The Zionist Destruction of American Higher Education
By Ron Unz • Unz Review • March 31, 2025
We may be witnessing the ongoing destruction of one of the greatest pillars of postwar American global influence and hegemony.
Late last week an astonishing event occurred in American society, and video clips of that incident quickly went viral across the Internet.
A 30-year-old Tufts doctoral student and Fulbright Scholar from Turkey was walking across her Boston-area neighborhood on the way to a holiday dinner at a friend’s house when she was suddenly seized and abducted in the early evening by six masked federal agents of the Department of Homeland Security. The terrified young woman was handcuffed and taken to a waiting car, secretly detained for the next 24 hours without access to friends, family, or lawyers, then shipped off to a holding cell in Louisiana and scheduled for immediate deportation, although a federal judge has now temporarily stayed the proceedings.
Just one of the Tweets showing a short clip of that incident has been viewed more than 4.5 million times, with a much longer YouTube video accumulating another couple of hundred thousand views.
That very disturbing scene seemed like something out of a Hollywood film chronicling the actions of a dystopian American police state, and that initial impression was only solidified once media reports explained why Rumeysa Ozturk was snatched off the streets of her home town. Her only reported transgression had been her co-authorship of an op-ed piece in the Tufts student newspaper a year earlier sharply criticizing Israel and its ongoing attacks on the civilian population of Gaza.
Apparently, one of the many powerful pro-Israel censorship organizations funded by Zionist billionaires became outraged over her sentiments and decided to make a public example of her, so its minions in the subservient Trump Administration immediately ordered her arrest.
CBS News covered a local protest demonstration demanding the young woman’s release, and quoted the remarks of one of the participants:
“The university campus should absolutely be a place for the free and open exchange of ideas and the fact that someone can just be disappeared into the abyss for voicing an idea is absolutely horrifying,” said rally attendee Sam Wachman.
Now supposed that such a scene—for such a reason—had taken place on the streets of Russia, China, Iran, or any other country viewed with great disfavor by our government. Surely that incident would have quickly become the centerpiece of a massive global propaganda offensive aimed at blackening the reputation of the regime responsible. Audiences worldwide would have been forcefully told that the arrest demonstrated the terrible dangers of living in a society lacking the freedoms guaranteed by our own Constitution and our Bill of Rights. I don’t recall seeing any recent propaganda campaigns along these lines, so that suggests that such incidents are extremely rare in those countries.
But unfortunately that is hardly the case in today’s America. A day or two before that Tufts graduate student was snatched off the streets of her city, a 21-year-old Columbia University junior went into hiding to avoid a similar fate after federal agents raided her campus dorm to arrest her. As the Times reported, high school valedictorian Yunseo Chung had moved to the U.S. with her family from South Korea when she was 7, but her permanent residency was suddenly revoked for her public criticism of Israeli policy. She was ordered immediately deported back to a country that she barely even remembered.
This followed the storm of controversy unleashed earlier this month by the very high profile arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate student heavily involved in last year’s campus protests against the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Seized in an early morning raid on his campus student housing, which he shared with his wife, an American citizen eight months pregnant, he was taken off to detention, first in New Jersey and then transferred to a holding cell in Louisiana, once again with no initial access to his family, friends, or lawyers.
As a Green Card holder—a permanent legal resident of the U.S.—he was considered fully entitled to all the normal rights and privileges of an American citizen, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that his Green Card would be canceled and he would be deported based upon an obscure legal doctrine never previously employed for that purpose, eliciting a strong legal challenge in federal court. Moreover, his transfer from a New Jersey jurisdiction to a different one in the Deep South also seemed to violate normal legal procedures.
A week after that arrest, Ranjani Srinivasan, another Columbia doctoral candidate from India on a Fulbright Scholarship, hurriedly packed her bags and fled the country to Canada when she narrowly missed being arrested by federal authorities who raided her student housing. As the New York Times reported:
“The atmosphere seemed so volatile and dangerous,” Ms. Srinivasan, 37, said on Friday in an interview with The New York Times, her first public remarks since leaving. “So I just made a quick decision.”
A day earlier Rubio explained that he had already authorized the arrest and immediate deportation of more than 300 students around the country for their criticism of Israel, so these particular cases obviously represented merely the tip of a very large iceberg.
In past decades, the academic leadership of a top Ivy League school such as Columbia might have stoutly defended the students in its community. But any such resistance was broken when the Trump Administration suddenly pulled $400 million in annual funding. The demands included full cooperation with the arrest of any students critical of Israeli policies, the creation of a new internal security force to suppress any anti-Israel campus protests, and “receivership” for the university’s prestigious Middle Eastern Studies Program, presumably resulting in firm Zionist control.
Acting President Katrina Armstrong bowed to those demands, sacrificing the academic freedom of her faculty members and the personal freedom of her students. But faced with such enormous conflicting pressures, she then resigned on Friday evening, some seven months after her predecessor had resigned for roughly similar reasons.
That same day newspapers also reported that the top leadership of Harvard University’s equally prestigious Middle Eastern Studies Center had been dismissed, probably ensuring that after more than seventy years this independent academic organization would henceforth become firmly pro-Israel in its orientation. Last year, after Harvard’s previous president had strongly defended academic freedom before a hostile Congressional committee, she was quickly forced to resign.
As I casually examined the home page of the New York Times website on Saturday, I noticed five different articles reporting these striking blows to intellectual freedom at a number of our top American universities, and it’s quite possible that I may have missed one or two others.
- Columbia President Is Replaced as Trump Threatens University’s Funding
- Leaders of Harvard’s Middle Eastern Studies Center Will Leave
- University of Minnesota Student Detained by Immigration Agents
- Targeting of Tufts Student for Deportation Stuns Friends and Teachers
- How Colleges Are Cracking Down on Students Now
For the last several generations, America’s elite academic institutions have been among the most prestigious in the world, drawing top students from across the globe and constituting a central pillar of our country’s soft power. Until last year, no previous case came to mind of an Ivy League president having been abruptly removed for political reasons. But over the last twelve months, four or five different Ivy League presidents have suffered that fate.
Similarly, I had never heard of any previous cases of peaceful college students being arrested by teams of masked federal officers, either seized from their dorm rooms in sudden raids or snatched off the streets of their local city.
Consider an ironic historical comparison. During the early 1950s the Rosenbergs were convicted and executed for their involvement in a Soviet spy-ring that gave our nuclear weapons secrets to Stalin. But as far as I know their arrest was handled in a very subdued fashion, with merely a couple of FBI agents quietly taking them into federal custody despite the capital charges that they faced. So apparently public criticism of Israel is today regarded as a far more serious and dangerous offense than nuclear espionage had been at the absolute height of the Cold War.
Indeed, the closest historical example that comes to mind were the notorious Palmer Raids of late 1919 and early 1920, which led to the deportation of several hundred immigrants. But these round-ups occurred in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution and waves of terrorist bombing attacks across many American cities, with Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer narrowly surviving two separate assassination attempts, including a bombing that destroyed his own Washington, DC home. Meanwhile, most of the immigrants arrested and deported were relatively recent arrivals, generally anarchist or Bolshevik radicals who had declared their intent to overthrow the American government.
Perhaps there have been previous examples of college students arrested merely for writing campus newspaper op-eds advocating peaceful and perfectly legal positions. But I don’t recall reading of any such egregious cases in my introductory history textbooks so I tend to doubt it.
One rather strange aspect of the current situation is that no students seem to have been arrested for voicing public criticism of the American government or even President Donald Trump. Only criticism of the Jewish State of Israel or Jews themselves seems to provoke such severe legal repression. This brings to mind a very shrewd observation, widely misattributed to Voltaire:
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
Since World War II elite American universities have tended to attract the best and the brightest young men and women from around the world, thereby shaping the minds of so many future global leaders. So I suspect that these shocking news stories of harsh ideological crackdowns on academic freedom and sudden dramatic arrests by masked federal agents are already reverberating around the world, severely damaging one of the few remaining pillars of American geopolitical dominance.
