Definitions
Nihilism rejects traditional morals, absolute truths, and religious beliefs.
Anarchism views government and hierarchical authority as harmful, unnecessary, unjust and advocates for replacing the state and capitalist systems with stateless societies.
Radicalism rejects all hierarchical authority, the state, and capitalism and demands an immediate, root-and-branch dismantling of "coercive" institutions such as the police and army.
Hence the ideology, braggings and acts of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who come to tear down the current political system of the United States, a country based on 250 years of established democratic liberal Western civilization. This civilization derived from the cultural legacies of ancient venerable Judeo-Christian spiritual and ethical ideas based on the Bible and the Greco-Roman philosophical and governmental systems.
Radical Islam seeks to transform society or politics by returning to foundational roots, rejecting Western or secular governance, and-in its most common contemporary usage-advocating or using violence to achieve political goals. A radical Islamist is an individual or group that believes Islam should guide all political, legal, and social systems, and seeks to overhaul existing secular or Westernized governments to establish a strict Islamic order. While some movements pursue this through peaceful political or social activism, others use militant or violent means.
Nihilists, anarchists, radicals - disguised as the Democratic Socialists of America
The DSA cloak themselves in the words "Democratic" when in fact they rely on mob rule, mass-manipulation, hysteria, class warfare and race baiting. They are not merely "social democrats" in the calm Western European sense of the term, but in truth they are more proactive Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyist, and Maoist from the education they got in left-leaning colleges and universities that shaped their outlook and practices.
The last thing they value is good old America which they seek to turn into a "people's republic" or even an "Islamic republic" more along the lines of Soviet Russia and Communist China.
And, yes, they admire the Islamic Republic of Iran especially because it arrogantly defies America and the West.
And yes, they speak American English beautifully and know how to smile wide for the TV and news cameras. They have mastered the art of sound bites and know how to project themselves and their ideas on Tik-Tok and Instagram and on YouTube and Facebook. In short they are masters of propaganda and know how to sway the minds of the mindless masses.
And they are dangerous people simply by virtue of being die-hard nihilists, anarchists and radicals in a de facto alliance with radical Islam.
American academia embraces Marxists
Following the end of the Second World War in 1945, for some or other reason higher education in America became the home base of varieties of leftists, Marxist and Communist academics who slowly but surely poisoned the minds of younger generations until producing the current crop of DSA-like left wing radicals.
What on Earth were American colleges and universities thinking when they hired untold numbers of left-wing ultra-liberal professors and lecturers steeped in the writings of Marx and Trotsky, who admired Lenin and Mao? Supposedly there was the McCarthy era that rooted out Communists in the politics of America but instead many left wing intellectuals found a haven and burrowed themselves deeply into the vast porous American college and university system and did their damage from there.
New departments of African and Asian studies became the cover for hiring all sorts of dubious academics who admired Third World anti-colonialist liberationist movements that had been backed and trained by the USSR and Communist China, and the liberationist methodologies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Che Guevara may have died but the spirit of his ideas did not and was carried forth by the ultra-leftist professors on American campuses. That now bears fruit in the popularity and rise of the DSA.
How the West learned to love Arabs and Islam
The roots of all this goes back to days when European countries colonised swaths of Africa and Asia. A sub-culture arose among the elites of the colonial European powers of admiration for the colonised people and of taking on a romanticized adoption of their ways. During the First World War 1914-1918 this took on geo-political significance when the the British deployed the Arab-loving Lawrence of Arabia to raise up an Arab army to revolt against the Ottoman Turks.
This created a partnership between the British and the Hashemites, who were first in Arabia and then got Transjordan as a compensation prize from the British. Capitalist America was not far behind when President Franklin Roosevelt joined with the house of Saud to kick out the Hashemites and their British backers, and replace them with the cooperative and compliant fanatically Muslim Saudis making a compact to extract and sell Saudi Arabian oil.
The German Nazis were more than eager to welcome the Mufti of Jerusalem in devising the Final Solution during the Holocaust that would keep Jews out of then British controlled Palestine. The Nazis even recruited Muslims from the Balkans to create special Muslim SS battalions to fight for them. After first backing Israel for a short while,in 1948 the Soviets led by Russia switched to arming Arab client states to the teeth in order to help them destroy Israel. Many among the Arab states too, became radical Arab "socialists" such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq.
Basically it was during the twentieth century that the British, Americans, Germans, the French (especially under Vichy), and Russia, joined arms and worked in harmony with their various Arab Muslim partners and client states across North Africa and the Middle East. That is the deeper level beginning of the union of the West, that was nominally Christian and the Arabs of the East who were Muslims.
Whereas in previous centuries Christian domains and Islamic powers were constant rivals at war with each other, starting in the twentieth century they became partners instead. Predictably, this new development of cross cultural civilisational "entente" and new found "love" worked against the Jews both in Europe and in Arab countries and then against modern Israel.
Rise of radical Arabs and Islam in America
Now turn to modern America in the twenty first century, where you have the union of the ultra left wing of the American political spectrum joining forces with radical Islamists to create a united front through the DSA, not just against the traditional American Democrat party but going much further by spouting anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic, and anti-American viewpoints and a willingness to take to the streets and storm the barricades to get their way.
All this in spite of the atrocities committed by fanatical radical Muslims on 9/11. America forgets and forgives succumbing to political amnesia. Coincidentally some in the American radical right wing political spectrum are also receiving Arab funding and becoming pro-Arab, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.
More ominously, the DSA crowd has been determined and learned how to use the very American political system itself - one that they despise - to get elected to office all over America in all branches of the government. Hence the rise of young radical left-wing Muslims, educated by American Marxists and left wing academics of all sorts and varieties. Be they of Egyptian, Pakistani, Somalian, Palestinian parentage or not, they have learned the tricks of the trade in American politics, know how to beat the American political system and get elected even though they are dyed in the wool nihilists, anarchists, radicals as well as radical Islamist, and dare one say "arsonists", openly spouting anti-American and anti-Israel points of view without any guilt.
In fact they are convinced that they are on the right side of history which empowers and emboldens them to even greater heights of nihilism, anarchism, radicalism and promoting the world outlook of radical Islam.
Under presidents Clinton, Obama, Biden the United States admitted millions of Arab Islamic refugees from the Middle East, fleeing the collapse and instability in countries such as Iraq and Syria, who then settled mainly in the large urban centers of America and almost to a man vote for DSA-like candidates. While the mainstream of America was worried about the influx of refugees from Central and South America, in the meantime, under the radar, US presidents Clinton-Obama-Biden sneaked in millions of Arab Muslims while nobody was paying attention. Now we are reaping the whirlwinds from those misguided actions.
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College-Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach - Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988-1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994-1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995-2015. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy. izakrudomin@gmail.com