Hungary’s ruling party is stepping up its campaign against billionaire investor George Soros by distributing a book that accuses the financier of pursuing a plan to flood Europe with migrants.
The book, titled “George Soros,” is written by Andreas von Rétyi - a German author known for pushing conspiracy theories about UFOs and what caused the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the U.S.
Fidesz, a conservative party led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, plans to distribute 5,000 copies to local politicians across the country.
“The book is a detailed and accurate piece,” Fidesz spokesman János Halász told broadcaster RTL Klub, according to newspaper Die Welt.
The Orban administration launched an anti-Soros campaign in the spring to halt the Hungarian-born investor’s operations in the country.
The streets of Budapest were filled with posters and billboards of the Hungarian-born billionaire with the caption “Don’t let Soros get the last laugh!”
Hungarian government poster portraying financier George Soros and saying "Don"t let George Soros have the last laugh" is seen at an underground stop in Budapest.
The campaign claims that Soros wants a 1 million refugee influx to Europe per year.
“The Hungarian standpoint is that illegal migration is clearly a matter of national security,” Orban’s spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a recent interview.
“We shall mobilize the political and legal power of the Hungarian state against anyone who undermines the security of Hungary – regardless of their origins, religious affiliation or wealth.”
Soros struck back at Orban by describing his “mafia state” as “one which maintains a facade of democracy.”
Over the past several months we"ve frequently noted the devolving relationship between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and billionaire financier George Soros. Tensions escalated last month when Orban took it upon himself to mail a Soros-related questionnaire to all 8 million Hungarian voters (see: Hungary Launches Anti-Soros Political Campaign) and then followed that up with an announcement that Hungary"s intelligence services had been instructed to "map" Soros" network of influence.
As Orban’s ruling party gears up for parliamentary elections in April - where it is the prohibitive favorite to win largely thanks to its refusal to accept refugees under a plan devised by the European Commission - the prime minister has instructed his intelligence services to map what he described as the networks run by the billionaire financier’s “empire” targeting his country, Bloomberg reported.
Intelligence agencies will help evaluate what he sees as efforts by Soros to get Hungary punished by EU institutions pursuing a “mixed-population” continent, Orban said in an interview with Kossuth Radio on Friday.
The Associated Pressadded that the investigation will also focus on alleged Hungarian members of the network.
Intelligence agencies will help evaluate what Orban sees as efforts by Soros to get Hungary punished by EU institutions pursuing a “mixed-population” continent, Orban said in an interview with Kossuth Radio on Friday.
Today, Soros has decided to strike back with a scathing "rebuttal" posted to his website blasting Orban for his "anti-Soros, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic propaganda effort."
On October 9, 2017, the Hungarian government mailed a national consultation to all eight million eligible Hungarian voters purporting to solicit their opinions about a so-called “Soros Plan.” The statements in the national consultation contain distortions and outright lies that deliberately mislead Hungarians about George Soros’s views on migrants and refugees. Hungarian government officials also falsely claim that George Soros is somehow controlling the European Union decision-making process. In fact, decisions on how to address the migration crisis are made by EU member states and institutions, including the Hungarian government.
With Hungary’s health care and education systems in distress and corruption rife, the current government has sought to create an outside enemy to distract citizens. The government selected George Soros for this purpose, launching a massive anti-Soros media campaign costing tens of millions of euros in taxpayer money, stoking anti-Muslim sentiment, and employing anti-Semitic tropes reminiscent of the 1930s. The national consultation is part of an ongoing propaganda effort that has been underway since May 2015 that included the “Stop Brussels” consultation in the spring of 2017 and the referendum that vilified migrants and refugees in 2016.
Soros went on to offer a "rebuttal", which in several cases read more like a confirmation, of Orban"s "propaganda":
National Consultation Statement 1: George Soros wants Brussels to resettle at least one million immigrants per year onto European Union territory, including in Hungary.
Soros Response: FALSE. In a 2015 opinion piece, George Soros said that because of the war in Syria, the European Union would have to “accept at least a million asylum-seekers annually for the foreseeable future. And, to do that, it must share the burden fairly” (“Rebuilding the Asylum System,” Project Syndicate, September 26, 2015). A year later, when circumstances had changed, he suggested that the EU should make a “commitment to admit even a mere 300,000 refugees annually” (“Saving Refugees to Save Europe,” Project Syndicate, September 12, 2016).
National Consultation Statement 2: Together with officials in Brussels, George Soros is planning to dismantle border fences in EU member states, including in Hungary, to open the borders for immigrants.
Soros Response: FALSE. George Soros has clearly stated his belief that “the EU must regain control of its borders.” He believes that “the EU must build common mechanisms for protecting borders, determining asylum claims, and relocating refugees.” (“Saving Refugees to Save Europe,” Project Syndicate, September 12, 2016).
National Consultation Statement 3: One part of the Soros Plan is to use Brussels to force the EU-wide distribution of immigrants that have accumulated in Western Europe, with special focus on Eastern European countries. Hungary must also take part in this.
Soros Response: FALSE. In his most recent commentary on the refugee crisis, George Soros endorsed “a voluntary matching mechanism for relocating refugees.” He made clear that “the EU cannot coerce member states to accept refugees they do not want, or refugees to go where they are not wanted.” (“Saving Refugees to Save Europe,” Project Syndicate, September 12, 2016).
National Consultation Statement 4: Based on the Soros Plan, Brussels should force all EU member states, including Hungary, to pay immigrants HUF 9 million (€28,000) in welfare.
Soros Response: FALSE. George Soros did not say that Hungary should be forced to pay HUF 9 million in welfare to immigrants. He did say, “Adequate financing is critical. The EU should provide €15,000 per asylum-seeker for each of the first two years to help cover housing, health care, and education costs—and to make accepting refugees more appealing to member states.” (“Rebuilding the Asylum System,” Project Syndicate, September 26, 2015). This would clearly be a subsidy from the EU to the Hungarian government. Last year George Soros announced that he would contribute to the financial effort by earmarking €430 million of his personal fortune “for investments that specifically address the needs of migrants, refugees and host communities.” (“Why I’m Investing $500 Million in Migrants,” The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2016).
National Consultation Statement 5: Another goal of George Soros is to make sure that migrants receive milder criminal sentences for the crimes they commit.
Soros Response: FALSE. Nowhere has Soros made any such statement. This is a lie.
National Consultation Statement 6: The goal of the Soros Plan is to push the languages and cultures of Europe into the background so that integration of illegal immigrants happens much more quickly.
Soros Response: FALSE. Nowhere has Soros made any such statement. This is a lie.
National Consultation Statement 7: It is also part of the Soros Plan to initiate political attacks against those countries which oppose immigration, and to severely punish them.
Soros Response: FALSE. Nowhere has Soros made any such statement. This is a lie.
