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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   24774 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025

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Good News Citizens

The FBI has saved Halloween. A terrorist plot dramatically broken up just before Halloween really gets into full swing. Smoking guns averted. Guitar solos as sunglassed G-men arrest terrorists and confiscate AK-47s.

One tidbit does, however, stand out from the article: An FBI undercover person was introduced into the chatroom in the early stages of discussion, that official added.

Register your predictions now. Terrorists busted? Or FBI has created a new fake and gay "terrorist plot" so they can swoop in?

Mine is that some morons just ruined their lives for the greater glory of Kash Patel.

These scenarios always seem to end up with either a violent incident where the perpetrators were "on their radar" or a situation that looks like entrapment.

I've heard that the underlying problem is how FBI agents are promoted. They need a bust of a major incident to get a promotion so going in early is a career killer.

So I think this was a good move. It's better to stop a problem early even if you can't get major convictions.

But some of the agents are pissed about it and leaking to MSNBC: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/fbi-terror-plot-detroit-rcna241148

I've heard that the underlying problem is how FBI agents are promoted. They need a bust of a major incident to get a promotion so going in early is a career killer.

"...recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them." --Sir Robert Peel, father of the Metropolitan Police (aka Scotland Yard).

The problem of course is that while he's right, this does not give a signal as to whether the funding of the police is adequate or excessive. Which means a police department that adequately reduces crime with little visible action is going to be regularly targeted for budget cuts.

You need some people to drown to show you aren’t overspending on drowning prevention.

These scenarios always seem to end up with either a violent incident where the perpetrators were "on their radar" or a situation that looks like entrapment.

¿Por qué no los dos?

That is to say, what if the situations where the perpertrators were "on their radar" were just cases of entrapment where the people they egged on got a little off the leash and managed to do something?

I'd imagine the standards for an 'outer radar' list could be like a singular flag or tweet that technically places them on a list that nobody's actually actively monitoring.

These operations long predate Kash and friends. This "investigation" probably does as well. The FBI has for a long time been full of attention seeking climbers that want to get promoted, move to DOJ, run for Congress/Judge, etc. Kash doesn't have to do crap to have these sorts of things to happen. If he was changing things he'd tell agents to pursue more boring cases, like straw purchasers of firearms, or interstate armed robbery gangs. I know of multiple cases in the midwest like this one where the FBI declined to investigate and/or DOJ declined to charge.

Being my favorite holiday, Halloween is probably the best night you could ask for getting away with the “it’s just a prank bro” legal defense. One of the last Halloween occasions I had with my family had a relative of mine getting arrested and later released for bringing along a real (and fortunately empty) shotgun with him while trick or treating solely for the purpose of scaring the kids.

I can’t imagine the difficulty in general of picking out an actual terrorist plot on such an occasion, unless the people in question are incredibly stupid.

I'd rather have FBI stop terrorists in secret instead of in the open.

Why reveal that you're actively introducing undercover FBI agents into chats and monitoring discord channels ? They'll move to other chat platforms and set up stricter trails for swearing fealty.

It's stupid.

There's deterrence to consider. Plausibly, fewer terrorist plots will get started in the first place if there's common knowledge that the FBI is constantly busting even very minor groups, than in a counterfactual world where that fact doesn't get publicized.

I believe there is enough deterrence to be terrorist already. If anything, the spycraft aspect of it probably makes it more alluring for radicalized youths.

At this point, I feel like these are all groups are like the Far Side sheep cartoon.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d5/c1/60/d5c160062388684ceaa27c3407c4fe9b.jpg

It's also one of the best scenes in Bill the Galactic Hero.

Right? How many decades old is the joke about the FBI being the only thing keeping the KKK afloat?

I don't hate that idiots get taken out of circulation. I hate that these are used to build a narrative that there is some greater problem, and the resources waisted.

Nobody knows for sure what’s actually going on in the interior of these institutions. I sometimes wonder how disconnected reports are from the actual facts on the ground of this supposed ‘lead’ they have on the workings of the FBI.

Calculating how resources are wasted is difficult when the efficacy of how their work is measured is defined by how many terrorist attacks ‘don’t’ happen. It’s a lot like working in the SOC in infosec. There’s no scoreboard for security and so it’s something you don’t see. People think you just sit around all day and do nothing and ironically on the rare occasion where that happens, those get counted among the most productive days you’ll experience. When you’re hard at work that’s often a bad sign.

It’s been known in sports analytics for years now that NBA teams often have a very hard time calculating individual players defensive impact on the court. Daryl Morey (one of the most intelligent GM’s in the game who came out of MIT) was once asked whether there were any publicly reliable statistical techniques for determining one’s defensive impact and he replied “no.” It’s all done privately, behind closed doors with big money trying to advance the state of knowledge on it because of how difficult it is. Defense is something you don’t see.

As it relates to IT though, it’s part of the reason why when there’s a downturn in the economy or the Fed hikes interest rates and corporate balance sheets begin to suffer and businesses have to start saving, when employees get laid off one of the first groups of people the exec’s begin eyeing is your IT and infosec staff because they don’t understand the economic value you bring. You’re a cost center and a liability. They don’t understand the digital landscape of the field they’re operating in. Corporations no longer have to be individual targets. Threat actors can just spray exploits at everything en masse and those lacking staffed expertise in that department suffer enormous economic losses before they realize why they had you in the first place. They’ll payout a $20m ransom bribe to an Eastern European criminal outfit and get rid of the guy that tells them the truth for $78k a year. It’s incredibly stupid. It’s why tech isn’t a “recession proof” job unless you want to get out of the front lines and go into GRC and compliance. Corporations can’t afford to get rid of you in tech if you’re someone whose presence is legally required to report the status of the business to the government on a regular basis.

I had a debate with my father several years ago around this phenomenon. I tried presenting a plausible account of a conspiracy that police don’t have a real incentive to stop crimes because if they did, wouldn’t that take away their whole reason for existing? It’s been known to have a real effect in some countries. Several years later I realized that there was an informal term to describe exactly what I was I was trying to articulate. I still regard it as a valid concept. I just don’t know on what level it’s true.

I agree with this but also simultaneously internet chat rooms would be a pretty easy way of running up the score on blowhards who'd never actually do anything

Running up the score here meaning…?

Declare you've foiled serious plots since you've got it written down on paper but the vast majority would likely never have any real chance of moving off the secret Al Qaeda fan club discord

Well yeah, I’m sure there’s certainly that too. But at the same time at what point can you honestly declare an event to have never likely happened without some effort made to thwart it? At the very least you’re involved in the surveillance of the activity. The other way is to withdraw from the affair entirely and just hope nothing ever comes of it. Not a way I’d want to govern society however.

I've long wondered how many people the FBI radicalizes in an effort to entrap... but then they fall between the cracks. Maybe they start getting their own ideas instead of listening to their FBI handler. Maybe someone retires and their casework gets lost in the shuffle. Maybe the target just can't follow instructions correctly and accidentally commits a terrorist attack at the wrong location so the FBI fails to scoop them up. All sorts of things can go wrong. The FBI is obviously playing with fire, trying to create terrorist so they can then arrest them. If it ever went wrong, they'd probably be the most darkly held secrets the FBI keeps.

It has definitely happened before. Egging on terrorists and then they actually try to mass kill people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Culwell_Center_attack

Actually had a single FBI agent following them as they attempted a mass shooting. Only stopped because of a shootout with off duty law enforcement acting as armed security. If it weren't for armed security they would have slaughtered attendees and I don't suppose a single FBI agent would stop two guys with rifles.

One of the key figures behind O9A, 764, Atomwaffen, and other offshoots is a FBI informant who runs an extremist literature publishing company. You have to wonder how many people he radicalized over the years, and what percentage of them the FBI managed to apprehend before they committed a serious crime.

The key evangelical for O9A, the figure who facilitated this macabre wedding of apocalyptic death cults, is Joshua Caleb Sutter, a 41-year-old ex-convict, prolific satanist, publisher of manuscripts advocating murder, torture, rape, and child abuse — and a paid FBI informant since 2004.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/the-satanist-neo-nazi-plot-to-murder-u-s-soldiers-1352629/

Sutter’s influence on 764 is readily apparent in the facts surrounding some of the group’s most violent participants, particularly the possession of O9A texts published by Sutter’s Martinet Press imprint, tattoos and flags of the Tempel ov Blood’s insignia, and his consistent promotion of it on social media and in newer publications. Alleged members of the exploitation network include Angel Almeida, who is currently facing a maximum penalty of life on federal charges of coercing a minor to commit sexual acts and possession of CSAM and a firearm, and a Romanian national convicted of possessing and distributing CSAM and had Tempel ov Blood indicia or tattoos of the group's trident emblem.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dangerous-exploits-of-an-extremist-fbi-informant/

‘Suspect was known to the fbi’ describes just about every school shooter.

Hindsight is always 20/20. But even still, a conflux of suspicious behavior isn’t grounds for arresting someone.

A young, bullied and disenfranchised boy who acquires a gun and writes hateful things online often commonly precedes an actual shooting that takes place. But a young man who gets a gun and writes hateful things online but has no desire to shoot a school up can only be watched and monitored. You can’t convict someone on odd or abnormal behavior.

Also just somehow entering a watchlist through automatic keyword flagging doesn't mean anybody is actively monitoring anything.

It was ATF, not the FBI, but the attempts to entrap Randy Weaver demonstrably were part of the radicalization of McVeigh, although Waco was probably a larger factor and as far as I'm aware wasn't "entrapment" per se.

I think that's strong evidence that the body count is probably positive, but it's always hard to consider counterfactuals --- maybe some would have radicalized anyway.

Randy Weaver

https://youtube.com/watch?v=266YzszdYUQ

It was ATF, not the FBI, but the attempts to entrap Randy Weaver demonstrably were part of the radicalization of McVeigh, although Waco was probably a larger factor and as far as I'm aware wasn't "entrapment" per se.

Not entrapment, no, but very clearly corrupt. There is overwhelming evidence that the investigation was being run as a PR operation, and this focus on generating press rather than law enforcement is the direct cause of the subsequent disaster. Not least because there is strong evidence that the crimes the Davidians were initially being investigated for were entirely fabricated by the ATF.

Waco is one of the worst law-enforcement scandals in American history. Federal Agents and their agencies very clearly committed numerous felonies in an attempt to curry favor with the incoming Clinton administration, and then to cover their asses when it all went horribly, horribly wrong right in front of the TV cameras.

I mean, why assume it'd be an accident if it happens? I kind of take it for granted that many terrorist attacks are successful ops by the FBI et al, parts of some grand chess game they're playing that involves killing lots of innocent American civilians.

Remember how the Buffalo shooter was in a groupchat with a "retired" FBI agent and then there were never any followup stories? Weird how that happens.

Or how there was an undercover FBI agent in the second car of terrorists who traveled to the "First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest" and he didn't warn anyone of what was happening? Weird again.

I think the FBI denies this one, but there's the 1993 World Trade Center bombing

You beat me to it.

The FBI is and always has been a fundamentally corrupt organization.

And that's just the FBI, without having to get into the ATF and their shady behavior. Although the "Draw Muhammad" shooting had a crossover element: one of the shooters bought his handgun at Lone Wolf in Phoenix, Arizona, which is the same store the ATF was using as its Project Gunwalker (Fast and Furious) operation center. Quite the coincidence.

My favorite on the ATF's greatest hits:

Defrauding a tobacco co-op out of millions to create an unaccountable slush fund: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/us/atf-tobacco-cigarettes.html

Using a literal retard (IQ in the 50's) as a pawn in a sting operation and then pressing charges against him after: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/04/07/ATF-sting-nets-mentally-handicapped-man/58531365366967/

Is that the same one where a woman ATF agent pretended to be a GF to a retarded kid to get him in trouble?

Using a literal retard (IQ in the 50's) as a pawn in a sting operation and then pressing charges against him after: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/04/07/ATF-sting-nets-mentally-handicapped-man/58531365366967/

In fairness to the ATF, imagining the mentally disabled man cheerfully helping his new friends buy guns and drugs for their fake store is funny. And the prosecutors ended up only seeking probation. A guy with an IQ in the 50s might not even notice he's on it.

A guy with an IQ in the 50s might not even notice he's on it.

He'll probably be sad when his friend the probation officer stops calling and asking him what he's been up to.

More comments

Obviously fake and gay; I don't even need to check the details to have a high confidence of saying that. The FBI egged on a bunch of morons and then made a dramatic bust to get some agents promoted.

