, on top of the commandments towards expanding sharia globally.)
The Left is basically a religion. We can perfect man, and must. Injustice must be addressed with government action, including redistribution. Justice requires that progressives adopt activist postures vis a vis injustice. The Left refuses to face Islamic hate and imperatives, and worse: it has bought the most radical narrative. Israel is a typical invasive Western colonial effrontery vs the innocent and noble, indigenous Palestinian people, so oppressed by their nasty, venal, scheming Jew overlord. At the extreme margins they preach that Israel is a genocidal monster worse than the Third Reich. So it's a natural alliance.
Edited on Mar 6, 2011 at 7:27amMay '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
1.) Israel is a constant reminder to its Arab neighbors of how poorly they have performed within the global transition to modernity. Israel has socialist features, but it is essentially a mixed economy that tends towards capitalism. Its politico-economic freedom, prosperity, and progress dwarf whatever successes its neighbors have achieved.
2.) Israel is a close ally of the United States. The contemporary Left possesses a certain kind of resentment towards the United States as it is today, hence it tends to view Israel with suspicion/disdain.
Edited on Mar 6, 2011 at 9:00amNov '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
JB - I thnk McCarthy gets it; fundamentalist Islam and the far Left are all about submission, the eradication of the free will of the individual, and the belief that those who do not go along with the herd are substandard (and hence discardable) human beings. The notion of "dhimmi" and "teabagger" are not that far apart. They are certainly different implementations, but both are based on a similar fear of The Other, and both have a heavy philosophical dependence on the denial of the human nature, in all its chaotic complexity. In some ways it's like the Hitler-Stalin alliance; one can only hope that in the long run they turn on each other and tear one another apart.
May '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
I agree with others, but would add to what they have said.
Israel is explictly defined by a religious heritage. Like the Church, the Jews are a clear symbol of traditional beliefs of God and morality. The Left hates to be reminded of traditional morality and will do anything to stamp it out.
They both fear and respect Islam. They respect it because it is strange and antithetical to Western civilization, which they hate. Like teenagers who unthinkingly rebel against anything their parents stand for, the Left is attracted to the "other" without really understanding what it is.
The Left and Islam are allies only while the Left believes that they will be free to live apart from sharia rule. Europeans are now only beginning to realize that they have made themselves vulnerable to cultural conquest.
May '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
Aaron Miller: Like the Church, the Jews are a clear symbol of traditional beliefs of God and morality. The Left hates to be reminded of traditional morality and will do anything to stamp it out.
. · Mar 6 at 9:57am
I think this may be the rub. Even if Israel were as socialist as France, the Left would still hate it.
Edited on Mar 6, 2011 at 10:22amOct '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
Throughout history, the Jews have been used as scapegoats by those in power whether to distract form failures or to motivate toward a single purpose.
Why were Jews selected for this role? Because the diaspora was everywhere and embodied the 'other' everywhere; perfect targets don't you know?
Dec '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
JB
Aaron Miller: Like the Church, the Jews are a clear symbol of traditional beliefs of God and morality. The Left hates to be reminded of traditional morality and will do anything to stamp it out.
. · Mar 6 at 9:57am
I think this may be the rub. Even if Israel were as socialist as France, the Left would still hate it. · Mar 6 at 10:20am
Edited on Mar 06 at 10:22 am
When Israel was socialist, the Left supported it. However, in 1967, Israel committed the sin of defeating the armies of socialist Arab countries which were Soviet client states. It compounded its sin by firmly joining the American orbit.
In the 1970s, Leftists felt the need to align with the avowedly Marxist Palestinian revolutionary terror groups. And soon thereafter, Israel completed its apostasy by electing a Likud government that reformed the Israeli economy along free-market lines.
As for aligning with jihadists, that's a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Since the Left doesn't have the Soviet Union around to destroy capitalism, they root for the Islamist to do the job, after which they will annihilate Islam and all religion.
Aug '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
Stuart said basically what I was going to say, but I'll add that the Left has always supported what they saw as 'authentic' people - which they usually define as socialist revolutionaries oppressed by right-wing governments. Thus the Sandinistas were authentic freedom fighters, while the Contras were murderous thugs, despite both being indigenous groups getting outside help to fight what they saw as oppression.
