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Ruth King

LOCKDOWN: The New Totalitarianism Jeffrey A. Tucker

https://www.aier.org/article/lockdown-the-new-totalitarianism/

Every political ideology has three elements: a vision of hell with an enemy that needs to be crushed, a vision of a more perfect world, and a plan for transitioning from one to the other. The means of transition usually involve the takeover and deployment of society’s most powerful tool: the state. For this reason, ideologies trend totalitarian. They depend fundamentally on overriding people’s preferences and choices and replacing them with scripted and planned belief systems and behaviors.

An obvious case is communism. Capitalism is the enemy, while worker control and the end of private property is the heaven, and the means to achieve the goal is violent expropriation. Socialism is a softer version of the same: in the Fabian tradition, you get there through piecemeal economic planning.

The ideology of racism posits something different. The hell is ethnic integration and race mixing, the heaven is racial homogeneity, and the means of change is the marginalization or killing off of some races. Fascism imagines global trade, individualism, and immigration to be the enemy while a mighty nationalism is heaven: the means of change is a great leader. You can observe the same about certain brands of theocratic religious traditionalism.

Each of these ideologies comes with a primary intellectual focus, a kind of story designed to occupy the mind. Think about exploitation. Think about inequality. Think about race theory. Think about national identity. Think about salvation. Each comes with its own language to signal one’s attachment to the ideology.

Most of the above ideologies are well worn. We have plenty of experience to draw on from history to observe the patterns, recognize the adherents, and refute the theories.

MELANIE PHILLIPS: WHY ANTI-ZIONISM IS ANTI-SEMITISM

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/why-anti-zionism-is-antisemitism?

The indivisible relationship explains much, but few, alas, acknowledge it.

A few days ago Mia Werner, a  Jewish student at the University of Portland, Oregon, described being the victim of an antisemitic incident on her Middle East politics course. You can read her account here. 

The incident occurred when her professor brought in an Iranian dissident as a visiting speaker. Werner writes: 

When he spoke to us, what ensued was three long hours of egregious prejudice. He espoused support for recognised terrorist groups, like Hamas and the Houthis. He called all American soldiers cowards. He went on a long-winded tirade about how Iran could and should blow Israel off the face of the earth. Then he explained how no one in that region was antisemitic. He looked me in the eye and told me that I could go anywhere I wanted to in the Middle East and I wouldn’t be murdered for being a woman nor for being Jewish (lucky me). They would only kill me if I said I supported the existence of Israel, if I admitted to being a Zionist.  

Throughout the entire three hours, my professor never said a word. She sat a few chairs down from me, silently watching as this man spewed absurd and harmful erasure of the persecution of the Jewish people.

The indivisible relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism is little understood, even among those who have a reasonably benign view of Israel. 

A Few Global Concerns that Affect Us All by Richard Kemp

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16589/global-concerns

Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army Commander. He was also head of the international terrorism team in the U.K. Cabinet Office and is now a writer and speaker on international and military affairs.  From a briefing to Gatestone Institute on July 29, 2020.

Now, I believe, the US is taking measures to prevent the Chinese Communist Party from dominating the world, stealing American secrets, further imposing their system on the US and benefiting from US trade in a way that they do not allow the US to benefit…. People realize this is an evil, dark regime that many people have been deluded about for many years. People are now realizing their error…. I only hope that we, in Britain, in Europe, and in the US and other countries, are able to do that more in earnest.

Another thing that is coming into question is that we — in my view foolishly — have plans to allow China to construct a series of nuclear power stations in Britain. We hope that Britain will review these plans and stop them from happening.

The situation with Lebanon and Hizbollah is all tied up with Iran. Hezbollah is a creation of Iran, directed by Iran and funded by Iran. It is basically an extension of the Ayatollah’s right arm…. If the current US administration were to lose the election, there would probably be a policy similar to what the previous administration had, with every effort made, probably, to try and resurrect the nuclear deal. This action would certainly help enable Iran to have nuclear weapons.

The ICC are also trying to investigate Britain for war crimes in Iraq — as well as the US for war crimes in Afghanistan. Of course, it is the usual three suspects, Britain, US, and Israel, they firmly have in their sights…. The International Criminal Court is no longer a legal body. It is now a political body. It has turned itself into something it was never intended to be.

There are a few global concerns that affect us all. The first is the current situation with Iran and its various ramifications. The second, connected with Iran, is the current situation in Lebanon, with Hezbollah in particular, which is also in Syria.

