Monday, September 23, 2024

Progressives Thrive on Deceit

         

                                               
To remake America, progressives have centered on a strategy of rewriting history, distorting current events, changing language, and using false allegations of disinformation, malinformation (facts progressives believe are presented out of context), and racism to censor and suppress centrists and conservatives.

By undermining confidence in American values, progressives have considerably advanced their efforts. They have controlled the White House and at least one House of Congress for 12 of the last 16 years, and the Supreme Court for nearly all of the last 70 yearsAlmost all major media outlets and reporters are in lockstep with progressive goals, lies, and omissions. Most report only about events and views that benefit the progressive agenda, and mischaracterize or suppress news, information, and opinions that may impede it. Progressives also control most federal agencies, many state agencies, leading universities, school boards, professional organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association, most leading think tanks, and many corporate boards.

As the COVID pandemic raged, progressives spoke hopefully of a new world order in which experts would tell us how to live. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, often refer to this chaos as the “rules-based international order.” They and other progressives, including Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, see the U.S. as just one among many countries. That is why they oppose immigration controls, support global compacts, subordinate the United States to the United Nations, and believe the U.S. can use economic or military power only when supported by an international coalition.

In a recent article for RealClearPolicy about progressives’ crude ad hominem attacks on conservatives, it is explained that progressive dogma is a fierce, 
culturally Marxist philosophy that: 
(1) demands all policies, resources, and opportunities be allocated in accordance with a benighted view of oppressors and victims centered on race, sex, and sexual orientation; 
(2) believes children are wards of the state to be indoctrinated by educators, while physically cared for by parents; 
(3) represses religion for being what Karl Marx described as “the opium of the people;” and 
(4) places a green agenda, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the rights of criminals above free speech and assembly, the judicial process, and rights of petition. Progressives deny that ISIS and Hamas are terrorists, oppose Israel’s right of defense because Jews are “oppressors,” and believe children may select irreversible gender reassignment surgery without parental consent.

To achieve their goals, progressives must overcome deeply held American beliefs in individual freedom, merit, hard work, and pride in their country.

Curricula based on The 1619 Project, which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery…at the very center of the United States’ national narrative,” Critical Race Theory (CRT), which teaches that all whites are guilty of bias, and Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria (ESG), which features progressive doctrine on DEI, climate change, and workers’ rights, has been infused into K-12 schools through action civics.

The National Association of Scholars has identified at least 45 state-level education standards in 25 states that incorporate these radical expressions of anti-American animus. Departments of education, accreditation agencies, university administrations, professional licensing organizations, and teachers unions mandate ideological training and DEI goals, and then coerce compliance as a condition of employment, promotion, and appointment to governing boards. Last year, the State Department announced that it will condition promotions and raises on an employee’s loyalty to DEI.

Eliminating or distorting teaching about Western civilization, American exceptionalism, and liberty leaves students uninformed about America’s unique storyAn Echelon Insights poll highlights the cumulative impact of this indoctrination. Sixty-six percent of high schoolers viewed the U.S. as exceptional and unique, compared to 47% of college students; 63% of high-schoolers were proud of the U.S., compared to 40% of college students; and 58% of high-schoolers were patriotic, compared to just 35% of college students.

Concurrently, progressives are remaking the acceptable lexicon. They corrupt language and norms to deprive us of the ability to express nuance and understand distinctions.

Leading institutions, including government agenciesprofessional organizations, and universities, proclaim that our language is replete with hidden racism and genderism that must be cleansed with a new vocabulary featuring ideologically-laden phrases. Among the words that trouble the American Medical Association are “disadvantaged,” “equality,” and “disparities.” The politically acceptable terms are “historically and intentionally excluded,” “equity,” and “inequities.” Similarly, “ex-con” or “felon” are to be replaced with “returning citizen” or “persons with a history of incarceration,” and “fairness” with “social justice.”

“Illegal alien,” the term used in federal law for those who enter the U.S. without proper visas or overstay their visas, first became “undocumented alien” and then “non-citizens,” who somehow deserve all benefits to which citizens are entitled.

The American Dream of “equality” is replaced by “equity.” Instead of seeking fair opportunities, we are to seek outcomes in which so-called marginalized minorities receive benefits at least in proportion to their percentage of the relevant population. According to Ibram X. Kendi, if a person embraces DEI and allocates opportunities by race, he is “anti-racist;” otherwise, he is racist. Whites cannot be the victims of racism, because only members of marginalized minorities can be victims. Over the last several years, dictionary definitions of racism have been stealth edited to conform to this new paradigm.

“Infrastructure” has always meant roads, buildings, bridges, and the like. But progressives have implausibly expanded that term to include paid leave, child care, and caregiving. They falsely described the Biden-Harris $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan as an emergency COVID stimulus plan, even though 90% of the plan had nothing to do with COVID.