This more or less aligns with my view. That gets me suspicious. I don't actually know that much about FBI counter-terrorism arrests, the specificity of our cynicism has me concerned that I may have ingested a meme. (You probably already knew more of the information below. I'm not assuming that you're a meme puppet. I might be because I did not have the data before forming the opinion.)

So let's break out the equipment and get me a diagnosis.

There doesn't seem to be easily accessible data about the number of FBI operations that result in arrests. The best sources GPT-5 has found for me so far are the United States Attorney Annual Statistical Reports. Here is FY2024 for an example.

Table 3B on Page 14 shows that in FY2024 there were 432 cases filed in the Terrorism/National Security Critical Infrastructure program category. That's tied for the most with FY2021 but ~200-400 cases a year has been the ballpark figure since FY2019.

The problem, as always, is aggregation. It's unclear how many of those cases were Terrorism-Terrorism, in the Whoopi Goldberg rape-rape sense, that involved an active plot (even if basically run by the Feds) versus crimes like providing material support to terrorists or trespassing on national security critical infrastructure.

You could scrape all the cases and have an AI categorize them but I'm not that worried about my health - I might be a moron talking nonsense but this isn't something where I'm going to suffer any real consequences for being mistaken. So I had GPT-5 summarize. It thinks - and I asked for very rough numbers - about 55-70% of them were Domestic Terrorism related with things like hoaxes, support, etc. not being particularly common.

However. More complications. The notes on Domestic Terrorism included this gem: "Since 2020, domestic-coded cases have far outnumbered international ones, driven heavily by 2020–2022 waves (e.g., Capitol-breach-related charges and civil-disorder/threats statutes appearing under the terrorism/internal-security program)."

I remain unsure of the prevalence of serious, imminent plots. But I am now convinced that the government should, as a public service, make available an AI equivalent to or better than GPT-5 Thinking that has easy access to all public information.

But this is also a checkup of how well I've integrated the information environment. So I asked GPT-5 for summaries of major news stories around similar plots. It found 8 from the last 5 years - interestingly, it did not include the Gretchen Whitmer case. Of those 8, it assessed that FBI undercover operation involvement in the planning was High in 5 cases, Unknown in 2 (including today's), and Low in 1. The Low one was a tip.

High involvement means things like "CHS + FBI “assets” sold two AK-47s in sting". See the table at the bottom of the GPT-5 conversation.

Final Diagnosis? I feel pretty good that my baseline assumptions, while not always being correct, are directionally accurate. Anyone who disagrees with The_Nybbler and I is either unaware of the data or the brainless meat puppet of an idea.

This was in the Dearborn area, as well.

Dearborn, which is in Michigan, where the "Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot" occurred.

I can either assume that Michigan is a hotbed of violent radicalism, or I can assume that the local Field office likes to game metrics.

The latter seems easier for me to believe.

Dearborn is a majority-MENA city, often called the most Muslim city in the US, it's not strange that an ISIS-inspired plot would be there rather than some town where the one Muslim family runs a kebab shop. Having said that, FBI nonsense also not strange to expect at all.

Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, Hanania was right again *

Two months ago, Richard Hanania predicted that Nick Fuentes and the groypers would become a major force in mainstream Republican politics. At the time, there was a fair bit of TheMotte discussion (including by me) which could be described as dismissive. Some choice quotes:

  • "As far as I have seen Fuentes occupies the space of fairly ineffective troll."
  • "Groypers are not a real faction in republican politics lol. I could speak with a dozen R voters off the street here in Texas and I doubt more than 1 even knows they exist."
  • "As Sagan pointed out, they laughed at the Wright Brothers but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. Fuentes is Bozo the Clown."

Yeah, about that... A few days ago Nick Fuentes did a full interview with Tucker Carlson. This was a mild surprise at most, given that Tucker has been dabbling in less-than-sympathetic viewpoints on Israel and Jews as of late. A lot of people thought that this would be the nail in the coffin cementing Tucker as a fringe figure, and that his days headlining major conservative events would end.

This appears not to have happened:

"There has been speculation that @Heritage is distancing itself from @TuckerCarlson over the past 24 hours. I want to put that to rest right now—here are my thoughts [attached video statement]"

The Heritage Foundation is the Conservative Establishment think tank. It doesn't get more mainstream than them. What is striking is that the statement doesn't just contrast America with Israel, it contrasts Christians with Israel, a tacit acknowlegement of the legitimacy of Christian discomfort with Israel specifically because of their rejection of Christ. This isn't quite total groyper victory, but one can see it on the horizon.

From a realpolitik perspective, I think this is bad. The groypers are right that Israel doesn't act in America's interests and that many American Jews have dual loyalty. That's how coalitions work. A few billion dollars in aid and geopolitical cover is a small price to pay for having the ethnic group that controls international finance and global media on your side. Rooting-out infidels might be a good strategy if Christ is King, but if he isn't, and it turns out we're all alone on this big round rock, then the groypers are blowing-up the conservative intelligentsia for no good reason.

*Apparently this is a series now.

By the contrary: Hanania is always wrong. If Hanania said the sky is blue and the sun rises in the east I'd look outside. At this point he's mostly Nick Fuente's hypeman and his desperate calls to authority for SOMEONE to put the naughty rightoid into time-out is pathetic. Hanania is a figure of no intellectual value and even less political valence and I will downvote any OP that mentions him as an authority on... well, anything.

Sorry, which republican elected officials are groypers again? Which of their policies are dominating Republican discussions? It's the party of Trump, business interests, and cultural conservatives. Groypers remain years away from mattering and a Carlson interview does not even begin to change that. Joe Rogan has what, 40 times Nick's viewership? Sixty? Nick struggles to break half a million, Joe regularly puts up 20 times that, and has done 100+ times that. The only times I ever even see Fuentes mentioned in political conversations are on this forum, even my conservative conspiracy nut friends barely remember who the dude is.

How much of his viewership is voting-aged American citizens?

Joe Rogan has what, 40 times Nick's viewership? Sixty? Nick struggles to break half a million, Joe regularly puts up 20 times that, and has done 100+ times that.

True, but I don't think that's a fair comparison. Joe Rogan is 58 years and has been doing podcast for over 15 years now, and he was already a big celebrity before that. He was one of the OG podcast bros, and at this point basically everyone has heard of him. He's not growing particularly fast anymore. He might have hit the limits of what he can get. Most of his opinions are very bland, centrist stuff, and he's mostly known for just bringing on a wide range of guests and letting them talk about whatever they want.

Meanwhile, Nick fuentes is 27. He went from some random college student, to being completely deplatformed, and until recently most normal people had never heard of him. He was not only deplatformed from any liberal organization, but even most of the conservative organizations tried to kick him out. He's completely banned from youtube and most other mainstream sites. His podcast is on rumble.com, which is a site I'd never heard of until I went to look it up just now. So I think, despite his overall small numbers, it's a sign that are some very passionate supporters out there boosting him and overcoming all mainstream efforts to shut him down.

The Heritage Foundation unequivocally denounces Fuentes.

How that squares with refusing to denounce Carlson is left as an exercise to the student.

How that squares with refusing to denounce Carlson is left as an exercise to the student.

The idea that there's something to square here seems patently absurd to me. Especially for a public commentator like Carlson, publicly talking to and spreading the message of people who deserve denouncement is exactly the role he should be filling. So of course people who would denounce someone like Fuentes wouldn't necessarily have a reason to denounce someone like Carlson for publicly speaking with him.

denouncement

Sorry to be a grammar Nazi, but it's "denunciation".

Never apologize for grammatical pendantry.

Don't make me do it again.

When Carlson talked with Fuentes, did he take the attitude of, "you need to justify all these things you say and back it up?" or did he take the attitude of, "Everything you're saying is reasonable and sounds true to me?"

Carlson can be harsh with the people he interviews, like he was with Ted Cruz. That he isn't asking probing questions with Fuentes indicates that he agrees with him. If you have a show like this and you interview someone, you're either sponsoring them with publicity, trying to elucidate what someone really believes, or trying to force them to appear foolish. Which is Carlson doing here?

In that trilemma, I'd place my wager down in the middle bucket, i.e. "trying to elucidate what someone really believes." But my belief doesn't matter a whole lot; it's whether or not Heritage Foundation believes that that is what Carlson was trying to do and whether or not they're reasonable to have that belief. Based on what I've seen of Carlson (likely about as much as the non-fan layman, though I did watch his entire Putin interview) and what I've read about this interview with Fuentes, I believe that the answers to those questions are, respectively: yes and yes.

Did you watch his interview with Fuentes? Carlson sounds a very... supportive. Not coming at it from an impartial, "I'm trying to capture this philosophy for the historical record." Lots of "Wow, that's amazing," "Oh, yeah," and "yes, absolutely." I didn't hear a single "gotcha" question, pulling up an older statement and asking him to clarify how that jives with what he's saying now, anything like that.

I know that if I were interviewing Fuentes, I'd ask him to explain more why he thought it was appropriate to say, "Raise your right hand. Repeat after me. I will kill, rape, and die for Nicholas J Fuentes," on a stream Is he trying to become a cult leader? And kind of go with that angle. Not questions to try to direct him to tell me his life's story in a way that is acceptable to normies. I don't think Carlson's tactic on this interview really sought to portray Fuentes in full, complicated multi-dimensional detail.

'Denounce people who say hateful things, not people who talk to people who say hateful things' seems like a pretty sensible policy for anyone who believes in the first amendment (and hasn't been given $7000).

and hasn't been given $7000

Is this a reference to something?

$7000 is the maximum than an individual can give directly to the campaign of a political candidate per election cycle. I've been seeing it used as a meme on twitter to reference Israel-lobby influence ever since Scott wrote his political finance post a few weeks ago.

It has nothing to do with Scott, they were literally paying $7000 per post to influencers.

It's a twitter meme that I think is down to accusations of qatari bribes against some influencer or another.

You can just say meme. And you know what it means, it means the same thing as 'shill' and 'pocket money' and 'astroturfed' and the hundred thousand other memes throughout history suggesting someone's opinion has been bought. If you want to be dismissive of a meme to diminish the possibility of it being picked up here, just do it.

I understood it had something to do with being a shill, but $7000 seemed to be referring to something specific. Clearly I was not the only one who thought I was missing some context. Asking you what you're talking about, or to just explain the meme, is not a hostile act.

Perhaps you think I was replying to someone else? Either way, I didn't assume it was a hostile act, I just described what I thought it was. Interestingly, framing it as perceived as a hostile act is the exact same level of 'hostility'.

Edit for some: hydro clearly understands the meme exactly, he knows the source - twitter, and he knows the players - he substituted Qatar for Israel for rhetoric, as the two sides involved either claim Israel or Qatar has undue influence on American politics.

Correct, it's an accusation that Qatar is bribing someone. If you have nothing to clarify, but only a snarky comment about how yes, that is a meme, then uh, why are you chiming in on the explanation?

Rooting-out infidels might be a good strategy if Christ is King,

Not even then. Generally speaking Christianity has looked down in that sort of thing.

Bloody Verdict of Verdun: widely condemned by the Church at the time, contemporary historians considered it a black mark on Charlemagne’s record.

Various Pogroms: not looked on fondly today, often bishops and priests would take on Jews to try to protect them from mobs.

Spanish Inquisition: Widely considered a mistake that didn’t work.

And honestly Jews make good allies against the Muslims, which are the real threat to Christendom. A quarter of the planet is Muslim, Jews are single digit percentage.

I apologize in advance, you have activated my autism.

The Massacre of Verden (not Verdun, that would have to wait for its own massacres) was not really that big a deal at the time, and the connection to Christianity is tenuous beyond the general context of religious war. The issue of oath-breaking/treason is far more strongly attested, and mass executions for treason were not unprecedented in Carolingian times - Charlemagne's uncle Carloman had carried out an even more devious one against the leaders of the Christian Alemanni. We have no evidence the massacre was condemned by the Church at the time. Here is the only detailed source (RFA/Einhard - there are several minor chronicles which mention it in a single sentence, saying Charlemagne "killed many Saxons", which also suggests it wasn't so important to them):

When the king heard of this disaster he decided not to delay, but made haste to gather an army, and marched into Saxony. There he called to his presence the chiefs of the Saxons, and inquired who had induced the people to rebel. They all declared that Widukind was the author of the treason, but said that they could not produce him because after the deed was done he had fled to the Northmen. But the others who had carried out his will and committed the crime they delivered up to the king to the number of four thousand and five hundred; and by the king's command they were all beheaded [decollati] in one day upon the river Aller in the place called Verden [Ferdun]. When he had wreaked vengeance after this fashion, the king withdrew to the town of Diedenhofen.