The next is the International Criminal Court, from which we are imminently expecting a decision that could have a potential impact on Israel as well as on the rest of us.

Iran, I believe, is under enormous pressure right now — the greatest pressure since the creation of the Islamic Republic during its Islamic Revolution back in 1979.

The leaders of Iran, the Ayatollah and the various others who run the country, are doubtless deeply worried about the survival of their regime. Regime survival for them is, of course, everything. Keeping their flame alive in Iran is the number one imperative of all that they do. To maintain that regime, they carry out large numbers of extreme activities both there and around the world.

First, their economy is reeling in a great depression with little sign of hope, due mainly to the United States’ “maximum pressure” campaign.

The US has imposed severe sanctions on Iran and also encouraged other countries not break those sanctions, and, in some instances, to take their own measures against Iran. These strictures have caused Iran an enormous problem.

They follow, of course, the repudiation by the current US administration of the dreadful Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA, which was supposedly intended to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed state, but which actually paved the way for Iran to become a fully nuclear-armed state.

DoJ, FBI Prepare For Election Night Violence, Voting Disruptions Profile picture for user Tyler Durden by Tyler Durden

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/doj-fbi-brace-election-night-violence-voting-disruptions

During an election year that was marred by an unprecedented global pandemic and some of the worst political violence witnessed in the US since the 1970s, it’s hardly a surprise that the DoJ is planning to station officials at an election night “command center” at FBI headquarters in the J Edgar Hoover building.

With liberals still hysterical over President Trump’s answer to Chris Wallace’s final debate question about pledging to accept the election results, whatever they may be, the DOJ is intensifying its usual routine monitoring of election night activity to also brace for any problems with voting machines that might arise.

“The Department of Justice takes election security and integrity seriously, and this year is no exception,” said Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

The FBI said in a statement that, as in previous years, it is “committed to protecting the American public’s right to a fair and safe election by securing it” and that officials “are working closely with our federal, state, and local partners so everyone involved with safe-guarding the election has the information and resources necessary to respond in a timely manner to any violations that may arise.”

“Of course our preparations for 2020 take into account the current climate of the country,” the statement said. “As always, the FBI has a responsibility to plan for a host of potential scenarios.”

Why Colorful View of American Politics Is Wrong by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16590/colorful-american-politics

White supremacists forget that in most cases what they present as lawbreaking by blacks is primarily caused by socio-economic factors, not skin color. Even then, lawbreakers form a small minority of black Americans, who account for 12 percent of the population.

While racists, both white and black, do exist in the United States, it is wrong to talk of across the board institutional racism. A majority of Americans of all colors understand that slavery was an evil and harmed every American regardless of color. They have also seen in real life that advancing equality benefits all, not only those of any particular color.

The way world media cover the current US election campaigns may foster the impression that the nation is gripped by a crisis due to institutional racism with black Americans as victims. Professional anti-Americans even claim that the US perpetuates a version of apartheid.

How accurate are such claims?

There is no doubt that race, or skin color, remains a cause of friction with small radical groups, both white and black, seeking to legitimize their agendas by fomenting fear and loathing with racial themes.

On the right, white supremacists try to portray black fellow citizens as genetic criminals whose presence is a cause of anxiety. They cite figures showing that a disproportionate number of blacks are in prison for breaking the law.

On the left, some radical anti-capitalists try to cast blacks as victims of institutional racism and use the concept of victimhood to justify violence.

White supremacists forget that in most cases, what they present as lawbreaking by blacks is primarily caused by socio-economic factors, not skin color. Even then, lawbreakers form a small minority of black Americans, who account for 12 percent of the population.

Anti-Americanism, Then and Now Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/03/anti-americanism-then-and-now/

The habit of liberal accommodation has precipitated a crisis in what one used to be able to call, without apology, manly self-confidence.

As members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter continue their nightly exercise of kinetic economic redistribution, and protestors assemble outside Walter Reed Hospital, where President Trump is receiving treatment for the Wuhan Flu, to shout anti-Trump slogans, I thought it might be useful to step back and consider this current wave of anti-American sentiment in historical context. 

Anti-Americanism is not new, of course. It was, as many writers have noted, a staple of 1960s’ radicalism. What seems novel today, however, is the extent to which radical anti-American sentiment has installed itself into the heart of many institutions that, until about 15 minutes ago, were pillars of the American establishment. How odd that (Democratic) members of Congress should lament that America is guilty, and has always been guilty, of “systemic racism,” etc., etc. Somehow, the fact that Boston Mayor Martin Walsh hoisted the Chinese Communist flag in front of City Hall there epitomizes the rot.

