In the streets of New York, on college campuses, and in Democratic primaries, a familiar pattern is replaying itself. Democratic Socialists of America activists chant alongside Islamist-aligned groups. Candidates blend wealth redistribution and public ownership with fervent anti-Israel rhetoric and Muslim identity politics. Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s first Muslim mayor and a democratic socialist, embodies the fusion. His allies are winning races. American Communist Party voices declare that “1917 must be united with 1979”—linking the Bolshevik Revolution to Iran’s Islamic one. This is no coincidence. It continues a long history of cooperation between socialism and Islamism against their shared enemy: capitalism and the liberal order that sustains it.
Both ideologies prioritize the collective over the individual—the ummah or the proletariat—and view private enterprise, profit, and market freedom with suspicion. Islam forbids riba (interest) and mandates zakat as obligatory redistribution. Socialism demands state control of production to end “exploitation.” Both offer totalizing blueprints: one under divine law, the other under enforced equity. Both frame history as a struggle against a corrupt, materialist West and reject liberal democracy for revolutionary change. Shared anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism bind them, turning Israel into a proxy for Western capitalism.
History proves these affinities produce alliances aimed at destroying capitalist systems. After World War II the fusion reappeared. Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya produced the Green Book, a “Third Universal Theory” rejecting pure capitalism and atheistic communism for an Islamic-legitimized socialist state that seized resources and society.
The most dramatic collaboration came in Iran in 1978–79. Marxist guerrillas, communist parties, and leftists joined Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamists to overthrow the Shah’s pro-Western, modernizing, oil-fueled capitalist regime. They shared slogans against imperialism, inequality, and American influence. The Shah called it the “red and black” alliance. Once the monarchy fell, the Islamists consolidated power, purged the leftists through imprisonment and execution, and built a theocratic state that still nationalizes key sectors, directs the economy under clerical oversight, and defines itself against capitalism and the West. Temporary anti-Western fronts repeatedly see socialists and Islamists dismantle existing orders, only for one side—often the Islamists—to dominate afterward.
These were not abstract exercises. They produced nationalizations, seizures of private enterprise, market suppression, and social engineering. Capitalism was the explicit target as the engine of Western power, individualism, and inequality.
America is seeing the domestic version of this red-green alliance. Post-October 7 campus encampments fused socialist groups with Islamist networks. DSA-backed candidates celebrate “from the river to the sea” while demanding public ownership of housing, energy, and industry, rent freezes, and taxes on the rich. Mamdani’s circle includes figures tied to anti-American symbolism and Islamist organizations. The rhetoric attacks not only “billionaires” but the constitutional order, free speech, and the confidence of a society built on markets, individual rights, and Judeo-Christian inheritance.
We should be concerned. History shows these alliances disrupt effectively even when they later fracture. Capitalism is the foundation of American prosperity, mobility, and innovation. Expansive state control, identity-based redistribution, and assaults on “Western civilization” risk the stagnation and authoritarianism seen abroad. Jewish communities already face the antisemitism that accompanies this coalition. Free inquiry and equal citizenship erode when one side demands religious submission and the other equity doctrines that reject merit. The Iranian leftists who helped topple the Shah learned too late their partners would not share power. American socialists may face the same lesson—or succeed in hollowing out the institutions that protect everyone.
America’s genius has been absorbing diverse peoples into ordered liberty and competitive markets. This red-green convergence rejects that framework for permanent revolution. When socialism and Islamism make common cause against capitalism, the result is not justice but control, decline, and division. Recognizing the pattern is the first step to resisting it.
