A decade ago, some American conservatives looked at what was happening to Britain’s Labour Party under the leadership of a far-left antisemite like Jeremy Corbyn and wondered if it could happen in the United States as well. They warned their Democratic opponents that their party was headed in the same direction unless they took action.
Most Democrats laughed and ignored the advice. In that bygone era, not long before The New York Times published its fraudulent “1619 Project,” the impact of the COVID pandemic and the moral panic that characterized the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, even liberals believed in American exceptionalism. If one of Britain’s two major parties—founded as a socialist faction before becoming the embodiment of neoliberalism under Tony Blair in the 1990s—was lurching to the left, what had that to do with American politics?
Hijacking the Democrats
Fast forward 10 years later, and nobody should be laughing.
The major nations of Western Europe that form the backbone of the NATO alliance are increasingly under the influence of a red-green alliance of Marxists and Islamists who are hostile to the United States and the foundational beliefs of Western civilization that are essential to liberal democratic societies, let alone anti-Israel. In the United States, the Democratic Party appears to be in the process of being hijacked by its left-wing intersectional base, with even its leaders embracing radicals like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan candidate for Senate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.
It’s no longer possible to ignore the possibility that what happens in London and Paris could be replicated in New York and Washington. The long-term outcomes and electoral consequences of this shift—also leading to some changes on the political right and about which no one should be sanguine—remain far from clear.
But three things are obvious.
One is that the ties that unite Americans on different sides of the political aisle are fraying to the point where it has become a bifurcated nation locked in a political battle that has taken on aspects of a religious war.
The second is that antisemitism has not only been normalized. It’s gone mainstream.
The third is that events in Europe, especially the impact of mass immigration, are offering a preview of where America could be heading in the not-so-distant future.
The only question is if, unlike a decade ago, Democrats, as well as Republicans, are, even now, ready to face up to what this means for their country and take some of the steps that might avert the same outcome.
Britain lurches left
The fact is that the current British Labour government—now under the leadership of the more left-wing Prime Minister Andy Burnham after he recently replaced the ineffectual, but relatively moderate, Keir Starmer—is in some respects arguably more radical than even Corbyn was during his four-and-a-half years as head of the official opposition.
In particular, it has adopted policies toward Israel to both sanction and demonize the Jewish state. Meanwhile, the Green Party, which in 2015 was still a relatively minor environmentalist faction, has not only grown to the point where some pundits predict it may win as many as 10% of the vote in the next general election. It also recently adopted a resolution declaring its support for the old Soviet antisemitic propaganda smear about Zionism being racism.
Like Labour, it, too, has become even more ideologically left-wing in recent years. Just as important, it demonstrates the not unreasonable conclusion that in Britain, the political benefits of hostility to Jews outweigh the drawbacks, even if the Greens’ current leader, Zach Polanski, comes from a Jewish background.
The explanation for what’s happening can be found in the way hard-core Marxists and leftists have joined forces with Islamists among the large population of immigrants from Muslim countries. The demography of Britain has shifted dramatically in the last generation as Asian and African migrants have been allowed in numbers so large that even immigration opponents didn’t predict them. And that changes how politicians think about a lot of cultural issues, as well as foreign policy in the Middle East.
Corbyn’s crushing defeat in 2019 led to his ouster as head of Labour, when Labour purged antisemites as Starmer steered the party back to a slightly more centrist position. However, the government he formed in 2024—after a smashing election victory after the British right ineffectually split its votes between the ruling Conservatives and the upstart anti-immigration Reform Party—was anything but moderate. And under Burnham, the same trends that marked Labour under Corbyn are coming back. Indeed, Ed Miliband, Corbyn’s more centrist (and Jewish) predecessor as Labour leader, now regrets not previously being “bold” enough and is channeling his inner Corbyn as he tries to lead Europe toward a boycott of Israel.
French riots
Across the English Channel in France, the situation may be even more dire. The social conflicts and consequences of massive Muslim immigration have been a top issue for French society for decades. But the current wave of riots sweeping across the cities and suburbs of France is new proof of a nation being turned upside down by demographic shifts.
While liberal media coverage of the riots has attempted to explain the problem as merely an argument about funding for education led by students, you don’t have to have a degree from the Sorbonne to look at the images coming out of this turmoil to see that this is a dispute being driven by that same red-green alliance that is shifting political reality elsewhere.
The rioters appear to be mostly younger males whose origins can be traced to the Middle East and North Africa. In many instances, the flags that they have been waving—when not burning down the schools and other institutions they claim are underfunded—are those of Algeria or Hamas, not the French tricolor. They’re being supported by the major party on the political left, the LFI led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the viciously anti-Israel socialist faction that will contend for power in the next French presidential election scheduled for April 2027.
