Customer Reviews

Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam And The American Left

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I had long wondered why people on the Left had the propensity to speak more positively about people who would slit their throats than they do about their own country, which affords them more freedom and opportunity than anywhere else. David Horowitz has answered that question thoroughly and convincingly in his Unholy Alliance. Where I felt bewildered and confused, I now feel crystal clear. Unholy Alliance is such a great book.

It begins with the leftist movements at the beginning of the 20th Century, and works its way up to the present day, exploring the anti-American attitude of these movements in detail. Horowitz shows that the enemies of the US back then are largely the same group today, operating under the same misperceptions, making the same mistakes, and pursuing the same impossible utopia.

Individual chapters are included on the Patriot Act (I was persuaded that it is a GOOD thing); the democratic flip-flop on Iraq once G.W. Bush implemented what they agreed with Clinton needed to be done; the driving components of the current anti-war movement; as well as chapters on individual personalities who are major spokespeople of the Left. Horowitz covers a lot of ground, and he covers it concisely and clearly. Unholy Alliance is richly informative without ever being boring or plodding.

This book is so illuminating that I simply cannot do justice to it here. I love people who reason so clearly that they help me get my own reasoning clear. Horowitz is just that type of person! In the terrain of mindless clichés (no-blood-for-oil, etc.), he is a breath of real fresh air.

I think that anyone who is a supporter of Kerry who has lefty roots, who wants to understand why intelligent adults can support George Bush should read this book. This book has one flaw, and hence only 4 stars. But it is a great book that should also be read by anyone who carries their Chomsky around. A really good thing for young college students to read.

Hey, my mom was a Trotskyite in college. What Horowitz says is totally right on. I don't know that it means that making war on Iraq was the best chess move in this very serious war, but I found only one item that I thought was an error.

Horowitz states that the war on Iraq and the war on Afghanistan took a few weeks and didn't become a quagmire. However, applying the same logical razor as he used in his book: First, you can't tell if something has become a quagmire until years afterward. Second, there are definite signs of quagmire developing, and it worth noting that the US occupation of Afghanistan never has reached the level of dominance and security at any time that the Soviet Union had there for the early years of their acquisition.

But, aside from that, he really nails the center of the uneasiness, the political fulcrum which has become a core of the Bush administration. Fact is, the left and its leaders have supported far more terrorism and sold far more lies than anyone else, and that most definitely includes Chomsky, his endless revisionist history and blinkered apologist tracts.

Horowitz knows his subject like only an apostate can. Seriously, if you want to read a book that will help you understand this political mess we have in America today, read this.

I am a liberal. I recognize that Islam is not liberal. There is nothing liberal about it. I have often wondered how those who call themselves liberal can justify and even side with muslims who want to destroy the west. Horowitz does not know why, of course, but he does lay out how liberals, who consider the US to be a fascist nation, are actively supporting its destruction by a culture that really is a fascist culture. Is it that liberals think once we get rid of the powerful west, the rest of the world will be easily swayed to our way of thinking? This viewpoint is not only stupid it is insulting to non western peoples. It's also amazing that liberals never seem to notice how much muslims and other peoples hate what they regard as the manifestation of liberalsim. Muslims would rather kill their daughters than to have them have children out of wedlock. They hate the idea of children not obeying parents, of religion being mocked, of personal gratification being the end all of existence. The things that liberals want, more freedom of every kind, more sexual liberation, are what muslims abhor. If muslims every got enough power, the first thing they would do is destroy the liberals. So what are liberals thinking?

Winston Churchill once said, "I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents." This is certainly true of President Bush. The same must be true of authors, at least in David Horowitz's case, judging by the animosities his critics exhibit. The book is fact. Fact that for anyone with modicum of knowledge regarding the history of radical socialism/leftism/communism will ring true. Mr. Horowitz knows whereof he speaks. Been there, done that. As a person who was once described as a former lefty who "knows where all the bodies are buried," he personally knows many of the players and the rules of the game better than most anyone else currently writing about those who believe that they know better than we what is good for us and all humanity.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no free lunch. Mr. Horowitz elucidates the price to be paid if we accept the force-feeding of an illusory, earthly paradise that the radical socialist and jihadist are attempting to push down our throats. Swallow at your own peril. What David Horowitz has on the menu is well worth the price and infinitely more digestible.

