red and black

A few days ago, I wrote this cheery passage:

The Left—both domestic and international—is already making common cause with Islamists. It is only a matter of time before some in those camps decide to cement that alignment with more than mere words.

Within the United States, this confluence of interests is largely confined to fringe Stalinists like International ANSWER and the student body of UC-Berkeley: vile, ugly, and annoying, though mostly harmless. At least to this point; but I fully expect a turn for the worse within the year.

Meanwhile, Amir Taheri writes that the Left-Islamist alliance is already a force to be reckoned with in Europe.

When the US-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, few would have imagined that the move might lead to the formation of an alliance between the radical Left and hard-line Islamists in Western Europe. But this is precisely what happened. In this month's election for a new European Parliament, voters in several European Union countries, notably France and Britain, are offered common lists of Islamist and leftist candidates, often hidden under bland labels. […]

The New Statesman, the organ of the British moderate Left, calls the new Islamist-Marxist alliance “Saddam's Own Party.” The label is not fanciful. Many of the groups involved in the alliance had been financed for years by Saddam through his so-called Cultural Relations Office in London.

IN FRANCE the radical Left alliance of Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and Workers' Struggle (LO) groups counts on Islamist militants to help it win seats in the European Parliament. Arlette Laguillere, the pasionaria of the Workers' Struggle, claims that “the struggle for Palestine” is now an integral part of the “global proletarian revolution.”

Similar Marxist-Islamist alliances have been formed in Belgium and Germany, where the Muslim Brotherhood itself has been taken over by radicals sympathetic to al-Qaida.

Talks are underway for holding a pan-European conference next year to give the Marxist-Islamist alliance permanent organizational structures.

The European Marxist-Islamist coalition does not offer a coherent political platform. Its ideology is built around three themes: hatred of the United States, the dream of wiping Israel off the map, and the hoped-for collapse of the global economic system. […]

The first to advocate a leftist-Islamist alliance against Western democracies was Ayman Al Zawahiri, al-Qaida's #2. In a message to al-Qaida sympathizers in Britain in August 2002, he urged them to seek allies among “any movement that opposes America, even atheists.”

The idea has received support from Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. In his book Revolutionary Islam, published in Paris last year, Carlos, who says he has converted to Islam, claims he has advised Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader, to forge an alliance with “all guerrilla, terrorist, and other revolutionary groups throughout the world, regardless of their religious or ideological beliefs.”

It's going to get worse before it gets better.

And while I'm making bold predictions: Yesterday was Bastille Day. The French ought to relish it while they can; for within fifteen years their Fifth Republic will end in a manner very similar to how the First began. The barbarians are already at the gates.