Plutocrat Violence and Election-Night Horror: Marxian Analysis Shows That Antifa Is Fascist
By Joaquin Flores | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 29, 2020
“When fascism comes to America, it will be called antifascism” – Huey Long (misattributed)
Antifa’s fascist violence will return on election night. That’s why it’s important to understand their fraudulence and fascism, and reject the politics of plutocrat-contrived violence. Perhaps strangely, Marxian analysis itself is best suited to communicate this point to the radical left.
This is because at the root of Marxian analysis are not self-declarations, nor definitions based in superstructural manifestations, but rather the material relationship between base and superstructure.
In layman’s terms this boils down to two things in practice: ‘follow the money’, and ‘watch what they do and not what they say’.
The real existing financial motives and the socio-economic class behind those motives is what we will find driving the base, even while at the superstructural level we find an ideology which only nominally, only apparently, appears at odds with the real motives at the base. Antifa, at its class and financial base (i.e., its objective and material base) is a plutocrat supported and controlled operation against the republic.
“Unlike the old left, rooted in radically independent organized labor, Antifa’s leadership and activities, to the contrary, are financed through billionaire oligarchs both directly and indirectly, like George Soros and Michael Bloomberg.”
In the simplest possible terms, Antifa is fascist because while they use some of the talking points and imagery of the old left, they actually work towards a plutocratic coup (or counter-revolution) against the republic. This is not to say there is a system-wide fascist threat, for reasons we will explain in an upcoming installment. In short, the coming coup against republican norms will not establish ‘fascism’ as historically understood, but a new kind techno-industrial repressive society within the rubric of post-modernity, which has hitherto not been contemplated rigorously outside of small circles of futurists and science fiction authors.
Antifa and BLM protests have generally disappeared from the simulated reality of the controlled media lens, because these riots did not have the intended effect of delegitimizing the Trump administration, instead working against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Antifa Explosion – What the Week of November 2nd Will Look Like
Once Trump declares victory at around 11:30 pm on November 3rd, right as social media bans, blocks, and censors Trump’s announcement of victory, we will see the start of mass Antifa violence in key cities in swing states. As the French Marxist Baudrillard would have explained, an entire media simulation will ensnare (within its simulacra) whole portions of the population, which will be encouraged to send in their late ballots, following a last minute strategic ballot harvesting ploy targeted at key locations.
The disastrous ruling of the Supreme Court allowing three-day late ballots to be counted, will encourage a whole post-election drive to harvest ballots precisely in those precincts where the known data is already in from election night. The push to throw the election for Biden post facto will focus largely on those precincts within particular communities, within swing states. The problem for Biden has been the lack of a ground campaign and any sort of excitement.
This means we should expect a very big controlled-media scandal to captivate headlines right after the election. Whether or not this will actually motivate post facto ‘voting’ is beside the point. It must only be a semi-credible narrative that will explain why hundreds of thousands of voters turned out starting November 4th to cast their late ballots organically, even as in fact these will have been the result of targeted ballot harvesting.
Why Antifa’s ‘Communists’ Are Actually Fascists
- It Doesn’t Matter What You Call Yourself
Many Antifa members, as well as the BLM leadership, call themselves Marxists, and because this self-declaration is also convenient for their conservative opponents, these self-descriptions go unchallenged.
Likewise in terms of its membership, fascist movements a hundred years ago were largely drawn from workers and small business owners who saw themselves as socialists and liberal-progressives. People do not fit into easy categories, and besides socialism and liberal-progressivism were a mix of both enlightenment and romantic ideas relating to both myth and utopia.
What defined them as fascists in Marxian terms was not the self-professed utopian, futurist, religious, socialist, or reactionary beliefs of this or that member of the movement, but by the objective material and financial reality of being backed by the plutocracy against the public, itself. All the while posing as guardians of the public.
Marxian analytic tools demonstrate that the same as true of Antifa in the U.S. today. The conservative right has long enjoyed throwing around the term ‘socialist’ and ‘Marxist’, especially ‘cultural Marxism’, to denounce their opponents within the Democrat Party, and this has the inverse effect of drawing elements of the populist and radical left who have no relation to the ruling plutocracy within the DNC, towards down-ballot DNC politics and Antifa protest-riots.
We cannot characterize a party or movement by the plurality socioeconomic class of its members in a vacuum. Otherwise both the Democrats and Republicans are ‘labor parties’.
- We Already Proved That Antifa Is Financed by the Plutocracy
Indeed, Antifa in the U.S. has become a plutocrat-financed fascistic movement if we are using any Marxian metric. This seems counter-intuitive, for after all they profess themselves to be antifascist, and the fascists they are opposed to are allegedly the ‘basket of deplorables’ that back Trump. This means we need to set aside the institutionally approved (Eco, Griffin, et al) definitions of fascism, ultimately liberal ones in service of the status quo, to arrive at any meaningful definition of any utility. The academic institutions themselves are compromised with regard to these matters.
This is why in our piece ‘How Can the Deep State’s Antifa Organization Be Stopped?’ we showed the plutocrat financed NGO industrial complex through organizations like Democracy Alliance, was the defining base of Antifa activism – what Marxian analysis has always held, far and above, as defining the objective nature of a movement, and not its self-professions nor characterizations by their opponents.
Marxian analysis requires that we assess a movement by a.) Its material base, meaning which class empowers it and makes it possible (finances it) and b.) In whose class interest they work to empower. The answer for both here is the plutocracy. Because they pose as ‘revolutionary left’ but are in fact plutocratic, means they are fascist.
Marxian analytic tools must be salvaged from today’s ‘Marxists’, as these are as prescient as they are timely. They go farther to explain the 4th Turning, the 4th Industrial Revolution, the declining rate of profit, the internet of things and 3D printing, and the potential for a future economy based on the natural right of liberty and human dignity, both in the world and of the soul. But it is vulgar misrepresentation as the ideology of Antifa and BLM serves the purpose, perhaps intentionally, of turning-off tens of millions of Americans who could otherwise see what is useful within the analytic framework of class and economic development through history.
- Their Tactics Are Taken From Fascism
Of course the fascism of Antifa is visible to many, because of its gang-stalking and arson, the mob intimidation of citizens and small businesses to support this nascent totalitarian movement. To force passersby to raise the fist just as eighty-five years ago, Germans and Italians were identically forced to give the Roman salute, is only a corroborating piece of anecdata, and not the root of the reasoning that Antifa is fascist in nature.
But insofar as the Antifa mob and BLM leadership situates itself ostensibly in Marxism, this is perhaps even more dangerous for the reasons we’ve explained. And yet it is Marxian analysis itself which is best suited to demonstrate that even at a theoretical level, Antifa is fascist.
The owning class weary of radical economic changes and a rising ‘right-wing’ populist movement which itself is fixated on economic issues historically associated with the left, deploys the very same ‘victims of modernity’ (war veterans, permanently unemployed of all ages, workers, vagabonds, indebted students, adventurers, petty thieves and released criminals) to bring its definition of order out of chaos by operationalizing the chaos and the chaotic tendencies of its minions.
Unlike the old left, rooted in radically independent organized labor, Antifa’s leadership and activities, to the contrary, are financed through billionaire oligarchs both directly and indirectly, like George Soros and Michael Bloomberg.
Likewise we cannot characterize something as ‘fascist’ by its explicit beliefs or by views that may be projected onto them, but rather by the class that operationalizes them, and towards what end. Race, nationality, ethnicity, religion – these are but superstructural permutations of the givens of a time and place. Here is, among many other places, where Umberto Eco and Roger Griffin and those in their image are critically errant in understanding fascism. Fascism is a matter of methods, of tactics, and of financing – not of symbols, explicit ideology, or specific positions on culture-war (wedge) issues.
That said, Griffin’s point that fascism no longer has the ability to mobilize a mass movement in the way it did prior to WWII, but that it can carry on as a smaller phenomenon that can inspire terrorism, is agreed. Many of his reasons for stating so are incorrect, even if this conclusion is apt.
- Antifa Punches Down, the Historic Labor Left Punches Up
Both the traditional radical left and fascist right were proponents of violence towards political goals, even if in self-defense, but the traditional radical left used to focus on ‘punching up’: Attacking capital, the ruling class, the banks, big land owners.
But historic fascism in its late-nascent stage is more similar to Maoism during the Cultural Revolution (there’s a strong New Left orientation to Maoism as well). It organizes and concentrates power by ‘punching down’.
This dangerous fascistic trend among what has come to be known as ‘the left’. At the level of universities, it began in the late 90’s when coastal university classrooms became ‘call-out sessions’. It moved into mass culture through venture-capital funded click-bait websites like Buzzfeed and Jezebel. Of course all of these antics would have been unrecognizably alien to militant rank-and-file labor union members in decades past.
That Antifa punches down and that mainstream media echoes their talking points, and that public service announcements are increasingly indistinguishable from Antifa propaganda, is a clear sign of its fascist essence. Punching down is always from a position of power, and its appropriation by the overt sections of power is a clear sign that their ideas have become what the French Marxist Althousser called the Ideological State Apparatus: That anything and everything outside of nebulous, ever-changing shibboleths (i.e. ‘community standards’) can potentially be called ‘fascist’ as a justification for ‘cancel culture’ and black-listing, is precisely that which the growing ‘illiberal liberalism’ of the plutocrats indeed flourishes on.
