A political coalition between Europe's far-left parties and Islamist groups is increasingly shaping policy across the continent, particularly regarding Israel, as a growing Muslim voting bloc reshapes electoral math from Stockholm to Berlin. Critics link the partnership — sometimes called the «Red-Green Alliance» — to a worrying rise in antisemitism in Western Europe.
The dynamic was on display this week in Sweden, where exit polling from the state broadcaster showed votes from non-European Swedes giving an alliance of left-wing parties a narrow three-seat lead over a right-leaning coalition led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. Swedish political researcher Tobias Hübinette pointed to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's win and said the result signaled a «Mamdanification» of urban Sweden, adding that the gap between city and country is now larger than ever.
In the United Kingdom, critics accused the left-wing Labour government of sanctioning Israel as a ploy to win back Muslim voters from the far-left, anti-Israel Green and Independent parties. Conservative lawmaker Tom Tugendhat called the sanctions announcement «performative politics.» Britain's Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis called it «a truly dark day for British Jews,» warning that «gesture politics of this kind feeds into an increasingly hostile discourse about Israel» and could embolden those who use hatred as a weapon against Jews.
Germany is bracing for a similar test. Voters in Berlin head to the ballot box this coming Sunday, with polls showing the far-left Die Linke party leading the center-right Christian Democratic Union by two points. Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society in the U.K., said a party polling at the top of the field in Berlin has factions that share platforms, demonstrations and slogans with networks German security services themselves link to Hamas and the PFLP. «When 'Death to the IDF' and 'Intifada' are chanted at an election event, and the response from parts of the party is to defend the man who led them, the red line has been erased, not crossed,» Mendoza said.
Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, senior envoy to Europe at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that while Germany's political «firewall» against far-right parties like the AfD «seems to work more or less on the right, it doesn't on the left,» because «there is a perception that whatever comes from the left, even the far-left, is not morally as repugnant as anything that comes from the right.» She added that the antisemitism seen today in Western Europe «is definitely fed far more (by) the far left's discourse.»
Mendoza argued that Europe has trained its anxieties almost exclusively on the far-right for a decade, leaving «a blind spot on the other flank.» He said antisemitism «is not less dangerous because it arrives waving a progressive banner.»
Janek Treiber, a research fellow at Germany's Dresden University of Technology, described what he called «an intriguing alliance between the supposedly progressive Left and regressive forces within Islamism.» He told Fox News Digital the unifying factor is a victimization narrative in which Muslims are cast as the oppressed and the West — including Israel — as the oppressor. «Whether Muslims hold conservative-religious views in this context is irrelevant,» he said.
The pattern extends beyond Germany and the U.K. In Spain, the far-left Sumar party is part of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's ruling coalition. Its support in the last election was strongest in areas with high Muslim populations, with party members attending demonstrations alongside Muslim Brotherhood-adjacent groups and Gaza protests organized by Islamist-leaning networks. Members pushed for Spain to recognize a Palestinian state while referring to Israel as an «apartheid state.» Spain recognized a Palestinian state in 2024.
In France, the far-left La France Insoumise has been accused by academics and ministers of «Islamo-leftism» after its de facto leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization and party members marched with Islamist-linked NGOs during Gaza protests. The party's popularity has been rising in polling ahead of next year's presidential election, and according to Le Monde, its electoral strength lies in Muslim-majority suburban districts. Israeli Ambassador to France Joshua Zarka recently told Fox News Digital that Mélenchon's manner of speaking to a crowd reminded him of Hitler, citing the use of a unifying enemy in the figure of Israel.
Rodan-Benzaquen traced the alliance's growth in the U.K. to the era when Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour Party, describing a far-left anti-imperialist current that found common cause with Islamist groups. The result, critics say, is a political landscape in which the far-left and Islamist networks increasingly reinforce one another — and in which antisemitism arrives, as Mendoza put it, waving a progressive banner.