An Offer We Don’t Get to Refuse
There’s a taste in my mouth, as desperation takes hold –Joy Division
Trump’s self-image as the consummate deal-maker has its advantages and its disadvantages. His willingness to bargain with Putin to end the war in Ukraine, for instance, promises to break the current administration’s determination to keep the slaughter going–if an act of war party desperation between now and the inauguration doesn’t succeed in queering the possibility of peace.*
But Trump’s faith in his dealmaking abilities also means he’s more likely to bargain away his voters’ mandate. This is of course assuming he intends, or intended, to honor it in the first place. Trump loves populist rhetoric because it’s won him the presidency twice; populist governance perhaps not so much. The difference is between the instant gratification of adoring crowds on the campaign trail and governing, where gratification is long deferred or never forthcoming.
Talk is cheap and in Trump’s case the action he promises may not even be possible. He may in fact be counting on the impossibility of his promises. As absolution for his previous failures, the hopeful refrain we hear now, “this time will be different”, is lent plausibility by the reality we witnessed in 2016, when the system formed like a tumor around the unwelcome cells of Trump and populism. The dejection and demoralization of the system’s media personalities now gives hope (and a good deal of entertainment) to those who see in Trump revolutionary change, but we can expect those enemies in the true commanding heights–those above lowly functionaries like Kamala Harris and television’s talking heads, those who are writing the checks–are made of sterner stuff. True power abides like the seasons, and this time there will be no next time.
But also we must account for the very real possibility–some would say certainty–that Trump was in fact merely allowed to win this time, that regarding presidential elections now the fix is always in, or always in reserve, and in this case the fix (as exemplified by polls and a media chorus about her “flawless” campaign) was withdrawn and the voters were not impeded.
One thing is clear, the Democrats lost the confidence of the Israel lobby and Zionist-leaning donors, suffering from both a lack of leadership above and a base below, of younger leftists and non-whites who are culturally foreigners, that increasingly despises Israel and its actions. If American politics are now a veiled battle between pro-Israel factions, dove and hawk, the Republicans represent the hawks, who are currently in ascendance.
That Donald Trump enters office “the most pro-Israel president ever” is not to be dismissed out of hand, no matter how much one is committed to resisting “conspiracy theories”. (Why one would be so committed to that after the last few years, other than faltering mental acuity due to age, is beyond me.)
There is no accountability where there is no one to hold to account. Trump is, as in 2016, a boon for his enemies, despite the histrionics of (ironically) low information media personalities who don’t understand the game. The specter of Trump as dictator is invaluable in manipulating the ill-informed and emotional, enabling all manner of censorship and public acceptance of, for instance, extreme Covid policies cast as the “scientific” alternative to Trump’s supposed denialism (despite Trump’s implication in the whole sorry story through Operation Warp Speed). Trump worked wonders for his putative enemies, creating among the “liberal” set strange new respect for the CIA and FBI, enthusiasm for censorship and skepticism toward democracy itself.
Because the establishment doesn’t accept the legitimacy of Trump or his policy proposals, there’s no one to hold him to account for failing to deliver on them–including his supposed anti-interventionism in foreign policy. Equally terrified of populism and of peace, Trump’s powerful enemies leave that money on the table. This leaves only the “far” right to hold him to his word.
But Trump’s already closed the deal with his voters. Negotiations are ended. In addition to the inherent disadvantage of electoral politics—that citizens grant their vote up front, left to hope politicians deliver on their promises—Trump enters office this time a lame duck from the start. Trump has been paid and is at his leisure. A glorious thing it would be if he somehow decided to betray his donors rather than his voters, but there’s no chance of that; you paid nothing to vote after all, but donors ponied up serious cash. Trump the businessman respects that.
So, promises aside, what exactly is the deal Trump is granting in return for your vote? What is the bargain voters have won, now taking shape with his cabinet selections?
It appears the Trump administration will wage political war on “woke” policies at home and wage literal war for Israel abroad, with the outside chance of some economic populism in the form of tariffs.
But I must concede it’s only a sizable fraction of his base he stands to betray and not the majority. The true-believers and most fervent of his supporters, the Fox News viewers and anons posting from behind body-builder avatars on X, are getting exactly what they ordered. They love America and Israel (not necessarily in that order) and they hate wokism and Muslims.
I’ve written before about the cultivation after October 7 of that pro-Israel pro-Trump faction through everything from the rise of Chris Rufo to the belated celebration of Steve Sailer and “race realism”–denigrating Arabs and Muslims and revering Jewish IQ. Operation Al Aqsa Flood and the panic it’s inspired in Zionists and diaspora Jews alike may have more to do with Trump’s victory than anything else, as witnessed by the conversion of Bill Ackman to enthusiastic Trump supporter.
The cabinet picks indicate Trump intends to pivot away from the proxy war on Russia via Ukraine to support for Israel’s military expansion in the Middle East—note how this gibes with the views of his least favorite pick, Marco Rubio, obsessively devoted to Israel but skeptical of our involvement in Ukraine.
The shift is embodied by Pete Hegseth, tapped for Defense Secretary, a combat veteran and Christian Zionist who argued for bombing Iran after Trump assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and for the construction of the Third Temple on the site of Al Aqsa Mosque. Hegseth has written about detrimental woke policies in the military and opposes women in combat. His role is to shape up a degenerate military and its leadership ahead of war with Iran.
Curiously the cabinet is shaping up to be far less Jewish than we’ve come to expect, while being more ferociously Zionist than we could have ever feared, with the risible Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel.