Pro-systemic propaganda punches down. Anti-systemic propaganda punches up. It’s an equation as simple as it is true.
- Like Fascists, Antifa Relies on Support from Local Law Enforcement, Local Business, and an Entrenched Local Political Class to Place Them ‘Above the Law’
Perhaps you’ve seen old film reel of Nazis in the 1920’s in paramilitary uniform, long before they had official power in the governmental sense, seemingly able to physically attack those they wanted at whim, without local authorities intervening. From a position of power, from local friendly police departments, business interests, and politicians who at the very least ‘look the other way’, Antifa – like its fascist counterpart – is able to get away with enforcing its power on a down vertical. Road-blocks, riots, home-burnings, against the general public – all with local official support. Their aim is to coerce from the public a fear-based passivity and conformity to the politics of their program.
It matters very little in this sense, that they call themselves Antifa. While history moves in one direction, and historical parallels are fraught with contradictions, Antifa today in the most simple terms is recruited and built from that disenfranchised and permanently unemployed hodgepodge of people of various socioeconomic backgrounds, along with thrill-seeking youth (in that age-old quest for meaning, purpose, and identity) which formed the bulk of fascist mobs in the teens and twenties a hundred years ago in Europe.
When we understand that, their ability to operate ‘above the law’ in many cases, find large groups of philanthropically minded lawyer’s groups (like the National Lawyers’ Guild) to work to have their charges dropped, district attorneys who are lenient, and the media industrial complex including monopoly social media, all work in coordinated fashion to enable the Antifa organization.
- Their Violence Has Not Once Been in Defense of Labor Strikes and Pickets
Their methods and tactics are entirely uninvolved in labor ‘general strike’ type strategies that would more correctly characterize them as traditionally leftist. As seen above, rather, their methods are taken solely from the rise of fascism. Their material financial base, as well as their methods and tactics are fascist, as we have shown. Legitimate left-wing movements arise from, and are materially (financially) rooted in organized labor at its base. The various superstuctural manifestations along the ideological plane, whether nationalist, fascist, social-democratic, communists, anarchist, etc., are not – in the final analysis – determinative of the class and socio-economic nature of its (conscious or not) ‘leftism’ in terms of its relation to organized labor.
- Their Cancel-Culture and Voter Disenfranchisement Campaign is Against Democracy
This is critical in separating Antifa from historical bourgeois-democratic movements. In Marxian terms, in the transition from feudal modes of production to capitalist modes of production, the plutocracy helped arm and organize workers and peasants, the poor and disenfranchised, to overthrow the feudal nobility and usher in an historical period characterized by bourgeois-democratic liberties and freedoms, which have come to characterize the ‘western tradition’ in modernity. Antifa is not a bourgeois-democratic movement because the U.S. is not a feudal, nor semi-feudal country, and also because their actions work against the existing rights to association and speech (cancel-culture), and work against enfranchisement as they have been operationalized towards a ballot harvesting scheme.
Concluding Commentary
The views of Griffin and Eco focus overwhelmingly upon the superstructural manifestations of the fascism of a century ago, so much so that Eco’s attempt to uncover an ‘Ur-fascism’, or generalized theory of identifying fascism, is an utter failure. Rather, Marxian analysis demonstrates that both historical fascism regardless of name as well as contemporary movements of the same essence are defined not by these superstructural manifestations (ideology, aesthetics, etc.) but rather by its driving base in terms of socio-economic class (economic foundation, private property, capital).
Election night and the weeks to follow will be met with a wave of violence larger than seen before. It will be difficult for those remaining on the left to understand that the Antifa foot soldiers are agents of capital, and not of labor. This is largely because of the gradual takeover of the left by new-left identity politics which crept slowly, and then rapidly, with May of 1968 and the Situationist moment being a key signifier.
We know that the FBI’s field offices which historically have infiltrated radical left-groups are also compromised, because we would otherwise see these FBI agents – whose work is often to act as agents provocateurs – to act as de-escalating agents urging calm from within the ranks of these fascistic Antifa outfits. We have not seen this, which is a key sign that the FBI at the very top is wrought with complicit activity, which incidentally is another piece of evidence in 5., above.
Perhaps it is ironic that Marxian analysis itself is best able to demonstrate that Antifa – whose members often describe themselves as Marxists (socialists, communists, etc.) – is in fact fascist.
The defense of the republic, of the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary gains of 1776-89 which were expanded in 1865, today rests upon election integrity, voter enfranchisement, and in a strange twist of fate, the Justice Department under AG Barr.
Twitter: Double Standards & Advertising
Twitter earns billions from advertising. But restricts Trump tweets on the grounds they might mislead.
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | October 28, 2020
Censorship by big tech companies is a growing problem. On Monday, a week prior to a national election, Twitter interfered with a tweet by the current president of the United States. The company took steps to prevent anyone from ‘liking’ or sharing this message from Donald Trump:
Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA. Must have final total on November 3rd.
Twitter further inserted a warning above the tweet:
Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about how to participate in an election or another civic process. [bold added]
As if the list of ideas that are disputed isn’t endless. Will we next be denied the opportunity to ‘like’ tweets that refer to Pluto as a planet, since its status is likewise disputed?
Some people dispute the efficacy of annual flu shots. Will Twitter, as a result, be neutering all tweets in favour of those vaccines? Some people dispute the notion that climate change is a crisis and an emergency – rather than a manageable problem. Will Twitter henceforth be preventing us from sharing 17-year-old Greta Thunberg tweets, which mention multiple things a week many grownups would dispute?
It’s hilarious that Twitter’s other concern is that Trump’s assertions might be misleading. This company survives on advertising. By huge multinational brands. Cosmetics. Casinos. Pharmaceuticals. We all know those ad campaigns are orchestrated by saints rather than spin doctors.
Seriously, folks. Spin is a fact of life. Sometimes it’s political. More frequently, it’s financial. The notion that Twitter exposes its users to billions of dollars worth of advertising, yet polices utterances by the US President lest they mislead tells us everything we need to know.
Big tech companies are about double standards and selective censorship. Their thumbs are firmly on the scale. Even during election campaigns.
‘Wokeness Wars’ Coming to Your County
By Philip M. Giraldi – American Free Press – October 23, 2020
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 dystopian short story “Harrison Bergeron” describes a 2081 America in which the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution of the United States have together mandated that all Americans must be made completely equal. No one is allowed to be more intelligent or handsome or more physically capable than anyone else. The standards are enforced by a Handicapper General, an elderly woman named Diana Moon Glampers armed with a shotgun, who mandates the wearing of disfiguring masks for those who are thought to be too beautiful while tiny radios are mounted inside the ears of intelligent people, programmed to go off at intervals and disrupt any thoughts. Those who are stronger or faster than others are required to wear heavy weights around their wrists and ankles.
Somehow, the Vonnegut story comes to mind at the present time, particularly in my home county here in Virginia. Loudoun County, a suburb of Washington D.C. where all that fiat money is printed, is the wealthiest in the United States based on per capita income. When I moved here twenty-three years ago, it was solidly Republican, but now it is controlled by the Democrats, largely due to the influx of out of state newcomers moving in to take the thousands of new federal jobs in the burgeoning Global War On Terror. When in power, the Republicans foolishly had allowed their business cronies to build large and ugly commuter housing developments that eventually changed the political power alignment when the liberal newcomers inevitably outnumbered the relatively conservative locals.
The county Board of Supervisors is headed by a black woman named Phyllis Randall. Randall has been in place since 2015 and is reliably progressive. Apart from muttering about “diversity” and “affordable housing,” she has generally avoided race issues in a county that is less than 10% black but has become more outspoken recently. The county seat Leesburg had a monument near the court house featuring a seven-foot bronze war memorial statue of a Confederate infantryman dubbed “Silent Sam” by some of the locals. Randall had described the memorial as a racist symbol that had intimidated “Thousands of Loudoun citizens, Black citizens, who never had a voice and sometimes didn’t have a vote.” It is a ridiculous argument that is often made when historical monuments are about to be purged by vandals, but apparently a statue can inspire real fear in some circles, at least according to Randall.
After being reelected last November and backed by a unanimously gutless board in a May vote, Randall felt empowered to remove the offending statue saying that she was “correcting history” over a “statue [that] should never have been put up.” The removal was accomplished on June 21st, in the midst of the wave of looting, rioting and arson all over the United States that was triggered by the Floyd George death.
Randall has also been pushing to replace the highly respected local sheriff’s department with a police department which would be controlled by her board. The popular sheriff is an elected official and he has committed the crime of being both somewhat independent and a Republican.
Since the removal of the Confederate statue, there has been more fun and games to include an apology to the black citizens of Loudoun from both the board of supervisors and the school board for the school segregation that continued into the 1960s. The local NAACP graciously responded that the apology was “not enough.” That was followed by a slap at another perennial punching bag for the social justice warrior movement. Columbus Day on the school calendar was renamed. Indigenous Peoples Day.
