Vindication: There Is An Unholy Alliance

FrontPage Magazine ^ | 31 MAY 2005 | David Horowitz

[rdb3]

Vindication: There Is An Unholy Alliance
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 31, 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 (leftwing) press except the New York Times. There it was given a paragraph or two among 4 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 website 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 website. 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 Lawyer 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 guerilla 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 and check the references here and here and here, for a start. Naturally Ratner and his fifth column friends are also spearheading the Anti-Patriot Act movement and the Open Borders Movement.

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 email I received from a friend the other day containing an Iraq News Network interview with British Laborite, progressive, Saddam ally and hero of such letwing websites 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 progressi ve 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 Administrataion and the war in Iraq are generally so immoderate and often so parallel to 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-Qaeda 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 re-set 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.

[wildcatf4f3]

bttt

[G.Mason]

"If liberals want the respect of conservatives they need to re-set 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."

But of course we know the "liberals" do not want this. In fact they would welcome terrorists who, if freed from Guantanamo, were to create murder and mayhem in the U.S. so as to point to the ineffective way this administration is fighting the war on terror.

The "liberal" [reads democrats, socialists, and communists] is the enemy of America as surely as any al-Qaeda.

[justa-hairyape]

The "liberal" [reads democrats, socialists, and communists] is the enemy of America as surely as any al-Qaeda.

We can definitly consider them the enemy of America just on economics alone. What they did to Europe was a crime. Their goals are to bring Europian economics to America. Here within the US their motto will be, 'In Hillary We Trust'.

[justa-hairyape]

...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.

Wow. Just did a flashback to the 1970's.

[papertyger]

Wow. Just did a flashback to the 1970's.

You saw Grace Slick too, huh?

[federal]

bookmark

[worldclass]

"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. "


I don't know if I am astounded more by what he said or the fact that he said it.

[PGalt]

Outstanding article with links and explanations. Thanks for posting.

[BillF]

This is the article that Rush was just discussing about 5 minutes back.

The Michael Ratner in the article is, IIRC, Ellen Ratner's brother.

[BufordP]

Thanks for the ping. Badda-bump.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for posting this,I have a copy of Unholy Alliance....a great book.

From the Powerline Blog:

Unholy alliance

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May 31, 2005

Unholy alliance

David Horowitz's FrontPage column today follows up on his book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left. The column features the execrable George Galloway and the legal assault on our terrorist incarceration center at Guantanomo: "Vindication: There is an unholy alliance." Before Horowitz wrote the book on the subject, I tried to describe the phenomenon in a FrontPage column based on my attendance at the National Lawyers Guild national convention in Minneapolis in the fall of 2003: "Face to face with Lynne Stewart."

Posted by Scott at 06:39 AM

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Face to Face with Lynne Stewart

By Scott W. Johnson
PowerLineBlog.com | October 28, 2003

The national convention of the National Lawyers Guild took place starting Wednesday October 22 in Minneapolis. It concluded on October 26. On Thursday Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Doug Grow noted the event in a column on Guild star Lynne Stewart: "Singing tunes a little to the left."

Stewart is the attorney for "the blind sheik," Omar Abdul Rahman. Rahman was the spiritual leader of a cell that carried out the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and was planning to blow up the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels. He is incarcerated in the federal medical detention facility maintained in Rochester, Minnesota. Last year FrontPage published a good column detailing the path that brought Lynne Stewart to her representation of Rahman: "Who is behind Lynne Stewart?"

In April 2002, Stewart was arrested on charges that she facilitated the support of a foreign terrorist organization. In July of this year federal judge John Koetl dismissed the two most serious counts of the indictment against Stewart. Two less serious counts (seeking to defraud the United States and making false statements) remain against her. Click here for Judge Koetl's order in PDF format. A FindLaw column by law professor Sherry Colb on the dismissed charges does a good job of explaining the seriousness of the underlying factual allegations: "Why Lynne Stewart is no heroine."

I was called by Guild member Jennifer Van Bergen and asked to speak as a supporter of the PATRIOT Act at a convention panel on the Act. Van Bergen is the author of a six-part series of columns urging the repeal of the Act; click here to access them. I asked her to look for someone else, but told her I might do it if she couldn't find anyone. She couldn't find anyone else. I appeared on the panel on October 24.

What was I thinking? In truth, I was giving it up for Power Line. I thought I would come away with something of interest to report to readers about Stewart. I'm not sure it worked out that way. I sat next to her on the panel, up close and personal. As you can tell from the banner below taken from Stewart's Web site, she's not an attractive woman.

But that was certainly the least of it. Guild history suggests that it has acted as a Communist front organization through much of its history, and it was recognized as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party in the United States by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities in 1950. Even Walter Goodman's The Committee, an unfriendly history of HUAC, suggests the correctness of this characterization. FrontPage has a good summary of Guild history: "NLG:The legal fifth column."

The Guild convention took place at the Holiday Inn Metrodome, a block from the University of Minnesota Law School. Entering the convention precincts was a little shocking; the ambience, the displays, and the literature really marked the convention as hostile territory. The booth promoting Dennis Kucinich for president looked normal by contrast.

Many handouts touted the cause of the only Cuban prisoners championed by the Guild -- "the Cuba five." The five, of course, are not any of Castro's prisoners, but rather are five Cuban men held in federal prison on conviction of offenses including espionage against the United States. "Free the Cuba Five" is the motto; the cause of the Cuba five is part of the Guild's old-time religion.

The Guild's PATRIOT Act panel demonstrated how the Guild has moved seamlessly from defending America's Communist enemies to defending America's Islamofascist enemies. The common denominator between the Communist Manifesto and Shari'a law is not apparent in theory; only in practice does raw hatred of the United States unmistakbly reveal itself as the glue that joins the Guild and these two causes.

Stewart referred several times to 9/11 as providing the "pretext" or "excuse" for snuffing out idealistic "activists" such as she. Her indictment, she acknowledged, was not brought under the PATRIOT Act but, according to Stewart, it resulted from the same "aura" of hatred directed at Islam in the wake of 9/11. Stewart never once acknowledged the reality of the war against the United States or the peril that those such as her client the blind sheik pose to it. Stewart's conclusion articulated her theme in the old Guild tradition, accusing the Bush administration of accomplishing the "usurpation [of civil liberties] by voracious corporate government."

Included with Stewart and me on the PATRIOT Act panel was Minneapolis attorney Joseph Margulies. Margulies is affiliated with the Center for Constitutinal Rights and represents Guantanomo detainees, individuals designated as enemy combatants by the United States government. CCR proudly notes on its Web site that it is asking the United States government for proof that Guantanomo detainees are not being tortured.

Margulies traced the thread between the PATRIOT Act and the legal issues raised by the government's treatment of the Guantanomo detainees as enemy combatants -- "secrecy." Margulies imputed sinister motives to the government's protection of information -- information that would relate to terrorist investigations -- under the PATRIOT Act and information regarding the Guantanomo detainees.

The concept of secrecy during wartime does not seem like much of a theme with which to scandalize average citizens. Average citizens might be more interested in seeking the thread that connects left-wing legal outfits such as the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The thread that is apparent to me from my visit to the Guild convention is the assault on the critical legal components of the defense of the United States from its Islamofascist enemies in the name of a Constitution that in reality they hate.

The preceding is taken from PowerLineBlog.com.

[kellynla]

Thanks for the ping, Ernest

Bump for later reading

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for the ping.

For fourty years, the liberals have been the homegrown enemies of America.

[BayouCoyote]

Thanks for the good read.

[PGalt]

Thanks.