Quote (Black XistenZ @ Feb 3 2020 04:52pm)
The original point of debate was how dangerous leftist and right-wing ideologies are in the present-day political context. As Goom pointed out in his brilliant post, islamists nowadays are completely aligned with the political left, in America and also in Europe/Australia/NZ.
While islamistic ideology itself is not left-wing, and most accurately captured in a category of its own, it is still the domestic leftists that downplay the threat of islamism, it is still the domestic leftists that argue and act against any measures intended to contain islamism. Leftists are doing almost everything in their power to let islamism in our Western countries go unchecked, and in this sense, they are its enablers and have to carry at least partial blame.
I think you run into a problem whenever you try to classify ideology as left or right in and of itself
since the inception of the terms, left and right were political alignments between groups with disparate ideologies who came together under a unified political movement, starting in the french revolution. And as the french revolution showed, ideologies and alignments could be in rapid flux. American politics certainly cement that ideological consistency isn't required for left vs right. How can islamist politicians and activists be universally acknowledged to be far-left, yet hold reactionary, regressive beliefs? Only by the magic of political incoherence and social justice / identity politics trumping any notion of rationality- a requirement for the left nowadays.
I think if black nationalists hadn't folded islam into the political left back in the 1970s, the post-9/11 political divide would have seen neither party warm to islam and keep it at a safe distance. Instead the influence crept back until we got the likes of Ilhan Omar, unironic attempts to ban Mohamed cartoons, Hillary wearing a hijab and that crowning moment I'll never stop talking about, Linda Sarsour heading the Women's March. It wasn't a necessary political alliance, it wasn't forced upon the democrats. Nobody said, hey, we need to be the party of embracing Sharia law, making sob stories for convicted terrorists, writing pro-Iranian propaganda, supporting mass muslim migration, etc etc. They weren't libelous accusations thrown at disavowing democrats. They chose it.