Most of the worst nominees–Elise Stefanik, Huckabee, Rubio, Mike Waltz–will sail through confirmation. Those that represent the people’s end of the bargain will have a harder time. Robert F Kennedy Jr could be sunk by Republicans beholden to Big Ag. The nomination of Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health probably has better chances, and I expect the doctor to school his challengers in the Senate in entertaining fashion. This is by far Trump’s best pick and welcome in particular because Trump is willing to abandon somewhat his promotion of Operation Warp Speed as a first-term accomplishment. Bhattacharya will be in a position to select the next head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Anthony Fauci’s old post from where he was the de facto overlord of the nation’s health bureaucracy despite being ostensibly subordinate the the director of the NIH.
There’s a lot more support for Trump’s worst instincts than for his best where it counts, in the halls of power and the minds of donors. Where there is already a powerful if largely hidden impetus, such as with war for Israel, he will be allowed to succeed, while where the genuinely powerful are opposed or indifferent he will be ferociously opposed or left to succeed or fail on his own merits–such as with the election. If Trump has a mandate from voters it is for economic nationalism, and opposition to that is unfortunately bi-partisan. The worst-case but likeliest scenario is “centrists” uniting to support Trump’s worst Zionist impulses and uniting to oppose his best populist impulses.
This administration will be closer to Israel than any before without meaningful opposition to that aspect. Now the faction most likely to save us from war with Iran might be Benjamin Netanyahu’s political opponents in Israel and our fate may hinge on Bibi’s prospects in his current corruption trial. Should his opponents manage to unseat Netanyahu, perhaps then all bets are off. Whatever opposition to war with Iran in Israel (and I haven’t a clue) is likely counting on and contributing to his conviction.
Donald Trump might still pull back on his own, he might still be trying to give his donors everything they want short of war with Iran, he might still experience a conversion and turn about, but at the moment everything we see suggests a second Trump administration gearing up to send the US military into the breach on behalf of Israel yet again.
One problem is his commitment to Israel looks far more solid than his commitment to us. I find his use of the kitschy anti-Christian satire and pro-sodomy anthem YMCA unfortunate, but maybe Trump has been signaling the truth to us the whole time: you will get screwed, but isn’t this fun? check on in…
*I’d like to re-introduce here the classic verb usage of “queer” as to spoil something’s prospects. Oh happy day that will be when “gay” and “queer” are restored to their traditional meanings and the current definitions are relegated to being listed as “archaic”–Merriam Webster’s online dictionary currently defines the verb form of “queer” as, basically, to make something gay as hell (lot of that going around) with the traditional meaning above perched on the transitional edge of the remainder bin as “old fashioned”.
MAGA is as MAGA Does
Somebody tell me it’s not just that stupid, that Donald Trump, lame duck president, is picking Cuban closet-case and AIPAC favorite Marco Rubio as Secretary of State to reward Hispanics for voting for him, as if Mexican construction workers in LA will be hiring mariachi bands for the grand parties they will throw in celebration. ¡Dios Mío!
Donald Trump is expected to tap U.S. Senator Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state, sources said, putting the Florida-born politician on track to be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat once the Republican president-elect takes office in January.
Of course he’s being selected to satisfy the Israel Lobby and the Widow Adelson while mollifying the Maga base by not being Mike Pompeo or Nikki Haley, but I can just see Trump thinking combining these concerns with a totemic sop to my Hispanics is cutting a brilliant deal.
Trump does pay attention to the base on X though, and this Reuters article is almost certainly the Trump people floating the idea to see how much Secretary of State Rubio will cost in popular support.
While the famously mercurial Trump could always change his mind at the last minute, he appeared to have settled on his pick as of Monday, according to the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The apparent Rubio selection has generated concern among some Trump allies who see the Florida senator as having a world view and establishment credentials at odds with the more isolationist stance favored by the Republican hard right.
Some cautioned on the social media site X that the choice of Rubio had not been finalized, although it was unclear where their information was coming from.
Caroline Wren, a pro-Trump fundraiser, mocked Rubio, comparing him unfavorably to former ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who was also in the running to be secretary of state.
“Why would we have wanted someone totally loyal like Ric Grenell when we can have a Senator who is ‘totally owned by lobbyists’ and a ‘lightweight with the worst voting record in the Senate’?” Wren posted on X, referring to Trump’s own past statements about Rubio.
For the Trump supporters who had higher hopes the cabinet picks will come like unwelcome sunlight creeping in through the blinds after an all night coke bender.
First the Romance, Now the Reality
Now it is only a question of how deep will be our disappointment. Enjoy the losers’ tears before they dry up, but know as monumental as the election was, it’s but a blip against the longer term trend line tracing the successful progress of their long war. Their histrionics are all the more remarkable in light of their still commanding position. Brace for their fury.
This time, as in 2016, Donald Trump’s biggest advantage was his competition. I think Kamala Harris’ campaign adopted “joy” as an early theme to turn to its advantage Harris’ habit of nervous laughter–because her habitual “cackling” appeared to be just that, the nervous laughter of someone out of their depth.
Harris didn’t make her own way to prominence in the Democratic Party. She was picked out of the chorus line and guided along like a starlet in the old Hollywood studio system, which is the model to which the two political parties aspire. Someone in the film industry once said “the audience will know what they want when we show it to them”– the only defensible position for an artist to take. Big donors and political honchos aren’t supposed to be in the business of entertainment and diversion, but they view the American voter the same way; they have no intention of letting you write the script.
It’s easy to forget now after Kamala Harris’ humiliating last four years, but she was considered the strong horse of the Democratic field going into 2020. Despite failing miserably in the primaries the Democratic leadership still thought enough of her to foist her on Joe Biden, who was supposed to play the role of place marker, before going off script declaring his intention to run in 2024.
