French President Emmanuel Macron posed a question to the French people: “Looking at these images, we have all asked ourselves: What was going through their minds? How can French people do this to France?” Because many of them aren’t French and never will be French. Macron should look at what the French elite have done to France. They flooded the zone with Third Worlders they can’t afford.
Now the barbarians are tearing shit up—and some French citizens are joining them. The chaos is spreading across Europe (Italy, most notably). It will come to America if Democrats emerge victorious in November. Indeed, it’s already substantially here. We saw it in the Black Lives Matter rebellion. We see it now in our streets, organized by the Red-Green Alliance and the globalists who fund them.
Source: Fortune
In anthropology and sociology, we teach our students to avoid Eurocentrism because Non-European societies have a different cultural operating system than European-based societies. Treating European experiences, history, institutions, and values as the universal standard distorts our understanding of other societies. Anthropologists, particularly since Franz Boas, have emphasized understanding cultures within their own historical and social contexts rather than judging them according to European cultural standards.
Indeed. People from other cultures don’t think like Westerners do. Africans and Middle Easterners (MENA) in particular don’t share European values. One of those values is assimilation. People from the MENA region resist integrating into Western nations that welcome them. Even when naturalized, they don’t integrate with the host country (we see this in the United States, too). Non-Westerners are the same species, to be sure, but they’re not the same people. I didn’t need proof to know that. But if the French needed proof, they got it in spades.
The underlying tension underpinning the chaos in France is the deterioration of the country. A vast welfare state burdened by mass migration is a major source of France’s decline. The French are experiencing deteriorating school conditions, rising living costs, and dissatisfaction with public services. The silent majority knows the causes of tension: globalization and the importation of millions of Muslims. Today, one in ten French residents is a Muslim. Muslims are disproportionately welfare recipients.
Importing an incompatible population was part of a grand plan. It was designed to undermine organized labor. According to Paul Dijoud, minister for immigrant workers, the French government in the 1970s, under president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, sought in Islam “a stabilizing force which would turn the faithful from deviance, delinquency or membership of unions or revolutionary parties.”
In Multiculturalism and its Discontents, Kenan Malik, who documents this, writes, “When a series of strikes hit car factories in the late 1970s, the government encouraged employers to build prayer rooms in an effort to wean immigrant workers, who formed a large proportion of the workforce, away from militant activity.”
The plan has been highly effective. In the 1950s, roughly one-third of French workers belonged to a trade union. Today, less than one in ten French workers belongs to a trade union.
The plan runs directly counter to France’s value of civic nationalism. Civic nationalism demands that all citizens integrate into a country’s core values. Keeping newcomers away from native-born workers by segregating population groups (such as prayer rooms) effectively disorganizes the national proletariat. French elites betrayed the French citizenry by destabilizing the working-class majority. This is globalization. In Europe, globalization works through regionalization, corporatism, and social democracy.
Ironically, today in France, the social democracy demanded by the left is feeding left-wing rage. They got what they voted for, and they don’t like it. Stupidly, they want more of what they don’t like. That’s on first blush. To be sure, they are stupid, but going deeper, the goal of communism and Islam is to destroy free societies. The destroyers use social democracy as a means to an end. Mass action has a goal—to destabilize the French Republic. Powerful forces are leading the rabble around by the nose.
The far-left plays an outsized role in the rebellion. Yet the MSM dissimulates the cause of the chaos. The talking heads tell us this is about protests over educational disparities. Organized blockades over such grievances aren’t appropriate, either. But this is not really about education. That’s media propaganda. Adult far-left agitators directed students to set up some 900 barricades and blockades across the country in a few days to trigger a mass action. From there, it rapidly descended into chaos. The left and the forces organizing them leveraged widespread discontent to further their revolutionary goals.