In the Middle East, Arabs tended to ally with the Soviets and socialist causes and portray themselves as the underdogs. This allowed the left to side with them. In addition, the peace movement of the 60's and the nuclear disarmament movement of the 70's and 80's allied the left with the Arabs against Israel, which was a military power that was stronger than its neighbors and which showed no inclination to disarm. Israel over time came to be defined as a barrier to peace because the Palestinians and Soviets helped write the narrative and the left was eager to go along with it - especially during the Reagan years. Reagan was pro-Israel, and for some on the left that was all they needed to justify their support for Islamic tyrants.
Oct '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
My-enemies-are-your-enemies plays a big role, I think. A lot of it may be how damned easy it is to suck up to the left. Recently I read a German neo-Nazi--a neo-Nazi!--use the Islamist sucking-up approach on a website I stumbled onto.
He used the nice, tolerant, accepting jargon to point out that, well, Nazi is a "slur" for "National Socialist German Workers' Party"--see! we're nice lefties! I doubt anyone bought it, of course, but it was a worrying sign.
More and more, marginal groups are seeing the success of Islamism in sucking up to Western elites, and adopting similar techniques. Islamism is the political perversion of a religion, and differs substantially from historical practice (not that I'm glorifying how Islam functioned before). Yet, the Islamists get away with it.
Why not Nazis, too? Anti-semites? Anti-Armenians? There's a lot of marginal groups out there, and if even a handful manage to duplicate the Islamists' success. . .
Edited on Mar 7, 2011 at 2:12amJul '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
The alliance predates Israel and, in fact, Israel is an afterthought in most Islamic corners. Bin Laden was focused on the American presence in Saudi Arabia, created to deter an invasion by Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the first Gulf War. The alliance is, like the Axis, totalitarian in its ambitions. Marxism can be used to bring Sharia up to date, providing institutions and mechanisms for operating a Sharia state in a modern context.
The Muslim-Nazi alliance was one more leftist alliance. The Nazis were leftist from the start, the right-wing attribution came about to rationalize the split with the USSR. The claims for Nazi right-hood, the forced labor camps, the ethnic cleansing, and the rest, were all things Joe Stalin did more of than Hitler.
Also, the Left seems to find in Islam an endless spigot of needy clients, victims of a resource-grubbing West in their narrative, though actually suppressed in potential by the usual tyrannical impulses in reality, theocratic and secular, impulses that the Leftie elites fully understand and share.
With a new round of populist hate mongers on the rise in Egypt, Israel is on the agenda again, a "safe" scapegoat.
Nov '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
I had a conversation with a British subject who was very successful and prosperous and he hated Israel. I tried in vain to get him to give me his reasons but although he would speak at length all it amounted to was the Jews in Israel are materially better off than the Palestinians.
I chalked it up to nothing more than traditional European anti-semitism.
Jun '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
Leftists (Progressives) are "smarter than everybody else" (just ask them...they'll tell you) and Islamists are "more loved by God" than everybody else (they'll tell you whether you ask them or not) so if some group (like Jews) is more successful, politically or financially, then by Leftist logic, or by Islamist logic, the Jews "must be cheating somehow." Narcissists envy the success of those they perceive as their "inferiors." Nothing new there. The 1930s is repeating itself.
Edited on Mar 7, 2011 at 1:15pmMay '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
The left hates Israel because it abandoned its surrounded strongman image after the Oslo accords. Its previous concessions had been negotiated from a position of strength (camp david happened post Yom Kippur War). After Oslo any concessions were made under the narrative that Israel was giving back stolen land. No one thanks a thief for returning stolen property.
Feb '11
Re: The Strange Alliance
The left has not always hated Israel. The Soviet Union was one of the first nations to recognize Israel. The weapons Israel used to fight in the 1948 war came to a large extent from Czechoslovakia with active Soviet aid in smuggling the weapons in. European socialists used to flock to Israeli kibbutzes in the 1950s and 1960s. The Israeli Labor Party was actively involved in the Socialist International.