Of course, as we"ve noted before, three decades ago, billionaire financier George Soros paid for a young Viktor Orbán to study in Britain. And as recently as 2010, Soros donated $1 million to Orbán’s government to help the cleanup effort following the infamous “red sludge” disaster.
But the once-warm relationship between the two men has deteriorated substantially over the past seven years, as Orban has drifted further to the right. In 2014, the leader of Hungary’s Fidesz party declared he would seek to model Hungary’s government after “illiberal” democracies like the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In response, Soros this summer denounced his former protege and accused him of creating a “mafia state” in Hungary.
One of dozens of billboards around Hungary bearing anti-Soros messaging...
Orban responded by accusing Soros"s network of using the European Union to achieve its own aims, including the promotion of mass migration into Europe.
Orban was no doubt provoked to launch the probe by reports Soros has donated $18 billion from his family office to his “Open Society” foundation, his primary tool for influence policy throughout the west. The group funds a network of dozens of organizations that fund liberal, globalist causes throughout Europe and the US. At times, recipients of funding have included Black Lives Matter groups, and even Antifa.
But will Orban’s investigation morph into a full-on, Turkey-style purge of anyone with ties to Soros’ linked organizations, regardless of their actual complicity? That, of course, remains to be seen.
It’s an open secret that the “Soros network” has an extensive sphere of influence in the European Parliament and in other European Union institutions.
The list of Soros has been made public recently. The document lists 226 MEPs from all sides of political spectrum, including former President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt, seven vice-presidents, and a number of committee heads, coordinators, and quaestors. These people promote the ideas of Soros, such as bringing in more migrants, same-sex marriages, integration of Ukraine into the EU, and countering Russia. There are 751 members of the European Parliament. It means that the Soros friends have more than one third of seats.
George Soros, a Hungarian-American investor and the founder and owner of Open Society Foundations NGO, was able to meet with President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker with “no transparent agenda for their closed-door meeting”, and pointed out how EU proposals to redistribute quotas of migrants across the EU are eerily familiar to Soros’s own self-published plan for dealing with the crisis.
The billionaire financier believes that the European Union should receive millions of immigrants from the Middle East and Northern Africa, provide each one with an annual 15,000 EUR in aid, and resettle these migrants in member-states where they do not wish to go and are not necessarily welcome.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has accused the EU of “eating out of the hand” of Soros. He believes that the billionaire open borders campaigner is behind the attacks on Hungary. The reason is the government’s attempts to take legal action over a new law which requires foreign-supported ‘civil society’ organizations — many funded by Soros — to list their big overseas donors in a public register and be transparent about their funding sources in their publications. The Hungarian government is applying efforts to close the Budapest-based Central European University founded by Soros.
“The whole of the European Union is in trouble because its leaders and bureaucrats adopt decisions like this,”said Orbán.
“The people support the ideal of the European Union. At the same time, they can’t stand the leadership of the EU, because it insults the Member-States with things like this, and it abuses its power. Everyone in Europe can see that. This is why the European leadership is not respected.”
The Visegrad group is trying to stand tall under the EU pressure on migrants’ policy. The European Commission of Migration and Home Affairs is pushing a new bill to make migrants quotas obligatory. At least 30 Soros supporters work for the commission.
Many people listed in the document are known for attacks on Russia. For instance, Rebecca Harms, a MEP from German Green Party, regularly calls the European Parliament to toughen the sanctions regime against Moscow. Guy Verhofstadt blames Russia for almost each and every thing going wrong in Europe. His article Putting Putin in his Place made a lot of noise last year. In 2012, former Croatian Primer Tonino Picula, who was the head of an observer mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), slammed the Russian presidential election of 2012 as unfair, saying it was “skewed” in Vladimir Putin’s favor.
The Soros list sheds light on the question of what makes the EU leadership implement policies, which run counter to the interests of Europeans. The answer is corruption. The politicians bribed by Soros dance to his tune. They fight against the attempts of national leaders to protect the interests of their peoples. Quite often those who oppose such policies have to face the resistance of political elites of their own countries. The standoff between Hungarian PM Orbán and the Soros network is a good example to illustrate how it works. The European Parliament under the influence of Soros friends is pushing Europe to suicide by letting millions of migrants in.
It shows that the much-vaunted European democracy is a façade to hide the activities of power structure close to feudal system with local lord holding the reins. It can hardly be called the power of people. The publication of Soros list provides a clue to understanding who rules the EU and who instigates anti-Russia sentiments in Europe. Actually, this is the case when EU member countries like Hungary happen to be in the same boat with Russia opposing the very same US-based forces, while protecting their sovereignty and independence. This is the time for Europeans to think about transforming the system to do away with outside pressure.
As Haaretz" Jonathan Lis reports, MK Miki Zohar (Likud) announced on Monday that he planned to submit a bill that would make it harder for leftist organizations to receive funding from organizations considered hostile to Israel.
He said the bill, named for mogul George Soros, won the approval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (but, associates of Netanyahu couldn’t say on Monday whether the prime minister would support the proposed law in the Knesset).
Its exact wording has yet to be disclosed.
Zohar said the bill would prevent “donors who are anti-Semites, inciters or hostile to Israel” from donating to Israeli organizations.
Zohar said he was aiming at donors like Soros who donate to organizations like Adalah – the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, B’tselem, Breaking the Silence, Ir Amim, Machsom Watch, Yesh Din and the New Israel Fund, which he said were all anti-Zionist.
He said such donors should be considered anti-Semitic, inflammatory and hostile, and donations from them to non-profits or Israeli corporations should be forbidden.
According to the bill, the Strategic Affairs Ministry will compile and periodically update a list of bodies and organizations that are hostile to Israel or are defined as anti-Semitic.
Apparently, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban thinks his propaganda campaign to discredit Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros - Orban’s political archnemesis - hasn’t been sufficiently effective.
As Orban’s ruling party gears up for parliamentary elections in April - where it is the prohibitive favorite to win largely thanks to its refusal to accept refugees under a plan devised by the European Commission - the prime minister has instructed his intelligence services to map what he described as the networks run by the billionaire financier’s “empire” targeting his country, Bloomberg reported.
Intelligence agencies will help evaluate what he sees as efforts by Soros to get Hungary punished by EU institutions pursuing a “mixed-population” continent, Orban said in an interview with Kossuth Radio on Friday.
The Associated Pressadded that the investigation will also focus on alleged Hungarian members of the network.
Intelligence agencies will help evaluate what Orban sees as efforts by Soros to get Hungary punished by EU institutions pursuing a “mixed-population” continent, Orban said in an interview with Kossuth Radio on Friday.
Orban speaks often of a coming split in Europe between “migrant-free zone” and those in the west who refuse calls to “haul” undocumented migrants away.
The unraveling of the friendship between Orban and Soros in some ways mirrors the falling out between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US-based cleric Fehtullah Gulen in terms of the extent of the deterioration.