No one has the moral right to comment about UNHOLY ALLIANCE until they have read every word of the book and each of the hundreds of footnotes. I have. Much has already been said, and more will be said, about UNHOLY ALLIANCE--and at greater length than this space allows. So suffice to say that in UNHOLY ALLIANCE David Horowitz not only presents a critically encyclopedic history of the Left in America and its ideological fraternalism with militant Islam, but, even more important, the author makes it clear beyond any resonable doubt that this "unholy alliance" is in a literal death struggle with western values in general and the United States of America in particular. If we survive the onslaught of this medieval barbarism, it will be in important measure due to the work of David Horowitz in exposing the threat to civilization posed by today's UNHOLY ALLIANCE.

In UNHOLY ALLIANCE, David Horowitz investigates the origin of the thinly disguised loathing that the Left has for its own country. He notes that this loathing began decades before 9/11, when the Left used the tragedy of the collapsing towers to accelerate an agenda that began with the very earliest writings of Marx. Yet, this rush towards seeing America in the same invidious light that is shared by America's alleged friends is a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the end of the Vietnam conflict most Americans, even those who were Democrats, believed in the kind of old-fashioned patriotism that is now under such merciless politically correct attack. This leftward shift roared into fifth gear as soon as radical Islam was incorporated into a witches' brew that amazingly enough yanked the Left from its previous liberal Democratic origin and intertwined it with the foulest anti-American sentiment seen since the heydays of Nazism and Communism. Horowitz sees no surprise in the melding of Islamofascism and the new platform of the Left. In fact, he notes that such a melding was inevitable, given the predisposition of the Left-dominated mass media and America's colleges and universities to always look inward to find fault when faced with external aggression. Horowitz correctly sees the Left as culturally blind to the very excesses of most Moslem socities which grind down women and spew the most vicious anti-semitic poison heard since MEIN KAMPF. He draws no small irony in noting that the Left praises Osama Bin Laden while denigrating traditional American values like the right of George Bush to act unilaterally to protect America's vital interests. Horowtiz sees no easy or looming solution to respond to enemies who wish only our harm. He does imply that this unholy alliance between radical Islam and the American Left will continue unabated until there occurs some unforeseen tipping point that will force most Americans to view this alliance under a more critical light.

An excellent read. Horowitz makes his case with unnerving facts and some excellent analysis.

An important book to read for any American. While not everyone will be as alarmed as Horowitz, it is difficult to not at least be troubled by the political sympathy of an entire "intellectual" movement in the U.S.

An important piece of work.

In this revealing work, Horowitz explores the hellish marriage between IslamoFascists and the highly networked American Left. These ideologues who once sided with the USSR and other repressive communist regimes have now wholeheartedly embraced radical Islam.

The agenda emanates from the extreme left but the influence extends far beyond, also encompassing liberal discourse and the mass media. It seems that this radical agenda has now succeeded in capturing the heart and soul of the Democratic Party.

Unholy Alliance exposes and dissects the Left in fine detail, seeking for answers to why it has made an alliance with a reactionary and oppressive religious ideology. Also why it tried to undermine the War on Terror by opposing the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq. The fracture of the consensus in American politics is another topic discussed here.

Part One, A Defining Moment, takes the investigation from 9/11, the response of the Administration, and the Left's response to that. It shows how the Left declared war on the War on Terror and started organising demonstrations long before any action was taken, becoming the vanguard for Saddam and the Jihad terrorists.

Part Two explores the Mind of the Left in a series that includes communist forerunners, the transition after the collapse of communism, the New Left, the Utopian Idea, the Nihilist Left and the Anti-American Cult. Throughout the book, prominent personalities are highlighted. Among them is Noam Chomsky, discussed with reference to a New Yorker profile where this nasty professor's malice and distortion of historical facts are pointed out. Chomsky's less strident but equally deceptive intellectual twin Howard Zinn also features. His plodding bestseller A People's History of the USA is a prime example of anti-American propaganda.

The main areas of Leftist infestation today are academia, the mass media, literary circles and Hollywood. There is a powerful fisking of Norman Mailer and his detestable piece about 9/11 for the New York Review of Books.

Part Three takes a closer look at the alliance with radical Islam and how it operates. It is shown to be an update of the Nazi-Communist entente. The introduction of communist thought and methods into Islam began with the Khomeini revolution in Iran. The last decade saw the Islamic transformation of the Palestinian struggle, which was completed by year 2000.

Chapter 16, The New Radicalism, revisits the UN's Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. This is where an array of dictators and tyrants met for a freakshow to condemn the West and where the Nihilist Left first showed its true colours. Israel, the USA and the UK were the only countries attacked by a bunch of the most oppressive regimes including Sudan and Zimbabwe. The atmosphere was moreover permeated with Jew hatred.

