-OpEd-
Around 60 years ago when the last Shah of Iran, Mohammadreza Pahlavi, warned of a "red and black" alliance of Marxists and Islamists, many in Iran and the West laughed it off.
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They scoffed at the idea of Communists and religious fanatics joining forces as a superficial, contradictory proposition. And some of those laughing were in charge of thinking up policies for the White House, like the idea of a "Green Crescent" — or a Muslim safety cordon — to contain Soviet Communism.
But in the decades since the fall of the Iranian monarchy in 1979, the West has come to see how its calculations were misguided and far less accurate than the late Shah's warnings about the revolutionaries (and their Western publicists) who will stop at nothing to try to take down the West, secularism and liberal democracy.
After 9/11
With the West dizzied by the fall of the Soviet Union, which it interpreted as the victory of liberalism and capitalism, socialist and Communist elements began to transform and even mutate to the point of becoming unrecognizable — though without ever losing their destructive instinct.
After the September 11 attacks, and with the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and of Iraq, waves of Muslims fled or migrated to the West, continuing to this day in the wake of the unending crises and calamities that afflict the Middle East. Europe has effectively become the biggest recipient of Arab and Muslim migrants and refugees since 2001.
Evidently, they hate the same things
A part of this considerable, restless population has given birth to the radicals and Islamists that have shown their violence on the streets, and now universities, of Western cities. Indeed, recent protests of students for Palestine seem to have finally revealed the once-implausible alliance of leftists and Islamists. Evidently, they hate the same things, as they eagerly trample Western flags or cloak a statue of a founding father of the United States with the Palestinian keffiyeh.
Security by subterfuge
Their shared hatred of the West and its ideals is so complementary you wonder how Communism and Islamism did not find each other earlier. Objections to their shenanigans, which thrive on the permissive nature of liberalism, are usually met with a barrage of insults as conservatives are immediately lambasted as racist, fascists or oppressors of the Third World. It might be time to judge the fascists by their actions instead.
Moderate political currents have too much difficulty in seeing the gravity of the threat.
It's also time to react to this two-headed hydra of keffiyeh-clad Bolshevism and revamped fascism threatening Western and liberal values — to which so many in the so-called Global South aspire if given half the chance. You might at the very least expect a vigorous media campaign to call out this deceitful, unholy alliance. Just don't expect it now, or soon. Established parties and moderate political currents have too much difficulty in seeing the gravity of a threat that's right in front of them.
We need only observe the European Union's timorous foot-dragging and extreme reluctance to act against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, not to mention the powers either battering its outer gates or quietly undermining its security by subterfuge.
Playing with fire
One is bewildered at the recent nonsense of a Green Party candidate praising God in Arabic for winning a seat in Britain's local council elections. Is this a glimpse of Europe's future?
The brakes on this madness may lie in the Middle East, where it began. At the risk of admitting to the historic mistake of allowing the Shah's downfall, analysts will surely agree that stability in Iran is crucial to securing some semblance of peace in the Middle East and lands far beyond.
The West was playing with fire when it let the Shah's fall occur, and hoped for the best. You can smell its smoke today in London, Paris and New York. Yet the West seems resolved to 'keep calm and carry on,' with the mesmerized look of an arsonist watching his fire with morbid fascination.