Not as much as a frown from Einhard. Later historians have made far more hay from the massacre, first from Enlightenment motives, then from German nationalism/Naziism, nowadays from general anticlericalism and a desire to find black marks on great men. But it's all pure speculation - there is nothing at all in the sources that would substantiate e.g. Alessandro Barbero's claim that "the most likely inspiration for the mass execution of Verden was the Bible. Exasperated by the continual rebellions, Charlemagne wanted to act like a true king of Israel" any more than the idea it was motivated by anti-German hatred, by traditional Frankish custom, or by Roman law stipulating beheading as the penalty for oath-breaking.

For a more fitting example from the Middle Ages, I would look at the Sack of Jerusalem, where we do have sources condemning the massacre of innocents, showing genuine pity for the victims, and praising the chivalry of those Crusader leaders like Tancred of Lecce who tried to protect them.

This was cool, you should allow your autism to activate more often.

The Inquisition coincided with the Spanish Golden Age, the height of the Spanish Empire, the height of Spanish music and art, and the expansion of Spain into the New World where now hundreds of millions are Spanish-descended Catholics. If God worked in superstitious ways, you can hardly imagine an act more commended by Him than the Inquisition. Would there have been a flourishing of Catholic Spain if a larger percent of the rich were Sephardic Jews? No. They did not fund any music and barely any pictorial art, let alone Christian music and art, but directed their profits to their own communities.

The inquisition was a monarchist attempt at gentling, centralizing, and regulating the series of irregular popular riots and local parish manias which had previously characterized concerns about false conversions and other anti-jewish sentiments. Ironically, the papal attitude was that even these efforts were far too harsh, and that the spaniards were just targeting people in order to seize their wealth rather than out of any actual proof of heresy/insincerity.

The Inquisition coincided with the Spanish Golden Age, the height of the Spanish Empire, the height of Spanish music and art, and the expansion of Spain into the New World where now hundreds of millions are Spanish-descended Catholics.

Well, yes, that's what happens when you've just finished a century-long process of reconquest of some of the richest lands in Europe, and then just-so-happen to have oodles of now-unoccupied fighting men laying around right when an explorer bumps into a whole new civilization sitting on some of the biggest silver mines in the world, and who has no resistance to any of the diseases that you're accustomed to. The inquisition had nothing to do with any of that.

Would there have been a flourishing of Catholic Spain if a larger percent of the rich were Sephardic Jews?

Yes, because increasing the percentage of wealthy spaniards which were jewish wouldn't have changed anything about the quality of Toledo steel, the tactics of the proto-Tercios, or the susceptibility of Aztecs, Maya, and Incas to old world diseases. Nor would jews have done anything to decrease the quality or output of the mines at Potosi.

the papal attitude was that even these efforts were far too harsh

That was the opinion of one pope in 1482, and for just a single year before he bent his knee to the Spaniards, allowing Spain full reign to carry out their inquisitions. The inquisition lasted ~350 years.

when an explorer bumps into a whole new civilization sitting on some of the biggest silver mines in the world […] the inquisition had nothing to do with any of that

The inquisition had nothing to do with Spanish Catholics monopolizing newfound trade opportunities? Sephardic Jews had previously dominated regional trade. The Inquisition ensured that all new profits stayed within the Catholic realm. Today, Lev Leviev and Dan Gertler direct their diamond trade profits to their own communities, and it would have been the same in a less-inquisitive Spain. It’s a zero-sum resource competition between two distinct communities.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Spain proper always had a low population density, at least through the spanish golden age. Crazy-big Spanish armies were due to new world extraction that was more due to Spain happening to conquer two gigantic ancient empires, one of which sat on a literal mountain made of silver, and a technological breakthrough in metals refining allowing the spanish to exploit more marginal mines in the new world. You can maybe blame the latter on something to do with Spain but Spanish military exploits were more like a random third-world dictatorship striking oil and suddenly buying top of the line military kit for long running wars in their near abroad than anything else. The Spanish army wasn't even mostly actual Spaniards.

Catholic Spain's cultural flourishing, on the other hand, mostly was the crown. Again, Spain's native military, cultural, and technological edge was not their, most of their soldiers and inventors and artists and a weirdly high percentage of conquistadors were literally not Spanish(Holland and Northern Italy and Greece all birthed notable 'Spaniards' in the period). The decision to keep launching moonshot expeditions at conquering parts of the new world, and not start moonshot ventures at eg invading China(a real plan that was presented to the Spanish crown), was the Spanish government. The decision to import the absolute best artists and engineers was the crown. There simply weren't enough Spaniards. Spanish armies were hilariously small when they actually enforced the de jure requirement for Spanish blood.

And Latin America being like 90% Spanish speaking Catholics(until recently) was also a crown priority; they could easily have been a normal conquering empire, just give us tribute type thing. The Incas sat on a literal mountain made of silver and could pay whatever bribe. The Spanish crown just really wanted to spread their culture and religion.

technological breakthrough in metals refining allowing the spanish to exploit more marginal mines in the new world

Which one is that? I haven't heard that one.

The patio method allowed the spanish to use silver ores that wouldn't have been profitable otherwise; like all pre-industrial regimes, their ability to mobilize labour(very much including soldiers but also the craftsmen, farmers etc to equip and feed those soldiers) was rate-limited by their net production of silver coins to pay for that labour(proles in history expect to be paid in silver, not gold, gold isn't the equivalent of a ben franklin- it's the equivalent of $100k bill, basically a year's salary for the upper end of the class that does actual work. Soldiers and labourers are paid in silver alloyed coins, gold alloys are used for big budget transactions between large companies[mostly reconciling accounts] and pure gold is mostly an accounting fiction for budgets and the like). Economics is just really different in an era where the labor theory of value isn't BS. The patio method allowed silver mines which had the high value ores tapped out to be continually exploited, giving Spain a revenue stream to equip its armies better(remember the labour theory of value is actually true until ~1750) and recruit more soldiers. Most Spanish soldiers, armorers, farmers feeding their armies, etc were Germans who had to be paid in cash to prevent defection; that's not to say Spanish armies in the eighty years war were particularly well run(they were a logistical disaster, the same as the modern day Saudi army- again, this is the equivalent of a third world country striking oil and suddenly having an unlimited credit line for military equipment) but at a certain point blacksmiths can just not cooperate particularly well, you have to fork over the money. Spanish army chits were worth the paper they were printed on because Spain had unlimited cash reserves due to the ability to reopen tapped out mines with superior refining methods- even the loot from the inca and aztec empires runs out fast.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Spain proper always had a low population density, at least through the spanish golden age.

Spanish armies weren't huge, but spanish tactics, on the other hand, were top notch, as was their equipment.

Spanish military exploits were more like a random third-world dictatorship striking oil and suddenly buying top of the line military kit for long running wars in their near abroad than anything else. The Spanish army wasn't even mostly actual Spaniards.

The Spanish armies were forged in the reconquista, not conjured ex nihilo out of Peruvian silver.

they could easily have been a normal conquering empire, just give us tribute type thing.

This is how the empire originally worked in many cases, with native polities giving tribute to spanish conquistadors. However, the Crown back in Spain didn't want rogue adventurers setting up their own kingdoms, and so set up administrations to take more direct control, including settlement of more europeans. Because the church had been partly nationalized during the reconquista, this included a lot of church officials getting secular power and control as well.

By the same token you might point out that the First Amendment coincided with the rise of the United States from backwater ex-colonies to global superpower. X happening at the same time as Y just doesn't prove much about God's will.

In the case of Spain, there's an obvious common explanation - unifying the peninsula (except for Portugal) allowed for a huge increase in both the resources and more importantly the state capacity of the Spanish crown, allowing it to engage in a number of large-scale projects, including the colonisation of the Americas, the flourishing of early modern Spanish culture, and the inquisition. Some of these projects were good and some of them were bad. It's quite superstitious itself to declare that they must all be lumped together, or were all causative of each other. The inquisition caused cultural flourishing? Might as well argue the reverse as well - cultural flourishing causes religious persecution! This is not good logic.

Spain actually had a relatively low state capacity in the era. Spanish armies were so large because of new world precious metals flowing into the treasury allowing Spain to hire mercenaries that were not actually from Spain- it's the equivalent of if a random third world country struck oil and suddenly had a better equipped army than its rivals, no one thinks that's because of a better R&D program. Spanish taxation and conscription was pretty bad and that explains why much poorer rivals with smaller armies were able to beat them in battle so often.

In the 15th century? We're talking about the end of the Reconquista, aren't we? I would have thought it would be hard to deny that in the 15th century the Spanish crown was definitely on the upswing. My thought is that the rise of the Catholic Monarchs, the successful (re)conquest of the entire peninsula, the Spanish Inquisition, and (some decades later) the colonisation of the Americas were all part of a big run of Spanish success.

I don't take the flow of American silver and gold into Spain as being the key factor here because the upswing we're talking about begins in the 15th century - we're talking 1480s onwards, aren't we?

Spain wasn't a dominant power in 1480, though, was it? For dynastic politics reasons Spain happened to be in command of the holy roman empire, but it was Austria that was dominant, not Spain.

Spain was on the upswing but being hapsburgs was probably a bigger part of it than superior tactics due to refinement in battle against the moors(after all, france was also in an existential conflict during the era, as were literally every balkans country).

Spain is already a Great Power under Ferdinand and Isabella, who unite Aragon and Castille in 1479 and complete the Reconquista in 1492, a year in which they also play venture capitalist and sponsor a Genoese nutcase who has the wrong value for the circumference of the Earth and thinks he can sail west to China without running out of fresh water for the crew.

Charles V consolidates the Habsburg Empire in 1519 including Spain, Austria and the formerly Burgundian Netherlands, and then goes on to conquer large parts of Italy (some of which is badged as a reconquest of historic Aragonese territory). When he abdicates in 1545, the Spanish half of the Empire is clearly the senior one, although it includes the now-Spanish Netherlands, which were not part of the Spanish inheritance. But even without the Netherlands, I think Spain including the old Aragonese possessions in Italy is a strong candidate for 2nd-strongest country in Early Modern Europe (after France).

From a realpolitik perspective, I think this is bad.

This is bad for American conservatism in an even more fundamental nature. For a brief period around 2025, you had Trump come in and detached right wing rhetoric from explicit[1] Christianity from the Robertson/Buchanan era. This created room in the nascent Trump coalition for people that wouldn't join if it was explicitly Christian even if they would happily compromise on a number of policies. And the religious wing did indeed get a good number of policy goals (within reason, obviously the anti-IVF folks were gonna be told to STFU). Detaching the rhetoric didn't result in abandoning all their priorities.

Ultimately this is how coalitions evolve -- when they are out of power, there's no sense in fighting because anything is better than 4 more years of Biden/Harris. Now there is a real battle for how holds the reins and who can be in the tent.

[1] Although I think one important piece that doesn't follow here is "blue policies mistreat Christians and need to be stopped" but I distinguish that quite a bit from the movement here.

Two months ago, Richard Hanania predicted that Nick Fuentes and the groypers would become a major force in mainstream Republican politics.

I have few instincts or thoughts on the broader question of how "prominent" Fuentes is with various political factions. However it's kinda crazy to me that someone who openly supported Kamala Harris is still being considered a Republican or conservative.

He wasn't supporting Harris because he supported wokeness, he supported her because the republicans aren't delivering. The strategy of voting republican no matter how poorly they serve their base only causes the base to get trampled. If the Republicans can count on votes no matter what, there is no reason for the republicans to consider the base's interests.

The republican establishment needs the threat of the base going against them in order to keep the establishment delivering.

Likely Fuentes was supporting Harris because that's what his FBI handlers told him to do. Funny how all these Republican groups got investigated in the wake of J6 but Fuentes was there with his bullhorn and somehow managed to walk away with no issues. https://youtube.com/shorts/7iyk4zITS-g

He wasn't supporting Harris because he supported wokeness, he supported her because the republicans aren't delivering.

But had she won, he would've gotten more wokeness. Quite the 7D chess move.

More wokeness benefits Nick Fuentes. The stronger the woke get, the stronger their right-wing mirror-image get. If America is well-governed by a functional conservative coalition and most people feel more-or-less happy with their governance, Fuentes has no audience.

Now he's doing well at the moment, but then, America is not well-governed at the moment either. Trump has disastrously low approval ratings and has failed to unify the country. In a sense, Fuentes was in a no-lose situation.

Extremists benefit from chaos and incompetence. Fuentes is no exception.

The republican establishment needs the threat of the base going against them in order to keep the establishment delivering.

Traditionally this is done in primaries, not in general elections.

How many "squad" members have you seen supporting Trump because Kamala/Joe Biden was an unacceptable neoliberal shill collaborating with fascists yadda yadda...? I expect the answer will be "none."

