When my friend and history-librarian at BU Donald Altschiller told me that the Chronicle of Higher Education had an article on the unholy alliance between the Islamists and the far right, my initial response was, “No, you mean and the far left.”
“No,” he responded I’m fairly sure it’s the right.”
“But the big story is not the alliance with the right, but with the left.” And in saying that, I thought, “alright, finally the MSM is catching on.”
“That may be true,” he responded with his characteristic understatement, “but I’m pretty sure this article is about the alliance between Islamism and the far right.”
And as he repeated his assertion, it slowly sank in: yes, the Chronicle of Higher Education has tackled the problem of unholy alliances between Islamists and Western ideologues who are playing with fire… but who do they focus on? The far right. Alone? No mention of the Left? You be the judge.

April 21, 2006 Friday

SECTION: THE CHRONICLE REVIEW; Pg. 7 Vol. 52 No. 33

Strange Bedfellows
GEORGE MICHAEL

Americans, stunned by the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and on the Pentagon, asked themselves, “Why did this happen?” The denizens of the extreme right in America believed they knew why. While mainstream commentators and public officials claimed that it was our values of freedom and democracy that made us targets, shortly after the attacks, extremist Internet discussion groups buzzed with a far different message: The United States had been attacked because of its support for the state of Israel.

That sentiment was shared by many followers of what is generally referred to as militant Islam.

Indeed for years, going back to the Third Reich in Germany, these two seemingly different groups have not only agreed on a common enemy Jews and, after it was formed, Israel but they have increasingly cooperated to forge a narrative of propaganda against their enemy. Last year, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran stirred worldwide condemnation by dismissing the Holocaust as a “myth,” purportedly used as a pretext for the creation of a Jewish state in the heart of the Islamic world, one of the voices that rose to his defense was David Duke, the former Klan leader (and Louisiana representative) who says he “has dedicated his life to the freedom and heritage of European American peoples.”

The collaboration of Islamic militants and the extreme right cries out for further study. For there are some indications that the narrative they tell could become more mainstream.

At first glance, there would seem to be little common ground between right-wing extremism and militant Islam. After all, the segment of the right concerned about the racial survival of white people generally tends to be derisive of nonwhites; they would not consider Muslims the majority of whom trace their ethnic ancestry to third-world countries to be part of the ideal, exclusively white community. For their part, Islamic fundamentalists tend to look askance at non-Muslims, whom they sometimes designate as “infidels” and Government released a working paper on “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” In it, they asserted that the various interest groups lobbying on behalf of Israel have subverted foreign policy in the Middle East to the detriment of the national interests of the United States. The report has occasioned considerable controversy. Critics like Harvard Law School’s Alan M. Dershowitz have been quick to point out the stylistic parallels between the study and traditional anti-Semitic canards of Jewish dual loyalty and malfeasance. Dershowitz, according to The Harvard Crimson, has gone so far as to aver that the authors culled information for their report from “hate sites” on the Internet. Although such allegations appear spurious, the paper did contain motifs about, for example, the power of Jews in the news media and Jewish manipulation of the political system that have formed the basis of classic anti-Semitic narratives. The report, indeed, has been enthusiastically received by representatives of the extreme right, including Duke, who expressed satisfaction that his criticism of Israel has been vindicated by such esteemed academics.

It is difficult to predict how the unexpected and alarming convergence between militant Islam and the extreme right will unfold in the future. Over the past two decades, several countries have imploded due to centrifugal ethnic rivalries. The extreme right is worried that large-scale immigration, the ascendance of multiculturalism, and the decreasing popularity of the assimilationist ideal could one day foreshadow a similar situation in the United States. The September 11 attacks and their consequences have the potential to amplify their fears. If the “war on terror” should falter, more people in the United States and Europe could become receptive to their views.

The meeting of the minds among what are now just some groups and individuals could presage strange alliances in the future.

George Michael is an assistant professor of political science and administration of justice at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. Next week the University Press of Kansas will publish his book The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right.

As far as I can make out… not even a hint. No one who was not well-informed would have a clue that the far greater threat — because the ideology is more permeable to mainstream thought — came from the Left. Indeed how many of the comments above could have been made about the Left, from blaming 9-11 on our support of Israel to supporting the Walt-Mearsheimer paper?

As a brief meditation on the issue of the unholy alliance between Left and Islamists, I offer the following passage in an article by Cédric Housez at a site called Voltairenet: Non Aligned [sic!] Press Network in which he attacks a French journalist (writing for Charlie Hebdo — one of the few French newspapers to publish the Danish Cartoons) named Caroline Fourest, who published La Tentation obscurantiste [The obscurantist temptation] in which she tackled the unholy alliance of the Left and islamism.

In [her] essay, she further continued to denounce the French anti-imperialist left wing movements, which are to blame, in her opinion, of indulgence with “Islamics”. We had already described in our columns how Prochoix, through the reports of its main presenters, Caroline Fourest and Fiammetta Venner, and Charlie Hebdo, especially through Philippe Val editorials, had broadened the definition of “Islamism” to finally include most of the anti-imperialist movements of Muslim inspiration [1].

This is a particularly interesting formulation — “anti-imperialist movements of Muslim inspiration.” Something like calling the anti-Iraq war movement a peace movement, when it’s profoundly belligerent and really only opposed to American war. What Islamic movement is against Islamic imperialism? What would an anti-imperialist Islam look like?

By labeling the Muslim organizations as satanic, due to repeated amalgams, Caroline Fourest, Fiammetta Venner and Philippe Val are part of a broader movement orchestrated by journalists, political leaders and heads of associations who want to prevent, due to different reasons, the establishment of a vast anti-imperialist cluster that includes Muslim and rebellious organizations. However, in order to be effective, the discourse to foul Muslim organizations in the eyes of rebellious groups should be delivered by people with an aura of prestige or by those who have at least a substantive audience in such movements. But the image of Prochoix and that of Charlie Hebdo was tarnished in the eyes of those movements due to the explanation and critical analysis of the associations. [2] or publications [3] which are aimed at pointing out the hypothesis and distortion of reality upon which the reports of the presenter of Prochoix and director of Charlie Hebdo are based.

In case you’re not familiar with how the French express themselves that means (with a little help from the French original)…

“by demonizing the Islamists through guilt by association, CF, VF and PV are part of a larger movement of media, politicians and NGOs who want to prevent the emergence of a vast alliance of anti-imperialists that includes Muslims and leftist dissident groups. But in order to do this, the attack needs to come from people with a reputation as leftist (since anything else could be dismissed as right-wing racism). But Charlie Hebdo and Prochoix lost their luster because some of us have trashed them.

In other words, anyone pointing out the grotesque synergy between the Left and Islamism is just doing so because they want to prevent a powerful anti-imperialist alliance. Talk about dupes of demopaths. This is a left-wing version of what they accuse the Zionists of — any criticism is illegitimate because anti-Semitic (or in this case anti-anti-imperialist). Somebody needs to read Ephraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism quickly to find out with whom they’re in bed… because History does count.

Update: In researching for a paper I’m giving on conspiracy theories, I ran across a detail I was unaware of. Voltairenet is the site where Thierry Meyssan first published his conspiracy theories about the Pentagon and 9-11. It currently has a piece on how the Israelis are manipulating the Palestinian factions to kill each other off. Thus we find the classic conspiracist mindset at work: on the one hand projecting the most nefarious motives and deeds onto one’s “enemies” and absolving one’s “friends” of all responsibility. My question is, why did they choose to invoke Voltaire for a site that shows all the signs of a credulity he would have despised? Psychops?