This conference brought together the radical Islamists with American NGO's and other Leftist organisations. The Ford Foundation funded it. Months later this coalition would re-emerge as a global movement against the War on Terror. From it also sprang the World Social Forum that first met in Brazil in 2001, another organisation dedicated to anti-capitalist nihilism.

Parts 4 looks at the War at Home by discussing the Anti-War protests and revealing by whom they were funded and organized. Homeland Security and the assault on the Patriot Act are further subjects. Part 5, A Nation Divided, demonstrates how the Democratic Party shifted from supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom to becoming vicious opponents using tactics unprecedented in a time of war. The transformation happened in a few months, as revealed by the words of people like Al Gore and Jimmy Carter.

The chapter Anti-War Democrats indicates how prominent leftists have achieved power in the Democratic Party. The epilogue deals with the 2004 presidential campaign, providing plenty of damning evidence from the rhetoric and tactics of the Kerry side. Horowitz concludes with the observation that there are now Two Americas that matter: An America that embraces its heritage and vision, and an America that has seceded from both.

Unholy Alliance demonstrates convincingly that the American Left today is far more dangerous than loony. The book concludes with 34 pages of notes and a thorough index. I also recommend The Anti-Chomsky Reader by Horowitz and Collier, The New Anti-Semitism by Phyllis Chesler, The Death Of Right And Wrong by Tammy Bruce, Eurabia by Bat Ye'or and Anti-Americanism by Jean-Francois Revel.

As the author of this book reminds us, plenty of liberals and conservatives have genuine constructive criticism for the United States. Some simply want to make America stronger. Others want the United States to make reasonable sacrifices to make the world as a whole a better place. But that's not what this book is about. This book is about those who wish to hurt the United States and whose advice to us has to be suspect. It is, in particular, about allegiances between portions of the American political Left and Islamic radicals, and the influence of this on American politics and on the war against terror.

Horowitz pins down the problem to an "anti-American cult" which argues that "America can do no right, even the right America does is wrong, and the wrongs America is responsible for are monstrous." This view explains the alliances of this group with Soviet Communism, with Castro, with Arafat, and with others whom they perceive to be enemies of America.

As evidence, Horowitz cites the surprising willingness of some on the Left to defend fundamentalist Islamist theocracies that oppress women, homosexuals, and non-Muslims. He makes a striking analogy with the opposition of American Communists to fighting against Hitler during the Nazi-Soviet pact interval from the end of the summer in 1939 to the start of the summer of 1941. In my opinion, American Zionists on the Left (such as Francisco Gil-White) often regard Israel's alliance with the United States as inconsistent at best, while American antizionists on the Left generally regard Israel and the United States as partners in crime, and I think this is further evidence for what Horowitz is saying.

Horowitz gives some examples of malicious, dishonest, and irresponsible attacks on the United States from the Left. A good example is that by a Columbia University assistant professor who said, "Peace is subversive, because peace anticipates a very different world than the one in which we live - a world where the U.S. would have no place." Horowitz shows the strong similarities between the radical Islamist indictment of America and the indictments by some Americans on the political Left. He then goes on to describe the infamous anti-American and anti-Israeli "conference against racism" held in Durban in September 2001, just before the attacks on the World Trade Center. He shows that many of the organizations that participated in that event went on to systematically oppose America's war against terror. One test of this opposition is defence of terrorists. An example Horowitz gives is Sami al-Arian, a leader of one of the principal terrorist organizations in the Middle East. When al-Arian was finally arrested in February, 2003, a number of groups sprang to his defense. Some radicals defended him with full knowledge of his terrorist occupation. Other more mainstream groups did so mostly because they were unaware of al-Arian's involvement in terrorism and swallowed the line that he was being persecuted for having a few unpopular views. This is one way that Horowitz shows the threat that radical anti-American groups can pose to mainstream politics. Although I feel that Horowitz is exaggerating this threat somewhat, I think we all ought to be aware of it. I definitely recommend this book.

David Horowitz' new book, Unholy Alliance, clearly explains the nexus between the Left and the radical extremist elements in the middle east and around the world. Although disturbing, this book speaks the truth. I never realized that Horowitz who is now a conservative, was a member of the radical left for many years. Thus he has first hand knowledge of how the Left operates and why they have alligned themselves with those we are now at war with.