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term="social justice"/><category term="totalitarianism"/><category term="victimhood"/><category term="welfare state"/><category term="white privilege"/><title type="text">Sultan Knish </title><subtitle type="html">News and Analysis from the US to Israel to Around the World</subtitle><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/posts/default" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default?redirect=false" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/><link href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" rel="hub"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default?start-index=26&max-results=25&redirect=false" rel="next" type="application/atom+xml"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><generator uri="http://www.blogger.com" version="7.00">Blogger</generator><openSearch:totalResults>4485</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage>25</openSearch:itemsPerPage><xhtml:meta content="noindex" name="robots" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"/><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-6594856086977557842</id><published>2024-04-26T21:12:00.001-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-26T21:13:54.196-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Philosophy"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Victimhood is an Oppressive System of Relative Rights</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimImrJW43MM98Ggmq-DI25Has94jG295J5nkT4xEfn7x_5aqQ-jwJSqniS3PIY6QJA_Zwcy__RlyNausHB7FIt3vgpQcJG2NrwSaJrvlQR1s3vsvYtEqOZ14QhvDWB19nz0VQVvPDEBUIwRFk4w9NTt7uLUA8ONcbbpT8m_nBp1jVcPOiNzvv8Kg/s933/image_2024-04-26_181345322.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="933" height="528" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimImrJW43MM98Ggmq-DI25Has94jG295J5nkT4xEfn7x_5aqQ-jwJSqniS3PIY6QJA_Zwcy__RlyNausHB7FIt3vgpQcJG2NrwSaJrvlQR1s3vsvYtEqOZ14QhvDWB19nz0VQVvPDEBUIwRFk4w9NTt7uLUA8ONcbbpT8m_nBp1jVcPOiNzvv8Kg/w640-h528/image_2024-04-26_181345322.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div>We are two years and spare change away from the American semiquincentennial which will celebrate 250 years since some brave men ratified the foundational document of our nation.</div><br />The Declaration of Independence’s bold assertion that the people were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” is all the more relevant in the age of relativism where fewer people believe in a ‘Creator’ or in unalienable rights. That radical document is why America remains the only place on the planet where freedom of speech is absolute.<br /><br />Other nations have their constitutions and human rights charters which run longer than an old-fashioned telephone directory, but their rights are granted by the government and then taken away by the government. Under the guise of buzzwords like ‘stakeholders’ and ‘evolving social contracts’ your rights are constantly reevaluated by committees according to leftist doctrine.<br /><br />Unlike the absolute rights of the Bill of Rights, the reevaluation of rights follows a Marxist paradigm in which the existing state of rights is an imperfect system imposed by the privileged on the underprivileged, and must be constantly shaken up to liberate the new oppressed.<br /><br />Your rights are not absolute, they are relative to how oppressed the committee thinks you are. And if you’re only as free as your oppression, then you have to be oppressed to have rights.<br /><br />These rights are not a gift from the Creator, but from systemic racism, that you have rights is not something to be proud of or grateful for, but a mark of shame that indicts you for having benefited from whiteness, being adjacent to whiteness, the patriarchy, heteropatriarchy or cisheteropatriarchy, and the only way to atone is to cede your rights to the next group.<br /><br />The clash between traditional feminism and the transgender movement clearly shows the difference between absolute and relative rights. In the absolute rights model, equality for women would have been a permanent victory, but in the relative rights model, by winning equal rights, women stopped being the oppressed and instead became the oppressors of transgender men.<br /><br />Feminists have responded to the transgender movement with both absolute and relative arguments. The absolute argument is that womanhood is a fundamental biological reality and not a relative state of mind that can be redistributed to anyone who comes asking for it. The relative one is, like nearly all relative rights arguments, an assertion of unique victimhood.<br /><br />The Marxist paradigm easily defeats past claims of victimhood. By the sixties, the old class warfare model had evolved to adopt and dispose of such past claims like an efficient factory, beginning with the original class of victims, the white working class, once the vanguard of the revolution, but quickly banished to the ranks of reactionaries and oppressors of the oppressed.<br /><br />From the lofty progressive vantage point of the current year, every domestic group on whose behalf the leftists of a century ago had advocated, coal miners, factory workers, women, Italian and Jewish immigrants, the rural poor, have now become the contemptible enemies of mankind.<br /><br />At the rapid pace of radicalization, everyone from white gay men to black men to lesbians, are being prepped for the social abattoir. By 2035, the only true victims may be groups so bizarre and warped as to be barely conceivable today. Before they too are exposed as the oppressors.<br /><br />Under intersectionality, each right is also a wrong, and each liberation conceals another oppression. The process of liberation is a constant search for new wrongs, new minorities to liberate and then denounce in a constant upheaval of society that masks the oppressive transfer of power from the citizenry to a revolutionary vanguard that also doubles as the true ruling class.<br /><br />The true oppression is a liberation movement that frees no one, only pits people against one another, giving each grievance its hour in the sun, before turning the aggrieved into the aggressors, so that only the revolutionaries can ever wield any meaningful power by arbitrating who the oppressors and the oppressed are at given moment.<br /><br />And that is what relative rights look like.<br /><br />When rights are dependent on defining who the oppressed and the oppressors are, then those rights are not truly inalienable rights given by the Creator or by a foundational document, but by the constantly shifting paradigms of academia and the accompanying leftist politics.<br /><br />Who the oppressed and the oppressors are can change overnight, as feminists found out. Yesterday, women were the oppressed, today any man who puts on a dress is oppressed.<br /><br />The difference between your rights being determined day to day by King George III or the editorial department of the New York Times is a preference for one tyranny over another.<br /><br />Absolute rights, like those in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, build one achievement on top of another. And that is the rights that most Americans, even most liberals, thought that they were getting, but instead the oppressed groups of yesterday wonder why the revolutionary moment seems to have passed them by leaving them with less than they had.<br /><br />What happened to the revolution, they wonder? What happened is that it’s a revolution.<br /><br />A revolution is a state of instability. Freedom doesn’t come from revolutions, but from the order that emerges afterward. That’s why Americans commemorate July 4th, 1776 as Independence Day. July 4th was neither the first nor the final shot fired for independence. Like the French, we could have made an original violent confrontation, the Boston Massacre, into our Bastille Day. Or we could have made Evacuation Day, a mostly forgotten holiday marking the British departure from New York City and the end of British rule, into the date of our independence.<br /><br />But instead we chose to commemorate the aspirational vision of the Declaration of Independence. Revolutions and battles come and go, but we wanted to build our independence around a new order of liberty, not around the perpetual revolution championed by some radicals.<br /><br />In my book, <a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left">Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against The Left</a>, I described the radical American leftists who wanted to perpetuate the revolution and saw France as a model.<br /><br />“Eternal providence called on you, you alone, since the world began, to reestablish on earth the empire of justice and liberty,” Robespierre had rhapsodized. During the Reign of Terror, the French leftist had assured fellow radicals that it would all be worth it for, “by sealing our work with our blood, we may witness at least the dawn of universal happiness.”<br /><br />Some American leftists plotted to topple George Washington and the Constitution to pursue a French style perpetual revolution that would, after enough bloodshed, offer universal happiness.<br /><br />Today the “dawn of universal happiness” has been replaced by the “right side of history”, but both are revolutionary movements of relative rights that are always incomplete and seeking perfection. But human affairs are by definition imperfect. The American experiment offered the security of absolute rights while the leftist approach is to rob of everyone of their rights over and over in search of the perfect state, the empire of justice and liberty, and the right side of history.<br /><br />The real struggle is still between the absolute rights guaranteed nearly 250 years ago by the Declaration of Independence, and the relative rights promised by the leftist revolutions which are still going on today. And it is this clash of rights that will determine the future of our rights.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/6594856086977557842/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/victimhood-is-oppressive-system-of.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="0 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/6594856086977557842" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/6594856086977557842" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/victimhood-is-oppressive-system-of.html" rel="alternate" title="Victimhood is an Oppressive System of Relative Rights" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimImrJW43MM98Ggmq-DI25Has94jG295J5nkT4xEfn7x_5aqQ-jwJSqniS3PIY6QJA_Zwcy__RlyNausHB7FIt3vgpQcJG2NrwSaJrvlQR1s3vsvYtEqOZ14QhvDWB19nz0VQVvPDEBUIwRFk4w9NTt7uLUA8ONcbbpT8m_nBp1jVcPOiNzvv8Kg/s72-w640-h528-c/image_2024-04-26_181345322.png" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-4025750075673547933</id><published>2024-04-26T03:37:00.003-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-26T03:37:51.832-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="civil war"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Hollywood"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">The Real ‘Civil War’</title><content type="html"><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8av312G7qwcA8PSR4D9W5v-9uVh84bHXtMlvI1PTTFanCxUrs254Bm6yTldGRRNPUDOiwtMiUBtFiFEh-1kU5rfmScrr4M1JdNxZegmIpyEPwW1YpLy1MDxMWeilYjN2fQ4G0wV1uTAWWn9eXgSX3FDD44N96gSXnhBMuyq53fZ5gyM920sPT0Q/s945/image_2024-04-26_003706925.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="644" data-original-width="945" height="436" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8av312G7qwcA8PSR4D9W5v-9uVh84bHXtMlvI1PTTFanCxUrs254Bm6yTldGRRNPUDOiwtMiUBtFiFEh-1kU5rfmScrr4M1JdNxZegmIpyEPwW1YpLy1MDxMWeilYjN2fQ4G0wV1uTAWWn9eXgSX3FDD44N96gSXnhBMuyq53fZ5gyM920sPT0Q/w640-h436/image_2024-04-26_003706925.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px;">A moronic liberal president opens up the borders to mass migration in order to change the nation’s demographics and win an election, but instead touches off a civil war when the governor of a conservative state refuses federal orders to let any more refugees inside.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">It’s not just the state of the Biden administration, but&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Second Civil War</em>, an HBO political satire from the era of the Clinton administration, that does what&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Civil War</em>, a 2024 movie, won’t.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Civil War</em>, currently number one at the box office, has a lot in common with its 1997 predecessor, both are civil war movies whose posters feature a battered Statue of Liberty and show the country being torn apart through the eyes of the media, but the difference between them is that&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Second Civil War</em>&nbsp;brought up issues while<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">&nbsp;Civil War</em>&nbsp;carefully avoids them.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">In 1997 it was still possible for a prestige production to discuss issues like immigration from both sides, to take shots not only at the conservatives, caricatured predictably as hypocritical xenophobic buffoons, but also at an equally mindless liberal elite using immigration for political gain, while being blind to the economic and social damage that it’s inflicting on the country.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">Such a position is inconceivable in 2024. That is why<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">&nbsp;Civil War&nbsp;</em>imagines California and Texas teaming up to topple an abusive president, but not the issues that would drive a civil war. The Western Forces militiamen are culturally coded as right-wing and xenophobic, and the reporters as liberals, but otherwise cannot touch on what would make Americans kill each other.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">In&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Second Civil War’</em>s black comedy, the administration is importing millions of migrants “the lumps at the bottom of the melting pot” with the specific purposes of winning swing states. Faced with pushback from The Nation of Islam, representing black Muslims, who are fighting the Reconquista Latinos of California, the president plans to import millions of Koreans.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">What was satire in 1997 is just politics in 2024. The nation’s foreign policy is being determined by a sizable Muslim minority in Dearborn, Michigan, which supports Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. The implausible demographic transformation in 1997 is a reality now as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/election-jihad-islamic-groups-are-hijacking-our-elections/" style="background-color: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; color: #008285; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Muslims make up 10%</a>&nbsp;of the Georgia State Senate delegation. Everything is diverse and in a state of perpetual war.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">The&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Second Civil War’</em>s Republicans don’t actually oppose immigration, they just posture for political reasons but have no intention of actually closing the border. Neither side in this bleak farce believes in anything, but is just falling into a civil war to gain a political advantage. The only truly implausible thing in the movie is that it depicts media people fighting each other over political issues. The media of 2024 is far too much of a political monoculture to ever dissent.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">And so is the entertainment industry.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">Hollywood today operates under codes stricter than anything in the Hays era. Everything from the number of minorities to the depiction of other cultures, religions and countries (especially China) is closely governed and passes through multiple layers of censorship. Much like in China, the only acceptable position is advocacy and the lack of it is its own sort of protest.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">If&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Civil War</em>, like<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">&nbsp;The Second Civil War</em>, were to address immigration in the current cultural climate, it would be impossible for the movie to do anything except take a militant open borders position and to spend its entire running time denouncing and demonizing anything else. And the same would be true for any other political issue or position. The only safe way to tell a story about a civil war that isn’t just going to be non-stop political scolding is to suppress the politics.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">And that negative space may be more revealing than anything that actually is in the movie.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">Liberal critics are not wrong when they point out that Alex Garland,&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Civil War’</em>s director, has done little more than transplant a conventional civil war narrative that could have just as easily been set in the former Yugoslavia to America, and that it offers little substance beyond the obligatory celebration of the heroism and horror of war journalism and the shock at a nation tearing itself apart, but what they miss is that they are the reason for the civil war.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">And for the obligatory silence.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">Nations tear themselves apart when they can no longer talk to each other or about the issues at issue. Cautionary warnings about a civil war do no good when the political atmosphere is so totalitarian and stifling that we can’t even discuss why we might end up fighting one another.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">Talk isn’t a remedy for everything. The North and the South understood each other pretty well and there was plenty of vigorous discourse before the onset of hostilities. And sometimes differences are indeed irresolvable. Or unlikely to be resolved. But there were actual efforts to find a compromise, like the redemption of the slaves, or a third option such as expanding America into Canada or Mexico, but there are no longer any efforts at a middle ground now.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">The Left refuses to accept limits on anything. Borders must be fully open and every migrant must be allowed to come and live here. The most graphic kinds of pornography must be forced on children in public schools. Men must be allowed to pretend to be women. Terrorists must be allowed to kill without resistance. Money must be spent by the government without limit. DEI racial quotas must be imposed everywhere. All reliable energy sources must be banned.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">There is no middle ground to any of this. Every institution in our cultural, intellectual&nbsp; and political life has been ideologically compromised and broadcasts the same absolutist position while insisting that any dissent is a “threat to democracy” that must be urgently suppressed.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">How does that trajectory end in anything other than a civil war?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">There are already two Americas separated by culture into mutually exclusive echo chambers. In the nineties, there were still debates, but by the late oughts, an iron curtain had fallen over the culture. Conservatives exist in the liberal echo chamber only as broadly stereotyped caricatures, racist idiots in red hats carrying guns, with no awareness of what they actually believe.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">In that blind spot,&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Civil War</em>&nbsp;can only conceive of a civil war, but not what might bring it about.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">Garland suggests that the absence of clear motives provides a space in which people can draw their own conclusions, rather than being told what to think about the war. There’s something praiseworthy about a movie asking the audience to make up its own mind, but it’s also a calculated evasion. Ambiguity is the cultural dissent most present in totalitarian systems.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">It’s one thing to let people make up their minds, another to be afraid of saying what you think.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">Say what you will about&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Second Civil War,</em>&nbsp;a lopsided and fumbling political satire that crammed in everyone from James Earl Jones, a badly miscast Phil Hartman (coming off his Saturday Night Live portray of Bill Clinton) as a moronic president, and Dennis Leary, from the director of&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Gremlins&nbsp;</em>and<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">&nbsp;Looney Tunes: Back in Action</em>, but it wasn’t afraid to offend anyone.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">(Can you imagine any contemporary movie showing an LA mayor laying claim to the city in Spanish before being shot and killed by the Nation of Islam without everyone getting canceled?)</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">And that was as typical of 90s culture as the total political monoculture is of the current age.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Civil War</em>&nbsp;is a movie about a civil war that is careful not to offend anyone. And in doing so it already offended the same leftists who complained that&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Don’t Look Up</em>&nbsp;was only metaphorically, not literally, about global warming, and every show isn’t sufficiently committed to the cause.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">Silence and ambiguity are evasive and ineffectual responses to such a totalitarian movement.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">What’s driving us toward a civil war are not vague concepts like “divisiveness” and “polarization”, it’s that we have no hope of resolving conflicts that we can’t even talk about. One of the few relics of the vigorous debates of the 90s is Bill Maher’s&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Politically Incorrect</em>. And even it has been ghettoized as “right wing” because its liberal host sometimes dissents from the Left.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">That’s why the civil war we’re in is mostly silent. At least to the Left which is incapable of even seeing the other side and is convinced that with enough pressure and open borders, it will disappear. The numbers, whether Biden’s poll numbers or national polls, show otherwise.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">Faced with pushback, the Left embraces state repression and political violence, whether it’s the Trump trials or the rioting mobs in the street who alternate between terrorizing cities for BLM, abortion or Hamas, rigs elections and centralizes its authority all to “save democracy”.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">But what is it saving democracy from except the other half of the country? Or democracy itself.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">A generation later,&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Second Civil War,&nbsp;</em>can appear prescient about what is actually happening and more importantly about how we stopped being able to talk to each other. Its sendup of the follies of the media is in stark contrast to the humorless journalists of&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Civil War&nbsp;</em>who are willing to die to report on what is going on for no other purpose than to bear witness.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Second Civil War&nbsp;</em>allowed us to laugh at each other which is about the best possible counter to a civil war. In the era of&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Civil War</em>, satire like the rest of comedy is dead because it’s been replaced by partisan mockery aimed squarely at the other side. When there are no other perspectives, all that remains is a sanctimonious seriousness with no vision or imagination.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Civil War</em>’s journalist protagonists travel the country to Washington D.C. to report back that war is violent. This kind of reductive narrative is what happens when we don’t talk about what’s actually going on and out of that silence, a civil war that will tear us apart really can come.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/4025750075673547933/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/the-real-civil-war.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="0 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/4025750075673547933" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/4025750075673547933" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/the-real-civil-war.html" rel="alternate" title="The Real ‘Civil War’" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8av312G7qwcA8PSR4D9W5v-9uVh84bHXtMlvI1PTTFanCxUrs254Bm6yTldGRRNPUDOiwtMiUBtFiFEh-1kU5rfmScrr4M1JdNxZegmIpyEPwW1YpLy1MDxMWeilYjN2fQ4G0wV1uTAWWn9eXgSX3FDD44N96gSXnhBMuyq53fZ5gyM920sPT0Q/s72-w640-h436-c/image_2024-04-26_003706925.png" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-4245870694644128115</id><published>2024-04-25T02:44:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-25T02:44:00.222-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Passover - From Slavery to Freedom</title><content type="html"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy2la5MXAQywypxC2Yz7iK_EyK1NKlQLmWW147DoH8KSF8ve-BWw1pVSvYYLWEJxQhOsDz0cWmXONBdo1RoEZ_5KPTvjpWNH_m8OiUADYcL__p0bXAs0iCgMHnPRv1E-lIb0YjLnIJwIvA_pg9S7Ztnu36db7Gp0bAn98eITeuT_Tz0g9pTYUN4g/s1012/image_2024-04-24_234348359.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="505" data-original-width="1012" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy2la5MXAQywypxC2Yz7iK_EyK1NKlQLmWW147DoH8KSF8ve-BWw1pVSvYYLWEJxQhOsDz0cWmXONBdo1RoEZ_5KPTvjpWNH_m8OiUADYcL__p0bXAs0iCgMHnPRv1E-lIb0YjLnIJwIvA_pg9S7Ztnu36db7Gp0bAn98eITeuT_Tz0g9pTYUN4g/w640-h320/image_2024-04-24_234348359.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>As the first days of another Passover conclude with the echoes of "Once we were slaves and now we are free" and "Next year in Jerusalem" recited at the Seder nights ringing in our ears, we know that freedom is a lot more than being able to board a plane and fly off to Jerusalem.<br /><br />Slavery did not end with the fall of Pharaoh. Since then we have become slaves again, lived under the rule of iron-fisted tyrants and forgotten what the very idea of freedom means. And that will likely happen again and again until the age of oppression ends. What is this freedom that we gained with the fall of a Pharaoh, his drowning armies, and the last sight of his pyramids?<br /><br />Freedom, like slavery, is as much a state of mind as a state of being. It is possible to be legally free, yet to have no freedom of action whatsoever. And it is possible to be legally a slave and yet to be free in defiance of those restrictions. External coercion alone does not make a man free or slave. <br /><br />Slavery, as all our ancestors learned at one time or another, is a state of mind.<br /><br />What is a slave? A slave is complicit in his own oppression. His slavery has become his natural state and he looks to his master, not to free him, but to command him. He does not want to be free and he resents the very idea of freedom. The Jews in Egypt were not merely restrained by chains and guards. If they had been, then the task of their liberation would have been much simpler. But just as an addictive drug crosses the barrier from physical to psychological dependency, they were enslaved not just with external, but internal chains. They moaned not at the fact of slavery, but at the extremity of it. When their taskmasters complained to Pharaoh, it was not about being enslaved, but of not being given the straw with which to build the bricks that had become their duty.<br /><br />The worst slavery is of the most insidious kind. It leaves the slave able to think and act, but not as a free man. It leaves him with cunning, but not courage. He is able to use force, but only to bring other slaves into line. And most hideously, this state of affairs seems moral and natural to him. This is his freedom.<br /><br />The true slave has come to love big brother, to worship at the foot of the system that oppresses him. It is this twisted love that must be torn out of him. It is this idolatry of the whip before which he kneels, this panting to know who his superiors and who his inferiors are, this love of a vast order that allows him to be lost in its wonders, to gaze in awe at the empire of tomorrow which builds its own tombs today, that must be broken. These are his gods and he must kill them within himself to be free.<br /><br />The Exodus is not the story of the emergence of free men who were enslaved, but the slow painful process by which slaves became a nation of free men, a long troubled journey which has not yet ended. That is why we celebrate Passover, not as an event of the past, but as of a road that we still travel on our long journey from slavery to freedom. Not just the journey of the Jews, but of humanity.<br /><br />Having escaped from Pharaoh, the Jews built a glittering calf, and having left the desert behind, they sought out a king. Every idol and tyrant was another token of slavery, a desire to put one's ear up against the doorpost and become slaves for life. The idols have changed, but their meaning has not. There is still the pursuit of the master, the master of international law, of a global state, the expert gods of the superstate who rule over the present and the future and dispose of the lives of men.<br /><br />There are far too many synagogues that worship the Democratic Party, rather than G-d, that bow to the ghost of FDR, and whose scriptures are to be found in the smeared ink of the New York Times. And in Jerusalem far too many eyes look longingly to Washington and to Brussels, to the cities on the hill which offer order, truth and peace.<br /><br />It is easy to slip into this kind of slavery. The pyramids are grand, the slogans are clever and the future seems assured. It is only when the dusty messenger comes along to whisper that "He has remembered". that those who have not forgotten gather and some among those who have forgotten, remember that they are slaves.<br /><br />In Egypt the system of the state had to be smashed, not just smashed, but discredited. The war between slavery and freedom could not end until the system of slavery had become ridiculous, until Pharaoh appeared a buffoon and his power no more than organized madness. And yet even so for a generation liberated from slavery, this majestic system, the only one they had ever known, remained their template, and in times of crisis, their immediate instinct was to retreat back to the only civilization they had known.<br /><br />The slavery of the present is a more subtle thing. It grips the mind more tightly than the body. It still remembers that men enslave themselves best. It knows also that true power comes from making all complicit in its crimes so that they are also complicit in their own degradation. The system only asks that each man enslave himself and kill his own children. And once he has done that, he will only feel it right to demand that everyone else do likewise.<br /><br />Do it for the environment, for social justice, for the Pharaoh of every age and his ideology. Enslave your mind. Kill your children.<br /><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div>This is the slavery of the system. It requires few whips and many words. It nudges men to be their own taskmasters and to reach out their hands to the new Pharaoh in the hope that he will save them. It is this slavery which is so pervasive, which Passover wakes us from, if it has not already been perverted into the Passover of the slave, into civil rights seders and eco-matzas with donations to Planned Parenthood which will do what the midwives did not.<br /><br />"Once we were slaves," the ancient words call on us to remember that we have been freed. That it is no longer Pharaoh who enslaves us, but we who enslave ourselves. "Now we are free men." But what is freedom really? Is it the freedom to worship G-d or to worship the system? The system proclaims that it is god. And that is the great lie which ends in the death of the system and its slaves.<br /><br />Like the slaves of ancient Egypt, we are shaken, dragged out of our everyday routine and commanded to be free. But how do you command men and women to be free? You can lead them through the habits of free men and women who think of themselves as kings and queens, who drink wine while reclining, who sing loudly in defiance of all oppressors, who boldly proclaim "Next year in Jerusalem" while the pharaohs and czars of D.C. and the EU bare their teeth at the Jews living in Jerusalem.<br /><br />You can unroll the scroll of history and show them how they were taken out, but all this routine is useless unless they understand and are sensible that they are free. Free not in their habits, but in their minds. Ritual is the gateway to a state of mind. A ritual of freedom only succeeds when it invokes a state of mental freedom. Otherwise it is a rite, a practice, a habit whose codes may help some future generation unlock its meaning, but which means little today.<br /><br />Passover is the beginning and the end. It is the start of the journey and the end of it and we are always in the middle, on the long road out of Egypt, discovering that there are more chains in our minds than we realized a year earlier or a hundred or a thousand years ago. Each step we take toward freedom also reminds us of how far we still have to go.<br /><br />It is the ritual that reminds us that we are still on the journey, that though we have been lulled by the routine of the system, the trap of the present that like the soothing warmth of an ice storm or the peaceful feeling of a drowning swimmer, embraces us in the forgetfulness of the dying moment, concealing from us the truth that the journey is not over. The desert still lies before us.<br /><br />This journey is the human journey. It is the recreation of what mankind lost when it defied G-d, when it turned with weapons on each other, when it built towers, created systems and tried to climb to heaven on the backs of slaves and pyramids. It is a transformative road that requires us to not only endure, but to learn.<br /><br />Surrounded by willing slaves who preach the creed of slavery, we must speak for freedom. Though few seem to remember the journey or the chains, it is our duty to remind ourselves. The message of Passover fully begins only when the holiday ends and its habits carry over into our daily lives.<br /><br />Once we were slaves, now we are free</div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/4245870694644128115/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/passover-from-slavery-to-freedom.