Politics & Power Quote by Richard Perle

Perle’s sentence is less a prediction than a permission slip: a way to widen the threat map so that nearly any domestic dissent can be read as adjacent to jihadist violence. The key move is rhetorical modesty. “Nor should we exclude the possibility” sounds prudential, even humble, but it functions as an inoculation against demands for evidence. Once the claim is framed as mere “possibility,” it becomes politically useful precisely because it can’t be falsified; it can only be “kept in mind,” quietly expanding the boundaries of suspicion.

“Make common cause” is the loaded hinge. It suggests not just parallel grievances but conscious collaboration, a coordinated anti-Western front. Pairing “Islamic terrorism” with “far Left and far Right” collapses ideological differences into a single menace defined by hostility to the center. That triangulation is strategic: the Left becomes suspect for anti-imperial critique, the Right for ethnonationalist resentment, and Islamism for spectacular violence. Different motives, same box.

Context matters. Perle is a post-9/11 hawk, steeped in a national-security worldview where misreading threats is treated as the cardinal sin. In that ecosystem, the worst-case scenario is always rhetorically advantageous. The subtext is an argument for vigilance that shades into domestic political management: surveillance, expanded policing, and a reflexive mistrust of “extremes” that can conveniently include antiwar movements, radical activists, or populist insurgencies. It’s an elastic warning designed to travel well in cable news and committee rooms, where “possibility” is often all you need to justify power.