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Notes -
Netanyahu Conspiracy Theories on X and Mark Levin as MAGA
Quick rundown:
Needless to say, the evidence provided has not dissuaded the rumors on X. I do not think Netanyahu is dead or severely injured, but these anomalies do warrant an explanation.
Why has Netanyahu not had any sort of public presence since March 9th that would be expected from a wartime leader? During the 12-Day War he maintained a public presence and even toured damage sites from missiles and took questions. But now the first time he appears in public in quite some time is is in a pre-recorded video to mock the rumors of his death in a coffee shop?
The easiest answer for the lack of public presence is due to security concerns. But it seems pretty trivial to me for a leader like Netanyahu to maintain a public presence with very low risk, and that risk would certainly be worthy of the benefits of moralizing the Homefront and projecting confidence.
I suspect the reason for this is because Netanyahu wants Trump to be the "face" of the war- several times a day you can see Trump on the News babbling to the media about the war attracting huge amounts of attention, while we can't spare a penny for Netanyahu's own thoughts or leadership at a time it would be expected. In particular, while Trump is clearly trying to muster NATO to join the war, it would be wise for Netanyahu to be far away from weighing in on that question or publicly supporting it because it would do more harm than good.
I do not see how traditional video touchups or filtering would cause the wedding ring to disappear like it did in the video released today, any video editing experts feel free to weigh in. Barring some "yeah I edit videos all the time and I've seen this before", the most likely explanation is that the ring disappearance was a video manipulation, but one intended to misdirect the critics on X- give them a bone to chew on with a false lead.
Mark Levin is MAGA, his critics are not
Rewind to 2016, Mark Levin was an avowed Never-Trumper while the alt-right essentially memed Trump into existence against all expectations. The tables have turned, if it was not already clear what side Trump was on in this feud between the Shapiro/Levin wing of MAGA and the online Right (tbh it was already clear), Trump has picked sides unambiguously:
So there you have it, MAGA has been subsumed, the 2016 alt-right energy that propelled Trump into office is out, hopefully the "plan trusters" now can stop pretending otherwise. For its part Fox News is unsurprisingly 100% behind the war, today they had on another 2016 never-Trumper Ben Shapiro, who gave Trump's Iran War an A+ grade and remarked:
MAGA is not dead, it's the rebranded neo-conservatism. The movement has been subsumed.
To me this sudden speculation about Netanyahu's death is a fairly transparent attempt by the usual suspects to distract from the far more credible reports that the younger Khamenei was either killed or seriously injured in the series of strikes that took out the elder Khamenei and that Iran is effectively without a "supreme leader" at this time.
In any case it is neither here nor there, if the IRGC were able to seriously disrupt or threaten the US or Israel's chains of command I imagine we'd be seeing something a bit more substantial than pseudonymous musings on X, and if Netanyahu or Khamenei (or Trump for that matter) really is dead I expect we'll find out one way or the other in a few weeks.
In the meantime Iran has gone from launching 500+ missiles and drones in the first 24 hours of the war to averaging around 125 launches a day for the week of March 2nd and 32 a day in the week of March 9th. I seen a lot of speculation (again from the usual suspects) how how this apparent decline is a product of Iran trying to draw the Jews and the Americans in so that they can win a decisive battle, but I think it's far more likely that they've shot their load.
As for the rest, the Alt-right has always had a vastly overinflated perception of their own importance. Believing that Trump/MAGA was "memed into existence" by edge-lords posting on 4-Chan requires one to be entirely ignorant of the preceding 8 - 10 years of GOP internal politics. It was only "unexpected" to those who were not paying attention.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed with no clear path to opening, Dubai International Airport is shut down, maintaining ~30 missiles a day is enough for mass economic disruption and disruption to daily life. The copium about Iran running out of missiles every day hasn't happened. We've gone from "We've won" to "We're winning" to "Please Help open the Strait" in 3 weeks.
Marcus Crassus fought the Persians (technically Parthians) at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC. His strategy was to wait for the Persians to run out of arrows before attacking with his infantry. But it turned out the Persians were being resupplied with camels, so the Romans attacked, and suffered one of their worst defeats in history. Crassus himself was killed during subsequent negotiations to end the fighting. Legend has it that the Parthians poured molten gold down his throat to mock his greed.
It certainly cannot be attributed to the Jewish Zionist wing that now owns MAGA like Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, given that they opposed it in 2016. I think it's delusional to think Trump would have won without the "meme magic" that constantly went viral on the Internet and basically defined his image/aesthetic, but in any case it was a far greater part of the creation of that movement than the people that actively opposed it at the time but now claim they define it. Chutzpah.
Tehran announcing that the straights have been closed is a very different state from no ships transiting the straights. Looking at Marine Traffic, Lloyds List, and various other logistics industry trade sites what appears to be happening is the the Euros are spooked and staying in port, the Gulf States are running dark (IE turning of their transponders), and the Chinese are ignoring the announcement but given that most of their tonnage is bound for Iranian ports anyway that is to be expected.
And again. believing that Trump/MAGA was "memed into existence" by edge-lords posting on 4-Chan requires one to be entirely ignorant of the preceding 8 - 10 years of GOP internal politics.
As I said, what Trump did was accurately identify key fault lines that cut across large swaths of both the conservative and corporate sides of the Republican electorate as well as many former Democrats who'd been alienated by the national party's embrace of Id-Pol and then build a coalition around it. The Bernie-Bro to Trump-Stan pipeline flipped more votes than any on the Alt-Right could have ever dreamed of and that is a large part of why the Alt Right is on the outside. They are not the target constituency, they never were.
I swear I feel like I'm the only one with a 10-year memory. Identity Politics reached peak during Donald Trump. BLM and all of its fallout and cultural Great Awokening was during Trump's first term. In 2016 he ran on Immigration restrictionism, which resonated with dissident elements who then turned all of his leadership faults into funny internet memes that went viral incessantly during the 2016 campaign, to the point Reddit had to eventually ban his subreddit. Trump's 2016 campaign was not an anti-idpol coalition, it was fundamentally a nativist movement. The Zionist wing of the GOP picked up on that energy, which is why they called themselves "Never-Trumpers" and opposed the movement, at least until he proved his worth and now they say they define the movement and all the "nativists" who are skeptical of another war for Israel are not MAGA.
Now, the 2024 campaign was more of an anti-idpol coalition, but by this point more discerning observers knew that MAGA was being subsumed by the interests that have brought us exactly where we are today, and "anti-idpol" was a Trojan Horse to move the chess pieces to achieve this war with Iran and the purge of the actual nativists.
Again the reason the Alt Right is on the outside is that they were not the target constituency, they never were.
I think that you are engaging for the common affluent liberal fallacy of assuming that the you opponents have been somehow manipulated into voting against their own interests to salve your own ego rather than consider the possibility that they have their own reasons and interests that are different from yours.
If you mean zionist elements in his close political orbit then sure. Normiecons didn't outplay shit, they dance to the same tune, but that's pretty much it.
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