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="6 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/4245870694644128115" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/4245870694644128115" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/passover-from-slavery-to-freedom.html" rel="alternate" title="Passover - From Slavery to Freedom" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy2la5MXAQywypxC2Yz7iK_EyK1NKlQLmWW147DoH8KSF8ve-BWw1pVSvYYLWEJxQhOsDz0cWmXONBdo1RoEZ_5KPTvjpWNH_m8OiUADYcL__p0bXAs0iCgMHnPRv1E-lIb0YjLnIJwIvA_pg9S7Ztnu36db7Gp0bAn98eITeuT_Tz0g9pTYUN4g/s72-w640-h320-c/image_2024-04-24_234348359.png" width="72"/><thr:total>6</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-2497308675176040324</id><published>2024-04-21T21:56:00.002-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-21T21:56:30.303-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Islamic terrorism"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Islamization"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">The New Jihadists Are Our Kids</title><content type="html"><div><span style="font-size: medium;">“I will use my knives and machete to slit their throats and kill them."</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_1ANr_e-pCpudJ5jigSMmwgsgJyywyqxz9HzOa9Dx8sWhwl2oayIEcH58tvKM8-xn3BJg2crsI1c6vePY3pAvp-uzaqEs_mnE_QZWNy84cqHQl3gszaCZlGXbUaptQpAIpnvg2ajA5v45D8hp356NMdkWybn1u4alwVLlsuGI74pj9qib2BSP3g/s1600/alexander.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_1ANr_e-pCpudJ5jigSMmwgsgJyywyqxz9HzOa9Dx8sWhwl2oayIEcH58tvKM8-xn3BJg2crsI1c6vePY3pAvp-uzaqEs_mnE_QZWNy84cqHQl3gszaCZlGXbUaptQpAIpnvg2ajA5v45D8hp356NMdkWybn1u4alwVLlsuGI74pj9qib2BSP3g/w640-h360/alexander.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><br /> Coeur d’Alene, an Idaho city with a population of over 50,000, had too many churches. Alexander Scott Mercurio, a new teen convert to Islam, had a plan to “fix that real soon.”<br /><br />Ramadan was almost over and Mercurio was unhappy because he believed that he was a bad Muslim who hadn’t even assaulted, let alone killed any Christians, and would go to hell.<br /><br />“I am a hypocrite who has not even spat in the face of a kafir (non-Muslim),” he complained in online chats. “Let alone spilled their blood and induced terror into their hearts and minds.”<br /><br />Mercurio wasn’t sure if he could be considered a good Muslim without killing Christians.<br /><br />“I really don’t want to miss out on the opportunity for jihad in Ramadan,” he worried.<br /><br />While the bloody Islamic holiday of Ramadan is often used as a pretext to warn America, Israel and other countries to stop fighting Islamic terrorists lest it offend Muslims, it’s actually a time of redoubled terrorism. And Mercurio wanted to get in on that murderous spiritual opportunity.<br /><br />“I’ve been thinking about Jihad. Well, I always am, but I mean it’s Ramadan,” Mercurio agonized. “I have motivation for nothing but fighting, like some kind of insatiable bloodlust for the life juice of these idolaters, a craving for mayhem and murder to terrorize those around me… primarily against churches.”<br /><br />There are “three or five churches within walking distance of me” who would be objects of his “insatiable bloodlust: for the blood of non-Muslims.<br /><br />Mercurio decided that he would strike on “the last few days of Ramadan, probably on Sunday, their special day.”<br /><br />The special day was April 7th also known as the Octave Day of Easter or the Sunday of Divine Mercy and would have been well known to the Muslim convert who was raised as a Christian by his parents. But Islam has no mercy, certainly not divine and not human either, and neither did Mercurio who fantasized about massacring Christians on “their special day” of mercy.<br /><br />Alexander Scott Mercurio had started out as a white supremacist before converting to Islam at the age of seventeen. He took on a user name meaning ‘total submission’ in Russian (because of his Russian immigrant mother) and whined about North Idaho and his “very Christian and conservative parents” who “want me to stop being Muslim” while he fantasized about building weapons that would allow him to “heap massacres upon the kuffar (non-Muslims) daily”.<br /><br />The Muslim convert had been allegedly working on sending cryptocurrency donations to ISIS while taking part in an online group that attacked the Taliban for not being murderous enough.<br /><br />Mercurio had allegedly begun chatting with a Muslim terrorist in Gaza who was moving money to ISIS, but then his pal, whom the FBI only says was “believed to have died”, presumably in fighting with Israel, went offline and an informant took over the account and became the receptacle for the convert’s fantasies about killing all the Christians.<br /><br />“Walk to the nearest Church. Stop close by the church, equip the weapon(s) and storm the temple, kill as many as possible…. then burn the temple to the ground, flee the scene, then move onto the next church, rinse and repeat for all 21+ churches in the town until killed.”<br /><br />Later the Muslim convert elaborated that he would “walk into a church and then start beating people with the ‘baton’; hit them first on the kneecaps and elbows… I will beat them only to incapacitate them, I will use my knives and machete to slit their throats and kill them.”<br /><br />Then he would set the church on fire.<br /><br />While Mercurio searched for knives and axes, he really needed something more powerful. After exploring the possibility of building some sort of flamethrower, he decided to get his dad’s guns. Initially he thought about killing or beating his father over the head with a pipe to get the key to the gun safe, and then decided he could just break in and grab the guns while his dad was out.<br /><br />Mercurio got his ISIS flag, developed his plans and finalized a script for his ‘martyrdom’ video which included responding to the call of the Islamic State by “killing Jews and Christians” and “his message to the disbelievers to go to hell”.<br /><br />But his plan to massacre churchgoers with guns, knives and fire ended when he was busted.<br /><br />What had worried Mercurio most of all was not being caught, but having his act of Islamic terror misrepresented by the media. He was concerned that they would “slander me in the media and call me a mentally ill psycho who did this out of desperation and not as an act of religiously motivated terrorism.”<br /><br />It will be easy for the media to dismiss Alexander Scott Mercurio as a teen who fantasized about killing people, and if he hadn’t done it for Islam, would have done it as a Neo-Nazi or just a random school shooter. And yet the documents released show that he agonized about trying to be a good Muslim. Failing at other traditional Islamic practices and prone to lapsing into pornography, he found the traditional Islamic loophole to get into ‘paradise’ through murder.<br /><br />Mercurio is one of a<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/while-we-were-watching-airports-islamic-terrorists-won-our-children/"> growing number of American teens</a> who convert to Islam, often in out-of-the-way places and then get involved in Islamic terrorism. Recent cases include Trevor Bickford, 19, of Maine, who tried to attack NYPD officers in Times Square with a Machete, Xavier Pelkey, 18, also of Maine, who tried to recruit two teens for a terrorist attack in Chicago, Cole James Bridges from Akron, Ohio, Mateo Ventura, a high school student in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and <a href="https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2020/09/the-doj-forced-new-jersey-town-to.html">Jonathan Xie</a>, a 20-year-old from a New Jersey suburb.<br /><br />There is a pattern of teenage boys, resentful of their parents and society, with nothing to aspire to and nothing to believe in, drifting into fantasies of violently terrorizing everyone around them.<br /><br />Islam, like Neo-Nazism, gave Alexander Scott Mercurio something to believe in and kill for.<br /><br />“I will not live to see the day that the flag of Tawheed (Islam) flutters over every land, nor the day that the entire Earth is governed by the Sharia of Allah,” he wrote. “I will gladly spill my blood again and again to make that a reality.”<br /><br />Both Islam and Neo-Nazism offered and offer young men the opportunity to kill and then die for a glorious cause, destroying everything around them so that a new dark order will rule the earth.<br /><br />This primal evil impulse at the heart of Nazism, Communism, Islam and so many other evils is a perversion of the good impulse to build, uphold and to protect that America once used to offer.<br /><br />Troubled young men seeking direction used to join the military, but now they find only wokeness there. The culture banishes young men, telling them they suffer from toxic masculinity and<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/masculinity-and-the-future-of-the-west/"> they drift into movements</a> like those run by Muslim convert and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate or into Islam itself which preaches they can find meaning by killing Christians.<br /><br />America needs to do more than spy on these young men, it needs to give them something to fight for. Because if it does not, Islam will. And they will become agents of our ancient enemy to kill, burn and bring down America, Europe and the entire civilized world under the flag of Islam.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="820" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0v2TR0DVnPQnnhqbsCinLmGjYyh9utrBMYXTEFMH1gSAEKtGzOOsmSpkUydR9-dRDQJ908mnLol7pp4lZZ5NHafelqwBnLC1TucNPLVlcWkRKFUTP1D9NxVBf3R4P7Eu0m-b_1OB28Q3wNH5s7mXA9mWSrsCzZGbm37-b-3rjqrDawh5cZdVpcA/w640-h245/domestic%20enemies%20facebook%20banner.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><i>[The full story of the Democratic plot to rig the 1864 election is told in the final chapter of my book,&nbsp;<a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" target="_blank">‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left’.</a>]</i></p></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/2497308675176040324/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/the-new-jihadists-are-our-kids.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="4 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/2497308675176040324" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/2497308675176040324" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/the-new-jihadists-are-our-kids.html" rel="alternate" title="The New Jihadists Are Our Kids" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_1ANr_e-pCpudJ5jigSMmwgsgJyywyqxz9HzOa9Dx8sWhwl2oayIEcH58tvKM8-xn3BJg2crsI1c6vePY3pAvp-uzaqEs_mnE_QZWNy84cqHQl3gszaCZlGXbUaptQpAIpnvg2ajA5v45D8hp356NMdkWybn1u4alwVLlsuGI74pj9qib2BSP3g/s72-w640-h360-c/alexander.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>4</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-7967692798193329628</id><published>2024-04-19T00:01:00.003-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-19T00:03:27.825-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Big Tech"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Culture"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">The Unreal Politics of Unreal Men</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSmXkBCLutKXGE69Fe6HieUPvdVCzIv0u0G0mBrJnfcR-hNpIIfzFAqYaMiABxvSgYIBs6A1Zl_v_hRvG0liQubjSacL01_TZBF7fYL8xeNdyFTB2xDjZFeVpoxXeYmG27Zxtke8_xmdQRONC81b5nmYdjYnHJda9WJBpFFcjlqqrJH1cK3tp25Q/s865/unreal%20dle2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="657" data-original-width="865" height="486" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSmXkBCLutKXGE69Fe6HieUPvdVCzIv0u0G0mBrJnfcR-hNpIIfzFAqYaMiABxvSgYIBs6A1Zl_v_hRvG0liQubjSacL01_TZBF7fYL8xeNdyFTB2xDjZFeVpoxXeYmG27Zxtke8_xmdQRONC81b5nmYdjYnHJda9WJBpFFcjlqqrJH1cK3tp25Q/w640-h486/unreal%20dle2.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">“Social media isn’t real life.” It’s a phrase we hear a lot. But is that really true?<br /><br />When Congress threatened to block China from controlling TikTok, the company riled up a mob of tweens to threaten Congress. If the Senate gives in, the outcome will be real enough.<br /><br />TikTok certainly is real life. If you doubt it, look at the rate of teenage girls who have themselves mutilated because of trans trends on the app, even younger girls who killed themselves over material in the app’s algorithm or the spread of verbal or motor ‘tics’ to teens over the platform.<br /><br />Social media isn’t real in the same way as the wind and the rain, or the laws of physics or economics, it’s an alternate reality spread through the internal realities of our minds.<br /><br />Before social media, there was just media, the concentration of mass media, radio, film and newspapers that wrecked much of the twentieth century and killed millions of people. It is no coincidence that some of the most destructive social and political movements arose in line with the growth of the media. It’s impossible to imagine Nazism or Communism without the media.<br /><br />What made people think that the Third Reich or the Communist revolution were viable? The Communists and Nazis were savvy propagandists who took full advantage of newspapers, film and all the elements of modern spectacle to concoct an alternate reality for millions of people. The crowds at Hitler rallies or Communist marches were living in their own version of the real world. And it was not until Hitler shot himself in his bunker or the Berlin Wall fell that they woke up to find that everything they believed had been as delusional.as anything on TikTok.<br /><br />Social media is more unreal than media because, like Hitler rallies, it’s a mutual fantasy. TikTok denizens take that to the next level through triumphs over reality by claiming, for example, that Helen Keller never existed. Like a magical world, social media is a place where people can create their reality and then use intimidation and peer pressure to enforce it on others.<br /><br />In this state of affairs, millions will believe that men can become women. And vice versa.<br /><br />What was a consensual mutual fantasy within a like minded group became a non consensual fantasy once it was being imposed on women in locker rooms and swimming matches. The process by which the fantasy of a small group became a sexual assault on a larger society parallels how the unreal realities of narrow groups, whether it’s Communists fantasizing about the abolition of private property or master race fetishists, becomes a form of violence when a private fantasy is tethered to political power and imposed on the unwilling millions.<br /><br />The unreal is sustained first by the delusions of those who wish to believe, then by persuadable useful idiots, then by mass propaganda and finally by force, social, political and finally violence as the failure of the unreal makes its devotees desperate to uphold it by any means necessary.<br /><br />The power of the unreal lies in the magic of its unreality. Whether it entails transforming economics, gender or our understanding of the universe, revolutionary movements promise to reveal what is hidden and to accomplish the impossible if people just believe. But to believe, people must leave the realm of the real and enter into the alternate universe of the unreal.<br /><br />Unreal politics depend on an unreal life. In times past, mass ignorance of the larger world made it possible for entire peoples to believe that their destinies depended on constellations or conversations with trees. There was no larger reality and so much of life took place in the unreal. But the citizens of modern civilization had to be immersed in the unreal. And only the advent of the mass media made it possible to immerse millions in unreal alternate realities.<br /><br />The more people inhabit an alternate reality, the more they can be convinced to believe in anything. The phenomenon that began with the dawn of the media is reaching its apotheosis.<br /><br />People could be skeptical of what they read in one newspaper, but the age of mass media introduced a barrage of newspapers, and then supplemented them with immediate messaging from radio broadcasts and then cinematic newsreels. The sheer concentration of park speakers, newspaper editorials, magazines, and headlines marching across the silver screen proved much harder to resist because it created an enveloping effect seemingly from everywhere.<br /><br />Beyond politics, mass media made life unreal. People began taking fashion cues, life advice and moral guidance from the media. When celebrities divorced, it became more normalized, when they committed suicide, a rash of suicides followed. Millions of people stopped using their own judgment and took to repeating whatever they heard as if media culture was their society.<br /><br />Reality fractured. Nations went to war or went bankrupt. The family fell apart. And throughout it all, the population climbed deeper and farther into the alternate reality of the media.<br /><br />The internet fragmented that alternate reality and it made way for more immersive and less relatable echo chambers. The old media ceased to be able to speak to anyone outside its echo chamber, but the new media was even more unreal and less tethered to external reality. And the old media came to chase the fantasies of the new media no matter what dead ends they led to.<br /><br />The old media, Hollywood, cable news and the rest of what’s left of the old mass media apparatus struggle to compete with the truly immersive swipe, stream and social media culture that not only surround smartphone users, but climb inside their heads and invite them to enter another world. And waiting in the wings is an augmented reality metaverse populated by AI bots that will make the worst of the current social media seem like the early days of the internet.<br /><br />A preview of it can be founded on ‘child-friendly’ metaverses like Roblox or Minecraft where eight-year-olds are groomed by sexual predators, ordered to carve names in blood, like the recently exposed<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39698406"> ‘764’ international network</a>, and where reality becomes malleable long before children have reached an age where they have any sense of a clear and definite truth.<br /><br />That is the same reason why the transgender movement is targeting increasingly younger kids.<br /><br />Mass indoctrination programs always work best with the young. Children are the easiest to introduce to an imaginary world. And they will have the hardest time breaking away from it.<br /><br />Children have always lived in imaginary worlds, but as mass media turned to colonizing those words, seizing control over them and imposing rules that crippled childhood imaginations, it also groomed each generation to buy its commercial products and then its ideological products.<br /><br />What began with a for-profit colonization of childhood became a non-profit colonization in the same way that most of the old infrastructure of capitalism became political enterprises. ‘Woke’ and ‘broke’ are true, but also miss the point. The goal of the ESG system is for corporations to produce primarily political outcomes. Rather than achieving profits through competition, ESG secures wealth by consolidating political control over entire nations. That begins with children.<br /><br />Woke corporations care very little what anyone over forty thinks about them. That is why the vast majority of advertising is aimed at younger audiences. Despite their assurances to their shareholders, they are not thinking about the next quarter, but about the right side of history.<br /><br />The collective labor to create a utopia with an ideal outcome for everyone is a fantasy that has overtaken entire societies. The only reason anyone believes in it is that life has become unreal.<br /><br />The degrees of unreality began with the rise of an upper class and then a middle class that had been sheltered from the realities of life and had a poor understanding of basic external realities. Newspapers, novels, theater, radio, film, television, the internet, social media and smartphones each came with a jump in radical politics as life became ever more mediated and unreal.<br /><br />America’s early settlers struggled, but had a fairly tight grip on common sense, but by the mid-19th century, middle class families, with little understanding of settlement, headed West because they had been enraptured by popular accounts and worthless guide books, with no understanding of what it would take to make the trip, suffered and in some cases died.<br /><br />They were already living in an alternate reality created by an early form of media.<br /><br />Today, a population insulated by multiple media layers believes in seven impossible things before breakfast. Politicians, with no idea of how to accomplish anything, make worthless promises based on whatever trends on social media, run up trillions in debt and believe that they are making the world a better place without ever knowing the world as it truly is.<br /><br />The concentrations of power, whether in D.C. or Silicon Valley, are more unreal than ever, mad courts where the echo chambers of power allow the elites to flirt with insane fantasies.<br /><br />Anything seemed possible in Woodstock. Anything seems possible when playing with $6 trillion budgets. And anything can seem to be true in a modern university critical studies course.<br /><br />Unreality has become our religion. Traditional faiths are falling away in favor of this unreality.<br /><br />Our elites believe that we can all inhabit their unreal utopia if only we believe, make the appropriate sacrifices and stamp out all skepticism. And then the magic will be unleashed.<br /><br />All of this seems more plausible to the laptop class who already live in a magical world where any food they want arrives in a few swipes, their screens hold endless entertainment and the world seems to exist to service them. In this unreal world, everything seems possible.<br /><br />Living in it, reality seems like a distant fantasy. Fully automated luxury Communism, gender transformation, a global order and plastic bags summoning the wrath of Mother Earth are real.<br /><br />The ancient pharaohs had no trouble believing that they were gods, because for a limited time they were. And for a much more limited time, our elites, either ancient and powerful, or young and wielding dot com enabled jobs, appear to be because they are detached from reality.<br /><br />Living unreal lives, they adopt unreal beliefs until the unreal bubble of their lives bursts.<br /><br />But where the pharaohs and ancient monarchs lived unreal lives on account of their power, the unreal inhabitants have been wrapped in unreality by media. Their power is an illusion. They are not god-kings, they have little real power, only a power fantasy fed to them by those with actual power. Whether it’s corporate media or radical politics, the true power lies with those who control the tap, not to those who get drunk on the unreal fantasies they provide.<br /><br />The more the West loses itself in an unreal world, the worse the real world becomes.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/7967692798193329628/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/the-unreal-politics-of-unreal-men.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="2 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/7967692798193329628" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/7967692798193329628" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/the-unreal-politics-of-unreal-men.html" rel="alternate" title="The Unreal Politics of Unreal Men" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSmXkBCLutKXGE69Fe6HieUPvdVCzIv0u0G0mBrJnfcR-hNpIIfzFAqYaMiABxvSgYIBs6A1Zl_v_hRvG0liQubjSacL01_TZBF7fYL8xeNdyFTB2xDjZFeVpoxXeYmG27Zxtke8_xmdQRONC81b5nmYdjYnHJda9WJBpFFcjlqqrJH1cK3tp25Q/s72-w640-h486-c/unreal%20dle2.png" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-9211182615867936058</id><published>2024-04-18T00:23:00.001-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-18T00:25:32.184-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Islam"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Islamization"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="UK"/><title type="text">Majority of Young Muslims in UK Want Islamic Law</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR3pXfJHjZ52KKa0MPDGnlpwhQW5F0AGStIGvmSduOYe591AnOnoNhDug0qlmec7JkAUQn9sfCjEHhmRqLk29R_IpmnZt6fIYTSZMkBXVKzA0LKAxX1vE9bzqCI_8O4sqRpQsOE-dBt2TkJWWsfwZ-Rc1kCiNxANYTmFKsKiEOYx9dwUOeEZ9O7w/s1053/islam%20will%20dominate%20frame2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="1053" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR3pXfJHjZ52KKa0MPDGnlpwhQW5F0AGStIGvmSduOYe591AnOnoNhDug0qlmec7JkAUQn9sfCjEHhmRqLk29R_IpmnZt6fIYTSZMkBXVKzA0LKAxX1vE9bzqCI_8O4sqRpQsOE-dBt2TkJWWsfwZ-Rc1kCiNxANYTmFKsKiEOYx9dwUOeEZ9O7w/w640-h404/islam%20will%20dominate%20frame2.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">1 in 3 Muslims living in the UK want Islam to be declared the national religion and for everyone to live under the brutal system of Sharia law which calls for beheadings and amputations.<br /><br />Less than 1 in 4 Muslims opposed the move while the majority were unwilling to commit.<br /><br />Among younger Muslims 18-24, 1 in 5 believed that making Islam “our national religion” was “very desirable”, and a total of 43% supported redefining the UK as an Islamic state.<br /><br />Only 16% opposed it.<br /><br />This younger group who are the future of Muslims in the UK was also the one most likely to sympathize with Islamic terrorists.<br /><br />1 in 4 British Muslim men expressed a positive view of Jihad. 46% of British Muslims sympathized with Hamas as did 58% of younger British Muslims. None effectively sympathize with Israel. Previously <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1494648/One-in-four-Muslims-sympathises-with-motives-of-terrorists.html">1 in 4 Muslims</a> had sympathized with the 7/7 suicide bombers in London.<br /><br />52% of Muslims supported a ‘blasphemy’ ban on Mohammed cartoons. This Sharia ‘blasphemy code’ had already been used to justify violence and Islamic terrorist attacks against artists and magazines. Including the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris by heavily armed Muslim terrorists.<br /><br />A <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11433776/Quarter-of-British-Muslims-sympathise-with-Charlie-Hebdo-terrorists.html">previous poll</a> reported on by The Telegraph in 2015 showed that 1 in 4 Muslims supported the Hebdo attacks.<br /><br />Among younger Muslim settlers, 59% supported a blasphemy ban, with only 20% opposed.<br /><br />57% of Muslim settlers in the UK were willing to call for the “compulsory use of Halal food in all schools and hospitals”. Among younger settlers, 67% were in favor of mandatory Halal.<br /><br />Setting up conflicts with feminists and LGBTQ activists, 1 in 5 Muslims wanted to legalize polygamy and 1 in 4 wanted to ban homosexuality. While a majority of Muslim colonists would not commit to the move, both measures had similar levels of opposition and support.<br /><br />Imposing Sharia law would be a ban on most of the social and lifestyle choices of the Left. That is a point that the British Left, like its Western counterparts, has not come to terms with, but may have to as Muslims in the UK move beyond supporting non-Muslim parties to forming their own.<br /><br />39% of UK Muslims supported the formation of a Muslim political party potentially of the kind that had been set up by Muslim Brotherhood movements in middle eastern countries.<br /><br />Only 16% were opposed.<br /><br />Among younger Muslim colonists, 46% favored a Muslim political party to contend for power in Britain. Such a party could then be used to impose Islamic law on the rest of the country.<br /><br />On most issues, with the exception of polygamy, the younger Muslims are more willing to support the imposition of Islam on the United Kingdom than their elders. The truly relevant poll numbers are not those that cover the entire population, but the next generation.<br /><br />While most polls group together Muslims, this survey broke down different groups of Muslims showing significant differences among white Muslim converts, Arab Muslims, Pakistani Muslims and African Muslims. White converts have been depicted as the most “extreme” due to their “misunderstanding” of Islam and indeed have been involved in terrorism, but the survey shows that they are actually less likely to support the imposition of Islamic law through blasphemy bans on pictures of Mohammed, Halal, homosexuality, polygamy and other Sharia measures.<br /><br />41% of Pakistani Muslim colonists in the UK want Sharia law and 37% want Islam to become the national religion. Pakistani settlers are the largest single Muslim group surveyed. 61% of Pakistan Muslim settlers supported compulsory Halal and 49% wanted an Islamic political party.<br /><br />While Muslims women in the UK were distinctly unenthusiastic about bringing back polygamy (15% in favor, 38% against), and an abortion ban (19% for and 28% against) they were even more totalitarian about some elements of Islamic theocracy than the men including compulsory Halal (65% for and 7%) against, and even more likely to sympathize with Hamas than the men.<br /><br />While the poll commissioned by the <a href="https://henryjacksonsociety.org/">Henry Jackson Society</a> and conducted by <a href="https://jlpartners.com/polling-results">J.L. Partners </a>which was published by <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/06/one-in-four-british-muslims-believe-hamas-israel/">The Telegraph</a> found widespread support for Hamas, it also showed that the backing for the brutal Islamic terror theocracy in Israel also translated into some support for establishing a similar system to the one Hamas is working toward in the UK.<br /><br />A growing number of British Muslims not only want to see an end to Israel, but also to the UK with Islam as the national religion, the imposition of Islamic law and an Islamic political party.<br /><br />The current poll does not show that the Muslim settler perspective in the UK is growing worse rather it shows that Muslims remained fairly consistent while the British have been in denial.<br /><br />Similar polls expressing high levels of support for sharia law have circulated as far back as 2006 when 40% of Muslims in the UK wanted Islamic law. 18 years later, 36% support Islamic law.<br /><br />Across nearly twenty years, Muslims in the UK want what they wanted in their home countries, theocratic supremacy and an end to equal rights for non-Muslims. The support for Hamas is an expression of a larger supremacist tendency that killed thousands in Israel, but millions around the world from India to Afghanistan to the Middle East and to London, Paris and New York City.<br /><br />A majority of young Muslims in the UK want sharia Islamic law and a political party to impose it.<br /><br />If the current immigration rates and demographic transformation rates continue, the question is not if it will fall to Islamic rule, but, when Britain will fall.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/9211182615867936058/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/majority-of-young-muslims-in-uk-want.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="2 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/9211182615867936058" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/9211182615867936058" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/majority-of-young-muslims-in-uk-want.html" rel="alternate" title="Majority of Young Muslims in UK Want Islamic Law" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR3pXfJHjZ52KKa0MPDGnlpwhQW5F0AGStIGvmSduOYe591AnOnoNhDug0qlmec7JkAUQn9sfCjEHhmRqLk29R_IpmnZt6fIYTSZMkBXVKzA0LKAxX1vE9bzqCI_8O4sqRpQsOE-dBt2TkJWWsfwZ-Rc1kCiNxANYTmFKsKiEOYx9dwUOeEZ9O7w/s72-w640-h404-c/islam%20will%20dominate%20frame2.png" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-3140383169398595403</id><published>2024-04-16T23:25:00.002-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-16T23:25:20.947-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="iran"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Israel"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Launched from Iran, Made in America</title><content type="html"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFohk5ci3NVJSnw7xZnA1ORxZHSch0aSDyGB3TaD8AnBBafJoiLHfBmiZl7Mswf3kTLXS1tfkka9_sIEbZmI-hubemZU92GjsgqHuAEuYq-cdiVlHjTQuZk9EmuV4BHKMxlPdwZvOCuWI1NSXxOq1VDhyeMS7_Roxq2ycfZyWt7_eFbOOXM6_Ncg/s946/image_2024-04-16_202511213.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="946" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFohk5ci3NVJSnw7xZnA1ORxZHSch0aSDyGB3TaD8AnBBafJoiLHfBmiZl7Mswf3kTLXS1tfkka9_sIEbZmI-hubemZU92GjsgqHuAEuYq-cdiVlHjTQuZk9EmuV4BHKMxlPdwZvOCuWI1NSXxOq1VDhyeMS7_Roxq2ycfZyWt7_eFbOOXM6_Ncg/w640-h440/image_2024-04-16_202511213.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />On Saturday night, Iran launched its attack, codenamed “Ya Rasool Allah” or “Messenger of Allah”, on the Jewish State, after Israel had taken out the Iranian mastermind of Oct 7.<br /><br />The attack began with waves of drones to swamp Israel’s air defenses, followed by cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. While the British and the French took out some drones, U.S. forces accounted for about half the total of drones and some of the ballistic missiles, leaving the rest for the Israelis to deal with. By the time it was over, 99% of the attack had been intercepted.<br /><br />The only serious injury in the “Messenger of Allah” bombardment was to a 7-year-old Muslim Bedouin girl.<br /><br />But why was Iran able to launch so many missiles at all, how did everyone know when the attack would happen, and why is Biden warning Israel not to respond to the Iranian attack?<br /><br />Last month, the Biden administration provided a $10 billion sanctions waiver for Iran. The administration warned Iran that it would impose sanctions on its missile program if it sent them to Russia. There was no mention of the real focus of those sanctions which was concern that Iran would provide those weapons to proxy terror groups like Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias and the Houthis, now using those weapons to attack civilian container ships and US Navy vessels.<br /><br />Iran should never have had that weapons technology in the first place. In 2006, the Bush administration had convinced the UN Security Council to sanction Iran’s missile program “to prevent the supply, sale or transfer …of all items, materials, equipment, goods and technology which could contribute to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”<br /><br />Part of Obama’s Iran Deal allowed those sanctions to expire on October 18, 2023. Two weeks after the Oct 7 attacks on Israel which killed over 1,000 people, the Biden administration let the UN sanctions lapse, making it easier for Iran to buy, export and boost its development of weapons technology. The administration tried to substitute a limited sanctions program of its own for the original sanctions while continuing to allow Iran to access billions in sanctions relief.<br /><br />Where the Trump administration had snapped back sanctions for Iran’s violations, Biden lifted them a month after taking office. Sen. Ted Cruz has estimated that the Biden administration allowed around $100 billion to flow to Iran since 2021. That $10 billion was just the latest of it.<br /><br />Despite the open violations of the Iran Deal, Biden allowed Iran to benefit from an agreement it was actively violating every single day even as it was attacking American soldiers and Israel.