Red–green–brown alliance

The French essayist Alexandre del Valle wrote of "une alliance idéologique ... rouge-brun-vert" ("a red–green–brown ... ideological alliance") in a 22 April 2002 article in the newspaper Le Figaro,[4] and wrote "Rouges-Bruns-Verts, l'étrange alliance", in a January 2004 article in the magazine Politique Internationale.[5] Del Valle's conceptual rendering of Islamist ideological trends appears to be based at least partially on earlier writings in which he had charged the United States and western Europe with favouring the "war machine" of "armed Islamism" via its funding of the Afghani mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War during the presidency of Ronald Reagan,[6] which helped future enemies of the West. In 2010, Del Valle published an essay in Italy titled "Rossi, Neri, Verdi: a convergenza degli Estremi opposti" (Red, Black, Green: The meeting of extreme opposites.)[7]

The later popularity of the red-green-brown theory and its various permutations derives mainly from a speech given by Roger Cukierman, president of the French Jewish organization CRIF, to a CRIF banquet on 25 January 2003, and given wide circulation by a 27/28 January 2003 article in Le Monde. Cukierman used the French term "alliance brun-vert-rouge" to describe the antisemitic alignment supposedly shared by "an extreme right nostalgic for racial hierarchies" (symbolized by the color brown), "an extreme left [which is] anti-globalist, anti-capitalist, anti-American [and] anti-Zionist" (red), and followers of José Bové (green).

In the United States, a similar alliance of disparate groups occurred in opposition to the World Trade Organization in the alter-globalization movement, which joined trade unions, neo-Luddite environmentalists, and paleoconservative nationalists like Pat Buchanan in common cause.[3] Many were surprised by leftist Lenora Fulani's support for Pat Buchanan, which has been viewed as an example of a red–green–brown alliance.[8]

The term red–brown (activists/political forces) (Russian: красно-коричневые, krasno-korichnevye) was originated in post-Soviet Russia to describe an alliance of far-left (communist) and far-right (nationalist, fascist, monarchist, religious) opposition to liberal and pro-capitalist Russian government in the 1990-s, opposing economic and social reforms (rapid transition to a market economy through "shock therapy", followed by a sharp increase in poverty and drop in living standards, removal of many restrictions on people's behavior).