I think that ACX mentioned that some pro-Palestinian Muslims were announcing that they were going to vote for Trump because Harris was too Israel-friendly. I am unsure how they are feeling about Trump's ME policies now.

The obvious choice to fixing situations where some voters can not credibly defect from their party because the other party caters to their interests even less would be to get rid of FPTP and get a multi-party system.

But without that, "always vote for the party which is most closely aligned to you" seems like a bad meta-strategy which will see you voting for the marginally less evil ones. Sometimes it is good not to engage in trades which are only slightly net-positive to incentivize the other player to offer you better trades instead.

I think that ACX mentioned that some pro-Palestinian Muslims were announcing that they were going to vote for Trump because Harris was too Israel-friendly. I am unsure how they are feeling about Trump's ME policies now.

They should be feeling dumb... but they should have been feeling dumb from the start. Trump's pro-Israel position was not at all a secret -- ask his daughter and his son-in-law, and consider his first term. It's Harris who flirted with the opposite, though she ended up back on the pro-Israel side rhetorically.

Trump has so far been no worse than Biden/Harris, though there's an opportunity to be much better or much worse coming up.

FWIW, while I like it in theory, all the european multi-party government system countries have a very similar problem as the one plagueing the US at the moment, with a sizeable chunk of people not feeling represented by any of the existing options and switching to the new (usually right-wing) kid on the block, despite not really liking that either.

And imo they are correct, there has been a coalescence towards a shared worldview that is best described as internationalist left among all major establishment parties. As a european myself, I don't have the impression that the US really has it worse, with the democrats taking the role of the internationalist left establishment vs the republicans as the opposition to that.

Supposedly, there are numerous Sanders>Trump voters.

Yes, but to return to the premise of the original post, I don't think many of them are all that welcome back in the modern Democratic party, let alone "major forces" in Democratic politics.

Just look at what's happened to public figures who've made that kind of transition - Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Taibbi, Joe Rogan, Jimmy Dore, even RFK himself - none of them are welcome in left spaces anymore.

If we need to include RFK, who seems like a true idiot, that is a bad sign that we are really reaching to fill out the list! Overall, I think the Dems will realize that they need to expand their coalition and that a huge amount of their coalition (albeit not the most active parts of the Dem base) are very opposed to the woke stuff that it seems like would be the grounds for Taibbi and Rogan's purported unwelcomeness.

Two months ago, Charlie Kirk was still alive.

Is Hanania still denying that left wing violence is a major, ongoing problem and instead claiming its dumb righties causing all the main issues we're seeing?

I'll go ahead and triple down on calling Hanania a hack.

Hanania sold at the bottom of the DR and bought in at the top of "with Zionism you win" submission.

I think he always was pro-israel, even before the break with Trump.

The Tucker/Fuentes interview is about to hit 17m views, compared to Tucker's 1.5-2m view recent episodes I checked. Heritage Foundation is definitely bending the knee.

Nick Fuentes is being strategic. The biggest "threat" to the Dissident Right movement is that the Conservative movement integrates these highly credible criticisms, which until now have only come from the DR at great expense and persecution to those who have been making this argument for years (and that's not to take credit from those like Pat Buchanan who have been doing this for decades longer). But at this point it's fair to say the DR is becoming mainstream with the Heritage foundation video being at least as relevant of a signal to that fact as the Fuentes/Carlson interview itself.

I say Fuentes is being strategic because Fuentes is obviously moderating himself recently to ensure he and his movement are included in this integration of these, until now, radical arguments which are going mainstream.

But the Coup de grâce is not merely shedding light on Dual Loyalty and foreign subversion, but to force that same apparatus to confront its sheer hypocrisy when it comes to White Identity versus Jewish Identity. Until now those like Ben Shapiro - "I don't care about the browning of America" and Mark Levin just operate in the zone of this sheer hypocrisy as they have since the 1920s, just dismissing anyone who gives this criticism of their behavior as a crazed antisemite. That's not going to work any more, the cat is out of the bag. The more they double down on that position the more strength they give the underlying criticism that's going mainstream.

Edit: One thing I want to emphasize is the content of the Heritage Foundation's statement:

Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course, antisemitism should be condemned. My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always. When it serves the interests of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other Allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence and technology. But when it doesn't, Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.

That is a very significant statement.

Until now those like Ben Shapiro - "I don't care about the browning of America"

What do you make of Fuentes’ embrace of civic nationalism today, the videos of him saying that anyone born in America is an American, that that’s what America First means and so on? It seems like a stunning moderation, but it’s not truly sudden either, he’s been setting it up for several months (even before the Kirk assassination), pushing back against his followers’ violent antisemitic rhetoric in a way he didn’t before, tongue-in-cheek comments about Jews actually being behind a lot of great movies and comedy, gently dressing down his more…violent commenters in the chat. Certainly it’s drawn a hugely negative reaction from many groypers and extreme antisemites who formerly liked him in the last 24 hours on Twitter. I don’t think it’s as simple as just moderating to appeal to Carlson’s audience, because it’s aligned with his own streaming on his own channel recently. Six months ago he was hostile towards Dave Smith, the libertarian anti-zionist and Jewish convert to Christianity, primarily for being ethnically Jewish. Beyond antisemitism, he advocated for the imprisonment and/or expulsion of certainly a substantial proportion, if not the great majority, of black people in America. Today, Fuentes makes the case for what I would consider Bannonite civic nationalism, indeed he’s almost totally aligned with Bannon’s vision of a loosely culturally Christian multiracial conservative coalition.

Tucker too essentially asks Fuentes in the interview, and it’s relatively explicit, “OK, so what do you want to do about it?” and Fuentes says (and I paraphrase loosely) force AIPAC to register as a foreign lobbying organization, ban dual citizens from serving in congress (Randy Fine, announcing legislation that would do just that, said last week that to his knowledge no Jews in Congress are Israeli citizens, so this would be no change), stay out of foreign entanglements and put America first, and that anyone who puts America first (relatively nebulous) is an ally of his. This is a pure Buchananite position, when previously Fuentes was well to the right of Buchanan, who was certainly moderately antisemitic but not in an ‘expel the Jews’ way, which was much more central to groyper messaging.

There was also some minor drama today on Twitter (which I’m sure you saw) about some guy who was full-on “kill them all” rhetoric about Jewish people getting a cop visit, which I think highlights what is increasingly a rather colossal gap between the groyper hardcore and the current Fuentes position.

You are right to perceive Fuentes shifting significantly in that direction, even well before the Kirk assassination, but I don't see it as a moderation. It's influence from Richard Spencerism. People also think Spencer moderated since 2016 but if you actually critically analyze his perspective, it remains among the most radical on the DR. Richard didn't moderate at all, he took the failures of the 2016 Alt Right and developed a new perspective on what ought to be the political aspirations of a radical movement. Fuentes has been heavily influenced in that direction.

The 2016 Alt-Right was a collection of memes, at most you could say the political aspirations were to "keep America majority (or all) White." Well that simply isn't possible, demographic change is baked in the cake. Do White people even need to have a majority to thrive? No, they do not, as Richard has been saying for years "Aryans are a global people" and always have been, the aspiration should not be to build an all-white neighborhood in rural Arkansas it should be pan-Aryan Imperium. And recently Fuentes has essentially adopted this same position, saying the political aspiration is ultimately a "New Rome", which is a pivot from "we just want to live in an all-white country" but not something I would say is moderation. It's actually what I have long-said should be the political objective of a white-identitarian global movement.

And by that analysis, it's myopic to blame subversive Jews purely for the development of multiculturalism; multiculturalism emerged as a managerial tact for maintaining global Empire, especially in the face of the Soviet threat which could capitalize on discontent from marginalized groups. Fuentes cited this directly in the Carlson interview as well.

Building and managing a global Empire does fundamentally require the cooperation and allegiance of non-white groups. Yes I think some Groypers will be made discontent by the overtures towards non-Whites, but that has always been a quirk of Fuentes with this fandom of rap and Kanye West. People joke all the time about how so many Groypers are non-white, but they don't stop to consider how many die-hard Jewish nationalists are non-Jewish themselves (AKA the entire Conservative movement... until now). The fact that there does seem to be an affinity among non-Whites for White Identitarianism is something to be capitalized on, not something to be rejected, as I said 9 months ago here:

The title "White Advocacy Is for All of Us" is an interesting one, but an Inclusive White Nationalist movement is not as contradictory as it sounds. Think of how strong the support of non-Jews is for Jewish nationalism- Zionism is for Everyone. The cultural and political levers that have accomplished that feat are available to White people as well if they learn how to use them.

And this pivot also doesn't represent much of a moderation on the JQ. Fuentes still maintains that the organized, international Jewish community is collectively responsible for the hostility towards White people deeply embedded in our Culture, and that their animus is motivated by their Jewish identities. That's always been the crucial insight of the "JQ", and Fuentes directly named Jewish identity as an obstacle to America First in his interview with Carlson.

Fuentes is accepting the reality that Global Empire is ultimately an operation that requires cooperation from non-whites, but at the same time we cannot accept the incessant hostility and subversion of White people by current management. That still has to be confronted, and it is being confronted at an effectiveness nobody in the DR really thought possible even optimistically. Enlisting non-Whites, but on vastly different terms than the cultural status quo with respect to the status of non-whites relative to whites, is more of an intelligent and strategic development than it is a moderation.

I think even Fuentes would accept Jews as Allies, as long as they are held to as high a standard of cooperation as Jews enforce on their their non-Jewish Allies.

Well that simply isn't possible, demographic change is baked in the cake.

It’s very possible, if you recategorize Hispanics as white. Now you have a country that’s about 80 percent white.

I haven't watched the Nick & Tucker interview. I did watch the Sam Hyde and Nick episode though. I also watched the Ian Carroll and Joe Rogan episode. I suspect Nick's appearance on Tucker was much the same.

Nick (and Ian since I brought him up) are slightly smarter than your average bear. They can go on shows and hide their power level as needed. But then, if you find yourself thinking "I like the cut of their jib, I wonder what else they have to say" and you check their twitter, you immediately discover they are shit flinging retards. It's a short lived illusion. This really doesn't work like it used to, where radicals could publish a book that sanitizes a version of the insane things they believe, filtered through a retard to normie ghost writer. Then they get glazed by the New York Times, it's required reading in college, and nobody would be the wiser because you'd have to actually know this retard in person to understand what a crazy person they actually are.

There may be knock on effects from letting retards attract more retards to their retard army. But Antifa and BLM already exists, so that bridge is burned.

Only way out is through. The right can't let the left monopolize retards.

Mr. President, we must not allow a retard gap!

Unironically yes. Retards are a valuable political resource.

Retard strength is powerful, yes, but wielding it carelessly incurs a terrible cost. By my observation, highly-motivated maximalists(of which RW retards are a subset) are a tenacious species. They feed off of every bit of momentum in their favor to spread and legitimize their memes while following closely behind the gains of their more moderate kin, such that by the time they've reached the borders of the Overton Window they're already primed for exponential metastasis; the history of the last {NumYrs=22.24*log14.88(PwrLvl) + 5} years of progressivism presents an excellent example of this sequence. If the modern right-wing coalition gives its retards too much slack, in due time they will swallow the movement whole.

If the modern right-wing coalition gives its retards too much slack, in due time they will swallow the movement whole.

The modern right-wing coalition was swallowed whole by the retards 15 years ago. Though to be fair it was less a matter of giving them too much slack and more getting thrown from the tiger's back. The Tea Party movement was the base shrugging off the remnants of the old school GOP. Of course, as these things usually go, early adopters got pushed out by a second wave of more radical populists.

To be less fair, Goldwater called it decades ago.

Israel does not get our support because the gentiles are doing some dispassionate analysis on the benefits of supporting Israel. If that were the case, there would be nothing to criticize. Israel is getting our support because Zionists who consider Israel the most important country in the world relentlessly lobby for Israel, and have been doing so for decades, sometimes smearing opponents as antisemites. Truman complained about their advocacy, Nixon complained about it. Congressmen in the 80s who criticized Israel would lose their seat. “They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby” was written in 1985! We are not talking about a new thing. Mearsheimer’s analysis on this has gone uncontested. Israel gets our support because of advocacy networks (including media influence) and, at least in one recent instance, a secretive cabal of billionaires that likened itself to the Sanhedrin, the leader of which funded Epstein’s child trafficking blackmail operation that ensnared Bill Clinton, Trump, and British Royalty.