Three decades ago, billionaire financier George Soros paid for a young Viktor Orbán to study in Britain. And as recently as 2010, Soros donated $1 million to Orbán’s government to help the cleanup effort following the infamous “red sludge” disaster.
But the once-warm relationship between the two men has deteriorated substantially over the past seven years, as Orban has drifted further to the right. In 2014, the leader of Hungary’s Fidesz party declared he would seek to model Hungary’s government after “illiberal” democracies like the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In response, Soros this summer denounced his former protege and accused him of creating a “mafia state” in Hungary.
One of dozens of billboards around Hungary bearing anti-Soros messaging...
Orban responded by accusing Soros"s network of using the European Union to achieve its own aims, including the promotion of mass migration into Europe.
Orban was no doubt provoked to launch the probe by reports Soros has donated $18 billion from his family office to his “Open Society” foundation, his primary tool for influence policy throughout the west. The group funds a network of dozens of organizations that fund liberal, globalist causes throughout Europe and the US. At times, recipients of funding have included Black Lives Matter groups, and even Antifa.
But will Orban’s investigation morph into a full-on, Turkey-style purge of anyone with ties to Soros’ linked organizations, regardless of their actual complicity? That, of course, remains to be seen.
With ratings down, ticket sales and prices dropping, and now Cam Newton"s route-gate, The NFL does not need any more headaches... but it has one. Even before Trump called out players for taking a knee during the national anthem, their union had been funding leftist advocacy groups along with George Soros.
In tax documents recently released by 2ndVote, a conservative watchdog group, we learn that the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) made a donation of $5,000 in 2015 to the Center for Community Change Action, a George Soros funded and adamantly anti-Trump organization.
Yet, as The Washington Times details, that just scratches the surface of the NFLPA’s dealings and donations to the extreme left...
The NFLPA contributed $5,000 in 2014 to Jobs with Justice, another pro-union group backed by Mr. Soros, and $5,000 in 2013 to the progressive Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.
The NFLPA donations from 2013, 2014 and 2015 were made before Mr. Trump was elected.
Other NFLPA charitable contributions went to a mix of groups supporting veterans, medical research and youth, including the Wounded Warrior Project, the Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins, Active Minds, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington.
“Clearly, ‘social activism’ by NFL players includes aligning with George Soros and other liberal organizations like Planned Parenthood in support of the left’s agenda,” said 2ndVote, a conservative watchdog group.
We wonder how this additional news will affect NFL ratings/ticket sales this week - as it seems players are not "on the same team" politically as many of their supporters.
For a new generation of nationalists (by which they clearly imply tin-foil-hat wearing, nazi-sympathizing, probably-drug-taking, conspiracy-theory-loving wonks), The FT"s Gideon Rachman explains - for those not willing to think for themselves, or follow the money, that the billionaire investor has become the perfect villain...
George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, has had a busy year.
Since the beginning of 2017, he has faked a chemical attack in Syria, funded anti-Trump marches in Washington, come up with the “Soros plan” to flood Hungary with refugees, forced a change of government in Macedonia, undermined the Israeli prime minister and got several key White House aides sacked.
Not bad for a man of 87.
All of the above are, of course, conspiracy theories. But the fact that they have surfaced this year — and all feature the name of Mr Soros — is not just a curiosity. It says something important and worrying about global politics.
In the 1990s, Mr Soros was in tune with the spirit of the age, as he used the billions he had made in finance to support the transition to democracy in post-communist Europe and elsewhere. But now the global political climate has changed and liberal ideas are in retreat. For a new generation of nationalists — from the US to Russia and Hungary — Mr Soros has become the perfect villain. He is an internationalist in an age of nationalism. He is a supporter of individual rights, not group rights. He is the 29th-richest man in the world, according to the Forbes rich list. And he is also Jewish, so is easily cast in the role of the shadowy and manipulative international financier, once reserved for the Rothschilds.
One of the nastier bits of anti-Soros propaganda this year explicitly linked him to the old slurs against the Rothschilds. When America First nationalists became worried that HR McMaster, national security adviser to President Donald Trump, was purging their allies in the White House, they set up a website called “McMaster leaks” which featured a cartoon of Mr McMaster being manipulated by puppetmasters labelled “Soros” and “Rothschilds”.
In 1989, one of the beneficiaries of a Soros scholarship to study at Oxford was a young Hungarian activist named Viktor Orban. Today, the same Mr Orban is prime minister of Hungary and demonises his one-time benefactor. The Hungarian leader has made denunciation of an alleged “Soros plan” to flood Hungary with Muslims central to his re-election campaign. There is no such plan. What is true is that Mr Soros is a generous backer of refugee charities and has also supported the EU’s plan to resettle Syrian refugees across the bloc, including in Hungary. That was excuse enough for Mr Orban to plaster the country with posters featuring a grinning Mr Soros, and urging: “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh.”
The demonisation of Mr Soros in Hungary, where he was born, is not an isolated case. In the past year, he has been denounced by political leaders in Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Turkey, all of whom claim he is plotting against them.
The paranoid right in America also churns out anti-Soros material. As long ago as 2007, Mr Soros was denounced on Fox News as the “Dr Evil of the whole world of leftwing foundations”. The origins of Soros-hatred in the US may date back to his opposition to the Iraq war. His support of liberal causes in the US, as well as of international institutions such as the UN, has kept the farright pot boiling.
There is clearly an echo-chamber element to the anti-Soros campaigns around the world, as far-right groups pick up on the same conspiracy theories.
But some strongman leaders have more concrete reasons to fear Mr Soros’s Open Society Foundation, which funds civil society organisations that promote education, a free press, minority rights and anti-corruption initiatives. In 2015, Vladimir Putin’s government chucked the Open Society Foundation out of Russia since it was no longer willing to tolerate the latter’s support for organisations such as Memorial, which promoted research into the Soviet terror.
Mr Soros’s activities have even made him a target in Israel. The obvious anti-Semitism in many of the anti-Soros campaigns around the world evidently matters less to the Netanyahu government than Mr Soros’s support for Palestinian rights and other causes unpopular on the Israeli right.
There is also a personal element in prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s anti-Soros ire. As an anti-corruption probe has got closer and closer to Israel’s first family, so they have lashed out against Mr Soros. Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, complained recently that the “Fund for the Destruction of Israel, funded by Soros and the European Union, is threatening me”. He even republished a cartoon of Mr Soros dangling the world in front of a reptilian creature, the kind of image that his father would routinely denounce as anti-Semitic if it had been published by another source.
Conspiracy theorists have an explanation for everything.So the fact that the FT should publish a column defending Mr Soros will simply be taken as further evidence of his nefarious influence. For the record, I have had precisely two conversations with Mr Soros. On both occasions, we were on the same public panel at seminars organised by the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank that he partially funds.
We have never had a private conversation and I certainly would not claim him as a friend. But I have no hesitation in applauding his philanthropy.
The fact that it even needs to be defended says something sad about the times we are living in.
