Abe Greenwald
Commentary Magazine, June 2024
“The union of radical leftism and jihadism on display across American campuses is a marriage born of necessity—and of love.”
In April, a long-haired flower child on the campus of Princeton University was captured on camera. The picture, posted on social media, shows him sitting on his guitar case, guitar in hand, ready to play. Spread on the grass before him, completing this otherwise faithful portrait of hippiedom, is not a peace sign or a tie-dyed bedsheet but the flag of the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Look closer, and you’ll spot the keffiyeh around his neck. But what is incongruous about the picture—the pairing of hippie garb and jihadist imagery—is nothing of the sort in real life. This tree-hugging terrorist supporter is the moronic face of a harmonious marriage.
In the first decade of the 21st century, the United States was attacked by jihadists who drew the country into a yearslong, multifront war. At the start of the third decade, we were attacked in a far different fashion, from within. Left-wing radicals embarked on a violent campaign to upend the cultural and political order of the nation. Both attacks changed us in significant ways, but neither one broke us. In 2023, seizing on Hamas’s October 7 massacre of Israelis, the jihadists and the left-wing radicals explicitly joined forces. They first launched a street campaign against Israel and in support of jihadist terror. Then they occupied university campuses, where they began harassing Jewish students, continued calling for death to Israel and America, and amplified their praise for jihad. All, naturally, in the name of peace.
We don’t know what this hybrid enemy of the West will do next. But we know that it won’t stop soon, as it is well funded and impressively organized. Moreover, its two halves enjoy a valuable symbiotic relationship. They need each other. … [To read the full article, click here]