We know who is behind the rebellion. France Unbowed or Rebellious France (abbreviated LFI) and the French Communist Party are the principal organizers of the chaos. They are joined by a network of roughly 50 revolutionary groups. Only about 15 of the groups involved are student or youth groups, and they are largely communist youth and Muslim student groups. Visible symbols at marches included Young Communists banners with hammer-and-sickle imagery, “Class War” and anti-imperialist slogans, Antifa insignia, LFI flags, and Palestinian flags. The coalition burning down France is known as the Red-Green Alliance, and several articles on this platform have exposed its character and warned readers of the consequences.
“Nothing justifies it, nothing explains it, nothing excuses it,” President Macron said, pledging an “uncompromising” response to “agitators from ultra-left fringe groups, joined by numerous delinquents.” Yet, there is no mention of mass migration or Muslims in his strident tones. Why would he criticize the plan? At an October 16 European Council meeting, Macron warned against politicizing immigration and argued that individual national approaches were ineffective. He emphasized European cooperation rather than unilateral border closures. He knows that it’s European cooperation that brought about the mass migration crisis.
The problem is not rebellion per se. The problem is who is rebelling. If French patriots rise up against globalization and mass migration and demand economic nationalism, closed borders, and mass deportation, militant action is justified. Violence in defense of one’s nation is warranted—of course, as a last resort. The French government is not acting to save France; the common man may find mass action necessary (they should wake up sooner rather than later). In the current situation, it is the enemies of liberal democracy—communists and Islamists—who are perpetrating the violence. This is never justified and must be met by state and popular force.
Predictably, antisemitism is also a motivating factor. French journalist Paul Amar reports that rioters in Marseille deliberately targeted Jewish-owned businesses while leaving Muslim-owned businesses untouched. Rioters arrived with addresses of Jewish business owners. They were instructed to leave Muslim-owned businesses alone. The world witnessed the second coming of Kristallnacht. It testifies to the true character of the Red-Green Alliance. The rioters are of the same ilk as the Nazi thugs who terrorized Weimar Germany.
In the end, as I have shown on this platform, when it comes to the ordinary person’s phenomenological experience, little light shines between communism and fascism—if any light shines at all. Both movements seek the end of liberal democracy. Both bring despair.
In the final analysis, communism and fascism produce the same conditions: the subsumption of the West under a one-world government and the administered life. The antidotes are republicanism and nationalism. The French need to wake up.
A synagogue in flames in Siegen, Germany, during Kristallnacht
The Democratic Party candidate for Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, habitually draws a false equivalency between Islam and other religions and treats the ethic of religious tolerance as a position of neutrality. Religious tolerance cannot be neutral about which ideology it tolerates, since not all religious systems adhere to the ethic of religious tolerance. El-Sayed’s propaganda line fails the basic test of religious liberty. And people are falling for it.
This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his. pic.twitter.com/p09eMtsh0x
Islam is a religion. But it is more than this. It is a militant right-wing political ideology. The hallmarks of Islam are social authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, rejection of liberal democracy, and commitment to rigid social hierarchies. Islam is a system of intolerance. And it is profoundly antisemitic. What happened in France over the weekend was a return of Kristallnacht. Jewish businesses were targeted. Muslim businesses were left alone. I evoke Nazi terror deliberately; Islam is the modern-day instantiation of National Socialism. Indeed, Islam is the original Nazism.
French journalist Paul Amar:
“They came prepared. They had the addresses of town halls. They had addresses of Jewish shop owners.
In a street in Marseille, all businesses owned by Jews were set on fire. Businesses run by Muslims weren’t” pic.twitter.com/zudahbmw7p
El-Sayed’s response is not merely designed to deflect Tommy’s question (I checked, and Tommy is not a plant). The question does not merely presume that a Muslim would have loyalty to the Muslim Brotherhood; the premise of the question is the fact that El-Sayed’s family has ties to the terrorist organization. El-Sayed is trying to obscure that fact by making the premise about his Muslim faith, as if his faith doesn’t matter. The audience is supposed to believe that Tommy presumes El-Sayed is a terrorist sympathizer because he is a Muslim—and that it is wrong for Tommy to make such a presumption.