<br /><br />When Biden allowed Iran that latest $10 billion in sanctions relief, not only were US Navy personnel actively in combat with Iran’s Houthi terrorists, but two Navy SEALS had died in an operation to intercept Iranian weapons being smuggled from Somalia to the Houthis in Yemen. In Jordan, an attack by Iran’s Shiite militias operating out of Iraq had killed three American servicemembers. While Biden appeared willing to let Iran get away with it, Israel was not.<br /><br />As General Mohammad Zahedi and other figures from Iran’s IRGC international terror network were meeting in a building near Iran’s terror facility in Damascus, they were taken out. After his death, Iranian sources named Zahedi as<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-takes-out-iranian-mastermind-of-oct-7/"> the mastermind of the Oct 7 </a>attacks.<br /><br />What followed were a series of back-channel communications between the Biden administration and Iran through various third parties. The goal of these negotiations was to persuade Iran not to “escalate” the conflict by <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/before-and-after-iran-communicated-attack-to-biden-admin/">limiting its attack</a> to what a Reuters report described as “within certain limits.” The timing of the attack was so widely known that media reports correctly repeated warnings that Iran would strike within 36 hours. Hours before the attack began, not only Iran’s allies, but also other countries in the region, were already prepared for it to begin.<br /><br />Instead of making clear to Iran that an attack was unacceptable, the Biden administration was pre-arranging the terms of the attack on one of its allies while warning it not to respond.<br /><br />When Iran launched the attack, it had been coordinated with Biden officials. Had it really wanted to launch a damaging assault, it would have changed the timing of the attack. Instead it not only launched the attack on time, but it did so while communicating with D.C. through backchannels before and after the attack. A Biden administration official <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/before-and-after-iran-communicated-attack-to-biden-admin/">stated that</a> there were “direct communications through the Swiss channel” including to tell the Biden administration when the attack was winding down.<br /><br />That is not how attacks normally work, but this was not a normal attack, nor is it the actual one.<br /><br />Iran launched the attack to demonstrate its capabilities. For the first time it showed that it could coordinate missile and drone launches from all of its clients across the region. The launches took place not only from Iran, but from the Houthis in Yemen, Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon.<br /><br />The attacks allowed Iran to test a coordinated assault across four countries, to test how Israeli and American air defenses would respond to being swarmed, and to score a propaganda victory with images of its drones over Jerusalem and that part of the Temple Mount where Muslim invaders had built their Al Aqsa mosque. What it was not meant to do was be devastating.<br /><br />Iran would have rejoiced if it had hammered Israeli air bases and cities, but barring critical errors by Israel and America, it wasn’t expecting more than an expensive light show and a little rubble.<br /><br />Compare the Iranian attack on Israel with the finely coordinated attack on Tower 22, the U.S. base on the Jordanian-Iranian border, where the Iraqi Shiite terror proxies <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/did-iran-agent-serving-as-pentagon-chief-of-staff-cause-death-of-3-soldiers/">had perfectly timed the attack</a> to coincide with a moment of confusion caused by the return of a U.S. drone, or the Oct 7 attack which set out to analyze and dismantle Israel’s border defense network, timing drone attacks to disable automated defenses, with this straightforward telegraphed attack.<br /><br />If Iran remains true to form, the actual attack will come from its proxies, will exploit vulnerabilities in Israeli defenses and will allow the regime to maintain plausible deniability as it did on Oct 7.<br /><br />What happened on Saturday night was not the actual attack, but a feint with the added purpose of convincing the Biden administration that its diplomatic approach can work. Beginning with the Iran Deal, the Islamic terror state has played a complicated game, welcoming diplomacy and then abruptly rejecting it, holding out hope and then taking it away, but only doing it long enough to keep up the chase. This time around, Tehran convinced Biden that its Islamic leadership, despite their cries of, “Death to America” are rational actors who want to manage the conflict.<br /><br />In the two years before Oct 7, Hamas convinced the Biden administration and the Israelis that it could be dealt with before launching a devastating assault, so too Iran, like other Islamic terrorist entities, specializes in luring America into a state of complacency before an attack.<br /><br />And so the Biden administration is warning Israel not to respond. After all these years it believes that Iran can be dealt with and that it successfully negotiated an end to the crisis. It allowed Iran to launch its attack on Israel, helped intercept it and foolishly believes that Tehran is now satisfied because all its leaders ever wanted, like Biden, was a show, not the real thing.<br /><br />Biden thinks that when Iran’s elites chant, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”, it’s as empty a slogan as all of his campaign promises. But, unlike Biden, Iran’s leaders keep their promises. The slogans are serious. They intend to destroy America and they intend to destroy Israel.<br /><br />American soldiers<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/after-iran-killed-3-u-s-soldiers-biden-gives-it-10b-sanctions-waiver/"> continue dying </a>at the hands of Iran and its terror proxies while D.C. diplomats conduct empty negotiations and <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/chief-of-staff-of-pentagon-counterterrorism-office-served-iranian-gov/">Iran’s agents p</a>enetrate their way into our government.<br /><br />After September 11, Biden suggested, “this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran.” Since then billions of dollars have made their way to Iran. The Islamic terror state has killed and kidnapped Americans, it is encircling America’s allies in the region, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and still the ‘no strings’ checks keep coming from D.C.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/3140383169398595403/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/launched-from-iran-made-in-america.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="0 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/3140383169398595403" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/3140383169398595403" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/launched-from-iran-made-in-america.html" rel="alternate" title="Launched from Iran, Made in America" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFohk5ci3NVJSnw7xZnA1ORxZHSch0aSDyGB3TaD8AnBBafJoiLHfBmiZl7Mswf3kTLXS1tfkka9_sIEbZmI-hubemZU92GjsgqHuAEuYq-cdiVlHjTQuZk9EmuV4BHKMxlPdwZvOCuWI1NSXxOq1VDhyeMS7_Roxq2ycfZyWt7_eFbOOXM6_Ncg/s72-w640-h440-c/image_2024-04-16_202511213.png" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-4248605393313010987</id><published>2024-04-16T00:51:00.008-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-16T00:54:23.329-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="environmentalism"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="green energy"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">No Cars for the Working Class</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhysOec05vBzIHT5orSpOzyoDUQgHMb8qfmZa5s3o3oSLEWB6_wj6N-B3dc7EoSVXm9PFoAj-81_tSH8BDCeppiqeFO0ldXZkJLznjobFIIEuD19Btw0nJajmPmzxoyxVxJHzy0ZM8KGwoT0h2V3JOVYl3jVaDA6waITsxe_YQy4TaLGxm9p2WS1w/s1000/image_2024-04-15_215409824.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1000" height="538" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhysOec05vBzIHT5orSpOzyoDUQgHMb8qfmZa5s3o3oSLEWB6_wj6N-B3dc7EoSVXm9PFoAj-81_tSH8BDCeppiqeFO0ldXZkJLznjobFIIEuD19Btw0nJajmPmzxoyxVxJHzy0ZM8KGwoT0h2V3JOVYl3jVaDA6waITsxe_YQy4TaLGxm9p2WS1w/w640-h538/image_2024-04-15_215409824.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div>The electric streets of La La Land are full of Teslas, Rivians, Mercedes EQS’ and even pricier offerings from the rare earth mines of China. Here a Tesla Cybertruck, looking like a ramp some sportier vehicle will jump, passes Bentleys, canary yellow Lamborghinis and ice blue McLarens.</div><br />In the posher parts of California, from Beverly Hills to the Bay Area, the green revolution has come. The ubiquitous EVs charging in the driveways of seven figure mansions are shadowed by solar panels on the roof and sit side by side with signs declaring, “Hate has no home here.”<br /><br />Neither does affordability.<br /><br />The vast majority of electric cars, approaching 1 million, can be found in California. Compare that to the paltry 5,000 EVs in Arkansas or even the <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/amount-of-electric-vehicle-owners-by-state">under 50,000</a> in a sizable wealthy blue state like Massachusetts. The entire industry of sleek shiny cars that run on batteries only exists because California<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/electric-cars-are-bankrupting-the-auto-industry/"> taxed other car </a>buyers to subsidize Tesla and its emerging counterparts.<br /><br />California’s heavy subsidies and mild weather, its wealthy cities and conspicuously virtue signaling elites, made EVs possible, and made it impossible for them to evolve outside its warm leftist ecosystem. The vast majority of Californians (like most Americans) can’t afford, can’t use and won’t drive electric cars, but like so much else, the Newsom elites don’t tend to notice.<br /><br />Electric car owners in California<a href="https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/03/california-electric-cars-demographics/"> live in</a> “communities with mostly white and Asian, college-educated and high-income residents” who are mostly “concentrated in Silicon Valley cities and affluent coastal areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties.” That’s why most electric cars are luxury SUVs marketed to very exclusive groups in very exclusive areas.<br /><br />Outside of these enclaves, there isn’t much of an EV industry and there never will be one. Electric cars are not an emerging product, but a niche one as subsidized toys for the rich.<br /><br />That’s a problem because the Biden administration, like a lot of Democrat states, is moving to <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/car-bans-could-be-a-deciding-factor-in-2024/">ban cars by 2035</a>. It’s one thing for California’s elites to once again disregard over 90% of the state on the assumption that a one-party system and aggressive ballot harvesting can overcome most obstacles, but the car bans have also extended to Maryland (46,060 EVs with 0.91%), Massachusetts (49,440 EVs and 0.91%), Connecticut (22,030 EVs and 0.75%), Oregon (46,980 EVs and 1.24%) and New York (84,670 EVs and 0.75%) among other blue states.<br /><br />How do you get from those numbers to total adoption in a little over a decade? You don’t.<br /><br />The assumption that most car owners would drink the Electric Vehicle Kool Aid and jump on board ignored the basic realities of energy, engineering and economics. There isn’t enough power, materials or money to make 2035 anything other than a political four-car pileup.<br /><br />GM and Ford have lost billions trying to push electric cars. GM promised to <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/all-the-people-who-care-about-the-planet-already-bought-electric-cars/">sell 1 million EVs</a> by 2025. In the first quarter of 20244, it sold 16,425 EVs. A year from now, it will need to have sold 250,000 of them. How is GM planning to get from 16,425 to 250,000 EVs sold? GM is bragging about the Cadillac LYRIQ. Last December, GM shut down production of the Chevy Bolt which ran to $26,000 and, unlike the LYRIQ, was too affordable and therefore not actually profitable.<br /><br />GM is hoping that the Cadillac LYRIQ will tap into the same luxury EV market that Tesla, Mercedes and every EV SUV is already aimed at, but as usual it may be too late to the party Even liberal millionaires who care so much about the planet that they fly private jets to Tahiti to reconnect with nature at their second or third homes only need so many green cars.<br /><br />Or as Edmunds’ Director of Insights Ivan Drury put it, most of those concerned about internal-combustion engines’ impact on the planet already bought electric vehicles.<br /><br />The latest <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/643334/ownership-ticks-fewer-nonowners-buy-one.aspx">Gallup poll shows</a> that the number of electric car owners slowly grew, but that those people are wealthy and most already have their cars. 7% of Americans now own an EV, only 9% would consider buying and 48% or half the country would not buy.<br /><br />Who are these electric refusniks who won’t drink the electric kool-aid? The working class.<br /><br />14% of EV owners are upper income while only 2% are working class. 61% of working class Americans won’t buy an electric car.<br /><br />Lefties who can see income inequality and disproportionate impact everywhere carefully refuse to see it in their policies which would bar the <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-bans-53-of-americans-from-buying-cars/">majority of the country</a> and most minorities from car ownership. A <a href="https://inspireadvancedtransportation.com/industry/who-owns-evs-today-ev-ownership-trends-and-changes-2021-ev-consumer-behavior-report-rundown/">2020 survey</a> found that 87% of EV owners are white. In a 2023 survey, black people were the most likely of any group to say that they <a href="https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/cars/news-blog/survey-breaks-down-ev-preferences-by-politics-and-ethnicity-44503708">would not</a> get an EV.<br /><br />After decades of lecturing everyone about systemic racism, capitalism and the evils of white men, a group of rich white people have decided to make it impossible for minorities and the poor to buy new cars. But what’s a little systemic racism when it means enriching China to save the planet from the threat of cars whose components can actually be made in America?<br /><br />While Secretary of Transportation in Absentia Pete Buttigieg scolds the “racist highways”, his administration is pulling off the single great example of disproportionate impact in generations. The average price of an EV is $53,469 and the average black household income is $41,500 while the average white household income is $68,000. You can still get a perfectly good family car for only $20,000, but good luck finding an EV that isn’t actively on fire in that price range.<br /><br />A policy of no cars for the working class or minorities may be a little bit awkward, but in the electric kool-aid world, much like the Mercedes EQS and the Chevy Bolt, not all people or cars are created equal, and not all people should be allowed to own cars. Most actually shouldn’t.<br /><br />Environmentalism ushers in a neo-feudalism in which things have to be taken away from us to save the planet. And the people most likely to feel the loss are those at the bottom.<br /><br />Hike the price of cars by $15,000 and the ones most likely to notice are those for whom that isn’t a monthly paycheck, but much of their annual income. Raise the price of airline tickets to compensate for carbon footprints and it’s the poor who won’t be able to visit grandma. Nickel and dime everything from supermarket bags to soda bottles and it’s a regressive green tax.<br /><br />Much of the green nickel and diming is invisible. Prices just go up a little bit on everything. But lefties have put the working class on a collision course with mobility, employment and independence. A car ban is not like a lightbulb ban or even a gas stove ban.<br /><br />Americans used to love cars because they were freedom on wheels. Decades of regulations and cheap imports from Asia have turned the driving experience for most Americans into a series of warning beeps, government tracking devices, and warnings not to do this and that, while slowly inching along in one of several semi-identical white, black or dark black boxes.<br /><br />And now even that is on the verge of disappearing.<br /><br />A car ban means most Americans will not be able to own, they will lease. American car ownership, like free speech and every other form of freedom, will become a distant memory.<br /><br />Unless the drivers of America outrun the EV banners of the Biden administration leaving them behind like Sheriff Buford T. Justice or Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane eating their non-green dust.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/4248605393313010987/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/no-cars-for-working-class.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="6 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/4248605393313010987" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/4248605393313010987" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/no-cars-for-working-class.html" rel="alternate" title="No Cars for the Working Class" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhysOec05vBzIHT5orSpOzyoDUQgHMb8qfmZa5s3o3oSLEWB6_wj6N-B3dc7EoSVXm9PFoAj-81_tSH8BDCeppiqeFO0ldXZkJLznjobFIIEuD19Btw0nJajmPmzxoyxVxJHzy0ZM8KGwoT0h2V3JOVYl3jVaDA6waITsxe_YQy4TaLGxm9p2WS1w/s72-w640-h538-c/image_2024-04-15_215409824.png" width="72"/><thr:total>6</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-1019330206922930690</id><published>2024-04-14T13:04:00.003-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-14T13:08:59.647-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Israel"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Left"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Swastikas Are Progressive Now</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifx1UdI-zTx7-Vn1H3yY2LeIsFWl9FdoCouKviiSPo63amA7oKpkHIU1ScpNQ37HoSOVms5uRFh1RYeIkLPRFlIQpZW-WkVfrf8NFnungf8Agauvc9rL379QuEUF4I2i4cFWVD_1AVLKF_fUHqfJ1U-iX8M2eOIzvPCaL_k1yGqFWcW-rfotsa2A/s869/image_2024-04-14_100852446.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="580" data-original-width="869" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifx1UdI-zTx7-Vn1H3yY2LeIsFWl9FdoCouKviiSPo63amA7oKpkHIU1ScpNQ37HoSOVms5uRFh1RYeIkLPRFlIQpZW-WkVfrf8NFnungf8Agauvc9rL379QuEUF4I2i4cFWVD_1AVLKF_fUHqfJ1U-iX8M2eOIzvPCaL_k1yGqFWcW-rfotsa2A/w640-h428/image_2024-04-14_100852446.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><span style="font-size: medium;">After Hamas supporters vandalized a synagogue with a swastika, leftist cheered this prototypical Nazi act as a progressive commitment to human rights.<br /><br />“A swastika clearly has a deep and painful history for the people in our community, it’s a symbol of hatred and death,” Rabbi Ethan Witkovsky of Temple Beth El said.<br /><br />However Malcolm Harris, a former Occupy Wall Street activist and author of ‘Palo Alto’ and other books published through Hachette, explained that swastikas were progressive now.<br /><br />“Israel’s genocide has literally reversed the meaning of a swastika on a synagogue from a Nazi threat to a condemnation of genocide,” Harris, who also writes for The Nation and Wired, argued.<br /><br />Harris claims that he viewed vandalizing a synagogue with a swastika as “an anti-zionist condemnation of Israeli genocide.” And if vandalizing synagogues with swastikas, the ultimate symbol of Nazi behavior is only “anti-Zionist”, not antisemitic, then there really is no difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and between leftist anti-Zionists and Nazi antisemites.<br /><br />David Austin Walsh, a postdoc at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, who has a book on the “far-right” coming out from Yale University Press, <a href="https://twitter.com/PhilWMagness/status/1774938371741389264">chimed in</a>, “I’ll stipulate for the sake of argument that tagging a synagogue with a swastika has an ambiguous or multivariate meaning. How are we to determine which is the intended meaning?”<br /><br />Marshall Steinbaum, an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and a Senior Fellow at the Jain Family Institute, whined that, “I wish we lived in a world where spray-painting a swastika on a synagogue still meant Nazis”.<br /><br />In the UK, where the London Met Police had<a href="https://www.newsflare.com/video/599288/met-police-warn-two-londoners-holding-england-flag-that-they-may-face-arrest-during-pro-palestine-protest"> previously arrested </a>and<a href="https://twitter.com/Startinglifeag1/status/1775041638764601466"> threatened anti-Jihad protesters</a> for flying the St. George’s flag, an officer explained to a Jewish woman complaining about swastikas at a pro-Hamas hate rally that the swastikas <a href="https://www.gbnews.com/news/st-georges-flag-more-likely-arrest-swastika-flag-ben-habib">needed to be</a> viewed in context.<br /><br />In certain contexts, such as Neo-Nazi rallies, swastikas might be bad, but when leftists and their Islamist allies aim swastikas at Jews, these Neo-Neo-Nazis were actually progressive.<br /><br />While the debate about whether vandalizing synagogues with swastikas and waving swastikas at Jews was antisemitic, the progressive swastika was making its way around the world.<br /><br />A swastika, along with “Free Gaza” was painted<a href="https://www.jns.org/gaza-free-swastika-spray-painted-on-home-of-holocaust-survivors-in-belgium/"> over the home </a>of Holocaust survivors in Belgium while outside Temple Beth Israel in Philly, two women scrawled a swastika and the “from the river to the sea” call for destroying Israel and exterminating the Jews. A Swastika alongside a Star of David was drawn on the University of Michigan Hillel building where Jewish students attend events. Instagram comments on the student paper from many students defended the vandalism as a statement against Israel and in support of the terrorists.<br /><br />Islamist and leftist movements who defend Hamas and its mass murder of Jews on Oct 7 could hardly object to the swastika which is a mere symbol. What’s worse, burning entire families alive, raping women and holding them hostage, or drawing a few lines on a wall?<br /><br />Once the Left had accepted the legitimacy of Hamas atrocities as “resistance”, all that was left was redefining the swastika as a righteous repudiation of Jews and Israel.<br /><br />The “reversal” of the National Socialist swastika from a symbol of the worst kind of evil to a progressive symbol is itself a symbol of the mainstreaming of antisemitism on the Left.<br /><br />This was not something that happened overnight or in the aftermath of Oct 7.<br /><br />Anyone who has been paying attention to the state of the American Left had seen it coming.<br /><br />After the Hamas kidnapping and murder of 3 Israeli teens in 2014 that foreshadowed Oct 7, Steven Salaita, a Muslim professor whose “academic work” tried to connect American Indians to the ‘Palestinians’, tweeted support for the murder of the teens and other Jews.<br /><br />“If it’s ‘antisemitic’ to deplore colonisation, land theft, and child murder, then what choice does any person of conscience have?” Salaita tweeted. “Zionists: transforming ‘anti-semitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.”<br /><br />When the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign withdrew its job offer to him, academic associations <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/i-would-have-killed-all-jews-world-sjps-holocaust-daniel-greenfield/">and the media</a> rallied to Salaita’s defense. The American Association of University Professors, the Modern Language Association and the Middle East Studies Association celebrated a man who had tweeted that antisemitism was becoming “something honorable”.<br /><br />The Chicago Tribune provided Salaita with a platform to claim that he wasn’t really defending antisemitism. Salaita received a six figure settlement, the chancellor who fired him was ousted and the violent bigot’s latest book about the incident is due from Fordham University Press.<br /><br />Flying a progressive swastika is the climax of making antisemitism into “something honorable”.<br /><br />The path to the progressive swastika and the “honorable antisemitism” had plenty of stops that all involved mainstreaming antisemitism while swearing up and down that it was only anti-Zionism. The media mainstreamed hate sites like Mondoweiss where editors and contributors admitted<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/jews-and-jewish-anti-semites-collide-california-daniel-greenfield/"> that</a>, “I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, but I can understand why some are” and “<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/anti-semitic-islamophobia-hoax-daniel-greenfield/">Liberals like to</a> deceive themselves about Jewish power.”<br /><br />The DSA, which has led the campaign for Hamas, had invited a representative of <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/democratic-socialists-america-have-anti-semitism-daniel-greenfield/">Melenchon’s Communist allied</a> party from France, who claimed that when a “man of the left” is “called an anti-Semite, it means he’s not far from power.” That same party became the only one to refuse to condemn Oct 7 and political figures from the party accused Israel of killing its own children.<br /><br />In 2014, academia and the media were justifying antisemitism. By 2024, they’re rehabilitating the swastika as a progressive symbol. And this change is about more than the Jews.<br /><br />Jews tend to be the canaries in the coal mine. Fanatics and totalitarian movements may start with the Jews, but they never end there. The Jews are just a convenient inciting incident.<br /><br />Both the Nazis and Communists understood that the persecution of Jews would legitimize the worse crimes they intended to commit. When the Nazis began rounding up and killing Jews with no protest, it became easier to justify the killing of the German disabled and mentally ill, and later the larger eugenics program that would have wiped out the Slavs and many other peoples. And when the Communists began shutting down synagogues and executing rabbis, it became easier to justify the takeover of the church and to build a cult of personality around Stalin.<br /><br />While there are single-issue antisemites out there, major movements that start waving fascist or progressive swastikas don’t intend to limit their plans to just killing Jews. The Jews are a symbol of the power they want, as Melenchon put it, and the justification for it, as Islamists contend.<br /><br />Hamas, an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, originally<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-nazi-roots-of-hamas/"> financed by the Nazis</a>, claims that it just wants to destroy Israel. But other arms of the Brotherhood tried to seize control of the entire Middle East during the Arab Spring, have been integrated into Al Qaeda, and operate in America and Europe to aid Islamic terrorists around the world. When they brandish the swastika, it’s not cautionary, it’s aspirational. And the same is true of their leftist allies.<br /><br />By defining the Jews as the new Nazis, leftist movements like the DSA justify the mass murder of the Jews, and the violent tactics they use to seize power to fight the Jews. But the DSA’s vision of totalitarian socialism, National Socialism one might say, will not end with the Jews.<br /><br />The swastika, whether used as a banner or a symbol of reversal, mainstreams antisemitism, not just to call for the murder of Jews, but for the killing of all those who stand in their way.<br /><br />The progressive swastika is a symbol of death for Jews and for everyone else.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/1019330206922930690/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/swastikas-are-progressive-now.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="5 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/1019330206922930690" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/1019330206922930690" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/swastikas-are-progressive-now.html" rel="alternate" title="Swastikas Are Progressive Now" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifx1UdI-zTx7-Vn1H3yY2LeIsFWl9FdoCouKviiSPo63amA7oKpkHIU1ScpNQ37HoSOVms5uRFh1RYeIkLPRFlIQpZW-WkVfrf8NFnungf8Agauvc9rL379QuEUF4I2i4cFWVD_1AVLKF_fUHqfJ1U-iX8M2eOIzvPCaL_k1yGqFWcW-rfotsa2A/s72-w640-h428-c/image_2024-04-14_100852446.png" width="72"/><thr:total>5</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-3833113194046922109</id><published>2024-04-11T23:24:00.007-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-11T23:31:33.202-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="history"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Chicago Dems Plotted the World’s Greatest Jailbreak to Steal a Presidential Election</title><content type="html"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw0M_uuRCUGdzVyi9JK_syi2Rje7jzloF5dOKgJmglNAVgwTsm2Si_agUNnaITSnoU3BsGkjy5QYY_N084qf_UE_Wa4Eg4S1MXqUAyQyZKal4HEVX69ncDl_L33hqWZSmcgqQsOKr8Q3pzPfiiLyDy67teNETPQDtpKFVbVeWhdSJwN5ENoO7hXA/s1600/Torchlight-procession-George-B-McClellan-campaign-1864b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="994" data-original-width="1600" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw0M_uuRCUGdzVyi9JK_syi2Rje7jzloF5dOKgJmglNAVgwTsm2Si_agUNnaITSnoU3BsGkjy5QYY_N084qf_UE_Wa4Eg4S1MXqUAyQyZKal4HEVX69ncDl_L33hqWZSmcgqQsOKr8Q3pzPfiiLyDy67teNETPQDtpKFVbVeWhdSJwN5ENoO7hXA/w640-h398/Torchlight-procession-George-B-McClellan-campaign-1864b.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>During the Civil War, Democrats came up with a unique plan to find more voters.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><i style="text-align: left;">[Pre-order a copy of&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" target="_blank">Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left</a>’.]</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="text-align: left;"><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="text-align: left;"><br /></i></div><p>“They will vote early and often, and they will fight,” Charles Walsh, a top figure in the Democratic political machine who had unsuccessfully run for Sheriff of Cook County, promised.</p><p>The year was 1864 and Walsh, the “doorkeeper’ of the Illinois House, who lost an election to a Republican by less than 800 votes, had a plan to win a presidential election the Chicago Way.</p><p>It was simple.</p><p>Abraham Lincoln was so associated with Illinois that “Land of Lincoln” would become its name, but Chicago was a whole other matter. Could Chicago Democrats hope to win Illinois? The Democrats had bet big on Chicago by bringing the Democratic National Convention to town.</p><p>The Democratic convention adopted a platform claiming that “after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war”, it was time to negotiate a settlement. But the convention was also to be the opening round of what became known as the “Chicago Conspiracy” in which Democrats plotted treason, a coup and a unique way to win an election.</p><p>Even by the standards of a time when urban Democrat political machines would bring in prisoners and lunatics to vote, often more than once, and even waylay passerby, get them drunk and force them to vote Democrat (a practice known as ‘cooping’ that some historians claim led to Edgar Allen Poe’s mysterious death), Walsh’s plan was ambitious.</p><p>Previously, the Chicago Tribune had reported that, “the mayor of Chicago… released nearly all the inmates of the bridewell on condition that they would vote for him today.” But the Bridewell prison held mere hundreds of inmates and what it would take was the world’s greatest jailbreak.</p><p>Chicago needed some good Democrats and the Cook County Democrat bigwig knew where to get them. At Camp Douglas on the South Side of Chicago, tens of thousands of Confederate prisoners of war housed in poor conditions and suffering from a high death toll, like most large camps on both sides, had become a popular cause for Chicago’s Democrat ‘Copperheads’.</p><p>While previous efforts had been made to help some Confederate prisoners escape, the Chicago Conspiracy had a much better idea. Why not break them loose and have them vote Democrat?</p><p>The story of the Chicago Conspiracy is part of the lost history retold in my book, ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left’ which reveals the corrupt and violent origins of the American Left and the Democrats and what we can learn from that today.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2pU5aBGocFrQQhrrX_XE9lHgK8CYFwldGk2-PpYN_A1B2Y9KMIATrT46seKEGQcIwBVXfHdC2WFTJFjK1MS1d1ZB_JGpnOd7bMHm-9DqNtqJqPJrNTjah0OG1mwR9_GDA7YsVzfSXE2B404QCAh979xXTerycNy19h6N57aLUQBWddmB7NSYFxQ/s512/unnamed.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="303" data-original-width="512" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2pU5aBGocFrQQhrrX_XE9lHgK8CYFwldGk2-PpYN_A1B2Y9KMIATrT46seKEGQcIwBVXfHdC2WFTJFjK1MS1d1ZB_JGpnOd7bMHm-9DqNtqJqPJrNTjah0OG1mwR9_GDA7YsVzfSXE2B404QCAh979xXTerycNy19h6N57aLUQBWddmB7NSYFxQ/s320/unnamed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Walsh’s plan may seem wild, but it was actually part of a nationwide Democrat conspiracy against the election featuring terrorism, race riots and simultaneous coups in major Northern cities that is retold in detail in ‘Domestic Enemies . In New York, local Democrats and Confederate agents had staged the Draft Riots, attacking black people and Republicans to seize power and then when that failed a campaign of domestic terrorism by attempting to set fire to Broadway hotels and theaters with thousands of people trapped inside.<p></p><p>But Chicago Democrats like Walsh were more practical. He stockpiled weapons, which his daughter would later claim were meant to be used “to protect Democrats at the polls.” These Democrat election defense weapons included “200 stands of arms, with all the necessary ammunition and two cart-loads of large revolvers, loaded and capped ready for use.”</p><p>The Democratic National Convention would provide a pretext for a large number of visitors to come to Chicago all at once. And Chicago’s proximity to Canada, where the real conspiracies were being hatched under British supervision by radicals too extreme for the Confederacy, like John Wilkes Booth, would make it a convenient jumping off point for changing history.</p><p>(The combination came together in Walsh’s fellow conspirator, Col. George St. Leger Grenfell, a British mercenary who lived with his own harem in a Muslim country before coming to America, being arrested and sentenced to death, having his sentence commuted through the intervention of the British government, and then managing to escape by boat and becoming a pirate.)</p><p>With enemy agents, likely from the Knights of the Golden Circle, the predecessors of the KKK, blending in with the arrivals to the Democratic National Convention, they would have plenty of time to coordinate with Walsh’s Democrat thugs “ready to shed blood”. Then they would liberate the tens of thousands of Confederates in Camp Douglas. And take them out to vote.