All of that has been bad enough, but the clincher is what is going on with the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS). The school board has spent $422,500 on a consultant to apply Critical Race Theory (CRT) to a new program of instruction that will be mandatory for all employees and will serve as the framework for teaching the students. When schools eventually reopen, all kindergarteners, for example, will be taught “social justice” in a course designed by the controversial Southern Poverty Law Center and “diversity training” will be integrated in all other grade levels.
Critical Race Theory has been fairly criticized as it pretends to be an antidote to systemic racism but is itself racist in nature as it opposes a race neutral system that equally benefits everyone. It proposes that all of America’s governmental bodies and infrastructures are racist and supportive of “white supremacy” and must be deconstructed. It requires everything to be examined through a value system determined by identity politics and race and it views both whites and their institutions as hopelessly corrupted, if not evil.
The principal concern currently is that the school board, which is revising its Personal Conduct Policy 7560 “Professional Conduct” for staff, is basically treating the First Amendment right to free speech as inapplicable when it comes to challenging certain policies involving the school system arguing that the Bill of Rights itself is just a tool in support of white supremacy, which is what CRT teaches. The Personal Conduct draft only addresses the First Amendment briefly, noting that the right “may be outweighed” by LCPS interest in “promoting internal…and external community harmony and peace” through “directives, including protected class equity, racial equity, and the goal to root out systemic racism.”
Section B3 of the draft revised policy requires total commitment to the forthcoming “equity” policies and it threatens punishment to include firing if anyone within the system dares to express a criticism. The full text cites “Any comments or actions that are not in alignment with the school division’s commitment to action-oriented equity policies, and which impact an individual’s abilities to perform their job responsibilities or create a breach in the trust bestowed upon them as an employee of the school division. This includes on-campus and off-campus speech, social media posts, and any other electronic or telephonic communications.”
The school board also has an “Action Plan to Combat Systemic Racism” which will require mandatory “racial literacy” classes for staff with the objective of creating “equity literacy and racial consciousness” for employees. To support struggling black students there will be non-coercive alternatives to suspension or expulsion for misbehavior, a feature that is being copied in many school districts. It is all part of the larger “Comprehensive Equity Plan” that the revised personal conduct policy is intended to protect, which includes manipulating passing grades to achieve “equity” — that is, to reward or punish people based not on their conduct and accomplishments or hard work, but primarily on their race and ethnicity. It calls specifically for the “disruption and dismantling of white racism.” It is not intended to give everyone an equal chance and is rather trying to guarantee a certain outcome. It will mean pushing people through the system based on race rather than merit until they find themselves holding jobs that they cannot possibly perform based on what they learned at school.
If that were not bad enough, the document also encourages school system employees to report on other employees who are critical of the policy. Most companies are within their rights to demand certain behavior while in the workplace, but the Loudoun County Public Schools demand that even criticizing the new policy with friends, family, at home, while on the phone, while shopping or even walking through the park is a violation subject to punishment. The draft states explicitly that employee speech “will not be tolerated” if it could be perceived as “undermining the views, positions, goals, policies or public statements” of Schools Superintendent Eric Williams or the school board. And other LCPS employees would have the “duty to report” speech violations to the school administration. Given that, the likelihood that anyone who is bold enough to surface as an employee-critic would be railroaded by the school administrators and the board is guaranteed. And, one might point out, LCPS has no teachers’ union.
Rod Dreher observes how the policy will also translate into what and how one’s children are taught. They too will be required to conform. “If your kid goes to a church that is not progressive and LGBT-affirming, she better shut up about her religious views at school, or she will be expelled. If you[r] kid won’t consent to calling a trans student by that student’s preferred pronoun, that could be the end of him at Loudoun County public schools. Anything that the left identifies as a manifestation of ‘white supremacy’ — and these days, what isn’t? — makes students who hold it targets of the system. What if a high school student believes that on balance, Robert E. Lee was a noble, if tragic, figure, and said so in a history class? He would have to fear that Loudoun County public schools, in the state of Virginia, would punish him as a white supremacist. Basically, deep-blue, wealthy, predominantly white Loudoun County in suburban Washington, DC, is going to ruin its public schools by turning them into ideology factories.”
One might also observe that imposition of a totalitarian style “equity” regime based on race will inevitably drive many of the academically better prepared students out of the system. Many of the better teachers will also move to the private academies that will spring up due to parental and student demand. Others will stop teaching altogether when confronted by political correctness at a level that prior to 2020 would have seemed unimaginable. The actual quality of education will suffer for everyone involved.
The outcry against the proposed Loudoun Public Schools Personal Conduct Policy has been such that there has been some suggestion that it might be revised, but the most recent minutes of school board meetings suggest otherwise. One suspects that if the policy ever actually is approved it will be challenged and declared to be unconstitutional, but it would be unwise to place too much trust in America’s increasingly politicized “social” judicial system.
A quote attributed to Sinclair Lewis goes “If fascism ever comes to America it will be carrying a Bible and wrapped in a flag.” He was wrong. We have learned in the past few months that totalitarianism can come from either the left or the right. Currently in America it is coming wrapped in a lot of virtue signaling coming from a gaggle of politicians and media “experts” who are working hard to turn the part of the United States that they have not burned down into what they perceive as a utopia where everyone can gather round the campfire and sing “Kumbaya.” Of course, one will have to eliminate all the deplorables first, and some radicals are clearly prepared to use informants and spies to do so. It’s ironic that the progressives who wrote the draft on Professional Conduct for Loudoun County Public Schools just cannot see that there is scant difference between the system of control and intimidation that they are promoting and the vilified regimes once in place in Russia and Germany. Well, possibly the school board will develop a spine and a conscience and reverse itself. But, on the other hand, more likely not. Sadly, the issue is quite real for me as I have grandchildren in LCPS.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
YouTube mysteriously bans Russia-friendly opposition politician just before crucial elections in Ukraine
RT | October 24, 2020
The YouTube channel of Viktor Medvedchuk, the co-chair of Ukraine’s main opposition party, has been suspended just as the country holds crucial municipal elections.
Medvedchuk is a controversial figure in Ukraine, going defiantly against the anti-Russian line to which most other political forces adhere. For example, earlier this month he called on Kiev to purchase the Russian-developed vaccine against Covid-19, which he claimed he had tested on himself.
The suspension of Medvedchuk’s YouTube channel came out of the blue with no explanation from the video service, which now labels it with a generic message that it had violated terms of service. His party, Opposition platform – For Life, called it an act of political retaliation by the US government for his Russia-friendly, West-skeptical position. It didn’t explain why they believe Washington was behind the move.
Before being banned, the channel had more than 70,000 subscribers, with some videos scoring over a million views. The party bragged that its co-chair was more popular on YouTube than other major Ukrainian politician, including President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The ban was reported on Saturday, a day before Ukraine holds municipal elections throughout the country. Zelensky’s Servant of the People party is fighting an uphill battle to produce a result even remotely comparable to the landslide victory it won last year.
During the July 2019 general election, the president’s party secured a huge majority in the 450-seat Ukrainian parliament, taking 254 seats. Medvedchuk’s party came a distant second with 43 seats. Recent opinion polls ahead of Sunday’s vote suggest that the Servant of the People party could end up behind both the pro-Russian politician’s grouping, and that of his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko.
Scott Atlas: I’m disgusted and dismayed
Unherd | The Post | October 20, 2020
Freddie Sayers caught up with Scott Atlas, a healthcare policy academic from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, who has become the latest lightning rod for the controversy around Covid-19 policy and his support for a more targeted response.
Speaking from inside the White House, where he is now Senior advisor to the President and a member of the Coronavirus task force, he does not hold back. He tells us that he is disgusted and dismayed at the media and public policy establishment, sad that it has come to this, cynical about their intentions, and angry that lockdown policies have been allowed to go on so long.
He won’t be rushing back to Stanford, where his colleagues have rounded on him, if the President loses in November.
KEY QUOTES
Why him?
“I’m a healthcare policy person — I have a background in medical science, but my role really is to translate medial science into public policy. That’s very different from being an epidemiologist or a virologist with a single, limited view on things.”
Dr Fauci
“He’s just one person on the task force — there are several people on the task force. His background is virology, immunology and infectious disease. It’s a very different background, it’s a more limited approach, and I don’t speak for him.”
Herd immunity policy?
“No. It’s a repeated distortion, lie, or whatever you want to call it… What they mean by ‘herd immunity strategy’ is survival of the fittest, let the infection spread through the community and develop a population immunity. That’s never been the policy that I have advised. It’s never even been discussed inside the White House, not even for a single minute. And that’s never been the policy of the President of the United States or anybody else here. I’ve said that many many times… and yet it persists like so many other things, hence the term that the President is fond of using called fake news.”
On herd immunity
“Population immunity is a biological phenomenon that occurs. It’s sort of like if you’re building something in your basement: it’s down on the ground because gravity puts it there. It’s not a ‘strategy’ to say that herd immunity exists — it is obtained when a certain percentage of the population becomes resistant or immune to an infection, whether that is by getting infected or getting a vaccine or by a combination of both. In fact, if you don’t believe that herd immunity exists as a way to block the pathways to the vulnerable in an infection, then you would never advocate or believe in giving widespread vaccination — that’s the whole point of it… I’ve explained it to people who seemingly didn’t understand it; I’ve mentioned this radioactive word called herd immunity. But that’s not a strategy that anyone is pursuing.”