For readers unfamiliar with the Muslim Brotherhood, see my August 2026 article, The Final Solution: The Globalist Ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. The game being played here is the manufactured bigotry of Islamophobia. Islam is an ideology. All ideologies are legitimate targets of criticism. Muslims are the bearers of Islam. All bearers of an ideology are rightly subject to criticism. The Muslim Brotherhood exists to organize Muslims in a war against the West and secular governments in the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood appeals to religious liberty to insulate a political project from criticism and resistance. El-Sayed is openly advancing a propaganda line. This makes him part of the Islamization project.
Before Arab Muslims claimed the label exclusively for themselves, all inhabitants of the territory were called “Palestinians.” Many descendants of these populations—Christians, Jews, and Arabs—now live in Israel, formally recognized as a nation-state by the international community. They live there as full Israeli citizens. Israel is one of history’s great success stories.
We are told that the Jews live on stolen land. The “stolen land” designation is not just a left-wing trope; Muslims are fond of the trope, as well. It presumes that the Jews colonized an already existing nation. But the truth is that Palestine has never been a nation in the modern sense. It was a Roman-named territory. In actuality, it is the homeland of the Jews, who lived there thousands of years before any Arabs. The people from which the name Palestine is derived, the Philistines, were not even a Semitic people. They were of Aegean origin. Both the Arabs and the Greeks before them colonized the land of the Jews. They are not indigenous to it.
Now the Arab Muslims seek to drive the Jews from their own lands. They have managed to convince a lot of people around the world that Arabs are the indigenous people of that land and that the Jews are the colonizers. This is an antisemitic lie. The corruption of popular consciousness is a spectacular propaganda achievement. Frankly, the Arab Muslims aren’t sophisticated enough to pull off such a feat. They got a lot of help from their friends, who are motivated to side with the Arabs because they share with Muslims a deep-seated loathing of the Jews.
The Jews are a generous and patient people. They should never have withdrawn from Gaza two decades ago. They should have annexed Gaza, as well as the West Bank, which is a network of Jewish cities and villages, and be done with it. This would have been good for those who now call themselves Palestinians. Had the Arabs living in those areas been assimilated along with the Arabs who became Israeli citizens when the Jewish state was established, they would be better off. Instead, they became pawns for those who loathe the presence of Jews in the region. That the surrounding Arab countries won’t take them more than suggests that Muslims want to keep them there to harass the Jews. After all, Hamas and Hezbollah are proxy armies funded and directed by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The international community could have helped by acknowledging that the Arab League is comprised of 22 member states, predominantly Muslim. Israel’s population is around 2 percent of the region. Its share of the land is only around 0.17 percent. The international community could then ask: Why is it so hard for Arabs to accept Jews living in their ancestral homeland? They would have to acknowledge that this is because Jew hatred is at the core of Islam. Why are world elites obscuring the genocidal desire of those who surround the Jews in the Middle East?
Israeli Jews are not suicidal. They are resisting the genocidal project. They responded to the October 7, 2023, attack with overwhelming military force. The next step is what conquerors do when winning a defensive war: annex the land they have subdued. At the very least, Israel should eliminate Hamas and de-Islamize the territory. This is what the West did with respect to Nazi Germany. The National Socialists were eradicated and Germany de-Nazified.
* * *
The majority of the Jews in America are not suicidal, either. Polls show Jews leaving the Democratic Party in droves. The reason for their exodus is obvious: Democrats have put Muslims before Jews in their desire for electoral power. They know that no governing party in Israel would ever switch its loyalty from Jews to Muslims. The
Democrats are shameless. Even though Jews still outnumber Muslims, the gap is narrowing, and Jews are more geographically concentrated in the Northeast, while Muslims are more evenly distributed across the country’s four major regions. Democrats have been welcoming Muslims into the United States and leveraging these ethnic enclaves to build constituencies in several major cities. Because Muslims constitute around two billion inhabitants on the planet, they represent a vast potential for expanding Democratic hegemony.
