Over the last decade, we’ve seen the convergence and alliance of Islamism with the far Left (and, with time, the not-so-far Left). Ten years ago, this seemed bizarre, since logic appeared to dictate that nothing could be more antithetical to the supposed values of the Left (equality, feminism, tolerance, freedom of/from religion, etc.) than the reactionary Islamic world, with its institutionalized brutal repression, its humiliation and abuse of women, its torture and execution of gays, and its extreme policies of religious persecution. Yet, with time, we grew accustomed to this alliance, and today, the glaring contradictions between values barely even faze anybody anymore.
Today, there seems to be another supposedly “impossible” convergence underway: We are witnessing the beginnings of an alliance between the radical Right (KKK, neo-Nazis, etc.) and the radical black Left (Black Panthers, Farrakhan, etc.) A dramatic example of this happened last week, when a former KKK Grand Wizard and neo-Nazi, former Congressman David Duke, released a video declaring his endorsement of Charles Barron in his current run for Congress. Barron is a former Black Panther, a radical antisemite who justified the anti-Jewish riots in Crown Heights in the ’90’s and compares Israel to the Nazis, and whose declared heroes are Muammar Kaddafi, Robert Mugabe, and Louis Farrakhan. At first glance, it might be difficult to imagine what basis there could possibly be for an alliance between a Right-wing neo-Nazi KKK leader and a Left-wing Black Supremacist Farrakhan supporter. The answer, of course, is that in spite of their obvious differences, they nevertheless have something very fundamental in common, which has brought them together: Their intense hatred of Jews and Israel. The centrality of their shared antisemitism comes through loud and clear in Duke’s endorsement video:
Just like the alliance between the Islamists and the radical Left, the new alliance between the White Supremacists and the Black Supremacists seems absurd but really isn’t: In both cases, the seemingly vast differences between the sides are trumped by the power of their shared Jew-hatred. And these two alliances are not at all unrelated: There is, of course, already a powerful alliance between the Black Power movement and the Islamist movement, epitomized by Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam. It is clear to anyone following the current trends that very soon, all four of these groups — the radical Left, the Islamists, the Black Supremacists, and the White Supremacists — will all be united in a common offensive against the Jews and Israel.
