Unholy Alliance By David Horowitz

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Vindication: There Is an Unholy Alliance David Horowitz

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 Last fall I published a book called "Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left," which argued that the progressive left in the West was in a de facto alliance with the Islamic jihadists, an alliance that developed out of the left's support for the genocidal camapaign of Palestinian jihadists against the Jews, and its global assault on the world capitalist system called "anti-globalization." With the support of FrontPageMag.com and NewsMax.com, the Washington Times and National Review – and of course talk radio – the book has done pretty well. There are 50,000 copies in print and most of them have been sold.

However, it went unnoticed in most of the conservative press and in all the mainstream (left-wing) press except the New York Times. There it was given a paragraph or two among four other books about Islam and dismissed by a shallow NYU professor as the work of a "relic." The fact is that many people like this fellow refuse to recognize that there even is a left in the West, let alone that it is working day and night to undermine the institutions of American society, sabotage our nation's war on terror and help our enemies to prevail. To enlighten these deniers I put up a Web site at www.discoverthenetworks.org demonstrating the links between radical Islam and American progressives organizationally and also their shared agendas (e.g., opposition to the Patriot Act, bleeding heart concern for the terrorists mercifully locked up in Guatanamo, etc.) Just as sophisticated liberals (The New Republic comes to mind) ignored my book, so others ridiculed the Web site.

How absurd to think that American radicals and their less radical allies had any connection whatsoever to the Arab and Islamic forces ranged against us, even though a million of them marched to prevent the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and then went on to obstruct the administration's war for freedom in the Middle East. Or consider the assault on our terrorist incarceration center at Guantanamo Bay. This is a pen for keeping these terrorists off the field of battle, which means from plotting to plant a dirty nuclear bomb in large American cities. According to The New York Times, white-shoe law firms have been mobilized by anti-American radical and lifelong advocate of Communist causes Michael Ratner to obstruct America's war effort and attempt to free the soldiers of the enemy. According to the Times, Ratner is "coordinating the assigning of lawyers to [terrorist] prisoners."

Of course the Times doesn't mention that Ratner is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, created as a Soviet front and still wedded to its Communist heritage, or that he is the current head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which was launched by William Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy in lieu of the Commmunist Party they had originally designed and which has dedicated itself to defending terrorist states like Castro's Cuba and terrorist movements like the Communist guerrilla armies in Central America during the '80s. Or that its members revere convicted terrorist and colleague Lynne Stewart for her Communist and pro-terrorist views. For that you would have to go to www.discoverthenetworks.org. Naturally, Ratner and his fifth-column friends are also spearheading the Anti-Patriot Act and Open Borders movements.

All this information is readily available and consciously ignored by the Times and other fellow-traveling media of the "progressive" left; this leaves the impression that the unholy alliance we have described in detail is somehow a figment of our imagination. No one actually reading these profiles could reasonably come to such a conclusion, but we are aware that laziness is an unappreciated factor in human affairs.

So it was a welcome e-mail I received from a friend the other day containing an Iraq News Network interview with British Laborite, progressive, Saddam ally and hero of such left-wing Web sites as Counterpunch.org and CommonDreams.org, which should settle once and for all whether there are large numbers of pro-terrorist leftists out there who consciously think of alliance with the jihadists: Mohammad Basirul Haq Sinha: "You often call for uniting Muslim and progressive forces globally. How far is it possible under current situation?" Galloway: "Not only do I think it's possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already.

It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries mainly Muslim countries. They have the same interest in opposing savage capitalist globalization which is intent upon homogenizing the entire world turning us basically into factory chickens which can be forced fed the American diet of everything from food to Coca-Cola to movies and TV culture. And whose only role in life is to consume the things produced endlessly by the multinational corporations. And the progressive organizations & movements agree on that with the Muslims." "Otherwise we believe that we should all have to speak as Texan and eat McDonalds and be ruled by Bush and Blair. So on the very grave big issues of the day - issues of war, occupation, justice, opposition to globalization - the Muslims and the progressives are on the same side."

Of course Galloway is on the left end of the progressive spectrum. Yet while his political recommendations are anathema to moderate members of that spectrum, their own critiques of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq are generally so immoderate and often so parallel with the views of Galloway and his friends that it is hard to see how they are an opposing force. The loudest and most convincing hysterics leading the charge on the situations in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo belong to the New York Times and the moderate left. Coupled with the lack of interest at the Times and the New Republic in the political dossiers of the Michael Ratners and the anti-American, totalitarian sympathizers leading the charge in these cases, this silence suggests that the popular front decried by worthy liberals like Peter Beinart and Martin Peretz is still very much intact. An anti-war academic like Todd Gitlin would be appalled by Galloway's call. He has criticized Bolshevik groups like International ANSWER and his work is welcomed in sensible liberal venues like The New Republic (where mine is banned) and The New York Times.

In "Unholy Alliance," I analyze Gitlin's writings about patriotism and the war on terror and America and show there is little to distinguish from those on the left he claims to despise in his own condemnation of American society and his ill-concealed disgust with his country. The shared antipathy for the United States between open self-declared enemies like Galloway and Zarqawi and "liberals" who detest both is what allows liberals - like the Wall Street lawyers mobilized by Ratner - to be recruited to the destructive agendas of the anti-American jihad. As noted, their entrance into the jihad is through such defense-of-democracy agendas as the abuses at Abu Ghraib (so minor in terms of the liberation of Iraq that the Imam Ali Sistani never uttered a word of protest over the incidents), the detaining of al-Qaida terrorists at Guantanamo and the effort to strengthen internal security controls.

When these issues, all of which contain legitimate concerns when raised in proportionate measure, are coupled with the hysterical hatred of Bush and distrust of American purpose that is by now second nature to these same progressives, it is hard to see where Galloway's alliance ends and their progressivism begins. If liberals want the respect of conservatives, they need to reset their priorities. The first target on their agenda should not be the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, but the fifth-column left and the war against us at home.