Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam And the American Left Paperback – February 2, 2006

Unholy Alliance by David HorowitzProfessor Todd Gitlin was one of the speakers at the Columbia teach-in against the war in Iraq. A former president of Students for a Democratic Society. Gitlin is a typical veteran of the New Left. In the 1960s, Gitlin was a self-declared “anti-anti-Communist,” choosing not to support the West in its Cold War against the Communist states.According to Gitlin, Vietnam was something like an American original sin. Gitlin summarizes in these words: “For a large bloc of Americans, my age and younger, too young to remember WW2---the generation for whom ‘the war’ meant Vietnam and possibly always would, to the end of our days---the case against patriotism was not an abstraction.Gerda Lerner was in her thirties when the New Left was launched in the wake of Khrushchev’s report on the crimes of Stalin in 1956. She was young enough to join its political generation and became one of its mentors, as the sixties radicals shook off the burdens of their Stalinist past and went back on the attack. Her easy assimilation to its attitudes and doctrines reflected its continuities with the Communist past.By the end of the sixties, the New Left was recognized by its opposition to the anti-Communist Cold War and its Marxist analyses of American society. Like there Communist predecessors, New Leftists viewed America as an imperialist state, the guardian of global system that plundered the poor. Their politics was distinguished by its warm embrace of the Stalinist regimes in Cuba and North Vietnam, and for the Soviet bloc.In 1960, Maurice Zeitlin was a Berkley Marxist and a founding editor of Root and Branch,One of the three radical journals that helped to launch the new radical movement. With fellow editor Robert Scheer (later a columnist at the Los Angeles Times and a prominent opponent of the war in Iraq) , Zeitlin wrote one of the first books hailing the triumph of the Communist revolution in Castro’s Cuba. Zeitlin became a professor of sociology at UCLA, specializing in Chile and writing about “dominant classes”. In 1997, he spoke at a UCLA symposium on twentieth-century utopias, where he returned to the subject of Che Guevara. Zeitlin used the occasion of the UCLA seminar to declare his continuing faith in the Communist cause for which Guevara had died.Leslie Cagan who was to emerge in the anti-Iraq protests as the primary leader of the “moderate” peace coalition. Cagan was selected to head the Coalition United for Peace and Justice by a group of left-wing activists meeting under the auspices of People for the American Way. According to the participants themselves, the organization was created as a public relations effort to deflect criticism that the peace movement was run by the hard-line Communists of International ANSWER, self-styled “Bolsheviks” aligned with North Korea, who had organized all of the national demonstrations to that point.Leslie Cagan was a sixties radical who became an activist in the Communist movement in college, breaking American laws to travel to the Communist World Youth Festival in Bulgaria in 1968. The following year she joined the First Venceremos Brigade, a project of Cuban intelligence that recruited American leftist to help with the sugarcane harvest. Cagan was a leader in other institutions of the Left, including the extreme-left Pacifica radio network, and was an organizer of demonstrations for a nuclear freeze and for solidarity with Communists in Central America in the 1980s and against the Gulf War in 1991.Noam Chomsky is a cult figure among contemporary radicals and their leading intellectual figure. A New Yorker profile has identified him improbably as “one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century,” while the left-wing English Guardian refers to him as the “conscience of a nation.” No other individual had done more to shape the anti-American passions of a generation. When Chomsky speaks on university campuses, which he does frequently, he draws ten times the audiences that other intellectuals and legitimate scholars normally do. Chomsky claims to be an anarchist, which frees him from the burden of having to defend any real-world implementation of his ideas. He defends Marxist dictatorships in Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam and other third world countries—like Iraq—when they are engaged in conflicts with the United States.A few more Radicals, Communist, Socialists and organizations that support them.Howard Zinn-historianNorman Mailer-authorJames Weinstein- author—Says socialist should work within the Democratic PartyPaul Berman-authorPalestine Liberation OrganizationNAACPAmerican Civil Liberties UnionMexican American Legal Defense and Educational FundNational Lawyers Guild ( an old Communist front)Ford FoundationSEIUAFSCMEWorld Social ForumRamsey Clark“Not in Our Name”- A front created by Revolutionary Communist Party, a Marxist-Leninist sect aligned with Communist

Great book

Interesting book. A must read if you are interested in the subject matter.

I remember the first time I read this book, and its uncanny presentation of something which has become a central fact of American and European life: the completely strange alliance between the ultra-left faction and the Islamic jihadis.Since then, events have confirmed Horowitz over and over again. George Galloway is a shining example. Jimmy Carter is an admirer of Hamas: he wanted to go and shake their hands but they refused (probably having figured out that Carter's credibility is around -700 these days). And just this weekend, a grand demonstration against Israel, organized by (guess who?) Code Pink, ANSWER, CAIR, and other representatives of people who used to love the USSR, as well as other front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood.Read this book, and shake your head in amazement and pity. I mean to say, the very least that one might expect is that ultra-leftist feminists would have NOTHING to do with Islamic Fundamentalism, not to mention the routine mutilation of female children. But everywhere you go, there is nothing but the very loud Sound Of Silence.The critical thing seems to be: "Hate America." If you pass this litmus test, you are welcome at the party.Speaking for myself, I don't find America (or any country) to be perfect, but it seems terribly, terribly obvious that people in America are, shall we say, better off than people living in Zimbabwe, or Syria, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran. They have more freedom, they have better food to eat, they have MUCH better health-care --- and yet, some people claim to hate the place.You cannot expect people to be rational!A really brilliant job of political analysis. Don't miss it.

Good read!

Good read

Really thought provoking!

He is a great writer and produces many facts.

One of the mysteries of life is the alliance between Islamist extremists and leftists such as Trotskyist revolutionaries. According to their dogmas they are violently opposed to each other, but everywhere such extremists are to be found giving each other mutual support. This is disguised by the tactic of adopting organisation names which obscure their origins and instead invoke some universal good. For example they will claim to be Anti-War (who isn't?) whilst in reality supporting the most brutal war-makers around. Whatever the answer, understanding this 'Unholy Alliance' will shed light on what truly motivates these extremists.Horowitz's book does not do too much to explore the causes of this bizarre phenomenon but it does a fantastic job of documenting it and will be an eye-opener to almost everyone who reads it, even if already rather well-informed.In my opinion it would be foolish to be active in politics these days without a good understanding of the topic Horowitz covers. I recommend this book most highly.

Horowitz tells it like it is from an insider's view and exposes a lot of important information that very few are aware of.

Another eye opener !

Maybe a bit bigoted.

I ordered this book because I had hoped to garner some further information about cause and effect of unrest. However, Horowitz devotes more time to bitching about other authors and seems determined to 'assassinate' Noam Chomsky. The general trend of the offering is from a very biased right wing point of view presumably directed by AIPAC. Not the standard one expects from " New York Times' best seller.