What is his policy?
“My advice is exactly this. It’s a three-pronged strategy. Number one: aggressive protection of high risk individuals and the vulnerable (typically the elderly and those with co-morbidities). Number two: allocate resources so that we prevent hospital overcrowding, so that people can be treated for this virus and get the other serious medical care that is needed. Number three: open schools, society and businesses because keeping them closed is enormously harmful — in fact it kills people.”
Has the policy changed?
“It is the White House policy on Coronavirus, but it always was. The President started this with an observation that was overlooked by most people in the world: he said in the third week of March that the cure cannot be worse than the disease… In April the White House released a formal ‘opening up America’ document, which included extreme protection of the vulnerable and opening up society… It’s not been a shift.”
Effect of lockdowns
“We must open up because we’re killing people. In the US, 46% of the six most common cancers were not diagnosed during the shutdown… These are people who will present to the hospital or their doctor with later stage disease — many of these people will die. 650,000 Americans are on chemotherapy — half of them didn’t come in for their chemo because they were afraid. Two-thirds of screenings for cancer were not done; half of childhood immunisations did not get done; 85% of living organ transplants did not get done. And then we see the other harms: 200,000 cases plus of child abuse in the US during the two months of spring school closures were not reported because schools are the number one agency where abuse is noticed; we have one out of four American young adults, college age, who thought of killing themselves in the month of June…
All of these harms are massive for the working class and the lower socioeconomic groups. The people who are upper class, who can work from home, the people who can sip their latte and complain that their children are underfoot or that they have to come up with extra money to hire a tutor privately — these are people who are not impacted by the lockdowns.
This is the topic, this is why you open up. A secondary gain might be population immunity, but this is the reason to open up.”
On short-term immunity
“We don’t know how long someone’s immunity lasts to this, but this is a coronavirus, this is not a completely novel disease… Coronavirus exposure typically has a year, or even a few years, of immunity — we can make a first guess that probably there’s a good chance that will happen… Yes, we know that antibodies disappear… but that’s true for every infection, that’s a typical scenario and not a cause for panic. Why? Because we know there is resistance to infection that seems to be coming out in the literature that is not purely due to antibodies, there are other components of the immune system. Suffice to say this: do we know that people have immunity? You don’t need to be a scientist to understand that when you have hundreds of millions of cases… do you know how many cases of reinfection there are? At the most, five in the world… It is not true that there is no immunity to this, that would be a bizarre conclusion.”
Climate of fear
“This is one of the biggest failures of the voices of public health in the United States and in the world — they specifically instilled fear with their proclamations and statements… And the models that were put forward that were worst case scenarios and were just hideously wrong, and the media that has hyped up these rare exceptions like multi-system inflammation in children even though we know the overwhelming evidence is that this disease is absolutely not high risk for children. All the hyperbole, the sensationalising and the failure of public health officials to articulate what we know instead of what we don’t know… The fear is due to what was said by the so-called experts, by the media and by a failure to understand or care that they were instilling hear… I just heard a famous epidemiologist from Harvard the other day say that to have the idea of herd immunity even being discussed is ‘mass murder’ — these kinds of statements are hideously outrageous.
It’s never appropriate to have fear. There is no such thing as a government leader who is competent who instills fear.”
How to protect old people
“We have not been perfect at it, there’s no question — it’s very challenging. The first is to educate people: put forward the guidelines. I think our society has learned — no-one knew what social distancing meant… that was a foreign concept and we now understand that — but there are more specific measures. We have shipped every single nursing home point of care rapid testing — we have mandated weekly testing of every staff that enters a nursing home, but when there is community increase we recommend going up to… four times a week.
We cannot guarantee that we can protect everybody — there is not such thing as zero risk in life…”
But
“I have a 93 year old mother in law, and she said to me 2 months ago, “I’m not interested in being confined in my home. I am not interested in living if that’s the life… I’m old enough to take a risk, I understand social distancing. I’m going to function, otherwise there’s no reason to live.” This sort of bizarre, maybe well-intentioned but misguided idea that we are going to eliminate all risk from life, we are going to stop people from taking any risk that they are well aware of, we’re going to close down businesses, we’re going to stop schools — these are inappropriate and destructive policies.
There are between 30,000 and 90,000 people a year that die — that are high risk elderly — in the United States every flu season. We don’t shut down schools in response to that…”
Is it politics?
“I see that there is a different philosophy in life. In my own family we have different views on things. But we need to start by looking at the data.
One thing that’s been really shocking to me is that in the US and I think all over the world, we have a really contaminated media. Their politics has really distorted truth… I think that has now contaminated public policy and science. There’s been a massive distortion — a complete almost disregard for objectivity, including in some of what were the world’s best journals like Lancet, New England Journal, Nature, Science: these people feel compelled to be politically visible, and that’s contaminated the discussion.”
On test and trace
“Now, there are 7 million registered cases in the US but even the CDC says that it’s probably tenfold that, that’s 70 million people at least; if we look at the world’s cases, maybe 40 million cases but we know that it’s probably 10 to 20 times that. So it’s not possible to do things like contact tracing and isolating asymptomatic people.
A lot of these people who have very fancy CVs have engaged in very sloppy thinking. And now, partly because it’s a political year in the US with a massively polarised electorate, the politics have entered the scene and there’s a massive amount of digging in to the original beliefs even though they are completely wrong…”
On his own reputation
“My position here is not political — zero politics. My motivation was that the President of the United States asked me, a public health policy person who understands medical science, to help in the biggest healthcare crisis of the century. There would be something wrong with you if you would say no to that, no matter what your politics…
When I did that though, I knew I would be vilified, because in the US there are a lot of people who think that this President is radioactive, so there is a massive destruction that ensues immediately when you associate with this President. It’s a very sad statement on America, on American culture, on the world — these people are blinded, even scientists, to the data because they despise the political side of this. And they have a massive ego, and can’t admit they’re wrong. OK I’m a contrarian, I’m used to being a contrarian, I’m proud to be an outlier when the inliers are wrong.
I’ve gone through various levels of being angry. I’m not angry but I’m sort of disgusted and dismayed at the state of things… It’s just sad to me. I’m cynical about the state we’re in right now and the future… I’m disturbed. I have children of my own who are in their twenties, and I wonder what the future is if we have lost truth in the media, to a great extent, and we are now starting to lose truth in science…
I am angry at the people who were wrong and who insist on prolonging these policies that are killing people, particularly people who are not in their socioeconomic class. It’s no problem for a person who has a high level job in government, or an academic job, to sit there and pontificate when the average guy is being destroyed. That I am angry about and I think history will record these people very harshly — it is an epic failure of massive proportion that they have abandoned regular people here with their own hubris and political agenda. In that sense – yeah I’m angry.”
On masks
“Things like universal mask wearing — honestly that is contrary to the science as well as common sense, to think that you need to wear a mask when you’re in the middle of the desert, when you’re in the car on your own, when you’re bicycling through St James’s Park. This kind of stuff is nonsense. There is no science to support universal masking.
You can look at LA County, Miami-Dade county, many states in the US, the Philippines, Spain, France, the UK, all over the world mandating masks does not stop, for the population, does not stop cases. That is just super naïve, wrong, and that’s just garbage science really. The WHO does not recommend widespread mandatory masks, the NIH does not recommend that, the CDC data itself shows that that doesn’t work. That’s bordering on wearing a copper bracelet as far as I am concerned.
I do think masks have a role… in medicine we wear masks for surgical procedures. The reason you wear a mask is when you’re very close to somebody, or a sterile environment like an open incision, you want to stop a cough or droplets from getting in there and infecting something. That’s very different from breathing… If you’re socially distanced, there’s no reason to wear a mask.”
On the Stanford letter
“They expose themselves for who they were when they wrote that letter… It’s preposterous what was said. But I have a lot of support inside the Hoover Institution, a lot of support in faculty… I certainly have lost some friends, there’s no question about that — would I do it again? Absolutely. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever done.
I’m disgusted by politics – completely disgusted — and it’s a sad statement. People were exposed when someone came into power who they didn’t agree with it they were exposed for who they were. That’s a gross embarrassment, and its sad… There’s a tremendous amount of emotion rather than rational thought.”
Macron’s Hypocrisy Is Typical of the Subservience to Israel By Most Western Leaders and Mainstream Media
By William Hanna | October 19, 2020
“The term does not necessarily signify mass killings . . . more often [genocide] refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilised as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary to the annihilation of the national group to which they belong.”
Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), Jewish Polish legal scholar who coined the term genocide
The decapitating in Paris of a French teacher who showed his pupils a caricature of the prophet Muhammad — from the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo — during a moral and civic education class discussion about freedom of speech, deserves to be unreservedly condemned by everyone. Extrajudicial executions are barbaric acts of extreme cruelty that violate international standards on human rights irrespective of where, or by whom, such heinous atrocities are committed.