Harris was not selected for ability, but for pliability. Ability is still a virtuous necessity for doctors and lawyers, accountants and mechanics. But in a presidential candidate exceptional ability, leading as it might to grander ambitions beyond personal advancement, is as dangerous and unreliable as exceptional character, to those for whom the president is the hired help. Harris, like Biden, like all candidates will be going forward should the powerful get their way (and there’s no reason to think they won’t, the glitch that is Donald Trump notwithstanding), was chosen because her lack of loftier ideals precludes the threat of her acquiring loftier ambitions.
Harris’ qualifications were supposed to be entirely theatrical. And she tried, a little too hard: the guffawing and contorted expressions were the affectations of a ham actor on stage. To be fair she was supposed to have had more time to prepare for her big run when Joe Biden sputtered out. She was in over her head in a way none of us could imagine. She did what people tend to do; she resorted to what she knew. Willie Brown’s former mistress played on her feminine wiles, as she saw them, combined with her impersonation of a television girl-boss (“I am speaking, sir!”); beyond that there was nothing.
Substance was out of the question; the Democrats had spent the Biden Harris years wreaking deliberate havoc. Kamala running on her personality was Kamala running away from her record, or lack of one. So the campaign tried to make the candidate’s lack of gravitas work for her. Thus the companion to “joy”, the “brat” theme. She wasn’t lacking in seriousness; no, she was fun-loving, relatable. The definition of brat, the internet tells me, is “confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant.” It must have seemed genius to the girls of Team Kamala at the time. But how is this–rebellious, bold, defiant--not an apt description of Trump as politician? If not for the fact the campaign seemed incapable of sizing up the competition, I would have thought they’d decided to out-Trump Donald Trump.
Joy failed them. The laughter was a little too loud to be genuine. All the joy was on the other side. Trump’s often vulgar humor started as a political consultant’s nightmare in 2016 but by 2024 not only had his initial admirers not grown weary of it, more of the fence-sitters and even detractors had been worn down. Because through the increasing madness prescribed by the ruling elite and their obvious disdain for us Trump’s persona, like his outsized confidence, wavered not a bit. Trump was stable, familiar, normal (achieving his opponents’ dreaded “normalization”) as his enemies became increasingly unstable, abnormal and relentless in their ongoing war on the familiar–no one recognizes the country they grew up in.
By 2024 the Democrats and progressive left had finished their unspoken transition from a class-based conspiracy of power–an elite faction conspiring with the economically disadvantaged to disempower the middle class–to its present conspiracy: an elite faction cultivating and conspiring with the psychologically damaged, to disempower us all.
This is what we all see. This is why the Trump revolution succeeded. This is why the election is legitimate cause for celebration. But to think we will see it go away, with the mere election of a president, especially this president, is naive.
Trump enters office a lame duck, with no more elections to run. This only leaves him more susceptible to the designs of the cabal of “advisors” that will ultimately control him. These people, if drawn from elite ranks, will have no interest in the success or failure of his term and no ultimate interest in the fate of the country; they have other ideas and other loyalties. The high profile renegade heroes that joined the campaign–Robert Kennedy Jr, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard–are not going to be in the most crucial posts. It’s notable none of them, with the possible exception of Gabbard, who sold Trump as a peace candidate in apparent ignorance of Trump’s record and statements regarding Israel, dares challenge the capture of US foreign policy by the Jewish State. Even if Musk is somehow allowed to reform wasteful government and RFK to revolutionize public health–very long shots–the status quo order will have hardly deflected from its present course.
They’re already hard at work to maneuver Trump into war with Iran, and leading the effort is the same intelligence apparatus that conspired against him.
An Iranian national and two Americans have been charged with involvement in a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, as well as an Iranian dissident, the US Department of Justice has announced.
Farhad Shakeri, Carlisle ‘Pop’ Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt were named in the criminal complaint unveiled on Friday by the Southern District of New York. Rivera was arrested in Brooklyn and Loadholt in Staten Island. Shakeri is “believed to reside” in Iran and remains at large.
“The charges announced today expose Iran’s continued brazen attempts to target US citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, other government leaders and dissidents who criticize the regime in Tehran,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
And Trump has in fact already committed to hostilities with Iran in his first term, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and drawing first blood in any assassination games.
While the DOJ noted that the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court, Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland have held up the indictment as proof that Iran is “actively targeting nationals of the United States and its allies living in countries around the world for attacks” motivated by vengeance for the 2020 death of IRGC Quds Force commander, General Qassem Soleimani.
Trump ordered Soleimani’s assassination in a drone strike carried out near the Baghdad airport in Iraq.
Primarily Trump’s victory is a victory for Israel, specifically Israel’s hardline Zionists; everything else is secondary and can be countered by the deep state.
Every candidate for foreign policy positions is fiercely pro-Israel and hostile to Iran. There’s virtually no chance of establishing independence from Israel barring a sudden, drastic change in direction:
Brian Hook, a hawkish fixture of the first Donald Trump administration who formerly served under George W. Bush, is reportedly getting the call to start staffing the State Department for a new Trump term. Hook, known as a major Iran hawk who helped lead the “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions, sabotage, and assassinations that characterized Trump’s approach to Tehran, has been appointed to help oversee the formation of a new foreign policy team, according to reports from Politico and CNN.
Hook served as U.S. Special Representative for Iran and advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the last two years of Trump’s presidency, which saw the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and expansion of crushing sanctions intended to spur regime change in Iran. That approach ultimately failed to collapse the Iranian government, or compel it to reduce its support for its network of armed proxies in the region. Instead, it wound up escalating the hostility between the two countries while Iran ramped up its nuclear enrichment following Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama-era nuclear deal.
On the day of Trump’s reelection Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister Yoav Gallant, a hard-liner himself but one pushing for genuine negotiations with Hamas over hostages:
While Netanyahu has called for continued military pressure on Hamas, Gallant had taken a more pragmatic approach, saying that military force has created the necessary conditions for at least a temporary diplomatic deal that could bring home hostages held by the militant group.