* * *
So there you have it - The FT defending Soros is proof that conspiracy theorists are crazy and preempts the conspiracy theories about The FT being part of the same group.
Of course, "this message was approved" by none other than George Soros himself...
The increase in conspiracy theories reflects deeper, worrying trends about politics around the world. https://t.co/LJcMevCdcs
Trump’s election confirmed one thing for certain: The Deep State is real.
As Ben Garrison writes, the Deep State"s dedication to removing our president from power is relentless. They will continue to work against him and if Trump backs off from any of his campaign promises, they’ll use that against him and claim victory. This is currently being done with his ambivalence on the ‘dreamers,’ which is a lefty name designed to garner sympathy for illegal aliens.
My cartoon shows some of the central players involved in the Deep State. Prominently featured is George Soros. He wants to break America and Europe and see western civilization replaced by a feudal, collectivist, globalist system.
The source of the swamp is evil itself. We know that many at the top are Satanic pedophiles. It’s sickening that we’re forced to cough up tax dollars as tribute for these monsters. We are forced to endure complicated tax forms and cough up our hard-earned money because the Deep State wants us kept poor, fearful and compliant. The tyrants know most people don’t want to lose their stuff and be hassled by the IRS. We go along and don’t push back enough. That attitude puts us on a slippery slope.
We slide into the swamp and the Deep State wins.
Currently they’re pushing for more taxes and control by means of their ‘climate change’ con, led by Al Gore. Those who question it are ridiculed, marginalized, or even threatened. Slippery slopes are created to keep people going along with the Deep State program when we should be rounding up people such as Soros. Hillary should have been locked up by now. The central bankers should be broken up and their Federal Reserve needs to be ended.
There are many good people on the Internet who are exposing the Deep State and its legion of lies, but can it lead to real change?
One of the items that is regularly reported on, but quietly…not alarming anyone…is the situation developing in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States.
At the forefront is Ukraine, as the U.S.-orchestrated coup of 2014 and the subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia created a line to develop into a Second Cold War. This is the root of the current tensions where both Russia and the U.S. are continuously posturing against one another.
The root of the matter lies in the undue influence that was secured by Georgy Schwarz (also known as George Soros) with the purchase of John McCain. An article just surfaced on September 13, 2017 entitled Power Games: What McCain, Soros, and the Clintons Have in Common, by Ekaterina Blinova of Sputnik News. The article gives a brief history of “The McCain Institute for International Leadership,” a non-profit organization profiting on the campus of Arizona State University. This non-profit organization has received “minor” donations, such as $1 million from the Saudi Arabian government in 2014.
Financial ties between McCain and Soros have been exposed in the past, and that the two have had a nebulous relationship since 2001. Interestingly enough, it was McCain who was the leading proponent behind the regime change in Ukraine. Assisted by Victoria Nuland with Obama and Hillary Clinton acting the part of “Zardoz” floating invisibly in the background, supplying the authority, and with Sen. Lindsey Graham as a lapdog-collaborator, it was McCain who orchestrated the coup above-board.
Beneath the boards was Soros. The reason Soros funded Maidan (the right-wing ultra-nationalists of Ukraine) and approved of Arseniy Yatsenuk (a globalist scientologist who currently resides in California) was to grab Eastern Ukraine for himself. Soros planned on dumping $50 million, backed by political control via McCain and the other Munsters, and financially by the IMF…all wrapped up in the NATO Hegemony….and buying himself one third of Ukraine…with all types of natural resources from coal to minerals…for 1/1000th of its actual worth.
Soros’ plan fell apart, because he did not count on the Russians seizing Crimea to secure Sevastopol (their Black Sea Fleet HQ) and access to the Mediterranean. He also did not count on Ukrainians of Russian national derivation revolting in Eastern Ukraine against the installed puppetry of Yatsenuk (Yoda) that eventually “morphed” into Petro “Willy Wonka” Poroshenko’s Kiev government. Because of the insurrection in the east, the IMF would not bail Ukraine out of the $9 billion plus owed to Russia to pay Gazprom for natural gas consumption.
Notice the complexion of the game has changed. Soros now is fostering ties with Russia, in the hopes that he can take those mineral and oil rights from the other direction and take himself off the hook with the Russian government. Par for the course in the manner of Rothschild, bankrolling both Napoleon and the British government and selling short on both sides to pocket from the overall misfortune of the situation. A situation caused by Rothschild and instigated into a war that gave him profits. Only the players are different in the comedy being played out today.
Jared Kushner has deep ties to Soros, as does Hillary Clinton. As mentioned in other articles, read Shadow Party by Poe that outlines the key role Soros played in the rise to power of Hillary Clinton. The President truly needs to clean Washington out, and remove these politicos that kowtow and bend to the whim of oligarchs. Only then can foreign policy be set that is in the interests of the United States and not a pack of privateers, oligarchs, and politicians…such as a Pelosi who begins a career making $150 grand and ends up with a net worth of more than $40 million.
There is a part of it all that is even worse than the theft. Because of these games and the corruption attached to them, these individuals depose governments and throw whole nations into civil war and anarchy for the promulgation of personal power and personal gain. World wars begin on the whims of madmen and see fruition because those madmen are in positions of authority derived from the citizens, yet with no accountability to the citizens. They hold no loyalty except to themselves and to personal gain.
Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos pledged that “nothing will deter” the organizers from hosting the “Free Speech Week” at the University of California, Berkeley later this month.
In a statement posted to Facebook Wednesday, Yiannopoulos criticized UC Berkeley Assistant Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof for “spreading rumors that Free Speech Week might be canceled.”
“Ignore him, it"s fake news,” Yiannopoulos wrote.
“Ironically, Berkeley is fighting Free Speech Week the same way they fought against Mario Savio"s Free Speech Movement in the 60"s - by spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt.”
Mogulof told Politico Tuesday that the student group Berkeley Patriot “still has not completed the critical steps” required for arranging the “Free Speech Week” on campus, putting the entire event in jeopardy.
“Mogulof has a long history of hostility, leaks, and lies when it comes to conservative speakers,” Yiannopoulos alleged.
“His efforts will not be successful, and Berkeley Free Speech Week will [be] a fabulous, and peaceful, celebration of free speech including more than 20 speakers from diverse viewpoints.”
In a statement to Campus Reform, Yiannopoulos further blasted the reports of possible cancellation, calling Mogulof’s comments “balderdash and piffle.”
Following his August pledge to spend “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on security at the event, Yiannopoulos also revealed that he is bringing a Navy SEAL team to assist with protecting the speakers.
“Our efforts are moving ahead at full speed to put together the best free speech event Berkeley has ever seen,” he said.
“I am sparing no expense, including a 16-man Navy SEAL security detail for me and our speakers.”
“UC Berkeley has claimed that this will be a year of free speech, but they"ve quickly gone back to their old tricks,” Yiannopoulos observed. “They seem committed to the course of excluding speakers who don"t share their progressive authoritarian mindset from campus. It won"t fly, there is too much at stake for America, and too many eyes on both the university administration and the city of Berkeley.”