While French President Emmanuel Macron was rightly justified in denouncing that barbaric attack, his comments about “ . . . freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not believe,” was to say the least extremely hypocritical because in France, as in most other Western nations, freedom of expression — the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers — is selective and has been criminalised when it involves criticism of Israel’s irrefutable crimes against humanity in the brutally and illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories.
While speaking at a dinner attended by Jewish leaders in February 2019, Macron claimed the surge in anti-Semitic attacks in France was unprecedented since World War Two and promised a crackdown including a new law to tackle hate speech on the internet; confirmed that France would be adopting the definition of anti-Semitism as set by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA): and added that “anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-Semitism.” The World Jewish Congress welcomed Macron’s actions by asserting “this is just the beginning of a long road ahead. Adopting this definition of anti-Semitism must be followed by concrete steps to encode into law and ensure that this is enforced.”
Human rights activists consequently fear being unfairly branded as anti-Semitic because of their criticism of Israel for its occupation of territory internationally recognised as Palestinian; for its inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip which has devastated the economy and caused unspeakable hardships in what is in effect the world’s largest prison; and for its perpetration of a genocide as defined by Raphael Lemkin who while managing to escape from the Nazis and save his own life, nonetheless lost 49 relatives in the Holocaust: a genocide which prompted the Jewish peoples’ commendable but sadly disregarded vow of “never again.”
Such disregard is the result of Zionism having hijacked and weaponised anti-Semitism and the Holocaust to silence any criticism of Israel’s crimes against humanity which spineless and unscrupulous Western leaders like Macron dismiss with the disingenuous soundbite of “Israel has a right to defend itself”: a right which apparently — according to the Western concept of impartial justice and equal rights for all humanity — is not applicable to the Palestinian people whom “God’s Chosen,” have frequently described as “animals” who have never actually existed as a people.
De-Arabizing the history of Palestine is another crucial element of the ethnic cleansing. 1500 years of Arab and Muslim rule and culture in Palestine are trivialised, evidence of its existence is being destroyed and all this is done to make the absurd connection between the ancient Hebrew civilisation and today’s Israel. The most glaring example of this today is in Silwan, (Wadi Hilwe) a town adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem with some 50,000 residents. Israel is expelling families from Silwan and destroying their homes because it claims that King David built a city there some 3,000 years ago. Thousands of families will be made homeless so that Israel can build a park to commemorate a king that may or may not have lived 3,000 years ago. Not a shred of historical evidence exists that can prove King David ever lived yet Palestinian men, women, children and the elderly along with their schools and mosques, churches and ancient cemeteries and any evidence of their existence must be destroyed and then denied so that Zionist claims to exclusive rights to the land may be substantiated.
Miko Peled, Israeli peace activist and author
According to Miko Peled “Israel has been on a mission to destroy the Palestinian people for over six decades,” and he asked “why would anyone not give solidarity to the Palestinian people?” He also regarded Israel’s actions in the Six-Day War of 1967 as deliberate acts of aggression rather than a genuine response to a real threat; that “every single Israeli city is a settlement”; and that “expressing solidarity with Palestinians is the most important thing people can do.”
Expressing solidity with Palestinians, however, is a morally justifiable human right which Apartheid Israel has managed to suppress with the complicity of a US-led Western alliance of unprincipled bought and paid for political leaders like Macron aided by a mainstream media which while masquerading as the “the voice of the people,” actually consists of conglomerate-owned news outlets that have gutted newsrooms, abandoned the concept of investigative journalism, and replaced reporting of the true facts with shallow infotainment.
If President Macron and other spineless Western leaders of his ilk are genuinely concerned about the “surge in anti-Semitism,” they would do well to seriously consider the following warning by Yehoshafat Harkabi — Chief of Israeli Military Intelligence (1955-9) and subsequently a professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — who in his 1989 book, Israel’s Fateful Hour, called for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories and warned that:
We Israelis must be careful lest we become not a source of pride for Jews but a distressing burden. Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world. In the struggle against anti-Semitism, the frontline begins in Israel.
William Hanna is a London-based freelance writer on democracy and human rights and author of the recently published book, The Grim Reaper. Further information including book reviews, articles, sample chapters, videos, and contact details at: https://www.williamhannaauthor.com/
The United States and Human Trafficking
By Vladimir Danilov – New Eastern Outlook – 11.10.2020
In the beginning of October, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order about imposing sanctions on countries that, in Washington’s opinion, “do not put forth sufficient efforts to combat human trafficking”. The list of countries put together by Washington specifically includes Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and the DPRK. In addition, US representatives in the IMF and multilateral banks have been ordered to vote against certain projects in which funds will be provided to Russia, China, Cuba, the DPRK, Iran, Syria, and several other countries.
However, it must be noted that recently in the US, debate over the topic of human trafficking by other countries has taken the shape of a national epidemic, even though in the US itself, according to some specialists, 300,000 children and teenagers are affected by this kind of danger each year. The US State Department prepares voluminous annual reports on this issue, the latest of which was published on June 25th this year. The last report, in particular, analyzed the situation in 188 countries and subnational entities around the world, and pointed to a significant number of people prosecuted for human trafficking in various countries, but not one word was mentioned about any similar penalties meted out in the United States. During the virtual presentation of this report, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, US Ambassador-at-Large John Richmond, and US presidential adviser Ivanka Trump even highlighted the tireless efforts of ten people in different countries who were recognized this year as heroes in the fight against human trafficking.
Addressing the ceremony’s participants on June 25th, the head of the State Department stated that today there are 25 million adults and children in the world who have become the victims of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual and labor exploitation. “The United States throughout our history has stood in defense of human rights like no other nation,” said the Secretary of State. “America was founded on a promise: a promise to uphold unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And the Trump administration’s work to end human trafficking is an important part of that noble tradition”. Along with that, the US Secretary of State stressed that if certain governments in the world do not take sufficient measures against human trafficking, then the United States will not stand on the sidelines.
However, the so-called “ratings” that are given by the US State Department are done so rather arbitrarily, proceeding from criteria that are spelled out in US laws to protect the victims of human trafficking. But along with that the fact that in the United States itself, even according to official statistics by the US Department of Justice, over the past two years quite a few thousand cases of “trafficking” have been identified, with thousands of those cases concerning human trafficking that have involved children, is conveniently ignored. The propagandistic “humanitarian and human rights” crux of these reports is dissolved in slogans and labels, which are apparently very necessary in Washington for its political PR and attacks on countries that are adversaries.
It is also noteworthy that, despite the stirring rhetoric by the US Secretary of State in public on June 25th that “if certain governments in the world do not take sufficient measures against human trafficking, then the United States will not stand on the sidelines”, its own political elite, which according to repeated publications in various media participates in human trafficking, continues to remain outside the jurisdiction of US society, the international community, and the voluminous documents put out by the US Department of State.
For example, just recently the American publication National Review accused the family of Trump’s main rival in the November election – and the leader of those fighting against Russiagate – Joe Biden of actively participating in human trafficking. Specifically, the publication indicated that Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, received a total of more than $4 million USD following “dubious financial transactions” with foreigners that have extensive political connections. He transferred funds to foreign nationals living in the United States who were “allegedly associated with an Eastern European network of prostitution and human trafficking”.
Another U.S. publication, the New York Post, also shared information with readers regarding a September 23rd US Senate report that links Hunter Biden to “prostitution and human trafficking”, and that he allegedly transferred “thousands of dollars” to people who appear to have something to do with the sex industry. According to the publication, these allegations are contained in a footnote in one section of the report, which provides details of the likely “criminal activities and threats of extortion” that involved Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family. At the same time, the publication notes that this Senate report also contains links to “numerous publications that talk about the likely complicity of Hunter Biden in the sex trade.”
In the conditions stated above, it seems worthwhile to submit that the US Department of State, instead of publishing politically biased reports on alleged human trafficking by other countries and imposing U.S. sanctions on them, should first deal with the problem in its own country, and impose sanctions on US citizens convicted of these kinds of crimes. As, by extension, of the murder of innocent civilians in the Middle East and in the other zones with armed conflicts unleashed by Washington. Although, is it really possible to hope for fair punishment for these offenses in the United States, when the country is cutting off its relations with the International Criminal Court in The Hague to help prevent the international conviction of American criminals? Or, when the United States itself commutes the sentences of its citizens who have already been proven of committing wrongdoing, as occurred in 2019 in particular when a court in Washington reviewed the verdict against three former employees with the private security company Blackwater in a case involving the murder of Iraqi civilians in 2007, and cut their sentences by almost half?
Why the Dems Can’t Have Nice Things (Like the White House)
By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | October 10, 2020
Here’s why the Democrats can’t have nice things. Like the White House.
Though by now the media has awarded Biden all 270 electoral votes and taped a transcript of his debate performance on the national refrigerator door, it is unclear Joe Biden really wants to be president. He barely campaigns and usually ends his working day at noon. Since mid-August Biden logged 22 days where he either didn’t make a public campaign appearance (during the same period Trump visited 19 states.) Biden has slept at home every night of the campaign. He has no signature policy initiative. He often appears overwhelmed. He simply presents his waxy self as the embodiment of the empty and depressing strategy of I’m the Lesser of Two Evils and marks off the days until it will all be over.