Perhaps only small numbers of ordinary Americans have been following the sudden, desperate plight of these top students from Turkey, South Korea, or India, but I think that a very large fraction of the educated elites of those important American allies are fully aware of what has transpired, and they are utterly horrified.
Under the control of its pro-Israel masters, the leading figures of the Trump Administration seem determined to severely wound or actually destroy the foremost institutions of our globally-dominant system of higher education.
Indeed, even before the latest round of these striking incidents, the eminent political scientist John Mearsheimer had declared that the Israel Lobby posed the greatest threat to American freedom of speech, with his views strongly seconded by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University and also former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi:
Although I was deeply shocked by these harsh Trump Administration attacks against freedom of speech and academic freedom, perhaps I should not have been. In many respects, they merely extended what had already occurred last year under his equally pro-Israel Democratic predecessor President Joseph Biden, as I had covered at the time in numerous articles.
For example, almost eleven months ago in early May 2024 I discussed the ongoing waves of university protests and the reasons behind their appearance, as well as the unprecedented crackdowns used to suppress them, a reaction so totally different than what had occurred regarding any previous campus political activism. Given the very harsh legal sanctions now imposed upon many of the participants, I think it’s worth revisiting that history at length:
From the years of my childhood I’d always been aware that political activism and protests were a regular feature of college life, with the 1960s movement against our Vietnam War representing one of its peaks, an effort widely lauded in our later textbooks and media accounts for its heroic idealism. During the 1980s I remember seeing a long line of crudely constructed shanties protesting South African Apartheid that spent weeks occupying the edges of the Harvard Yard or perhaps it was the Stanford Quad, and I think around the same time other shanties and protesters at UCLA maintained a long vigil in support of the Jewish Refuseniks of the USSR. Political protests seemed as much a normal part of college years as final exams and had largely replaced the hazing rituals and wild pranks of traditional fraternities, which were increasingly vilified as politically incorrect by hostile social censors among the students and faculty.
Over the last decade or so, the Black Lives Matter movement raised such nationwide protests by college students to new heights, both on and off campus, often involving large marches, sit-ins, or vandalism, and this may have been propelled by the increasing influence of smartphones and social media. Meanwhile, the mainstream media regularly praised and promoted this “racial justice movement,” which reached its sharp peak following the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. That incident triggered a massive wave of generally youthful political protests, riots, and looting that engulfed some 200 cities across America, the worst urban unrest since the late 1960s. But unlike that earlier era, most of our establishment media and political class fiercely denounced any suggestions that the police be deployed to quell the violence. Indeed, in many or most cases local law enforcement stood down and did nothing, even as some of their political masters loudly raised the outcry “Defund the Police!”
During those years many universities became heavily caught up in such controversies. Yale renamed its Calhoun residential college in early 2017 and the list of name changes due to the 2020 George Floyd protests is so long that it has its own Wikipedia page, a list that included some of our most storied military bases such as Ft. Bragg and Ft. Hood. Verbal or even physical attacks against the symbols and statues of America’s most famous presidents and national heroes became quite common and were often favorably reported in the media, with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Christopher Columbus all being vilified and denounced, sometimes with elite endorsement. A lead opinion piece in the New York Times called for the Jefferson Memorial to be replaced with a towering statue of a black woman while one of the regular Times columnists repeatedly demanded that all monuments honoring George Washington should suffer a similar fate. Many observers argued that America almost seemed to be undergoing its own version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution amid widespread claims that much of our entire historical past was irretrievably tainted and therefore had to be expunged from the public square.
Most of these political protests, especially those on college campuses, were widely hailed by those holding the media megaphones as signifying one of the greatest virtues of American democracy. The many elite defenders of such social and cultural upheavals argued that these events demonstrated the great strength of our society, which freely allowed the fiercest public attacks against our most sacred national icons and heroes. Americans accepted the sort of searing self-criticism that would surely be permitted almost nowhere else in the world.
That long history of permitting or even glorifying public protests against perceived injustices had naturally been absorbed and taken to heart by the young college students who began their classes in September 2023. Then within weeks, a remarkably daring surprise raid by the Hamas militants of long-besieged Gaza caught the Israelis napping and surmounted the high-tech defenses that had cost perhaps a half-billion dollars to construct. Many hundreds of Israeli soldiers and security officers were killed along with similar numbers of civilians, with most of the latter probably dying from the friendly-fire of Israel’s own panic-stricken and trigger-happy military units. Some 240 Israeli soldiers and civilians were captured and taken back to Gaza as prisoners, with Hamas hoping to exchange them for the freedom of the many thousands of Palestinian civilians who had been held for years in Israeli prisons, often under brutal conditions.
As usual, our overwhelmingly pro-Israel mainstream media portrayed the attack in extremely one-sided fashion, devoid of any historical context, a pattern that had been followed for three generations. As a result, Israel received an enormous outpouring of public and elite sympathy as it mobilized for a retaliatory attack against Gaza. Within days, our own Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Israel declaring that he came “as a Jew” and pledging America’s unwavering support in that moment of crisis, sentiments completely echoed by President Joseph Biden and his entire administration. But the Hamas fighters and their Israeli captives were hidden in a network of fortified tunnels and rooting them out might produce heavy casualties, so Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisors decided upon a different strategy.
Instead of attacking Hamas, Netanyahu took advantage of the wave of global sympathy by unleashing an unprecedented military assault against Gaza’s more than two million civilians, apparently intending to kill huge numbers of them and drive the remainder into Egypt’s Sinai desert, allowing Israel to annex their territory and resettle it with Jews. Soon afterward, the Israeli government began distributing assault rifles to the Jewish Settlers of the West Bank, ordering some 24,000 of those automatic weapons for that purpose. Putting such armaments into the hands of religious fanatics would surely lead to local massacres and these might provide an excuse for driving all those millions of Palestinians over the border into Jordan. The ultimate result would be the creation of a racially-pure Greater Israel stretching “From the River to the Sea,” the longstanding dream of the Zionist movement. So if he were successful, Netanyahu’s place in Jewish history might become a glorious one, with his many venal sins and blunders easily overlooked.
As American airlifts supplied an unending flood of the necessary munitions, the Israelis began a massive aerial bombardment campaign against densely-populated Gaza and its helpless residents. Secure in their underground tunnels, relatively few Hamas fighters were killed, but Gaza’s civilians suffered devastating losses, much of it inflicted by two thousand pound bombs, almost never previously deployed against urban targets. Large portions of Gaza were soon transformed into moonscapes, with some 100,000 buildings destroyed, including hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, universities, government offices, bakeries, and all the other infrastructure necessary for maintaining civilian life. After just a few weeks, the Financial Times reported that the destruction inflicted upon much of Gaza was already worse than had been suffered by German cities after years of Allied bombing attacks during World War II.
Although Netanyahu was strictly secular, he played to his religious base by publicly declaring the Palestinians to be the tribe of Amalek, whom the Hebrew God had commanded be exterminated down to the last newborn baby. Many other top Israeli leaders voiced very similar genocidal sentiments, and some of the more zealously religious Israeli soldiers and commanders probably took those statements quite literally.
This gigantic bloodlust was further inflamed as the Israeli government and its supportive propagandists began promoting outrageous Hamas atrocity-hoaxes such as beheaded or roasted Israeli babies, sexual mutilations, and gang-rapes. The notoriously pro-Israel global media credulously reported these stories, using them to deflect attention from the enormous ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians. To ensure that the coverage remained one-sided, the Israelis targeted independent journalists in Gaza for death, killing some 140 of them over the last few months, a figure as large as the combined total in all the world’s other wars over the last several years.
With Israel’s leaders publicly declaring their genocidal plans for their Palestinian enemies and Israeli troops committing the greatest televised massacre of helpless civilians in the history of the world, international organizations gradually came under strong pressure to involve themselves in the ongoing conflict. In late December, South Africa filed a 91-page legal brief with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing genocide. Within a few weeks the ICJ jurists issued a series of near-unanimous rulings supporting those charges and declaring that the Gazans were at serious risk of suffering a potential genocide at Israel’s hands, with Israel’s own appointed judge, a former Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, concurring in most of those verdicts.