American Jews must recognize that the Republican Party is their only hope for marginalizing the Democrats and stemming the Islamization of America. For if or when Democrats become the majority in government, not only will Jews in America be unsafe, but the Jewish homeland in the Middle East will lose its most crucial ally. And Islamization is not just a problem for the Jews. It’s a problem for Christians. Muslims de-Christianize the territories they colonize. Muslims and their advocates tell us that not all Muslims are terrorists. True. But so what? That’s not the problem. The problem is that Islam, a militant political ideology, is a colonizing force.
If the United States does not end Muslim immigration, it is only a matter of time before the United States becomes another casualty of Islamic conquest. Look at what is happening in France. Muslims make up approximately 8–10 percent of France’s population. That’s all it takes to throw a nation into turmoil. Hopefully, the French will reclaim their country. Why should the US even risk the French experience? Why should we have to wonder whether Americans will defend their country from the onslaught of Muslim colonizers?
The Muslim population in the US is 1-2 percent, and it does not appear that they are willing to assimilate into American culture. This morning, I listened to a person insisting that Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic candidate for Senate, doesn’t need to assimilate. Why? Because he was born here. This admits what is so problematic about Islam: even when born in America, Muslims don’t embrace American norms and values.
* * *
In recent essays, I have appealed to Karl Popper’s identification of a problem with tolerance (see, e.g., Why the West Cannot Tolerate the Intolerable). If a people tolerate the intolerable, Popper warns, the intolerant will take command, and will cancel the value of tolerance. Popper insists that we should first meet the intolerable with argument and persuasion, because we are a tolerant people. But when the intolerant will not be persuaded, we know they intend not to embrace the culture of tolerance, but to overthrow it.
It is one thing for a Muslim to live in his enclave and refuse to assimilate into American culture. It is another thing altogether for the Muslim to obtain political office and use that position to transform American culture. The situation then moves from chauvinistic opinion to political action that seeks to encode chauvinism into law and policy. At this point, tolerance is no longer a useful value. It has become an instrument of self-destruction.
A man can be a Nazi. It’s a man’s right to believe what he will, however odious the belief. But he is not allowed to assume office and advocate for transforming society according to National Socialist law and policy. There is no obligation in a nation of free people to allow Nazis to enter their country and trust that they do not mean to remake it into a National Socialist one.
If 1-2 percent of a country’s population identifies as Nazis, it is time to worry about the peril of National Socialism. If Nazis establish enclaves in major US cities, it signals trouble, and a free people must prepare to respond to the threat. If Nazis run for office, then an outcry must go up. Those who defend the Nazi candidate betray their countrymen. They are asking patriots to tolerate the intolerable.
Jews are a very tolerant people. They allow Muslims to participate in Israeli politics. But they would never permit Muslims to achieve majority power in Israel. They know what that would mean for Israel. They know that the National Socialists used the electoral machinery to achieve power in Germany. Once Hitler had secured enough power in the Reichstag, he canceled democracy and established a dictatorship. The Nazis exploited an open system to close that system.
The Jews are also aware that Muslims were in league with the Nazis. The Nazis and the Muslims shared the same goal: the eradication of Jews. They also shared Hitler’s hostility towards Christianity. Baptized and raised Roman Catholic, Hitler was opposed to Christianity even while appealing to it to legitimize his rule. Christianity was permitted in Germany only so long as it did not hinder Hitler’s ambitions.
The reality is that, while Hitler was religious, he saw Christianity as incompatible with his worldview. He objected to Christianity’s emphasis on compassion, humility, and universal moral obligations. In other words, he rejected Christian ethics. Christian ethics conflicted with his racial ideology and Social Darwinist understanding of struggle. Christianity sees all men as equal in God’s eyes. Hitler’s worldview elevated the ethnic German to a position of superiority. All others were inferior, to either be eliminated or subordinated according to the providence that divinely ordained Hitler to manifest on Earth.