Contrary to the Associated Press’s adoption in 2015 of “they” as a singular pronoun, there are only two biological sexes, and an individual has never been a “they.” Just 0.6% of Americans identify as transgender. Yet, insisting there are only two sexes is now hate speech. Multiple professors have sued to retain the right to properly address their students. Columbia University threatens to terminate employees who don’t bow to the fiction that there are multiple genders, and the Biden-Harris Administration allows an “x” to be used as a gender on a passport.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s selection of three conservative Supreme Court justices, progressives advocated court packing by increasing the number of justices. They justified doing so by falsely asserting that Trump’s selection of justices based on their political leanings also was court packing. Dictionary.com changed its definition of court packing to “the practice of changing the number or composition of judges on a court, making it more favorable to particular goals or ideologies, and typically involving an increase in the number of seats on the court.” Here, “typically” supplants “always,” which is the threshold condition of court packing. Selecting justices based on their views is not court packing—it is what all presidents do. This is not mere semantics. This is a ploy intended to overcome the opposition of majorities of voters in both parties.

As progressives erase and change language, history, and values to create a foundation to change America’s way of life, they also corruptly fabricate, suppress, and misrepresent recent and current events to confuse voters, shield accountability for their failures, and disparage their opponents. The following is a list of recent political hoaxes promoted by progressive elected officials, bureaucrats, and major national media (my thanks to Breitbart News for identifying many of these):

Russia Collusion Hoax
Hunter Biden’s Laptop Is Russian Disinformation Hoax
Biden Is Not Cognitively Impaired Hoax
The Biden-Harris Administration Is Not Censoring Social Media Hoax
Biden Is Not a Crook Hoax
Project 2025 Hoax
Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax
Jussie Smollett Hoax
Covington KKK Kids Hoax
Very Fine People Hoax
Drinking Bleach Hoax
Seven-Hour Gap Hoax
Russian Bounties to Taliban Hoax
Trump Trashes Troops Hoax
Policemen Killed on January 6 Protest Hoax
Rittenhouse Hoax
Eating While Black Hoax
Border Agents Whipping Illegals Hoax
NASCAR Noose Hoax
The Georgia Jim Crow 2.0 Hoax
COVID Lab Leak Theory Is Racist Hoax
Biden Will Never Ban Gas Stoves Hoax
COVID Deaths are Overcounted Is a Conspiracy Theory Hoax
Mass Graves of Native Children in Canada Hoax
Hamas Hospital Hoax
The Alfa Bank Hoax

Hiding Biden’s cognitive impairment took dozens, if not hundreds, of staff, family, elected officials, and reporters. That hoax was revealed only when replacing Biden became imperative to defeat Trump. In lockstep, the progressive media complex abandoned its cover-up of Biden’s impairment and called for his replacement.

Harris’s and Tim Walz’s campaign became the second act of this hoax. With few exceptions, they refuse to discuss their records or beliefs, and falsely claim to have changed both. They willfully misstate Trump’s positions and falsely attribute to him sponsorship of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (yet another hoax, as even USA Today and CNN have acknowledged).

A complicit media purports to fact check Trump, but seldom checks Harris or Walz. During the candidates’ debate last week, ABC’s moderators checked Trump in real time on six occasions (at least two of which were wrong), but never checked Harris, who repeatedly made false statements. Since then, a few mainstream media outlets have acknowledged some of Harris’s misstatements, though most give her the benefit of the doubt while blasting Trump for every imprecision or contentious assertion.

When the New Yorker’s fact checker, Susan Glasser, was caught pretending that Harris had never spoken in favor of taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgery for illegal aliens, rather than correct her article, she claimed that she intended to question “the political advisability of bringing up these things in a national debate.”

As Harris runs from her recordthe media often scolds Republicans for pointing that out, or for tying her to the Biden-Harris Administration. That went too far even for White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who explained that Harris has been a full partner in administration policies. And, last week, The New Republic reported that “much” of the new issues section on the Harris-Walz campaign website was lifted from Biden’s campaign website.

Though conservatives may win an occasional battle, there should be no illusions about the power and effectiveness of progressive deceptions, or the arc of recent history. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, and the strong consumer opposition to Bud Light’s woke capitalism, opponents of DEI won a few battles, but DEI is simply going underground with a name change. Some states have rolled back genital mutilation of children, men in girls’ sports, and CRT in schools, while other states and the Biden-Harris Administration have gone in the other direction.

More than 90 corporate leaders have endorsed Harris—who strongly supports DEI, reparations, increasing corporate taxes, taxing unearned income, censorship, and the full range of progressive policies. If she wins, the pendulum will swing strongly to progressive victories, as America moves ever-closer to an Orwellian dystopia.

Any conservative who believes that progressives have ethical limits is naïve. If conservatives have any hope of changing course, Republicans will need to win the presidency, control of both houses of Congress, gubernatorial elections, and state legislatures. To do so in November, and then to keep winning, conservatives must understand the ruthlessness and entrenched power of progressives, and must respond with equal or superior tactics. Marquess of Queensberry rules won’t do.


Source:


 I know this is a long article but it is well written and an easy read with tons of footnotes (links) throughout.

Before responding with progressive dogma, please make an attempt to read and comprehend the ideas put forth in the article.







Los Angeles Struggles to Curb Brazen and Violent Street Takeovers

 Weak laws, slow bureaucracy, and out-of-touch interventions are no match for the social media-fueled spectacle, say safety advocates and law enforcement.