But instead of backing off, Netanyahu’s government merely redoubled its attacks against Gaza, tightening the blockade of food shipments by banning the UN organization responsible for distributing them. The Israelis apparently believed that the combination of starvation, bombs, and missiles would be the most effective means of killing or driving out all the Palestinians.
In past decades, these horrifying events might have gone relatively unnoticed, with the overwhelmingly pro-Israel gatekeepers of our mainstream media ensuring that little if any of this distressing information reached the eyes or ears of ordinary Americans. But technological developments had changed this media landscape since video clips on relatively uncensored social platforms such as TikTok and Elon Musk’s Twitter now easily circumvented that blockade. Despite their decades of suffering and oppression, Gaza’s Palestinians were a fully modern people, well-equipped with smartphones, and the scenes they filmed were shared worldwide, quickly attracting huge audiences among the younger Americans who relied upon social media as their primary source of news.
For generations, college students had been heavily indoctrinated with the horrors of the Holocaust, endlessly told that they must never remain silent while helpless men, women, and children were brutally attacked and slaughtered. The images they now saw of devastated cities and dead or dying children seemed exactly like something out of the movies, but they were instead happening in real-time in the physical world.
A couple of years earlier, the Trump and the Biden Administrations had both jointly proclaimed that the Chinese government was guilty of “genocide” against its Uighur minority despite lack of any evidence that significant numbers of Uighurs had been harmed let alone killed. So by that standard, the total destruction of Gaza and the massive slaughter or deliberate starvation of millions of its people obviously constituted an enormous “genocide,” and within weeks student activists all across college campuses had taken up that cry and begun organizing public protests against the horrendous massacre that Israel was committing.
Three years earlier, a lifelong career criminal named George Floyd had died of a drug overdose while in police custody, and a single, highly-misleading video of his last moments had provoked the greatest wave of American public protests since the late 1960s. So it was hardly surprising that the widespread dissemination of hundreds or thousands of videos showing dead and mutilated Gazan children inspired a powerful protest movement. But this time, instead of being praised for their humanitarian commitment, those students—and the university administrators who allowed their protests—were ferociously attacked and punished as I described at the time:
With graphic images of devastated Gaza neighborhoods and dead Palestinian children so widespread on Twitter and other social media outlets, polls have revealed that a majority of younger Americans now favor Hamas and the Palestinians in their ongoing struggle with Israel. This is a shocking reversal from the views of their parents, which had been shaped by generations of overwhelmingly pro-Israel material across broadcast television, films, and print publications, and such trends are only likely to continue now that Israel is being prosecuted in the International Court of Justice by South Africa and 22 other nations, accused of committing genocide in Gaza.
As a consequence of these strong youthful sentiments, anti-Israel demonstrations have erupted at many of our universities, outraging numerous pro-Israel billionaire donors. Almost immediately, some of the latter launched a harsh retaliatory campaign, with many corporate leaders declaring that they would permanently blacklist from future employment opportunities any college students publicly supporting the Palestinian cause, underscoring these threats with a widespread “doxxing” campaign at Harvard and other elite colleges.
A few weeks ago, our uniformly pro-Israel elected officials entered the fray, calling the presidents of several of our most elite colleges—Harvard, Penn, and MIT—to testify before them regarding alleged “antisemitism” on their campuses. Members of Congress severely brow-beat these officials for permitting anti-Israel activities, even ignorantly and absurdly accusing them of allowing public calls for “Jewish genocide” on their campuses.
The responses of these college leaders emphasized their support for freedom of political speech but were deemed so unsatisfactory by pro-Israel donors and their mainstream media allies that enormous pressure was exerted to remove them. Within days, the Penn president and her supportive Board chairman had been forced to resign, and soon afterward Harvard’s first black president suffered the same fate, as pro-Israel groups released evidence of her widespread academic plagiarism to drive her from office.
I am unaware of any previous case in which the president of an elite American college had been so rapidly removed from office for ideological reasons and two successive examples within just a few weeks seems an absolutely unprecedented development, having enormous implications for academic freedom.
I’d think that most of these students were absolutely stunned at such reactions. For decades, they and their predecessors had freely protested on a wide range of political causes without ever encountering even a sliver of such vicious retaliation, let alone an organized campaign that quickly forced the resignation of two of the Ivy League presidents who had allowed their protests. Some of their student organizations were immediately banned and the future careers of the protesters were harshly threatened, but the horrifying images from Gaza continued to reach their smartphones. As Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL had previously explained in a leaked phone call, “We have a major TikTok problem.”
Indeed, the Israelis continued to generate an avalanche of gripping content for those videos. Mobs of Israeli activists regularly blocked the passage of food-trucks, and within a few weeks, senior UN officials declared that more than a million Gazans were on the verge of a deadly famine. When the desperate, starving Gazans swarmed one of those few food delivery convoys allowed through, the Israeli military shot and killed more than 100 of them in the “Flour Massacre” and this was later repeated. All these horrific scenes of death and deliberate starvation were broadcast worldwide on social media, with some of the worst examples coming from the accounts of gleeful Israeli soldiers, such as their video of the corpse of a Palestinian child being eaten by a starving dog. Another image showed the remains of a bound Palestinian prisoner who had been crushed flat while still alive by an Israeli tank. According to a European human rights organization, the Israelis had regularly used bulldozers to bury alive large numbers of Palestinians. UN officials reported finding mass graves near several hospitals, with the victims found bound and stripped, shot execution-style. As Internet provocateur Andrew Anglin has pointed out, the behavior of the Israeli Jews does not seem merely evil but “cartoonishly evil,” with all their blatant crimes seeming to be based upon the script of some over-the-top propaganda-film but instead actually taking place in real life…
These grim developments have naturally sparked a continuing wave of student protests condemning Israel for committing these monstrous crimes and our own Biden Administration for enabling them with money and munitions. Prof. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago is one of our highest-ranking mainstream academics, a very sober-minded scholar of the Realist School, and in an interview last week he expressed little surprise at these matters. After all, he pointed out, Israel was obviously an Apartheid-state currently committing a genocide before the eyes of the entire world so political protests on college campuses were only to be expected.
Throughout these last few months, pro-Israel partisans have regularly denounced the anti-Zionism of their opponents as antisemitic and insisted that it be suppressed. Back in February I had noted the ironic implications of their position:
This is certainly an odd situation, warranting careful analysis and explanation. The word “antisemitism” merely means criticizing or disliking Jews, and in recent years, Israel’s partisans have demanded with some success that the term should be extended to encompass anti-Zionism as well, namely hostility to the Jewish state.
But let us suppose that we concede the latter point and agree with pro-Israel activists that “anti-Zionism” is indeed a form of “antisemitism.” Over the last few months, the Israeli government has brutally slaughtered tens of thousands of helpless civilians in Gaza, committing the greatest televised massacre in the history of the world, with its top leaders using explicitly genocidal language to describe their plans for the Palestinians. Indeed, the South African government submitted a 91 page legal brief to the International Court of Justice cataloging those Israeli statements, prompting a near-unanimous ruling by the jurists that millions of Palestinians faced the prospect of genocide at Israeli hands.
These days most Westerners claim to regard genocide in a decidedly negative light. So does this not syllogistically require them to embrace and endorse “antisemitism”? Surely a visitor from Mars would be very puzzled by this strange dilemma and the philosophical and psychological contortions it seems to require.
It is rather surprising that the extremely “politically correct” ruling elites of America and the rest of the Western world are loudly cheering on the racially-exclusivist State of Israel even as it kills enormous numbers of women and children and works very hard to starve to death some two million civilians in its unprecedented genocidal rampage. After all, the far milder and more circumspect regime of Apartheid South Africa was universally condemned, boycotted, and sanctioned for merely the tiniest sliver of such misdeeds.
An important turning point may have come on April 17th when Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, herself of Egyptian origins, was raked over the coals by a Congressional Committee for permitting anti-Israel protests on her campus. Her interrogators claimed that these were “antisemitic” acts and caused some of Columbia’s Jewish students to “feel unsafe,” a dire situation that seemingly trumped both freedom of speech and academic freedom.