The Democratic party itself seems to feel much the same way. After four years of complaining Trump is an old white draft dodging man linked to corruption, the best the Dem process could cough up was an even older white draft dodging man linked to corruption. On a rare Biden visit outside his own yard to Charlotte, North Carolina, local organizers only turned out 16 people to meet the candidate. The chairwoman of the African American caucus only learned of the event from TV. Meanwhile, the party insists on its own demographic illusion. Latinos, key in crucial states like Arizona and Florida, have shown less support for Biden than for past Democratic nominees, resistant to a campaign defining them as “people of color.” Some 98 percent of Latinos don’t want to be called “Latinx” even as the Democrats continue to do so pandering to the two percent. Ideology over reality, though it may not matter: 38 percent of Hispanic voters Dem imagine they control in battleground states are ambivalent about voting at all. A Telemundo poll shows 68.7 percent believe Trump won the first presidential debate.
The Dems ignore other demographic bad news. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin net Democratic registrations are down by 38 percent from 2016. More to the point, registration among whites without college degrees is up 46 percent while registration by people of color is up only four percent. Turnout looks to be in trouble as well; in Wisconsin while 79 percent of black voters participated in the 2012 general election, in 2016 it was down to 47 percent. The risk of low turnout is even greater when one factors in age. About 78 percent of blacks age 60+ are likely to vote, compared to only 29 percent for blacks age 18-29.
Meanwhile, in this final stretch when they should be clawing for every vote, Dems are sending out scattered messages on in-person voting (“You might die of COVID but it’s so important you guys!!!! LOL”) and planning on relying on a 19th century mail in system run by local yokels that works poorly under the best of circumstances. Plan B is to claim the system they told everyone to use didn’t work and the president needs to be selected by Netflix users.
If Democrats really wanted to win some swing states they should have found a way to fix the water in Flint. They might have persuaded Mike Bloomberg instead of buying felons’ votes in Florida to have created the equivalent in new jobs in Ohio. Dems never talked to the voters they needed the most. In fact, quite the opposite. They stomped their feet and held their breath in a four year tantrum and called them racists and haters when unmasked Midwesterners never got appropriately offended by Trump. These people worked hard for what they have only to hear that dismissed as privilege. Dems attack people as much for who they are as what they believe and still expect a vote for Biden. The NYT calls them “the worst of us.” Call them the missing whites on election day.
Democrats also believe their own self-illusion. Instead of understanding social media as a winnowed, mob-enforced minority of confirmational people, Dem strategists believe it all makes a difference. They came to think listening to podcasts, wearing cute #Resistance gear, retweeting and liking, holding Pink Hat marches and flash mobs, making $25 donations to GoFundMes, signing online petitions before going on Etsy to buy snarky t-shirts about vaginas, forwarding propaganda videos from the Lincoln Project, all while talking about NPR in line at Trader Joe’s, matter. All the devices don’t add up to a single vote. It isn’t a barometer, it’s a mirror.
Voting Dem may just be too much of an ask for thinking people. Review the near-endless emotional hemophilia, hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance, and fake news kudzu a Dem voter is asked to ignore. For example, a Trump rally, or a wedding, is a deadly super-spreader event but a BLM rally is not. Schools and businesses are open or closed at the discretion of governors and mayors but Trump is to blame. Demonstrations which devolve into riots are acceptable but a couple of rednecks open carrying at a statehouse is a precursor to civil war. BLM when the killer is a cop, a lot less so when the killer is a black gang member. The new Supreme Court will limit our rights, except if they extend our 2A rights and then more rights are bad. Kids in cages means Nazism but Biden bringing back the Obama national security advisors who created millions of refugees flowing out of Syria and Libya is no matter. Choosing a Supreme “too close” to an election is the end of democracy but Dems promising revenge by adding states, deep-sixing the Electoral College, and packing the court to jam through their own one party eternal majority is not. A Muslim woman in Congress is revered for her adherence to sexist Islamic doctrine but a Catholic woman who honors her spouse is Handmaid’s Tale in Biblical proportions. #BelieveWomen applies to accusers of Republicans but not Democrats. We must have more women in government, except if they’re Republicans. Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, claims he will block any FDA-approved COVID vaccine from his state until his own scientists check it out, fearing a dangerous chemical will be released so that Trump can win the election. We must reawaken our democracy but if you vote for a third party you are working for Putin.
More?
When the stock market was soaring it didn’t matter because most people did not own stock yet when it fell during COVID it was the end of the economy but when it recovered it no longer mattered. None of the desperate warnings of war — Iran, China, North Korea, Venezuela, civil war in America — came to be. No one did anything bad after the embassy moved to Jerusalem or the Iranian agreement ended. All the things which were to disappear — the ACA, Roe, LGBT rights, same sex marriage — did not. Martial law was not declared, though the MSM signaled numerous times they would be OK with a military coup to depose Trump. Puerto Rico did not descend into genocide. Trump did not launch nuclear weapons in a fit of psychosis. The Democrats over and over made insta-heroes of miserable people who then had to be disowned like Michael Avenatti, Michael Cohen, Robert Mueller, James Comey, and every former general who was going to flip and tell all but didn’t. I honestly have no idea anymore if Dr. Fauci is seen as a good guy or a bad guy by Dems. The Democratic party claimed insubordination by government officials is to be honored if it is called #Resistance. We needed to see Trump’s taxes bad enough that it was OK someone stole them and even then the NYT won’t let anyone see the actual documents. Pee tape anyone? And in the final months before the election, the principle Democratic strategy is to claim if Trump wins it was all unfair. Update: the Reichstag is still standing.
How can a thinking person look at all that and conclude “these are the people I want running the country.”
Too many readers will see this article as pro-Trump. Where does it praise Trump? And that’s the last point here. Democrats and the MSM (let’s call it MSDNC) have divorced themselves from earth gravity. The rules of their home planet are any criticism of the party means you love Trump, are a hater, racist, Nazi, Russian or a bot. Inquiry is not allowed, so you must accept the Dossier, Russiagate, Ukraine, whatever crazy story is “reported” by “sources” and vote Biden or else.
Maybe if a little introspection had been allowed amid demands for conformity of thought the Democrat party would not be imploring voters to believe the end justifies the means. Maybe they would not have cried wolf again and again until only the true crazies are still listening. Maybe they would have foregone the public humiliation of the Mueller report and the failed impeachment. Maybe they’d be running a candidate that represented, well, something to vote for. Maybe they would not be so worried their voters will stay home on November 3.
If Trump wins again, it will be safe to say Dems lost this election in 2016 when they failed to see the change the nation wanted, pushed Bernie aside, and demanded we coronate Hillary. That gave Trump his first term. But rather than learn anything in the cold morning and seek redemption, the Dems basically did the same thing in 2020, albeit with the more likeable Joe Biden. But Biden carries most of the same old school baggage, inherits the same wounds of the Obama years, and has that lasting taint of corruption after 47 years in government.
Yes, Joe’ll win the popular vote, the Electoral College are racist cheaters, Mrs. Jones’ ballot was lost in Raleigh, PutinPutinPutin, all a rich gumbo but whenever the end of the day comes, Trump will likely have his second term. More because the Democrats lost than because he won.
Spain Rejects Extradition of Orlando Figuera’s Murderer – Black Chavista Burned Alive in 2017
Enzo Franchini Oliveros inside the red circle. File photo.
Orinoco Tribune | October 2, 2020
A Spanish Justice on Wednesday rejected the extradition of the Venezuelan Enzo Franchini Oliveros, who is requested in Venezuela for his participation, during the 2017 guarimbas, in the criminal action, where a group of people stabbed and burned alive 22-year-old Orlando Figuera, under the accusation of “being Chavista.”
The ruling issued by the Spanish National Court revokes the sentence adopted in June that ordered the extradition of Franchini on whom audiovisual evidence weighs that points at him as the material author of this action that resulted in the death of Figuera as a consequence of a cardiopulmonary arrest due to the collapse that registered his body after being stabbed six times and suffering for several days second and third degree burns in 54% of his body.
According to the EFE news agency, this judicial overturn, promoted by three magistrates, arises under the argument of understanding “the rational fear” of the accused, who alleged that in Venezuela his “fundamental rights” could be affected.
Contrary to this assertion, in the same ruling the rapporteur judges acknowledge that “the seriousness of the crime that motivates the extradition request (a hate crime) is undoubtedly considered,” while accepting the “lack of political connotations” in the extradition request on the part of the Venezuelan authorities.
They also acknowledge the absence of evidence that indicates a possible political persecution against Franchini by pointing out “the lack of data that allow us to conceive a special significance of the accused as an opposition political leader of the current Venezuelan government.”
Prior to this ruling, the first section of the Criminal Court of the National High Court agreed to extradite Franchini considering that all the requirements were met and after ruling out a motive of political persecution by not “glimpsing any element”, it stressed the importance of guaranteeing the application of justice against Franchini given “the connotation of the crime.”
Battlefield Social Media: The West’s Growing Censorship
By Ulson Gunnar – New Eastern Outlook – 08.10.2020
Censorship in the West flourishes as tech giants turn social media back into traditional programmed media.
The United States, United Kingdom and the European Union are fond of passing judgement on nations around the globe regarding “free speech.”