LOS ANGELES—Two infernos, a vandalized storefront, a Metro bus slamming into three cars, drones spitting fireworks at drifting, souped-up muscle cars. Relatively, it was a tame Labor Day Weekend in Los Angeles County, where illegal street takeovers continue to terrorize neighborhoods that have been co-opted as tourist attractions for drivers and spectators seeking internet clout.

Contemporary “takeovers”—in which drivers commandeer intersections and perform dangerous stunts for a scrum of onlookers—are a kind of successor to classic California car cultures including drag racing, cruising, lowriding, and sideshows.

But propelled by the manic, mimetic spectacle of social media, they have become a uniquely dangerous part of the landscape.

Assaults, shootings, flash mob robberies, and pedestrian injuries associated with illegal racing and takeovers are all on the rise, according to law enforcement agencies, who say they are cracking down with a zero tolerance approach. A multi-agency task force is dedicated to addressing the issue, and authorities are investing in educational programming and diversion, enhanced technologies, and street modifications at problem intersections.

Despite all this, the problem appears increasingly unhinged.

“What we’re seeing is this increase in violent behavior—looting, cars on fire. Recently, we had two kids shot and one murdered at a takeover, at a spin,” Craig Valenzuela, commander of the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) Traffic Group, told the L.A. County Board of Supervisors at a July 30 meeting.

He was referring to a July 22 incident in which two 15-year-olds involved in a takeover were shot after an alleged robbery, including one fatally.

“That’s really what concerns us—it’s the level of violence and us trying to get in there to end those and keep our communities safe.”

At the meeting, other agencies and county staff presented a final report on illegal racing and takeovers in unincorporated county areas, nearly a year in the making.

They painted a rather bleak picture, acknowledging the scope and scale of the problem, and the fact that existing enforcement, as well as outreach efforts by authorities—seeking to influence the behavior of an anti-authority youth subculture—are not working.

“It has risen to that level where we really need to dedicate all of our resources and address this epidemic that’s wreaking havoc on our communities,” L.A. Assistant Sheriff Myron Johnson told the board.

Supervisors ultimately voted to direct staff and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) to report back on funding and an action plan in 60 days.

To advocates who have been lobbying for years to stave off the inevitable casualties of illegal racing and takeovers, it seems a long time coming.

“Unfortunately, I think it caught everyone by surprise,” said Lili Trujillo Puckett, founder of Street Racing Kills, referring to a surge of takeovers during the pandemic.

Puckett founded her organization after her 16-year-old daughter, Valentina, was killed in a street racing crash in 2014. She now runs diversion programs for youth offenders, as well as legislative and education campaigns.

“There were no laws in place. I started asking for bills a long time ago, but nobody saw it was a problem,” she told The Epoch Times.

Image

Lili Trujillo Puckett, founder of Street Racing Kills, speaks alongside local residents and supporters of the group during a protest on the increase in street racing takeovers in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles on Aug. 26, 2022. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Donald Galaz, founder of Project Street Legal, an organization focused on providing legal venues for street racing, says the problem has outgrown law enforcement’s ability to corral it.

“It’s just way out of control,” he said. “No task force is ever going to stop it—there are too many individuals, these kids out there, they just continue to move from place to place.”

Galaz is a longtime member of the Brotherhood of International Street Racers, a group that developed legal avenues for racing, which he credits with getting him off the streets and out of gangs in his youth. And while there is a “level of disrespect” and chaos in today’s takeovers that wasn’t part of the covert sideshows and drag racing of previous decades, then largely confined to industrial areas and parking lots, he says officials could still put a major dent in the problem by giving kids a safer alternative.

“I’ve been advocating for this for over 12 years—let’s do something. I’ve been through many city council members and mayors that promise to help,” he said. Galaz said he ran phone banks for a mayoral campaign, but the effort ended in a long line of “unkept promises” to address the issue.

“In the meantime, people are dying. The public is at risk. Businesses are getting destroyed. Streets are getting destroyed,” he said. “And then you see on the news all the time that people are getting killed, and still elected officials have done nothing.”

Uneven Impact

The destruction tends to be concentrated in certain areas, and often perpetrated by people who live elsewhere, say law enforcement officials.

The city of Compton has long been an epicenter of Southern California car culture, home to motorcycle and racing clubs, and a Sunday lowrider cruise that continues to this day.

But in recent years, it’s also become a hotbed for out-of-towners in search of street cred and Instagram likes, a launching pad for drivers to make their name.

“If you want internet clout, you have to go to Compton,” Galaz said. “That’s no secret.”

During a July 28 takeover in the city, California Highway Patrol (CHP) arrested 63 spectators, issued 66 citations, and impounded 28 vehicles, according to the agency. Those arrests represented only around five percent of participants—and around 80 percent were not residents of L.A. County.
 
