Strange Allies

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, The Weekly Standard:

FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS, there have been rumblings among terrorism analysts about an unlikely alliance between Islamic radicals and the neo-Nazi far right. This union seems counterintuitive on the surface: The far right tends to see Muslims as racially inferior, while Islamic radicals disdain most members of the far right as infidels. However, the immediate urgency of a shared enemy can sometimes take precedence over long-term differences. In his new book The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right (University Press of Kansas 2006), University of Virginia professor George Michael argues at length that this is now the case for certain factions within the far right and radical Islamic movements.

In reality, this peculiar convergence of interests isn't new. There have been four distinct phases of cooperation between militant Islam and the extreme right, stretching back to Germany's Third Reich and World War II. During this time, much of the Muslim world sympathized with the Axis alliance, and Muslim Brotherhood members even prayed for the defeat of the Allies during their meetings. READ MORE

Michael notes that the Muslim world's sympathy with the Axis alliance was "best exemplified by the cordial relationship between Hitler and the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini." Although al-Husseini's followers had already been involved in one anti-Jewish rampage by 1922, the British appointed him grand mufti that year. During the 1930s, as the Nazi government implemented a number of ordinances abridging the rights of Jewish citizens, al-Husseini lent his support to the German project and requested reciprocal assistance in his own fight against the Jews. Eventually, as World War II progressed, al-Husseini helped organize a Bosnian Muslim division of the Waffen SS, and propagandized for the Nazi cause by writing an anti-Semitic tract entitled Islam and the Jews.

The second phase of cooperation between militant Islam and the extreme right began after Hitler's defeat. As Nazi Germany crumbled, Hitler's erstwhile officers had to flee to new homes lest they face prosecution for their role in the regime's atrocities. Given the Muslim world's support for Germany, it was natural that many of Hitler's men went to the Middle East. There, out of work Nazis proved useful to their host countries by helping develop their militaries and intelligence agencies.

After Gamal Abdel Nasser became Egypt's president, for example, a number of Nazis were given prominent positions in his government. Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny trained thousands of Egyptians in guerilla and desert warfare, and even organized early Palestinian terrorist forays into Israel and the Gaza Strip in the mid-1950s. Johann von Leers, who had been a high-ranking assistant to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, produced material for Nasser attacking the United States and Israel. Von Leers even converted to Islam during this period, adopting the name Oman Amin von Leers. Corresponding with a fellow fascist, von Leers opined that "if my nation had got Islam instead of Christianity we should not have had all the traitors we had in World War II."

The third phase of cooperation came with the rise of Palestinian terrorism in the late 1960s. After witnessing such incidents as the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the extreme right recognized a shared hostility toward Zionism--and several times tried to collaborate with Palestinians on terrorist operations.

Some neofascists did participate in anti-Israel operations. Robert Courdroy of the Belgian SS and neo-Nazi Karl von Kyna were killed in the late 1960s while fighting for the Palestinians. Some neo-Nazi groups reportedly helped the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine carry out attacks against Jewish targets in Europe, while a neo-Nazi group called Freikorps Adolf Hitler reportedly participated in the Black September war in Jordan. Yet despite these and other incidents, no enduring bonds between the two movements were forged. As Michael writes, "At best, the ties were sparse, shallow, sporadic, and ephemeral."

THE FOURTH, CURRENT PHASE BEGAN in the 1990s. The Soviet Union's fall caused the extreme right to turn away from Communism as their prime enemy, and toward the new world order (often seen as a convergence of "international corporate finance, Jewish media, and American military power"). At the same time, the Internet's rise allowed divergent extremist groups to recognize shared interests.

The extreme right and militant Islam now possess the same enemies. They both loathe the Jews and believe that the American government is controlled by a shadowy Jewish elite. Both movements also have revolutionary aspirations, seeking to replace the existing order with "monocultural states built around racial or religious exclusivity."

While both sides began to recognize these ideological similarities in the 1990s, 9/11 hastened the convergence of interests. After the Twin Towers collapsed, many far-right leaders exulted at both the punishment inflicted on the United States and the courage displayed by the hijackers. As National Alliance organizer Billy Roper said shortly thereafter: "The enemy of our enemy is, for now at least, our friends. We may not want them marrying our daughter, just as they would not want us marrying theirs. . . . But anyone willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews is all right by me."

Since then, here have been intensified efforts to build bridges between radical Islam and the extreme right. Ahmed Huber, a Swiss convert to Islam who is a self-proclaimed admirer of both Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden, jubilantly declared that 9/11 would help align the two movements: "The eleventh of September has brought together [the two sides] because the new right has reacted positively. . . . They say, and I agree with them 100 percent, what happened on the eleventh of September, if it is the Muslims who did it, it is not an act of terrorism but an act of counterterrorism."

In the United States, late National Alliance founder William L. Pierce praised Osama bin Laden prior to his death. The Aryan Nations established a Ministry of Islamic Liaison, and the group's head August Kreis declared his solidarity with Osama bin Laden during an interview with CNN. Kreis even advised bin Laden that his followers were willing to fight on al Qaeda's side: "They might not be cells of Islamic people, but they are here and they are ready to fight."

MICHAEL'S BOOK IS FAR from perfect. At some points, the reader is bombarded by page after page of block quotes, with very little analysis from the author. Moreover, the book is too long, with marginal issues explored in too much detail. This is evident from the very outset, as the book's ten-page introduction includes a six-page description of pre-9/11 debates about what direction the post-Cold War world would take, including an extended analysis of the divergent views of Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington that summarizes without adding value.

Not only do these marginal issues test the reader's patience, but they also sometimes display Michael's unfamiliarity with the subjects at hand. For example, the book erroneously refers to Hezbollah as a Salafi group (page 58), and uncritically reiterates the apparently fabricated quote from Ariel Sharon that "we the Jewish people control America" (page 48).

Nonetheless, the value of The Enemy of My Enemy can be found in its in-depth study of the on-again, off-again love affair between radical Islam and the extreme right. How the latest chapter in this romance will play out remains to be seen. It may not result in joint operational work--neo-Nazi groups, in their current state of decline, may be viewed as a liability rather than an asset by Islamic militants. Moreover, although both movements despise Israel and the United States, they may prove incapable of overcoming the vast ideological divide that separates them.

But, even if a united terror front never emerges, there may be other long-term implications to the convergence between militant Islam and the extreme right. For example, the intellectual legitimacy afforded to extreme-right Holocaust deniers within the Muslim world may ultimately prove significant. This is a trend worthy of notice, and George Michael provides the best window available for glimpsing it.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior consultant for the Gerard Group International LLC. His first book, My Year Inside Radical Islam, will be published in February 2007 by Tarcher/Penguin.