I Lived Under a Red-Green Alliance. I Know What Comes Next Here.

How could I know the army officers standing at the office door were harbingers of today’s Red-Green Alliance between socialists and radical Muslims?

My father had gone to work as he always did, providing for his family through a small oil distributorship in Egypt. That day he came home and shared that the company now belonged to the state. The officers had sent him and his colleagues home, a lifetime of labor erased by a government order.

In Egypt, shortly after 1948, when I was born into the Coptic Christian community, Gamal Abdel Nasser had informants everywhere: in workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, even among students. A careless word could travel faster than a child understood.

As a young man, I read about freedom of speech, freedom of religion in America, and the right to say what you believed without fearing the knock at the door, but I was afraid someone might report what I was reading. That is how oppression works. It only has to teach everyone to be afraid.

Banks were nationalized. Foreign commercial holdings were nationalized. Private companies and land were seized. Christians who had lived in Egypt for centuries became second-class citizens. Highly educated believers were pushed out of leadership and into menial work. Churches were restricted. Evangelism was confined.

Not all Muslims were hostile to me. I had Muslim friends from moderate, enlightened homes, and I thank God for them.

I left Egypt in my teens with the clothes on my back. Finally, in 1977, I moved to the United States from Australia. I became a citizen in 1984. I chose America because, in my heart, I had loved her freedoms long before I held her passport.

Americans do not think they are embracing socialism. The numbers bear that out. A Marquette Law School national poll released in August found the Democratic Socialists of America underwater with the public: 24 percent favorable, 54 percent unfavorable. 

The poll split its sample. The organization stood at a net minus 30, while the candidates stood at a net minus 22. For scale, MAGA stood at a net minus 26. Not one name in that poll came out ahead. That reveals something serious.

Well-known socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stood at 45 favorable, 47 unfavorable, with 8 percent responding they needed more information. President Donald Trump stood at a net minus 22, and Vice President JD Vance, known to just as many people as Sanders, stood at minus 16. This demonstrates that an ideology can be rejected by name and still become normal through personalities people trust. 

On August 4, Abdul Mohamed El-Sayed narrowly defeated Democrat Rep. Haley Stevens (MI-11) in Michigan’s Democrat U.S. Senate primary. On August 11, Wisconsin Democrats almost nominated Francesca Hong for governor, a self-described socialist state legislator. And alarmingly, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are now the largest socialist organization in United States history, reporting more than 120,000 members as of July 4, up from roughly 5,000 a decade ago.

In an August 9 interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) spoke of “a time of renewal for the Democratic Party” and “an ascendance of a young, inspiring, exciting electorate.” Young people are carrying real economic pain, and she said plainly that many feel ignored, sidelined and burdened by decisions made before them.

That objection deserves to be heard honestly. But renewal of what, and toward what?

In an interview, Jonathan Karl read from the DSA’s own national platform: defunding the Department of Defense, closing overseas military bases, abolishing the police and prison system. AOC did not endorse those positions, but said, “I think that this is a free country. Everyone can have all sorts of beliefs,” and then she redirected to lowering bills and helping people afford a doctor.

That exchange is a warning. Radical content can be carried quietly inside a movement whose public face is compassion. The platform sets aside academic debate while the argument moves to affordability. Sometimes the most dangerous ideas are the ones we gloss over.

Earlier, Obama’s famous political guru David Axelrod asked AOC whether she would run for higher office. People “assume that my ambition is positional,” AOC said. “They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat. And my ambition is way bigger than that… Presidents come and go. Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go. But single-payer healthcare is forever. A living wage is forever. Workers’ rights are forever. Women’s rights, all of that.”

I have never heard an American politician speak of “forever” this way. But I heard it from regimes and ideologies that believed they could own the future.

Only God owns forever. Nasser and his boasts are gone, but the Church in Egypt is still there.

Some Christians tell me political neutrality protects our Gospel witness, and I have seen believers confuse the Kingdom of God with earthly parties. That is a grave mistake, but silence in the face of evil is not faithfulness.

In my most recent book, “An Unholy Alliance,” I have warned that Marxists and Islamists may hate one another, but they can still work together when their common enemy is the biblical foundations of Western Civilization. I saw the Red-Green forces unite in the Egypt of my youth. We saw it again in Iran in 1979, when leftists and Islamists toppled the Shah; Khomeini destroyed the leftists once he held power. It makes me fear for America.

Our freedoms are not self-sustaining. They depend on moral foundations deeper than law, deeper than elections, deeper than slogans about renewal or forever. But they are in the crosshairs. When government becomes our provider, savior, parent, priest and judge, it does not merely mismanage the economy. It tries to replace God.

A nation that has forgotten God will not be brought back to faith in Him. He must draw her home. Our part is to speak and to ask.

Dr. Michael A. Youssef is the host of the popular TV and radio broadcast “Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef,” which airs more than 18,000 times every week across six continents in 28 languages — reaching audiences in nearly every major city in the world. Equipped with a keen understanding of the Bible, the Middle East, sociological trends in the Western world and popular Christian worldview issues, Dr. Youssef is a sought-after voice whose expertise is regularly requested on both secular and Christian media. In Dr. Youssef’s most recent book, “An Unholy Alliance: How Progressivism Brought About an Islamist Invasion,” he exposes the surprising convergence of radical Progressivism and political Islam — two seemingly opposing ideologies with one thing in common: a shared hatred for Western Judeo-Christian values.

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