Recent LASD data show the vast majority of takeovers in the first quarter of this year—219 out of 289—happened in the county’s Second Supervisorial District, which includes South L.A. and parts of the Harbor Region. Most of those were in the cities of Compton and Carson, which had 90 and 109 incidents, respectively. This is an increase over the previous quarter, when there were 173 takeovers in the District, out of a total 234 incidents, with 74 and 58 in Compton and Carson.

Meanwhile, the Fourth and First Districts, which cover the southeastern and eastern parts of the county, had 55 and 15 incidents in the first months of 2024. There were no takeovers reported in District Three, which includes West L.A. cities, or District Five, which covers the northern part of the county.

Image

Vehicles drive over tire skid marks from other drivers doing burnouts and donuts on Bellevue Ave. as area residents protest an increase in street racing takeovers and the latest Fast and Furious movie being filmed in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles on Aug. 26, 2022. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

“The increase in illegal street takeovers is deeply troubling,” Compton Mayor Emma Sharif told The Epoch Times. “It goes against the values of our city—it really does. This issue has had a severe impact on our community, affecting both the safety and the well being of residents.”

Both Compton and Carson do not have their own police forces but contract with the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, which coordinates with other agencies like the CHP on traffic enforcement. Carson city officials did not respond to a request for comment.
 
Looking at LAPD data for the city of Los Angeles, it appears that street racing and takeovers peaked in 2020, with 912 incidents. There were 319 in 2019, and the numbers have fluctuated since, dropping to 482 last year.

That shows redistribution, not eradication, observers say.

“Just because it has peaked in the city of Los Angeles doesn’t mean it’s gone down across the county,” Damian Kevitt, executive director of the nonprofit Streets Are for Everyone, told The Epoch Times.

As the LAPD’s street racing task force has gotten more aggressive, he said, the crackdown has pushed the problem to outlying communities like Compton and unincorporated areas.

The CHP, which enforces vehicle code in Los Angeles County, responded to 100 street takeovers, issued 2,000 citations, arrested 500 people for reckless driving, driving under the influence, spectating, and weapons offenses, and impounded more than 400 vehicles in unincorporated areas of L.A. County last year, according to the agency.

“Street racers will show up, do their takeovers, spend 45 minutes—they know how long it will take for the task force to do their thing, then they’re off to the next location,” said Kevitt.

LASD and LAPD data show takeovers increased in the first months of 2024 in both the county and the city, but the county saw an overall 15 percent dip in the second quarter over the first, from 289 to 245 incidents, LASD officials told the board at the July meeting.

That’s still more than the fourth quarter of last year, and Compton is trending upward.

‘More Brazen, More Violent’

In its June 12 report responding to a directive from the city council, the LAPD pointed to the diminishing ability of law enforcement officers and first responders to intervene at takeovers, which often include hundreds of spectators and countless vehicles.

Spectators use laser pointers to blind officers and helicopters, launch fireworks at police, intentionally ram and swarm cars, and resist arrest.

“I think they feel like they’re untouchable,” Galaz said. “And because it’s one police unit with two officers that shows up, they’re outnumbered right off the bat. So now you’ve got these kids that are out there blocking the cars, throwing rocks and bottles and shooting fireworks and doing that type of stuff to the police. ... They just don’t care.”

Street racing has always been anti-authoritarian, but Galaz notes racers used to be more concerned with demonstrating their skills than taunting law enforcement...

https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/los-angeles-struggles-to-curb-brazen-and-violent-street-takeovers-5720805?utm_source=PR_article_paid&utm_medium=email&est=jnsbTkYO%2F%2BJAQipEq7fryz%2BjA6t5pDfNGxwLO2fDhyGkgbyPlWMABhim6elXv37jGIR3&utm_campaign=pr-2024-09-22-ca

Michigan: Dem Mayor of the Only Muslim-Majority City in America Endorses Trump

Matt Vespa reporting for Townhall 

After all the pandering and sanitized statements concerning the war in Gaza, the Democrats’ plan to keep Michigan from falling away might not be working. It’s not a slam dunk, but this mayor’s endorsement is rather damning for the Kamala Harris team, which has worked overtime to keep Muslim Americans from either staying home or, worse, backing Trump. The former was likely the biggest fear, as Arab American voters are incensed over Israel’s justified war of self-defense in the region against Hamas. Yet, in Hamtramck, Michigan, America’s only Muslim-majority city, its Democrat mayor decided to make his 2024 decision public: He’s voting for Trump (via Fox News): 

The mayor of a Muslim-majority city in Michigan says he is endorsing Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, calling the former commander-in-chief, "the right choice for this critical time."

Amer Ghalib, mayor of the Detroit-area suburb Hamtramck, announced his endorsement of Trump in a Facebook post Sunday. While admitting he and Trump didn’t "agree on everything," he said he regarded the former commander-in-chief as "a man of principles." 

"Though it’s looking good, he may or may not win the election and be the 47th president of the United States, but I believe he is the right choice for this critical time," Ghalib wrote in Arabic on his Facebook page. "I’ll not regret my decision no matter what the outcome would be, and I’m ready to face the consequences. For this, and for many other reasons, I announce my support and endorsement for the former, and hopefully, the next president of the United States, Donald Trump." 