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpif2Q_2W-71jgF4un06_y_Z_CJaaqgM1VLVdDG9_JYO3-dcQr28RF6Ve6eLmNLbM95ByGmWE2R5TIJ9SEa8klWQrQA0Ih3jE9fb-yTCkYtyQ6K8GrAX1J5-z1zxkEDxzKD0pnhaHiH5GwWVnJmtnfOf0gbwxzCykazXWeiknZc319ubeSFMvv2Q/s962/campdouglas.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="962" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpif2Q_2W-71jgF4un06_y_Z_CJaaqgM1VLVdDG9_JYO3-dcQr28RF6Ve6eLmNLbM95ByGmWE2R5TIJ9SEa8klWQrQA0Ih3jE9fb-yTCkYtyQ6K8GrAX1J5-z1zxkEDxzKD0pnhaHiH5GwWVnJmtnfOf0gbwxzCykazXWeiknZc319ubeSFMvv2Q/s320/campdouglas.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The plan was that “the rebels were to march into the city” and “take possession of the polls, voting in each precinct, and preventing the deposition in the ballot-box of any other than the McClellan ticket.” Such gangland voting tactics were not unusual in Tammany Hall and other Democrat urban political machines. Indeed one reason that was given for not allowing women to vote was that it was too violent due to Democrat gangs terrorizing anyone who voted differently.<p></p><p>But Chicago Democrats were thinking even bigger with the world’s greatest jailbreak by bringing in tens of thousands of heavily armed Confederate Democrats who would, in Walsh’s words “vote early and often, and they will fight.”</p><p>In typical Chicago fashion, Walsh linked fighting and voting together.</p><p>Then, in even more typical Chicago fashion, the Chicago and Confederate Democrats, after voting, would loot all the banks.</p><p>Unlike the Draft Riots, which at least succeeded in driving enough Republicans and black voters out of New York City so that the Tammany Hall machine was able to secure Democrat control of local elections, the Chicago Conspiracy, like the entire Northwest Conspiracy, failed badly.</p><p>The Democrat plan to either rig the 1864 election or, failing that, seize control of major cities and secede from the United States, fell apart. These conspiracies owed less to the South, where the Confederate leadership was less likely to entertain such madness, than to local Democrat political machines, like those of Tammany Hall and Cook County, and British agents who publicly opposed slavery, but covertly were thrilled to see America tearing itself apart.</p><p>(The unresolved hostilities from the British covert backing for the South would play out in the form of the Fenian raids into Canada and the threat of a potential third war with America that continued to linger long after the North and the South had bandaged the wounds of their war. And there was a good deal of irony in Canada harboring some of the Democrat radicals who had originally been among the most vocal proponents of invading and annexing Canada.)</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN3DGDBDZjJRzIMbmwgDsPd5avUzth-l0bhym7MbgFrqvVjea4AcgowOrmGyP8nv_FkEImffmohryqOWTx4zyb3xh6u5-n_o1EsvXPz8RVlypmGTM9jgjyBU57eCI3UYdcuxbOg5gfWLwlBw9gQFusphMGWNHhyphenhyphenh0LEsxod3WEDDwvO2IBe-R1Zw/s1920/espi.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1313" data-original-width="1920" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN3DGDBDZjJRzIMbmwgDsPd5avUzth-l0bhym7MbgFrqvVjea4AcgowOrmGyP8nv_FkEImffmohryqOWTx4zyb3xh6u5-n_o1EsvXPz8RVlypmGTM9jgjyBU57eCI3UYdcuxbOg5gfWLwlBw9gQFusphMGWNHhyphenhyphenh0LEsxod3WEDDwvO2IBe-R1Zw/s320/espi.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>While Democrats like Walsh appeared to be making a dangerous gamble in an era when men could still be shot for treason, they were only mildly inconvenienced by their conspiracies, unlike Southerners, many of whom suffered greatly during the war even when they opposed slavery.<p></p><p>Even right after Lincoln’s assassination, Walsh was only sentenced to five years in prison and was released much sooner so that he was out by 1865. Other prominent conspirators walked away entirely including a former Chicago mayor. So did the majority of the party thugs who proved the Democrats protected their own whether in the streets or in a court of law.</p><p>While the Chicago Conspiracy failed, it’s hard not to see it as a trial run for the modern party.</p><p>The original plan to “seize the polls” and “stuff the boxes sufficiently to secure the city, county and State” and then “to utterly sack the city, burning and destroying every description of property, except what they could appropriate for their own use” seems like just the basic strategy of what Democrats have done to Chicago, Illinois and the United States.</p><p>“God be praised. Chicago has redeemed herself,” the Chicago Tribune had celebrated the Republican victory in 1862 even though the Democrats had “flooded the wards with illegal voters and counterfeit tickets.” But it’s been a long time since Chicago has been redeemed.</p><p>The illegal voters are everywhere and Democrats have ushered in illegal invaders from all the nations of the world to march across the Southern border and stuff ballot boxes and loot cities.</p><p>What was once a Democrat conspiracy is now just Democrat policy.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="820" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0v2TR0DVnPQnnhqbsCinLmGjYyh9utrBMYXTEFMH1gSAEKtGzOOsmSpkUydR9-dRDQJ908mnLol7pp4lZZ5NHafelqwBnLC1TucNPLVlcWkRKFUTP1D9NxVBf3R4P7Eu0m-b_1OB28Q3wNH5s7mXA9mWSrsCzZGbm37-b-3rjqrDawh5cZdVpcA/w640-h245/domestic%20enemies%20facebook%20banner.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><i>[The full story of the Democratic plot to rig the 1864 election is told in the final chapter of my book, <a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" target="_blank">‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left’.</a>]</i></p></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/3833113194046922109/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/chicago-dems-plotted-worlds-greatest.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="2 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/3833113194046922109" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/3833113194046922109" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/chicago-dems-plotted-worlds-greatest.html" rel="alternate" title="Chicago Dems Plotted the World’s Greatest Jailbreak to Steal a Presidential Election" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw0M_uuRCUGdzVyi9JK_syi2Rje7jzloF5dOKgJmglNAVgwTsm2Si_agUNnaITSnoU3BsGkjy5QYY_N084qf_UE_Wa4Eg4S1MXqUAyQyZKal4HEVX69ncDl_L33hqWZSmcgqQsOKr8Q3pzPfiiLyDy67teNETPQDtpKFVbVeWhdSJwN5ENoO7hXA/s72-w640-h398-c/Torchlight-procession-George-B-McClellan-campaign-1864b.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-6240586729263465244</id><published>2024-04-10T15:09:00.004-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-10T15:31:06.827-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Israel"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">The Untold Story of Israel After October 7th</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhex_WKQHUv2bn1Z957SPlVPD6_pgdzr_A35JMu4fbtU6WO4JqKnLl0_2AVtBVjGwtp4q4Wm4oR18bwioivizFLn9xUa_sLJAv2mI3bC1NwIdPgqQfbloEL1fs8mX-PBJXyPqNG-MndW99bIcPyqYSyb4oGJatvJRCAbHXQHP18E3q8XCmEkHc4vw/s742/image_2024-04-10_123056446.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="742" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhex_WKQHUv2bn1Z957SPlVPD6_pgdzr_A35JMu4fbtU6WO4JqKnLl0_2AVtBVjGwtp4q4Wm4oR18bwioivizFLn9xUa_sLJAv2mI3bC1NwIdPgqQfbloEL1fs8mX-PBJXyPqNG-MndW99bIcPyqYSyb4oGJatvJRCAbHXQHP18E3q8XCmEkHc4vw/w640-h374/image_2024-04-10_123056446.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div>The story of what happened after Oct 7 has played out in the international media as a montage of bombs and rubble. And while Israel’s campaign against the Hamas perpetrators of the horrific massacres, rapes and kidnappings is an important part of the story, it is not the only one.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtC6uebyDwD2Td9iR7_tqz9pC7zS7vTBIC6gPzRS1eAHtvBJNl8HqwZejZX8-PL36o42cRW_DypKdgCH24j9d-YKNc95F-O1gxBLajeetQCcgtYBWWEoJn8DhPLzBfTaZoNZhygy4pDmHTmPaGEOcyqRpn5ILJh-HMqxQPiBGX-Z-8-2wjWR82tA/s741/image_2024-04-10_122637935.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="741" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtC6uebyDwD2Td9iR7_tqz9pC7zS7vTBIC6gPzRS1eAHtvBJNl8HqwZejZX8-PL36o42cRW_DypKdgCH24j9d-YKNc95F-O1gxBLajeetQCcgtYBWWEoJn8DhPLzBfTaZoNZhygy4pDmHTmPaGEOcyqRpn5ILJh-HMqxQPiBGX-Z-8-2wjWR82tA/s320/image_2024-04-10_122637935.png" width="320" /></a></div>From the men who grabbed their guns and drove south in the hours after the attack began to the warehouses quickly set up to provide food and clothing for the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who were forced to leave their homes after the attacks from Gaza, inside Israel, the real story has been defined by a country coming together not only to fight, but to support each other.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_V_vKZxflRQLF7wstGsvKVC0aCWW7ZxQprs4ocUQIHYaJJ3Y6e1n85V4sfGTQ36icXzMRqkx-uERoBjuEVCLTmvzHlC6a6IN2UhtV6NB0AS1vsf8IMlFVPIGI7LEXqbCpUsD8iwqniQHqMR4xXPwZrEFb0CoXgI6B7ITAdhvFL4vxIApxzWHPZg/s831/image_2024-04-10_122600023.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="565" data-original-width="831" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_V_vKZxflRQLF7wstGsvKVC0aCWW7ZxQprs4ocUQIHYaJJ3Y6e1n85V4sfGTQ36icXzMRqkx-uERoBjuEVCLTmvzHlC6a6IN2UhtV6NB0AS1vsf8IMlFVPIGI7LEXqbCpUsD8iwqniQHqMR4xXPwZrEFb0CoXgI6B7ITAdhvFL4vxIApxzWHPZg/s320/image_2024-04-10_122600023.png" width="320" /></a></div>In the month after the attacks, one survey estimated that the majority of Israeli Jews were volunteering in one form or another at everything from baking cookies for soldiers to standing guard at potential terrorist targets. With hundreds of thousands of soldiers mobilized and hundreds of thousands of people stranded, even the most ordinary things became a problem.<br /><br />Like laundry.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdNWQJwm-jZzbHKMZlXPtlmLvvZxCzzGJy_9GCX1AWxGFQ61OR5fKMmxKQ4ywhLSdtlYIOANbZZvKHORGVEM4hY-3mED_eKRvqL2hUo05OWPuT-THk8onnpACwPVXEAfTQ2OBd82QBBXwvHJxjFGagB4CEHcwVKfvg_zGL4HH9_BOEPBylXKc8dA/s448/image_2024-04-10_121916521.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="436" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdNWQJwm-jZzbHKMZlXPtlmLvvZxCzzGJy_9GCX1AWxGFQ61OR5fKMmxKQ4ywhLSdtlYIOANbZZvKHORGVEM4hY-3mED_eKRvqL2hUo05OWPuT-THk8onnpACwPVXEAfTQ2OBd82QBBXwvHJxjFGagB4CEHcwVKfvg_zGL4HH9_BOEPBylXKc8dA/s320/image_2024-04-10_121916521.png" width="311" /></a></div>A Chassidic rabbi <a href="https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/filling-requests-as-quickly-as-he-gets-them-rabbi-shai-graucher-looks-to-help-anywhere-he-can/">loaded up </a>washing machines and dryers on trucks and headed with them to an army base. Laundry from displaced families<a href="https://mishpacha.com/operation-home-front/"> was crowdsourced </a>through social media groups with messages like, “there are at least 2000 people from Sderot who need help with their laundry. If you can help with doing one or two loads please reach out.”<br /><br />Both religious and secular groups assembled massive warehouses filled with clothing and supplies for displaced people. Restaurants have set up meals and volunteers have deployed mobile kitchens in parking lots. And tens of thousands volunteer to cook in their own homes.<br /><br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="314" scrolling="no" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=314&amp;href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshinuahevrati%2Fvideos%2F1287932225238477%2F&amp;show_text=false&amp;width=560&amp;t=0" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" width="560"></iframe>&nbsp;</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Weddings and bar mitzvahs have gone forward for refugee families welcomed by communities. Teenagers have volunteered to babysit and to perform household chores for military families.<br /><br />At farms, including in the communities targeted by the Islamic terrorist invaders, tens of thousands headed to help. In one kibbutz, a “motley dozen-strong crew ranging from housewives to engineers and stockbrokers” could be found “tending to around 600 dairy cows”.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVSak1MpOc2asNzGGayXgJsUWNHF-NaiN_xFzcz3fxZk72yNj289Lj53lekFxhYrXr97ar0zn4A34U9fIUMt_BcIHZXC2V_2qtAR4cEWlFZkTl8qbWsEE76cV8KjCz2t7K-Q0BX-nglmnzNHoUObdGCy5zHVd9YlRQYErA5TBIeXmMcl0hjcqaXQ/s954/agricultural%20volunteer.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="693" data-original-width="954" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVSak1MpOc2asNzGGayXgJsUWNHF-NaiN_xFzcz3fxZk72yNj289Lj53lekFxhYrXr97ar0zn4A34U9fIUMt_BcIHZXC2V_2qtAR4cEWlFZkTl8qbWsEE76cV8KjCz2t7K-Q0BX-nglmnzNHoUObdGCy5zHVd9YlRQYErA5TBIeXmMcl0hjcqaXQ/s320/agricultural%20volunteer.png" width="320" /></a></div>Polly Levine, the daughter of longtime David Horowitz Freedom Center supporter Tammy Steinsapir, recently<a href="https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/368105/diary-of-determination-ensuring-israels-food-security-and-future/"> wrote about her</a> experiences doing everything from preparing food boxes to planting broccoli. “I was surprised to see hundreds of volunteers from all over the world: Australia, Great Britain, South Africa, France, Mexico and beyond,” she wrote.<br /><br />And in grimmer work, in the days after the attacks, <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2023/10/11/jerusalem-cemetery-israel-war-dead/">volunteers</a> arrived<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-israel-buries-its-dead-volunteers-honor-them-by-digging-their-graves/"> to dig graves</a> to bury the over 1,000 dead. “Google docs were sent out on community WhatsApp groups and it wasn’t unusual for empty 2 a.m. slots to be filled within minutes in the race to honorably bury the dead.”<br /><br />“We had 50 people yesterday,” a police officer said. “Now the invitation to volunteers has gone viral, and we’re worried 5,000 could turn up.”<br /><br />And there are the armed volunteers putting their lives on the line.<br /><br />After the attacks, hospitals asked anyone with a gun license to volunteer as a guard. Other volunteer guards rallied to protect kindergartens in Jerusalem after the soldiers who usually defend them were summoned to war. While normal kindergartens don’t require soldiers or guards, Islamic terrorists have repeatedly targeted Israeli children. In one notorious incident in 2011, Hamas even<a href="https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/FOREIGNPOLICY/Issues/Pages/Behind-the-Headlines-Hamas-Attack-on-an-Israeli-School-Bus-10-Apr-2011.aspx"> fired an anti-tank missile</a> at a school bus. Fortunately it hit only after most of the children had disembarked and only one teenage boy was wounded in the terrorist attack.<br /><br />600 civilian security squads were established after the attacks and armed with thousands of rifles. These squads help patrol and secure communities likely to be targeted by terrorists. Volunteer forces had played a crucial role in countering the Hamas invasion at a time when the Israeli military had been caught by surprise and was outnumbered by the attacking terrorists.<br /><br />The volunteerism is only the outward expression of a country at war. At a Shabbat table, I heard the story of a woman who calmly stated, “my husband is in the army, my father is in the army and my son is in the army”. After the Oct 7 attacks, reporting rates in some reserve units passed 100% with personnel showing up who had not even been called up. One <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jewishbreakingnews/reel/C3o7cb8O106/">viral video</a> shows a 73-year-old “soldier” visiting his 101-year-old mother and then standing watch in the rain.<br /><br />And that solidarity is really the untold story of what happened after Oct 7.<br /><br />Turn on CNN and you’ll see the same montage of crying old women in hijabs and wrecked buildings that seems to have been running as a constant feed in the region since the rise of cable news, but in Israel, the story is not just the war, it’s also the peace. Before Oct 7, Israel had been tearing itself apart along political and religious lines. The underlying tensions haven’t gone away and every Hamas hostage offer calculatedly plays on those same divisions.<br /><br />But Israel has also come together to a remarkable extent. That’s not a story which interests the media, but it ought to interest us because our hope for the future also lies in solidarity. In the years since 9/11, 7/7 or the other numberless Islamic terror atrocities that should have marked an awakening, we have learned all too well that superior weapons are not enough to win a war.<br /><br />Wars are not just won or lost with firepower, but with the spirit of a people. The food baskets, clothing warehouses, volunteer guards, cooks and even gravediggers represent something as important, and perhaps even more important, than a military force: a national spirit.<br /><br />“I see mothers of soldiers on the front lines volunteering in supermarkets. I see rabbis leaving their communities, traveling 48 hours across multiple countries to return home and fight for their country.” an email circulating after Oct 7 read. “I see police officers feeding bottles to babies who no longer have parents. I see teenage girls with flags at 2:30 in the morning dancing for soldiers who have returned to fight who simply cannot believe their eyes.”<br /><br />The war against Islamic terrorism is not only a physical war, it is a spiritual war. Fighting it with weapons, but without conviction, with drones but without a national revival, has failed and will go on failing. Islamic terrorists do not just attack our bodies, they seek to destroy our spirit. They divide us in order to conquer us, they terrorize us and then play the victims, and they make every effort to convince us of the futility and wrongness of our cause so that they may defeat us.<br /><br />Israel has long been the canary in the coal mine of Islamic terrorism. It has shown us how to physically fight terrorism. Perhaps it will now show us how to awaken our nations to the war.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/6240586729263465244/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/the-untold-story-of-israel-after.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="3 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/6240586729263465244" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/6240586729263465244" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/the-untold-story-of-israel-after.html" rel="alternate" title="The Untold Story of Israel After October 7th" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhex_WKQHUv2bn1Z957SPlVPD6_pgdzr_A35JMu4fbtU6WO4JqKnLl0_2AVtBVjGwtp4q4Wm4oR18bwioivizFLn9xUa_sLJAv2mI3bC1NwIdPgqQfbloEL1fs8mX-PBJXyPqNG-MndW99bIcPyqYSyb4oGJatvJRCAbHXQHP18E3q8XCmEkHc4vw/s72-w640-h374-c/image_2024-04-10_123056446.png" width="72"/><thr:total>3</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-2805284870280825959</id><published>2024-04-09T13:46:00.001-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-09T13:46:00.235-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Coronavirus"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="education"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">The More Powerful the Teachers Union, the Less the Children Learned</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJDsmQ4_fUVU10qoA43zINAqboEZIh6EI0KT5vsOJoLUnK2UKFvjJOp-NWc1XMMhDlqXOYrPuwiVqBBSerEoCGkGp-CABp_-7TmqLC8-PoshqAILNsaNiQqfw9ncjavQSgN9k8A4NSai3Da_veUD9Y7icbIfHd7U1jnleJdD8kn0O76VncnQFxLQ/s1035/image_2024-04-08_224632387.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="819" data-original-width="1035" height="506" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJDsmQ4_fUVU10qoA43zINAqboEZIh6EI0KT5vsOJoLUnK2UKFvjJOp-NWc1XMMhDlqXOYrPuwiVqBBSerEoCGkGp-CABp_-7TmqLC8-PoshqAILNsaNiQqfw9ncjavQSgN9k8A4NSai3Da_veUD9Y7icbIfHd7U1jnleJdD8kn0O76VncnQFxLQ/w640-h506/image_2024-04-08_224632387.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">The Biden administration is on a hunt for systemic racism. Thus far it’s found systemic racism everywhere from the highway system to the military, but the one place it hasn’t looked is among the ranks of the teachers unions who provide much of its cash and its election foot soldiers.<br /><br />But <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/upshot/pandemic-school-closures-data.html">new data</a> reported by the New York Times shows that the pandemic school closures demanded by teachers unions were the single greatest act of systemic racism in 50 years.<br /><br />During the pandemic, members of the corrupt teachers union machine demanded school closures to “save lives”. Unwilling to do their jobs, they instead marched around brandishing coffins at political protests while warning that if they had to go and teach, everyone would die.<br /><br />Education was replaced with the Orwellian misnomer of “remote learning” which parents, students and honest teachers admitted was not actually teaching any of the students anything.<br /><br />And the newest data backs that up, showing that “in districts where students spent most of the 2020-21 school year learning remotely, they fell more than half a grade behind in math.”<br /><br />The numbers were even worse for the poorer students who fell behind three fifths of a grade.<br /><br />The decline in math scores was the <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/teachers-union-lockdowns-caused-worst-drop-in-student-scores-in-50-years/">worst in 50 years</a> making it a historic setback and while all students suffered during the pandemic, the learning experiences in districts where schools shut were far worse for poorer students, often minorities, than for wealthy or middle class students.<br /><br />And while the DEI complex and the media have spent years talking about disproportionate impact, it was the Left which was responsible for the worst disproportionate impact in 50 years.<br /><br />And therefore for the “systemic racism” that they had selfishly brought into being.<br /><br />Previous figures showed a “larger score gap between white and black students nationally—from 25 points in 2020 to 33 points in 2022.” Fourth grade math scores fell twice as much for black and Hispanic students as for white students. While we already knew that minority students fell back further during the pandemic, the new numbers compare the schools that stayed open and those that closed in order to pander to teachers union members who refused to come to work.<br /><br />“More time spent in remote or hybrid instruction in the 2020-21 school year was associated with larger drops in test scores,” the Times analysis showed. “Students that were offered a hybrid schedule (a few hours or days a week in person, with the rest online) did better, on average, than those in places where school was fully remote, but worse than those in places that had school fully in person.”<br /><br />The media had accused Georgia, Florida and other states that opened up of conducting experiments in “human sacrifice”. The actual human sacrifice was carried out by Democrats and their educational establishment which brought up children as human sacrifices to the unions.<br /><br />Teachers unions waged a relentless and ruthless war to close schools and keep them closed.<br /><br />American Federation of Teachers (AFT) boss Randi Weingarten called reopening schools “reckless, callous, cruel”. Union members protested, threatened, sued and even physically blocked schools from reopening. The teachers unions won while students and parents lost.<br /><br />Rep. Aaron Bean <a href="https://readlion.com/extended-school-closures-pushed-by-teachers-unions-created-generational-learning-loss-say-house-panel-witnesses/">noted that </a>“school districts with lengthier collective bargaining agreements were less likely to start the fall 2020 semester with in-person instruction.” Surveys<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-union-map-of-school-closings"> found that</a> the more powerful the teachers unions were, the more likely schools were to stay closed.<br /><br />And therefore, the more powerful the teachers union, the less the children learned.<br /><br />Teachers unions chose not to work and they leveraged school reopenings to extract personal and political benefits without paying any price for it. That is true of the lockdown advocates nearly across the board, but the teachers unions emerged politically stronger than ever from the educational disaster they had helped to cause. Strikes, slowdowns and elections made them wealthier and more powerful. And they continue to grow more powerful every year.<br /><br />As late as 2022, 73% of the members of the Chicago Teachers Union voted not to come to work while claiming that COVID-19 was still too dangerous. A year later, CTU organizer Brandon Johnson was elected as the 57th mayor of Chicago.<br /><br />What happened during the pandemic was not a unique event, it just accelerated the current state of affairs in which teachers unions have wielded their political power to demand more money for less work while dismantling all the basic standards of the educational system.<br /><br />According to teachers unions, the ideal educational system has no test scores and no expectations but that students be taught to parrot the politics of their teachers.<br /><br />The price for the dismantling of the educational system by the educators, during the pandemic or the rest of the time, is being paid by students. Especially poor and minority students.<br /><br />Teachers unions claim that they advocate for students and that when they wield power, they do so to improve educational outcomes. The data, not only during the pandemic, proves otherwise.<br /><br />In 1960, the American Federation of Teachers had a mere 60,000 members. Today it’s 1.7 million. And students are<a href="https://www.howtolearn.com/2016/04/silent-reading-levels-lower-than-1960/"> less capable </a>of reading, study less and know less than their peers in 1960, but receive much higher grades than they did 60 years ago.<br /><br />What has improved in schools since 1960 are the teacher salaries, by “45 percent in real terms”, so that teachers union members, like other government workers, are outperforming the taxpayers who pay their salaries.<br /><br />The growth of the teachers unions has been great for teachers, but terrible for students.<br /><br />The pandemic brought home the consequences to many parents and the years since convinced many that the public school system, fatally corrupted by teachers unions, is incapable of reform. That’s why movements such as homeschooling and school choice continue to grow, not just for the stereotypical conservatives, but for a spectrum of parents, many of them minorities.<br /><br />Restoring public education will require many reforms, but the most fundamental of these will be ending the death grip that the teachers unions have over the nation’s students.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/2805284870280825959/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/the-more-powerful-teachers-union-less.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="1 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/2805284870280825959" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/2805284870280825959" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/the-more-powerful-teachers-union-less.html" rel="alternate" title="The More Powerful the Teachers Union, the Less the Children Learned" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJDsmQ4_fUVU10qoA43zINAqboEZIh6EI0KT5vsOJoLUnK2UKFvjJOp-NWc1XMMhDlqXOYrPuwiVqBBSerEoCGkGp-CABp_-7TmqLC8-PoshqAILNsaNiQqfw9ncjavQSgN9k8A4NSai3Da_veUD9Y7icbIfHd7U1jnleJdD8kn0O76VncnQFxLQ/s72-w640-h506-c/image_2024-04-08_224632387.png" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-3524797719184273468</id><published>2024-04-08T13:09:00.008-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-08T14:31:53.019-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="censorship"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Culture"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="literature"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Woke"/><title type="text">Whodunit It? The Wokes Did!</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQ4zmNAcGcJr-sjPG7SQtqSaspK-zwps80cSp1Aem-iufJ8Lh9ZKI4YUUuKQVq4CdfZvmvgwtrsNmVDar5pCp5O7it8LxDpuI4niQIBuePisDxlEBDr4Zgdk3__4i-ex594gLBFlkZ4zNZ6ziUXdIQW0FnVZVTf9L4LcoxmYEqHgzpBIUbyM0nw/s1857/and%20then%20there%20were%20frame.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1169" data-original-width="1857" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQ4zmNAcGcJr-sjPG7SQtqSaspK-zwps80cSp1Aem-iufJ8Lh9ZKI4YUUuKQVq4CdfZvmvgwtrsNmVDar5pCp5O7it8LxDpuI4niQIBuePisDxlEBDr4Zgdk3__4i-ex594gLBFlkZ4zNZ6ziUXdIQW0FnVZVTf9L4LcoxmYEqHgzpBIUbyM0nw/w640-h402/and%20then%20there%20were%20frame.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large; text-align: left;">Agatha Christie, an elderly lady from Devon, had plenty of blood on her hands, all of it fictional. But none of the killers in her many books and short stories are nearly as monstrous or obsessed as the censorious wokes who have been coming after the deceased author for decades.</span></div></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />The latest episode in the long-running saga takes place not on a luxurious train speeding through Yugoslavia or on the Nile, but at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) which had performed Christie’s play, “And Then There Were None.”<br /><br />“And Then There Were None” is a natural fit for a high school setting. With lots of different balanced roles and one-note characters who reveal a hidden side, it’s a training wheels production for students learning the basics of performing a character and acting on stage.<br /><br />It’s also fun. Ten people. One island. And a killer.<br /><br />There’s a reason why “And Then There Were None” has remained popular and Hollywood keeps ripping it off for movies like 2022’s ‘The Menu’ which added food to the premise.<br /><br />Over February, a mutlti-racial cast of Philly teens had<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFXGNZzm74U&amp;list=PLG_hp1b8FuGKfztBbRprwzmMFTA07_I1I&amp;index=17"> taken on the roles </a>of murderers and murder victims on an island off Christie’s native Devon, England, with the enthusiasm and polish to be expected of teenage actors, and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@kennykillaa/video/7330775436022074655">had fun with it</a>, smoking cigars, rocking in rocking chairs, dressing up and trying to deliver lines in shocked voices, until they were told it was all wrong.<br /><br />And the play, based on one of the best-selling novels ever written, was really a hate crime.<br /><br />While there’s nothing objectionable about the play (unless you object to people being murdered, which wokes do not), it’s based on a Christie novel whose title once had the “N-word” in it after a minstrel song. It was then charged to “Ten Little Soldiers” or “Ten Little Indians” in various versions and eventually became known as “And Then There Were None.” The novel never appeared under its original offensive name in America and it’s been that way since 1940.<br /><br />As a British author, Christie didn’t understand the offensiveness of the “N-word” and American culture the way that the Yanks did. By the end of the forties, Christie had cleaned up her own books long before the modern woke publishers began rewriting them for offensive content.<br /><br />There’s nothing actually racist about “And Then There Were None.” None of the characters are black, but one of the white characters is actually punished for his abuses toward African people.<br /><br />Philip Lombard, one of the more clearly evil characters, describes stealing the food of his African mercenaries. “Natives don’t mind dying, you know. They don’t feel about it as Europeans do,” he villainously claims. That original crime is the reason why he deserves to die.<br /><br />But still the staff at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts are fielding outrage because the school allowed “And Then There Were None” to be performed despite the fact that over eighty years ago, before anyone involved was born, it used to have a racist title.<br /><br />And, worse still, the performance had happened during Black History Month.<br /><br />Some wokes figured it out and became professionally outraged, claiming that the play contained “racist, xenophobic, and violent content”. Violent content in a murder mystery? Well, I never!<br /><br />Outraged leftists claimed that the play about ten bad people being killed off by an unknown murderer “lacked historical context and did not provide any cautionary preface or follow-up discussion”. Wokes love nothing more than adding mandatory trigger warnings to everything..<br /><br />The mother of a student <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-capa-agatha-christie-play-racism-criticism/">complained</a>, “there was a scene in the play where a noose swings out on stage and a white student is holding the noose.The whole crowd gasped. We were not sure if somebody was going to get lynched or what would happen next. I was kind of aghast and shocked.”<br /><br />Spoiler alert: no one got ‘lynched’ on an island off the English coast in the 1930s. The noose serves to enable the climactic suicide. It has nothing whatsoever to do with lynching. That didn’t stop an NPR affiliate from writing multiple paragraphs describing the history of lynching in America, which has as much to do with the play as Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan.<br /><br />Molefi Asante, an African American studies prof, insisted the school should have lectured on “the history of racism in Britain and America” and “why this play is significant now. The director of the play missed an opportunity to really educate the students about the meaning of the play.”<br /><br />The meaning of the play is that it’s entertaining. That is a concept wokes are incapable of understanding. It is not about the history of racism. It has no significance “now” or ever. It is refreshingly free of George Floyd, Trans Visibility or any of the things wokes insist plays must be about. It’s fun and there’s nothing that wokes hate more than fun. Except maybe white people.<br /><br />Since the squeaky wokes get the grease, CAPA’s principal has already apologized “for the offense that this has caused” and vowed that while she “cannot undo the harm caused, please know that as a school community we are taking active and intentional steps to prevent similar incidents in the future.” That means all future plays will be about transgenders and lynching.<br /><br />CAPA is holding a ‘Town Hall’ at which outraged wokes will scream about their pain until there are none left to listen. No amount of apologies will sate their bloodlust, only embolden them.<br /><br />Throughout all of the subsequent outrage, none of them has managed to coherently explain what’s wrong with the play aside from the novel’s original title. Multiple people interviewed by the local NPR arm still could not explain what they were offended by except the original title.<br /><br />And until they were told about the title, they had no idea that anything was wrong.