Fred Siegel of the DLC: Not Stupid

Wow. The DLC has published a rip-roaring condemnation of the alliance between the New Left and radical Islamism by Fred Seigel, whose work I'll be looking out for. (hat tip to praktike in the e-voting comments, below) he opens with a sharp summary:

In the new era, Communist red and Islamist green, joined by more than a dash of Nazi brown, have increasingly forged an anti-liberal alliance that sees Israel and the United States as its common enemies. They all believe, in different ways, that if only the United States and Israel could be destroyed, the world could return to the idyllic harmony that prevailed before Jewish capitalism polluted it.

and then follows with a stunner that I hadn't heard before:

The most dramatic example of the conjoining of the hard left and Middle East extremism can be found in a French prison -- in the person of Carlos the Jackal, the most famous terrorist of the 1970s. Born Illich Ramirez Sanchez in Venezuela, Carlos led numerous terrorist attacks in the name of the Palestinian cause and other revolutionary undertakings; he is now serving a life sentence. Once a convinced Marxist-Leninist, he has converted to Islam on the grounds that "only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy" the United States and its allies. In a book he managed to sneak out of prison and publish on the first anniversary of 9/11, Carlos lauds Osama bin Laden and praises "revolutionary Islam" as the only route to just societies.

Connects the legacy of 1968 to the current policies:

Behind the incessant drumbeat, intensified after 9/11, lies a political program based on a relentlessly negative meld of anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and anti-globalism. For the ideologues of the BBC, the Guardian, and other leading European journals -- all 1968ers come to power -- the past quarter-century has been an era of crushing disappointment. Once they placed their faith in Third World liberation movements abroad and a state-run economy at home. But both failed. Repeatedly cuckolded by history, they were increasingly defined by their hostilities rather than their hopes.

(and it should be noted that there are strong historic connections between the current European leadership and the elements of the radical left such as Sanchez - Joschka Fischer, current FM of Germany, was a member of a radical street-fighting group, one of whose members was apparently part of Sanchez' attack on an OPEC conference in Vienna in 1975.

The immediate cause for the media's intensified interest in Fischer's past is the court trial of Hans-Joachim Klein, who has faced proceedings since last autumn because of his participation in the 1975 attack on the Vienna OPEC conference.

Klein was a member of Fischer's group before he took part in the assault on the OPEC conference under the command of "Carlos," alias Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. Later he dissociated himself from terrorism and went underground. Some of Fischer's close friends...including Tom Koenigs (at present director of the civilian UN administration in Kosovo), Daniel Cohn-Bendit (European parliamentary delegate for the French Greens) and the cabaret artist Matthias Beltz...were in contact with Klein. He was arrested in France in September 1998 and sent to Germany. Fischer has been called as a witness in the Klein trial and, after initial reservations, was set to give evidence on January 16 in Frankfurt.

Going through the leadership of the EU and EU nations, there are many more alumni of 1968 radicalism - as there are in US politics, including yours truly)

That's the kind of stuff I want to see from my party, and that's what I wish I'd hear from its standardbearer.

JK UPDATE: Welcome to the party, DLC. We'd... kind... of... noticed... that... too... a while ago. And reader Yehudit offers yet another example: a U.S. neo-Nazi leader doing the rounds of Muslim functions across North America.