The Axis of Ideological Evil

The Axis of Ideological Evil
By Ben Shapiro
2/23/2011

Wisconsin union protesters have taken center stage in our nation's debate about fiscal responsibility. These protesters are pushing for the right to milk the American taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars; they want to be able to "collectively bargain" with legislators, although they generate precisely zero profit. President Obama supports them wholeheartedly.

On the other side of the globe, Muslim protesters lash out at tyrannical governments in Egypt, Libya, Jordan and Tunisia. These protesters are pushing for the right to vote -- but more importantly, they're pushing for more benefits, less American regional influence, and a resurgence of genocidal anti-Semitism. President Obama supports them wholeheartedly.

Traditionally, liberal foreign policy theorists have buttonholed America's ideological enemies into separate camps: Islamists, communists, fascists. Each group, say the theorists, must be treated separately from the others. We can always work with fascists against communists or communists against fascists, they argue -- we can always peel away the Islamists from the communists, or vice versa, say the liberal theorists.

There's only one problem: historically, this has been untrue. The history of the 20th century -- and now the history of the 21st century -- is plagued by an inconvenient truth for such liberal thinkers: communists, fascists and Islamists work in tandem all the time. Their relationship with each other is surprisingly enduring and resilient. From World War I, when the Ottoman Empire sided with the Austro-Hungarian and German empires, to World War II, when virtually the entire Muslim world joined forces with the Nazis and initially the communists, to the Cold War, when the Soviet Union cultivated allies in Middle East, the ties that bind socialists, fascists, and Islamists have weathered the storms of time.

Today, that relationship remains in place.

The protesters in Wisconsin protest for the same socialist principles that those in the Middle East want. Communists and socialist labor unions have worked with Muslim Brotherhood front groups on a routine basis, as Glenn Beck has repeatedly exposed. The Muslim Brotherhood is not merely Islamist, but it is socialist in orientation, as are their offshoot terrorist groups. Osama bin Laden himself constantly preaches on behalf of wealth redistribution. "You should liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system," he preached in 2007. It is no wonder that socialist megafunder George Soros supports the Muslim Brotherhood wholeheartedly.

Aside from the commonality of socialist tendencies, the union left and the Islamists are united by their deep and abiding hatred for Jews and Israel. Oddly, despite Israel's quasi-socialist economic system, unions across the world boycott Israel, deride it as a terror state, and stand in solidarity with Palestinian thugs. Everyone from Britain's National Union of Journalists to its largest union, Unite, from the Norwegian Port Union to the Canadian Union of Public Employees, from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to the Congress of South African Trade Unions, has boycotted Israel. American unions are no exception to the anti-Israel rule.

Neither, of course, are the supposed Islamist democrats in the Middle East. They despise Israel and make no secret of it. When Muslim protesters raped Lara Logan, they screamed "Jew! Jew!" Posters of deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak were defaced with stars of David scrawled on his forehead. Muslim Brotherhood spiritual head Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi, who has often called for the murder of all Jews, spoke at Tahrir Square to a cheering throng. In Tunisia, "freedom protesters" gathered outside Tunis' main synagogue, chanting "Jews wait, the army of Mohammed is coming back!" In an attempt to head off popular uprising, the Jordanian government appointed Hussein Mjali as its justice minister. Mjali is best known in Jordan for calling Israel a "terrorist state that will be destroyed."

Why now, after 9/11 and after the fall of the Soviet Union, is the socialist-Islamist axis of ideological evil rising once again? Because the president of the United States stands at the center of that axis, bridging the gap.

President Obama is a committed socialist with a history of warmth toward Islamism. His father was a communist and a Muslim; his grandfather and mother were communists; his stepfather was a Muslim. He despises Israel, showing the Jewish state nothing but disdain. The same week that Muslims across the Middle East called for Israel's destruction, Obama's secretary of state called Israel's settlement program illegitimate.

America is the most powerful nation on earth. If it chose to slow the mobilization of the socialist-Islamist axis of ideological evil, it surely could. Instead, Obama is facilitating the rise of that red-green axis, purposefully weakening America from within and without.
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To read another article by Ben Shapiro, click here.