Celebrants online have posted the I’m assembling a team meme featuring the higher profile and more popular supporters of Trump:
Notably not a one of them is a proponent of our independence from Israel’s foreign policy, and meanwhile Trump is in fact assembling a less glamorous team for the dirty work. Those in line for cabinet posts:
Elise Stefanik, who led the Congressional charge to censor anti-Israel protests on college campuses and boasts of backing “every measure to aid Israel”:
[update, Nov 11: Stefanik has been chosen to be UN ambassador]
Mike Lee, in line for Attorney General (and to wage a crackdown on anti-Israel dissent), whose qualifications the American Jewish Congress celebrates here:
Senator Lee opposed the Iran nuclear deal. He opposed UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that claimed that Israel’s settlements have no legal validity. He has cosponsored a resolution that opposes the discriminatory Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the delegitimization of Israel.
In 2018, Senator Lee cosponsored the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act, a legislation that supported full funding of security assistance to Israel as outlined in the 2016 U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding.
In 2019, he voted for the Strengthening America’s Middle East Security Act which, among other things, strengthens Israel’s security and allows a state or local government to adopt measures to divest its assets from entities that boycott Israel.
The aforementioned Brian Hook, leading the transition team, is a confidante of Jared Kushner, a Bush II regime veteran, led a neocon purge of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff during the first Trump term, and crafted a grand plan to “reform Islam”:
Founded in 1947, the Policy Planning Staff is the department’s in-house think tank. It is headed by the hawkish former Bush administration official Brian Hook, who was in charge at the time the memo was produced. According to the department’s website, Hook and his team “take a longer term, strategic view of global trends.” The document was finished shortly after Hook had purged career staffers he considered to be insufficiently loyal to Trump or too friendly with Iran. Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, for instance, was pushed out of Hook’s policy department following a right-wing smear campaign that questioned her loyalty to the United States, reporting falsely that she was born in Iran.
The policy shop, shorn of expertise and stocked with ideologues, is now producing material unlike anything it has before, according to a range of former State Department, Pentagon, and NSC officials, advisers, and lawyers consulted by The Intercept. They said that they had never seen the contentious and inflammatory phrase “Islamic Reformation” — a call for a Martin Luther-like figure to bring Islam into modernity that is rooted in tropes that presume Islam to be inherently violent and backward — used in an official U.S. government document before.
Also in line for Attorney General is John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence. Here he is making his pitch for a role in the next Trump administration in this Real Clear Defense article:
While Israel works to fend off terrorists, the Biden administration is withholding both intelligence and military aid – placing a key ally in jeopardy and putting America’s own national security at risk.
The administration is refusing to share valuable information regarding Hamas with Israeli intelligence until Israel halts its Rafah offensive – a decision that follows close on the heels of the administration’s announcement that it would halt weapon shipments to Israel. Yet these appalling decisions are only the most recent in a long string of poor policy choices…
This misperception led the Biden administration to divert critical assets away from terrorist groups like Hamas – ultimately leading to the failure to anticipate or disrupt the events of Oct. 7. In November, senior administration officials admitted that, following 9/11, U.S. intelligence agencies almost completely stopped spying on Hamas and other violent Palestinian groups, believing that Hamas constituted no direct threat to the U.S.
Last time I checked it doesn’t.
Indeed, Washington deprioritized the Middle East as a whole. After the Biden administration’s takeover, the Central Intelligence Agency decided to reduce the number of civilian intelligence analysts tasked with monitoring the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials, lawmakers, and congressional aides testified that this deprioritization of the Middle East had left the U.S. vulnerable and unable to anticipate the attacks.
Congressman Mark Green of Tennessee is being considered for the Department of Homeland Security. An aside in his pro-censorship article in The Hill:
Even more sickening are the actions of some American political leaders. Multiple Democrat members of Congress have yet to sign a resolution stating Israel has the right to defend itself. Several members have also introduced a resolution calling for a cease-fire, which is the same thing as calling for Israel to allow Hamas to stay in control of Gaza. Iran is our enemy. Hezbollah is our enemy. Hamas is our enemy. Islamic terrorism is our enemy. Yet these elected officials refuse to admit it.
At this point there isn’t a single person under consideration who might temper the devotion to Israel of the rest.
Beyond foreign policy and the welcome addition of Tom Holman to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement there is little to cheer, just uncertainty and the likelihood Trump will be maneuvered by his new elite friends like Elon Musk into globalist strategies for monetizing the environment. Whitney Webb on what Trump’s victory means for carbon tax proponents:
Chief among these is Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team who has stated that he is tasked with finding the “talent” for the incoming administration. Lutnick is the long-time and current head of Cantor Fitzgerald, which was one of the earliest players in emission trading and has since become a global leader in ESG investing, “sustainable infrastructure” financing and green bonds. For example, Cantor’s sustainable infrastructure fund is expressly committed to “digital transformation, decarbonization and the improvement and modernization of aging infrastructure,” while “a primary focus for the Fund will be to invest in issuers that are helping to address certain United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through their products and services.” In addition, the top constituent of another Cantor infrastructure fund is Invenergy, a renewable energy company that has received a significant amount of subsidies from the Biden’s controversial Inflation Reduction Act and is run by the country’s first “wind billionaire” Michael Polsky.
Transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick is a thorough-going globalist master of the universe type and “sustainability” enthusiast.
Elon Musk is representative of the Trump dilemma. His enthusiasm is genuine, his liberation of Twitter heroic, but so are his connections to the surveillance state, his enthusiasm for carbon taxes and his thorough acquiescence to Zionism and Jewish power.