Anti-Americanism is hard to argue with. I don’t mean that there are good arguments in favor of the phenomenon. Quite the contrary: insofar as arguments enter the arena at all, they usually lean heavily on assertion backed up by belligerence and cliché. 

But it is seldom that argument does enter. Anti-Americanism has always been more a matter of attitude than argument. It depends on, it draws its strength from, the wells of passion, not reason. The composition of that passion is complex and shifting. Envy generally enters into it, as does a congeries of political attitudes that the literary critic Frederick Crews aptly dubbed “Left Eclecticism”: a bit of cut-rate Marxism to start with, leavened with a dollop of some trendy academic theory, a dash of utopian fantasy and snobbery, seasoned to taste with resentment and paranoia. 

The late Paul Hollander provided a connoisseur’s overview of the favored configurations in his classic compendium Anti-Americanism: Irrational & Rational, first published in 1995. Reading through Hollander’s inventory, one is again and again struck by the combination of virulence and absolutism that fuels expressions of anti-Americanism. Hollander quotes the Russian writer Vasily Aksyonov, who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States in the late 1970s: 

Even now, after living in America for more than five years, I keep wondering what provokes so many people in Latin America, Russia, and Europe to anti-American sentiments of such intensity that it can only be called hatred. There is something oddly hysterical about it all.

Chris Wallace caps a bad week with a strange attack against Scott Atlas By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/chris_wallace_caps_a_bad_week_with_a_strange_attack_against_scott_atlas.html

On Tuesday night, during the first presidential debate, Chris Wallace was weak and ineffectual.  He was also a partisan without the decency to admit it.  On Wednesday, Wallace blamed Trump for his own failings, a coward’s way out.  And Friday, he announced that Scott Atlas, M.D. is not qualified to talk about Wuhan virus policy because he is not an epidemiologist.  This almost random collateral attack has nothing to do with the important skill sets Atlas brings to Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force.

The real reason why Scott Atlas is in the left’s crosshairs is that he’s a new voice on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and he’s saying things the left dislikes.  His usefulness lies in the fact that he’s a brilliant man who is a counterweight to Fauci, who is all in for locking America down indefinitely.

Although Fauci is primarily responsible for Trump’s initial approach to the virus — an approach the left now claims leaves Trump with blood on his hands — the left loves Fauci.  Leftists resent that Trump has added an opposing voice to the Task Force.

The left’s hostility to Atlas reflects a general problem with socialists: they value only their opinions (think “cancel culture”) and invariably embrace groupthink.  Groupthink creates conditions for Lysenkoism in scientific endeavors.  This can be incredibly dangerous because there’s no one to point out their factual errors or fallacious reasoning and conclusions.

Atlas’s ideas are especially repugnant for a party invested in the shutdown.

The media’s mad obsession with white supremacy It isn’t the Proud Boys who have been rioting for the past two months. by Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/01/the-medias-mad-obsession-with-white-supremacy/

EXCERPT

Trump and white supremacy have become the main talking points in the post-debate fallout. From CNN to the BBC, and of course across the Trump-loathing Twittersphere, all the talk is of why Trump won’t condemn the white-supremacist groups that are apparently tearing apart the soul of America. During the debate, Trump was asked if he would condemn the Proud Boys, the stupid right-wing gang founded by Gavin McInnes to defend Western values (if these chinless wonders are the last line of defence for Western civilisation, then we’re even more screwed than I thought). Trump said he doesn’t know who the Proud Boys are but he would be happy to condemn them if they are indeed white supremacists. They should ‘stand down’, he said, and ‘stand by’.

It is those last two words – ‘stand by’ – that have whipped up global fury and rejuvenated the chattering classes’ beloved pastime of Trump-bashing. See, Trump is a white supremacist, they’re saying. He is now openly calling on groups like the Proud Boys to ‘stand by’ (we’ll leave it to the time-rich, sunlight-deprived users of 4Chan and other sites to pore over the question of whether the Proud Boys really are white supremacists). No one allowed for the possibility that Trump misspoke or messed up his words, something he is quite famous for doing. And even his clarification of his comments – he has now said that the Proud Boys, whoever they are, should definitely ‘stand down and let law enforcement do their work’ – has not damped down the drama. Trump refused to condemn white supremacists because he is one, the tweeting classes claim.

