In the turbulent years before America’s entry into World War II, the United States witnessed an unusual coalition of political forces opposed to aiding Britain or preparing for war. On the right stood the America First Committee, whose most famous spokesman, the notorious Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh, warned darkly of foreign entanglements and claimed Jewish influence was pushing the U.S. toward war.
But opposition to intervention was not limited to conservatives or fascist sympathizers. It also included elements of the American left – idealistic, anti-war students, members of the Communist Party USA, and respected Socialist leaders like Norman Thomas.
At the City College of New York in the 1930s, students organized rallies against military preparedness and ROTC recruitment, viewing war as an instrument of capitalist imperialism. Thomas, the six-time Socialist Party presidential candidate, denounced both fascism and militarism, but often focused more on resisting American “war fever” than on the rising totalitarian threat from abroad.
These groups had very different motives, but in practice, they formed a de facto alliance: a front of right-wing isolationists, antisemites and left-wing pacifists opposing American support for Britain and the embattled democracies of Europe.
History remembers how this uneasy coalition collapsed after December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor shattered illusions and clarified the stakes. The America First Committee disbanded. The Communist Party reversed its stance as soon as Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
Today, we are witnessing a troubling echo of that era – this time centered on Iran.
Once again, an authoritarian regime has openly threatened civilized society. Iran has armed proxy militias, fomented global terrorism, called for the annihilation of Israel, and rained down ballistic missiles on Israeli cities and civilian populations – all while advancing a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has also been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of more than 1,000 Americans.
In response, the United States has now struck Iranian nuclear facilities. Yet even now, across the American political spectrum, resistance to confronting Iran persists. And it often mirrors the strange-bedfellows alliance of the 1930s, when right-wing isolationists and segments of the far left united in opposition to U.S. military preparedness.
On the far right, populist voices warn against endless wars, mistrust the intelligence community, and urge America to retreat from the Middle East altogether. On the left, ideologues and activists – including some Democratic Party lawmakers and operatives – view Iran as a victim of Western aggression. Some have even gone further, casting Iran’s clerical fascist regime as an imperfect but legitimate counterweight to U.S. and Israeli dominance.
These antiwar groups could not be more ideologically opposed; yet they converge in practice. Their unifying instinct is opposition: to foreign interventions and entanglements, to bipartisan foreign policy consensus, and often to the institutions of American power itself.
This is not to brand every critic of U.S. intervention in Iran in the run-up to President Trump’s decision to take decisive military action to end the Iranian nuclear threat as a demagogue or an appeaser. Healthy debate is essential. But when criticism turns into apologism – or when it enables a truly evil regime that is committed to a foreign policy of conquest and aggression – we must recall how tactical alliances can obscure moral clarity.
The lesson of the prewar years is not that dissent should be silenced. It is that dissent can become dangerous when it forgets the nature of the enemy. Norman Thomas was a man of conscience, but even he admitted later that the left’s resistance to rearmament had been tragically misplaced. So too were the student protests at CCNY that saw preparations for war as a greater evil than war itself.
Today, following the U.S. military operation destroying Iran’s most crucial nuclear sites, the echoes of the past should warn us. When the extremes of right and left unite in opposition to confronting tyranny, history tells us which side usually benefits.
Until Americans remember that, they risk repeating the mistakes that nearly let darkness triumph.
