On Friday’s episode of The Editors podcast, National Review writer Michael Brendan Dougherty explained why he thinks the alliance between Islamists and the woke Left makes sense.

“There is this supposed incongruity,” he said, “of the ultra-liberal lifestyle Left partnering up with Intifada-chanting supporters of Hamas . . . because of course in Israel they have pride parades and in Gaza they would throw homosexuals from roofs.”

But, he added, “I actually think it makes total sense for this alliance to happen. It doesn’t matter which group is the useful idiot of the other one. They’re both dedicated to the end of the moral order of the West.”

He pointed out that “they have surprising and distressing similarities.”

“Both groups,” he continued, “at the extreme edges falsely treat suicide as martyrdom,” referring to how trans advocates often say that opponents of that agenda are responsible for high trans suicide rates.

“And they do that for a reason, right,” he added. “It’s this idea of ‘We’re going to use suicide as a weapon to terrify the tender-hearted.’ . . . The point of the suicide is to inflict damage and nastiness on the rest of the world. And the people who are slaves of Eros and the people who would be slaves of Allah, they don’t want to live in a moral order where God grants you the burden of free will and your responsibility for it. And so they’re both dedicated to snuffing out the self along with the civilization that surrounds it.”

He concluded, “I give no quarter to this movement. I think it’s total nihilism on the edges, and it makes perfect sense why it’s allied together.”

The Editors records on Tuesdays and Fridays and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.