This is the elite faction behind Trump, grand scourge of the Elite. Their determination to serve Trump is suspect; their determination to serve Israel is not, and it won’t stop them from joining with anti-Trump efforts elsewhere. They might on one hand encourage him into becoming a war president on behalf of Israel, while also helping his political enemies determined to foil populist domestic policy. This is all setting up the second Trump administration to be a complete failure for America and a historic boon for Israel.
The Revolution is in Capable Hands
Seattle antifa plans to riot on election night fizzled after a small group of about 40 was set upon by about 100 police officers, making arrests for blocking the road.
Not helping was a confusing flyer Seattle antifa put out, mis-dating election day as the 3rd, something I missed when I posted on this earlier:
Meanwhile Portland antifa appears to have been a no-show for their planned action downtown. A friend there reports seeing a column of SWAT vehicles speeding down the freeway in the early evening, but there are no reports of anarchist action to be found.
Of course the Northwest’s wokest cities are not out of the woods yet. Seattle antifa may have something planned for tonight, November 6–though they might have messed up the date again on this poster for an “election rally” (on the left):
Riot on Schedule
A New York Times “analysis” of Telegram activity breathlessly warns of the potential for rightwing violence on election day.
More than 4,000 of their posts went further by encouraging members to act by attending local election meetings, joining protest rallies and making financial donations, the analysis found. Posts from other right-wing groups reviewed by The Times urged followers to be prepared for violence. These calls to action extended the right-wing language typically found on other major social media sites into the physical world.
In New Hampshire, one Telegram channel instructed people to question local officials in person about absentee ballot tallies. In Georgia, followers of a local Telegram channel were urged to attend election board meetings to argue for limits to absentee voting. In New Mexico, people were told to monitor voting stations with cameras, file police reports if necessary and be ready to “fight like hell.”
You might find it hard to discern the threatened violence there, but, as the Times points out, we’re talking Telegram here:
Katherine Keneally, a former intelligence analyst with the New York Police Department, said views shared on Telegram should not be dismissed as the musings of a fringe minority but rather seen as a warning about what could happen on Election Day and beyond.
“Telegram is very often central to actually organizing people to engage in offline activity,” said Ms. Keneally, who now works for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research firm that monitors Telegram. She recalled attending a meeting in 2022 of election skeptics in Montana, where participants taught one another how to use Telegram. Among more extreme movements, she said, Telegram is used “very strategically to radicalize and recruit.”
Remember the CEO of Telegram was arrested in France in August for “illicit material” on the site and not enough content moderation, as if that was a crime.
The company’s growth — it now has more than 900 million users — has been driven partly by a commitment to free speech. Telegram’s light oversight of what people say or do on the platform has helped people living under authoritarian governments communicate and organize. But it has also made the app a haven for disinformation, far-right extremism and other harmful content.
That paragraph betrays a remarkable lack of awareness on the part of the Times, which sees nothing authoritarian in the media’s knee-jerk response to shut down any suspicion of election fraud without bothering to investigate claims. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov appears to have relented to authorities after his arrest, making changes to the app that may be the reason the Times and US government are able to monitor it more effectively now–one of the demands made of Telegram was to take on more moderators, and some surmised with good reason this meant spies working for authorities.
Telegram played a small but significant role in the 2020 election as an organizing tool for planners of the Jan. 6 attack. Today, its influence is greater and potentially more ominous, according to The Times’s analysis.
Right-wing media channels post a stream of news, memes and misinformation about perceived voting irregularities, which are then picked up by other groups that use them to argue that the Democrats have begun to steal the election. Mixed in are calls for citizens to show up at the polls and to monitor and report irregularities — or fight if necessary.
An objective observer will find it difficult to judge the veracity of the various charges of fraud leveled in this election year, in no small part because the media refuses to engage them honestly, choosing only to dismiss with a wave of the hand all but those that can be easily disproven. Rash or flaky accusations are welcomed and used to cast doubt on the practice of questioning of the integrity of elections as a whole.
Note how the treatment of election skepticism (from the right, one is still allowed to traffic in the “Russian collusion” hoax) works just like the media’s defense of the Covid regime: media mobilizes to discredit charges immediately without testing their veracity and skepticism itself is demonized for degrading our trust in whatever institution is coming under fire. Damaging the reputation of authority is criminal now, whether it’s charges of Covid disinformation–destroying trust in the medical establishment; reporting on the shenanigans of the intelligence community re Donald Trump–disparaging the heroes of the CIA; and, now, doubts about questionable practices besmirching election officials. Most notable of course is how skepticism of those first two has proven warranted.
My take on the question of election cheating in 2020 and now has always been that it strains credulity to believe the establishment would have spent these last eight years breaking every rule of decency and fair play to be rid of Donald Trump only to slam on the brakes when it comes to election interference. Indeed, their actions everywhere else–the serial hoaxes and cross-institutional collusion since 2016–constitutes what we should call governing interference in the same sense as there is a thing called election interference. This governing interference even can’t help but effect and constitute a level of election interference, by hamstringing and slandering an administration you lessen its chances in the next election and this is just one consequence of your malfeasance. I think those engaged in this factored that in. Making Trump un-electable was a motivation; if they couldn’t get him thrown out of office they would at least wreck his chances at re-election.
Beyond that, if you voted for Trump in 2016 the media, the intelligence community, the Democratic Party, elements of the Republican Party and others all colluded to disenfranchise you over the ensuing four years by digging in their heels and refusing to play fair, and then they colluded to fix the 2020 election. They had already won–because they’re at all the levers of power–by the time Trump’s supporters were reduced to relying on Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and nobody was–or is now–talking about the massive crime that transpired over four years. To say nothing of the boon that Trump, specifically the panic manufactured around Trump, was for the forces of authoritarianism and anarchy: the increased censorship and warping of the legal system through lawfare, just for starters; and the gaslit, deranged half of the American public ready to accept it and more to–cry tears of laughter, cry tears of pain!–“save our democracy”.