Elaborating on the nature of Hitler’s religious belief is a subject for another essay. It suffices to say here that it was not Christianity and, moreover, aligned with the Islamic rejection of Christian ethics and embrace of antisemitism. National Socialism and Islam are birds of a feather. Muslims carry forward Hitler’s project. The Jews recognize this. It is time for Christians to also come together around this understanding. The world didn’t lose millions of lives to the Nazi peril to become paralyzed in the face of the Islamic peril. History is a teacher, but the student must pay attention to its lessons.
And let’s be honest. Those who appeal to tolerance when defending Islam are not really tolerant. Quite the opposite. They do more than plug their ears when those who know history attempt to share its lessons. They rage against the teacher, smearing him as a bigot. They sometimes even resort to violence. They prove the charge against them. It is those who oppose Islamization who are the true defenders of tolerance. They’re the ones confronting the threats to a free and open society. It is the Muslims and their advocates who are the bigots.
The MSM hammered Katie Zacharia, the newly appointed White House Press Secretary, for not passing the bar exam. Zacharia holds a law degree, having graduated from Pepperdine University School of Law in 2011. She has served as a legal advisor for a large law firm. None of that seemed to matter. However, why any of it should matter to her role as White House Press Secretary in the first place is rather baffling. Since when has being a practicing attorney been a qualification for press secretary? At any rate, such was the pressure that Zacharia has resigned from the position.
For the record, passing the bar exam is not universally required to become a practicing attorney in the United States. In fact, one does not necessarily need a law degree to practice law in the United States. This is not true for physicians, however. Being a physician requires more than a medical degree. One must also complete a residency program, pass all steps of standardized licensing examinations, and apply for and obtain an active medical license from a state medical board.
Katie Zacharia and Abdul El-Sayed
Abdul El-Sayed earned his MD from Columbia University in 2014. However, he did not complete his residency. He has never held a medical license. Under Michigan and New York state law, “physician” is strictly defined as an individual who is licensed to engage in the active practice of medicine. Putting the matter bluntly, El-Sayed is not a physician. Yet he claimed on numerous occasions that he was. Is being a physician a qualification for being a Senator? No. But a Senator should be a truthful person. How can we trust El-Sayed’s integrity in office if he lies about who he is?
Zacharia is an attractive woman. I suspect there’s some Sydney Sweeney envy behind the frenzy. But that’s not all. Is the media hysteria over Zacharia’s self-identification as a lawyer designed to deflect from the fact that El-Sayed lied about being a physician? Where is the media hysteria over El-Sayed falsely claiming to be a physician? Doesn’t a Senator occupy a loftier position than that of White House Press Secretary? Was NBC’s query into El-Sayed’s mother’s involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood a limited hangout to deflect further from the candidate’s deception about being a physician—and possible connections with the terrorist organization?
Republican candidate Mike Rogers is gaining ground, but El-Sayed has held a consistent lead in the polling. Are Michiganders about to elect an Islamist to the Senate?
We know who Zacharia is. Whether she misrepresented her credentials seems a rather trivial matter. But who the hell is El-Sayad? Why has the MSM essentially ignored these questions all along? Is it not news that a candidate for Senator lied about being a physician and may have ties to a terrorist organization? What did the Democratic National Committee know about these matters? I presume the MSM and the DNC knew about them all along. It’s like these organizations are run by stupid people.
In light of yesterday’s article, Impeachment Managers Withheld Crucial Information at Trump’s Senate Trial, where is the MSM on the newly declassified documents showing that witnesses in the House impeachment of Donald Trump lied under oath? Imagine the shoe being on the other foot. Would the MSM ignore the fact that witnesses in a House impeachment of Joe Biden lied under oath? Not unless their lies advantaged Biden. We see the same dynamic in the Zacharia hysteria. Zacharia was burned under the magnifying glass. El-Sayed escapes sustained media scrutiny.
