The Red and the Green - Coalitions don't require ideological uniformity while there's an opponent left to beat.

American Thinker ^ | 8 Sep, 2026 | Luis Gonzalez

[MtnClimber]

Sun Tzu made an observation, some 2,500 years ago, that modern coalition politics seems to have taken to heart, though no one credits him for it. Paraphrased loosely: an army does not need every soldier to want the same outcome. It needs them moving in the same direction until the battle is won.

The Red and the Green appear to have absorbed the lesson without ever reading the book. Almost nobody asks what happens once the battle ends and there's no shared enemy left to hold the army together.

The Red is the socialist left. The Green is political Islam. Different histories, different ambitions, different visions of the society each ultimately wants to build; on paper, that gap should make an alliance implausible. In practice, it hasn't stopped one from forming. Coalitions never require their members to agree about the final destination, only about what stands in the way of reaching one, and for now, the Democratic Party's own establishment: its incumbents, its machine, its money, its voters, serves that purpose well enough.

History has already run this experiment. Revolutionary Cuba built its coalition against Batista out of men who agreed on almost nothing beyond wanting him gone. Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, Camilo Cienfuegos, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara fought side by side, but Che was already a committed Marxist, Raul stood further left than Fidel, and Camilo's own movement had promised a return to constitutional government once Batista fell. That promise did not survive him. Once the enemy was gone, the question became who got to decide what came next, and the coalition answered by leaving almost no one standing who might contest it. Camilo died in what the official record calls an accident, a plane that was never recovered. Che was "reassigned" to Bolivia and executed there.

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TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: batista; camilo; cuba; democrats; dsa; islam; marxism; redgreenalliance; revolution

[MtnClimber]

The DSA marxists don’t realize that the islamists have plans for them.

[Skwor]

Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[ClearCase_guy]

“If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

It’s not really a quote about Jews or anti-Semitism. It’s about the value of having a political enemy that people can join together in hating. Trump will do.

[mewzilla]

Deep State über alles.

[Leaning Right]

> The DSA marxists don’t realize that the islamists have plans for them. <

Right. The pink-haired women and the soy boys will be no match for the ruthless members of a death cult.

Dare I hope they have a serious falling out before the Repubic is completely destroyed?

[DIRTYSECRET]

Interesting. Appeals to the intellect. Reminds me of the days when history professor Newt would give speeches that appealed to that element in the voters. It made workers who didn’t go to the university think that they would have felt comfortable on campus. We don’t have that now because Trump rightfully brought out the fight in everyone.

Who could be that intellectual Pied Piper? America just might might be ready for it.

[aquila48]

It’s the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” syndrome.

[Uncle Miltie]

After Victory, the islamists will murder all their former leftist allies who hold no guns.

So leftism is fighting a battle with allies who will surely murder them.

But leftists still don’t care, because they would rather be murdered than allow Western Civilization to continue.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Of course, the archetype is Emmanuel Goldstein, the fictional character in George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. A principal enemy of the state of Oceania, the political propaganda of The Party portrays Goldstein as the leader of The Brotherhood, a secret, counter-revolutionary organization that violently opposes the leadership of Big Brother and the regime of Ingsoc (English Socialism) Party.

[beef]

“Enemy of my enemy” type coalitions never end well.

[beef]

You would think that when the Islamic government of Hamtramck, MI banned pride flags, they would get the message that this wasn’t going to work out. No such luck.

[arthurus]

We know what happens when the shared goal is reached. It is demonstrated in Communist revolutions everywhere. One faction is or becomes dominant and kills off all the new opposition who have the misfortune of being too close to their executioners and find it is too late to take to the hills. It was starkly illustrated with the ‘79 revolution in Iran won by a coalition of Communists and and jihadists. The Moslems turned on the Communists and assorted other allies of convenience and killed them. It is always thus.

[Rocky Mountain Wild Turkey]

Green always eats Red in the end ....