Shafik may or may not have agreed with those arguments, but she surely remembered that just a few months earlier her counterparts at Harvard and Penn had both been summarily purged for giving the wrong answers, and she hardly wished to share their fate. So she firmly promised to root out all such public antisemitism at her university and soon afterward 100 helmeted NYC riot police were invited onto the campus to crush the demonstrations and arrest the protesters, mostly charging the latter with “trespassing,” a rather strange accusation given that they were enrolled students on the grounds of their own campus.
This sort of harsh and immediate police crackdown seems almost unprecedented in the modern history of college political protests. Back in the 1960s, there were a few scattered cases of police being called in to arrest militant protesters who had seized and occupied administrative offices at Harvard, paraded around with firearms at Cornell, or burned down a campus building at Stanford. But I have never heard of peaceful political protesters being arrested on the grounds of their own college merely for the content of their political speech.
Although the crackdown at Columbia demanded by those members of Congress was obviously intended to quell American campus protests, it predictably had the opposite effect. Scenes of burly, helmeted riot police arresting peaceful college students on their own campus went viral on social media, inspiring a wave of similar protests at numerous other colleges across the nation, with police arrests quickly following in most locations. By latest count, some 2,300 students have now been arrested at dozens of universities.
The actions by the Georgia State Police at Emory University seemed particularly outrageous, and a Tweet containing a clip of one of those incidents has already been viewed some 1.5 million times. A 57-year-old tenured professor of Economics named Carolyn Frohlin was concerned at seeing one of her own students being wrestled to the pavement and walked towards him only to find herself brutally thrown to the ground, hogtied, and arrested by a couple of hulking officers led by a sergeant. CNN anchor Jim Acosta was utterly shocked when he reported this story…
Even worse scenes took place at UCLA as an encampment of peaceful protesters was violently attacked and beaten by a mob of pro-Israel thugs having no university connection but armed with bars, clubs, and fireworks, resulting in some serious injuries. A professor of History described her outrage as the nearby police stood aside and did nothing while UCLA students were attacked by outsiders, with 200 of the victims then arrested. According to local journalists, the violent mob had been organized and paid by pro-Israel billionaire Bill Ackman.
I have never previously heard of organized mobs of outside thugs being allowed to violently assault peaceful American student protesters on their own campus, something that seems far more reminiscent of turbulent Latin American dictatorships. The closest example that comes to mind might be the notorious 1970 “Hard Hat Riot” in New York City in which hundreds of pro-Nixon construction workers battled similar numbers of anti-war protesters on the streets of lower Manhattan, an incident so infamous that it has an extensive Wikipedia page of its own.
However, a somewhat different but much closer and more recent analogy may exist. After Donald Trump launched his unexpectedly successful presidential campaign, right-wing, pro-Trump speakers invited to college campuses were regularly harassed and assaulted along with their audiences by mobs of violent antifa, with many of the latter apparently recruited and paid for the purpose.
This sort of very physical “deplatforming” was intended to ensure that their threatening ideas never reached impressionable college students and led conservatives to begin organizing their own groups such as the Proud Boys to provide physical protection. Violent clashes occurred at Berkeley and some other colleges, while similar antifa riots in DC disrupted Trump’s inauguration. From what I remember, most of the organizers and financial backers of these violent antifa groups seemed to be Jewish, so perhaps it’s not surprising that other Jewish leaders have now begun employing very similar tactics to suppress different political movements that they regard as distasteful.
Some years ago a former senior AIPAC official once boasted to a friendly journalist that if he wrote anything on a simple napkin, within 24 hours he could get signatures of 70 Senators to endorse it, and the political power of the ADL is equally formidable. Therefore it was hardly surprising that last week an overwhelming bipartisan 320-91 majority in the House passed a bill broadening the meaning of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the anti-discrimination policies of the Department of Education by codifying the definitions used in our Civil Rights laws to classify those ideas as discriminatory.
Although I haven’t tried to read the text, the obvious intent is to force colleges to expunge such noxious activities as anti-Israel protests from their campus community or face loss of federal funds. This represents a striking attack against academic freedom as well as America’s traditional freedom of speech and thought, and may also pressure other private organizations to adopt similar policies. In a particularly ironic twist, the definition of antisemitism used in the bill clearly covers portions of the Christian Bible, so the ignorant and compromised Republican legislators have now wholeheartedly endorsed banning the Bible in a country in which 95% of the population has Christian roots.
Israel/Gaza: The Masks Come Off in American Society
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • May 6, 2024 • 6,800 Words
Until now, revocation of a permanent residency Green Card could only occur if its holder had committed a serious felony such as murder or rape, but the empowered pro-Israel partisans of the Trump Administration have now stretched that law to include criticism of Israel or Jews, arguing that such criticism undermined the vital American national goal of combatting antisemitism across the world. When combined with last year’s bipartisan Congressional enactment of the Antisemitism Awareness Act, this might set a legal precedent for actually criminalizing such political views, especially if these can be portrayed as “providing material support” to such officially-designated terrorist organizations as Hamas.
Perhaps despite the determined efforts of the ADL and similar organizations, this legal transformation will not occur. But then again I had never expected to see masked federal agents abducting university students for writing campus newspaper op-eds criticizing Israel.
Similarly, consider the mass arrests and long prison sentences of the January 6th protesters in DC. Nearly all of the defendants had been guilty of nothing more than trespassing and perhaps petty vandalism, but their severe punishment demonstrated that strong ideological and media pressure can successfully force American courts to stretch the law in extreme ways in order to severely punish individuals engaging in political activity that has been sufficiently demonized.
From a broader perspective, we have already seen developments that suggest American society and its political life have reached a very strange point.
Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate are earnest young Jewish progressives who run the Grayzone, a webzine and YouTube channel of their own. In several articles last year, I noted their lengthy discussion of how the pro-Israel donor class had recently crushed any political dissent within the Democratic Party, contrary to the overwhelming views of its voter base.
In that same livestream, Blumenthal and Maté also focused on the methods used to keep American elected officials in line on this issue, noting that a few days ago Zionist billionaires spent an almost unprecedented $8 million to defeat Rep. Cori Bush in her own Democratic primary, angry that the black progressive member of “the squad” had called for a ceasefire in Gaza. Just a few weeks earlier, roughly twice as much money had been spent by similar individuals for very similar reasons to successfully eliminate her close political ally Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
Those two primary races were by far the most expensive in American history, and in their aftermath most members of Congress must surely realize that they only remain in office at the sufferance of AIPAC and its ideological allies. Although leading progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounced the role of big money in those primary races, she was obviously too fearful of pro-Israel donors to even mention whose big money had been involved. The Grayzone editors were far more candid and accurately characterized the dollars as being deployed by “the foreign agents of an Apartheid state.”
These incidents seem to suggest a rather peculiar situation. It appears that American elected officials will regularly be removed from office if they are deemed insufficiently loyal to a certain foreign country, hardly the sort of governmental framework usually discussed in our political science textbooks.
Despite their longstanding coverage of the Middle East conflict, I do not think that either of the Grayzone editors had ever contemplated the horrors currently being inflicted upon the suffering Palestinians, nor the totally slavish support for Israel expressed by the entire Biden Administration. These shocking developments prompted ideological reassessments and in May I’d described some ironic statements they had made in an earlier podcast:
This massive suppression of all political opposition to Zionism through a mixture of legal, quasi-legal, and illegal means has hardly escaped the notice of various outraged critics. Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate are young Jewish progressives very sharply critical of Israel and its current attack on Gaza, and in their most recent livestream video a day or two before that Congressional vote, they agreed that Zionists were the greatest threat to American freedom and that our country was “under political occupation” by the Israel Lobby.
They may or may not have been aware that their angry denunciation closely paralleled one of the most notorious Far Right phrases of the last half-century, which condemned America’s existing political system as nothing more than ZOG, a “Zionist Occupation Government.” Over time, obvious factual reality gradually becomes apparent regardless of ideological predispositions.