While it is increasingly clear to a growing number of people that this “concern” is disingenuous and aimed at merely defending agitators funded and directed by Western special interests in these targeted nations, the West still likes to fashion itself as a sort of champion of free speech.
Yet back home the Internet has been taken over by social media and tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Their platforms clearly serve as online public squares where everything is discussed and even election campaigns play out. Yet these companies have, over the years, begun to eliminate voices of dissent against a notion known as “consensus.”
If you are speaking out against “consensus” you are in real danger of disappearing from these platforms. Some of these platforms, like Google-owned YouTube, serve as the livelihood to people who have for years built up their audiences, produced hundreds of videos and when their accounts are deleted for speaking out against the “consensus,” they have their livelihoods destroyed.
In the wake of these incremental “purges” is a chilling effect with content creators self-censoring or even withdrawing entirely from Western social media.
It is the sort of very real censorship the West has crusaded against in fiction around the globe for decades.
Consensus or Else
A more recent example is Google’s decision to ban ad revenue for those going against the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) “consensus.”
CNBC in their story “Google will ban ads from running on stories spreading debunked coronavirus conspiracy theories,” would claim:
Google next month will ban publishers from using its ad platform to show advertisements next to content that promotes conspiracy theories about COVID-19. It will also ban ads that promote those theories. In cases where a particular site publishes a certain threshold of material that violates these policies, it will ban the entire site from using its ad platforms.
Those “conspiracy theories” might include questioning the official death rates of COVID-19. Yet even the British government itself has been recently forced to investigate its statistics regarding death rates, vindicating the very sort of people who would have been either forced into silence or forced to give up ad revenue.
The London Guardian in its article, “Matt Hancock orders urgent review of PHE Covid-19 death figures,” would admit:
The UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, is ordering an urgent review of the daily COVID-19 death statistics produced by Public Health England, after it emerged that they may include recovered former sufferers who could have died of other causes.
False reporting over deaths to hype COVID-19, induce greater public panic and pave the way for billions in government handouts to pharmaceutical giants is at the very core of many of these so-called “conspiracy theories” Google seeks to silence through its campaign of financial coercion.
Imagine if this chilling effect was achieved sooner. Would the British government have even bothered investigating its faulty statistics if there weren’t people suspicious of them?
The chilling effect this has over openly discussing something as serious as COVID-19 considering its socioeconomic impact is truly alarming and much more so because it is happening in the so-called “free world” overseen by its self-appointed arbitrators in the US, UK and EU.
A similar campaign was carried out to purge Google, Twitter and Facebook of anyone allegedly connected with “Russia” who also so happened to be anti-war and anti-NATO for waging those wars.
Entire lists are compiled by Western government-funded organizations which are then submitted to these tech giants for purging. The Western media writes accompanying articles announcing, justifying and spinning the purges… but also sending a warning to those left about what is and isn’t going to be tolerated on these platforms.
Social Media Transforming Back into Programmed Media
Content creators are faced with two decisions; to either self-censor themselves to protect their work, their audiences and their livelihood, or to accept the possibility they will eventually be “purged” (censored) and need to rebuild their audiences from scratch on platforms with far fewer potential readers, viewers and patrons.
Social media, of course, is no longer social media in this sort of environment, but more akin to the sort of programmed media giant Western special interests built their power on over the course of the 20th and early 21st century.
Private Public Squares?
Of course the defense is that Google, Facebook and Twitter are “private companies”and can do as they please with their platforms. In reality, these companies work in tandem with Western governments whether it is fomenting political destabilization abroad or creating “concensus” at home.
The notion that censorship is “OK” because the US, UK and EU governments launder it through private companies ignores the close relationship these companies have with the government and how their platforms have been transformed into de facto public squares and critical channels of public communication and participation.
The West’s growing overt censorship leaves it with a choice; to either accept that it is in reality as guilty of censorship and manipulating the public as it has claimed its opponents are, or continue pretending it isn’t but at the continued cost of its legitimacy upon the global stage.
There is a very good reason the West is in decline around the globe and why its attempts to leverage notions like “human rights” and “free speech” against nations like China or Russia are increasingly impotent. That reason can be found, at least in part, among the growing number of purge lists, censorship campaigns and calls for “consensus” across Western social media.
Finally, the increasingly overt nature of censorship and controlled narratives promoted by tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter should have them facing restrictions and bans around the globe. Why should any nation host a “public square” where discourse is entirely controlled by interests oceans away? Why shouldn’t a local alternative be created instead where the revenue is kept locally and if narratives are to be controlled, controlled in a way that best suits people locally?
It is ironic that, China for example, is condemned for not allowing Google, Facebook and Twitter to operate freely within their information space because it is a violation of “free speech,” even as Google, Facebook and Twitter cudgel free speech on their own respective platforms.
How much longer will the world tolerate these double standards? How long until individuals, organizations and even entire nations begin creating alternatives to Google, Facebook and Twitter to at the very least balance out the lopsided power and influence they have collectively accrued and abused?
New ‘Licence to Kill’ bill shows UK is happy to let its spies break the law – while lecturing other countries how to behave
By Tom Fowdy | RT | October 6, 2020
A bill giving Britain’s security services the green light to break the law is passing through parliament. It’s another abuse of government power that a compliant media is unwilling to question.
The British Parliament is in the process of pushing through a new law, with the consent of the Labour Party leadership. Perfectly normal, right? Except that this legislation has quite huge implications.
Titled the ‘Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill,’ its purpose is to “authorise conduct by officials and agents of the security and intelligence services, law enforcement, and certain other public authorities, which would otherwise constitute criminality.”
That’s right, the security services of the United Kingdom are being given the green light to break the law, reducing the power of oversight and accountability behind what are already highly secret activities.
The mainstream media are not drawing serious attention to it, nor are they giving the bill any scrutiny. Although Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party agreed to pass the bill, he faced a rebellion from a cohort of 19 MPs, including former leader Jeremy Corbyn, who voted against it, arguing it is an abuse of government power and inherently dangerous.
MP for Coventry South Zarah Sultana stated: “I can’t support legislation that could give undercover state agents the licence to murder, torture and commit sexual violence.”
The bill marks the second time the Conservative government has sought to exonerate abuse of power from authorities with Labour’s support, with a bill legalising UK war crimes also passing through the House of Commons.
Once again, the United Kingdom believes that it is a law unto itself, which is hardly surprising coming from a government that believes Britannia still rules the waves. On one hand, it preaches the virtues of a democratic and open society, pointing fingers at countries implementing basic national security provisions and preaching ‘the rule of law,’ such as when addressing the situation in Hong Kong. But at the same time, it advocates a subtle mindset that its own actions in any capacity, even when much more questionable, are simply untouchable.
The latest act of parliament is simply the legal consolidation of a long established mentality that means the security establishment cannot truly be held to account, and it is best the public do not know about its activities.
Even before this new legislation, Britain’s intelligence services have long exempted themselves from meaningful scrutiny of their actions. The Five Eyes“PRISM” program, shared with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, is designed to counteract local privacy laws and legal constraints on government power by simply coordinating espionage activities and sharing the information.
Although defenders of this bill and the programme say it constitutes a common good – in terms of counter-terrorism, for example – they cannot say with absolute certainty that there will be no abuses of power, or more ‘political’ activities taking place.
The same people are equally likely to say that the ‘national security’ and ‘intelligence’ activities of countries such as China are always malign, oppressive and out of control, but is that the case at home too?
One of the most defining sagas of our time which suggests such is the fate of Julian Assange. Currently facing hearings over his extradition to America, his ‘crime’ is having revealed information about the activities of the US and Five Eyes intelligence around the world.
If he were Chinese or Russian, he would be heralded as a hero and glorified as a martyr. But for challenging the Western security establishment and their crimes, he’s merely considered a criminal and the Western media at large make a point of ignoring it, just as they do with this new bill authorizing criminal activity by the British security establishment.
In essence, the virtues of Western democracy do not appear to extend to challenging and scrutinizing covert, secret activities. Where is the transparency for MI5 and MI6? There is none.
And most unfortunate of all is the Labour Party leadership’s willingness to kowtow to this agenda. Under Sir Keir Starmer, the party is moving back towards the political centre and is eager to completely disregard the anti-establishment, anti-war and anti-imperialist policies of Jeremy Corbyn.
In a manner very similar to Tony Blair, he is reintegrating the party back into the core of the Western security establishment and supporting the government’s positions on these matters. This has caused many within the party to lambast the leadership as a ‘controlled opposition’ – one similar to the Democrats in the United States, which does not oppose the government’s foreign policy or national security agenda whatsoever. Such bipartisanship ultimately serves to protect the agenda of the ‘deep state,’ as it is sometimes described, from any serious public scrutiny, buffered by mainstream media complicity.
In this case, Britannia is a law unto itself. The government is securing the absolute power and untouchability of the security services beyond the rule of law, and bar a few Labour MPs and followers on social media, there is not a whimper about it.
For a country that prides itself on such deep moral and political superiority over others, it is simply not open to serious discussion, spotlighting or scrutiny of its activities in a way its values endeavour to profess. One rule for me, another for thee.
Tom Fowdy is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.