<br /><br />That’s because there was nothing wrong. And had someone not checked Wikipedia, it would have stayed that way. Wokes are not genuinely offended, they’re seeking to take offense. The more offended they are, the more power they get. And the more power they get, the more offended they are. The vicious cycle of violence is what “And There Were None” is About.<br /><br />Whodunit? The wokes did.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span></div></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/3524797719184273468/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/whodunit-it-wokes-did.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="6 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/3524797719184273468" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/3524797719184273468" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/whodunit-it-wokes-did.html" rel="alternate" title="Whodunit It? The Wokes Did!" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQ4zmNAcGcJr-sjPG7SQtqSaspK-zwps80cSp1Aem-iufJ8Lh9ZKI4YUUuKQVq4CdfZvmvgwtrsNmVDar5pCp5O7it8LxDpuI4niQIBuePisDxlEBDr4Zgdk3__4i-ex594gLBFlkZ4zNZ6ziUXdIQW0FnVZVTf9L4LcoxmYEqHgzpBIUbyM0nw/s72-w640-h402-c/and%20then%20there%20were%20frame.png" width="72"/><thr:total>6</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-8770648053038989268</id><published>2024-04-07T14:05:00.003-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-08T14:32:12.131-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Introducing the Envia Discord 2025</title><content type="html"><p>&nbsp;PRESS RELEASE</p><br />These days every car company claims that their latest model is environmentally friendly no matter how much it pollutes the planet and makes Indians standing by the side of a road cry bitter tears.<br /><br />But what does environmentally friendly really mean? At Envia Motors, we set out to make a car without concessions to speed, performance or handling because we put the environment first.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSnIw7wCcCIAgw6Iu4gScqvyr50U_WK3aPoob1V2wM6zGvaLJ64ZnsbobcHehrLZlHMApQVmC1R8KflxCyWyjLLlgXif5vpUjvdO4kKau5TK2DhT62A-L_v9hed2aA10yWuFAlWqIrtnlyKbQl5QkJvfEcQTDRBrVlvxJ5ZFYaUmJFxHvlGcGXCA/s908/envia4.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="787" data-original-width="908" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSnIw7wCcCIAgw6Iu4gScqvyr50U_WK3aPoob1V2wM6zGvaLJ64ZnsbobcHehrLZlHMApQVmC1R8KflxCyWyjLLlgXif5vpUjvdO4kKau5TK2DhT62A-L_v9hed2aA10yWuFAlWqIrtnlyKbQl5QkJvfEcQTDRBrVlvxJ5ZFYaUmJFxHvlGcGXCA/s320/envia4.png" width="320" /></a></div>Fueled by a dream and two billion dollars in government grant money, we challenged ourselves to see whether four community organizers with no technical knowledge or skill could create a car that would become a compulsory driving experience.<br /><br />And with the Envia Discord 2025, we succeeded beyond your wildest mandated imagination.<br /><br />The Discord isn't just a car. It's a political experience. It speaks to our yearnings and aspirations. And it has plastic skis permanently attached to the roof so it looks like you're always heading to a ski weekend even when you're going off to pretend to work at a non-profit to help inner city children.<br /><br />Envia is all about choice. That's why the Discord 2025&nbsp;comes in every color from Avocado Green to Plantain Green so that you can have your Green Car... just the way you like it.&nbsp;<br /><br />But the Discord isn't just environmentally friendly. Its commitment to social justice begins with steering wheels at every seat so everyone can drive. Studies show that even in multiracial families, white males are most likely to be the drivers and the Discord uses engineered disruption to sabotage the patriarchy.<br /><br />Like the progressive movement, the Discord has no brakes. Because once we're moving Forward, there's never a reason to stop.<br /><br />The Envia Discord 2025&nbsp;also has no seat belts or airbags because... check your privilege. Most people of color around the world lack these things and it's only your sense of entitlement that leads you to expect that a car company should value your life more than that of a person of color.<br /><br />Some might say that the Discord is missing something, but we prefer to think of it as the meaningful absence that the Discord brings into your life. We didn't just leave out things that every other car has to save money. With a sticker price of $395,000, that obviously was never an issue. Instead we did it as part of our mutual commitment to changing how we envision what a car is.<br /><br />Car companies have encouraged consumers to see their vehicles as property to protect against the economically challenged. Envia Motors disrupts the capitalist system of property and theft by taking all the locks off the doors, the trunk and the ignition.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi50VlWiEx2iIOAwpMZhEtbRMe2dH7bqwINdQwCWSKOBAJcAvOdeU7vFMjiT4vsvHAD2MJNiNqH_qOX6DpCjDFtYx0Nl0Sv_r44_1UTmeUNtc2U1gV8cuRWUcRmf7JRNZElnCixxenuncDPQCo2YlI_-Gcv44XP_jKBmjdkfxjfsJHovMPAfwsPEg/s893/envia2.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="737" data-original-width="893" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi50VlWiEx2iIOAwpMZhEtbRMe2dH7bqwINdQwCWSKOBAJcAvOdeU7vFMjiT4vsvHAD2MJNiNqH_qOX6DpCjDFtYx0Nl0Sv_r44_1UTmeUNtc2U1gV8cuRWUcRmf7JRNZElnCixxenuncDPQCo2YlI_-Gcv44XP_jKBmjdkfxjfsJHovMPAfwsPEg/s320/envia2.png" width="320" /></a></div>Anyone can enter and drive a Discord once they undergo a privilege check that connects the driver by remote satellite link to an organic public intellectual with a PhD in Social Justice. And to make it even easier, the Discord automatically advertises its location on Craigslist at every stop and encourages the oppressed urban workers and peasants to make off with it.<br /><br />Despite Envia's best efforts no member of an oppressed group has chosen to redistribute a Discord, that is why we are committed to spending more money on outreach to traditionally oppressed groups.<br /><br />While the Envia Discord 2025&nbsp;may not have brakes, seat belts, airbags, locks or a windshield (check your privilege), the money that could have gone to those entitled safety features was instead spent on turning its bumper into a 4K screen that automatically pulls the latest social justice hashtags from Twitter and displays them as bumper stickers.<br /><br />The Discord 2025&nbsp;is inclusive. Its seat cushions, woven out of fair trade whole grain fibers by Yamadu Indians in Bolivia, accommodate a variety of sizes and shapes. Its cup holder can blend wheatgrain smoothies and can perform emergency sex change operations for those who want to give up their cisgender privilege.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj1Jm6nTvP-F46T8yMnzHz2lwmqeHbj-1QoInPIrbKe3N3FjS9i9ax32soI7aUYGyWU7yso-HMvvLDoi4MK_VmHTd7pA_OcCXZYTtIND80buBKsjghrIBK8_CsGFUE9zXZs6GFyNYh63nxJ5vof2yJmiKnUMa_PNGmNdKVC23q5QgNZ047PlXz3A/s930/envia1.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="760" data-original-width="930" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj1Jm6nTvP-F46T8yMnzHz2lwmqeHbj-1QoInPIrbKe3N3FjS9i9ax32soI7aUYGyWU7yso-HMvvLDoi4MK_VmHTd7pA_OcCXZYTtIND80buBKsjghrIBK8_CsGFUE9zXZs6GFyNYh63nxJ5vof2yJmiKnUMa_PNGmNdKVC23q5QgNZ047PlXz3A/s320/envia1.png" width="320" /></a></div>Envia Motors has also reached out to the Muslim community by programming the Discord 2025&nbsp;to explode when it hears the words, "Jihad", "Allahu Akbar" or "Shiite." It will also explode when its internal CPU, which is always monitoring your conversations, hears anything racist, homophobic, transphobic, cisgender, heteronormative or any other thoughtcrimes from a list that is constantly being updated through the cloud.<br /><br />Sometimes the Discord 2025&nbsp;will just explode for no reason. Check your privilege.<br /><br />Unlike consumer cars, the Discord has no manual. Instead it has a six year graduate course that takes you through the intricacies of Western capitalism and invites you to understand your complicity in the oppression of others.<br /><br />If you refuse to educate yourself, it's your own fault.<br /><br />There is also no help line. The expectation that white people should have unlimited access to the time of trans bisexual people of color is an insidious form of privilege. And our help line, which doesn't take calls, is entirely manned by trans bisexual people of color.<br /><br />Check your privilege.<br /><br />Everyone knows electric cars have a higher carbon footprint than ordinary petrol death machines. That's why the Discord isn't an electric car. You can put in any number of sustainable environmentally correct fuels into its tank from seaweed smoothies to Iranian Uranium... but it still won't run.<br /><br />That's because the Discord is powered by people power. Literally.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4m8t_3ZnxYiaO-vaGnomyk2MTJMyUrd14_EYgmIUIwOEkv-uGKDOEuF1x1i6mX_OaQCSTzy83OiTAY2aenAAJOAkTtZm0LXwhjzI3m8EWo-bJM2JXoANTytoeC_RyUrnbWBfZdRwYPjkXR1muX8FKsq6hIqabBivhMdLEE_FaFlhfnQL1yDXeRA/s919/envia5.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="756" data-original-width="919" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4m8t_3ZnxYiaO-vaGnomyk2MTJMyUrd14_EYgmIUIwOEkv-uGKDOEuF1x1i6mX_OaQCSTzy83OiTAY2aenAAJOAkTtZm0LXwhjzI3m8EWo-bJM2JXoANTytoeC_RyUrnbWBfZdRwYPjkXR1muX8FKsq6hIqabBivhMdLEE_FaFlhfnQL1yDXeRA/s320/envia5.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />To make the Discord move forward, just rope a dozen members of the bourgeois middle class to its fair trade tenterhooks. Then crack a sustainable fair trade whip over their heads until they begin moving forward at a brisk trot taking you to a conference on income inequality or to your executive offices at the Department of Health and Human Service... just in time for your four hour lunch break.<div><br />We won't lie to you. People have died in the making of the Discord 2025. And they will go on dying as Discords driven by multiple drivers with no brakes careen through urban environments leaving a trail of death in their wake. But people have always died fighting for social justice.<br /><br />The Discord isn't just another car, it's a vehicle for social justice, and the blood on its grill, dashboard and tires demonstrates Envia's commitment to a better world at any cost.<br /><br />At any cost.<br /><br />The deaths of your loved ones at the hands of the Envia Discord 2025&nbsp;invite you to check your privilege. Automobile accidents are a First World problem. In most of the world, no one can even afford to be hit by a car. The life expectancy of a child in Africa is less than 5 minutes. The gasoline that fuels ordinary petrol death machines is made out of the congealed blood of Iraqi children.<br /><br />Before you join that heteronormative transphobic class action lawsuit against Envia Motors, check your privilege and ask yourself, "How much am I willing to sacrifice for social justice?"<br /><br />The Discord 2025. Coming soon to California and parts of Rhode Island.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href=" https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGXBpNQddGJO0E4twlloXaa2gtAqHpfaobX0x8E9hQHe8-uW2ennu5OnTYIIOrbxSxkfFswNpTYTlCBH8Pqgj_36-z_qENZn1d6Vh1OF_ZgRiQip735o9VZ6SH2nK76vvLOXQvauEC1-dIDVR9WHbLk5IYQU3IlCXP4d7i0yZwg4oYowLGQxw8Q/w640-h214/site%20footer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/8770648053038989268/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/introducing-envia-discord-2025.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="8 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/8770648053038989268" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/8770648053038989268" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/introducing-envia-discord-2025.html" rel="alternate" title="Introducing the Envia Discord 2025" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSnIw7wCcCIAgw6Iu4gScqvyr50U_WK3aPoob1V2wM6zGvaLJ64ZnsbobcHehrLZlHMApQVmC1R8KflxCyWyjLLlgXif5vpUjvdO4kKau5TK2DhT62A-L_v9hed2aA10yWuFAlWqIrtnlyKbQl5QkJvfEcQTDRBrVlvxJ5ZFYaUmJFxHvlGcGXCA/s72-c/envia4.png" width="72"/><thr:total>8</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-2489921621907433095</id><published>2024-04-05T03:09:00.001-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-05T03:09:11.366-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Biden"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Big Tech"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="China"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Could China Use TikTok to Elect Biden?</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4H88F66PngQXeTrTT9VTij7V_njerytAmYeqbMGHffJTGJkhlEPEh6uSVsXCn4-QefX6fZ2x_xCVzBBmc95-9pCUi83eILJNVA9mOQFM7vBtD9mDcBsuOA8BD5XQWEACsejfSrdozRchB1wzTU_V5GCg11fuHHAnGr-dIpDBK8kr7nzPwYcSIjA/s1028/image_2024-04-05_000821847.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="806" data-original-width="1028" height="502" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4H88F66PngQXeTrTT9VTij7V_njerytAmYeqbMGHffJTGJkhlEPEh6uSVsXCn4-QefX6fZ2x_xCVzBBmc95-9pCUi83eILJNVA9mOQFM7vBtD9mDcBsuOA8BD5XQWEACsejfSrdozRchB1wzTU_V5GCg11fuHHAnGr-dIpDBK8kr7nzPwYcSIjA/w640-h502/image_2024-04-05_000821847.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">In 2020, 3% of Americans got their news from TikTok. It’s<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-the-trend-seen-on-most-other-social-media-sites/"> now 14%</a> or 1 in 7 people.<br /><br />Among 18-29 year olds, 1 in 3 Americans get their news from TikTok. That’s up from less than 1 in 10 in 2020. Some of this is due to the app’s growth rate, but it’s also a strategy. It’s not just that TikTok is growing quickly, but today half of TikTok users say they get their news through it. That’s up from 1 in 5 in 2020. TikTok isn’t just growing, it’s growing its political influence.<br /><br />When the House passed a bill forcing an end to Chinese Communist control over TikTok, the platform rallied its users, many of them underage, to pressure and even threaten Congress.<br /><br />With 170 million active users in the United States, TikTok is one of the largest news platforms in the country and it’s under the control of Communist China. By 2021, most mainstream media organizations had jumped on to a platform that used to be known for short dance clips.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFlMMXDDL-uD7B1Gssa6VcmzNFyEyHOTvKnBm8Jf_BU6S2ugtGZt4XM4A8HWacprTTebP2VUSkzaShxMSlhDFNkiaDz8qToQq4fErGPT0Vquxk-_Qv2EPjOg0gvWfkbtnP-ChBc_f-M2dGQizvVFlqe2LAMyxorAXPxcwP4tXmWNKyTddjjjFvng/s941/tiktok%20ad%20frame2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="652" data-original-width="941" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFlMMXDDL-uD7B1Gssa6VcmzNFyEyHOTvKnBm8Jf_BU6S2ugtGZt4XM4A8HWacprTTebP2VUSkzaShxMSlhDFNkiaDz8qToQq4fErGPT0Vquxk-_Qv2EPjOg0gvWfkbtnP-ChBc_f-M2dGQizvVFlqe2LAMyxorAXPxcwP4tXmWNKyTddjjjFvng/s320/tiktok%20ad%20frame2.png" width="320" /></a></div>The Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed that China had influenced the 2022 midterm elections using TikTok and warned that the Communist regime may “attempt to influence the U.S. elections in 2024”. Some have speculated that China used TikTok to help swing the 2022 elections, but its influence over the 2024 election will be much more powerful.<br /><br />If TikTok’s influence continues to grow at its current rates, by 2026 no one in D.C. will touch it.<br /><br />An effort to end China’s control over TikTok fell apart ahead of the 2022 midterms and now a similar effort is being attacked from all sides because China’s influence cuts across parties. There are Democrats and Republicans who have taken Chinese money and some members of both parties who oppose China are also considered potential threats by the ChiCom regime.<br /><br />During the 2022 midterms, China used TikTok to target some elected officials from both parties.<br /><br />While China has its own agenda, so do some of the top ESG firms who bought into its ByteDance partner, including BlackRock and Sequoia Capital, which have <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/10/30/larry-fink-shakes-big-bucks-from-lefty-joe-bidens-esg/">profited massively</a> from Biden’s destructive ESG agenda that is feeding inflation and bankrupting America.<br /><br />But those agendas are also interwoven with China’s growing influence on American business.<br /><br />Sequoia has been under <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-19/sequoia-targeted-by-us-committee-s-china-tech-investment-probe">congressional </a>scrutiny for its Chinese investments that may have helped the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/sequoia-made-a-fortune-investing-in-the-u-s-and-china-then-it-had-to-pick-one-f13e7b91">Chinese military</a>, and the firm’s Michael Moritz <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-21/soros-sequoia-capital-s-moritz-give-millions-to-anti-gop-group">directed millions </a>into a Dem PAC alongside George Soros. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party had warned that BlackRock <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/investing/china-congress-blackrock-msci/index.html">had invested</a> $429 million into Chinese companies that “act directly against the interests of the United States.” BlackRock vets fill the ranks of the Biden government.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHLmNJT57vwYaWTE1G19BAHvOOtczqTeEo2ydCwNkEoEvFVprWOqa0X2AuWdZAR1AaZc1uhrl65OC5HsB5hPOW3BcKv9Ur3GWg6DKYJ1OXhZtdD0Jda229RDaL2f9rLw3nwkWg1iQGyqhPHJfO9Px0dURDqp9ESokqCsRrYHA3mV7gAjWHbauqrw/s492/biden%20tiktok%20frame.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="408" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHLmNJT57vwYaWTE1G19BAHvOOtczqTeEo2ydCwNkEoEvFVprWOqa0X2AuWdZAR1AaZc1uhrl65OC5HsB5hPOW3BcKv9Ur3GWg6DKYJ1OXhZtdD0Jda229RDaL2f9rLw3nwkWg1iQGyqhPHJfO9Px0dURDqp9ESokqCsRrYHA3mV7gAjWHbauqrw/s320/biden%20tiktok%20frame.png" width="265" /></a></div>All of this is likely to come to a head in the 2024 election in which vast amounts of power and money will be at stake. And with the sharp growth in TikTok’s active users and their news consumption, China may finally be in a position to swing an American presidential election.<br /><br />It had been estimated that Google’s biased algorithms may have <a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/nation-world/google-might-have-moved-millions-of-people-to-vote-democrat-psychologist-suggests">moved millions of votes</a> in the 2020 election, but the biases in TikTok’s algorithms could move millions more votes, especially among the younger voters who use it heavily, under the direction of an enemy nation.<br /><br />And with 170 million users, half of whom get their news from TikTok, those videos help shape the worldviews of 85 million Americans.<br /><br />TikTok’s finely turned algorithm reportedly uses all the data that the app collects about users, from where they are to which phones they use, learning which videos they watch and which they ignore, and how much of them they watch, to zero in on their worldviews and build a rapid profile, and begin recommending videos within 15 minutes that will get inside their heads.<br /><br />Given that information, it becomes all too easy for the algorithm to manipulate users.<br /><br />This manipulation can be gross, like pushing left-learning or pro-Biden content to independent and swing voters, but it can also be subtle, like interfering in primaries by promoting content in favor of or against one politician, or pushing ‘doomer’ content that discourages one side, like conservatives, from voting. Such methods have already been experimented with on other platforms, but TikTok’s secretive foreign operation makes it particularly impermeable.<br /><br />If China were to interfere in the 2024 election, how would it do it?<br /><br />Chinese Communist election<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/china-helped-canadas-trudeau-win/"> interference on behalf of Trudeau </a>and against the political candidates whom the regime opposed provides us with a partial real world blueprint. Leaks from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/canadas-trudeau-will-investigate-whether-china-tried-to-elect-him/">revealed how the</a> CCP and its agents used straw campaign donors, hired Chinese volunteers and rallied local groups to rig elections.<br /><br />But it’s in Taiwan’s election where China used everything from fake polls to crypto bribes to deepfake videos that <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/china-bombards-taiwan-with-fake-news-ahead-of-election/">we can see </a>the real danger. TikTok was<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/pro-china-tiktok-sock-puppets-wreak-chaos-in-taiwan-election"> flooded with</a> videos smearing the anti-Communist frontrunner, while promoting pro-PRC candidates. One Chinese Communist influence operation used fake personas to accuse the pro- independence party of causing “an egg shortage and the alleged poisoning of kindergarten students.”<br /><br />China, which is trying to catch up to America in AI, also used AI <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/23/taiwan-election-china-disinformation-influence-interference/">to produce a</a> 300-page book and then made that into the basis for AI generated videos targeting Taiwan’s former president. The PRC is already deploying AI campaigns in America and TikTok provides it with the perfect platform. But TikTok’s algorithm also ensures that China won’t have to rely too heavily on AI as human influencers will rush to produce content that is rewarded by the algorithm.<br /><br />TikTok provides China with a direct pipeline into half the country with no limitations.<br /><br />What will the Communist regime do with that power? Much as in Canada, where Xi decided to back the leftist candidate, the CCP will likely choose to throw its covert support to Biden. And the best way to tell whom China supports may be to follow the TikTok trends.<br /><br />Communist China has the ability to use TikTok to elect Biden. The only question is will it?<br /><br />As long as TikTok remains under China’s control, our elections can never be safe.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="500" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1_keQ0_yU7H0_WMk_BDp7bl0Hkb-VNwIrmbYScRiXPu4yvMjSJzNw6fwn1WmPicuXUfil4uvKWre_HN4tJE-6l22CWZrlbyCMqW2yp28Lb3Wqbd8mk05nS_o6bQ5p6g_Ejh_GgcIBus9FT_VOGWM5-0hVrtCPYwtyncpCVh26RfnwxGp1Hb5q4g/w640-h230/%E2%80%9CA%20marvelously%20original%20and%20enlightening%20look%20at%20American%20history,%20with%20a%20host%20of%20insights%20for%20our%20own%20age.%E2%80%9D%20%E2%80%94Robert%20Spencer,%20Author%20of%20The%20Sumter%20Gambit%20How%20the%20Left%20Is%20Trying%20to%20Foment%20A%20Civil%20W.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><br style="font-size: medium;" /></div><div><br /></div></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/2489921621907433095/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/could-china-use-tiktok-to-elect-biden.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="1 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/2489921621907433095" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/2489921621907433095" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/could-china-use-tiktok-to-elect-biden.html" rel="alternate" title="Could China Use TikTok to Elect Biden?" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4H88F66PngQXeTrTT9VTij7V_njerytAmYeqbMGHffJTGJkhlEPEh6uSVsXCn4-QefX6fZ2x_xCVzBBmc95-9pCUi83eILJNVA9mOQFM7vBtD9mDcBsuOA8BD5XQWEACsejfSrdozRchB1wzTU_V5GCg11fuHHAnGr-dIpDBK8kr7nzPwYcSIjA/s72-w640-h502-c/image_2024-04-05_000821847.png" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-5811659529076768570</id><published>2024-04-04T00:36:00.005-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-04T00:38:20.847-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Hamas"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Islamic terrorism"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Israel"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Terrorist Murderer of 5-Year-Old Girl Caught Hiding in Maternity Ward</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI3fnHluzQ-JhofZNqLTq7NDJsTGfGYzRM3H0dqZycLxABzmJ09dYIWIop2VYjaRZE9-FQf52M2F2CCtZBu4RN3ZsSd8rvj_IBMANjTL6TJKaohaCQByDhw4BIikyL8RXAE2XysVXzuKlnUUASn9kZ0frstiHOFpUgzjvjcnzlpo9oz16a0nr3fA/s500/shefi%20dwek2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="500" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI3fnHluzQ-JhofZNqLTq7NDJsTGfGYzRM3H0dqZycLxABzmJ09dYIWIop2VYjaRZE9-FQf52M2F2CCtZBu4RN3ZsSd8rvj_IBMANjTL6TJKaohaCQByDhw4BIikyL8RXAE2XysVXzuKlnUUASn9kZ0frstiHOFpUgzjvjcnzlpo9oz16a0nr3fA/w640-h384/shefi%20dwek2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: large;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>On a Sabbath morning, three Islamic terrorists invaded the Israeli village of Adora located in the Judean Mountains in the rebuilt vicinity of a city dating back to the reign of King Solomon.</span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />The Jihadists had carefully picked the Sabbath morning when many of the men and some of the women would be praying in the synagogue. To fool what few families were at home, they wore the uniforms of Israeli soldiers as they entered their houses.<br /><br />At the Shefi family home, Jacob Shefi, a policeman, was in the synagogue and his wife Shiri was in the bedroom playing with their three children, 5-year-old Danielle, 4-year-old Uriel and 2-year-old Eliad, when.one the terrorists burst into the bedroom.<br /><br />Danielle had wanted to go to the synagogue, but her mother insisted on doing her hair first.<br /><br />Shiri told the children to hide under the bed and covered them with her body as the terrorist opened fire. Wounded, she still managed to force the door closed as the terrorists continued their rampage across the village. Uriel and Eliad were wounded, but Danielle, hiding under the bed, was dead.<br /><br />Jacob Shefi, running home at the sound of gunshots, thought the terrorists were soldiers and asked them what was happening. They shot at him and he ran to a house nearby to find a gun. When he saw his wife again, she told him, “they murdered our daughter.”<br /><br />Danielle Shefi was one of 4 people murdered in the Adora attack, including <a href="https://laad.btl.gov.il/Web/He/TerrorVictims/Page/Default.aspx?ID=33103">Katia Greenberg</a>, a Russian immigrant and mother of 3 who worked with the disabled, <a href="https://laad.btl.gov.il/Web/He/TerrorVictims/Page/Default.aspx?ID=39443">Yaakov Katz</a>, a Soviet dissident physicist, who left the USSR with Reagan’s help and was working on laser technology, and First Sergeant <a href="https://honorisraelsfallen.com/fallen/becker-eric/">Arik Becker</a>, a 22-year-old reservist who <a href="https://laad.btl.gov.il/Web/He/TerrorVictims/Page/Default.aspx?ID=39468">was killed</a> trying to stop the attack.<br /><br />It was the spring of 2002 and such Islamic terror atrocities still had the power to shock the world. Or those parts of it that were not the media which headlined the story as, “Palestinian Gunmen Kill 4 Israeli Settlers in West Bank.” And Danielle Shefi became just another “Israeli settler”.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVyyymjE-Ygu4cdpOY-vJdrcpHd902-ewoC_QIjrkY1xYSrKaLn38J4bOLDf-JV0qXzAt7aaTA54hPjK8mZBNqfk8QdYNvLcEzYiPBwa2IkFnwgcfY6gbE2idlwejXQX82_2MD6szlFGdwESPSwjwxGGeMndAslFKS34467UluPERMEJUmqdYadg/s257/shefi%20nypost%20cove.rjpg.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="257" data-original-width="196" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVyyymjE-Ygu4cdpOY-vJdrcpHd902-ewoC_QIjrkY1xYSrKaLn38J4bOLDf-JV0qXzAt7aaTA54hPjK8mZBNqfk8QdYNvLcEzYiPBwa2IkFnwgcfY6gbE2idlwejXQX82_2MD6szlFGdwESPSwjwxGGeMndAslFKS34467UluPERMEJUmqdYadg/s1600/shefi%20nypost%20cove.rjpg.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>“Anyone capable of looking a 4-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl in the face and then shooting them is not human,” Jacob Shefi <a href="https://nypost.com/2002/04/28/killed-in-her-cradle-tot-among-four-slain-as-dads-prayed/">told the press</a>. “Danielle, who never hurt anyone and who was taught to love and respect all human beings, Jew or Arab, was murdered in her parents’ bedroom – which for her should have been the safest place.”<br /><br />When her kindergarten classmates were told that the little girl had gone to heaven, they asked, “What is Danielle doing up there near the birds and planes?”<br /><br />“Please remember Danielle Shefi, a little girl in Israel. Danielle was five. When the murderers came, she hid under her bed. Palestinian gunmen found and killed her anyway,” Elie Wiesel, the great writer of the Holocaust, urged President Bush. “Please remember that while Israelis mourned alongside us for our nation’s tragedy on September 11th, Yasir Arafat was busy suppressing footage of his constituents dancing in the streets.”<br /><br />But few remembered and the world moved on. One of the terrorists from the Adora attack was released as part of the disastrous Shalit hostage exchange deal in 2011.<br /><br />Fadi Mohammed Salaam Dewik, that terrorist, rose through the ranks and became a senior figure in Hamas. After Israel had finished its previous raid on the Al-Shifa hospital, the Qatari base used by Hamas, Dewik along with many other terrorists returned to the hospital.<br /><br />They assumed that Israel would not come back without offering plenty of warning the way that it had during the previous raid on Al-Shifa under pressure from the Biden administration.<br /><br />But this time the terrorists had made a fatal mistake.<br /><br />After a campaign by <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-truth-about-the-jihad-in-dearborn/">Islamic terrorist supporters in Dearborn</a>, Michigan, and their leftist allies, the Biden administration had turned on Israel to salvage his chances in the swing state.<br /><br />Senator Schumer was chosen by the administration to denounce <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/schumer-warns-israel-to-spare-hamas-or-face-sanctions/">Israel a</a>nd warn it not to endanger civilians by attacking Hamas. The weekend after Schumer’s shameful speech, Israel came back to Al-Shifa and this time there were no more warnings to tip off the terrorists.<br /><br />Over the holiday of Purim, Israeli soldiers took out over 200 terrorists and <a href="https://www.jns.org/idf-600-terrorists-detained-over-140-killed-at-gazas-shifa-hospital/">captured over </a>650 terrorists. There were more terrorists at the hospital than its official number of 700 patient beds.<br /><br />The terrorists included the top leadership of Islamic Jihad and senior Hamas officials. While most of the terrorists surrendered, expecting to be traded in a deal for the hostages, some of the most hardened holed up in the hospital’s maternity ward and wouldn’t come out.<br /><br />Among them was Dewik.<br /><br />Cartoons had often depicted Hamas hiding behind babies, and the terrorists made those cartoons come to life as they opened fire from the ER, threw grenades from the burn ward and when the maternity ward was finally liberated, IDF soldiers<a href="https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/artc-gaza-idf-uncovers-a-cache-of-weapons-at-shifa-hospital-s-maternity-ward"> found sniper rifles</a>, handguns and mortars hidden everywhere from beds to drop ceilings.<br /><br />Dewik died alongside Zakariya Najeeb, a top terrorist who had coordinated operations for Hamas, in the maternity ward where mothers are supposed to bring life into the world.<br /><br />The terrorist who had taken part in the murder of a 5-year-old girl died in a place of children.<br /><br />Justice had been delayed for 22 years before finally catching up with Fadi Mohammed Dewik.<br /><br />“When I heard my daughter was murdered, my first reaction was: there is no God,” Jacob Shefi said <a href="https://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/2002-04-28/ty-article/0000017f-edcc-d4cd-af7f-edfce5930000">at the time</a>. “Then I came to my senses. I thought to myself, here, my two sons and my wife were left alive, even though terrorists shot at them from point blank range. They also shot at me and didn’t hit me, there is a higher power watching over us.”<br /><br />“She loved to pray, go to synagogue. If only she had gone out with me in the morning, maybe she would be alive,” he said.<br /><br />Today, Jacob is one of the “Blue Riders” motorcyclists in Israeli law enforcement and posts inspirational religious messages in the wake of the Islamic terrorist attacks of Oct 7.<br /><br />When Danielle was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said that she wanted to be a righteous woman. Today she would have been a young woman, perhaps married with children of her own. Islamic terrorists denied her the opportunity as they had so many innocent victims, from the dead in Adora to those murdered on 9/11, 7/7 in London and Oct 7 in Israel.<br /><br />Justice under these conditions seems elusive and at times even impossible. And those who are left behind may even wonder if there is a God who sees and makes right a broken world.<br /><br />Danielle’s full name was Danielle Bat-El Shefi. Bat-El means “Daughter of G-d”.<br /><br />Murdered on a Sabbath, Danielle was avenged on Purim which commemorates the day when Haman had plotted to kill the Jews, “from the young to the old, little children and women”.<br /><br />The Biden administration and the world had abandoned Israel, but that higher power had not.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="500" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1_keQ0_yU7H0_WMk_BDp7bl0Hkb-VNwIrmbYScRiXPu4yvMjSJzNw6fwn1WmPicuXUfil4uvKWre_HN4tJE-6l22CWZrlbyCMqW2yp28Lb3Wqbd8mk05nS_o6bQ5p6g_Ejh_GgcIBus9FT_VOGWM5-0hVrtCPYwtyncpCVh26RfnwxGp1Hb5q4g/w640-h230/%E2%80%9CA%20marvelously%20original%20and%20enlightening%20look%20at%20American%20history,%20with%20a%20host%20of%20insights%20for%20our%20own%20age.%E2%80%9D%20%E2%80%94Robert%20Spencer,%20Author%20of%20The%20Sumter%20Gambit%20How%20the%20Left%20Is%20Trying%20to%20Foment%20A%20Civil%20W.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/5811659529076768570/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/terrorist-murderer-of-5-year-old-girl.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="3 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/5811659529076768570" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/5811659529076768570" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/terrorist-murderer-of-5-year-old-girl.html" rel="alternate" title="Terrorist Murderer of 5-Year-Old Girl Caught Hiding in Maternity Ward" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI3fnHluzQ-JhofZNqLTq7NDJsTGfGYzRM3H0dqZycLxABzmJ09dYIWIop2VYjaRZE9-FQf52M2F2CCtZBu4RN3ZsSd8rvj_IBMANjTL6TJKaohaCQByDhw4BIikyL8RXAE2XysVXzuKlnUUASn9kZ0frstiHOFpUgzjvjcnzlpo9oz16a0nr3fA/s72-w640-h384-c/shefi%20dwek2.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>3</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-1219048741885504674</id><published>2024-04-03T00:13:00.002-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-03T00:15:17.474-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Afghanistan"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="iran"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Israel"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Iran Smuggles US Weapons from Afghanistan to Terrorists in Israel</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDSAXujZt6ZIb9eEmJOYyO1Jkwtbl0xA1yfbLlS05HjIzFRmvtCvACxyU1Imgp8ptj7UzfOPrGAyFrL2RdH9FF6TAvXi3gL29DQ5PsjEAmYL-5B83zZSdV9hVON6jnePo287h27_NHYlLshDAVpwGsAGnL8ksvQm6ePM2L6XPkcTYVgOaJ3eL_xA/s1600/afweapons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="897" data-original-width="1600" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDSAXujZt6ZIb9eEmJOYyO1Jkwtbl0xA1yfbLlS05HjIzFRmvtCvACxyU1Imgp8ptj7UzfOPrGAyFrL2RdH9FF6TAvXi3gL29DQ5PsjEAmYL-5B83zZSdV9hVON6jnePo287h27_NHYlLshDAVpwGsAGnL8ksvQm6ePM2L6XPkcTYVgOaJ3eL_xA/w640-h358/afweapons.