With the economy on shaky ground and President Donald Trump’s approval ratings cratering, MAGA media pundits are trying to hold their coalition together by pushing Islamophobia and hyping the haunting specter of socialism.
If you’ve spent any time over the past few weeks listening to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast, you’ve likely heard the term “Marxist jihadist.” MAGA influencer Benny Johnson prefers the term “jihadist communist.” Other right-wing media programs have chosen the phrase “red-green alliance” — that is, a supposed pact between communists and Islamists.
A trio of factors are driving more openly politicized Islamophobia in right-wing media. All three are expressions of Muslims exerting their constitutionally protected political rights.
Overt Islamophobia is not a new phenomenon in right-wing media. It has been deployed for years alongside broader nativist and xenophobic narratives. But a trio of factors is driving more openly politicized Islamophobia in right-wing media. All three are expressions of Muslims exerting their constitutionally protected political rights, especially when pursuing progressive policy goals.
The first is the pro-Palestine movement’s rapid growth in response to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza after Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 — actions that a U.N. commission and multiple human rights groups have characterized as a genocide. The second is the rise of democratic socialist candidates across the country, most notably Zohran Mamdani, who was elected mayor of New York City. The third is Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan earlier this month.
Mamdani is a long-standing member of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. El-Sayed, though a champion of leftist programs such as universal healthcare, identifies as a capitalist. But both are Muslim and open in their support for the Palestinian cause. To state the obvious, neither Mamdani nor El-Sayed is an Islamist (adhering to a political philosophy that seeks to place Islamic principles and teachings at the center of society). Each goes out of his way to express support for a pluralistic, ecumenical and egalitarian society with a clear separation between organized religion and the state.
But to hear it from right-wing media, the very existence of the United States is now at risk from these men and their allies.
On Aug. 5, Fox News’ Will Cain provided a clear distillation of how conservative media is framing this issue as a new red scare, combined with well-worn Islamophobic tropes. “As democratic socialism gains ground in America,” Cain said, “the themes that we hear force us to ask this question: Where have I heard this before?”
“That same anti-Western rhetoric, that same anti-colonial narrative, that same anti-Israel messaging — it’s the playbook of the red-green alliance,” he said, defining it as “the partnership between the far-left and Islamist movements, despite their deep ideological differences.”
With so little for the affirmative case for Trump and the GOP, their media allies will rely on fearmongering as Election Day nears.
The same day, right-wing pundit Ben Domenech published an op-ed at The Daily Wire under the headline “Democrats Are Officially the Party of Commie ISIS.” Like Cain, Domenech argued that this alliance was nothing new. “You know the history of this — you know the red-green alliance,” Domenech told Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow. “We’ve seen it before in history, and the thing that I think we need to understand right now is that we are not seeing a new thing. We’re not seeing a new development — we are seeing a very old thing repackaged for people who do not recognize it.”
Other right-wing pundits who have fearmongered about such an alliance this month include Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones, Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet and Glenn Beck (who referred to this supposed partnership as “a civilizational killer”). But Fox News’ Mark Levin believes that the term wasn’t clear enough.
“We’ve talked about the enemy without — let’s talk about the enemy within, and I mean that,” Levin said. “These Islamist movements that are devouring the Democrat Party, and they have obviously teamed up with this whole Marxist ideology.”
“I know people called it the red-green alliance,” he continued. “I wish they would stop that because most people do not know what that means — the Marxist-Islamist alliance.”
Although Steve Bannon frequently uses the term “red-green alliance,” he favors a more overtly discriminatory term. “Mamdani, a Ugandan Marxist jihadist that should be denaturalized, is running New York City and is the rising political power with this Marxist jihadism,” Bannon said earlier this month.
Laura Loomer, who has referred to herself as a “proud Islamophobe,” is perhaps unsurprisingly one of the most openly bigoted right-wing pundits when talking about Muslims.
“This is a red-green alliance, as I’ve highlighted numerous times on my show,” Loomer said on a recent episode, adding that Republicans are missing “the clearly and very overtly pro-Islamic, jihad element of the Democrat Party’s unholy alliance, right, with these communists and open support for terrorist organizations, Hamas.”
Loomer, who has long had Trump’s ear, later proposed reinstating the president’s Muslim ban from his first term, while speaking over a chyron that read “Abdul El-Sayed: The New Face of the Islamic Takeover of America.”
MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson similarly framed the issue in apocalyptic terms after El-Sayed’s victory in the Aug. 4 primary. On Aug. 5, Johnson complained that “the jihadist communist won in Michigan” before suggesting that broader migration patterns being enabled by “left-wing networks” are threatening “our civilizational survival.”
Right-wing media has fractured over the Iran war, the United States’ support for Israel and how much burritos should cost. But these figures are in lockstep when it comes to opposing progressive Muslim politicians wielding political power. And remember — it’s only August of an election year. With so little for the affirmative case for Trump and the GOP, their media allies will rely on fearmongering as Election Day nears. As bad as the rhetoric is now, it could get far uglier.
The post Why MAGA media is obsessing over a fictional ‘red-green alliance’ appeared first on MS NOW.
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