By August, I noticed that they had begun explicitly using that incendiary term in their most recent podcast:
That particular article of mine proved quite popular so it’s possible that my remarks may have directly or indirectly found their way to those individuals. Whether or not that was the case, in their current podcast they mentioned that although they’d always dismissed “ZOG” as some ridiculously antisemitic expression, recent events had demonstrated its reality, and Americans were obviously now living in “one nation under ZOG.” I think this marked an important step forward in their understanding of our world.
Soon afterward, their Grayzone channel was temporarily banned from YouTube, and when it returned a week later, the two hosts nervously joked about the acronym they must carefully avoid uttering, using several rhyming words to enlighten their audience. I suspect that many other thoughtful Americans have also recently begun entertaining notions that they would have always previously dismissed as ridiculous.
But over the last six months, these unfortunate trends have merely accelerated. So a couple of weeks ago the initial Columbia University arrest prompted them to release a new Grayzone podcast that they entitled “Shalom, the Occupation’s Home.”
Blumenthal emphasized that Americans were “living under some kind of Zionist occupation” and the two hosts then joked about how useful it would be if someone could come up with a catchy, three-letter acronym to describe our national predicament. They did so again later in the same show as they described the overwhelming Zionist control over the American government.
Such cautious circumlocutions are quite understandable given the very real risk of YouTube deplatforming, but individuals who have long since suffered that fate can afford to speak much more boldly.
As I have emphasized, obvious factual reality produces a certain amount of descriptive convergence even across the most disparate ideological camps. Late last year a fierce right-winger named Stew Peters released a video documentary entitled “Occupied” on many of these same issues and other related ones, running close to two hours. Although it unfortunately contained quite a lot of misinformation, I’d say that at least 70-75% of the material was correct, and it included many video clips that I hadn’t previously seen.
Although it was originally freely released across the Internet, those copies no longer seem available for viewing, but apparently it can still be watched on his website by anyone who registers with an email address.
Last week I published a lengthy article summarizing the strong, even overwhelming evidence that Israel and its American collaborators had been responsible for the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers. One of the leading motives for those killings had been the determination of the Kennedys to break the growing political power of the nascent Israel Lobby.
- How Israel Killed the Kennedys
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • March 24, 2025 • 11,500 Words
Now six decades later, that same political force has metastasized to such an extent that it largely controls both of America’s major political parties and nearly all the members of Congress, and may now be on the verge of successfully eliminating our traditional constitutional rights, including freedom of political speech. When university students are snatched off city streets by masked federal agents merely for writing an op-ed in their campus newspapers, matters have clearly reached a very perilous state in American society.
Related Reading:
‘Almost everyone is onboard with the green agenda’
The 3-Step, Normative Pressure Manipulation Loop.
By Gary L. Sidley | Propaganda In Focus | March 28, 2025
There is a plethora of techniques deployed by the state to lever compliance with their globalist agendas; censorship, propaganda, the smearing of critical voices, and various forms of psychological manipulation, are all habitually used by government agencies to encourage the masses to think and behave in the ‘right’ ways. This article focuses on one specific behavioural science (‘nudge’) strategy – normative pressure – that is, at present, being widely deployed to convince ordinary people that there is a climate emergency.
What is a normative pressure nudge?
The psychological methods of persuasion emanating from the discipline of behavioural science often operate below people’s conscious awareness and frequently rely on inflating emotional unease as a means of changing the behaviour of those targeted. The normative pressure nudge (commonly referred to as ‘social proof’) exploits the fact that human beings tend to feel uncomfortable if they think themselves to be in a deviant minority – in contrast to believing one is at the centre of the herd, a view that generates a sense of safety and security. Therefore, awareness of social norms, the prevalent views and behaviours of our fellow citizens, can exert pressure on us to conform. If government actors can convince the sceptical target group that the majority of people are already onboard with state-approved beliefs and behaviours, this normative pressure nudge constitutes an effective weapon in their manipulation armoury.
Throughout the covid event, the normative pressure nudge was heavily relied upon to shape people’s behaviour in line with public health diktats – we will all remember politicians and their science experts asserting that, ‘The vast majority have complied with the rules’, and ’90 per cent of those eligible have already had the first dose of the vaccine’. Now the same strategy is ubiquitous in the outputs of the influencers who are striving to get us all to accept the – highly dubious – climate-Armageddon narrative. One aspect of this state-endorsed strategy is, what I have labelled, the ‘3-step, normative pressure manipulation loop’.
As way of illustration:
Step 1: Bombard the general public with fear-laden messaging about the purported climate emergency
Ordinary people have, for many years been exposed to fear-elevating information about the ‘climate crisis’, and the intensity of this assault is escalating. This comprehensive exercise in scaremongering is achieved through multiple channels. Examples include:
Announcements by high-profile political bodies
– The weather has become ‘a weapon of mass extinction … a code red for humanity… we are digging our own graves’ (Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations).
– ‘Global warming has led and will lead to more extreme weather events … The risks of irreversible and catastrophic change could greatly increase’ (European Parliament).
– ‘The only way to protect future generations is by tackling the climate crisis’ (Ed Miliband, UK Energy Secretary).
Biased and misleading mainstream media outputs
– Television programming strategically designed to promote the green agenda, such as the 2021 collaboration between Sky TV and the Behavioural Insights Team (the ‘Nudge Unit’) that strives to ‘increase the salience of sustainability in plotlines, and make it emotionally engaging for better impact’, so as to ‘encourage viewers to take up pro-environmental action needed to save the planet’.
– Weather presenters and newspaper journalists enrolling on training courses to learn how to attribute – with maximum emotional impact – any extreme weather event to ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’; for example, the partnership between the Reuters Institute and University of Oxford.
Amplification of unreliable modelling studies
– The green lobby’s reliance upon unscientific modelling studies (rather than real-world observations) to produce scary headlines of imminent climate catastrophes, prophesies that have been repeatedly shown to be inaccurate.
The exploitation of medical professionals to promote the ‘climate emergency’ narrative
– The World Health Organization’s encouragement of doctors (as trusted sources of information) to become ‘powerful climate communicators’, a role eagerly endorsed by the Royal College of Physicians in their recommendation that its members ‘communicate with patients about climate change to help them understand how it will affect their health’.
Indoctrination of children
– Changing school curricula to include the assertion that climate change is the ‘biggest existential threat of our age’, despite a current context where over three-quarters of under-12-year-olds already suffer from ‘eco-anxiety’.
Step 2: Conduct a survey asking questions designed to get the ‘right’ answer
In the wake of this prolonged and multi-faceted drive to promote fear about a future climate catastrophe, the next stage of the manipulation loop is to measure the level of climate concern among the general population. This is accomplished by a survey – the ‘Public Attitudes Tracker’ – conducted four times each year on behalf of the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (DBEIS). For instance, a recurring question in this analysis is:
‘How concerned, if at all, are you about climate change, sometimes referred to as “global warming”?’
Two observations about this process support the assertion that the DBEIS’s primary intention is to elicit supporting evidence for the idea that the general public is greatly troubled by the potential impacts of climate change.
First, if you expose the population to a protracted period of indoctrination about the ‘existential threats’ posed by future weather conditions – cities submerged under rising sea levels, more droughts, increased frequency of extreme weather events, poorer health – it would be astonishing NOT to find that a lot of people acknowledge a degree of alarm about impending climate events; after all, who would wish to reveal disregard to anything that might jeopardise the lives of our children and grandchildren? Indeed, in the aftermath of this onslaught of fear, and the purported need to save the planet for the sake of future generations, a survey respondent would require unusually high levels of single mindedness – and a desire to conduct one’s own independent research – to openly reject perspectives supportive of the dominant climate-change narrative.
Second, the slant of the questions asked (and where the responses are subsequently amplified) is, inevitably, going to encourage the answers the DBEIS is seeking. By asking, ‘How concerned … are you about climate change/global warming?’, the wording implicitly legitimises the presence of ‘concern’ about future weather events; Furthermore, the generality of the question makes it more difficult to express contrary views. It is interesting to speculate as to how people would have responded to more specific (and differently slanted) survey questions, such as:
‘How concerned, if at all, are you that the green agenda will lead to a rise in energy prices?’