[…] 

Ghalib’s endorsement of Trump comes after the two met in Flint earlier this week for a private 20-minute conversation. 

Ghalib told The Detroit News that Trump "knew a lot about me before the meeting." 

As Fox News' Joe Concha commented, “And there goes Michigan.” Is this some back-breaking move? No, but it does allude to Harris not being some master candidate that the media is trying so desperately to sell. She has glaring deficits among key Democratic voter groups.


Re-Possessed

Re-Possessed


Who could have foreseen how much the 20th century would differ from the relatively placid and optimistic 19th? In the years between 1800 and 1900, for the first time in world history, average people were getting dependably richer. Monarchies were giving way to republics. Liberal ideas were spreading. And intellectuals overwhelmingly endorsed “progress,” by which they meant not just improvement but a world in which natural law seemed to guarantee endless betterment.

It didn’t work out. In addition to two world wars taking the lives of tens of millions, the 20th century created something new, the system we have come to call totalitarianism. Invented by Lenin, and then imitated by Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, and others, it came to dominate some 40 percent of humanity. It also captivated intellectuals in traditionally free societies—not in spite of, but because of, its unprecedented violence. When Stalin was succeeded by the much milder Khrushchev and Brezhnev, intellectuals lost interest in the USSR and idolized Mao instead.

Before the 20th century, the Spanish Inquisition was the Western exemplar of political repression, but the 30,000 or so who died at its hands in its 300-year history was exceeded approximately every two weeks in Stalin’s Soviet Union. The collectivization of agriculture alone took well over 10 million lives. In the opening paragraph of his classic 426-page study of this episode, The Harvest of Sorrow, Robert Conquest observed that “in the actions here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in this book.”

Only one major thinker foresaw this turn of events: Fyodor Dostoevsky. He not only predicted that oppression would grow, he also outlined in detail what forms it would take. These predictions occur in a book usually considered the greatest political novel ever written, The Possessed—more accurately translated as The Devils. After Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s murders (some of them, anyway) in 1956, the prominent literary scholar Yuri Karyakin, who had once been a true believer, experienced the revelations as “an earthquake,” saying, “We read The Devils and the notebooks [Dostoevsky kept while writing] the novel . . . and did not believe our eyes. . . . We read and interrupted each other almost on every page: ‘It can’t be. How could he have known all this?’”

How indeed? The short answer is that Dostoevsky was not only a keen observer of the revolutionary movement but had been a revolutionary himself. Arguably the greatest psychologist who ever lived, he probed, partly by introspection, the revolutionary mind-set and recognized with horror that, in the right circumstances, he, too, could have participated in revolutionary killings.

The Devils, published in 1873, is a fictionalized account of a sensational murder committed three years earlier by the terrorist Sergei Nechaev—a fanatic committed to the idea that literally anything was justified to promote “the cause.” Lenin, who greatly admired Nechaev, agreed. Dostoevsky was less interested in the specifics of the Nechaev case than in what it revealed and foreshadowed. He explained that he wanted to present “not a description of a particular occurrence in Moscow” but the essence of revolutionary violence itself.

Given the atmosphere of intellectual intolerance in which he wrote, Dostoevsky knew that he risked opprobrium. His liberal enemy and fellow novelist Ivan Turgenev might temporize, he reasoned, but for Dostoevsky, the danger he detected loomed too large for anything less than the full truth. “I want to speak out as passionately as I can,” he wrote to one friend. “All the Nihilists and Westernizers will cry out that I am retrograde. To hell with them. I will speak my mind to the very last word.”

Like Nechaev, Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, the novel’s central character, has convinced everyone in the provincial town where the novel is set that he represents a vast revolutionary organization, with its central committee in Switzerland and countless followers throughout Russia. Also like his model, Pyotr Stepanovich masterfully spreads exciting myths about himself. Young men looking for a romantic hero are flattered by his attention.

Pyotr Stepanovich organizes his followers into “quintets,” groups of five whose only contact with other quintets is through Pyotr Stepanovich himself, a structure supposedly insuring that even if the members of one quintet are arrested, they cannot betray any others. It is actually designed to maximize Pyotr Stepanovich’s power to spread disinformation. The real Nechaev was tried for murder after he persuaded four members of his quintet to murder the fifth to prevent the man from informing. Nechaev’s real plan was to bind the others to him as accomplices in crime. Pyotr Stepanovich commits just such a murder, which Dostoevsky describes in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and “mystical terror” that was his signature.

The murder victim, Ivan Shatov, has abandoned his former revolutionary convictions (like Dostoevsky himself) and become a believer in the Russian people and “the Russian God.” His death becomes all the more moving because he has just experienced the most joyous moments of his life after his ex-wife, who left him after two weeks of marriage and is now pregnant by another man, returns to him. Resolving with enthusiasm to adopt the baby, Shatov also comes to the realization that goodness and meaning reside not in the right ideology but beyond all ideology in ordinary decency and compassion—a realization that would also occur to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and other Soviet dissidents a century later.