Even if you love Israel, you should want America to have the upper-hand in deals. We can continue to support them if they gradually pay us back. Israel has subsidized synagogues, healthcare, and education. When America funds Israel we are funding some Israeli’s man’s lavish parties and vacations, because he doesn’t need to pay as much in taxes for his nation’s defense. We are funding Rabbis, as they benefit from Israel’s subsidies for religious institutions; this includes Rabbis in America who studied in Israel or are funded through an Israeli organization. Meanwhile, Israel is applying tax pressure on the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem; they are required to pay taxes while not receiving the same subsidies as Jewish institutions. Meanwhile, Israel-connected billionaires are putting down funds to get rid of Thomas Massey. To me this is all offensive on principle, not because of the dollar amount.

Israel is getting our support because Zionists who consider Israel the most important country in the world relentlessly lobby for Israel, and have been doing so for decades, sometimes smearing opponents as antisemites.

This is a point I've brought up privately to Jewish friends of mine: Israel is burning through goodwill that they and their parents and their grandparents have spent decades building in the American public. When I came through public school, I studied the Holocaust more often than any single event outside of the Declaration of Independence and the Walking Purchase. I read at least three full books in the curriculum that I can remember: Night, Numer the Stars, and of course The Diary of Anne Frank. There might have been more that I'm forgetting.

Making sure that every American public school student learned that the Holocaust was the worst most uniquely horrible thing that ever happened in human history, often taught with questionable historicity (shoutout @SecureSignals), was a project of lobbying by Jewish groups. Making antisemitism into the worst, stupidest, lowest class, most unacceptable prejudice was a project of lobbying. Making Nazi gangs into the world's worst villains that don't need to be humanized in Sons of Anarchy or Breaking Bad wasn't an accident, nor was it a project of a few weeks. Making Nazi into a swear word and Hitler into secular-Satan was a project of decades.

This was what gave the Jews a special exception from the liberal world order in Israel for decades, what allowed them freedom of action. And now it seems to me that they've pissed a lot of it away on a few years of mowing the Gazan grass.

This is a point I've brought up privately to Jewish friends of mine: Israel is burning through goodwill that they and their parents and their grandparents have spent decades building in the American public.

Just so I understand your argument, you're saying that Israel/American Jews built goodwill by pushing Holocaust education in school and anti-Nazi/antisemitism propaganda? What have they now done differently to burn the goodwill? Is it this:

This was what gave the Jews a special exception from the liberal world order in Israel for decades, what allowed them freedom of action. And now it seems to me that they've pissed a lot of it away on a few years of mowing the Gazan grass.

Because the American right writ large does not give a shit that Israel has turned Palestine into rubble. After October 7th, plenty of people here were gung-ho for a little genocide/purge. Precious little of the conversation in this thread is focused on Palestine, whereas most of the standout comments focus on Jewish control of Media/Finance/Hollywood and other institutions.

So it begs the question - why is the American right turning against Jews now, and what changed in the last 20-30 years that enabled it? Decentralization of the media and sources of information has disproportionately benefited fringe people like Fuentes at the expense of traditional media. Cynically, and depending which movie screen you're watching, this either makes it harder for Israel to spread their propaganda or lets Fuentes spread hateful antisemitic tropes.

Neither has much to do with American or Israeli Jews 'burning the goodwill of the American people,' nor is there anything they could really do differently to mitigate it.

you're saying that Israel/American Jews built goodwill by pushing Holocaust education in school and anti-Nazi/antisemitism propaganda?

Yes, I'm saying that generations of Jews made specific efforts to denormalize and taboo antisemitism through lobbying and cultural efforts. I don't think this is a controversial statement, or one that requires a conspiratorial reading. I think that's pretty much been the stated goal of many Jewish or holocaust remembrance organizations for decades. The ADL on their website specifically calls out in their page on their history and mission that in the 1950s they:

embark[ed] on a campaign to produce educational and cultural media promoting religious and racial acceptance. In December 1959, in conjunction with ADL's 46th annual meeting, the CBS television network broadcasts "A Salute to the American Theatre," featuring excerpts from Broadway productions on the theme of diversity.

While in the 1960s they used:

Worldwide attention to the capture, trial and execution of Nazi henchman Adolf Eichmann prompts renewed focus on the Holocaust and catalyzes ADL activities to educate about the Holocaust and counter those who deny or diminish it.

And in the 1970s they:

establishe[d] the International Center for Holocaust Studies (now known as the Braun Holocaust Institute-Glick Center for Holocaust Studies) which becomes one of the nation's first formal Holocaust Education programs - pioneering materials for students and educators to understand the Holocaust and apply its lessons to contemporary issues of prejudice and hate.

Later on in the 2000s they will:

ADL joins with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education and Yad Vashem to launch Echoes and Reflections, a comprehensive multimedia program for teaching about the Holocaust in U.S. schools.

The ADL is just one organization that has worked on this project, but at no point has their goal been conspiratorial or secret: they want to put Holocaust education on curricula, they want to create Holocaust education materials and get them into the hands of teachers and students to produce a world where the vast majority of American students (who are paying any kind of attention) are exposed to these narratives. This built up cultural goodwill over the course of seventy years is being burned over the past three.

What have they now done differently to burn the goodwill?

Pew finds that 53% of Americans now have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 42% before the war. This includes a supermajority of Democrats, 69% up from a narrow 53% majority before the war. But worse, Republicans under 50 now have a 50% unfavorable view of Israel, up from 35% before the war.*

This all happened since 2022. Do you think the media environment changed significantly enough in that time, or immigration altered demographics sufficiently, or some other factor intervened, that across the board Americans left and right turned against Israel? You think it has nothing to do with Israel's behavior, and that Israel could not have made any choices to mitigate that decline? That's a bizarre take given the obvious correlation between Israel's actions in Gaza and the decline in American public opinion on Israel.

You can certainly argue that the emergence of social media, particularly those outside the control of traditional media guardians like Xitter and tiktok, was necessary to publicize what happened in Gaza without censorship; but if nothing was happening in Gaza, there would have been nothing to publicize. Maybe this is all propaganda from Israel's jew-hating enemies, but without the war, the war could not be the site and opportunity for an external maneuver by those enemies. The temporal correlation is way too strong to argue that the conduct of the war has not had a disastrous impact on public opinion around Israel. And saying Israel had no choice about how to conduct the war is absurd.

Now, goodwill exists so it can be used. Were Israel burning goodwill to permanently solve the problem, I may not support their solution, but I could respect the decision. Israel's actions thus far have not solved their problems, they have amounted to mowing the grass.

The most dangerous mechanism on for Israel, though, is one I myself see on this very forum.

After October 7th, plenty of people here were gung-ho for a little genocide/purge. Precious little of the conversation in this thread is focused on Palestine, whereas most of the standout comments focus on Jewish control of Media/Finance/Hollywood and other institutions.

We've had our resident Jew-Posters since before 2023, and I generally either ignored them or argued against them. Now I find myself upvoting them, agreeing with them, when the conversation turns to Palestine. Orthodox Ivy League liberal lawyers in my social circle are horrified finding themselves agreeing with Marjorie Taylor Greene more than they agree with Chuck Schumer, or seeing tweets from Fuentes or quotes from Darryl Cooper and agreeing with them. When Israel makes the antisemites correct about one thing, they risk making people look at the rest of their thoughts. It's a very bad dynamic for the Jewish People.

nor is there anything they could really do differently to mitigate it.

Have they tried?

*Gallup shows similar across the board declines during the war, but in less detail.

Elements of the right have always wanted to be more openly antisemitic, and that’s been building steadily on the edgier corners of the internet for years now. Though Gaza isn’t a primary motivation for right antisemites, I do think it is closely related to why right antisemitism is bursting out into the open in a bigger way now. Previously, if the right allowed their antisemites any air they were handing the left a massive stick to clobber them with. Now, the hypocrisy of the left accusing the right of antisemitism would be too rich after the last few years of anti-Zionism from the left that quite frequently spills over into outright antisemitism. So even though right antisemites don’t give a shit about Gaza, it is very helpful for them because it provides a permission structure to come out into the open.

Because the American right writ large does not give a shit that Israel has turned Palestine into rubble. After October 7th, plenty of people here were gung-ho for a little genocide/purge.

Well, some of us are influenced by a libertarian and/or paleocon bleeding heart and anti-war POV. Just sayin

So it begs the question - why is the American right turning against Jews now, and what changed in the last 20-30 years that enabled it?

American Jews used to be much more ideologically diverse and spread across both parties. Now they are like 98 percent Democrat and very very far left. More than Asians or African Americans, and much more influential than either of those groups. Part of the reason no one takes Ben Shapiro seriously the way they did Dennis Praeger or Mark Levin is that he’s clearly some kind of weird outlier, the right equivalent of the Democrats castrated whipped token white males. He’s like the Republican Tim Walz.

American Jews are only about as Democrat as Hispanics and have never been as democrat as blacks.

American Jews used to be much more ideologically diverse and spread across both parties. Now they are like 98 percent Democrat and very very far left.

Modern Orthodox Jews mostly vote right, including Republican in the US, but are not particularly politically engaged in countries other than Israel. Haredi/Hassidic Jews vote for the Rebbe's corrupt political machine, and in the US the big ones are mostly nominally Republican.

Interesting, although I'd push back and say that (without actually looking for any data) I doubt those numbers don't apply to Israelis, Jews further down the orthodox spectrum and the boomer-Jews who have real money/power outside of Hollywood/conventional media. Even the doctors/professors I meet are not at all like the anti-Israel protestors. But I take your point more broadly.

Jewish Boomers of any income level you will find a lot more conservatives, and the liberal ones are usually not crazy. Gen X is where the shift starts, and it becomes almost total ideological lockstep in the Millennial and Zoomer ones.

I read the article and I also watched the Fuentes/Carlson interview. And I actually have a different point of view. For instance here is Hanania

The story of the 2019 “Groyper War” is instructive here. Followers of Fuentes would ambush mainstream conservative figures, most notably Charlie Kirk at Turning Point USA events, and pepper them with questions about topics like immigration and Israel. Kirk, who had once openly supported legal immigration and “stapling green cards to diplomas,” shifted toward a harder line, demonstrating how a fringe online movement could bully one of the GOP’s most connected influencers into changing his tune.

Setting the emotional appeal and Russel conjugations aside, I do not think these questions are out of bounds. Trump and Kirk have America First policy, which is also something that Groypers can get behind. They are on board with tariffs and hard stance of US foreign policies even against allies like Canada or Denmark or Mexico and other countries. It is absolutely logical to ask why should Israel have special place when under the same policy. It is not as if people like Kirk were "bullied" - it is that it is very hard to answer these questions and be consistent with America First messaging.

To the degree Fuentes is getting a publicity bump, it's mostly via the left choosing its destructor. By trying to offload one of their pet murderers onto some dank corner of the internet right, they wound up publicizing a relatively niche character. Who has played his moment in the sun pretty well so far.

And they can't even bitch too much about anti-semitism given lefty behavior in the past two years. This has legitimized right-wing JQ'ers in a way few other things could. Jew-hate is now the nobbly end of the horseshoe, the bridge between the left and right at the extreme.

By trying to offload one of their pet murderers onto some dank corner of the internet right, they wound up publicizing a relatively niche character. Who has played his moment in the sun pretty well so far.

Man, I need to frame this.

Antisemitism has always been the horseshoe theory par excellence. The greens and constitutionalists were able to agree about it before all this.

I stand by my previous assessment that Fuentes isn't going mainstream, now or in the future. Fuentes political character arc is that he will come out as gay and go on a left wing podcast tour denouncing how toxic right wing ideology kept him in the closet.

come out as gay and go on a left wing podcast tour denouncing how toxic right wing ideology kept him in the closet.

Or come out as gay and go on a right-wing podcast tour that if we keep important immigrants, they'll start throwing the gays off roofs. Look at the Hammtramck/Dearborn socialists lamenting the pride/trans flags coming down after they dutifully voted for the brown guys.

I saw a short snippet of the interview in which he declared himself to be the admirer of Stalin of all people, so I'm inclined to agree with you. Then again, maybe it was a deepfake.

The Tories are dying, the CDU is dying, mainstream republicanism is dying. The "right wing" elite has little to offer its voters and consistently fail. People aren't voting republicans for more wars in the middle east, cheap Indian labour and a deregulated wall street.

They try to brand Fuentes as extreme when his policies are having an immigration policy that would make America far safer, more cohesive and that would benefit labour. Meanwhile, we are supposed to pretend that invading Iraq was sensible Milquetoast policy.

The left has a similar problem in that establishment Democrat policies don't deliver to their base either. Parading the first DEI person at some post while delivering neoliberal economics isn't what the base desires. Most likely we are going to see a revolt within both parties that turns both sides into internal shit shows. The establishment controls the campaigns and the seats, the base refuses to vote and to do activism.