Meanwhile we can be assured antifa will be mobilized on November 5 and must wonder if it’s with some encouragement from the establishment they profess to hate but whose bidding they always seem to be doing–they have been quite silent during the Biden Administration after all. Time to get the band back together.
Seattle’s antifa action is scheduled for Cal Anderson Park downtown on election night.
Cal Anderson Park was a hotspot in during the BLM riots of 2020 (another Trump election year, by coincidence) helping to birth the nearby Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, site of the wretched Black Lives Matter Garden and scene of what might have been the most gruesome murder ballad to come out of Seattle’s “Summer of Love”.
Portland antifa will be convening at Chapman Square downtown. That’s a small park block in between the city hall and the police station and federal courthouse on the other side. It was occupied by antifa for much of the summer of 2020.
Meanwhile in DC they are boarding up and some are even pretending this is in anticipation of rightwing violence:
Now is the nervous time, now is the fun time.
Lawsuit Establishes “He Who Smelt it, Dealt it” Precedent
Columbia University is paying a student 395,000 dollars to settle a lawsuit claiming he was unfairly suspended for spraying a group of pro-Gaza protesters with a noxious chemical.
Columbia University has reached a $395,000 settlement with a student who was suspended in January after spraying student protesters with a foul-smelling substance at one of several campus demonstrations in support of Palestine.
The Israeli student who received the payout had been suspended until May.
The case was first described as a possible chemical attack involving the use of skunk spray, an agent developed in Israel and used as a crowd-control weapon, most commonly in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But Columbia has said the spray used was novelty, non-toxic fart spray, bought on Amazon for $26.11, and not a chemical agent.
“Liquid Ass” is available on Amazon, of course.
It’s also used for realistic training in the medical field and military:
Liquid Ass even made its way into military training operations, as Mary Roach describes in her book Grunt. It’s a key ingredient in fake bowels filled with dyed oatmeal, used in a device called a Cut Suit, a creation of a training company called Strategic Operations in San Diego, California which trains some members of the US military. The Cut Suit is a wearable prop that realistically mimics wounds; it starts off looking like healthy skin, and when you cut into it, it looks and smells like a real body would if it were cut open. The suits have been used, for example, by Navy medics practicing attending to wounded soldiers during an ongoing battle.
“Skunk” is the name for the more noxious “malodorant” the IDF developed for use on protesters and is sold abroad for use in crowd control, including in the United States.
Skunk is liable to cause physical harm, such as intense nausea, vomiting and skin rashes, in addition to any injury resulting from the powerful force of the spray. Examinations by police and army medical teams in the past also indicated that the excessive coughing caused by exposure can result in suffocation.
Apparently there’s no market in India for it, because, you guessed it:
A bomb that smells like sewage and was intended to be used on protesters in Kashmir and elsewhere has been found to be a dud. Reason: the “high threshold of Indians to tolerate stench”.
Skunk is deployable in projectiles. In October the IDF deployed some sort of malodorant using tank rounds against Irish UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
At around 6:40 a.m., peacekeepers at the same position reported the firing of several rounds 100 metres north, which emitted smoke. Despite putting on protective masks, fifteen peacekeepers suffered effects, including skin irritation and gastrointestinal reactions, after the smoke entered the camp. The peacekeepers are receiving treatment.
It was January 19 of this year when the Columbia protesters were stink-bombed.
During a rally on Friday, according to attendees, two individuals sprayed a hazardous chemical that released an odious smell. Dozens of students have reported an array of symptoms, such as burning eyes, nausea, headaches, abdominal and chest pain, and vomiting.
The campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine publicized the incident on Saturday morning, identifying the substance as “skunk,” a chemical weapon used by the Israel Defense Forces against Palestinians and one that U.S. police departments have reportedly acquired in the past. SJP also alleged that the assailants have ties to the Israel Defense Forces, a claim that The Intercept could not independently confirm.
CSP students’ allegations will not get a hearing now that the lawsuit is settled.
Columbia eventually identified one of the alleged assailants and suspended him until May of next year. Soon its Task Force on Antisemitism, formed on November 1 2023 and headed by three Jewish professors, took up his cause, writing up a sort of amicus brief for the suspended student, arguing the charges were unfounded and the punishment excessive.
The task force continues its work but isn’t going to tie itself down by actually defining antisemitism.
The task force is not going to parse words on the definition of antisemitism but will take an “experientially oriented approach,” Fuchs said. She added that they would not delve into which of the “25 definitions of antisemitism” the group would subscribe to, because “that’s not the purpose of what we’re doing.”
They’ll know it when they smell it I guess.
Clown at Large
Nothing good happens after midnight or at the mall food court on Halloween:
One person was killed and two injured in a shooting at the Vancouver Mall food court around 7:30 p.m. Thursday, police said, as shoppers described hearing shots ring out and ran for the doors while others sheltered in place.
Police received an early report that the shooter was seen dressed all in black wearing a clown mask and last seen running toward JCPenney. The shooter was still at-large late Thursday.
Officials are worried the killer clown fled over the river into Portland where he’ll blend right in.
Shouting Fire
Someone has set fire to ballot boxes in Portland Oregon and over the Columbia River in Vancouver Washington in recent weeks.
Hundreds of ballots were destroyed or damaged in fires set Monday at two ballot drop boxes in the Pacific Northwest – and investigators are searching for a person they believe is responsible for both incidents.Almost all the ballots that were damaged or destroyed were in a drop box in Vancouver, Washington, while most ballots in a drop box in Portland, Oregon, survived a fire set the same day, election officials said. The incidents are believed to be connected to a third fire on October 8, also in Vancouver.
