There Is Nothing Special About the Islamo-Leftist Alliance

Why do Islamism and the political left so often find themselves on the same side against Israel? Why does anti-Zionism so often accompany anti-capitalism?

These questions have generated an impressive amount of analysis. We are offered explanations involving youth unemployment, stagnant wages, inequality, housing costs, precarious employment, globalization, automation, declining social mobility, university culture, social-media radicalization, postcolonial theory, anti-imperialism, and disillusionment with capitalism.

Others try to identify some deeper ideological compatibility between Islamism and the left. What, they ask, could these apparently incompatible movements possibly have in common?

The question sounds reasonable.

But I think it starts in the wrong place.

We are trying to explain the coalition’s ideology before examining its target.

The term “Islamo-Leftist Alliance” itself encourages the wrong analysis. It makes Islamism and the left look like the two components that need to be explained, as though their convergence were the phenomenon. But if the coalition could just as easily be called an “Islamo-Capitalist Alliance” under a different Israeli political system, then neither “Islamo” nor “Leftist” explains the underlying phenomenon.

And that may be why the phenomenon appears so mysterious.

Who Do They Have in Common Against?

In Us vs Them, Part I, I wrote:

The more completely people divide the world into two opposing camps, the fewer bridges remain between them. And when several identities align—when the same people are perceived simultaneously as belonging to the wrong religion, the wrong ethnicity, the wrong nation, and the wrong political camp—the boundary becomes especially powerful.

The more completely people divide the world into two opposing camps, the fewer bridges remain between them. And when several identities align—when the same people are perceived simultaneously as belonging to the wrong religion, the wrong ethnicity, the wrong nation, and the wrong political camp—the boundary becomes especially powerful.

We tend to look at two groups standing together and ask what they have in common.

But coalitions are not necessarily formed because their members share a coherent ideology. Sometimes they are formed because their members agree about who belongs on the other side of the boundary.

It is a Jewish state.

It is a nation-state.

It is Western-aligned.

It is allied with the United States.

It is militarily powerful.

In other words, Israel can be placed on the “wrong” side of multiple ideological boundaries simultaneously.

For Islamism, Israel is a Jewish state.

For radical anti-nationalism, Israel is a nation-state.

For........

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