by Richard Landes

Twenty-five years ago, a UN conference in Durban, South Africa brought two very different groups into the same space: “progressive” human-rights activists and Muslim religious extremists. On paper they had nothing in common. In practice, they found a shared enemy — the US and Israel — and walked away with a shared playbook.

That playbook is still running today. The conference wrapped up just three days before 9/11, so almost nobody noticed. But the alliance it built didn't disappear — it just went quiet, working through NGOs and international institutions for the next two decades.

Then came October 7, 2023. For years, this alliance had dressed itself in the language of human rights — anti-hate, anti-racism, anti-war. After that day, parts of it dropped the disguise and openly cheered savage violence against civilians as 'justice.' The people you'd expect to be shocked by that mostly weren't. Some cheered along. Others just went quiet.

This day is a conversation with people who watched that alliance form in real time and have tracked it for twenty-five years: what it promised, what it actually built, and why the West still hasn't figured out how to respond to it.