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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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Zohran Mamdani is threatening to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits the UN in September

18 USC 878 makes it a federal crime to threaten to imprison any foreign head of state, which suggests that the DOJ has grounds to take action against Mamdani here. This would, of course, cause absolutely nuclear levels of insanity to erupt, especially since I have very little faith in the media not to frame it as "Fascist Trump arrests political rival". But also, it's also extremely unlikely that there will be an actual attempt to arrest Netanyahu, since that would require the NYPD to tangle with the United States Secret Service. All of this seems obvious to me, which means it must be obvious to Mamdani, which raises the question, what is his play here? Even the suggestion that the city that hosts the UN would seriously consider arresting guests of the UN should be insanely problematic.

The hysteria over this flies both ways.

The DOJ has no grounds to take any action against Mamdani as he has only said that he was in active conversation with the legal team over whether or not he could arrest Netanyahu. That can't be illegal, can it? Following that the law apparently says he can't arrest Netanyahu so this is just PR for the lefty base.

That being said, Israel is an apartheid state engaged in terrorism against civilians in large areas that it wants to ethnically cleanse and settle with the genetically correct people. The UN is by their own standards denigrating itself via inaction against such a regime. As is the rest of the world who holds on to the pretense that this is bad under any other circumstance.

To that extent the UN can not act as if their own inadequacies and failures are excusable when they fly in the face of the moral decency felt by free and democratic societies that are fast seeing their electorate turning into single issue voters due to the corruption and crimes committed by zionists and Israel.

Maybe the people of NYC don't want to host the UN if this is what the organization stands for.

I'm about as opposed to the Israelis' actions in Palestine as it gets, but I believe that hosting the UN ought to entail some sort of responsibility that surpasses object-level moral concerns. Really, the UN is somewhat like the Motte in that its purpose is to provide a neutral ground for parties to talk to each other who would never do so otherwise, except with the UN there are rather more things at stake.

If the people of NYC can't keep their moral principles in their pants for this higher purpose, maybe they should in fact not be allowed to host the UN, and the headquarters should move to a place with a higher decoupling waterline. It's their loss, or that of the US as a whole if they are incapable of finding any other site to guarantee safe passage for the de facto representatives of every significant piece of clay. (I'm sure China would be happy to set up a special economic zone with hookers and blow somewhere if nobody else is willing to step up.)

It's not moral principles, it's showing off, like the sanctuary city stuff and then all those immigrants turning up was a problem so they needed to be bussed off somewhere else.

I think that's what 4bpp is saying. Saying something like "keeping their moral principles in their pants" is a good way to put it. It's like having a big dick. Instead of a dick though, it's big morals. A lot of people who have it want to show it off as much as they can.