The fires came after a US Department of Homeland Security bulletin from September obtained by the watchdog group Property of the People warned: “Some social media users are discussing and encouraging various methods of sabotaging ballot drop boxes and avoiding detection, likely heightening the potential for targeting of this election infrastructure through the 2024 election cycle.”
The fires were started by devices placed outside the drop boxes, authorities said.
Police have a suspect description and say the incendiary devices betray some expertise in metalworking; the devices used bore the phrases “Free Gaza” and “Free Palestine”:
Investigators believe the man who set the incendiary devices at ballot boxes in Portland, Oregon, and nearby Vancouver, Washington, had a “wealth of experience” in metal fabrication and welding, said Portland Police Bureau spokesperson Mike Benner.
The way the devices were constructed and the way they were attached to the metal drop boxes showed that expertise, Benner said.
Authorities described the suspect as a white man, age 30 to 40, who is balding or has very short hair.
Police previously said surveillance video showed the man driving a black or dark-colored 2001 to 2004 Volvo S-60. The vehicle did not have a front license plate, but it did have a rear plate with unknown letters or numbers.
The incendiary devices were marked with the message “Free Gaza,” according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.
A third device placed at a different drop box in Vancouver earlier this month also carried the words “Free Palestine” in addition to “Free Gaza,” the official said.
If the idea is to destroy votes for Harris the box in Portland would be an obvious target. But Clark County Washington where Vancouver is only leans slightly Democratic, with Vancouver itself being more conservative. The “Free Gaza” inscriptions of course could be an attempt at misdirection. The first link above to DHS intelligence warning of potential drop box sabotage from “domestic violence extremists” comes from a self-described government transparency non-profit, Property of the People, that is focused almost entirely on taking down Donald Trump and is headed by an “animal rights activist” named Ryan Shapiro.
Whether or not it is the work of a foolish rightwinger, a false flag or something else we can expect it to be conflated with the specter of Trump supporters’ “election denial” by the media (the Property of the People memo on DVEs planning to disrupt the election is making the rounds). The narrative that “Maga extremists” are gearing up to repeat 2020 is heating up (so to speak) in preparation for next Tuesday.
Meanwhile antifa in the Northwest are already preparing to riot over a potential Trump victory (or just because), as they did in 2016. Their poster for the planned action in Seattle has some interesting artwork:
2016:
Slipping the Right a Rufo
There is a stark divide on the American right separating supporters and opponents of Israel. The anti-Israel sentiment of the “far” right originates in opposition to Jewish power and influence, what we’re conditioned to call “anti-Semitism”. Here at least the charge “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism” is apt. On the near side of respectability is the pro-Israel right, comprised of conservative Jews, every right-leaning politician and anyone with public ambition of any sort, leading a dwindling number of non-Jews still bamboozled into thinking affinity for Israel is warranted and reciprocated–now aging out to the snarling paroxysms of Sean Hannity. Some might characterize this latter group as “cucks” or “simps”, suckers akin to the Yiddish freier; the oblivious and manipulated mass necessary to any great political movement. Keeping them gulled and gaslighting the next generation to replace them is a necessity growing in difficulty as trust in the traditional media evaporates and alternative media abounds–exposing the pernicious nature of our relationship to Israel. Censorship, as we see, is not enough. Resentment of Israel and its control over foreign policy threatens critical mass.
But for the moment on the right the pro-Israel side is respectable but largely dishonest, and the anti-Israel side is honest but entirely disreputable. Nearly the only thing the two share is an opposition to the current revolution taking over American institutions through applied critical theory, or “wokism”, an opposition that is beginning to infiltrate the center left. But the chasm Israel has cleaved through our polity and society extends to the left, where it intersects wokism, another fissure dividing us (and in no small part the work of the Diaspora). In this way the far right and the progressive left find themselves faced off against the pro-Israel center right and center left; the woke split runs perpendicular to the Israel divide, dissecting the field into four isolated quadrants.
Not, of course, that the anti-Israel side would represent an alliance without wokism; right and left arrived at the same place from opposite directions and with opposite goals. In the first months of the anti-Israel protests there were some naive attempts on the far right to establish an alliance with the Arab and Muslim opponents of Israel, but the notion appears to be a non-starter. Needless to say there is no question of a far-right/far-left alliance in opposition to Israel’s dominance of US foreign policy. I suspect there’s nascent anti-Semitism brewing on the far left after the last year of Israeli brutality, cheered on by sadistic Jewish supporters here–one can always hope after all–but time is short.
For the left opposition to Zionism and Israel’s “apartheid state” is a logical piece of the woke bundle, originating in opposition to colonialism and in the same concern for the oppressed by which they’ve strayed into “trans rights”, radical feminism, Marxism–actual and cultural–black idolatry kitsch, identity politics…whatever comes next.
They are consistent. Despite the pro-Zionists’ characterization of them as antisemitic, they are more accurately described as anti-white or anti-western. In fact if anyone is capable of separating Zionism from Judaism it’s white leftists, who see in Zionism the modern manifestation of western colonialism while also seeing Jews as the apex identity atop the hierarchy of oppressed peoples without straining their eyes in the slightest.
But the spector of white ethno-masochists aligned with non-white ethno-advocates united in their resentment of the west protesting Israel provides an opportunity to Israel’s loyal proxies on the American right, an opportunity to conflate opposition to Israel with wokism and hatred of whites and the west. Some of them even seem to believe it.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war more than a year ago, perplexing forms of open anti-Semitism have cropped up on both sides of the political aisle. First visible on the political left with an eruption of protests and even of violence on Ivy League campuses, it also appeared soon enough on the political right.