Hoping to entice the novel’s other protagonist, Stavrogin, into serving as the movement’s charismatic figurehead, Pyotr Stepanovich brings him to a meeting of young radicals. To avert suspicion, they have gathered on the pretext of celebrating the host’s name day (the Russian equivalent of a birthday, an occasion that instead commemorates the saint with whom the celebrant shares his Christian name). One of the host’s relatives, identified simply as “the major,” innocently shows up uninvited to participate in the ostensible celebration.

From the meeting’s first moment, young people vie to outdo each other repeating revolutionary clichés taken as scientific fact, including the necessity of abolishing every religion, all traditions, and received morality. At last, an ideologue named Shigalyov insists on explaining his irrefutable “system” for establishing earthly paradise.

“I am perplexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contradiction of the original idea with which I start,” Shigalyov commences. “Starting from unlimited freedom I arrive at unlimited despotism. I will add, however, that there can be no solution to the social problem but mine.” And indeed, that is how it always is with modern revolutionary movements: The promise of absolute liberty leads to the worst possible slavery, just as the call for fraternity leads to the guillotine, and the ideal of equality to the domination of the few over the many.

Reading this passage, Dostoevsky’s contemporaries would surely have thought of the example of the Jacobins who brutalized the French a few years after their revolution in 1789. But Shigalyov advocates a much more ambitious tyranny closely resembling modern totalitarianism. His admirer, “the lame teach-er,” explains: “He suggests as a final solution of the [social] question the division of mankind into two unequal parts. One-tenth enjoys absolute liberty and unbounded power over the other nine-tenths. The others have to give up all individuality and become, so to speak, a herd, and through boundless submission, will by a series of regenerations attain primeval innocence, something like the Garden of Eden.” As Dostoevsky well knew, intellectuals naturally favor governments where educated “experts” (themselves) wield power. The Soviets called such an arrangement “true” democracy, much as today’s elites embrace undemocratic means to “preserve democracy.”

One radical objects to Shigalyov’s paradise: “If I didn’t know what to do with nine-tenths of mankind,” he explains, “I’d take them and blow them up into the air instead of putting them in paradise. I’d only leave a handful of educated people, who would live happily ever afterwards on scientific principles.” To be sure, this solution would entail “cutting off a hundred million heads.” But the real-world version of Shigalyov’s vision eventually devoured even more than that. Mao used this very argument when advocating nuclear war. A hundred million heads: As several commentators have pointed out, that is the number that appears in The Black Book of Communism, a painstaking 1997 effort to document the destruction of humanity in the name of Marxism-Leninism, as the bare minimum of Communist killings.

Bored by this collection of fools, Stavrogin walks out of the meeting, with Pyotr Stepanovich following so he can explain his revolutionary plans in more detail. He endorses Shigalyov’s idea of “a system of spying. Every member of the society spies on the others, and it’s his duty to inform against them. Everyone belongs to all and all to everyone.” East Germany came pretty close to this. And the Chinese Communist Party, in its campaign in the early 1950s against what it called “the five antis” (basically a war on private property) provided what historian Frank Dikötter called “denunciation boxes, bright red with a small slit at the top, allowing anyone in China to denounce anyone else of thought crimes.” Think how much more effective such surveillance would be (indeed, already is) with today’s technology.

Pyotr Stepanovich explains that achieving “equality” of result rather than equality of opportunity is the goal, and it demands the suppression of all individuality, all genius, all great intellects. “All are slaves and equal in their slavery,” he instructs. It follows that “the level of education, science, and talents is lowered.” When I hear people wondering why woke educators do not see that teaching math without demanding correct answers—let alone closing schools altogether for a lengthy period—is bound to foster ignorance, I cannot help but wonder whether ignorance is, in fact, the goal. As Pyotr Stepanovich reasons, one cannot make people equal by raising the bar but only by lowering it: “To level the mountain is a fine idea,” he tells Stavrogin. “In the herd there is bound to be equality.”

Mao concurred. As he famously observed when the Cultural Revolution closed schools, “The more you study, the stupider you become.” In the name of equality and revolutionary zeal, accomplished professors in Mao’s China were beaten by their students, paraded through the streets wearing dunce camps, and consigned to arduous manual labor. As Dikötter remarks, “Here were some of the country’s most eminent scientists, physicians, engineers and philosophers, far away from their laboratories and offices, forced to do hard physical labor, shoveling mud, baking brick, collecting twigs, or hauling manure. On one occasion, a mathematician trained in Cambridge and a physicist with a doctoral dissertation from Moscow University attempted [unsuccessfully] to slaughter a pig.” Soon enough, students themselves were dispatched to the countryside to “learn from the masses” through pointless agricultural work. Libraries were burned, ancient manuscripts destroyed, and classic artwork annihilated on a scale so colossal that, if not for what was preserved in Taiwan or unearthed later, Chinese cultural history would have been largely erased.

Dostoevsky foresaw all this. Pyotr Stepanovich promises that talented people will be banished or put to death. “Cicero will have his tongue cut out, Copernicus will have his eyes put out, Shakespeare will be stoned…. Down with culture…. We’ll stifle every genius in its infancy…. Complete equality!…. Only the necessary is necessary.” Under the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s in Cambodia, we recall, wearing glasses or any other sign of literacy was fatal. To create a blank slate on which it could inscribe a new human nature, the Khmer Rouge deemed all Cambodian tradition, folk as well as educated, “anathema that must be destroyed.”