A few billion dollars in aid and geopolitical cover is a small price to pay for having the ethnic group that controls international finance and global media on your side.

You know that most of the reason the Near East hates the West is because of us propping up Israel, right? Western protection of Israel was explicitly cited as a motive for both September 11 and the Houthi blockade of the Red Sea.

And it's not even like all Jews support Israel!

Western protection of Israel was explicitly cited as a motive for both September 11

I tend to think that bin Laden was more insulted that Saudia Arabia chose protect itself from Saddam by having HW Bush set up shop rather than invoke his Mujahideen who were fresh off defeating the Soviets. That seems more salient in a lot of ways -- it was infidels setting up military bases in the holiest of Islamic countries and it was a personal slight. Moreover, the fight between Islamic Arab states and the secular pan-arabism of Saddam and Nasser was still in full flight.

And it's not even like all Jews support Israel!

I'm pretty sure it's not even a majority of them at this point, as long as we use the expression 'support for Israel' in the Likudnik / AIPAC-ist context.

I feel like that is both true but also sort of just an excuse to justify direct terrorist action against America. It was one reason among many, and I can't help but feel like if we were less supportive of Israel 9/11 would have still happened. We still meddle quite a bit on our own out there. I have a Ron Paulish stance on it.

There is a legitimate geopolitical reason for propping-up Israel, but it sounds Machiavellian when stated explicitly. Israel cuts the Arab world in half, preventing them from coalescing into a caliphate which would be a global power. Israel is the cornerstone of America's divide-and-conquor strategy in the Middle East.

I'm no expert on the geopolitics of that region, but it seems to me if anything could bring them together, it's their common hatred of Israel.

I’m no expert on the Middle East either, but it sure seems to me that shared animosity towards Israel counts for surprisingly little over there: despite the ruling elite of Turkey and Iran being rabidly anti-Israel, the two countries consistently refuse to cooperate and regularly back opposing factions in, e.g., the Syrian conflict. Similarly for Saudi Arabia against Iran, Saudi against the Houthis, and to a lesser extent Qatar and the Gulf Arabs competing against their fellow Arabs for Trump-senpai to notice them.

Honestly I suspect that with the exception of the Houthis and the Iranian hardliners, the anti-Israel sentiment is largely just political theater, a cheap way for a mostly-apathetic elite to shore up support with the masses and to burnish their “pious, God-fearing Muslim” credentials while continuing to suck from the teat of US foreign aid and (in the case of Turkey) NATO membership.

Arabs won't coalesce on their own, they need to be oppressed by somebody or they'll fight amongst themselves. So Israel beating up Iran and acting as a mild constraint on Turkish ambitions in Syria is the only way this actually happens, and both are newer than US support for Israel.

Arabs won't coalesce on their own, they need to be oppressed by somebody or they'll fight amongst themselves

Hell, most of the time they’ll fight amongst themselves even when they are being oppressed by an outsider, hence why the Ottomans and later the British were able to play “divide and conquer” in the region for so long.

The Arab world has tried this before - the United Arab Republic lasted three years, and it wasn't Israel that broke it up, it was Syrian elites resisting Nasser's power. The Arab world is simply too fractious to unite, they're even too fractious to cooperate in opposing Israel. Israel's proximity to the Suez Canal is more geopolitically important than the simple fact that it sits between Egypt and Syria (nothing is stopping Egypt and Saudi Arabia from uniting across the Red Sea, but that's clearly not going to happen).

I submit to you that the United Arab Republic would have been a lot more stable if it were contiguous. Things may have been different if Nasser had the ability to drive a tank column into Damascus. If you need to look at a map to know what country is between Egypt and Syria, go ahead.

nothing is stopping Egypt and Saudi Arabia from uniting across the Red Sea, but that's clearly not going to happen

The main thing stopping this is US foreign policy. The US funds a quarter of Egypt's military expenses (which is extremely relevant because the Egypt is controlled by the army), and defends Saudi Arabia whenever they are threatened militarily.

Syria wasn't able to hold Lebanon, and this is- as later history of the Assad regime shows- not due to squeamishness on the part of the former. Arabs are just a combination of incredibly fractious and bad at war without domination by a non-Arab power. No doubt there will soon be Israeli proxy forces(druze, probably Jewish settler, maybe Maronite) establishing non-state governments and mucking things up even more.

Perhaps Nasser would have been able to hold it a little longer by force, but Syria is, as recent history shows, not an easy country to hold by force, particularly when your "force" is an Arab army with all that entails.

As for Egypt and Saudi Arabia unifying, do you seriously think the Saudis look at Egyptians with anything other than dripping contempt that would make BAP blush? Do you think the Egyptian stratocratic barons under Sisi could restrain themselves from clumsily sacking Saudi Arabia's oil wealth? For all the vile stuff that America has done in the Arab world, if you take Western hegemony out of the picture, you wouldn't get some fantastical unified caliphate, you'd have a generational bloodbath that would only end when the last warlord runs out of oil.

Uh, you'd get the ottoman and persian empires reborn. Arabs killing each other would line up to be proxies for more militarily competent neighbors in exchange for influence- this is how Hezbollah came to control Lebanon- and that's how empires are formed.

The Heritage Foundation has not been "the" think-tank for a while now.

The idea that groypers as a faction have even a percent of the influence over the Republican party as men like Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Dave Portnoy, and Donald J Trump, seems absurd to me when the only groyper currently running for office is running as a Democrat.

Dave Portnoy

wasn't there a scandal where he came up as a fragile Jew a few months back?

wasn't there a scandal where he came up as a fragile Jew a few months back?

Was there? If so, does the median republican voter know about it? If they do know about it, do they care?

I doubt that the median republican voter even knows who David Fuentes or Richard Hanania are, and if they do, I would bet that it is because they were either on (or were mentioned on) either Rogan or Barstool Sports.

Indeed, his eponymous complaint caused quite the stir when it was first published

If not Fuentes then someone else of his ilk, sooner or later. As far as I can tell, "normie" Republicans under 40 are extinct.

What do you mean by "normie"? because if you are talking about the sort of polite anodyne neo-conservatism espoused by men like Bill Kristol and David French. I agree. Nobody under the age of 60 is buying what they are selling in the year of our Lord 2025.

If you are talking about "normal Republicans" that is a completely different story. If you take a video of a "No Kings" protest and a video of a Charlie Kirk Memorial and compare them to see which one has more grey hair in it, I am guessing that it won't even be close.

I just mean that every time I see one of those neocon boomers actually expose themselves to public commentary they're always being torn to shreds by hordes of feral /pol/ zoomers.

I opened the link and I don't see any evidence there that he's a groyper.

for having the ethnic group that controls international finance and global media on your side

What do they do with international finance and global media, exactly?

Finance has busily furthered DEI, deindustrialization of the West, financialization of the economy, toxic housing bubbles and rapid development of China.

The media whips up racial hysteria, worsens relations between the sexes and spreads grossly misleading racial narratives about policing. They've spread panic about climate change that has had all kinds of horrible effects, mental illness, people refusing to have kids 'for the climate'. Not to mention popularizing energy and environmental policies that have wrecked industry. Everyone constantly complaining that enforcing borders is fascism, that's the fault of the media. The media problematizes national myths and culture, delegitimizes identities like 'white' in favour of 'Black' or 'POC'. And the media goes out of their way to insult and humiliate white men. See here: https://x.com/StupidWhiteAds

If the argument is 'American Jews control finance and media, therefore they shouldn't be upset since they're bringing in more than they cost' then the premise is wrong because finance and media are not helping out. International finance and world media have been massively toxic and aggressively unhelpful for at least the last 30 years. They've been especially opposed to Christians and conservatives. A disproportionate amount of these sectors are Jewish (Blackrock and NYT for example), much is not.

What has the 'conservative intelligentsia' actually done for conservatives? Have they brought huge victories, or did they just help implement mass immigration, Pride as civic religion, diversity quotas to achieve their real goals - tax cuts and regime change in the Middle East?

I would much rather have my financial sector run by some honest, hardworking midwit who tries to advance national interests and develop our industries, than a 160 IQ financial genius who uses his vast talents for private profit, asset-stripping, offshoring and demanding share buybacks over investment.

I would rather have patriotic journalists with tedious prose and limited abilities than charismatic, excellent writers who hate me and attack me and my ancestors, systematically pursuing my disempowerment in society.

One of the wisest things the US could do is to crack down on media and financial elites, put patriots in charge of these key institutions so that they're coordinated to further US interests. That goes for whoever's running America. But it should be 10x more important for conservatives/MAGA to recognize that these people are, (generally speaking), not their friends!

Finance has busily furthered DEI, deindustrialization of the West, financialization of the economy, toxic housing bubbles and rapid development of China.

Peanut butter enthusiasts lobby for more people to eat peanut butter! Man with hammer thinks most problems can be solved by smacking them! News at Eleven!

...More seriously, I think I generally share your feelings about the finance industry. But this was funny.

The media whips up racial hysteria, worsens relations between the sexes and spreads grossly misleading racial narratives about policing.

True, but media has also been undergoing a major structural disruption due to the internet for the past twenty years; they're desperately trying to do whatever it takes to keep eyeballs. What's getting pushed out (e.g. in the NYT) is what sells - entities that don't keep up, like Newsweek, Time, many mid-major and local papers, etc. - die.

Also also, the idea that newsmedia are amoral gossipmongers lying and ginning up hysteria to goose sales isn't exactly new

I would much rather have my financial sector run by some honest, hardworking midwit who tries to advance national interests and develop our industries, than a 160 IQ financial genius who uses his vast talents for private profit, asset-stripping, offshoring and demanding share buybacks over investment.

I would rather have patriotic journalists with tedious prose and limited abilities than charismatic, excellent writers who hate me and attack me and my ancestors, systematically pursuing my disempowerment in society.

Perhaps there is a third option between "people foresaw and intended these results because they are evil" and "people would achieve alternate results because they are good", which is "people intended well, but were wrong."

I'm not going full mistake theory - people tie their egos to their opinions, rationalize and dig in, and usually aren't amenable to being convinced by dispassionate arguments. But that doesn't get rid of the fact that people tend not to think like cartoon supervillains.

It doesn't need to be cartoonish supervillainy, it's world-class, hardworking, high IQ supervillainy done by actual supervillains with decades of experience, not invented by some idiot comic writer who couldn't write a coherent plot to save his life.

They can invent and propagate whole ideologies to justify and valorise looting, perfect networks of influence and private enrichment. They can reframe looting the commons as beneficial, positive development, the source of our strength. They can reframe sabotage and wrecking as virtue struggling against evil. And people will believe it because people generally go with the flow. Plus these guys are very good at papering over the cracks because they're Very Rich or Are The Media. Maybe they believe it too themselves, it's easy to believe things if they're advancing your interests.

These are Ayn Rand supervillains.

True, but media has also been undergoing a major structural disruption due to the internet for the past twenty years; they're desperately trying to do whatever it takes to keep eyeballs.

"whatever it takes" notably didn't involve breaking the story that the President was mentally incompetent, and before that it didn't involve breaking the story that the president's son was selling access to his father to foreign interests. In fact, there's no shortage of stories that could have earned the news corps an avalanche of eyeballs that they passed on for clearly ideological reasons. This argument that the media class is fundamentally mercenary and are just seeking to maximize attention and ad revenue might have been weakly plausible in 2014, but at this point it is pretty clearly an undead argument immune to any degree of contrary evidence.

"whatever it takes" notably didn't involve breaking the story that the President was mentally incompetent, and before that it didn't involve breaking the story that the president's son was selling access to his father to foreign interests.

Correct, because those stories would have pissed off their current readers, without necessarily gaining them eyeballs among other, new customers.

Nowadays media makes money by feeding people's epistemic bubbles, not puncturing them.

If socmed metrics are anything to go by, drama sells. Also mainstream companies have proven time and again they will pick ideology over profit.

Social Media is free; NYT is trying to get people to pay money to subscribe, and precisely by picking ideology - i.e., reinforcing their reader's pre-existing biases and telling them that they are correct about the world but moreso, and in fact have they considered being even MORE worried about their particular boogeymen?!? - has racked up millions of subscribers.

What do they do with international finance and global media, exactly?

If the word 'your' in that context is a reference to the globalist goyim elite, then yes, the original statement is technically correct, I guess.

I have never heard a human being sound so much like a text-to-speech program.

EDIT: this was re: Kevin Roberts. I haven't come across him before but he has a very peculiar manner of speech to my ear.