Biden, who at this point will clamber upon any soapbox that comes his way, says America now has a president who is ‘refus[ing] to disavow white supremacists’. Big talk from a man who just a few weeks ago announced that any black person who is even thinking of voting for Trump is not really black. These are the double standards on racism in the woke era: Trump is a vile white supremacist for saying ‘stand by’ in relation to the Proud Boys, yet Biden is the great hope for civil rights in America despite his belief that all black people must think and vote in the exact same way or else forfeit their blackness. The broader point about that crazy, awful debate – the fact that Trump said ‘Sure, I’m willing to do that’ when directly asked if he is willing to condemn white supremacists – has been lost in all of this. Trump saying he is willing to condemn white supremacists has somehow morphed into proof that he supports white supremacists.

There is a bigger issue at play in the media elite’s obsession with white supremacist groups. It speaks to their alarming inability, or unwillingness, to face up to the real source of disarray and conflict in the US today. It isn’t white-supremacist groups who have taken part in the worst, most nihilistic riots to rock America for five decades – it is people who, right or wrongly, identify as ‘left’ or as ‘progressive’. It isn’t the Proud Boys who have laid waste to entire blocks in often quite deprived areas in Kenosha, Minneapolis and Portland – it is supporters of so-called ‘Antifa’ and of Black Lives Matter. It isn’t the Proud Boys who have harassed diners and stormed into suburbia calling people ‘motherfuckers’ and insisting that they bow down to the supposedly correct political worldview – it is the upper middle-class, often white supporters of BLM who have done that, most of whom will shortly be voting Biden for president.

Willing dupes are funding a toxic new racial grift industry

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/willing-dupes-are-funding-a-toxic-new-racial-grift-industry

Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How to be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas, recently gave a presentation to teachers and administrators in Fairfax County, Virginia. For his one hour of work, he was paid an astounding $20,000 in taxpayer money. That’s $333 per minute of his presentation.

On top of that, the school district splurged $24,000 to buy his books about critical race theory and to make them required reading for K-12 students.

This utter waste of money on ideological claptrap is, however, chump change compared to the lucre that sluices into Kendi’s pockets for his corporate work. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey donated $10 million to Kendi’s anti-racism center. Bank of America partnered with the law firm McGuireWoods to host a discussion with Kendi as part of its “diversity and inclusion” initiative.

So, yeah, anti-racism is great work, if you can get it. It would be a relief if it were only “money for nothing,” but actually, it is money for poison.

This summer, amid evidence of police brutality against black people in the United States, it has become trendy to react in ways that do nothing to advance the cause of reform. Reform is hard, and it is much easier for corporations, school boards, and other institutions to whitewash themselves by deliberately getting themselves scammed. So, they unaccountably pay outrageous sums (usually of other people’s money) to hucksters such as Kendi.

One Nation, Under Woke . By Richard M. Reinsch II

ttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/10/02/one_nation_under_woke_144356.html

Through the sweeping and indiscriminate indictment of oppression that it makes against the American republic, wokeism poses the first serious challenge to our constitutional democracy since communism. Wokeism aims to remake American constitutionalism root and branch, to transform economics, politics, education, and other institutions and practices. The free and equal individual under the rule of law will be replaced with monolithic voices, united by perceived oppression, who demand a mutating law and politics that reward their grievances with punishments against alleged oppressors and redistributed resources for supposed “victims.”

The first thesis of wokeism is that persons are reducible to their affiliated identity: above all, race or gender. In this view, we understand ourselves solely through these prisms and we apply that understanding to others and to institutions. The second thesis is that no person, no idea, and no historical account can be understood by independent human reason unfiltered by race, gender, and stories of interlocking oppression, or, as the case may be, by the acts of oppression one has shared in as a member of the dominant group. Everything comes to us and is either understood or projected by us through our racial or gender identity. The third thesis is that those who have identities that can be grouped under “persons of color” or LGBTQ possess greater authority to speak — owing to the various oppressions they have experienced and the cosmic redress required for justice and liberation —  than oppressor groups in almost every sphere.

America’s national DNA, according to the New York Times’ 1619 Project — wokeism’s anti-American document par excellence — has been encoded with slavery and anti-black racism. Indeed, America left the British Empire for the purposes of retaining the slavery regime, the project’s lead author Nikole Hannah-Jones proclaims (against historical evidence). White males stand as the grand artificer of this oppression, which has been transmitted throughout American history, informing our constitutional documents, politics, and social structures.