So what changed? 1967 War was the start. Israel's population and political life shifted from Ashkenazi socialists to Sephardic right.
Dec '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
TeeJaw, did you point out to your British friend that Britain neither gave the Palestinians independence nor prepared them for peaceful self-reliance when the UK ruled Palestine? (There was also the matter of Britain and France enlisting Israel's help in a military campaign against Nasser's Egypt in 1956....)
Dec '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
"Also, the Left seems to find in Islam an endless spigot of needy clients, victims of a resource-grubbing West in their narrative," BINGO!
I think Sisyphus nails it. Or to frame it in Steynian terms, demography equals victory. I also agree that there is the mutual enemy factor, so Israel's alliance with the U.S. is a big factor. And I also think that there is an insidious aspect to anti-capitalism that relies upon the "Jews control...." (fill in the blank).
But demography, I believe, is the key to the left's alliance with radical Islam.
Jun '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
I think a lot of it comes from liberal feelings of guilt. European liberals feel guilty about the sins, real and imagined, of their past colonial empires and American liberals feel guilty about past treatment of Native Americans. They buy into the Arab narrative the Israel is the last of the European colonies, a European state built on land "stolen" from the "natives," i.e. the Palestinians. As Helen Thomas said, "Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not German, it's not Poland..."
Note how they love to use the term "apartheid" to compare Israel to white (colonial) government of South Africa. I think this also explains their obsession with the settlement issue, as they basically see all of Israel as an illegitimate settlement on Arab land.
Jun '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
etoiledunord: Leftists (Progressives) are "smarter than everybody else" (just ask them...they'll tell you) and Islamists are "more loved by God" than everybody else (they'll tell you whether you ask them or not) so if some group (like Jews) is more successful, politically or financially, then by Leftist logic, or by Islamist logic, the Jews "must be cheating somehow." Narcissists envy the success of those they perceive as their "inferiors." Nothing new there. The 1930s is repeating itself. · Mar 7 at 1:14pm
Edited on Mar 07 at 01:15 pm
I agree. And despite the fact that they are "more loved of God" than anyone, Israel keeps kicking their butt militarily. Explanation: the Great Satan supports Israel. And of course the Great Satan, especially its richness and power, is the symbol of everything the left hates. Thus the love affair between the left and the Islamists. Let's face it, the left hates our richness (though Obama is trying to fix that little problem) and power more than they hate people who stone women and execute homosexuals.
Dec '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
Anthony Daniels, a.k.a. Theodore Dalrymple, the Prison Doctor, said the Brotherhood’s success in harvesting incarcerated blacks for the Mohammedan faith ensued from the convict’s desire for both repentance and structure without conflict with his incurable criminal deviancy of rebellion—he got religion but could still stick it to the man.
To understand this, listen to the histrionics of Louis Farrakhan (who denies being a part of the successful assassination of Malcolm Little, a.k.a. Malcolm X—no wonder), a preacher who makes Jeremiah Wright sound like a Marine who graduated from a high school that was 90% white—all true.
The pathologies of their fellow traveling leftists are no different. Leftist propensities ensue from their arrested state of development imprisoning them in adolescent-like rebellion. The ambition to “fundamentally transform” the greatest nation on the planet says it all.
As “CoolHand” pithily stated in our run-in with a Mother Jones readin’, ACLU friendin’, Park Slope, DC, and Venice, California livin’ leftist:
“There need not be coordination or conspiracy for there to be complicity.”
Dec '10
Re: The Strange Alliance
I marvel at how Israel is branded the "apartheid State" when the Palestinian Authority carries on its books the death penalty for any Palestinian who sells real estate on the West Bank or Gaza to a Jew.
And of course, if and when a Palestinian state is declared on the West Bank, the rest of the world will find it entirely reasonable and appropriate for Jews living on the West Bank to be deported en masse in an act of ethnic cleansing, because it would somehow be expecting too much from the Palestinians to tolerate and co-exist with Jews in their new state.
Judenrein is the new political correctness.