Yiannopoulos concluded his statement by pledging that the upcoming event “will go on no matter what Berkeley says,” adding, “Nothing will deter us. We will not yield.”
A representative for the Berkeley Patriot likewise told Politico that the group still intends to go through with the event, saying, “we are working diligently to answer any requests that the university might have...we will work to get all of this clarified in a good faith and collaborative manner.”
“The American Dream is back.” President Trump made that claim in a speech in January.
They are ringing words, but what do they mean? Language is important, but it can be slippery. Consider that the phrase, the American Dream, has changed radically through the years.
Mr. Trump and Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, have suggested it involves owning a beautiful home and a roaring business, but it wasn’t always so.
Instead, in the 1930s, it meant freedom, mutual respect and equality of opportunity.
It had more to do with morality than material success.
This drift in meaning is significant, because the American Dream - and international variants like the Australian Dream, Le Rêve Français and others - represents core values. In the United States, these values affect major government decisions on housing, regulation and mortgage guarantees, and millions of private choices regarding whether to start a business, buy an ostentatious home or rent an apartment.
Conflating the American dream with expensive housing has had dangerous consequences: It may have even contributed to the last housing bubble, the one that led to the financial crisis of 2008-9.
These days, Mr. Trump is using the hallowed phrase in pointed ways. In his January speech, he framed the slogan as though it were an entrepreneurial aspiration.
“We are going to create an environment for small business like we haven’t seen in many many decades,” he said, adding, “So, essentially, we are getting rid of regulations to a massive extent, could be as much as 75 percent.”
Mr. Carson has explicitly said that homeownership is a central part of the Dream. In a speech at the National Housing Conference on June 9, he said, “I worry that millennials may become a lost generation for homeownership, excluded from the American Dream.”
But that wasn’t what the American Dream entailed when the writer James Truslow Adams popularized it in 1931, in his book “The Epic of America.”
Mr. Adams emphasized ideals rather than material goods, a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.” And he clarified,
“It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and recognized by others for what they are.”
His achievement was an innovation in language that largely replaced the older terms “American character” and “American principles” with a forward-looking phrase that implied modesty about current success in giving respect and equal opportunity to all people. The American dream was a trajectory to a promising future, a model for the United States and for the whole world.
In the 1930s and ’40s, the term appeared occasionally in advertisements for intellectual products: plays, books and church sermons, book reviews and high-minded articles. During these years, it rarely, if ever, referred to business success or homeownership.
By 1950, shortly after World War II and the triumph against fascism, it was still about freedom and equality. In a book published in 1954, Peter Marshall, former chaplain of the United States Senate, defined the American Dream with spiritually resounding words: “Religious liberty to worship God according to the dictates of one’s own conscience and equal opportunity for all men,” he said, “are the twin pillars of the American Dream.”
The term began to be used extensively in the 1960s. It may have owed its growing power to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, in which he spoke of a vision that was “deeply rooted in the American Dream.” He said he dreamed of the disappearance of prejudice and a rise in community spirit, and certainly made no mention of deregulation or mortgage subsidies.
But as the term became more commonplace, its connection with notions of equality and community weakened.
In the 1970s and ’80s, home builders used it extensively in advertisements, perhaps to make conspicuous consumption seem patriotic.
Thanks in part to the deluge of advertisements, many people came to associate the American Dream with homeownership, with some unfortunate results. Increasing home sales became public policy.
In 2003, President George W. Bush signed the American Dream Downpayment Act, subsidizing home purchases during a period in which a housing bubble — the one that would lead to the 2008-9 financial crisis — was already growing at a 10 percent annual rate, according to the S.&P. Corelogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price index (which I helped to create).
This year, Forbes Magazine started what it calls the “American Dream Index.” It is based on seven statistical measures of material prosperity: bankruptcies, building permits, entrepreneurship, goods-producing employment, labor participation rate, layoffs and unemployment claims. This kind of characterization is commonplace today, and very different from the original spirit of the American dream.
One thing is clear: Bringing back the fevered housing dream of a decade ago would not be in the public interest. In “House Lust: America’s Obsession With Our Homes,” published in 2008, Daniel McGinn marveled at the craving for housing in that era: “In many neighborhoods, if you’d judged the nation’s interests by its backyard-barbecue conversation — settings where subjects like war, death, and politics are risky conversational gambits — a lot of people find homes to be more compelling than any geopolitical struggle.”
This is not to say that homes have no appropriate place in our dreams or our consciousness. To the contrary, in a 2015 book “Home: How Habitat Made Us Human,” the neuroanthropologist John S. Allen wrote, “We humans are a species of homebodies.” Ever since humans began making stone tools and pottery, they have needed a place to store them, he says, and the potential for intense feelings about our homes has evolved.
But the last decade has shown that with a little encouragement, many can easily become excessively lustful about homeownership and wealth, to the detriment of our economy and society.
That’s the wrong way to go. Instead, we need to bring back the American Dream of a just society, where everyone has an opportunity to reach “the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.”
Members of the legal marijuana industry, who for months have been nervously anticipating a federal crackdown led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, can breathe a sigh of relief. According to data from the Justice Department, the number of federal drug-crime prosecutions has fallen to its lowest level in 25 years, and the decline has continued to accelerate since President Donald Trump took office.
The latest data show that federal law-enforcement agencies prosecuted fewer drug offenders over the past 12 months than at any time during the last quarter century. During the first five months of the Trump administration, only 8,814 drug offenders were prosecuted by the federal government, a drop of 9 percent as compared with the 9,687 federal criminal cases prosecuted between February and June 2016.
Prosecutions fell sharply in June on a month-to-month basis following a spike in May. Over the long term, the six-month average has been declining slowly since 2003.
“During the month of June 2017, only 1,578 new prosecutions for drug crimes were brought - down 16.1 percent from the number in May. And prosecutions over the past year are even lower than they were five years ago. Overall, the data show that drug prosecutions in U.S. district courts are down 27.6 percent from levels reported in 2012.”
According to the report, most (75.8%) federal drug prosecutions involve trafficking charges, while another 21.8% are related to organized crime.
“So far during the first nine months of FY 2017, about 1 in 5 cases (21.8%) were the result of organized crime task force efforts. An additional three out of four (75.8%) fell under drug trafficking programs, while simple drug possession was the nature of the offense in the remaining 2.5 percent of cases.
The lead investigative agency for the largest number of prosecutions so far during FY 2017 was the Drug Enforcement Administration. It was the lead investigative agency in nearly four out every ten (38.9%) federal criminal prosecutions filed.”
If the decline continues at the current rate, the US is on track to see a sharp drop in the number of per-capita prosecutions in 2017.
“During FY 2016 the Justice Department said the government obtained 68.9 narcotics/drugs prosecutions for every one million people in the United States. If pace during the first nine months of FY 2017 continues at the same rate, narcotics/drugs prosecutions for one million people in the United States this year will be 65.3.”