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">In December, the Biden administration blocked a shipment of M4 rifles to Israel. The rifles were meant to be used by local community self-defense units of the kind that had served as the front line of defense against the Hamas attack on Oct 7. However the Biden administration claimed that it was concerned that the self-defense units might be Jewish “right-wing extremists”.<br /><br />The Islamic terrorists attacking them however had no trouble finding M4 rifles. They just expected theirs to come by a <a href="https://www.jns.org/israel-thwarts-iranian-weapons-smuggling-plot/">more complicated road</a> from Afghanistan, by way of Iran’s terror operatives, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan via a <a href="https://israel-alma.org/2024/03/26/who-is-responsible-for-smuggling-weapons-into-judea-and-samaria-via-jordan/">drug smuggling route</a>, and then inside Israel.<br /><br />The M4 rifles were part of a package that included grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles, anti-tank landmines, RPGs, C4 and Semtex explosives, and hand grenades.<br /><br />A number of those were clearly American weapons including the M4s and the M203 grenade launchers: both in use in Afghanistan. The Alma Center, founded by IDF Lt Col (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, <a href="https://israel-alma.org/2024/03/26/who-is-responsible-for-smuggling-weapons-into-judea-and-samaria-via-jordan/">believes that the</a> M4s are likely “spoils from Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan.”<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>If U.S. weapons from Afghanistan made their way to Islamic terrorists in Israel, it would not be the first time. Islamic terrorists in Gaza had been previously spotted with M4 and M16 rifles, including during the Oct 7 attacks. Rep. James Comer <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/10.23.2023-Dept.-Defense.pdf">had dispatched </a>a letter after the Hamas attacks to the Department of Defense asking it to explain the M4A1 Carbines, which were “specially designed for U.S. Special Operations Forces” in the hands of the terrorists.<br /><br />“The surprise terror attacks by Hamas into Israel were made possible, in part, because of U.S. arms left behind in Afghanistan by the Biden administration,” Larry Keane, the Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, <a href="https://www.nssf.org/articles/weapons-abandoned-by-biden-administration-appear-in-hamas-terror-attacks/">wrote at the</a> Firearm Industry Trade Association.<br /><br />The weapons package now intercepted by Israel shows how Iran may have tapped into the weapons left behind in Afghanistan. The weapons shipment appears to be a ‘sandwich’ with Iran moving American weapons to the Islamic terrorists backed by the Biden administration.<br /><br />While the weapons were being smuggled by Iran through its IRGC terror arm, the key player was Munir Makdah, a top figure in the Fatah movement which controls the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority is a major recipient of American foreign aid and the Biden administration has been pressuring Israel to put its terrorists in charge of Gaza.<br /><br />Even as the Biden administration was demanding that Israel allow Fatah terrorists to run Gaza, a top Fatah leader was recruiting terrorists to attack Israel. The anti-tank weapons, mines and RPGs suggest that the goal was a significant assault on Israel in order to open a second front in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, to relieve the pressure on Hamas in Gaza. .<br /><br />Munir Makdah serves as a deputy commander of Fatah in the Ein al-Hilweh terrorist settlement in Lebanon. Misleadingly described by the UN as a refugee camp, it’s actually a major city of over 100,000 which various Islamic terrorist groups have been fighting over since at least the 1980s. While Ein al-Hilweh is often described in the media as a “Palestinian refugee camp”, large numbers of Syrian Islamists fled there after losing their civil war, and have been fighting with Fatah for control of the city using heavy weaponry including rockets.<br /><br />The weapons were intended for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Fatah terrorist arm, sanctioned by the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization for its numerous bloody attacks.<br /><br />Even as Al Aqsa has gone on murdering Israelis,<a href="https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/FOREIGNPOLICY/Issues/Pages/On-Marwan-Barghouti-s-murder-record,-political-maneuvering-and-exploitation.aspx"> Marwan Barghouti</a>, its founder, in prison for his involvement in multiple murders, including that of a Greek monk, has been promoted as a future president of the Palestinian Authority.<br /><br />The New York Times ran an op-ed by Barghouti while failing to identify him as a terrorist. The Washington Post recently claimed that the Biden administration had “raised the treatment of Marwan Barghouti” with Israel. The International Red Cross, which has failed to visit any of the Jewish and non-Jewish hostages held by Hamas, has been clamoring to visit him.<br /><br />“The Biden administration should make it very clear to the Netanyahu government that if Barghouti is harmed or killed in prison, it would throw gas on a raging fire,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, notorious for his promotion of Iranian agendas, warned.<br /><br />While the Biden administration and Iran Lobby adjacent figures like Van Hollen were lobbying for Barghouti, the terrorist’s men appeared to be preparing to unleash a major attack on Israel.<br /><br />And who was behind the attack? Iran.<br /><br />Apart from being a top Fatah terrorist, Munir Makdah has<a href="https://www.jns.org/israel-thwarts-iranian-weapons-smuggling-plot/"> also been identified</a> as an operative with Iran’s Hezbollah terrorist movement in Lebanon and the IRGC. After consolidating its control over Hamas and <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/al-qaedas-new-leader-is-an-iranian-puppet/">Al Qaeda</a>, Iran is gaining a deeper foothold in the Palestinian Authority.<br /><br />And the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist operation subsidized by American taxpayers.<br /><br />The weapons, including the M4 rifles, had come by way of Iran’s terror operatives, including those in Syria, who would have been in a position to move them through Jordan into Israel.<br /><br />Captagon, the amphetamine used by the Hamas terrorists on Oct 7, is manufactured under the protection of the Assad family, an Iranian client, smuggled out of Syria and into Jordan, where it’s then trafficked to Iran’s enemies in Saudi Arabia, but also into Muslim areas in Israel.<br /><br />Iran’s global drug smuggling empire provides wealth, but it’s also used by the terror regime to piggyback terror operatives and weapons like those that were meant for the Fatah terrorists.<br /><br />Opiates and weapons from Afghanistan make their way to Iran, and from there to Iraq, Syria, Yemen and to Gaza and now even the West Bank. In 2022, Israel had detected a <a href="https://ctc.westpoint.edu/guns-drugs-and-smugglers-a-recent-heightened-challenge-at-israels-borders-with-jordan-and-egypt/">significant increase</a> in both drugs and weapons being smuggled into the country. This was likely part of the prep for the Oct 7 attacks which employed both drugs and weapons.<br /><br />Iran’s drug network is also a terror network and the terrorists are also its clients. Gaza has an estimated 150,000 drug addicts from a population of only a few million.<br /><br />After Biden turned over Afghanistan to the Taliban, along with its drug trafficking operation, Iran boosted a pipeline of weapons and drugs that are used to bind its allies and attack its enemies.<br /><br />Weapons left behind in Afghanistan have made their way into Israel. But this time they were intended for the Palestinian Authority terrorists backed by the Biden administration.<br /><br />While the terrorists want the M4s left behind in Afghanistan, Israel is <a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/idf/thanks-but-no-thanks-israel-replacing-us-assault-rifles-with-locally-made-arms/2024/03/06/">pivoting away </a>from the rifles denied to it by the Biden administration and shifting over to local manufacturing. After the Biden administration began moving arms from Israel to Ukraine, and then began cutting off weapons to stop Israel from finishing off Hamas, the Israeli government is <a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/idf/thanks-but-no-thanks-israel-replacing-us-assault-rifles-with-locally-made-arms/2024/03/06/">going local</a>.<br /><br />Under Biden, Islamic terrorists can still count on American weapons, Israelis however can’t.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIIjNTrtgETVud2E8MisTScbXza1YfwQg3rkYS_widRotbG1WK8KPAnm5ptDAYH3_lHQQLmmLVa61NgKDsoOlp8Qyfmbs2TduFOCWX23GXLCiOxZStvfqYhjvM0zshe01Agf3VORUgDVLuxwwoAt5iXzSLJEMVvCsdccLs3WQ7K3wMxpGVsslDng/w640-h640/domestic%20enemies%20ad.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/1219048741885504674/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/iran-smuggles-us-weapons-from.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="0 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/1219048741885504674" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/1219048741885504674" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/iran-smuggles-us-weapons-from.html" rel="alternate" title="Iran Smuggles US Weapons from Afghanistan to Terrorists in Israel" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDSAXujZt6ZIb9eEmJOYyO1Jkwtbl0xA1yfbLlS05HjIzFRmvtCvACxyU1Imgp8ptj7UzfOPrGAyFrL2RdH9FF6TAvXi3gL29DQ5PsjEAmYL-5B83zZSdV9hVON6jnePo287h27_NHYlLshDAVpwGsAGnL8ksvQm6ePM2L6XPkcTYVgOaJ3eL_xA/s72-w640-h358-c/afweapons.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-4591344323808937497</id><published>2024-04-01T20:27:00.002-04:00</published><updated>2024-04-01T20:27:27.009-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Biden"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Justice Department"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Trump"/><title type="text">Biden’s DOJ Targeted Trump From Day 1</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvz8BKvnxoiwSZ5B_Ekp-SYBZ494jbj79OT5s4bpH8dT3o2-EWz3vsO9cFw44FfRz8tBt8t39EoPuG1T2Bhyphenhyphenx4VSzuVaWOtPI8J6KJ3_kG6uZVv9t2LTBC9jYvPpAtAJGPHD-ygzu7JjspHASKt2cgYk8cvuWMKGATJ7uC8acUjRGW4lWZeBwwrw/s925/dc%20spying%20dle.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="797" data-original-width="925" height="552" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvz8BKvnxoiwSZ5B_Ekp-SYBZ494jbj79OT5s4bpH8dT3o2-EWz3vsO9cFw44FfRz8tBt8t39EoPuG1T2Bhyphenhyphenx4VSzuVaWOtPI8J6KJ3_kG6uZVv9t2LTBC9jYvPpAtAJGPHD-ygzu7JjspHASKt2cgYk8cvuWMKGATJ7uC8acUjRGW4lWZeBwwrw/w640-h552/dc%20spying%20dle.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>Attorney General Merrick Garland is in trouble. Not just with Republicans, but with Biden.<br /><br />While Republicans are unhappy that AG Garland had been going after Trump and other conservatives, Biden and other Democrats are unhappy at his ineffectiveness.<br /><br />A Politico report <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-to-fire-attorney-generals-for-not-doing-enough-to-cover-up-senility-sons-criminality/">from last month </a>cited White House insiders claiming that if Biden wins, Garland won’t get a second term because he didn’t do enough to insulate the Biden family from investigations and that he didn’t move the Trump investigation along fast enough.<br /><br />Biden’s people wanted a Trump trial before the election and Garland failed to give them one.<br /><br />In response to the attacks, AG Garland and his allies have begun releasing information about their Trump efforts in a bid to save their jobs. While that isn’t likely to work, it does show that the “independent investigation” was a myth and that getting Trump had been the DOJ’s top job.<br /><br />A New York Times report <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/us/politics/trump-jan-6-merrick-garland.html">reveals that</a> AG Garland “gathered his closest aides to discuss a topic too sensitive to broach in bigger groups” after “being sworn in as attorney general in March 2021”.<br /><br />The topic was Trump.<br /><br />Garland urged a J6 investigation that would “follow the connective tissue upward” and “follow the money” even if the “evidence leads to Trump”. Indeed it would appear that the unusually aggressive nature of the J6 investigation and the pressure on defendants to strike deals had less to do with the events or the defendants, but was part of a failed plan to get Trump.<br /><br />The Biden DOJ had followed a “dead end”, believing that by going after the J6 defendants it could “follow the money” to Trump and his people, and indict the former president that way, but the entire campaign of investigations and arrests showed no actual financial links. The lack of results likely spurred more aggressive actions by the FBI and the DOJ who were under pressure from AG Garland and the Biden administration to produce results. Only to come up with nothing.<br /><br />While plenty of J6ers were arrested, indicted and convicted, none of this gave the DOJ Trump.<br /><br />The attorney general was involved in these efforts and the “meetings often lasted hours as Mr. Garland rattled off questions. One early query: Had Mr. Trump made incriminating statements during an Oval Office meeting in December 2020 when his team discussed overturning Mr. Biden’s electoral victory?”<br /><br />While the prosecutors breathed down the necks of the FBI and their juniors, and Garland breathed down their necks, the White House was breathing down Garland’s neck.<br /><br />“The investigation itself has determined the timing?” 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley asked Garland.<br /><br />“Yes. Exactly right,” Garland lied.<br /><br />The investigation did not determine the timing, the timing actually determined the investigation.<br /><br />In June 2021, AG Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco “frustrated with the pace of the work” created a special team to go after Trump and his allies, and since “they did not want too many people knowing about it”, they “gave it a vanilla name: the ‘Investigations Unit.'”<br /><br />Four months after taking office and with a crime wave rocking the country, the DOJ had two teams going after Trump. The second secret team was meant to be more aggressive.<br /><br />And it was this team that was spun off into the Jack Smith indictments.<br /><br />Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom was put in charge of the secret ‘Investigations Unit”. When Trump announced his candidacy, Garland was forced to follow the rules and appoint a special counsel. He picked Clinton ally Jack Smith who then brought in Windom so that his special counsel investigation was just a continuation of the DOJ’s secret ‘Investigations Unit”.<br /><br />As the New York Times put it, the Investigations Unit. “team would lay the groundwork for the investigation that Mr. Smith would take over as special counsel a year and a half later.”<br /><br />The Smith investigation, the DOJ investigations, the House Dem J6 Committee and the prior Mueller investigation were all part of an interconnected effort by Democrats to go after Trump.<br /><br />The Times describes Garland giving directions to the DOJ campaign against Trump through L. Rush Atkinson, a former Mueller investigation prosecutor now serving as “a senior counselor to Mr. Garland whose work for the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III offered valuable insight.”<br /><br />The official narrative that the Trump indictments were the product of a non-partisan investigation that followed the evidence where it led has been entirely discredited. The Jack Smith investigation was actually the work of a secret unit within the DOJ that formed because Biden and AG Garland were unhappy that the investigation that followed existing laws wasn’t working.<br /><br />The Biden administration and congressional; Democrats turned up the heat on Garland. Even as the secret team targeted Trump, House Dems created the J6 Committee to explore even more speculative options for indicting him. The extremely speculative legal theories of the J6 committee would then be used to <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-the-doj-outsourced-trumps-indictment-to-house-dems/">create the legal justifications f</a>or the Smith indictments.<br /><br />“Prosecutors, special counsel, they follow the facts and the law where they lead,” Garland had told 60 Minutes. “When they’ve gotten the amount of evidence necessary to make a charging decision and they’ve decided that a charge is warranted, that’s when they bring their cases.”<br /><br />In reality, Garland and the DOJ were not following the facts and the law, they were inventing them. When the facts and the law failed to show any evidence by following the money, a second team was put on the case to begin inventing crimes and creating speculative laws.<br /><br />When their inventions failed, they turned to a wholly partisan J6 Committee to find a case.<br /><br />And none of this had anything to do with the law.<br /><br />Efforts to find a legal basis for indicting Trump, which had begun in March 2021, had collapsed later that year. Everything that followed, leading up to the current indictments, was illegal.<br /><br />Last October, Garland had told 60 Minutes that “I would resign” before agreeing to political pressure from Biden to go after Trump. Garland had told the CBS News show that Biden had never pressured him and that “Justice Department prosecutors are nonpartisan. They don’t allow partisan considerations to play any role in their determinations.”<br /><br />That story quickly fell apart as the media filled up with leaks about Biden’s anger at Garland for not getting Trump quickly enough and Garland’s protestations that he really was getting Trump.<br /><br />Garland claimed in October that Biden “has never tried to put hands on these investigations.” Four months later, we learned that Biden wanted Garland gone for not doing what his boss wanted. And five months later, we learned that Garland personally was all over the investigation.<br /><br />Stories about the bad relations between Biden and Garland describe the attorney general’s alleged “vaunted independence” (Wall Street Journal) or “Democrats close to Biden fear Garland has become too consumed by that instruction to appear impartial” (Politico), but AG Garland wasn’t being independent or impartial, he just had trouble doing the impossible.<br /><br />Garland had been tasked with manufacturing a baseless indictment of a presidential candidate that would stick. The DOJ spent years exhausting its legal options before being pressured by Biden, Garland and the J6 Committee into ignoring the law and coming up with something.<br /><br />But Jack Smith’s “something” is no more likely to stand up to scrutiny than Steele’s did.<br /><br />The trouble dates back to the Steele dossier in which people in the Clinton campaign paid an ex-spy for hire to find a basis for their conspiracy theory. The dossier fell apart the moment people saw it. The Mueller report proved to be no better. And the Jack Smith indictments will go the same way. What all three had in common was that they were not based on facts or the law, but on ridiculous conspiracy theories sourced from email chains between influential party figures, donors and eventually social media trends that could not hold up to serious scrutiny.<br /><br />The law is the difference between ‘knowing’ something is true and actually proving it.<br /><br />After getting the thankless job of trying to embarrass Sen. Mitch McConnell as a fake Supreme Court nominee, Attorney General Merrick Garland got the even more thankless job of trying to manufacture an indictment of Trump based on what the party hierarchy already “knew”.<br /><br />And that will be Garland’s corrupt legacy.<br /><br />Most attorney generals are forgotten and those who aren’t are usually the infamous ones.<br /><br />Attorney General Merrick Garland will be remembered for wasting years, while thousands died in a massive surge of crime and violence, faking an indictment of a political opponent to please his boss and rig an election, and offering humiliating apologies while being purged for his failure.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIIjNTrtgETVud2E8MisTScbXza1YfwQg3rkYS_widRotbG1WK8KPAnm5ptDAYH3_lHQQLmmLVa61NgKDsoOlp8Qyfmbs2TduFOCWX23GXLCiOxZStvfqYhjvM0zshe01Agf3VORUgDVLuxwwoAt5iXzSLJEMVvCsdccLs3WQ7K3wMxpGVsslDng/w640-h640/domestic%20enemies%20ad.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/4591344323808937497/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/bidens-doj-targeted-trump-from-day-1.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="3 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/4591344323808937497" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/4591344323808937497" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/04/bidens-doj-targeted-trump-from-day-1.html" rel="alternate" title="Biden’s DOJ Targeted Trump From Day 1" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvz8BKvnxoiwSZ5B_Ekp-SYBZ494jbj79OT5s4bpH8dT3o2-EWz3vsO9cFw44FfRz8tBt8t39EoPuG1T2Bhyphenhyphenx4VSzuVaWOtPI8J6KJ3_kG6uZVv9t2LTBC9jYvPpAtAJGPHD-ygzu7JjspHASKt2cgYk8cvuWMKGATJ7uC8acUjRGW4lWZeBwwrw/s72-w640-h552-c/dc%20spying%20dle.png" width="72"/><thr:total>3</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-1990668051960004487</id><published>2024-03-31T13:03:00.001-04:00</published><updated>2024-03-31T13:03:11.603-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Biden"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Crime"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Pro-Crime"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Fact Check: Biden’s Myth of the Lowest Crime Rate in 50 Years</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXN2UdXxOkFJnvvoxXVX_hCFwoQGaEz5oqnHNJ0F2S_8mLVUZQeVnvl8BnX3mq44baufYsZrJo9pKLgZ_zb8oaXMbM0GTvcm5xA8jptAWbV_BQhgoABgD7Z5cWLId0lyhgZ-mcYn0JLtmpDADRbQTq-5x1Mqbt-Cxxhl6M_J2nQNPFEYDS9kYrqw/s1366/subway%20frame%20nat%20guard.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1082" data-original-width="1366" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXN2UdXxOkFJnvvoxXVX_hCFwoQGaEz5oqnHNJ0F2S_8mLVUZQeVnvl8BnX3mq44baufYsZrJo9pKLgZ_zb8oaXMbM0GTvcm5xA8jptAWbV_BQhgoABgD7Z5cWLId0lyhgZ-mcYn0JLtmpDADRbQTq-5x1Mqbt-Cxxhl6M_J2nQNPFEYDS9kYrqw/s320/subway%20frame%20nat%20guard.png" width="320" /></a></div></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div>“Last year, the United States had one of the lowest rates of all violent crime — of all violent crimes in more than 50 years. Murder, rape — murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery all dropped sharply, along with burglary, property crime, and theft,” Biden recently proclaimed at a White House law enforcement event.</div><br />And then he claimed credit for it.<br /><br />While Biden has a history of making things up, this particular one has been slowly making its way through the media which is also composed of the only people who could possibly believe it.<br /><br />The original source for the claim that the United States had the lowest crime rate in 50 years came from the<a href="https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-in-2023-murder-plummeted-violent"> substack blog of Jeff Asher</a>, a 30-something former federal employee who set up his own consulting and analytics firm that helps create “a more equitable criminal justice system” which is a term often used for the pro-crime policies that led to the high crime rates.<br /><br />Asher had popped up in pro-crime media outlets back in 2020 to dismiss the idea that pro-crime policies had caused a surge in violent crime. In one op-ed, Asher blamed, “increased domestic violence early in the pandemic, warmer weather, or just plain randomness”. Now Asher is back and arguing that we’re enjoying “the lowest violent crime rate nationally since 1969.”<br /><br />And his claim appears to have ended up in a president’s mouth.<br /><br />There are some obvious problems with Asher’s thesis. Forget 1969. The FBI recorded 16,214 murders in 2018. While a story about Asher and his firm says <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/12/28/us-murder-violent-crime-rates-drop">that they expect </a>“homicides overall to fall from 21,156 last year to around 18,450 this year.”<br /><br />Asher admits that, “murder was almost certainly still higher in 2023 than in 2019 even with a record double-digit decline nationally this year, but not by much.”<br /><br />Biden is bragging about the “lowest crime rate in 50 years” that includes thousands more murders than not all that long ago under Trump.<br /><br />But Asher argues that, “Detroit is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1966”. That would be more impressive if not for the fact that there were over 1.5 million people living in Motor City in 1966 and there are some 600,000 still living there now.<br /><br />There were 252 murders in Detroit in 2023, that’s a little more than the 232 murders in 1966, but the<a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2024/01/03/fewest-homicides-since-1966/72098581007/"> actual per capita murder rate </a>is much higher because the population is much lower. Detroit has actually gone from 15 murders per 100,000 to 41 murders per 100,000.<br /><br />Any statistical analyst who writes the sentence that “Detroit is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1966” without a massive qualifier is triggering more red flags than the USSR.<br /><br />Virtually all of the media’s reporting on the good news about crime rates has come from Asher and AH Datalytics. Relying on a single source for reporting on a national phenomenon would have traditionally been frowned upon, but the media has long since discarded such journalistic hangups. And media outlets have asked Asher no substantive questions about his research.<br /><br />Nor do they wonder when an expert describes the reduction in crime rates as a mystery.<br /><br />Asher tends to argue that there’s no explanation because he’s ignoring the obvious causes. “The national murder rate reached a modern low in 2014, capping a quarter-century decline. Then it rose across the United States in 2015 and 2016. Why gun violence increased in those two years remains somewhat of a mystery, and no single factor is likely to explain it, but there is one potential contributor that is rarely talked about: the weather,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed. A likelier explanation than the weather might have been the Ferguson riots in 2014.<br /><br />Crime rates are not a mystery. We know what caused them and what causes them to drop.<br /><br />Baltimore, another of Asher’s success stories, is claiming that murders have dropped sharply. There were 262 murders in Baltimore in 2023. That is down from 334, but it’s still a ways from 211 in 2014. In 2015, as the Freddie Gray riots swept through the city, incited by pro-crime politicians and activists, and Baltimore’s homicides jumped massively to 342.<br /><br />After a decade of violence, Baltimore’s murders may finally be approaching what they were in 2014. It’s a dubious success story that fails to mention the obvious cause of the killings.<br /><br />The violence helped lead to <a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/residents-weigh-in-on-why-baltimore-citys-population-is-plummeting">a 6% drop</a> in Baltimore’s population from 2010 to 2020. With 35,000 fewer people, Baltimore’s per capita murder rate is actually higher than it would appear.<br /><br />Asher is basing his large claims off FBI statistics. And those statistics are highly suspect.<br /><br />The FBI’s data collection methods had changed at the same time as it began reporting a sudden drop in the crime rate and the numbers appear to have been massaged by various pro-crime think tanks and organizations. Thousands of police agencies are no longer having their data incorporated into the FBI’s statistics and it’s hard to believe that this isn’t linked to the drop.<br /><br />And there are even more blatant ways of suppressing crime rate statistics.<br /><br />Mayor Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s radical pro-crime boss, is shutting down the ShotSpotter program that helped police track shootings. While Johnson has made some of the familiar pro-crime arguments against ShotSpotter, the real trouble with the tool is that it raises crime rates by alerting police to incidents that would otherwise not have been reported. Past surveys have suggested that only<a href="https://nationalpolice.org/main/not-letting-cops-enforce-laws-leads-to-witnesses-not-reporting-crimes-which-leads-to-crime-statistics-becoming-misleading/"> 1 in 10 incidents</a> intercepted by ShotSpotter led to a call to the police. Imagine how crime rates will drop after ShotSpotter is gone and how Johnson will take credit.<br /><br />Another story from The Atlantic promoting Asher’s claims of low crime rates contrasted with the decline in police forces suggested that defunding the cops doesn’t affect crime rates. It’s more likely that <a href="https://ouramericafoundation.org/category/crime-safety/">historic police cuts</a> have led to lower police responses and lower crime rates. That’s not because crimes aren’t being committed, they’re just not going into the database.<br /><br />Police responses have slowed down in some places while in others patrols have been canceled and officers have stopped responding to entire categories of calls. Pittsburgh recently announced that it won’t respond to 911 calls that aren’t “in progress emergencies” such as thefts or burglaries. And, predictably, Pittsburgh appears on Asher’s list of success stories.<br /><br />Why don’t people believe Asher? Because, according to Asher, “people are bad at perceiving crime trends.” And the media has gone with this angle that people are stupid and ignorant.<br /><br />NBC News trumpeted Asher’s claims with the headline, “Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They’re wrong.” The Atlantic argued that, “in surveys, most Americans say that crime and inflation are still rising, but they’re wrong… the twin crises largely evaporated, and no one is totally sure why.” When a crisis goes away and no one is sure why, that’s because it didn’t.<br /><br />Multiple media outlets championed Asher’s claims and argued that the public was worried about crime because “some candidates lean into ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric that doesn’t necessarily match reality” (Axios) like Trump’s “fear-based appeals on crime” (The Atlantic).<br /><br />But if the public was prone to believing things just because politicians and media outlets tell them so, shouldn’t “more than three-quarters of the public” believe that crime is dropping?<br /><br />And yet the experts, or in this case, one expert had spoken.<br /><br />Statistics can be a useful tool, but they only show part of the picture. The FBI crime data represents a final dumping ground for statistics from a large number of law enforcement agencies that can be put together in different ways to tell multiple stories. Data reflects primarily the means by which it is gathered, law enforcement, and then put together, but the real origin point for all that data is with the ordinary people whom Asher and the media dismiss.<br /><br />When crime victims no longer bother to call 911, when the police no longer go out because there are no officers and there’s no point, when crimes are underreported and undercharged, the public still knows what’s going on even if the data no longer shows up at police departments.<br /><br />In an NPR interview, Asher responded to a survey showing that “more than three quarters of Americans believe there’s more crime in the country” with the condescending reply, “the only way that I find to discuss it with people is to talk about, this is what the data says. You know, you’re wrong. And then I’ll take out my phone and say, look, here’s a chart, for the graphic learners.” Whom are you going to believe, Asher’s phone or your own eyes?</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/1990668051960004487/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/fact-check-bidens-myth-of-lowest-crime.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="6 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/1990668051960004487" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/1990668051960004487" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/fact-check-bidens-myth-of-lowest-crime.html" rel="alternate" title="Fact Check: Biden’s Myth of the Lowest Crime Rate in 50 Years" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXN2UdXxOkFJnvvoxXVX_hCFwoQGaEz5oqnHNJ0F2S_8mLVUZQeVnvl8BnX3mq44baufYsZrJo9pKLgZ_zb8oaXMbM0GTvcm5xA8jptAWbV_BQhgoABgD7Z5cWLId0lyhgZ-mcYn0JLtmpDADRbQTq-5x1Mqbt-Cxxhl6M_J2nQNPFEYDS9kYrqw/s72-c/subway%20frame%20nat%20guard.png" width="72"/><thr:total>6</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-6509793980102914884</id><published>2024-03-28T20:02:00.002-04:00</published><updated>2024-03-28T20:02:54.165-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Hamas"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Islamization"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Poll Shows U.S. Muslims Support Hamas</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8wKeOy1kHv16kXi_QVmame767h1t1Gh3uiOR6889XpeSXxY6PEYK35hAqcUKanQrF6zcMq-V4KnnF4BgNM7FDefRserU-_tKPrQcMbbKWZ4CGExTWm0dffrqTKPmleM430vwO9H71HdzsSi1UqGQRKrUpSIy3r2HrG80UxtSc18Ol4vRFzlNoUw/s1011/dearborn%20frame.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="661" data-original-width="1011" height="418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8wKeOy1kHv16kXi_QVmame767h1t1Gh3uiOR6889XpeSXxY6PEYK35hAqcUKanQrF6zcMq-V4KnnF4BgNM7FDefRserU-_tKPrQcMbbKWZ4CGExTWm0dffrqTKPmleM430vwO9H71HdzsSi1UqGQRKrUpSIy3r2HrG80UxtSc18Ol4vRFzlNoUw/w640-h418/dearborn%20frame.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>After 9/11, elected officials told us that Islam had nothing to do with terrorism. And that accusing Muslims of supporting Islamic terrorism was a dangerous bigotry they dubbed “Islamophobia.”<br /><br />In the decades since, the same speech has been delivered after every Islamic terror attack.<br /><br />Now, as Muslims and leftists riot in support of Hamas, after Islamic groups and public figures from campus groups <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/cair-boss-cheers-hamas-oct-7-attack/">to the leader of the </a>Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) celebrated the Oct 7 atrocities, we are not allowed to suggest they support terrorism.<br /><br />Even <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-truth-about-the-jihad-in-dearborn/">as Dearborn, Michigan</a> became the hub of a movement to save Hamas by pressuring Biden, led by figures who had praised Hamas, <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-truth-about-the-jihad-in-dearborn/">an op-ed by a MEMRI counterterrorism researcher</a> in the Wall Street Journal that warned of the degree of support for terrorism in the Muslim area was denounced by everyone from Biden on down for its “Islamophobia.”