Communism, the Palestinian Death Cult and the Pro-Terrorism Red-Green Axis : The Other McCain

Posted on | July 18, 2026 | No Comments

Sometimes I have to remind people that I actually knew Sam Francis who, in recent years, has been recognized as a sort of prophet who foresaw the rise of what has become known as the MAGA movement.

Most of Sam’s younger admirers, knowing of his long battle against neoconservatives — which came into focus with his criticism of the 1991 Iraq war — are not exactly friends of Israel. What many of them may not realize is that Sam made a remarkable contribution to an understanding of the Middle East conflict, which his neoconservative opponents sought to erase from memory once he fell out with them during the first Bush presidency. Good luck finding an online copy of Sam Francis’s 1981 policy paper, “The Soviet Strategy of Terror,” which had an enormous influence on the Reagan administration’s foreign policy. Sam was at one point a research fellow for the Heritage Foundation, which published that paper, but once he was cast out for being too politically incorrect, Heritage effectively “de-published” it, removing it from their website, a deliberate insult they have not repented more than 20 years after Sam Francis died.

Years ago, I obtained a samizdat copy of “The Soviet Strategy of Terror,” but it’s packed away in my papers somewhere in the garage, so I can’t quote it, however the key insight is this: The Soviet Union, in its worldwide warfare against the West, sponsored terrorist activity as part of a general strategy. In other words, terrorism wasn’t merely a tactic, but had deep roots in the Communist worldview, by which its use was justified, and was employed to destabilize conditions in such a way as to foment revolutionary upheaval and advance Soviet interests.

What is terrorism? It is the use of violence for political purposes, and is akin to guerrilla warfare — “insurgency,” as we are now wont to call it. Guerilla warfare is used by those who, unable to defeat a stronger opponent through open combat between regular military forces, engage in raids and ambushes, then return to concealment among the civilian population. The distinction between guerrilla warfare and an organized terrorist campaign can be difficult to make. For example, during the Vietnam War, sometimes the Vietcong acted as guerrilla combatants and other times they were engaged in terrorism.

A Vietcong terrorist is executed in Saigon, 1968

As someone has remarked, the lesson of the Spanish Civil War is that if you think you’ve killed enough Communists, you’re wrong. And at the same time America was fighting Communists in Vietnam, the Soviet Union was sponsoring terrorism against Israel. This relationship began when Egyptian dictator Gamal Nasser became a client of the Soviets in the 1950s. Under Nasser’s sponsorship, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was created in 1964 with Ahmed Shuqeiri as its leader. However, after Egypt was humiliated in the 1967 Six-Day War, the PLO came under the control of Yassir Arafat, whose Fatah organization had been engaged in terrorist attacks on Israel since 1964. (You can read the relevant history from Discover the Networks, which is far more informative than Wikipedia.) It was the Six-Day War that put Israel in possession of Gaza and the West Bank, as well as the entirety of the Sinai peninsula. When Egypt and the other Arab powers counterattacked in 1973 (the Yom Kippur War), Israel successfully defended itself, and was thus dealing from a position of strength when it agreed, in the 1978 Camp David Accords, to return the Sinai to Egypt in a historic peace agreement. Despite making peace with Egypt, however, Israel was still viewed as a target by the Soviets, which continued sponsoring terrorism by the PLO.

The very concept of a “Palestinian” nationality is an invention Soviet-sponsored propaganda. Those of us old enough to remember the 1970s recall the Soviet “brushfire” strategy, of sponsoring Communist insurgencies all over the world in so-called “wars of national liberation,” of which the terrorist campaign against Israel was just one example.

The history of the so-called “Red-Green Alliance” between leftists in the West and radical Islamists has been recounted by Eli Lake. What actually unites them, of course, is their anti-American fanaticism which is itself a legacy of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War (which did not end until I was in my 30s), there was always a non-coincidental convergence of Soviet propaganda themes and the rhetoric of leftists in the West.

One of the things I learned during the years in the mid-1990s when I went from being a yellow-dog Democrat to being a “right-wing extremist” was passed along to me by a former member of Rep. Larry McDonald‘s staff: Just because the Soviet Union collapsed did not mean that Communism was no longer a threat. Communism’s friends in the West didn’t just strike the tent and go home in defeat when the Berlin Wall fell and Gorbachev was ousted in Moscow. The radicalism of the “free Palestine” mobs is not actually a protest against Israeli policy or U.S. policy because, to invoke one famous maxim of the Left, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

It is unfortunate that some of our friends on the Right have allowed their opposition to neoconservative interventionism (“forever wars”) to lead them into a de facto alliance with the pro-Hamas leftists who portray Israel as the villain in the Middle East. There has been a lot of divisive online conflict between “America First” activists (including some I consider my friends) and the more outspoken Zionists in the Republican coalition (also including some of my friends). My own Zionist credentials being indisputable, I lament both this intramural conflict itself and the excessive vehemence of the rhetoric involved. “Mark Levin said this!” “Tucker Carlson said that!” Is this actually an argument about policy, or is it something else? Regardless of what anyone may say, I cannot help but ask: Cui bono? Who benefits from divisions within the Right?

There is a reason why you rarely see me jumping into these arguments to denounce people by name. Sam Francis got purged from the Official Conservative Movement™ as a result of foreign-policy quarrels in the 1990s, and the only reason we are where we are now — i.e., with the populist grassroots energy of MAGA now the dominant force in Republican politics — is because some of us were wise enough to keep our powder dry, to be discreet in our communications, and to maintain our focus on truly important issues. There have been times when I’ve foolishly lost my temper, or otherwise strayed from the advice I give others in these matters. Nevertheless, I continue to urge patience, and to counsel against joining circular firing squads. Always aim downrange. There are too many obvious enemies on the Left for us to waste ammunition fighting amongst ourselves. But you can see that Communists are still what they always were, even if they call themselves “progressives” now. They still embrace the same terrorist strategy that the Soviets pursued for decades. Let us focus on exposing them and defeating them, and not let ourselves get distracted from that mission.

Fact Check: True. pic.twitter.com/9tog4T1bCB

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) July 4, 2026

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