While the long-term trend appears to ignore the worsening opioid epidemic, some of the largest year-over-year increases occurred in regions where opioid abuse has surged since the beginning of the decade. The Northern District of West Virginia, a state with the largest number of opioid prescriptions written per capita, saw the largest year-over-year increase. Over the past five years, Wyoming saw the largest increase n prosecutions, up 242%. The district with the largest projected drop in the rate of prosecutions was New Mexico, with 30%.
The most-active district is unsurprisingly situated along the US-Mexico border. The Southern District of California, which encompasses San Diego, saw 453.6 prosecutions per million people last year, while the District of Arizona ranked second.
Sessions has insisted that stepped up enforcement of drug laws is essential to combating the worsening opioid abuse crisis, but the decline But the decline in prosecutions suggests that law enforcement agencies have been somehow less active in targeting high-level drug offenders, even as overdose deaths rise to all-time highs thanks to powerful synthetic opioids that have penetrated the markets for heroin, cocaine and even prescription pills. Given the high stakes, and the actions against drug manufacturers recetly ataken by a nmber of states" attorneys general, the decline in prosecutions at the federal level makes little sense.
Over the weekend, Squawker Media attended a “Unity March,” which was organized in support of the immigrant community in Baltimore, Maryland. In a Facebook group titled “Patterson Park Neighbors,” City Councilman Zeke Berzoff-Cohen of District 1 said in a post,“The march was organized by local Baltimore young people as part of the Free Minds Free People Conference. This will be a family march and I invite everyone to come out and show love and support.”
What we’re about to show you is the true nature of the groups actively working to ensure that America remains divided. The above Facebook post by Councilman Berzoff-Cohen deceptively telling the citizens of Baltimore that the march was organized by Baltimore’s youth demonstrates a harrowing reality: operatives are trying to undermine the system. Such operatives receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from organizations dedicated to undermining the social cohesion of the United States and have infiltrated even local city politics. From this report, and the exclusive video captured on-site at the protest, you will see firsthand just how deeply George Soros’ Open Society Foundation is entrenched in our political system, even at the municipal and local levels.
The video below shows throngs of anti-Trump, pro-immigration protestors bused into a protest on Eastern Avenue. Footage depicts protestors stepping off of unmarked buses and entering the site of the protest.
In the next video, after all the protestors are brought in, a female keynote speaker rails against President Trump, calling him “a monster.” While much of what she said about disappearing jobs and crumbling infrastructure as the result of globalization rings true, she fails to place the blame where it rightfully belongs: at the feet of the globalist svengalis. When she gave a resounding call to arms at the end of her speech, a chilling reminder of “America divided” rang through her radical insistence for protesters to grab pitchforks, shovels, and bats.
“If we don’t stand together, and you and I unite like we’ve never been before, if we don’t pool our resources together, and our spirits together, and our souls together, and everything we can think of together… revolutions were fought with pitchforks and shovels, and bats, and cans, and anything and everything we can get our hands on.”
In the second half of the video, Casa De Maryland Inc., an entity funded directly by George Soros, then leads a march down the streets of Baltimore, actively disrespecting traffic ordinances and shutting down streets. For the record, there were no traffic marshals in this march, as evidenced by the content provided above.
Soros’s Open Society Foundation has its tentacles in the funding of urban protests, disruption, and chaos. Soros has been directly linked to the Ukrainian Revolution and the ouster of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The Open Society Foundation has also been linked to other groups in various European countries that promote revolutionary calls to action.
Soros is notorious for funding revolutionary ideologies and has openly contributed $81.7M toward “Human Rights Movements & Institutions” in 2017, a portion of which is clearly seen in the recently disruptive Baltimore protest. Additionally, Soros’s Open Society Foundation has contributed $82.8M to matters of “Equality & Anti-Discrimination,” which is essentially euphemistic for the advocation of culturally regressive social reforms.
Despite the massive amounts of funding to Baltimore from the pocket of Soros, Baltimore’s homicide, opioid abuse, and overall crime rates are only skyrocketing.
Bret Weinstein is a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., who supported Bernie Sanders, admiringly retweets Glenn Greenwald and was an outspoken supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Weinstein, who identifies himself as “deeply progressive,” is just the kind of teacher that students at one of the most left-wing colleges in the country would admire. Instead, he has become a victim of an increasingly widespread campaign by leftist students against anyone who dares challenge ideological orthodoxy on campus.
This professor’s crime? He had the gall to challenge a day of racial segregation.
A bit of background: The “Day of Absence” is an Evergreen tradition that stretches back to the 1970s. As Mr. Weinstein explained on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, “in previous years students and faculty of color organized a day on which they met off campus — a symbolic act based on the Douglas Turner Ward play in which all the black residents of a Southern town fail to show up one morning.” This year, the script was flipped: “White students, staff and faculty will be invited to leave campus for the day’s activities,”reported the student newspaper on the change. The decision was made after students of color “voiced concern over feeling as if they are unwelcome on campus, following the 2016 election.”
Mr. Weinstein thought this was wrong. The biology professor said as much in a letter to Rashida Love, the school’s Director of First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services. “There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles,” he wrote, “and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away.” The first instance, he argued, “is a forceful call to consciousness.” The second “is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.” In other words, what purported to be a request for white students and professors to leave campus was something more than that. It was an act of moral bullying — to stay on campus as a white person would mean to be tarred as a racist.
Reasonable people can debate whether or not social experiments like a Day of Absence are enlightening. Perhaps there’s a case to be made that a white-free day could be a useful way to highlight the lack of racial diversity, particularly at a proudly progressive school like Evergreen. Yet reasonable debate has made itself absent at Evergreen.
For expressing his view, Mr. Weinstein was confronted outside his classroom last week by a group of some 50 students insisting he was a racist. The video of that exchange — “You’re supporting white supremacy” is one of the more milquetoast quotes — must be seen to be believed. It will make anyone who believes in the liberalizing promise of higher education quickly lose heart. When a calm Mr. Weinstein tries to explain that his only agenda is “the truth,” the students chortle.
Following the protest, college police, ordered by Evergreen’s president to stand down, told Mr. Weinstein they couldn’t guarantee his safety on campus. In the end, Mr. Weinstein held his biology class in a public park. Meantime, photographs and names of his students were circulated online. “Fire Bret” graffiti showed up on campus buildings. What was that about safe spaces?
Watching the way George Bridges, the president of Evergreen, has handled this situation put me in mind of a line from Allan Bloom’s book “The Closing of the American Mind.” Mr. Bloom was writing about administrators’ reaction to student radicals in the 1960s, but he might as well be writing about Evergreen: “A few students discovered that pompous teachers who catechized them about academic freedom could, with a little shove, be made into dancing bears.”