As our (un)civil war escalates towards the real thing, America is in throes of unrest unlike any in its history
By Michael Rectenwald | RT | October 5, 2020
Nearly two thirds of Americans believe the US is on course for civil war. One third now support political violence. The first Civil War’s death toll won’t be beaten, but the second’s nation-destroying potential will be unequalled.
The American left and right no longer inhabit a common moral universe. In fact, that imagined universe does not exist. The old, cherished political notions no longer apply, if they ever did. Not only are the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ complete misnomers under the current configuration, but the players are not as they seem, or as they are made out to seem.
First, Trump is hardly the stereotypical right-wing despot that the ‘resistance’ makes him out to be, his rough demeanor and coarse rhetoric notwithstanding. At the same time, the Democrats are hardly the vaunted champions of the ‘working class’ as imagined under the old dispensation. Instead, the resistance to Trump is actually led by an entrenched political establishment, although their supporters apparently remain unimpressed by this minor detail.
Take a look at this ironic and unlikely political alignment. It should go a long way toward understanding the perturbations throwing the nation into convulsions. The resistance includes the Democratic Party machine, the loyal Democratic Party voters, the ‘never-Trumpers’ among the Republican establishment, the permanent bureaucracy or ‘deep state’, the riotous Antifa and Black Lives Matter foot soldiers, and, but for a few isolated and dwindling islands, the entirety of the mainstream media. Given its uncontested hegemony, this establishment-backed resistance inhabits a parallel universe of its own making and projects a fabricated simulacrum as reality.
The resistance establishment controls the official narrative, which includes a few prominent elements: the tropes that Trump is an inveterate liar, a huckster profiting from his incumbency, and a criminal who is committing unspeakable (and undiscoverable) crimes against the nation and humanity at large. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the Speaker of the House, went so far as to call Trump, the sitting president, an “enemy of the state.” This establishment resistance routinely declares Trump a dictator. It now asserts as an incontrovertible article of faith that he will refuse to vacate the White House should he lose the upcoming election.
The death of civility
Despite its own chicanery and possible criminality, the resistance establishment is so sure that its success is guaranteed that Hillary Clinton boldly urged Joe Biden not to concede the election under any circumstances. Rumors have even been floated that a contingent of military generals are prepared to remove Trump from the presidential domicile, if or when it comes to that. And now, since Trump contracted the coronavirus, Democratic Party leaders, a frothing media, and ardent party supporters have been unable to contain their glee at the prospect of his early demise.
As an indication that ‘civility’ is a thing of the past, one may point to the recent spate of tweets by Trump haters openly wishing for his death by Covid. Such posts became so prevalent and glaring that Twitter was forced to introduce a new policy declaring that any tweets wishing for the death of a politician would be removed. Conspicuously missing was any mention of even temporarily banning tweeters who infringe the policy. Such banning is routine for pro-Trump posters – and for far lesser infractions – if they are not contrived by the tech giant in the first place.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters are routinely caricatured as a reactionary and irredeemably racist band of blind loyalists, including a significant contingent of white supremacists willing and already engaging in acts of racist violence. Even as Antifa and Black Lives Matter rampage and riot, leaving rubble in their wake, rightwing extremists, we are told, are the greatest domestic threat to national tranquility.
A very American coup?
At the same time, Trump Republicans and their few allies in an otherwise overwhelmingly Democrat-favored corporate media point to a growing body of evidence that a coup has been ongoing since before Trump assumed power. The director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, recently alleged in a letter published by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), just hours before the first (and perhaps last) presidential debate, that Hillary Clinton orchestrated “a campaign plan to stir up a scandal” – by linking Trump to Russia in 2016. The letter also claims that then-President Barack Obama knew about her intent and role in the contrived affair and did nothing to prevent his former secretary of state from ordering up the concoction.
While the resistance hurls an endless series of increasingly outrageous accusations and epithets at Trump, pro-Trump forces in the state nevertheless continue to pile up dirt on the Democrats and their assets in the permanent bureaucracy. For example, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigations into the ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation of the Trump team’s supposed collusion with Russia has revealed evidence that a Russian asset, suspected by the CIA of being a spy, was the underlying source for the “dirty dossier” that prompted the FBI investigation. The committee has pointed to evidence that former FBI Director James Comey knew the dossier was unsubstantiated garbage peddled by a gutter-sniping mercenary hack when he or his staff members submitted FISA applications.
Added to this, the Department of Justice has since reported that more than two dozen phones belonging to members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team were “accidentally” wiped clean of data before the Justice Department’s inspector general could comb them for records.
Ironically, the Senate Judiciary Committee has also asserted that the son of former VP and current presidential candidate Joe Biden, namely Hunter Biden, actually engaged in a kind of ‘Russian collusion’ – when he received a whopping 3.5 million dollars from Elena Baturina, the wife of the corrupt former mayor of Moscow. Hunter Biden then allegedly funneled a part of these funds into human trafficking and prostitution rings. This alleged swindle, gained on the basis of his father’s influence peddling, would be added to the vast sums reportedly collected from corrupt oligarchs in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere.
All of these claims are either scoffed at and deemed conspiracies prima facie, or simply memory-holed by a complicit press. Nothing, it appears, will ever come of any of them.
Meanwhile, the vastly outflanked pro-Trump camp maintains that the attempted coup extends to the upcoming presidential election. Fears are escalating that the Democratic Party’s election machinery has already been set in motion, harvesting fraudulent or otherwise invalid mail-in ballots in favor of Biden. These deep misgivings are compounded by early reports of dumped and discarded ballots for Trump.
Anarchy in the USA
Among the ground forces in both camps, some informed and some merely inflamed by baseless rhetoric, hostility has reached fever pitch. According to Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service, 83 percent of Americans believe that behavior once considered unacceptable is now deemed acceptable in the political sphere. Apparently, this behavior includes violence and threats of violence. Other studies found that 61 percent Americans polled believe the country is headed inexorably towards civil war. Other reports indicate that a nearly equal number of Democrats and Republicans (33 percent and 34 percent, respectively) believe that violence will be justified if their side loses the impending presidential election, up from just eight percent on both sides who believed that three years ago.
The ‘left’ justifies its campaign of violence given the supposedly disproportionate unjustified police violence against blacks. The ‘right’ justifies its pondered response as necessary self-defense and defense of the nation after months of almost unhampered rampages.
Surging gun sales across the country suggest that many Americans fear continued and increasing conflict. First-time gun and ammunition purchases have reached an all-time high. One might reasonably suppose that potential counter measures from pro-Trump ground forces are being seriously contemplated. The prospect of a protracted election controversy has both camps suggesting that they’re booted up and ready for action. Any state response to such action, on the other hand, remains unclear. Who, after all, will have the authority to direct state police forces if Democrats and their supporters claim that Trump’s ‘occupation’ of the White House is illegitimate?
Pro-Trump pundits warn that the violence coming from ‘leftists’ since May has only been a warm-up act for November 3 and beyond. There are so many related and somewhat disparate theories being floated that one’s head is left spinning. But suffice to say, anyone the least bit cognizant of the state of affairs is bracing for a massive confrontation.
‘Things fall apart’
The current and looming strife is demoralizing in the extreme, especially given the utterly incommensurable accounts held by the opposing sides. It is especially alarming to me, living as I do in urban Pennsylvania – a ‘swing state’ with the potential to be a center of a disputed election result that looks to tip over into open mortal combat. I plan on voting in the early morning, then driving immediately to another, probably uncontested, state.
The alarming state of affairs has led me to revisit a harrowing poem by William Butler Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’. The first stanza captures the temper and pitch of the moment so well that I quote in its entirety:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
I met my first grandchild for the first time the other day. And I wept with trepidation for his future.
Michael Rectenwald is an author of ten books, including the most recent, Beyond Woke. He was Professor of Liberal Arts at NYU from 2008 through 2019. Follow him on Twitter @TheAntiPCProf
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Elite Western universities are a corrupt, parasitic empire
Instead of high-quality education, these institutions are fostering a global neo-feudal system reminiscent of the British Raj
By Dr. Mathew Maavak | RT | May 30, 2025
In a move that has ignited a global uproar, US President Donald Trump banned international students from Harvard University, citing “national security” and ideological infiltration. The decision, which has been widely condemned by academics and foreign governments alike, apparently threatens to undermine America’s “intellectual leadership and soft power.” At stake is not just Harvard’s global appeal, but the very premise of open academic exchange that has long defined elite higher education in the US.
But exactly how ‘open’ is Harvard’s admissions process? Every year, highly qualified students – many with top-tier SAT or GMAT test scores – are rejected, often with little explanation. Critics argue that behind the prestigious Ivy League brand lies an opaque system shaped by legacy preferences, DEI imperatives, geopolitical interests, and outright bribes. George Soros, for instance, once pledged $1 billion to open up elite university admissions to drones who would read from his Open Society script.
China’s swift condemnation of Trump’s policy added a layer of geopolitical irony to the debate. Why would Beijing feign concern for “America’s international standing” amid a bitter trade war? The international standing of US universities has long been tarnished by a woke psychosis which spread like cancer to all branches of the government.
So, what was behind China’s latest gripe? ... continue
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