I actually stand by the comments made earlier with regards to Fuentes specifically - he's got far too many flaws to be a real vehicle for serious political change, and while being gay isn't something I find disqualifying it is something a large portion of his potential base finds disqualifying (if you're curious, check out Kiwi farms - they have impeccably documented the multiple instances of him being caught red-handed browsing gay porn or gazing longingly into the eyes of another man). His actual movement has some of the worst optics of all time, including a large contingent of groypers that are open supporters of pedophilia (if you want proof, do a search for the term "cunny" in a place where nobody can see what's on your screen).

But there's no putting the genie back into the bottle. Israel has completely torched their reputation with the youth of both the left wing and the right wing. Nobody on the left gives a single shit about accusations of anti-semitism anymore, because those accusations have been used on people like Ms Rachel. When you tell people that a woman taking care of a young girl that had her legs blown off and giving her a chance to have a real birthday party is actually an antisemite, you don't actually make people think that caring for amputee children is bad - you make people think that an antisemite is a pretty young woman who cares about wounded and disabled children. When John Podhoretz says that Trump can say Shylock as many times as he wants because he bombed Iran, or when the ADL says that nazi salutes are fine as long as you support bombing the Palestinians, they're torching the societal proscriptions against antisemitism that have existed since the end of WWII.

And for the right? The majority of conservative youth are either /pol/ adjacent or had their worldview informed almost entirely by second-hand exposure to /pol/ memes and ideas. The information environment on the online, anonymous right is so much more effective at selecting for persuasive memes and ideas than the institutional, pro-Zionist right that whenever there's an even playing field /pol/ wins every single time. I've said before on here that people who are healthy and well-adjusted winners generally don't get involved in antisemitism or other kinds of discrimination because they don't have a need to blame anyone for why they failed - but society has failed so many of these young men that the number of losers has reached critical mass. Even the youth who are actually doing well are growing up in a social context where antisemitism is just a constant fact of life. You are never, ever going to turn a young, radicalised right winger who has grown up on an information diet of /pol/ infographics, Pepe the frog memes and USS Liberty references into a zionist... the only exceptions I've seen of people pulling themselves out of that kind of information environment are cases where they end up trans, and the radical left isn't going to be supporting Israel either.

And of course there's the fact that there isn't actually a rational case for American support of Israel - and especially not for the kinds of ridiculous policies that are currently being demanded, like restrictions on free speech just for Israel or extra taxes forced onto struggling rural populations to help pay for Israel's military and public healthcare system. These policies are unconscionable, and the right is correct to reject them.

I've said multiple times on here and eaten multiple downvotes for it, but Israel has completely torched their reputation around the world, and they have done their absolute best to destroy the social safeguards against anti-semitism in the process. It was incredibly short-sighted, and this is only the beginning - have a look at the rates of Israel support by age, and think about what happens in a few years when more of the boomers start dying off and the younger populations start gaining power. Even assuming nobody changes their opinions at all, a majority of the US population is going to be opposed to Israel by virtue of the inexorable demographic changes of time and death by old age.

he's got far too many flaws to be a real vehicle for serious political change, and while being gay isn't something I find disqualifying it is something a large portion of his potential base finds disqualifying

I’m reminded of 2015, when no one thought that evangelical boomers would ever have more than a grudging toleration for Donald Trump, at very best.

Trump's base has always been 'Christians that don't go to church very often'. In 2015 that opinion was laughably ignorant because boomer evangelicals already loved Trump.

You can be reminded all you want, but these are not really remotely comparable. Donald Trump was a decades long, successful, popular mainstream celebrity businessman with the top TV show for years running.

Because Donald was elected, isn't reason to bring 'disqualifying flaws' down to zero in predictive value of other people in other contexts

and while being gay isn't something I find disqualifying it is something a large portion of his potential base finds disqualifying (if you're curious, check out Kiwi farms - they have impeccably documented the multiple instances of him being caught red-handed browsing gay porn or gazing longingly into the eyes of another man).

Uh. What?

And for the right? The majority of conservative youth are either /pol/ adjacent or had their worldview informed almost entirely by second-hand exposure to /pol/ memes and ideas.

In a way they’re just the new low information voters adopting what’s in vogue in meme format. 2016 was the real watershed moment where it became evident that it’s a force multiplier in battling in the media space. And it was weaponized hilariously.

The information environment on the online, anonymous right is so much more effective at selecting for persuasive memes and ideas than the institutional, pro-Zionist right that whenever there's an even playing field /pol/ wins every single time. I've said before on here that people who are healthy and well-adjusted winners generally don't get involved in antisemitism or other kinds of discrimination because they don't have a need to blame anyone for why they failed - but society has failed so many of these young men that the number of losers has reached critical mass. Even the youth who are actually doing well are growing up in a social context where antisemitism is just a constant fact of life. You are never, ever going to turn a young, radicalised right winger who has grown up on an information diet of /pol/ infographics, Pepe the frog memes and USS Liberty references into a zionist... the only exceptions I've seen of people pulling themselves out of that kind of information environment are cases where they end up trans, and the radical left isn't going to be supporting Israel either.

It’s actually pretty funny. Awhile ago I was looking for a new book to read in what little down time I had after finishing an earlier one and came across this that appeared in my Amazon suggestions. When I went through the preview I was laughing my ass off because of how idiotic most of this stuff sounds, and it instantly reminded me of the Far Right Extremist meme. As something of a moderate fascist myself, it was very funny watching some academic jackass come along and supposedly tell me what it is I actually believe. Chapter 5, “Women and Nonbinary Children,” already taking a page out of the shitlib lexicon right out of the gate. How’s the phrase go? “Surely the enemy has conquered you when you adopt and speak their language.” Apparently being illiberal makes you a Nazi it seems. Nothing could be further from the truth. Always love it when people attempt to pathologize my political beliefs.

We live in a system today where a large number of men aren’t benefitting from the institutions that take from them. And who can blame them? A few of my closest friends are some of the hardest working people I have ever known from childhood and have been high achieving all their life. For almost the last 15 years when they’re off work they go straight home and withdraw into their hobbies and social ties that have remained with them. They barely participate in society anymore unless there’s an outing that involves family or friends and if you ever ask them why you’ll get the same reason from them every single time. “I have no reason to.” Like myself we very much grew up with the mindset that you marry young, get a career and raise a family. At least that was all we ever asked for growing up. That’s what gives their lives meaning. But absent that they see little reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

American society is losing its most productive people at the most productive ages of their lives and things in a hundred different ways are simply demotivating for a lot of men. Otherwise give me your best vanity pitch for why a lot of young men should care about it. Men aren’t going to work to uphold a system they feel is dedicated to tearing them down at every turn. At some point you have to speak their language. I don’t wake up every day and go to work for the “possibility” of getting paid on the hope my boss decides to pay me. I work for the tangible results that are returned to me to be able to live my life. Most communities are being destroyed. Most churches are dying and most men don’t have a realistic opportunity to pursue relationships with others.

But there's no putting the genie back into the bottle. Israel has completely torched their reputation with the youth of both the left wing and the right wing. Nobody on the left gives a single shit about accusations of anti-semitism anymore, because those accusations have been used on people like Ms Rachel. When you tell people that a woman taking care of a young girl that had her legs blown off and giving her a chance to have a real birthday party is actually an antisemite, you don't actually make people think that caring for amputee children is bad - you make people think that an antisemite is a pretty young woman who cares about wounded and disabled children.

People have had Israel fatigue for a long time. I think only now it’s become more socially acceptable for it to seep out in the broader population. The average person’s beef isn’t with Jews or Judaism at all. It’s with Zionism which is the ideological mantle of Israeli government. That can go straight to hell.

Now I'm wondering ... what could Israel have done differently to not taurch their reputation?

As Worf said unto Q, "Die".

This is all Monday morning quarterbacking but:

  1. Try to get their American cousins to not launch a 20 year long pogrom against the demographics that most strongly supported Israel

  2. Try to get their American cousins to not spend 50 years pumping up and covering for all the demographics that hate Israel the most

  3. Realized that their public relations campaign was going the way of Harley-Davidson* sometime in the early 2010s

  4. Done something different regarding October 7, somehow. This is the hardest one, it’s like saying “why not simply prevent 9/11?”

I take the opposite analysis of a lot of this board, I think most of Israel’s flagging support is the result of the American cousins and not Israel itself. Were it not for them, Israel would just be one of many, many foreign countries with a somewhat questionable human rights record.

*Harley-Davidson is a motorcycle company that monomaniacally focused their marketing and product lines around boomers, to the detriment of appealing to any other demographic. The minute boomers got too old to ride, the company’s sales collapsed.

Israel could've gone into Gaza, wrecked shit, and left before it became a years long humanitarian crisis, and only lefty weirdos that also think kids can change their gender would've gotten all bent up out of shape about it.

Israel could've gone into Gaza, wrecked shit, and left before it became a years long humanitarian crisis

Domestically, not until they got the hostages back. That's what the hostages were for -- to keep Israel pummelling Gaza.

They could trade umpteen zillion prisoners for the hostages. That’s what they wound up doing anyways.

I take the opposite analysis of a lot of this board, I think most of Israel’s flagging support is the result of the American cousins and not Israel itself. Were it not for them, Israel would just be one of many, many foreign countries with a somewhat questionable human rights record.

Very clever argument, and for a certain species of American conservative, I think it's true. However this doesn't explain European anti-Zionism, which historically has been much more pervasive both on the left and the right than in America (at least until recently).

Realized that their public relations campaign was going the way of Harley-Davidson* sometime in the early 2010s

*Harley-Davidson is a motorcycle company that monomaniacally focused their marketing and product lines around boomers, to the detriment of appealing to any other demographic. The minute boomers got too old to ride, the company’s sales collapsed.

This reminds me of some article I read ages ago on The American Conservative which, in the context of some other mostly unrelated subject, argued that the main cultural force actually driving popular support for Israel in the US is Reaganist boomers picturing Israel as a second Saigon. Their attitude being: we abandoned Saigon like traitors and cowards in the face of the conquering enemy, so we owe it to ourselves to always support Israel, because reasons. The author then argued that the one thing we can surely state about this sentiment is that it has zero relevance to any American born after 1960 or so.

Done something different regarding October 7, somehow. This is the hardest one, it’s like saying “why not simply prevent 9/11?”

I'll note, with minimal Monday Morning Quarterbacking as I said this 10/8, Israel did not have to invade and level the Gaza strip, which made Palestine front page news again. They could have used targeted strikes against individuals, and diplomatic leverage following the attacks, to normalize relations with more Arab nations and destroy Hamas' global funding base.

This strategy worked extraordinarily well against Hezbollah and Iran and in Qatar, none of those interventions created significant backlash, and the civilian casualties were never obviously photogenic enough to harm Israel internationally (despite murdering a Qatari cop/soldier/whatever along with a bunch of kids elsewhere).

Now maybe they're able to get the Abraham Accords back on line now, but we'll have to see. If nothing else, Hamas created significant space for the Palestine dead enders, who were about to be permanently sold out by the gulf states and made more or less irrelevant permanently.

Try to get their American cousins to not launch a 20 year long pogrom against the demographics that most strongly supported Israel

Why would we assume that Ezra Klein class of Jews give a fuck what the mostly right wing current rulers of Israel do?

Especially without some inciting event.

If right wing white Gentiles can't prevent their own progressive brothers from championing that alleged ethnic cleansing why should we assume that progressive Jews could be talked down?

But, if I would raise a criticism myself, maybe Netanyahu's treatment of Obama and his lining up behind his American opponents, was slightly unwise.

We can argue that most of the outcome is baked in because of immigration but the absolute last thing you want as a foreign nation is to be seen as an ally to one side of America's culture war. It's a demented game with no clear rules but always two sides and it's insane to play it for real stakes.

Taking the invite from Republicans and rejecting any attempt by Obama to slow down on settlements didn't play well on the left, especially since Netanyahu seems to have the hardiness of a cockroach.

If right wing whites can't prevent their own progressive brothers from championing that alleged ethnic cleansing why should we assume that progressive Jews could be talked down?

I think the Israelis could have tard-wrangled them if they made a serious effort. But like all the rest of us, they didn’t realize the significance of the SJW threat and how fast the ideology would metastasize.

Additionally part of the problem was that Israel spent years presenting an overly white-washed version of themselves, so people didn’t realize how awful Israel was going to look through the lens of decolonialist ideology.

I don't want to just post a big smiley face holding a sign that says "THIS" but I do want to say that this strongly aligns with my perception of the situation. Fuentes could gobble a dong live on the air and it wouldn't pull respectable Zionist conservatism out of its graybeard death spiral.