At a town hall meeting, Mr. Bridges described the protestors as “courageous” and expressed his gratitude for “this catalyst to expedite the work to which we are jointly committed.” Of course, there was also pablum about how “free speech must be fostered and encouraged.” But if that’s what Mr. Bridges really believes, why isn’t he doing everything in his power to protect a professor who exercised it and condemn the mob that tried to stifle him?
The Weinstein saga is just the latest installment in a series of similar instances of illiberalism on American campuses. In March, a planned speech by Charles Murray at Middlebury ended with the political scientists escorted off campus by police and his interviewer, Professor Allison Stanger, in a neck brace. In April, a speech at Claremont McKenna by the conservative writer Heather Mac Donald had to be livestreamed when protestors blocked access to the auditorium.
Shutting down conservatives has become de rigueur. But now anti-free-speech activists are increasingly turning their ire on free-thinking progressives. Liberals shouldn’t cede the responsibility to defend free speech on college campuses to conservatives. After all, without free speech, what’s liberalism about?
Evergreen State College closed campus on Thursday and warned students and faculty to stay away because of an unspecified threat of "campus violence" - though it"s just as likely they"re using the episode as an excuse to shut down the protests that have effectively brought life on campus to a halt over the past week since a campus biology professor objected to a planned demonstration that asked white students and faculty to leave campus for a day.
After the threat, the school asked students and faculty to either leave campus, or return to their dorms and await further instruction, local NBC affiliate K5 reported. It’s “unclear” whether the threat is related to the protests.
Protests erupted on the Evergreen campus last week after biology professor Bret Weinstein sent an email to colleagues objecting to a planned demonstration that asked white students and faculty to leave campus for a day. Students confronted Weinstein on campus last Tuesday, shouting over the professor and demanding that he resign until the commodtion drew the attention of campus police. The "triggered" protesters then retreated to the campus library, where they barricaded themselves inside. Police have told Weinstein to hold class off campus because they believe the angry SJWs are a threat to his safety.
University President George Bridges has more or less kowtowed to the protesters. Though he said he wouldn"t fire Weinstein because faculty "need to be able to speak their mind," he has agreed to a list of demands from the SJWs that includes more sensitivity training for campus police officers.
Videos of the confrontations at Evergreen have circulated online, where they"ve been roundly mocked. This has apparently angered some of the protesters, who"ve demanded that the university investigate the “theft” of the videos.
Weinstein’s email objecting to the “Day of Absence Day of Presence” protest was circulated on Twitter. In it, he characterizes organizers’ demand that white students vacate campus for a day as “an act of repression.”
"There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles (the theme of the Douglas Turner Ward play Day of Absence, as well as the recent Women"s Day walkout), and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness....the second is a show of force and an act of oppression in and of itself.
Commenting on the current state of the European experiment, George Soros warned the European Union has plunged it into an existential crisis as a result of "dysfunctional" institutions and austerity mandates, and will require the bloc to reinvent itself to survive. Speaking at the Brussels Economic Forum, the billionaire investor said the EU had "lost its momentum" as he urged policymakers to abandon hopes of "ever closer union" driven by a top-down approach from Brussels, a statement which will likely displease Germany.
"The European Union is now in an existential crisis," Soros told a Brussels audience. "Most Europeans of my generation were supporters of further integration. Subsequent generations came to regard the EU as an enemy that deprives them of a secure and promising future."
Just a day after Brussels published a paper mapping out its vision of eurozone integration, Mr Soros warned that the single currency area had become "the exact opposite of what was originally intended" according to the Telegraph.
Quoted by CNBC, Soros said Europe"s "reinvention would have to revive the support that the European Union used to enjoy." The reinvention would have to review past mistakes and explain what went wrong, and make proposals to make things right.
Soros welcomed a German idea to cut European funds aimed at reducing income inequalities at the regional level for those countries disrespecting the rule of law. Both Hungary and Poland, which are net recipients of the so-called cohesion funds, have been criticized by European institution for their weak standards with regards to the rule of law.
The billionaire also reminded his hosts that "the European Union was meant to be a voluntary association of like-minded states that were willing to surrender part of their sovereignty for the common good. After the financial crisis of 2008, the eurozone was transformed into a creditor/debtor relationship where the debtor countries couldn’t meet their obligations and the creditor countries dictated the terms that the debtors had to meet."
"By imposing an austerity policy they made it practically impossible for the debtor countries to grow out of their debts. The net result was neither voluntary nor equal."
He, correctly, said loss of trust in the EU has paved the way for support for anti-European political parties and said the goal of "an ever closer union" had to be abandoned.
"Now we need a collaborative effort that combines the top-down approach of the EU institutions with the bottom-up movements that are necessary to engage the electorate," said Soros and added that "instead of a “multi-speed” Europe we should aim for a “multi-track” Europe that would allow member states a wider variety of choices. This would have a far-reaching beneficial effect."
He urged the bloc to focus on three key areas - dealing with the refugee crisis, Brexit and "the lack of an economic growth strategy".
Fight Xenophobia and Hostile Powers
Predictably, the man who some have alleged was behind the great migration movement that sent 1 million mostly Syrian refugees in Germany in the past 2 years, Soros said Europe needs to overcome the current "existential crisis" by fighting together against the rise of anti-European sentiment, xenophobic feelings and surrounding "hostile powers."
“Externally the EU is now surrounded by hostile powers: Putin’s Russia, Erdogan’s Turkey, Sisi’s Egypt and the America that Trump would like to create but can’t,” Soros said.
He called for an update of European treaties to make the EU work better and allow a "multitrack" bloc where countries would have a wider variety of choices when it comes to integration.
Brexit
Discussing Brexit, Soros - who rose to prominence as the man who broke the Bank of England for his bets against the pound in the early 1990s - warned Brussels against punishing Britain in forthcoming Brexit negotiations and said Brussels should not get distracted with the upcoming EU exit negotiations with the U.K. and continue their work to regain the trust of EU citizens.
"Brexit will be an immensely damaging process, harmful to both sides. Most of the damage is felt right now, when the European Union is in an existential crisis, but its attention is diverted to negotiating the separation from Britain," he said.
He also said Brexit is likely to take "as long as five years" and that the EU should approach negotiations in a "constructive spirit" and should use Brexit "to transform itself into an organization that other countries like Britain would want to join", instead of seeking to punish Britain.
"The European Union must resist temptation to punish Britain and approach the negotiations in a constructive spirit. It should use Brexit as a catalyst for introducing far-reaching reforms," Soros said. "The divorce will be a long process taking a long as five years... During that time the EU could transform itself into an organization that other countries like Britain would want to join. If that happens the two sides will want to be reunited even before the divorce is completed."
In many articles leading up to the 2016 election I discussed the problem of “escalation.” Namely escalation on the left end of the political spectrum and the people who identify with it (set aside that this spectrum does not exist for the leaders and gatekeepers that exploit it). In analyzing the consequences of the inevitable Trump win, it was clear that extreme leftists (cultural Marxists) were about to lose considerable social influence and that this would end up driving them to more aggressive measures. This process has happened even faster than I expected.