<br /><br />Muslims in America, we’re told, don’t support Hamas, they just oppose Israel. Is that true?<br /><br />While <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-myth-of-gazas-innocent-civilians/">there were polls</a> which showed that the vast majority of Muslims in Israel (the so-called ‘Palestinians’) support Hamas, there hasn’t been a comprehensive poll of Muslims in America.<br /><br />However a recent <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/">Pew survey on</a> the war showed that half of Muslims in America (49%) believe Hamas has “valid” reasons for attacking Israel, while the majority (54%) also reject the idea that Israel has the right to defend itself against the Islamic terrorist organization<br /><br />Unlike the vast majority of Americans from all ages and backgrounds, Muslims are the only group where less than half agree that the Oct 7 murders, rapes and kidnappings were wrong.<br /><br />1 in 5 Muslims in America (21%) were willing to admit they supported the Oct 7 massacres. Nearly 1 in 3 claimed to be unsure whether burning Jewish families alive in their homes was wrong.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5mWx1tey7tmi_acYAtt9rI7kXy-ut00uelt3IZK1fLldA99OhhiIScmC-2ZsPCUYfHNfJWXvPsiCyoknCTIFYiiiaELSAHILjxa3N5BNqaTHnPRzy8mgLNYj7nqY0CjkYGgCYPViBnPjdXyhyphenhyphenTCdLny3BgwD4bHkdOn4fbLcEfkwxMBv-tf66og/s529/muslims%20quote.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="519" data-original-width="529" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5mWx1tey7tmi_acYAtt9rI7kXy-ut00uelt3IZK1fLldA99OhhiIScmC-2ZsPCUYfHNfJWXvPsiCyoknCTIFYiiiaELSAHILjxa3N5BNqaTHnPRzy8mgLNYj7nqY0CjkYGgCYPViBnPjdXyhyphenhyphenTCdLny3BgwD4bHkdOn4fbLcEfkwxMBv-tf66og/s320/muslims%20quote.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />Only 5% of Muslims in America believe that Israel’s military campaign on Hamas is acceptable while 68% of Muslims believe that Israel’s attacks on the Islamic terrorists are not acceptable.<br /><br />67% of Muslims in America have an unfavorable view of the “Israeli people” (not the Israeli government which an overwhelming 86% of them oppose.)<br /><br />While only 8% of Americans have a favorable view of Hamas, 1 in 3 (37%) Muslims in America are willing to admit to a favorable view of a sanctioned terrorist organization. (There are multiple reasons why some Muslims might oppose Hamas while still hating Israel, including support for the Palestinian Authority, political opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood or resentment over Hamas siding with the Sunni rebels in Syria.)<br /><br />60% of Muslims in the U.S. resent that America is “favoring” Israel.<br /><br />These numbers are troubling because they pose a threat not only to Israel, but to America.<br /><br />Support for Islamic terrorism in one part of the world can often translate to support for terrorism elsewhere. Including in America. Hamas is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood which has built an extensive infrastructure in America. When the Brotherhood took power in Egypt, before being removed in a popular uprising with military backing, many Muslims here rallied to support it.<br /><br />Muslim Brotherhood terrorist groups operate not only in Israel or the Middle East, but around the world. Al Qaeda was formed as part of a fusion with a Muslim Brotherhood splinter group. Osama bin Laden was one of a number of Al Qaeda leaders who had been in the Brotherhood.<br /><br />And the Muslim Brotherhood is on every campus in America through its student groups, it has built up organizations that control mosques and represent Muslims on Capitol Hill. Some of those organizations also did everything possible to undermine America’s war on Al Qaeda.<br /><br />Now some of them are cheering on the Houthi Jihadists as they battle the U.S. Navy to sink as many ships in the Red Sea as they can. Will they also cheer on attacks against America?<br /><br />The Pew numbers show quite clearly that a surprising number of Muslims are willing to express support for Islamic terrorism. How many share their views but are more circumspect about telling them to a stranger on the phone? That is something we may only find out far too late.<br /><br />While 1 in 3 Muslims will admit to supporting Hamas, 1 in 2 claim that Hamas has valid reasons for attacking Israel. And hardly any believe that the victims of Islamic terrorism have the right to fight back. That is the final number that truly matters. Some Muslims will claim to reject Islamic terror, but very few are willing to actually support non-Muslims who fight back against terrorism.<br /><br />While the Pew poll offers plenty of bad news about Democrats and their support for terror, this is in part driven by the growing Islamic role in the party, the media and public life. That is the phenomenon reflected in the <a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/election-jihad-islamist-political-machines-are-transforming-states-and-threatening-america-and-israel">David Horowitz Freedom Center’s ‘Election Jihad’ report </a>which showed that Islamic activists were gaining statewide offices around the country and using their positions to defend Islamic terrorists while opposing efforts to put a stop to their violence.<br /><br />Muslims in America don’t represent a range of diversity, they are clear outliers when it comes to supporting Islamic terrorism even among those groups most prone to supporting terrorists.<br /><br />Over 3 times as many Muslims, as Democrats, support the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7. Twice as many Muslims as black protestants, the other group least friendly to Jews, believe Hamas has valid reasons for fighting Israel. Over twice as many Muslims, as 18-24 year olds, the most pro-Hamas age demographic, support Hamas.<br /><br />These views do not represent an American range, but a dangerous un-American one.<br /><br />The support for Hamas and the opposition to Israel among Muslims in America is not a reflection of American politics, but of Islamic ones. This is also true of the anti-Israel campaign. The majority of Muslims don’t just oppose Israel, but the “Israeli people”. This is not a disagreement with a particular government, but a tribal hatred of an entire people.<br /><br />And that is the same genocidal hatred that Hamas and other terrorist groups have mobilized.<br /><br />American Jews are shocked at the level and depth of support for the murder of Jews, but over the past decades, they (like most Americans) failed to view immigration as an urgent threat. Now that there are multiple crises, from terrorist mobs in the streets to a mass invasion at the border, some people are waking up. And that wake up call needs to turn into action.<br /><br />Israel has its war at its own borders and we have ours. America is a generation away from its own Oct 7. As in Europe, a new terrorist threat is rising in our own country, not from abroad, but from a generation of Muslims and converts who were born in this country.<br /><br />The Pew poll shows once more how deep the support for Islamic terrorists is not just in abstractions like the “media” or the “college campus”, but among Islamic immigrants.<br /><br />If Americans and, especially, Jews, do not come to terms with that, what follows will be worse.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="574" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w4ZDszkXUHI" title="If Another 9/11 Happened, Would Biden Betray America the Way He Did Israel?" width="619"></iframe></span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/6509793980102914884/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/poll-shows-us-muslims-support-hamas.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="2 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/6509793980102914884" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/6509793980102914884" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/poll-shows-us-muslims-support-hamas.html" rel="alternate" title="Poll Shows U.S. Muslims Support Hamas" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8wKeOy1kHv16kXi_QVmame767h1t1Gh3uiOR6889XpeSXxY6PEYK35hAqcUKanQrF6zcMq-V4KnnF4BgNM7FDefRserU-_tKPrQcMbbKWZ4CGExTWm0dffrqTKPmleM430vwO9H71HdzsSi1UqGQRKrUpSIy3r2HrG80UxtSc18Ol4vRFzlNoUw/s72-w640-h418-c/dearborn%20frame.png" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-7908646157114236280</id><published>2024-03-28T00:21:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2024-03-28T00:21:33.546-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">The Golden Apple - A Socialist Fairy Tale</title><content type="html"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifOqRBYYm-1iHSD3mvF5KMcHY5b3mhiMry69Q-5C3zLyHtn8F4NBxWcLtvlXusceH1rG3Aj6-fvZhK1v1DAydbdvnn8ktkF3YsXFSq0LMDFIsMiUzP4aBx7gKPo6W__MNEXm_z2JTNxjGlXjuIHvF7a8y2q5pvsWSrDsN9nSkda0INk-mONKaqpQ/s1030/image_2024-03-27_003724058.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="887" data-original-width="1030" height="552" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifOqRBYYm-1iHSD3mvF5KMcHY5b3mhiMry69Q-5C3zLyHtn8F4NBxWcLtvlXusceH1rG3Aj6-fvZhK1v1DAydbdvnn8ktkF3YsXFSq0LMDFIsMiUzP4aBx7gKPo6W__MNEXm_z2JTNxjGlXjuIHvF7a8y2q5pvsWSrDsN9nSkda0INk-mONKaqpQ/w640-h552/image_2024-03-27_003724058.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><b><span style="font-size: large;">O</span><span style="font-size: medium;">nce</span></b> <b style="font-size: large;">upon a time </b><span style="font-size: medium;">there was a street fair. Then the government created a Ministry of Street Fairs funded by taxing the produce sold at the street fair. At first the Ministry brought some some order to the street fair. But to justify its expansion, it would periodically launch new "street fair initiatives" paid for by higher taxes on the produce. The higher taxes are passed on to customers as higher produce prices and people stop shopping at the street fair.</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;">After some consultation the Ministry of Street Fairs launches an "Emergency Street Fair Stimulus Plan" to promote shopping at the street fair. The stimulus plan offers people credit for shopping at the street fair. But the credit has to be paid for by doubling the price of all the produce. That and the welter of new hidden regulations embedded in the stimulus plan raises expenses for the sellers, who in turn have to raise prices. There is a short term burst of shoppers excited by the credit, which quickly fades away. The credit goes away soon enough too, but the prices stay just as high.<br /><br />The Ministry of Street Fairs realizes that people are shopping for their produce at supermarkets instead. And it demands that supermarkets also be classified as street fairs, and put under the jurisdiction and tax authority of the Ministry. A Bill is introduced, "The Supermarkets are now Street Fairs" bill, to put supermarkets under the Ministry's authority, and tax them at twice the rate of street fairs. Supporters of the bill denounce the evil "Supermarket Lobby" for profiteering at the expense of the starving children who need fresh fruit and the poor street fair sellers, who wish the Ministry would just go away. The bill passes. The Ministry is congratulated for its commitment to fighting for the right of everyone to buy fruit at vastly inflated prices.<br /><br />Very few people shop for produce anymore because it has become far too expensive. Falling sales mean that merchants have to raise their prices even more to compensate for decreased sales volume. Many supermarkets and sellers go out of business, creating more unemployment and even fewer people who can afford fruit. Fruit growers and importers in turn go out of business or turn to other products. Fresh fruit becomes a luxury that only the very rich can afford.<br /><br />The Ministry of Street Fairs responds by creating a "Fruit Dole" which entitles every child to one apple and pear a week. This dole comes once again at the expense of the fruit sellers, which raises the general price of fruit once again. Charismatic young politicians speak out demanding "Fruit for the People" and denouncing those who prevent the people from having access to fruit. The blames falls on the fruit sellers. A radical "Fruit People's Party" is created with a call to equal fruit for everyone.<br /><br />The Ministry decides to regulate the price of fruit, setting an exact price at which fruit may be sold. The taxes on fruit sellers however remain just as high. Most of the fruit sellers go out of business. The few who remain in business, sell bad fruit at the mandated price to the public, while selling good fresh fruit under the table at much higher prices. Now everyone can afford fruit, but the only fruit they can buy is rotten and moldy.<br /><br />Naturally the young politicians and the "Fruit People's Party" are unsatisfied. They demand to know why the only fruit available to the people is bad fruit. An investigation is launched and several of the sellers are arrested for covertly selling good fruit at much higher prices. The sellers are sentenced to jail, and a new Fruit Inspection Squad is launched to patrol the street fair and insure that no one sells fruit at higher prices. The Fruit Inspection Squad's salary is paid for by higher taxes on the fruit sellers. This forces the fruit sellers to begin covertly selling fruit that they would have once considered bad under the table. The remaining fruit that they sell to the public at the mandated low price is so rotten that it is completely inedible.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnGpWmbwxZQrcidagho_3xGAPc0qlQfcRRhCnfU94tJbn_bDRH7GQW2uud3OMda5Gfj6m-o3sFt4XEfihTpl2aSYak2TTssgXs-qWI2fqrx8J1VbURib5pWQWom_I6NEetRT3MiN2vZXZ8N8xOzz6VUP-xOykoY9ls-szfnENvEUtEhWu1H2QLGA/s1011/image_2024-03-27_005149337.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="833" data-original-width="1011" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnGpWmbwxZQrcidagho_3xGAPc0qlQfcRRhCnfU94tJbn_bDRH7GQW2uud3OMda5Gfj6m-o3sFt4XEfihTpl2aSYak2TTssgXs-qWI2fqrx8J1VbURib5pWQWom_I6NEetRT3MiN2vZXZ8N8xOzz6VUP-xOykoY9ls-szfnENvEUtEhWu1H2QLGA/s320/image_2024-03-27_005149337.png" width="320" /></a></div>Within a few days, the Fruit Inspection Squad members have made arrangements with the fruit sellers to pocket fresh fruit for themselves and their families in exchange for looking the other way at their covert fruit sales. The same situation continues. Once again an outcry is launched, and more fruit sellers are arrested, along with members of the Fruit Inspection Squad. Lengthy jail sentences are handed out to everyone. A new Fruit Inspection Squad is appointed, with twice as many members. And additionally, a Fruit Secret Police is created composed of undercover agents who are tasked with rooting out corruption in the Fruit Inspection Squad.<br /><br />All this new manpower comes with new taxes on the fruit sellers. The fruit sellers are no longer able to meet the demands of the taxes, and the bribes expected by both the Fruit Inspection Squad and the Fruit Secret Police to allow them to stay in business. Instead they go over their heads and suborn a few key members of the Ministry of Street Fairs with fresh fruit. The fruit sold at the street fair and in the supermarkets is now more rotten than ever and draws flies from miles around.<br /><br />Politicians rise to denounce corruption in the Ministry of Street Fairs, and its Fruit Inspection Squad and Secret Fruit Police. A third round of investigations leads to the imprisonment of members of the Ministry. New Ministry members pledge their absolute devotion to the highest standards of ethics. Instead they collude with members of the Secret Fruit Police to create a secret fruit cartel which sells fresh fruit to the very rich at high prices. The Fruit Cartel extends its way up into the highest levels of the government.<br /><br />The fruit at the street fair grows more rotten than ever. But the Fruit Dole is doubled to two apples and two pears a week. Which are worse than ever, as employees at the Ministry resell the fruit intended for the fruit dole. The cartel creates a thriving underground fruit market. Young boys throughout the city earn a few coins by whispering to passerby, "Hey Mister, would you like to buy some fruit."</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Be1H8Njy9sBRmB6fAQoaNiUMqb4hUDnD9xaq7-zIWHr8FJw1yWBqbhuurOeYHahiNKXX75557H82SDuPCovL2uwyLihF2WjEY7Fdm4y3qD2sUuWbapRJkp3BlnRYSsWYLpSbgvW-FimaAiE0-LiLmC6U4aQ7Dy6DATeCgvGGuiQe3mnZZcrbAQ/s1018/image_2024-03-27_004205967.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="874" data-original-width="1018" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Be1H8Njy9sBRmB6fAQoaNiUMqb4hUDnD9xaq7-zIWHr8FJw1yWBqbhuurOeYHahiNKXX75557H82SDuPCovL2uwyLihF2WjEY7Fdm4y3qD2sUuWbapRJkp3BlnRYSsWYLpSbgvW-FimaAiE0-LiLmC6U4aQ7Dy6DATeCgvGGuiQe3mnZZcrbAQ/s320/image_2024-03-27_004205967.png" width="320" /></a></div>The fruit cartel quickly transforms into organized crime. Rival fruit sellers engage in knife fights. A number of children are killed selling fruit. The public demands that the government do something. The government increases jail terms for illegal fruit sales and doubles the size of the Ministry's budget by doubling taxes on the fruit sellers. The fruit quality sold at the fair grows worse. No one shops there at all anymore. The fruit trade has moved into the back alleys.<br /><br />The Ministry nationalizes the remaining fruit sellers and supermarkets, promising absolute control over all fruit sales. The government encourages people to grow fruit in their own backyards and cellars, for their own use-- which can be sold only after an expensive licensing and approvals process. This only increases the illegal fruit market, as many citizens begin growing fruit and reselling it on the black fruit market. The Fruit Cartel, enforced by the Secret Fruit Police attempts to control this market. Daily radio broadcasts denounce "Fruit Hoarders" and declare a "War on Backyard Fruit." Home fruit growing is banned, but nevertheless thrives.<br /><br />The public outrage against crime, the high prices of illegal fruit and the low quality of legal fruit, combined with the Ministry's blatant corruption, motivate the people to support the Fruit People's Party's revolution. The entire government is shot. The Ministry of Street Fairs becomes the People's Ministry of Street Fairs, and promises an end to all corruption and "Fruit for Everyone".<br /><br />As its first act, the People's Ministry turns to the fruit growers and importers and demands that they provide "Fruit for Everyone." The few fruit growers and importers who have not gone out of business, have gotten used to selling their fruit illegally and do not comply. The People's Ministry has them tried and executed. Their orchards and businesses are nationalized "In the Name of the People." The government sends out of work people who know nothing about growing fruit to work the orchards. A new "Golden Age of Fruit for Everyone" is declared.<br /><br />The fruit orchards go mostly untended. The new workers know nothing about growing fruit. Their salaries are minimal. Their motivation is entirely absent. At the beginning of each growing season, the "People's Ministry of Street Fairs" proclaims a target number for the crop that they expect them to grow. The workers fail to meet that quota. The People's Secret Fruit Police accuses them of economic sabotage and has them executed. A new collection of workers takes their place.<br /><br />After a few seasons of this, there is still no fruit. In fact there is less fruit than there ever was. The People's Ministry compensates for this by importing fruit from abroad which it distributes through the "Fruit Dole". What fresh fruit is grown, goes to the Ministry and the members of the Fruit People's Party, as well as the numerous members of the Fruit Inspection Bureaucracy that evaluates and weighs the produce for weight equality.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBRls1IbNu7IRW4hTp4WouUZBxodgYBVp3INAjm4jsP8sj8tEGiSjn0JmnT5b6vES4wtJz7PDYCZyqhrhJrYGIh_L80-1M1tTYv97vV6qoyuuKnsE2j_mla6VIB0M2sHgPNm3r6D9ftUIt_8d43N1skknYmG906JoGBkpH7CVcVVz0t8YClMwzng/s1007/image_2024-03-27_004409035.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="885" data-original-width="1007" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBRls1IbNu7IRW4hTp4WouUZBxodgYBVp3INAjm4jsP8sj8tEGiSjn0JmnT5b6vES4wtJz7PDYCZyqhrhJrYGIh_L80-1M1tTYv97vV6qoyuuKnsE2j_mla6VIB0M2sHgPNm3r6D9ftUIt_8d43N1skknYmG906JoGBkpH7CVcVVz0t8YClMwzng/s320/image_2024-03-27_004409035.png" width="320" /></a></div>At the end of every harvest, the People's Fruit Propaganda Corps declares that under the wise leadership of the Fruit People's Party, with the insightful guidance of the members of the People's Ministry of Street Fairs, with the tireless efforts of the Fruit Inspection Bureaucracy, and through the hard dedicated labor of the Fruit Growers (those who hadn't been shot yet), the target for the fruit harvest has been both met and exceeded. Posters, television broadcasts and the radio constantly talk about the great number of ripe shining fruit that has been grown. Children are interviewed about how pleased they are to be living in the greatest country in the world where fruit is available to everyone on the Fruit Dole, whether or not they can pay for it.<br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">Meanwhile the street fairs are neglected and the only fruit there will kill you as soon as you take a bite of it. The only reason anyone goes to them is because they are a good place to make a connection with illegal fruit sellers, who resell fruit stolen by members of the Fruit Inspection Bureaucracy. At private parties, the members of the People's Ministry and the People's Party dine lavishly on pears and apples, and decadently spoon handfuls of grapes into their mouths... little aware that in the outside world any working family could afford what has become a delicacy in the People's Republic of Fruitania.<br /><br />As families go out for a night at the movies, the only film playing is the impassioned epic FRUIT HARVESTERS OF THE NORTHERN SLOPES, which depicts the struggle of brave fruit growers who battle the elements and greedy corrupt Fruit Gangsters. It took 2 years to film, and it is the first new movie to be released in six months. And the people are happy to have it. They don't remember that before the Ministry of Film-making was formed, several movies used to be released each week.<br /><br />After the Newsreels which show the brave People's Army preparing to invade local fruit producing nations, whose "fruit hoarding aggression" threatens them, and members of the Fruit Inspection Squad rounding up seedy looking Fruit Gangsters, usually belonging to a minority ethnic group-- the main feature begins.<br /><br />Even as the film tells the story of Peter, the brave fruit grower, who romances the beautiful daughter of Lovak, the fruit hoarder, who insists on growing and selling his own fruit, rather than working for the benefit of the people-- the audience pays little attention, focusing mainly on the shot after shot of gorgeous fruit orchards, their mouths salivating furiously at the sight.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTOjcZpfucvozDG94PRJlA7ChBggZ-ui_oBsbwmJO6nl0KuQobExYwOJBhFPa-T0_WFH49zwBXNK2sZBg_ma0q9qv6QBDN14C8UE_jRRp_ZLsTn_7skl_h3hM8xYD86s_J3nwVDCk5RTHy5GPiB1D64AoPV7A6pIPekzPeHOWprwcnoi9Wj-wH_Q/s979/image_2024-03-27_004551179.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="846" data-original-width="979" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTOjcZpfucvozDG94PRJlA7ChBggZ-ui_oBsbwmJO6nl0KuQobExYwOJBhFPa-T0_WFH49zwBXNK2sZBg_ma0q9qv6QBDN14C8UE_jRRp_ZLsTn_7skl_h3hM8xYD86s_J3nwVDCk5RTHy5GPiB1D64AoPV7A6pIPekzPeHOWprwcnoi9Wj-wH_Q/s320/image_2024-03-27_004551179.png" width="320" /></a></div>At the end of movie, an official from the People's Fruit Party rises to proclaim that this year's fruit harvest has been the biggest and most tremendous harvest ever. Unfortunately, he says, the first priority of the People's Fruit Party must be to provide fruit to the starving children who go without fruit all the time. Which is why 90 percent of the harvest will go to a special Children's Fruit Dole, to be distributed to starving children, somewhere else. Somewhere they've never heard of.<br /><br />The remaining fruit must be sold to the filthy Fruit Hoarders abroad in order to buy the weapons with which to equip the Fruit People's Army to protect the fruit orchards of Fruitania from those who seek to steal their fruit. He congratulates them for their dedication to the principles of Fruitism, and promises that with their continued hard work and effort, a day will come when everyone in the nation and around the world will have as much fruit as they want, when the World Fruitian Revolution comes.<br /><br />The audience joins him in signing the revolutionary hymn, "Fruit of My Homeland", their voices rising with impassioned fervor on the verse, "The fruit of my homeland is the sweetest fruit of all. I will die for your orchards and perish for your pears. The fruit of my homeland is dearest to me." This is followed by a chorus of "Soldiers of Fruitania", "Workers of the Fruit Orchards" and "Death to the Fruit Hoarders".<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2w8iUdh5FQHbZThO89bXsUf6p9t2dBFjx9ToVx_U8TQKy7yvcTw_m_HoFCHv_r5qShTFTLJTSIOvk8gIUk9s1xu840YIuLD1mkzC6VUh08p8r_ctjcS18j8GeyZAwgSEkw3nX/s1600-h/The-Republic-of-Social-Soviet-Union-for-Country-and-Urban-Worker-Posters002.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2w8iUdh5FQHbZThO89bXsUf6p9t2dBFjx9ToVx_U8TQKy7yvcTw_m_HoFCHv_r5qShTFTLJTSIOvk8gIUk9s1xu840YIuLD1mkzC6VUh08p8r_ctjcS18j8GeyZAwgSEkw3nX/s320/The-Republic-of-Social-Soviet-Union-for-Country-and-Urban-Worker-Posters002.jpg" /></span></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_xj2vr9aY9vHB-7xDF4KaN5uDsCdu_P32qh6p0rP-nycj_lISr-DO6mkT7DSThIat1g0_-3IXeVkaJkpBk04G975VBPlgaXcQvlfrWapofah2Fyo1hRImWhyfFQ6Ps-yIwhPA0N6o8r6aEIJD4SBmUDkSrx42eTm77umPRExDq-3GoDtEhAPpwQ/s1029/image_2024-03-27_004756458.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="875" data-original-width="1029" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_xj2vr9aY9vHB-7xDF4KaN5uDsCdu_P32qh6p0rP-nycj_lISr-DO6mkT7DSThIat1g0_-3IXeVkaJkpBk04G975VBPlgaXcQvlfrWapofah2Fyo1hRImWhyfFQ6Ps-yIwhPA0N6o8r6aEIJD4SBmUDkSrx42eTm77umPRExDq-3GoDtEhAPpwQ/s320/image_2024-03-27_004756458.png" width="320" /></a></div>They go home. The People's Party member to what he considers a lavish repast of a fresh pear. If he moves up in the party, he can expect to dine on many pieces of fruit a week. A few lucky audience members return to suppers of moldy fruit baked into pies that are mostly crust. Others have rice clumped into the shapes of pears, apples and grapes, covered in food coloring and glazed with sugar-- as a delicacy that they claim is almost as good as the real thing. Not that any of them have ever tasted a piece of fresh fruit in their lives. And never expect to.<br /><br />The radio comes on automatically with a stirring broadcast from the Chairman of the People's Fruit Party who announces that the world revolution is now closer than ever. "The decadent Fruit Hoarders abroad are part of a decaying social and economic system that cannot last much longer. Their fruit hoarding has made them weak," he declares, "and ripe for takeover. They cannot conceive of sacrificing their fruits for others as we can. All they care about is their own personal profits. Soon their fruit orchards will be ours. And then they too will live just as we do."<br /><br />The broadcast heard by millions of people who have never tasted a fresh piece of fruit closes with the revolutionary anthem, "Fruit for Everyone".<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(Fortunately this is only a fairy tale that could never ever happen in real life. Still it might be worth remembering that when you kill the golden apple of the free market, all that's left are moldy pears. And that "Fruit for Everyone" usually means "Fruit for No One")</span></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/7908646157114236280/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/the-golden-apple-socialist-fairy-tale.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="6 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/7908646157114236280" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/7908646157114236280" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/the-golden-apple-socialist-fairy-tale.html" rel="alternate" title="The Golden Apple - A Socialist Fairy Tale" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifOqRBYYm-1iHSD3mvF5KMcHY5b3mhiMry69Q-5C3zLyHtn8F4NBxWcLtvlXusceH1rG3Aj6-fvZhK1v1DAydbdvnn8ktkF3YsXFSq0LMDFIsMiUzP4aBx7gKPo6W__MNEXm_z2JTNxjGlXjuIHvF7a8y2q5pvsWSrDsN9nSkda0INk-mONKaqpQ/s72-w640-h552-c/image_2024-03-27_003724058.png" width="72"/><thr:total>6</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-3399960547195843028</id><published>2024-03-27T00:33:00.001-04:00</published><updated>2024-03-27T00:33:09.437-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Biden"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="China"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Biden Lies to America, Tells the Truth to China</title><content type="html"><span style="font-size: medium;">“When I was director of intelligence for the Indo-Pacific Command, for example, I watched as numerous requests to publicize Chinese malign activities were disapproved by Washington,” Rear Admiral Mike Studeman recently warned.<br /><br />The former head of the Office of Naval Intelligence had served between 2022 and 2023 and during that time one of the suppressed stories about China’s attacks involved “Beijing’s use of high-altitude surveillance balloons over the sovereign airspaces of the US” which came “many months before the shooting down of a Chinese balloon flying over the US.”<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ42KVzgHapJ_UYoaGxY9WN0KGv49gbKLt3FPbYae5OLfEfOGxTN4kVraJf_hgz9jr2IEcVxeLDVd4BjaM129AfAqFmhomIuzy0THGH6U1SGHw5GT10Ch6a42KH07dBC0j4xHdpVphREUPzH8w7fQo7-TtyCBQvVaKGdNeLVZp84nSWPMOVKGAnA/s637/biden%20xi%20frame2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="637" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ42KVzgHapJ_UYoaGxY9WN0KGv49gbKLt3FPbYae5OLfEfOGxTN4kVraJf_hgz9jr2IEcVxeLDVd4BjaM129AfAqFmhomIuzy0THGH6U1SGHw5GT10Ch6a42KH07dBC0j4xHdpVphREUPzH8w7fQo7-TtyCBQvVaKGdNeLVZp84nSWPMOVKGAnA/s320/biden%20xi%20frame2.png" width="320" /></a></div>After the spy balloon was exposed, Biden administration officials had claimed that there had been multiple spy balloon overflights under Trump and only one under Biden, which went unnoticed at the time, but the US Navy was clearly aware and had been ordered to keep quiet by D.C. about the multiple incursions by Chinese spy balloons under Biden.<br /><br />When the spy balloon was first detected, the initial response by the Biden administration had been to suppress news about it and then to deny that the administration had been aware of it.<br /><br />“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” an administration official<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-admin-believed-americans-finding-out-about-chinese-spy-balloon-was-the-real-threat/"> admitted</a>.<br /><br />But when a Montana resident’s footage of the spy balloon went viral, the Biden cover-up fell apart. Once it was exposed, the official complained that “It caused so many problems.”<br /><br />While the Biden administration was publicly criticizing China, the State Department was privately <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/secret-emails-reveal-biden-admin-faked-china-spy-balloon-outrage/">sidelining sanctions</a> and any actions against the People’s Republic of China. A month later, a top State Department official dealing with China was already looking to “move on”<br /><br />By May, Biden had resumed relations with China and was dismissing the whole thing as a “silly balloon”. In June, he claimed that the spying was “more embarrassing” for Beijing “than it was intentional.” Over a year later an FBI report on the balloon is still being kept secret.<br /><br />With Secretary of State Blinken trying to wrangle an invitation to China, the Biden administration fully committed to covering up “difficult subjects”.<br /><br />One of those <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-handed-over-south-america-to-china/">difficult subjects</a> was<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/after-lying-about-it-biden-admin-admits-china-spying-on-us-from-cuba/"> China’s spy base </a>in Cuba. After the Wall Street Journal reported that China had agreed to pay Cuba billions to build a spy base, the Biden administration denied it.<br /><br />And then it had to admit it anyway.<br /><br />To quote NBC News, “as for why the White House, Pentagon and others all flatly denied the Journal’s reporting despite knowing that China has been spying from Cuba for years, the official said the Journal story was inaccurate because it called the eavesdropping a new development.”<br /><br />After the initial denials, the Biden administration backpedaled and admitted that China had been spying on America from Cuba since 2019. Much as with the spy balloon story, after a China espionage cover up fell apart the Biden administration tried to pass the blame on to Trump.<br /><br />Cover-ups of enemy activity had become the default mode for the Biden administration.<br /><br />While Russia developed a space weapon, the Biden administration <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/first-china-now-russia-the-biden-admin-keeps-hiding-enemy-activity-from-americans/">covered it up </a>because it was “worried that if the program became more widely known in Congress or in the public, that might scuttle the nascent efforts to get Russia to abort those tests.”<br /><br />What began with <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-admin-ends-effort-stop-china-spying-because-daniel-greenfield/">Biden’s abandonment</a> of the China Initiative in 2022 escalated into coverups.<br /><br />The Justice Department had argued that “the ‘China Initiative’ fueled a narrative of intolerance and bias” and that the “rise in anti-Asian hate crime and hate incidents” made it urgent to shut down the effort to stop PRC spies. The assaults on Asian-Americans in San Francisco and New York City by minority street thugs had nothing to do with catching spies. It was a cover-up.<br /><br />The cover-ups, in the name of anti-racism or diplomacy, allowed the Communist regime a clear field for spying on the United States while suppressing the story so Biden wouldn’t get blamed.<br /><br />By the fall of last year, the Wall Street Journal<a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/chinese-gate-crashers-at-u-s-bases-spark-espionage-concerns-cdef8187"> reported on</a> Chinese infiltrators trying to access American military bases “as many as 100 times in recent years”. Chinese nationals pretending to be tourists did everything from trying to force their way into a base in Alaska to scuba diving to spy on a Florida rocket launch site. The increasing brazenness of the Chinese efforts reflected the extent to which the Biden administration was covering up for the spy campaign.<br /><br />Over the last year, Chinese spies have been accused of looting everything from AI secrets to tech used to detect nuclear missile launches.<br /><br />And there is every reason to believe that the situation may be worse than we realize.