Yes; the goal of overprescribing declining zionism of the american right to goblins like Fuentes is another vain attempt to discredit the viewpoint as unacceptable. In reality Fuentes is at best a downstream symptom of the changing tides, not a cause or much of an instigator.

I have to say, I was very impressed by both his interview with Tucker, and his eulogy for Charlie Kirk (which was better than a lot of sermons by actual preachers that I have heard).

me too. I was impressed by his ability to basically take 4chan /pol/ or twitter style shitposting and... "sane-wash" it into a coherent argument. I don't know if he personally will become a big influence, but that sort of alt-right, moderate racist, moderate sexist, moderate anti-semite faction of internet reactionaries is definitely becoming a force in American politics.

I saw that interview as well and was indeed surprised that Tucker had him on. He didn’t really cover anything that Nick hadn’t already brought up in previous interviews. I did get the impression that Tucker was squirming a bit in some of his responses to Nick, almost as if he’s trying to ride both sides of the aisle because he doesn’t want to get hit hard by the political establishment.

I felt I also got dismissed by people here when I brought up Nick in contrast with Charlie Kirk’s assassination. People essentially said Nick doesn’t have much of a base of support outside the groypers, but there’s a massive undercurrent of people sympathetic for wanting to shift the establishment gatekeeping of conservative assumptions to other issues, that’s probably best seen by the viewership numbers his content generates. I don’t have anything quantifiable outside of that. And why should someone? People don’t want to get destroyed in their personal or professional lives if they express sympathies for his views.

I don’t actually think Nick is a racist or an anti-Semite. He’s not someone like ZoomerHistorian (who probably is a racist and anti-Semite) but the kind of views expressed in a book like the one in the video represent a broad segment of populations across the western world who are afraid of saying the kinds of things that someone like Nick is willing to do. And if you look at the character assassination campaign against him, it’s no wonder why.

In the future I predict no one will remember the significant impact someone like Charlie Kirk had over the long run. He simply repeated the same boring, middle of the road mainstream conservatism these token characters with big money support behind them always do. But people will remember the impact Nick had in the political sphere. Whether that turns out to be for better or worse is still to be determined.

In the future I predict no one will remember the significant impact someone like Charlie Kirk had over the long run. He simply repeated the same boring, middle of the road mainstream conservatism these token characters with big money support behind them always do.

Why? We remember both MLK and Malcolm X, so I guess we simply have to wait until someone takes a shot at Fuentes to see just how much history rhymes.

And if you look at the character assassination campaign against him, it’s no wonder why.

Perhaps Fuentes is the seed crystal for what will be, in 50 years, clearly identifiable as post-progressivism. Or post-post-conservatism, but that's silly.

Why? We remember both MLK and Malcolm X, so I guess we simply have to wait until someone takes a shot at Fuentes to see just how much history rhymes.

Well someone already did show up at his house with a gun, wanting to kill him. But I suppose he’s an appropriate target to the relevant interest groups, so he doesn’t matter that much.

Perhaps Fuentes is the seed crystal for what will be, in 50 years, clearly identifiable as post-progressivism. Or post-post-conservatism, but that's silly.

50 years could contain anything. You can’t even predict what will happen tomorrow. But conservatism is still looked at as a tarnish word the left remains hard at work trying to smear and degrade even further as much as it can. It contaminates virtually everything it touches, including the root of its own traditional philosophy. The liberalism that arose out of the European wars of religion came out of necessity to combat constantly warring identitarian groups with competing divisive and exclusionary outlooks, remains a sound and respectable philosophical opponent of my own political beliefs. It’s still one I regard as wrong but useful lessons can still be gleaned from its failings. The left abandoned its own stance on liberalism a long time ago. If we’re not post-everything already, let’s at least return to the historical and normal vocabulary used to describe our respective positions. Common sense would be a great place to start with things.

‘was interviewed by Tucker’ != ‘has become a major force’. Sure, I’ll grant minor updating toward the premise, but certainly nothing that has come to pass. Tucker mostly isn’t interviewing the major players, and his own star is on the decline

I do think that the Right will become increasingly split on Israel, and that this will include some loud antisemitic voices, some loud voices questioning blind support and being called antisemitic, and a lot of people quietly sliding away. However:

  1. Specific, fringe antisemtic voices will be a minimal contributor to the process and

  2. Pro-Israel voices will amplify and blame the fringe voices in #1 as a way to deletions disagreement with their fading hegemony.

Nick Fuentes is not and there is no strong evidence of him becoming anything more than a fringe, very online persona.

Culture-war-related court opinion:

  • NB (♂) and LB (♀) are in the process of divorcing. LB obtains a restraining order against NB, claiming that NB (1) has been harassing LB both in person and via text, (2) owns a gun, and (3) "has made vague statements that LB believes are suicidal".

  • In this state, a domestic-violence restraining order requires the officer to seize the defendant's (1) guns and (2) permit to buy guns. After being made aware of the restraining order's existence, NB goes to the police station, where an officer asks him about the gun. However, NB cannot remember where he left the gun! At first he says he left it at his cousin's house (intentionally, to prevent his anger issues from leading to violence during the divorce process). Then he says it's in a storage unit. And finally he remembers that, though he originally left it with his cousin, the cousin later gave it to NB's sister and informed NB of the further transfer. He retrieves the gun from his sister's house and gives it to the police.

  • The trial judge credits NB's claim that this was just a failure of memory in a stressful situation, rather than an intentional series of lies. However, the trial judge also finds that "when possessing a firearm one must have it guarded, protected, and secured where you can control that possession, and clearly that wasn't the case for a period of time", so NB lacks the "essential character of temperament necessary to be entrusted with a firearm", "it is not in the interest of public health, safety, or welfare" for NB to possess guns, his gun is forfeited to the government, and his permit to purchase guns is permanently revoked. The appeals panel affirms.

I seem to be missing something here.

We have licenses and background checks and rules about strawpurchases because the idea is to control who has firearms. If someone buys a gun and then gives it to their cousin none of that makes sense.

I don't see any reason to be mad about this specifically unless you are already mad about our current gun regulations existing.

We have licenses and background checks and rules about straw purchases because the idea is to control who has firearms. If someone buys a gun and then gives it to his cousin none of that makes sense.

Buying a gun for another person is illegal only if the other person (1) is ineligible to buy a gun on his own, (2) intends to use the gun in a felony, or (3) intends to give it to a third person who meets criterion 1 or 2. NB did nothing illegal here.

New Jersey requires that everyone that is transferred a firearm has a firearms purchaser identification card and a record of the transaction (N.J.S.2C:58-3). There are temporary exemptions while out hunting and at a firing range and all of them require the person with the firearm is in your immediate vicinity.

Your claim that they did nothing illegal is completely unfounded.

The cousin was in Pennsylvania, not in New Jersey.

Yeah, but you are also supposed to keep your gun(s) securely. "I gave it to my cousin to keep it safe" is one thing. "Where it is right now I have no idea" is another. In the midst of this maybe my cousin-maybe in storage-maybe my sister, what if the gun went missing? What if it turns up in the possession of criminals who use it to do crime?

Guns are not just harmless collectible objects like funkopops, they are for shooting. If you own something dangerous (be that a gun or a dog) you are supposed to be a responsible owner keeping other people safe by keeping control of what you own. "Man, I get so mad I might shoot my wife so I handed it off to someone else" is not, I submit, the same level as "I have this gun for personal safety/home defence/I like going to the range and shooting guns". Cops and judges want to take the gun away in the second case, protest it and I won't object. Cops and judges think maybe you're not the greatest guy to have guns around in the first case? That's not persecution.

If you gave it to your cousin, you don't know where it is, or at least, you sufficiently don't know where it is that you'd better say under oath "I don't know where it is". Your standard implies that it's not possible to give a gun to someone else temporarily at all.

Your standard implies that it's not possible to give a gun to someone else temporarily at all.

I don't mean to be saying that. There will of course be situations where you need someone else to hold the gun for you. But the difference is "This one person definitely has it and definitely it is secure" and not "well it could be anywhere".

"Well it could be anywhere" is not going to play well if some twelve year old gets their hands on it and shoots their friend while showing it off. "Yeah I was so careless that I got a kid killed, but that does not mean I should not be able to have as many guns as I want, that's my Constitutional right!"

Yeah, it's your Constitutional right. You are also an idiot, and it's dangerous to let idiots have guns, Constitution or no.

If you give someone an object, they are now in control over its location and you are not. That's how giving people things works.

A standard which says that you must control its location implies that you can never give it to anyone.

But the difference is "This one person definitely has it and definitely it is secure" and not "well it could be anywhere".

The requirement is not limited to knowing that the gun is secure. It has to be "secured where you can control that possession" which does not allow it to be secured by someone else. Even if his cousin puts it in a gun safe, the judge can just say "You do not control that gun safe. Sorry, you are now permanently prohibited from owning guns".

I agree that safe storage is part of being a responsible gun owner. But it is very much not mandated by US law; the particular transaction might have been illegal, but it's not an inherent fact.

However, NB cannot remember where he left the gun! At first he says he left it at his cousin's house (intentionally, to prevent his anger issues from leading to violence during the divorce process).

Yeah, maybe I'm just a female supremacist, but I think if you are telling the cops "I had to hand my gun to my cousin in case I got so angry during the break-up that I'd shoot my wife" then the restraining order might indeed be justified.

Also "Uh, where is the gun? Well I'm not sure - I think I gave it to my cousin? Or it might be in storage? Oh wait, hang on, now I remember - my sister has it!" is not the most convincing thing ever. Again, I think the judge saying "If you have a gun, you have to know where it is and who has it" is reasonable, and taking away his gun ownership is not the most wicked imposition of authoritarianism ever.

Let him work on his anger and memory issues and then come back and argue he should be able to own guns.

Yeah, I broadly agree- this guy clearly shouldn't be owning guns, even if the specific laws involved might not be reasonable.

Now, there is nowhere in the US that has specific safe storage laws, although everywhere criminalizes leaving guns where kids can get at them. Gunsafes are seen as a sign of responsible gun ownership.

It does need to be said, though, that the government ought to compensate him for his property. Even if it was seized for good reason(as it seems to have been), it was still seized.

If you think he shouldn't be owning guns, make a law which says that he shouldn't own guns. Don't twist another law that really isn't supposed to be used for that, because twisting other laws sets precedents that get applied to other people.

The law in New Jersey did say that he can't own a gun.

The statute says that courts can pull guns after a GVRO (or police refuse to issue a purchase permit) for any perceived deficiency of temperament or character, on a bare preponderance of evidence.

The statute no more says you can or can’t possess a gun after this behavior than it does for a speeding ticket, expired car registration, or purely legal behavior like leaving a toilet set up. Leaving aside compliance with Heller, since that’s a sad joke, where’s the fair notice?

Oh New Jersey. Nybbler's pager must be going off.

But NJ is not alone. Most gun-unfriendly states have similar provisions in their Order of Protection laws, prohibiting firearms for at least the duration of the OP, and the OP often can be extended indefinitely based on various factors. And I doubt any federal judges have the stomach to reverse any of these because domestic violence is, frankly, incredibly common, and commonly deadly. The fastest way one loses their judicial career is denying a motion in a DV case and have the offender then kill the victim the next time around.

The fastest way one loses their judicial career is denying a motion in a DV case and have the offender then kill the victim the next time around.

Perhaps that should be extended to judges who let violent criminals out on no cash bail.

One would hope, but only the domestics really activate all the right elements most of the time.

and the OP often can be extended indefinitely based on various factors

Gives a whole new meaning to the old “surely OP will deliver” skeleton meme

Yeah, that sounds about standard for New Jersey, and why The_Nybbler's so direct to say that they've made the Second Amendment a nullity: "When dealing with guns, the citizen acts at his peril." Also a large point to why GVRO/Red Flag laws are given such skepticism. It's not hard to see this as what their advocates want, where the standard of proof to remove someone's rights is nearly nil, and they must jump high and arbitrary hurdles to get those rights back. And, of course, none of the takings clause people are going to come climbing out of the woodwork for this stuff.

But no serious org is going try to take this sorta case -- both because of its optics, and also just because he didn't cross every i and dot every t to preserve issues and present evidence perfectly -- and neither would the New Jersey State Supreme Court nor SCOTUS take it up if they did. Nobody that isn't already pro-gun is going to be appalled that they've read Rahimi to cordon Heller to a nullity, even a lot of self-described libertarians. And it shows how badly calibrated anyone must be to expect a 'bank shot' SCOTUS case that rules against its specific person while protecting the class of rights that person was trying to appeal toward.


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