Cultural Marxists are almost universally distrusted or despised in America today. Their only support seems to come from their own inbred activist circles, Hollywood and certain elements of the corporate and political world.
This does not mean they are going away. Not at all. What it means is that they are going to evolve into something else, perhaps something worse.
That said, even if this does occur, I worry that conservatives are putting far too much stock in the threat these people represent. My greatest fear is that conservatives will become so hyper-focused on a militant left that they will forget about the international financiers that instigated this mess in the first place. I also worry that we will one day abandon our constitutional principles in the name of stomping such people into the dirt, using government as our primary tool.
I understand the circus mentality surrounding this issue. The lefties want to “punch fascists” and become some kind of folk heroes in a cultural revolution, so they fabricate images of Nazis and imperialists everywhere in order to rationalize their behavior. Conservatives see this behavior and conjure images of communist hordes overrunning the Republic and building a nation-sized gulag around us, so we want to go out and “punch communists.” It’s a tale over a century old.
I see an undue level of fear, though, over these cultural Marxists and their real world effectiveness.
I see guys going out to counter-protest little 96 pound, vegan Antifa kids by strapping on ballistic plates or soft body armor, level IIIA helmets and SAP gloves like they think they are going to war. I have to chuckle a little because it showcases the conservative tendency to meet every threat with a nuclear over-response (metaphorically speaking… in some cases). Remember, in most situations these college-age weaklings have no clue what they are doing, they can barely move around in those skinny jeans they all wear and half of the men identify as women. This is not a group of well trained, bloodthirsty Cheka; they are incompetent and fumbling in the dark.
Opening a high pressure can of whoop ass on such people might be necessary in some instances, but “victory” against them is not going to earn you a place in Valhalla. It may provide some fleeting satisfaction, but let’s be realistic — this is not a war, it is a game… an opportunity to brawl in the streets.
To illustrate my point further, I would like to repost a video that has been making the rounds in the liberty movement recently. Behold! The next phase of escalation in leftist militancy: Learning which end of a gun goes “Boom!”…
The above video posted by the Phoenix John Brown Gun Club was apparently meant as a message of intimidation, but instead it resulted in a roar of laughter. These are the people we are supposed to be afraid of?
Anyone with marginal firearms training will be feeling some cringe right now. There is nothing intimidating about 50 people shooting wildly at a drawing of Pepe The Frog and mostly hitting the dirt hillside instead. It’s hard to become personally proficient with a firearm when you can’t even tell who is hitting what during your “training.” It is also hard to hit a target when you aren’t shown how to shoulder your weapon correctly or present a proper shooting stance.
I’m a good sport and I’ll give the Antifa kids a few tips: Lean forward into the gun instead of backwards, and STOP gripping the mag well and put your non-shooting hand on the handguard; that’s what it is there for. Or, just form a big circle during live weapons training and get the friendly fire incidents over with now.
Don’t get me wrong, I have seen poorly managed prepper and militia training as well, but nothing quite to the level of pure suck that comes across in the video above. And I don’t hold it against the people who showed up to the event, I hold it against the incompetence of the trainers.
But let’s get back to the main point of this article.
The John Brown Gun Club does not represent REAL escalation. Not the kind of escalation I have referred to in the past. Most leftists do not grow up in a gun culture and are thus lost when trying to adopt it. When you are barely exposed to the notion of a thing, you are going to be VERY SLOW in learning that thing. When I showed a friend of mine this video they said, “It’s like when Asians immigrate and have trouble driving…” (Is that racist? Oh who cares…).
Real escalation when it comes to the Left is almost always funded and supported by governments or by elites seeking to use those leftists as weapons for prodding the general population and creating rationalizations for reactionary totalitarianism. I highly suggest skeptics of this idea look into Antony Sutton’s evidenced records and studies into the corporate backing of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia as well as their backing of the rise of fascism in Europe.
I would also suggest research into more famous and violent leftist activist groups like the Weather Underground; a collective responsible for dozens of bombings and threats against government facilities. Perhaps the most suspicious circumstance of the Weathermen and their seeming immunity in many cases to prosecution is the strange story of Bill Ayers, a leader within the Weather Underground that planned multiple bombings but remains free to this day and is an influential figure among political elites in Washington.
If you think that the racially charged rhetoric of social justice warriors today is extreme or “new,” just look at the rhetoric of the Weather Underground, which included discussions on “killing all white babies” because they were destined to “grow up to be oppressive racists.” This propaganda has been going on a LONG time.
These are the kinds of groups we should be truly worried about when it comes to the left, and not because they are capable of ever accomplishing their goals. Leftists rely on two things when imposing their will on others — they rely on the power of the mob, the power of government or both at the same time. Right now it is clear that the left has lost the power of the mob. They have no momentum. They were losing any momentum they did have long before conservatives faced off with them at places like Berkeley.
Government and elitist-supported groups, supplied with training and funding, are a greater danger. They tend to operate more like terrorist cells, using bombings, shootings and attrition.
This is not always simply to instill fear or to achieve an actual political aim in support of leftist “values.” Instead, these groups are sometimes injected into the system as a way to inspire conservatives to overreact or to run into the welcoming arms of a waiting dictatorship.
Perhaps the most effective example of the creation and exploitation of violent leftist terror was Operation Gladio, a false flag program running from the 1950s to the 1990s in Europe until it was finally exposed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. Many of the leftist and “communist” cells involved in the numerous attacks on civilians during this period were in fact either manipulated by government agencies like the CIA, or they were created from scratch by those same agencies.
This is not to say that every Antifa and SJW organization active today is some kind of Frankenstein creation of the government. Most of them are not. As I stated earlier, many of these people are ignorant college kids brainwashed by academia. They are, at most, useful idiots and not a true threat because they don"t have the tools or capacity to present a true threat.
However, a day is likely coming in which Gladio-style leftist groups will be active in the U.S., and they will not be assaulting senior citizens with mere pepper spray, or screaming at Trump supporters and throwing bike locks from sidewalks.
The goal behind such groups will NOT be to “win.” They are not trying to establish a Marxist enclave. What they really want is to frighten conservatives and liberty activists into supporting extreme measures outside of the constitution and our principles. For once we abandon our principles in the name of “winning,” we will have actually lost everything.
At bottom, the pinnacle threat to liberty is not the cultural Marxists, the SJWs, Antifa or whatever else they like to call themselves. The real threat, as always, are the establishment elites funding and influencing that very ideology, that very mob. Countering the leftists on the street in some situations is useful, but not at the expense of abandoning the fight against the root cancer eating at the heart of our country. Until the moneymen and political criminals (on both sides of the aisle) are dealt with, the waves of angry leftist dupes and their more dangerous Marxist cells will never end. Fighting the left while ignoring the greater demon is an eternally foolish strategy.