‘To what extent, if at all, do you believe that Western governments are exaggerating the negative impacts of climate change?’
My guess would be that such queries would suggest the presence of a sizable number of climate-change sceptics within the general population.
Step 3: Widely circulate the results of selected survey questions as a normative pressure nudge
Armed with the manufactured statistic that a high proportion of people who responded to the survey acknowledged concern about the future impacts of climate change, the final step in the manipulation loop is to repeatedly publicise this finding, thereby applying normative pressure on the sceptical minority to re-evaluate their existing perspectives. A prominent example of this nudge technique in action is provided by a 2023 document by the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team titled, ‘How to build a net zero society’. The executive summary of this publication leads with the definitive statement:
‘Tackling climate change … is backed by huge public support. The Government’s own data reveal high public concern for climate change (84%)’.
This publication contains multiple nudges of this kind, repeatedly announcing that 80%-plus of the general population are on board with various aspects of the green agenda. Another Behavioural Insight Team document – the collaboration with Sky TV, mentioned in Step 1 – also contains many normative pressure strategies citing survey findings.
Not content with heavily deploying this manipulative intervention in the text, the ‘How to build a net zero society’ document takes the process a stage further by including ready-made Tweets of these dubious survey findings to encourage readers to spread normative pressure nudges among their followers.
The ultimate aim of this 3-step (scare-survey-share) manoeuvre is to prompt those who remain appropriately sceptical of the climate-catastrophe narrative to relent and opt to join the (apparent) majority of believers, seduced into conformity by the anticipated comfort of being at the centre of the herd. It is one specific example of how government-funded influencers strive to promote ‘right-think’ among the general population.
As further illustration of the process, a normative-pressure informed mission to convince people that the earth is flat might look something like this:
Over several decades, expose children to ‘flat earth’ topics and educate them about ways to avoid falling off the edge of the world. Ensure the media pumps out numerous reports of ‘missing’ people/ships/aeroplanes that are all presumed to have succumbed to this fate. Habitually highlight ‘scientific discoveries’ that the earth is getting narrower, and the precipitous rim is getting ever closer, thereby justifying urgent future action to erect enormously expensive barriers along the earth’s perimeter, and other constraints on movement, to keep us all ‘safe’. Conduct surveys asking ‘how concerned’ people are about falling of the world’s edge, and widely circulate the results that inevitably show a high level of apprehension. Repeatedly refer to this widespread flat-earth anxiety to justify the imposition of further restrictions and hardships on the populace.
By highlighting this 3-stage manipulation loop, my main aim is to enable more people to recognise, and call out, this form of clandestine, state-sponsored persuasion. Visible dissent to our governments’ attempts to promote ‘right think’ in their citizens is essential if we are to stymie the authoritarianism that is stripping us of our rights and freedoms.
Finally – to end with a note of optimism – maybe the tide is turning: the winter 2024 version of the Public Attitudes Tracker found that the proportion of respondents concerned about climate change had fallen to 80% (as compared to 85% in 2021), a statistically significant reduction. Perhaps ordinary folk are becoming less inclined to accept the pronouncements of official, nudge-infused, communications? Let us hope so.
From JFK to Donald Trump: How the USA Became Wedded to Zionist Israel
By Rick Sterling | Global Research | March 28, 2025
There are many contrasts between the 35th president, John F. Kennedy, and the 45th and 47th president, Donald J. Trump. One extreme example is regarding U.S. policy toward Israel.
JFK and Israel/Palestine
Unknown to many people today, JFK supported Palestinian rights and sought a sustainable peace in the region.
In 1960, when JFK was campaigning to be president, he spoke at the convention of the Zionists of America. In his speech, Kennedy was complimentary about Israel but frankly said,
“I cannot believe that Israel has any real desire to remain indefinitely a garrison state surrounded by fear and hate.”
That warning, issued when Israel had only existed for 12 years, was ignored. Israel continued to act in an aggressive zionist fashion.
Kennedy did not just issue warnings. To the chagrin of the Israelis, JFK established friendly relations with Egypt’s President Nasser. The Kennedy administration provided loans and aid to Egypt.
The JFK administration supported UN resolution 194 which called for the right of return for Palestinian refugees driven out of their homeland. Although Israel committed to abide by UN resolutions when it was admitted to the United Nations in 1949, the Israelis reneged on this commitment and were hostile to the resolution. The day before JFK was assassinated, the New York Times reported (p 19), “Israel Dissents as U.N. Group Backs U.S. on Arab Refugees” and “U.S. Stand Angers Israel.” The second item begins, “Premier Levi Eshkol expressed extreme distaste today for the United States’ position in the Palestinian-refugee debate.”
John Kennedy’s brother Robert was Attorney General and headed the Department of Justice. For two years, up until the end of 1963, the DOJ made increasingly strict demands that the American Zionist Council (AZC) register as agents of a foreign country. In response, the AZC stalled, delayed, and created the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The most intense disagreement between Tel Aviv and Washington was regarding the nuclear site under construction at Dimona. JFK was intent on stopping the expansion of countries which possessed nuclear weapons. Although IsraeliPrime Minister Ben-Gurion said the nuclear site was for peaceful purposes, JFK insisted that the US needed to inspect and confirm this. The inspection deadline was December 1963.
In each of these four areas of contention, US policy changed dramatically after JFK was assassinated and Lyndon Johnson became president. Dimona was never properly inspected, and LBJ did not object to Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons. The demand that the American Zionist Council register as an agent of a foreign country was dropped. Over time, the US withdrew their support of UN resolution 194, and LBJ was hostile to Nasser and ended US loans and support. Details of this process are described in this article and this book.
Israel Policy Since JFK and Today
With few exceptions, US policy has been subservient to Israel’s wants ever since JFK. An extreme low point was the treachery of President Johnson in covering up the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty during the June 1967 “Six Day War”. News about the Israeli killing and injuring of over 200 US sailors was suppressed for decades.
Damaged USS Liberty on 9 June 1967, one day after attack (Public Domain)
Now we are in a new extreme low point. In his first presidency, Trump flouted international law and longstanding US policy by moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The significant move was driven by mega donor Sheldon Adelson who wanted it announced on Trump’s first day in office. Another prime concern of Adelson was to torpedo the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Trump responded as expected and withdrew the US from the agreement, effectively killing it.
Now President Trump’s administration is trampling on the right to free speech and aggressively suppressing critics of Israel. This repression on behalf of Israel was taking place under Biden but has escalated dramatically. Authorities have imprisoned a perfectly legal resident, Mahmoud Khalil. They have forced Columbia University to punish students without just cause and to impose obvious restrictions and prohibitions on speech and opinion. Why did they do this? It appears to follow the wishes of megadonor Miriam Adelson. She is president and chief funder of the Maccabee Task Force, which has campaigned on these issues for months.
As reported at Responsible Statecraft,
“Adelson’s support for the administration’s campaign to stifle criticism of Israel on college campuses isn’t a new focus but her alignment with the levers of state powers to implement her vision are unprecedented. In fact, tax documents reveal that she is directly overseeing a social media campaign targeting Khalil and Columbia University.”
In addition to suppressing free speech and punishing critics of Israel, the Trump administration has bombed and attacked an independent country (Yemen) in the service of Israel. They are doing this despite the fact that Yemen did NOT threaten U.S. ships in the region. The Houthi government only threatened Israeli ships after Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire and prevented food and other necessary humanitarian aid getting into Gaza. Israel, with U.S. support, is blatantly defying the International Court of Justice which ordered Israel to “maintain open the Rafah crossing for unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” and “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Israel is in violation of this order and the US is complicit by providing most of the weapons.
President Trump, who campaigned and won election on the pledge to STOP needless wars, has started a new war with Yemen which is of no benefit to the US but serves the interests of Netanyahu’s Israel. Will he authorize attacks on Iran, in further subservience to Bibi?