_____________

It is telling that Dostoevsky directs his most savage attacks in The Devils not at the radicals but at the liberals who fawn on them. Here, too, he proved prophetic. In the years leading to the Bolshevik takeover, the liberal party known as the Kadets (Constitutional Democrats) refused to condemn terrorism and other violence completely at odds with their own professed values as long as the barbarities came from parties to their left. They became the Bolsheviks’ first victims.

Pyotr Stepanovich understands precisely what motivates such liberals: “I could make them go through fire,” he tells Stavrogin. “One has only to din it into them that they are not advanced enough.” Supposedly rejecting all authority, they are “ashamed to have an opinion of their own.” They favor the guillotine, explains one character, because it is easier to cut off heads than to think through an idea. Shatov calls their mind-set “flunkeyism of thought.”

Then and now, those who consider themselves the most advanced among us often espouse absolute drivel, the very absurdity of which demonstrates their progressive credentials. Any uneducated slob, after all, can resort to common sense. In the presence of young radicals, even “genuine and quite indubitable celebrities” become “humbler than the grass…shamefully cringing before them.” Worst of all is “the great writer Karmazinov”—closely based on Turgenev—who “trembled nervously before the revolutionary youth of Russia” and “fawned upon them in a despicable way, chiefly because they paid no attention to him whatever.” Like Turgenev, Karmazinov claims to accept all the radicals’ beliefs except their hostility to art. When even this fawning proves inadequate, Karmazinov in effect replies: “I am not the sort of man you think, I am on your side, only praise me, praise me more, as much as possible, I like it extremely.”

Dostoevsky recognized that most young radicals are genuine idealists. Unfortunately, so does Pyotr Stepanovich, who knows how to exploit their naiveté, as do his real-life counterparts. There is always a spectrum of awareness. Many don’t even know they work for “the cause.”

“I’ve reckoned them all up,” Pyotr Stepanovich explains. “A teacher who laughs with children at their God…is on our side…. The prosecutor who trembles at a trial for fear he should not seem advanced enough is ours, ours. Among officials and literary men, we have lots, lots, and they don’t know it themselves.” Citing the 19th-century Russian equivalents of “defund the police” and “white privilege,” he concludes: “Do you know how many we will catch by little, ready-made ideas?… Every scurvy group will be of use. Out of these groups I’ll pick you out fellows so keen that they’ll not shrink from shooting, and be grateful for the honor of a job, too.”

When others at the meeting endorse revolutionary violence, the major whom no one invited replies: “I confess I am rather in favor of a more humane policy …but as all are on the other side, I go with all the rest.” And so among us, people who never hated Jews before endorse Hamas. Anyone who wonders how our traditionally liberal society could be yielding so readily to anti-Semitism and quasi-Marxist ideologies should read The Devils, and not just for the purposes of literary edification. A prediction, after all, can come true more than once.


Yikes: Kamala's Confused Comment About Trump Shows Why They Don't Want Her Answering Questions


Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

Kamala Harris proved again on Sunday why her team doesn't seem to like having her take questions. 

Usually when she's traveling back and forth, you see her running from the car to the plane and completely blowing off the press that might be waiting there, hoping to slip in a question. But for some reason, on Sunday, the press managed to get in at least a couple of queries when she was traveling to New York. 

It did not go well. 

Kamala says she'll outline her "vision for the economy" this week that will deal with "what we can create in terms of opportunity for the American people in making an opportunity economy which really is in short form it's about what we can do more to invest in the aspirations, the ambitions, and the dreams of the American people while addressing the challenges that they face, whether it's the high price of groceries or the difficulty in being able to acquire home ownership [unintelligible]."

Huh, what?

So let's examine that word salad. 

First, the high prices of groceries and the difficulty of homeownership are because of legislation she voted for with her tie-breaking vote in the Senate. That's on her. She can't run away from it; she drove inflation up. So she hasn't just not made it better while she's been in office all this time, she's actively made it worse. 

Then she's been running away from all her old radical remarks. But here she can't help but let the attitude slip through. Government -- to her -- is about "investment" (translate: spending taxpayer dollars) in "aspirations, ambitions and the dreams of the American people." Um, no. The government is NOT supposed to be "providing" for me, it's supposed to get out of my way so I can provide for myself. It is supposed to be "providing for the common defense," i.e., things like protecting the country and our borders, which she has failed to do. Spending more by promising freebies to get elected doesn't solve inflation, it makes it worse. But either she doesn't understand that, or she can't keep her socialistic aspects in check. 

It's also funny because even now with only a few weeks left, she's still trying to define herself and tell people what she thinks. She had to get help from people like Oprah, and even then, she had problems trying to convince people and questions raised about the event. 


Whoops: Did You Notice This Small Problem With Kamala's Oprah Zoom Audience?