<br /><br />The Biden administration has developed a consistent track record of suppressing damaging information about Communist China. What we know about the PRC’s operations against us come from leaked material and court cases. Without viral videos, like the one out of Montana, and intelligence reports leaked to the media, we would know even less than we do now.<br /><br />Governments normally conceal information about enemy activities so as not to tip off foreign spies, but the Biden administration’s consistent pattern has been to hide the information from Americans rather than from Russia and China. Instead of trying to deceive our enemies, the Biden administration instead deceives and lies to Americans.<br /><br />The Biden administration has misleadingly denied reports for no purpose other than to conceal information about enemy activities from Americans. China knew it was spying on the United States from Cuba. And they certainly knew that we knew it. Russia knew it was building a space weapon and was talking about it with the Biden administration. But Biden didn’t want us to know.<br /><br />After the spy balloon, the Biden administration told Americans one thing and China another.<br /><br />Whom did it tell the truth to? China. The Biden administration put on a fake show of outrage for Americans while quietly telling Chinese Communist officials that all of this would soon pass.<br /><br />When the United States government lies to Americans, but tells the truth to an enemy dictatorship, something is very wrong. China can trust the White House, but we can’t.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/3399960547195843028/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/biden-lies-to-america-tells-truth-to.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="2 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/3399960547195843028" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/3399960547195843028" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/biden-lies-to-america-tells-truth-to.html" rel="alternate" title="Biden Lies to America, Tells the Truth to China" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ42KVzgHapJ_UYoaGxY9WN0KGv49gbKLt3FPbYae5OLfEfOGxTN4kVraJf_hgz9jr2IEcVxeLDVd4BjaM129AfAqFmhomIuzy0THGH6U1SGHw5GT10Ch6a42KH07dBC0j4xHdpVphREUPzH8w7fQo7-TtyCBQvVaKGdNeLVZp84nSWPMOVKGAnA/s72-c/biden%20xi%20frame2.png" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-8966083366727785005</id><published>2024-03-25T17:09:00.004-04:00</published><updated>2024-03-25T17:09:56.815-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Hamas"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Israel"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Jewish"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Left"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">The ‘Rabbi’ and ‘Peace Activist’ Who Cheered the Hamas Oct. 7 Attack</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJPDh64cFqQrLES_TLpH-VgasPQE6MngUpEXpw3_bF8ZqBor9V1UI-gvkQvxcpg4Cshv0Dw3Z85ifOoGSCgO61x0ASX2S5Igq80ItI1IuBGt_FFoCAalu2TpHhDr3AdFSDnJ2uivDhgy-q4dife8j9fvxrt-x1XRh7uk8eCAdGQOunn8QXy4J64A/s772/image_2024-03-25_140458415.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="515" data-original-width="772" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJPDh64cFqQrLES_TLpH-VgasPQE6MngUpEXpw3_bF8ZqBor9V1UI-gvkQvxcpg4Cshv0Dw3Z85ifOoGSCgO61x0ASX2S5Igq80ItI1IuBGt_FFoCAalu2TpHhDr3AdFSDnJ2uivDhgy-q4dife8j9fvxrt-x1XRh7uk8eCAdGQOunn8QXy4J64A/w400-h266/image_2024-03-25_140458415.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div>When pro-Hamas insurrectionists stormed Capitol Hill, <a href="https://canarymission.org/individual/Brant_Rosen">Brant Rosen</a>, described as “one of the demonstrators”, was quoted as falsely accusing Jews of genocide. He was later arrested.</div><br />In Chicago, where he claims to have co-founded the “first anti-Zionist temple”, he showed up at a rally urging, “stop the violence, and then, to work toward a true and lasting and just peace.”<br /><br />‘Rabbi’ Brant Rosen, a co-founder of the pro-terrorist JVP Rabbinical Council (the misleadingly named Jewish Voice for Peace is neither Jewish nor peaceful) is a public face of the political campaign against Israel disguised as calls for “peace” and a “ceasefire”. The media describes him as a “rabbi” and as a “peace activist”. Much like JVP, he’s as much of one as the other.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0e_Udcb3W5SxUiQwSZe1zMAWjiI3g-NgTL7luU4MqHPiGN-k6ofEtMSWl3_89099dKskOe2eNwQPCRIpUSe3j7tBD_KklnqtPsAXzvcrHQ46pn5mpkses1y2CMWUPH-VqPu-h3i_EaXF-SoaBItvZRo0Wj40xuyscpimr8PRBxP4EtGOho-wB3w/s813/image_2024-03-25_140925618.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="813" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0e_Udcb3W5SxUiQwSZe1zMAWjiI3g-NgTL7luU4MqHPiGN-k6ofEtMSWl3_89099dKskOe2eNwQPCRIpUSe3j7tBD_KklnqtPsAXzvcrHQ46pn5mpkses1y2CMWUPH-VqPu-h3i_EaXF-SoaBItvZRo0Wj40xuyscpimr8PRBxP4EtGOho-wB3w/s320/image_2024-03-25_140925618.png" width="320" /></a></div>Rosen actually became a regional director for the American Friends Service Committee, a radical anti-American and anti-Israel Quaker group, after being pushed out of his synagogue for his hatred of the Jewish State and support for Islamic terrorists. In its 5-year tribute to him, AFSC did not use the ‘rabbi’ title. While at the AFSC, he claimed to have opened the “first anti-Zionist temple”. In reality, the “temple” appears to be a PO Box opposite a Little Caesars.<br /><br />Whether the “temple” exists is unclear, but Brant Rosen’s hatred for Jews is all too real.<br /><br />“When I heard the initial reports of Hamas’ attacks on Israel this past Saturday, I will be completely honest – my first reaction was ‘good for them,’” Brant Rosen wrote in response to the Hamas attacks of October 7.<br /><br />When Hamas terrorists burst into homes in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, massacring families and livestreaming the horrors on Facebook, Brant Rosen described it as “not the first time this community had experienced Palestinian armed resistance”.<br /><br />This is Brant Rosen and the Jewish Voice for Peace’s <a href="https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/10/19/a-cold-blooded-massacre-live-on-facebook-how-hamas-forced-a-17-year-old-to-help-them-go-door-to-door/">idea of </a>“Palestinian armed resistance”.<br /><br />“A father huddles over a mortally injured girl lying in a pool of blood as his wife wails.”<br /><br />In his column, published at the People’s Voice (formerly the Communist Party’s Daily Worker), he claimed that “this latest violence did not occur in a vacuum. It is but the latest manifestation of an injustice that Israel has been perpetrating against the Palestinian people for decades.”<br /><br />Later in October, Brant Rosen argued that, “Hamas’ abduction of hostages – brutal and heinous as it was – occurred in response to a colonial, apartheid regime that (sic) been governing their lives for the past 75 years.”<br /><br />Brant Rosen gets a great deal of mileage for his activism by claiming to be a “rabbi”. In reality, he was “ordained” by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College: an atheistic movement which believes neither in the Bible nor the G-d of the Bible, or in any actual form of Judaism. He speaks most convincingly about faith when discussing his love of Quaker spiritual teachings.<br /><br />When he announced that he had founded the “first anti-Zionist temple”, the story popped up everywhere, including at the JTA: always eager to provide a platform for anti-Israel activists.<br /><br />But the only address for Tzedek Chicago, the tattooed clergyman’s “anti-Zionist temple”, is a Chicago post office box seven miles from Rosen’s house and opposite a Little Caesars pizza place. The weekly “services” are <a href="https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-lone-anti-zionist-synagogue-isnt.html">happening </a>in closed Zoom sessions.<br /><br />The launch meeting for Tzedek Chicago was held in the basement of a Lutheran Church of the kind whose staff all list their pronouns. And he has described himself as “a Jew who also finds a comfortable spiritual home in the Quaker community” who testified that “my spiritual life has greatly benefitted from my encounter with Quaker thought and practice.”<br /><br />The American Friends Service Committee had developed extensive Communist ties early in the last century and went to work covering up the worst horrors of these regimes. It even defended the <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/when-saints-go-marching-david-solway/">Khmer Rogue genocide</a>, claiming that the United States was spreading lies to undermine an “alternative model of development and social organization.”<br /><br />After the fall of the Communist regimes, the AFSC turned to Islamic terrorism: its people met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/irans-secret-interfaith-outreach-america-ryan-mauro/"> traveled to Iran</a>. The AFSC defended the Hamas fundraisers of the Holy Land Foundation and ran a piece arguing for “Decriminalizing Hamas” urging that the Islamic terror group be removed from the list of terrorist organizations.<br /><br />“When the Palestinians chose Hamas as their ruling party, by and large, they were choosing another alternative,” another AFSC article argued. “In this instance, they were mistaken in thinking that the world would respect their choice.”<br /><br />Rosen claims that by opposing Israel he’s advocating for Jewish values, the actual values he’s advocating for are those of a Quaker group that partners with <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/irans-secret-interfaith-outreach-america-ryan-mauro/">Hamas’ backers in Iran</a>.<br /><br />He established the “Jewish Fast for Gaza” back in 2009 a few years after Hamas took over.<br /><br />Brant’s purpose in fasting was, among other things, “to call upon Israel, the US, and the international community to engage in negotiations with Hamas.”<br /><br />By 2012, Brant Rosen had become so extreme that he was actually attacking Hussein Ibish, a leading anti-Israel Arab figure, for writing too harshly about Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.<br /><br />“It was only the armed resistance of Hamas in Gaza that managed to bring Hilary Clinton to the region and actively engage with the Israelis and Palestinians,” Brant Rosen argued.<br /><br />“Meshaal’s opening went utterly unregarded by the Obama administration, who refused to deal with Hamas and chose to maintain its support of Israel’s crippling siege of Gaza.”<br /><br />After the Hamas kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teens in 2014, Brant Rosen complained that Israel “knew full well that the teens had been murdered shortly after their abduction” and was “using the pretense of their kidnapping to brutally crack down on Hamas members.”<br /><br />“If Israel was truly interested in following the course of justice in order to preserve life, it could have dropped its abject refusal to deal with Hamas following the November 2012 cease-fire and pursued further negotiations aimed at ending its crushing siege,” he went on to argue.<br /><br />That same year, Brant Rosen left the synagogue he used to work at after his “views, work, and words on the Israel/Palestine issue caused deep rifts among the members” and got a job with the Quakers working against Israel and learning from the teachings that had praised Pol Pot.<br /><br />The “close collaboration” between the American Friends Service Committee and JVP is such that some critics have questioned whether JVP isn’t just a Jewish suit that AFSC wears. Lynn Gottlieb, another member of JVP’s Rabbinical Council, used to head AFSC’s Middle East Program. May Ye, a current member, had ties to AFSC when she was a “musician”.<br /><br />It’s unclear to what extent Tzedek Chicago exists off Zoom, but as a ‘church’ it doesn’t have to file 990 forms or reveal its financials. And there’s no way to know what the anti-Israel group could be hiding behind its “temple”. But Tzedek Chicago has the advantage of also advancing the “rabbinic” credentials of random anti-Israel activists.<br /><br /><a href="https://canarymission.org/individual/May_Ye">May Ye</a>, a Chinese-American activist from Maine who claimed that she “became a rabbi to be a Jewish voice for Palestinian liberation”, who was quoted in stories about the <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/defund-the-soros-hamas-insurrection/">pro-Hamas assault</a> on New York’s Grand Central Station over the Sabbath, had worked as a “rabbinic intern” at Tzedek Chicago before branching out as a “radical rabbi” with a focus on destroying the Jewish State.<br /><br />What does it mean to be a “rabbinic intern” in a P.O. Box opposite a Little Caesars?<br /><br />The media is too busy promoting collaborators like Brant Rosen to ask such basic questions.<br /><br />And while Brant compares Israel’s Jews to the Nazis, his wife Hallie Esbin Rosen, who worked for the ADL for 15 years and used to work for the <a href="https://www.ilholocaustmuseum.org/">Illinois Holocaust Museum</a>, has <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Czjp_QLPH-h/">taken part in </a>Brant’s anti-Israel rallies.<br /><br />But Brant Rosen, like many other activists, would not exist if the media did not prop him up. And that is especially true of the JTA which has published multiple articles promoting a “rabbi” and his PO Box congregation whose main claim to fame is supporting terrorists and hating Israel.<br /><br />The JTA ran 9 articles promoting Brant Rosen over the years. It ran two articles alone about his new “temple”. The average synagogue would never get such publicity. Stories about Rosen then popped up in every Jewish local paper in America reprinting the JTA’s publicity for Rosen.<br /><br />Rosen, JVP, If Not Now, and other hate groups and terrorist collaborators have been blown up into public figures by the JTA and supportive media without revealing what they really believe.<br /><br />Brant Rosen’s first reaction to Oct 7 was, “when I heard the initial reports of Hamas’ attacks on Israel this past Saturday, I will be completely honest – my first reaction was ‘good for them.”<br /><br />That is the story about the Quaker Rabbi of the PO Box Anti-Zionist Temple the media won’t tell.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/8966083366727785005/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/the-rabbi-and-peace-activist-who.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="5 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/8966083366727785005" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/8966083366727785005" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/the-rabbi-and-peace-activist-who.html" rel="alternate" title="The ‘Rabbi’ and ‘Peace Activist’ Who Cheered the Hamas Oct. 7 Attack" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJPDh64cFqQrLES_TLpH-VgasPQE6MngUpEXpw3_bF8ZqBor9V1UI-gvkQvxcpg4Cshv0Dw3Z85ifOoGSCgO61x0ASX2S5Igq80ItI1IuBGt_FFoCAalu2TpHhDr3AdFSDnJ2uivDhgy-q4dife8j9fvxrt-x1XRh7uk8eCAdGQOunn8QXy4J64A/s72-w400-h266-c/image_2024-03-25_140458415.png" width="72"/><thr:total>5</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-6230199409322692787</id><published>2024-03-24T04:29:00.001-04:00</published><updated>2024-03-24T04:29:44.843-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="victimhood"/><title type="text">We Are the Victims and Everything We Do is Justified</title><content type="html"><span style="font-size: medium;">At the heart of everything from the debate over the Gaza War to DEI to toxic interpersonal relationships is a disastrous loop known as the “self-reinforcing victim/villain” cycle.<br /><br />The self-reinforcing victim/villain cycle is a deceptively simple and incredibly destructive paradigm for any kind of relationship, national, communal or personal, in which one party constantly attacks the other while claiming that it is the victim fighting against oppression.<br /><br />The paradigm is guided by the idea that there is a permanently fixed victim and villain, that the victim is constantly suffering attacks from the villain and that anything the victim does is justified because he or she has no agency except to resist the assaults of the villain.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYBQTb5v-a0xv9cTX5iVik5_wVtmte_8lXOMq2cd61A3LHzXR1h5drkWHLHWmG50Z-VAaojXY4onq9TPk9biIMUrvJk-2I5b9grl7IABmFGdjSqy_2g6uTODZOjAs9eulpH5He9D4GlgAd3g9DCuV1GQxP0HKwOLe0RWj_TzqaZkFKHXbJCRd8BA/s990/angry%20arab2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="762" data-original-width="990" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYBQTb5v-a0xv9cTX5iVik5_wVtmte_8lXOMq2cd61A3LHzXR1h5drkWHLHWmG50Z-VAaojXY4onq9TPk9biIMUrvJk-2I5b9grl7IABmFGdjSqy_2g6uTODZOjAs9eulpH5He9D4GlgAd3g9DCuV1GQxP0HKwOLe0RWj_TzqaZkFKHXbJCRd8BA/s320/angry%20arab2.png" width="320" /></a></div>While some Hamas supporters have lied or tried to cover up the atrocities of Oct 7, Ghazi Hammad, a Hamas official, initially denied them, but then<a href="https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-official-ghazi-hamad-we-will-repeat-october-seven-until-israel-annihilated-victims-everything-we-do-justified"> burst out with</a>, “the existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood, and tears. It is Israel, not us. We are the victims of the occupation. Period. Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000 – everything we do is justified.”<br /><br />“We are the victims”, “nobody should blame us” and “everything we do is justified” perfectly capture the cruel workings of the cycle. So many westerners have sided with Hamas because they accept, incorporate and make use of the same cycle in their own politics and lives.<br /><br />The very same arguments adapted from Marxism and therapy culture play out routinely in “whiteness” and “colonialist” discourse in America, Europe and other free world nations.<br /><br />The “self-reinforcing victim/villain” cycle dispenses with arguments, evidence or any reasoned assessments of rights. These may occasionally be thrown in when convenient, but make no real difference because the central premise of the cycle is the lack of any objective standard that both sides have to meet. International law, racial tolerance, peace treaties or negotiations are invoked in a purely one-sided fashion. It is understood that the officially designated victim never has to abide by international law, to stop hating or to sincerely agree to stop the violence.<br /><br />Any of the invoked appeals to any larger principle are usually rigged in such a way as to render mutuality meaningless. For example, racism has been redefined to mean racial hatred practiced by those with power, making them the officially designated villains, while racial hatred from victims has been designated “reverse racism”: a justified response to the racism of the majority.<br /><br />Once again, “we are the victims”, “nobody should blame us” and “everything we do is justified”.<br /><br />Similarly, international law is held to apply only to Israel as the “occupier” while no one can expect anything of the Muslim terrorists who are “occupied” and therefore have the right to “resist” by invading Israel and burning Jewish families alive in their own homes.<br /><br />The perpetrators are omnipotent by virtue of being helpless, since they can do nothing, they can do everything, as victims of oppression they have no agency and also no restraint under any norms, either those of decency, humanity, the laws of war or any concept of right and wrong.<br /><br />They cannot be asked not to rage, that’s “tone policing”, not to hate, that’s “reverse racism” or even not to kill because that’s “dictating to oppressed people the forms of their resistance”.<br /><br />Whatever they do is not a reflection on their own morality, but on the oppression they suffer.<br /><br />If they hate, it’s because they have been hated and if they kill, it’s because they have been killed. The worse the crimes they commit, the more we are told that the horrors they perpetrate are a reflection of the horrors they have suffered. When suicide bombers emerged on the scene, we were told that they were a sign of how desperate the killers must be after such suffering.<br /><br />No crime, not even those committed on Oct 7, was allowed to be seen as a deliberate choice.<br /><br />The moral numbness of the self-reinforcing victim/villain cycle has long haunted liberal minds. As Nazi Germany invaded Poland and began the process that would lead to the mass murder of millions of Jews, the poet W.H. Auden penned a hasty condemnation of Nazism, but threw in four lines that became the best known from the poem. “I and the public know/What all schoolchildren learn/Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return.”<br /><br />Those same four lines appear in disguised or undisguised form in every account of the Oct 7 attacks and in every account of the violence committed by leftists and their allies.<br /><br />How often during the BLM riots were we treated to the MLK quote that, “a riot is the voice of the unheard” which was never intended to be a blank check for urban violence, but is used to shift the agency from the young men beating an old man in the street to the body at their feet.<br /><br />The insistence that evil is a cycle not a choice, that the Nazis were victims rather than perpetrators, that every terrorist and rioter in the world could not do otherwise is an unlimited license for evil. And evil is not a cycle: it is a choice that each and every one of us makes.<br /><br />Oct 7 is far from the first time that “we are the victims”, “nobody should blame us” and “everything we do is justified” licensed genocide. And it will certainly not be the last.<br /><br />Why did so many radicals jump into supporting Hamas after Oct 7 rather than disavow it?<br /><br />The atrocities did not alienate, they incited. The crimes offered the same heady promise that the Left had since the French Revolution of committing the worst possible crimes while being morally righteous because each horror was a response to the horrors visited upon them.<br /><br />When there are no objective standards, all that remains are the propaganda narratives that justify violence. The self-reinforcing victim/villain cycle sheds standards. It asserts pain and suffering. It spends all of its time demonizing those it wishes to kill. And then it kills them.<br /><br />The crybullies, the victims who kill, spend all of their time asserting their trauma, they project hate as pain, murderousness as trauma and assaults as resistance. Even as cities and countries burn, they always talk about themselves while raging when anyone mentions the damage.<br /><br />Attempting to find common ground with them is futile. Proposals for reforms or compromises are treated as admissions of guilt. Negotiations are blown up because the professional victims don’t want a deal, they want to continue the hate and violence, and they only use negotiations to assert their endless suffering which can only be remedied with the destruction of their targets.<br /><br />Some attempt to meet them blow for blow, by asserting their own victimhood, and yet this strategy is bound to fail because the underlying premise of the self-reinforcing victim/villain cycle is the “punching up” and “punching down” one of wokeness that only some people’s pain and some people’s lives matter, that those who have “power” are always perpetrators, and those who claim to be “powerless” are always their victims no matter who is actually doing what.<br /><br />No matter how much those charged with having “power”,deny it, back away from it, leave, turn over control, and cut deals, the underlying dynamic can never be allowed to change anywhere.<br /><br />Pro-Israel activists, especially liberal ones, still don’t understand this dynamic and are pained and shocked at how their former allies can justify mass murder and rape at a music festival. But the answer is that it’s the same way that supporters of BLM justified torching cities. The self-reinforcing victim/villain cycle rejects any morality except assertions of powerlessness.<br /><br />Whoever has the most power is accused of setting the cycle into motion and can never assert innocence again even as the Nazis are goose stepping their way into Poland.<br /><br />What is the answer to the self-reinforcing victim/villain cycle’s endless “you made me do it”?<br /><br />Giving up power isn’t the answer. Some adopt a Stockholm Syndrome strategy of admitting guilt and promising to “do better”, they clamor to be “allies” and loudly denounce their own people. But when the violence begins, the Stockholmers don’t do any better than anyone else. Whether it’s the Hamas attacks or BLM riots, the appeasers and the apologists were caught up in them.<br /><br />Some died.<br /><br />An argument cannot be won by arguing using the self-reinforcing victim/villain cycle’s rules. It is important to think back to a time before the cultural poison reduced every exchange to Marxist logic and social media narcissism when we actually knew what right and wrong looked like.<br /><br />And the only way to do that is by demolishing the cult of victimhood.<br /><br />Right and wrong are not determined by expressions of pain. While some people may have more power than others, no one is truly powerless or lacks agency. Whatever happens, everyone has a choice in how they respond to it. That choice defines who they are for as long as they keep making it. People are not the products of impersonal forces, but of those choices.<br /><br />Anyone can be a victim, but no one has to choose to continue being one unless it’s a role they want to play. And anyone from narcissists to aspiring tyrants finds that to be a useful role.<br /><br />Most of those who assert victimhood were never victims at all. The most malignant victimhood behavior comes from the powerful and the privileged who use it to claim moral immunity. Lenin came from a noble family and Castro was the son of a plantation owner. Osama bin Laden came from a billionaire family. Hamas had its origins in high officials who were displaced by the fall of the Ottoman Empire and whose families have become millionaires through terrorism.<br /><br />Every evil movement, including the Nazis, claimed to be the victims, but they’re only the victims of their own thwarted ambitions. Today’s totalitarians who claim to be victims are like them the victims of their futile dreams of conquest and of grinding everyone else under their boots.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Daniel Greenfield</a>&nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">Front Page Magazine</a>.</span></i></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Click&nbsp;<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2005/03/blogging-hara.html" target="_blank">here to subscribe</a>&nbsp;to my articles. And&nbsp;<a href="http://paypal.me/DgreenfieldWriting" target="_blank">click here to support my work with a donation</a>.</i></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><i>Thank you for reading.</i></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/6230199409322692787/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/we-are-victims-and-everything-we-do-is.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="7 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/6230199409322692787" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/6230199409322692787" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/we-are-victims-and-everything-we-do-is.html" rel="alternate" title="We Are the Victims and Everything We Do is Justified" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYBQTb5v-a0xv9cTX5iVik5_wVtmte_8lXOMq2cd61A3LHzXR1h5drkWHLHWmG50Z-VAaojXY4onq9TPk9biIMUrvJk-2I5b9grl7IABmFGdjSqy_2g6uTODZOjAs9eulpH5He9D4GlgAd3g9DCuV1GQxP0HKwOLe0RWj_TzqaZkFKHXbJCRd8BA/s72-c/angry%20arab2.png" width="72"/><thr:total>7</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-7688203773612891425</id><published>2024-03-21T18:37:00.010-04:00</published><updated>2024-03-21T18:54:36.060-04:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="recent"/><title type="text">Domestic Enemies - Pre -Sale Begins Now</title><content type="html"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibeev4ivI5P1PACU9941etjeD8q3bkubjXAGspdZRJoUjzzfjE7eUeES1CftazIWzetg-NjNS14Q9NfLjpvAgaEv1WmXeLb_pBbRKj4kZQvgosbxGQjFxBhz2TFKzjgn4AxzUjM0IEVbDaVqbuV_yTZVcolAw7oPfj4IC_lFTe8vJ4wCdbjoG5CQ/s1920/dm%20test%20header3h%20alt%20erase.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibeev4ivI5P1PACU9941etjeD8q3bkubjXAGspdZRJoUjzzfjE7eUeES1CftazIWzetg-NjNS14Q9NfLjpvAgaEv1WmXeLb_pBbRKj4kZQvgosbxGQjFxBhz2TFKzjgn4AxzUjM0IEVbDaVqbuV_yTZVcolAw7oPfj4IC_lFTe8vJ4wCdbjoG5CQ/w640-h360/dm%20test%20header3h%20alt%20erase.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">The David Horowitz Freedom Center is <span style="color: #ffd966;"><a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left"><b>launching the pre-sale</b></a> </span>of my first book, 'Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers' Fight Against the Left'.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />I call it a '1619 Project for the American Left', telling the untold story of the rise of the movement and how America's greatest leaders, from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln, faced down against it in the halls of power and even in street battles.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">You can learn more about the book and other places to order it at <a href="http://www.domestic-enemies.com/"><b>Domestic-Enemies.com</b></a><br /><br />It'll be out April 30, 2024, but you can order it right now<b> <a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" target="_blank">from the Freedom Center store</a>.</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimCtjK8qdHCv4qGNR9XV7P4MX6X3CYfTUavEy-sUOy_lZD9jbr9sNNftO-nJhjwMD8yadK8vyLJWxWlbvR5SrtEvBm1uc4vw9mxBSdOeYu0ms7oL4mgoWSOKFEY4VwNr8o8r_13zkT1Rot5cT_vGpHAMhVRUA8JCu2bLFFLjNSGlhDp1o7hLg-8Q/s1080/dm%20instagram%20size.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimCtjK8qdHCv4qGNR9XV7P4MX6X3CYfTUavEy-sUOy_lZD9jbr9sNNftO-nJhjwMD8yadK8vyLJWxWlbvR5SrtEvBm1uc4vw9mxBSdOeYu0ms7oL4mgoWSOKFEY4VwNr8o8r_13zkT1Rot5cT_vGpHAMhVRUA8JCu2bLFFLjNSGlhDp1o7hLg-8Q/s320/dm%20instagram%20size.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Some people may wonder if&nbsp;this the right time for a book about American history? Yes because history is repeating itself.<br /><br />Everything we're dealing with has happened before. And America prevailed.<br /><br /><br /><b>In 2020,</b> history repeated itself. The Left exploited a pandemic and set off race riots to steal a presidential election. But these weren’t new strategies; they are as old as this country.<br /><br />The Left has been plotting against America for over two centuries. And today’s radicals use the same tactics that their ancestors employed against the Founding Fathers.<br /><br />Pandemics, stolen elections, race riots, fake news, globalism, terrorism, class warfare, inflationary spending, radical education, and socialism aren’t new problems.<br /><br />A disease outbreak that depopulated entire cities allowed a traitor and a murderer to rig the 1800 presidential election with a flood of new voters.<br /><br />Socialists seized power in Rhode Island and blocked the adoption of the Constitution.<br /><br />Globalists and radicals used fake news to try to and bring down George Washington.<br /><br />There were socialists in Congress 150 years before Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.<br /><br />The Communist ‘communes’ of the 1820s abolished marriage and private property. <br /><br />Democrats set off massive race riots during the Civil War to bring down President Lincoln.<br /><br />‘Domestic Enemies’ reveals the secret history of the Left’s long war against America in a grand tour of the conspiracies, street fights, secret societies, debates, smear campaigns, naval engagements on the high seas, and urban firefights that shaped our nation’s history.<br /><br />This is not just history. It’s our story today. <br /><br />“Domestic Enemies” tells us how we got here. It shows us how the great men of our nation’s history took on the same challenges we face and how America prevailed against the Left.<br /><br />This is their story. And that means it’s not just the story of our past, but also of our future.<br /><br />If we learn from the past, we can defeat the Left again.<br /><br />The Left isn’t a new threat. For over two centuries, America has confronted the radicals. We haven’t always won, but through all the political battles and street fights, we survived.<br /><br />That’s why America is still standing.<br /><br />We fought these battles before. We will fight them again. And we can win.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b><a href="http://www.domestic-enemies.com/" target="_blank">Domestic Enemies:</a> The Founding Fathers' Fight Against the Left </b>is <b><a href="https://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/products/pre-sale-domestic-enemies-the-founding-fathers-fight-against-the-left" target="_blank">available to order now</a>.</b> And it will be out on April 30, 2024.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><div>“A concise and lucid account of the little-known, but extremely important history of today’s American Left—and why it was and is so dangerous.” Victor Davis Hanson</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRfhAhikTRIiM42MaDn7eg9znP7ew9f0wE_XIGS-tupwEDlsrAoopWPrnboduSvDEdAz48sgEcxoq3fHJqGWUwwRDvRbN9YgXxOUI9qYeLg3xd8tK1-IQSeaH93uCMusxTN0MuPREcVSdeIU7TceMXa2DL1YKpqdVCYig5Vz3qBaROA0u_gwBnNA/s851/facebook%20header.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="851" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRfhAhikTRIiM42MaDn7eg9znP7ew9f0wE_XIGS-tupwEDlsrAoopWPrnboduSvDEdAz48sgEcxoq3fHJqGWUwwRDvRbN9YgXxOUI9qYeLg3xd8tK1-IQSeaH93uCMusxTN0MuPREcVSdeIU7TceMXa2DL1YKpqdVCYig5Vz3qBaROA0u_gwBnNA/w640-h236/facebook%20header.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></i></span></div></content><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/feeds/7688203773612891425/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/domestic-enemies-pre-sale-begins-now.html#comment-form" rel="replies" title="0 Comments" type="text/html"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/7688203773612891425" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11368628/posts/default/7688203773612891425" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"/><link href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/03/domestic-enemies-pre-sale-begins-now.html" rel="alternate" title="Domestic Enemies - Pre -Sale Begins Now" type="text/html"/><author><name>Daniel Greenfield</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/13575285186581875356</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image height="32" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail" src="//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhRSvmnQijYr-BAX6Dhyjov7iV0exSO5_GeAmrS9KrDfyKL3VSV3Un-5pZhpzro8iWIUneqiL4ANYnGEUoTL0vy8NsLmlYYh-OMLsfNWslVjJgEd_c4FeGGK5dq-f2R63PGJTSDp-d1bMHg9mFKJEaV6Dfl20ZBX9rGmaVz8MlOTuPQ/s220/headshot%20bw4.jpg" width="30"/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibeev4ivI5P1PACU9941etjeD8q3bkubjXAGspdZRJoUjzzfjE7eUeES1CftazIWzetg-NjNS14Q9NfLjpvAgaEv1WmXeLb_pBbRKj4kZQvgosbxGQjFxBhz2TFKzjgn4AxzUjM0IEVbDaVqbuV_yTZVcolAw7oPfj4IC_lFTe8vJ4wCdbjoG5CQ/s72-w640-h360-c/dm%20test%20header3h%20alt%20erase.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry></feed>

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