What has transpired is a complex story about the academy and the internet, the elite and the fringes—one that we must confront directly as it reveals something rotten in our politics. This concerning trajectory can only be changed through the restoration of higher principles that once kept these threats in check. In the face of dangerous identity-based ideologies, it is crucial to return to America’s historic defense of colorblindness, meritocracy, and fair play.
Left-wingers have participated in anti-Israel and pro-Hamas agitation, in some cases even defending the Hamas militants who massacred approximately some 1,200 innocents, including at a music festival. Keffiyeh-clad student protesters captured buildings at Columbia, eventually setting off a wave of copycat flashpoints at other universities. Elites institutions like Harvard—which previously had issued statements on political controversies ranging from Black Lives Matter and #MeToo to the war in Ukraine—suddenly went silent on the Israel-Hamas war in the name of protecting freedom of speech.
Rufo has made a name for himself making war on the DEI regime, wokism and its enforcement arm “cancel culture”; then October 7 happened. More to the point Israel commenced the current slaughter in Gaza, prompting the subsequent wave of anti-Israel protests on university campuses. Suddenly the language and tactics of cancel culture were everywhere on the pro-Israel right: Jewish students were made “unsafe” by the language of pro-Palestinian protesters precisely in the same way minorities and trans students are said to be threatened by the presence of right-wing speakers or fellow students. Authorities, in this case university administrators, were complicit by not denying the radicals freedom of assembly. The “stochastic terrorism” concept was invoked in everything but name.
The “violence” Rufo asserts above is difficult to find: we do know the universities responded in a heavy-handed fashion that bears no resemblance to their inaction and tacit or overt support for the George Floyd protests of 2020, which involved no end of property destruction and were of a whole with deadly riots throughout the country. At UCLA police stood down as pro-Israel students attacked an anti-Israel encampment. Columbia called police to break up another–something that would have been unthinkable in the case of BLM or similarly left-wing protests.
So the most salient point of comparison between 2020 and now is how quickly the universities folded to pressure leveled by Jewish donors and groups–the same people who responded to 2020’s mayhem with silence or vocal support for BLM–bringing the hammer down on anti-Israel protests.
Note how free speech goes from sacrosanct to suspect when Rufo laments how adiminstrators “went silent…in the name of protecting freedom of speech”, just as it does for the radical left, and with the same rationalization that the protected group, minorities in one case, Israelis and Jews in the other, occupy a special and sacred place by virtue of their suffering.
Making it all the more ironic Rufo appears to be of that class anti-racist conservatives seeking to circumvent white political advocacy by denouncing it as “the woke right”, or identity politics and cancel culture for white people. Rufo of course made his mark in the campaign to silence the anti-Israel protests when he took down Harvard president Claudine Gay by exposing the DEI-hire’s history of plagiarism in alliance with billionaire donor Bill Ackman and rabidly pro-Israel Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York (top contributor AIPAC, naturally) who led a series of congressional hearings of university heads for their failure “to sufficiently condemn student protests calling for ‘Jewish genocide’ “, referring of course to the phrase “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” which is a call for a single democratic state of Israel making “the Jewish State” untenable. Meanwhile Israel engages in its program of extending the Jewish State from the river to the sea through bombardment and settlement–actual genocide.
Rufo’s piece has the clumsy feel of something rushed to print to satisfy a benefactor (further muddying things we now learn George Soros is funding Compact magazine, which fronts at least as a conservative outlet) and the thrust of the piece is a call for more censorship in favor of Israel, just as Bill Ackman has been calling and increasingly paying for, through his donations and newfound support for Donald Trump.
Meanwhile there is another campaign within the pro-Israel right seeking to commandeer the racism of whites justly resentful of the privileging of non-whites the left has achieved through oppression narratives, notable with the new enthusiasm for the old ideas of Steve Sailer and his “human biodiversity” approach countering those leftist narratives with proof of uneven racial distribution of IQ; this appears now on the scene as if ready-made to justify both Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians and Jewish subjugation of the west, and Steve’s new generation of champions is disproportionately Jewish and elitist, of course, if not always openly.
And now clumsy Chris seems to have discovered this angle:
These institutions have failed to keep in check the simplistic oppressor-versus-oppressed ideology that undergirds the worldview of today’s left. The provincial-minded elites that call the shots in these institutions tend to filter every conflict through this ideological lens, looking primarily to skin color and then power dynamics as the main criteria for judging the rectitude of a cause. Palestinians, with their slightly darker skin tone and less developed economy and military, fit the “oppressed” mold, thus making the Jewish state their “oppressor.”
Chris goes on; boldface is mine, obliviousness is Rufo’s (also note the HBD-based justification for Jewish actions in the last sentence):
Though this line of thought dates back to the 1960s (think of the Black Panthers’ alliance with the Palestinian cause), this is the first time that it has come to dominate discourse on university campuses. This is thanks in part to the collapse of intellectual diversity on campus. But it also has attracted numerous students and professors because of the prevalence of victim worship and the subsequent resentment toward successful groups. In their eyes, Palestinians are a kind of eternal victim. A pseudo-historical narrative tells us they have been victimized for time everlasting, and lack any agency in their own fate. Ironically, the oppression of the Jews dates back to biblical times, yet American Jews are one of the most successful groups in academia and other intellectual professions. The success of a minority group throws a wrench into the left’s narrative gears.
I guess antisemitism as “the oldest hate” was actually referring to another group of semites.
Chris Brunet worked with Rufo on the Claudine Gay story but has subsequently fallen out with him. He too seems convinced Rufo is now entirely a mouthpiece for powerful benefactors; here he is posting Nick Fuentes videos on his substack on the subject.
untethered 