Kamala's Rich Celebrity Brigade and Their Shallow Reasons for Supporting Her Show Just How Out of Touch They All Are

Kamala Dishes an Unbelievable Word Salad Festival With Oprah


But she also had a true "Joe Biden" delusional moment. Who is she trying to have a debate with? She doesn't seem to know. 

Harris said she'd like another debate with the "former vice president." Um, Donald Trump is the former president, not the former vice president. Paging Mike Pence, sounds like Kamala wants to debate you (again). 

Did she catch Joe Biden's cognitive decline while she was covering up for him? 

Also, if she thinks she's ahead or she won the last debate, why is she so anxious to have another one? 

One would have to think that her internals are telling her she needs it. And if she wants another debate, why didn't she agree to the Fox event that Trump agreed to? She can't have it both ways with these games. Trump has already done two debates -- she's the one that has to prove herself. 

This is why they don't want her talking randomly or off the teleprompter, because things like this are bound to result. 



Policing the Narrative

Policing the Narrative

am

The Deep State has struck again. The Biden Administration’s intrepid Department of Justice (DOJ), ever-vigilant in its quest for Russian bogeymen, has proudly announced the seizure of 32 internet domains. Their purported crime? Daring to challenge the regime’s approved narratives.

According to the allegations, Russian entities such as Social Design Agency (SDA), Structura National Technology, and ANO Dialog operated these domains under the guidance of the Russian government. These “Doppelganger” campaigns reportedly sought to reduce international support for Ukraine, promote pro-Russian policies, and influence voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the upcoming 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.

The methods allegedly used in these efforts include cybersquatting (registering domain names closely resembling legitimate news sites), creating fake media brands, deploying paid influencers, utilizing AI-generated content, running social media advertisements, and producing bogus social media profiles that impersonate U.S. citizens or non-Russian individuals. According to the DOJ, these campaigns target audiences across several countries, including the U.S., Germany, Mexico, and Israel.

The U.S. Treasury Department has designated ten individuals and two entities connected to these activities, stating that their actions violate U.S. money laundering laws, criminal trademark laws, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The FBI spearheads the investigation while various U.S. Attorney’s offices and Justice Department divisions manage the prosecutions.

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks of “Russian government propaganda,” but what’s the real propaganda here? Is it the belief that endless proxy wars and foreign election interference are in America’s best interest? Or the idea that our intelligence agencies aren’t actively shaping public opinion?

The authorities speak of “malign influence” and “disinformation,” but what they fear is the truth—about our political class’s corruption, the American economy’s decline, and the regulation of what people read and discuss.

Make no mistake: This isn’t just about Russia or “protecting democracy.” The real threat isn’t some shadowy Russian troll farm.

It’s about control—control of information, control of narratives, control of you. The regime trembles at the thought of freethinking Americans questioning the prevailing orthodoxies upheld by universities, mainstream journalists, and corporate America.

In our society’s intricate web of power relations, we find ourselves entangled in a discourse of truth and falsehood, legitimacy and illegitimacy. The state, that grand apparatus of control, wields its power through force and strategic manipulation of knowledge and narrative, amplified by a compliant and enabling legacy media.

Consider the continued withholding of information about the Kennedy assassination: a perfect illustration of how power operates through the control of knowledge. The state maintains its authority not by revealing truth but by managing what is known and unknown, creating a system of truth that serves its interests.

The Russia collusion narrative and the Steele dossier exemplify how power constructs its own truths. These are not mere lies or mistakes but manifestations of how institutional power shapes reality through discourse. The “truth” here is not an objective fact waiting to be uncovered but a product of power relations, carefully crafted to maintain existing authorities.

When we examine the treatment of ordinary individuals—the Duke lacrosse players or the Covington high school students—we see the disciplinary power of media at work. Far from being neutral conveyors of information, these institutions actively create and enforce societal norms and conventions.

These recent actions of the DOJ against people and firms expressing pro-Russian views reveal the state’s attempt to police the boundaries of acceptable discourse. This is not merely about protecting truth from falsehood but about maintaining a specific regime of truth that aligns with state interests.

State censorship is harmful, as are state propaganda and interference in the political affairs of other sovereign nations. The question is the extent to which the individuals and entities charged here act as state agents.

Regardless, state manipulation is a problem, and no government is entirely free from censorship or propaganda because these elements are inherent in the nature of state power. If actual money laundering is involved in this case, then prosecution is warranted. However, the authorities’ reliance on IEEPA raises grave doubts. This broad, amorphous law grants the president wide latitude to regulate international commerce in response to perceived threats, which suggests that the case may be weak. The act itself is problematic due to the excessive power it places in the executive branch.

Labeling dissenting speech as “disinformation” or “propaganda” is, in any event, an attempt to delegitimize and exclude certain forms of knowledge from acceptable discourse. The pattern of controlling knowledge and narrative is neither new nor limited to foreign interference. It reflects a deeper, ongoing struggle over who dictates the terms of discourse in our society.

Be skeptical when the government labels certain information as false, disinformation, or misinformation. Withhold judgment and refrain from accepting claims as fact until you have independently verified them. In our age of contested truths, the power to define reality is the ultimate sign of control. Do you control yourself, or does someone else?