Corruption of the Political Process
When Jewish donors to JFK’s 1960 campaign suggested they should determine his Mideast policy, JFK was shocked and definitively said NO. As reported by Seymour Hersh in “The Samson Option”, Kennedy talked with a friend who described what happened: “As an American citizen he (JFK) was outraged to have a zionist group come to him and say, ‘We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you’ll let us have control of your Middle East policy.” At that time, JFK vowed to change the US electoral system to prevent this corruption if he got elected. As president, he tried, but faced big hurdles and did not succeed.
Ever since JFK’s death, pro-Israel forces have had undue influence on U.S. policy. If the International Court of Justice decides that Israel is committing genocide, as seems likely, the U.S. will be the primary collaborator in the war crimes. The US is increasingly alone in supporting the zionist state as it practices apartheid within Israel, theft of land in the West Bank, and massacres in Gaza including attacks on hospitals, schools, and UN facilities. Fourteen countries now support South Africa’s charges of genocide against Israel.
Under Democratic President Joe Biden, U.S. policy to Israel was unwaveringly obsequious. Despite 70% of Democratic Party voters wanting the U.S. to get a ceasefire in Gaza, the Biden/Blinken team refused to do this. The Democratic Party leaders’ zionist ideology combined with zionist financial influence superseded their party members’ wishes. Netanyahu ignored Biden’s “red lines” with impunity.
Republican President Trump has taken this to a new level. His zionist donors determine his Israel policy. To protect Israel, Trump issued an executive order which weaponizes antisemitism. Universities are being compelled to implement a new definition of antisemitism which conflates criticism of Israel with ethnic discrimination. Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” has evolved into “Miriam Adelson Gets All”.
It is a remarkable descent from the days when JFK did what was best for the U.S. as well as being best for Palestinians and non-zionist Jews.
Rick Sterling is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com.
Stepan Bandera’s Sinister MI6 Alliance Exposed
[Source: ar.inspiredpencil.com]
By Kit Klarenberg | Covert Action Magazine | March 20, 2025
October 15, 2024, marked the 65th anniversary of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) founder Stepan Bandera’s assassination by the KGB in Munich, in then-West Germany.
The date passed without mention anywhere. This may reflect how prior public commemorations of the life and death of Nazi collaborator Bandera—widely credited as the father of Ukrainian nationalism—in Kyiv sparked significant controversy and condemnation across Central and Eastern Europe, particularly neighboring Poland.
The complicity of Bandera and the fascist movements he birthed during World War II is well-documented. His influence over modern-day ultranationalist and Neo-Nazi factions in Ukraine, such as the Azov Regiment, has also been acknowledged in the mainstream media.
Yet, Bandera’s secret Cold War bond with British intelligence has never been seriously explored by Western news outlets. Now, examination of little-known declassified CIA records by CovertAction Magazine exposes the malign contours of a long-running, ruthless conspiracy between Bandera and MI6 to destabilize the Soviet Union.
This dark handshake only expired because MI6’s fascist asset was resistant to joining forces with other Ukrainian anti-Communist forces, therefore jeopardizing plans by Washington and London for all-out war with the Soviets in Donbas. That plot, intended to ultimately collapse the entire USSR, has eerie, direct echoes of the current Ukraine proxy war. So too Britain’s willingness, then and now, to go even further than the U.S. in building alliances with the most reactionary, dangerous Ukrainian ultranationalist elements, in service of balkanizing Russia.
“Bandit Type”
MI6 first contacted Bandera while he was exiled in post-war West Germany in 1948, via Gerhard von Mende. An ethnic German hailing from Riga, Latvia, von Mende has been described as the “enthusiastic Nazi” who headed Berlin’s Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territory, or Ostministerium. Among other connivances, von Mende was charged with recruiting fifth columnists from the USSR’s Central Asian republics, to undermine and attack Communist authorities. He has been credited with influencing subsequent British and American support for Islamic extremists.
Per a declassified CIA biography, after Nazi Germany’s defeat, von Mende was “interned as a ‘guest’” at the Agency’s Camp King, where Nazi officials and soldiers were interrogated and tortured. In some cases, inmates were unwittingly dosed with LSD under PROJECT BLUEBIRD, a forerunner to the CIA’s notorious MK-ULTRA mind-control program. Subsequently, von Mende became an asset for West Germany’s Nazi-riddled BND, the CIA, and MI6, continuing his spy recruitment in the USSR via a front company.
Through this position, von Mende was kept abreast of UPA activities and capabilities, and maintained an intimate personal relationship with Bandera. The Ukrainian fascist ideologue’s thuggish West German network was by then hard at work killing hundreds of local citizens suspected by the CIA and MI6 of harboring Communist sympathies. While the OUN-B chief’s “ask” of British intelligence was initially judged too high, that perspective rapidly changed. By 1949, MI6 was helping Bandera airdrop his chaos agents into Ukraine.
A year later, Britain’s foreign spy agency began formally training these operatives to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations on Soviet soil. This sinister compact was established despite stern CIA and State Department opposition. At this point, the Agency had identified a comparatively moderate alternative to Bandera’s murderous ultranationalist mob, the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR). The group was led by Ukrainian-Greek Catholic priest Ivan Hrinioch, a “longtime CIA asset” and former high-ranking OUN-B operative Mykola Lebed.
During World War II, Lebed oversaw the UPA’s massacre of tens of thousands of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. However, he subsequently disavowed this genocidal carnage, and led UHVR’s push to unite Ukrainian émigrés, who had fractured due to bloody, internecine squabbles toward the conflict’s end. Under the auspices of Operation AERODYNAMIC, for decades the Agency exploited the UHVR to foment “nationalist flare-ups” throughout the Soviet Union, “particularly” in Ukraine, and “encourage divisive manifestations among” the population, to “exert pressure on the Soviet regime.”
By this time, Bandera had fallen out of favor with many Ukrainian nationalists, and was even renounced by what remained of OUN-B’s Kiev-based leadership. This, his genocidal past, and overt anti-U.S. actions and statements due to Washington’s refusal to publicly advocate for Ukrainian independence, all deterred the CIA from employing him. However, MI6 was unperturbed and pushed ahead with its Bandera operations. This created a ludicrous situation, with London and Washington supporting bitterly antagonistic Ukrainian nationalist factions, which frequently undermined and attacked each other.
As a British intelligence memorandum on “the crisis over Bandera” noted, by 1950 Ukrainian nationalist leaders had “become aware of the fact that the British and Americans were backing rival groups,” putting the agencies’ joint anti-Soviet project at risk. It was decided to dispatch a co-signed message to UPA headquarters via Ukrainian CIA and MI6 agents parachuted into Lviv, calling for an end to “present disagreements” between opposing nationalist factions, which London and Washington professed to “deplore and earnestly hope may be resolved.”
It signed off with the now-infamous, Bandera-coined nationalist slogan, “Glory to Ukraine” (“Slava Ukraini”). The memo’s MI6 author, moreover, recalled an in-person meeting they had with Bandera in London. The spy described him thusly:
“Convincing and sincere… a professional underground worker with a terrorist background and ruthless notions about the rules of the game, acquired by hard experience, along with a thorough knowledge of the Ukrainian people… a bandit type if you like, with a burning patriotism which provides an ethical background and a justification for his banditry.”
The MI6 operative cheerfully added that genocidal mass murderer Bandera was “no better and no worse than others of his kind I have had dealings with in the past,” and “genuinely grateful for the help given to him” by British intelligence, “but at the same time is certainly trying to get all he can out of it.” The CIA begged to differ, however, commissioning a study of London and Washington’s conflicting positions on the “Ukrainian underground” and Bandera, and how to resolve this divergence.
UPA poster from the 1940s. OUN/UPA’s formal greeting is written on two of the horizontal lines “Glory to Ukraine!” “Glory to the Heroes!” The soldier is standing on the banners of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. [Source: euromaidanpress.com]
“Political Overtones”
A subsequent appraisal repeatedly declared Bandera and OUN-B to be “completely unacceptable” to the CIA, “both from the political and the operational standpoints.” It proposed the Agency and MI6 take joint ownership of the UHVR and its anti-Soviet wrecking project in Ukraine, and “exchange political, operational and intelligence data resulting from these operations.” Meanwhile, the CIA would “take independent action to neutralize” OUN-B’s “present leadership,” including Bandera himself. It is unknown if this was pitched to MI6, although London’s steadfast opposition was inevitable.