The French center, led by lame-duck President Emmanuel Macron, has more or less collapsed. The next French election looks to be one in which Mélenchon’s real opponent will be Marine Le Pen, head of the right-wing, anti-immigrant National Rally Party which, though founded by her antisemitic father, is more friendly to Israel and determined to oppose the antisemitic left and its Islamist allies than any of its competitors.
What has all this to do with American politics?
While Corbyn was normalizing antisemitism as the head of British Labour 10 years ago, the notion that the same thing could happen in the United States seemed fanciful to most Americans, especially Democrats. They assumed that their party couldn’t possibly fall into the hands of a radical like him. Indeed, the notion that American politics would be altered by Islamist advocacy seemed far-fetched.
The same Democrats who scoffed at the warnings about the “Corbynization” of their party were equally unconvinced by analogies to the impact of immigration on Europe.
Immigration and political change
Any jeremiads about the impact of massive immigration from the Middle East and Africa that brought millions of Muslims to Western Europe in the 2010s, of whom a large number were refugees created by the Syrian Civil War, seemed disconnected from reality.
Most Americans had never heard of books like French author Michel Houellebecq’s 2015 novel Submission. It fantasized about a Muslim takeover of France, which over the years has become a touchstone for fears about a changing continent. Douglas Murray’s prophetic The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam told us what was occurring in real time. But while it was noticed by some conservative intellectuals, it didn’t break through to a larger American audience. Older warnings, such as those coming from JNS columnist Melanie Phillips in her 2006 Londonistan and her 2010 The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power, were dismissed by liberals on both sides of the Atlantic as alarmist and prejudiced.
But the shift inside the Democratic Party was already happening.
Within a couple of years, the conviction that the radicals were marginal cranks who posed no threat to the Democratic establishment began to collapse as they began assuming a larger role within the party.
The ranks of the left-wing “Squad” in the U.S. House of Representatives have expanded beyond its original quartet of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), all of whom were first elected in 2018. The Democratic Party has not only fully embraced them and their “progressive” colleagues but has since adopted many of their positions, especially when it comes to Israel.
Mamdani’s election in 2025 could be attributed to a strictly New York affair with little impact on the rest of the nation. But in 2026, as anti-Israel and antisemitic radicals won a slew of Democratic primaries, the future direction of the party seems to be set on a leftward course as it heads toward the 2028 presidential election, with many so-called moderates signaling their desire to distance themselves from Israel and support for antisemites like El-Sayed.
Liberal crackup
The point here is that as was the case in Europe, the crackup of liberal American politics is a function of ideological fashion and demography. The neoliberal Labour of Tony Blair and his successor, Gordon Brown, governed Britain from the political center from 1997 to 2010; opened it up to mass immigration; and did its best to welcome and appease the left, even as the radicals reviled it. The same was true for Starmer, who was supposed to be a fresh break from Corbyn yet ended up empowering the same radicals he was supposed to restrain.
The gradual lurch left of the Democrats in the last generation has been just as obvious. Under former President Barack Obama, who had campaigned for the presidency in 2008 as a centrist, the party governed from the left, exacerbating the same racial and partisan differences he had derided while running as the “hope and change” candidate. Under former President Joe Biden, who was elected as the supposedly sane and moderate alternative to Donald Trump, the radicalization got even worse, with his open-borders policies that let in millions of illegal immigrants, further inflaming the situation.
Like British and French moderates, Obama and Biden allowed their party to become a safe haven for the “Squad” and Democratic Socialists like Mamdani and other far-left antisemites, such as El-Sayed. In the 1990s, Democratic centrists like President Bill Clinton won elections with “Sister Souljah moments” in which they condemned and anathemized radicals, purging them from their party; now they are embraced. While Minority Leader Chuck Schumer boasted for decades that he would be the shomer or “guardian” of the Jews and Israel in Congress, he now routinely condemns Israel while his party embraces arms cutoffs to Israel during wartime. And he’s now doing all he can to get El-Sayed elected.
Where is this heading? Nothing is set in stone, and it is still theoretically possible for Democrats to wake up and start pushing the antisemites out of their party. Still, in a Democratic Party that has fully embraced the toxic left-wing ideologies that encourage and enable antisemitism, it seems highly unlikely. It’s not a coincidence that the mayors of the largest cities in both the United Kingdom and the United States—Mamdani and London’s Sadiq Khan—are not only left-wing radicals and Muslims, but both commemorated the Oct. 7 anniversary this week by condemning Israel.
The writing is on the wall. Just as left-wing radicals and Islamists have seemingly conquered Britain and are setting France aflame, the same thing is already on its way to happening across the pond. For Americans to avoid this fate, many of them, including liberal Jews, are going to need to adjust their positions on open borders and immigration, as well as draw the line against supporting Jew-haters, even if they are fellow Democrats. If they don’t, we can easily see where this is heading.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
