Marcelo Tognozzi | The left’s love for Islam

In the early 2000s, when the conflict between Islam and Judeo-Christian culture reached its peak with the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, professor Pierre-André Taguieff was immersed in research into relations between the left and Islam. He created the term “Islamoleftism”, a synthesis of the love affair between the revolutionary left and holy war Islam.

Taguieff, 77, was a kid of just 22 in May 1968, when the libertarian socialists led by Jewish student Daniel Cohn-Bendit set France on fire and contaminated the West with their ideas and protests. In Brazil, the energy of the French May 1968 came to an end on June 26 with a march led by the left, with 100 thousand people in the center of Rio in protest against the military regime.

Today, there are those who find it strange that Lula, PT and a large part of the Brazilian left are in favor of radical Islamist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad. There is nothing strange about that. It’s just another chronic love affair.

It is the result of a process that began in the mid-1970s, as Egyptian Marxist Chris Harman (1942-2009) explains in his text “The prophet and the proletariat: Islam and class struggle”. Harman, a Trotskyist and one of the most important theorists of the international socialist tendency, shows that the common enemy called imperialism, whether cultural or economic, united the left and the Islamic movements.

Cultivated within universities for decades, Islamo-leftism was defined by the former French Minister of Education, Frédéric Vidal, as “a gangrene contaminating French schools”. One of the harshest critics of this movement, Frédéric believes that it compromises academic integrity and scientific freedom.

This week, a fact showed the Islamic community to be increasingly politically influential in the United States. The website 538 published the aftermath of the Democratic primaries in Michigan, where 100,000 Democrats voted in favor of “disengagement” (neither candidate) because they were unhappy with the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. In Arab-American cities with a strong Muslim population, such as Dearborn, “disengagement” beat Biden by 56% to 40%. Message given.

Taguieff has been demonstrating that the result of the alliance between the left and Islam gave rise to a new form of anti-Semitism, through which Jews became associated with imperialism and white supremacy. This type of disinformation goes back a long way, since the beginning of the last century, when the Russian Tsar’s intelligence created the famous Protocols of the Elders of Zion to convince the unwary that the Jews wanted to dominate the world.

This new anti-Semitism emerged in opposition to the alliance of Israel, the United States and the European Union, guardians of Western culture and, consequently, imperialism. Taguieff delves into this aspect and goes much further in the book “A nova judeofobia” 2002. History has shown that every time anti-Semitism has grown, democracy has shrunk.

At the end of last year he published “The new opiate of progressives” on anti-Zionism and Islam, in which he analyzes the Islamization of the Palestinian cause and its objective of destroying the State of Israel. Coincidence or not, Taguieff released his book on September 7th. Exactly 1 month later, Hamas attacked Israel, slaughtering more than 1,200 young people who were participating in a rave to celebrate peace. Then came the “pure opium” speech from progressives against Israel’s reaction.

It is very important to understand what unites the Brazilian left with radical Islamist movements, Iran or African Muslims and how our diplomacy works so that Lula has a leadership role in this left-wing Islamist community.

The president has said and repeated that he fights for a new world order, including a new monetary standard, in which the primary source of power would be the poorest, be they Palestinians, Africans or Latin Americans. The recent swelling movement of the Brics, led by China, Russia and Iran, with Brazil as a supporting player, is the greatest example of this new power pole in consolidation.

In addition to poverty as a political asset, there are many other affinities between the left and Islam, such as stronger totalitarian states, instrumentalization of justice used to repress political opponents, restrictions on freedom of expression, control of social networks and constant increase in taxes as form of economic pressure on the middle class, compromising the production of wealth and transforming public power into the only driver of prosperity. The State captures prosperity and disposes of it according to its interests and needs.

Individual and collective freedom, guaranteed by democracy, the right to vote, human rights, so dear to the left in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, ceased to be a relevant political asset in the face of alliances with regimes intolerant of female emancipation, gays, freedom of opinion or even the freedom to undertake and decide on the future of private companies considered strategic.

An example is Vale do Rio Doce, pressured by a government determined to directly influence its destinies to the discomfort of the Faria Lima group, those useful innocents who signed manifestos in favor of democracy without knowing that behind them was Islamo-leftism. They didn’t imagine that Allah would be so big and so efficient.

Lula, the President’s special advisor for international affairs, Celso Amorim, and the left involved in this movement see Israel as an adversary and act to polarize, placing Islam, part of Africa, Venezuela, Latin America, Russia and China on one side and, on the other, the United States, European Union, England, Japan, Israel, India, Australia, Canada and allies such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, practitioners of Western-style capitalism.

Brazil, inserted in the middle of this dispute, saw, perhaps for the first time in history, our diplomacy opting for confrontation instead of dialogue, as in the case of Israel, seeking polarization. What comes next is unpredictable.

One of Professor Pierre-André Taguieff’s inspirations is jazz. A pianist, he enjoys playing the music that marked post-war Europe and united Jews and blacks, Westerners and Arabs. To the sound of jazz, he produced many books on racism, Islamo-leftism, anti-Semitism and national populism (he was attacked by the far right for his opinions and findings), and did numerous research as director of the French National Center for Scientific Research.

After more than 50 years on the road, his conclusion is one:

“Liberal democracy must be defended, because it is the only type of political organization that guarantees individuals the freedom to act and think.”