The “British position,” as described in the study, was Bandera’s “importance” had been perennially “underestimated by the Americans, as a rallying symbol in the Ukraine, as leader of a large émigré group [and] as a leader favored by the homeland headquarters.” This did not conform to the reality on the ground as detected by the CIA, but MI6 had a vested interest in maintaining the fascist demagogue as an agent. An April 1951 Agency memo summarizing recent “talks” with British intelligence “on operations against the USSR” noted:
“[MI6 is] seeking progressively to assume control of Bandera’s lines… [MI6 argues] Bandera’s name still carried considerable weight in the Ukraine… [and OUN-B is] the strongest Ukrainian organization abroad, is deemed competent to train party cadres, [and] build a morally and politically healthy organization.”
By contrast, the CIA observed Soviet authorities “had been successful to a remarkable degree in transforming the mentality of the younger generation” of Ukrainians, resulting in them vehemently rejecting Bandera and his brand of rabid nationalism. While the Agency, therefore, favored “political neutralization of Bandera as an individual,” MI6 balked, as this “would lead to a drying up of recruits” and “disrupt British operations.” However, the declassified paper trail shows London eventually tired of their fascist asset.
In February 1954, a senior MI6 official who led liaison with OUN-B for two decades made a “final attempt to bring Bandera to reason” in London, due to the genocidaire’s refusal to reconcile and unite with opposing Ukrainian nationalist elements. The high-ranking British spook offered him “one last chance” to make amends with émigré leaders. Bandera “refused this suggestion with arrogant finality,” thus making “the break” between Bandera and MI6 “complete.”
All British intelligence-run Ukrainian agents who remained loyal to Bandera were duly jettisoned. MI6 informed other nationalist leaders the agency “would not resume” its relationship with him “under any circumstances.” Bandera remained exiled in Munich, West Germany, and continued to run belligerent cloak-and-dagger operations against the Soviet Union, while ratcheting up his anti-Western rhetoric. The CIA and MI6 viewed these activities as a significant problem, with no obvious solution.
As CIA records of a January 1955 “joint U.S.-UK conference” put it, despite the “unanimous desire” of British and American intelligence to “‘quiet’ Bandera,” it was equally vital the KGB was “not allowed to kidnap or kill him.” This could make Bandera “a martyr” among Ukrainian ultranationalists, a prospect to be avoided if at all possible. Hence, London and Washington kept him alive and well, while permitting West Germany’s BND to run him as an agent. Their old friend Gerhard von Mende was his handler.
West German authorities wished to punish Bandera and his in-country network for crimes including kidnapping, but von Mende consistently intervened to insulate his compatriot from prosecution. A July 1959 CIA report noted the BND’s use of Bandera was such a “closely held” secret within the agency, it was not even formally cleared with the West German government “due to political overtones.” Despite this omertà (code of silence), the BND moved to secure Bandera a U.S. visa.
It was hoped he would connect with Ukrainian émigrés Stateside, while ingratiating himself with the CIA and State Department. Per an October 5, 1959, Agency memo, the BND believed “it should be a simple matter” for the CIA “to influence the issuing of a visa” for Bandera, as “many less desirable and less ‘exploitable’ individuals” had already visited the country via Agency assistance. A formal request was submitted to Washington. Just ten days later, though, the KGB finally caught up with him.
Despite their mutual wish that Bandera not be “martyred” by Soviet intelligence, it is likely that the CIA and MI6 breathed a collective sigh of relief upon hearing of his death. The OUN-B and UPA founder’s destabilizing, disruptive influence within the Ukrainian anti-Communist underground was a significant impediment to Anglo-American spying agencies’ implementation of a far grander plan than has hitherto been tried. Namely, fomenting all-out war against the Soviet Union, using Ukrainian ultranationalists as foot soldiers.
This is the first instalment of a two-part investigation. Stay tuned.
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Allies Don’t Need Lobbies
By Jay Knott | Dissident Voice | September 24, 2013
In a recent article on Counterpunch, Rob Urie defended the traditional Marxist analysis of US policy in the Middle East. He argues that support for Israel is driven primarily by economic interest, not the Jewish lobby.
He starts by paying tribute to the idea that Western societies are uniquely racist. He says that the “Western narrative” claims there is an “Arab character”, and that this is “antique racist blather”. He gives no definition of these terms. Further, he establishes his credentials as part of the dominant current in the American left by claiming that “over a million people in Iraq died so ‘we’ in the West can drive SUVs.”1
When he tries to criticize bourgeois economics, he makes it clear he doesn’t understand the developments it has made since Marx’s day, using the mathematical discipline known as “game theory”. He dismisses the basic abstraction of economic theory, the idea of the rational individual, on the grounds that it is “devoid of history, culture and political context”. But abstractions are always devoid of something.
He defends a more concrete economic theory, mostly Marxist, with some input from another theorist of capitalist crisis, Hyman Minsky. This concrete theory leads him to the view that US activity in the Middle East is primarily driven by rational capitalist motives, the need to secure a supply of oil.
“Taking the totality of circumstance — former oil company executives launching war on an oil rich nation on a pretext they publicly proclaimed they didn’t believe shortly before taking office — and that upon launching their war proved to be non-existent, requires a willingness to overlook the obvious — that the war on Iraq was for oil, that is difficult to support.”1
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood him, but based on what he says in the rest of the article, this convoluted sentence seems to argue that, because president Bush and vice-president Cheney attacked Iraq on false premises, and they also said it was all about oil, and they are former oil executives, and Iraq has a lot of oil, it’s difficult to deny US attacks on Iraq are all about oil.
In fact, it’s not hard at all. As Urie points out, at times Bush and co. said that attacking Iraq was “protecting the world’s supply of oil.”1 But, as he also points out, they are congenital liars. Why should we believe them when they say they are trying to “protect” the oil supply? Protect it against what? When politicians “admit” attacks on Middle Eastern countries are wars for oil, they are parroting the neo-con party line, feeding the public, both left and right, with a plausible-sounding pretext. For right-wingers, “it’s a war for oil” is a reason to support war, and for leftists, it’s a way to feel better by complaining impotently about corporate greed. Both approaches help the war drive. … continue
Blog Roll
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- Russia slams UK plan to seize tankers suspected of carrying its oil
- Pakistan ramps up food exports to Persian Gulf nations as war deepens food insecurity
- Iran submits response to US plan, sets terms for war’s end: Tasnim
- US vs Iran: Kharg Island Talk — Bluff or Escalation? Ex-Military Officer Weighs In
- Zelensky unnecessarily involves Ukraine in the Middle East crisis
- Turkish tanker blacklisted by Ukraine hit in drone attack – media
- Canada, the U.S., and NATO: the inescapable trap
- Villains of Judea: Leonid Radvinsky
- If Americans Knew
- ‘No Innocent Children’: Far-right Israeli Lawmaker Defends Killing of Palestinian Family
- Mossad’s promises helped Netanyahu convince Trump that Iran could be toppled
- US Arms Control Official Refuses To Comment When Asked If Israel Has Nuclear Weapons
- Veterans warn US landing could be ‘more Gallipoli than Vietnam’
- Israel may be committing war crimes in Lebanon – Not a ceasefire Day 167
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- Jacob Reses, one of the most powerful pro-Israel operatives in Trump’s Washington
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- ‘Forever live by the sword’: Understanding Israelis’ massive support for Iran war
- UN’s special rapporteur on human rights says Israel is systematically torturing Palestinians
- No Tricks Zone
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- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
- Storing Green Energy To Last Germany 10 Days Would Require A 60-Million Tonne Battery
- New Studies: UK Sea Levels Were 4 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Destructive Green New Deal: German Energy And Metal Group Warns Of Drastic Crisis
- New Study Documents A 20-Year Pause In Arctic Sea Ice Decline – Driven By Internal Variability
- Wake-up Call: Survey Shows Majority Of Germans Now Favor Postponing Climate Targets!
Aletho News 