Progressive activists building political coalitions with radical Islamist organizations may want to revisit their poker strategy, according to a pointed warning from conservative commentator Lewis Dovland. His central thesis: when you can’t spot the sucker at the table, you’re probably it.
Writing for American Thinker, Dovland examines what he characterizes as an increasingly visible “Red-Green Alliance” between neo-Marxist progressivesâincluding groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and Antifaâand radical Islamist movements. While these strange bedfellows share a common adversary in Western democratic capitalism, he argues they fundamentally disagree on what should replace it. And that disconnect, according to Dovland, sets the stage for the left’s eventual betrayal.
The crux of his argument rests on historical precedent: political movements that unite to topple a shared enemy rarely remain allies once victory is achieved. In fact, yesterday’s coalition partners often become tomorrow’s victims.
The Hamtramck Preview
Dovland points first to Hamtramck, Michigan, where an all-Muslim city councilâelected in 2021 with robust support from LGBTQ+ activists and progressive groupsârejected flying the Pride flag during Pride Month just two years later. Council members defended their 2023 decision as a neutral policy against displaying flags for particular interest groups, while also acknowledging conflicts with Muslim residents’ religious beliefs.
The irony wasn’t lost on observers. Political activists who had championed diversity and LGBTQ+ recognition found themselves facing a governing majority whose religious convictions didn’t embrace those principles. According to Dovland, the episode illustrates a simple truth: when two movements cooperate for political advantage, neither should assume the other will honor its values after securing power.
Iran’s Cautionary Tale
But Hamtramck represents small-scale foreshadowing compared to Dovland’s primary historical example: Iran’s 1979 revolution.
Before the revolution, the Shah governed Iran with a Western-oriented modernization program. Opposition to his rule created an unlikely coalition of religious Islamists, Marxists, socialists, students, intellectuals, and other political factions, all united in wanting the Shah gone.
The left, Dovland argues, made a catastrophic miscalculation in choosing that partner.
Once the Shah fell, Islamists consolidated power rapidly. Their former Marxist and socialist allies quickly discovered they’d helped install a regime with no intention of sharing authority. Leftist organizations were suppressed, political opponents imprisoned or executed, universities shuttered during the Cultural Revolution, and intellectuals who’d participated in the revolution faced persecution.
The very revolution the left helped orchestrate became the instrument of its destruction.
Women who marched alongside religious revolutionaries pursuing political change soon confronted compulsory dress codes and severe restrictions on their freedoms. Secular intellectuals discovered their ideas had no place in the new theocracy. Those who imagined themselves architects of a new society were instead treated as state enemies.
Dovland poses the question bluntly: Who was the sucker in that arrangement? His answer: The Marxists believed they could use the Islamists to accomplish their revolution. The Islamists understood the Marxists were useful idiots in achieving theirs. Once the leftists ceased being useful, the partnership ended.
The Contemporary Red-Green Alliance
According to Dovland, today’s Democratic Party faces a similar dynamic, now embedded within its own coalition. He characterizes the party as “on life support,” arguing that virtue-signaling support for diversity and inclusion made it impossible to deny Islamic access to the party. Fear of being labeled racistâeven though Islam isn’t a race, he notesâproved a bigger deterrent than watching political lives crumble.
The fundamental contradiction, in Dovland’s view, centers on incompatible worldviews. One side advocates secular government and personal liberty; the other seeks religious authority over public and private life. One celebrates sexual and gender diversity; the other may regard such identities as violations of religious law. These aren’t differences that can be permanently reconciled by joining forces against capitalism or Israel.
Dovland highlights what he sees as an extraordinary contradiction: excusing Hamas’s authoritarian ideology, its October 7 attacks on civilians, or its hostility toward LGBTQ+ people while simultaneously claiming to champion human rights.
The slogan “Gays for Hamas” captures this contradiction in three words, he argues. His pointed question: How long would such an organization be permitted to exist under the government it appears to support?
Political Influence Versus Political Control
Dovland draws another distinction the progressive left may be overlooking: political influence isn’t the same as political control. While leftists may believe they’re gaining influence by welcoming radical Islamist organizations into their coalition, once a more authoritarian movement gains sufficient power, the coalition’s less radical members may discover their votes, demonstrations, and revolutionary credentials offer little protection.
That’s the warning of Iran, and the warning implicit in Hamtramck’s political developments, according to Dovland.
He suggests history demonstrates that when competition for absolute power begins, the more ruthless and ideologically committed movement typically prevails. Progressive activists, in his view, are helping elect Islamists who wear a temporary socialist mask while forgetting that Islamic governance traditionally has no accommodation for the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals, women, and minoritiesâeven if, through what he terms “taqiyah” (Islamic doctrine permitting concealment of faith under threat), they mouth those words to gain support.
A Warning to Revolutionary Aspirants
Dovland’s message to DSA members and progressive activists viewing radical Islamism as a convenient partner against Western society comes down to remembering Iranâremembering the secular revolutionaries who helped topple the Shah, only to become among the first victims of the regime they helped install.
“You may believe you are using your allies to achieve your revolution,” he writes. “Just make certain they aren’t using you to achieve theirs.”
His ultimate caution: if history serves as any guide, the greatest danger to progressives in the Red-Green Alliance may not be common enemies like the conservative right. It may be what happens after the alliance wins.
To leftist supporters actively working to bring down Western civilization for revolutionary glory, Dovland offers a stark prediction drawn from historical pattern: you’ll likely be among the first ones eliminated if you succeed.
Whether progressive activists heed this warningâor dismiss it as conservative fear-mongeringâremains to be seen. But the Iranian precedent Dovland invokes does pose uncomfortable questions about coalition politics when partners share only enemies, not values or visions for governance.
Source: www.americanthinker.com â https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/11/warning-to-non-muslim-dsa-marxists-if-you-win-you-will-lose/