If you don’t see this yet, then you are truly naive: the MSM is essentially the DNC’s propaganda platform. This is why relying on alternative news sources is imperative to hold informed opinions about public officials and the myriad other issues of public concern (for example, in crime reporting). A man who relies mostly or solely on CNN, MS NOW, and other major news networks is not an informed citizen. He is the target of disinformation. He should think better of himself.
According to reporting from The Hill, four Republican senators have joined the Democrats in pressing the Trump administration for information about whether Pentagon officials ordered restrictions on Ukraine’s access to the satellite-based Starshield network, which Ukrainian officials said limited their ability to intercept Russian drones. Ukraine also uses Starshield to target sites inside Russia. Restricting Ukraine’s access to the network hampers its ability to wage war with Russia.
Restricting Ukraine’s access to Starshield may be a move to force the Zelensky regime to the negotiating table. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that a resumption of full peace talks is unlikely due to Ukrainian drone attacks, as well as ongoing disagreements over territorial and security demands. Too many lives have been lost in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
For the record, I have always opposed US assistance to Ukraine. I have been writing about this conflict on Freedom and Reason from the start of the war and made my position explicit (see my initial essay, which provides the historical context, History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War). In my view, it was always a bad idea to allow the Zelensky regime access to satellites to target Russia.
However, in light of recent developments, the more important question may be why some Republicans are upset about Trump restricting Ukraine’s access to the Starshield network (if, in fact, this is what Trump did). How are there any Republicans who insist on aiding Ukraine? Ukraine is corrupt and authoritarian. Democrats are neck-deep in the corruption.
Newly declassified State Department emails and documents show that former US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch received frequent briefings from top aides on Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma, a Ukrainian company, contradicting her congressional impeachment testimony. The emails show that her deputy in Kyiv believed the Burisma-Biden relationship was adversely affecting US policy. Trump’s phone call to Zelensky concerned these ties. He was not only acting in his role as Magistrate-in-Chief, but also to secure the integrity of US foreign policy.
Impeachment managers withheld this information at Donald Trump’s Senate trial concerning the Ukraine phone call. Trump ultimately prevailed in that case (Senator Mitt Romney of Utah was the sole Republican lawmaker to break party lines), but the fact that Democrats concealed information that would have allowed managers to turn this back on Democrats is deeply concerning. This is a massive scandal. Will the MSM treat it as such? Readers know the answer to this question.
It appears clear now that the impeachment of Trump over the Ukraine phone call was a desperate attempt by Democrats to deflect from Hunter Biden’s involvement in Burisma and, more deeply, Joe Biden’s relationship to Ukraine corruption. (See The Conspiracy to Overthrow an American President.) If this information had been public, it might have shone a light on the Biden crime family. It might have made 2020 too big to rig. Instead, the impeachment gave Democrats a propaganda weapon to drive down support for a successful president seeking reelection.
Senators are sworn in at the start of Trump’s impeachment trial, January 16, 2020
I have several thoughts about the Cornell rape case. Before I turn to them, I want to summarize the case for readers who may not be following it closely. But before that, I want to recognize rape as a serious felonious offense. Rape is sexual intercourse or penetration that occurs without a person’s consent. This can include sex obtained through coercion, physical force, threats, or when a person is incapable of giving consent, such as when unconscious. The precise legal definition varies by jurisdiction, including which acts qualify, how consent is defined, and how the law treats coercion or incapacity. Consent is a tricky matter, as the reader will see.
* * *
The case at hand concerns allegations that a 20-year-old Cornell University student, identified as Jane Doe, was drugged and gang-raped by members of the Chi Phi fraternity at a fraternity house in October 2024. Doe alleges that, after drinking alcohol and being pressured to use ketamine, she became incapacitated while multiple men engaged in sexual acts with her over several hours. Some are denying that this is gang-rape. They contend that what occurred instead is what is popularly known as a gang-bang.
Doe reported the incident to Cornell police in November 2024. A rape kit was administered 18 days after the fact, which makes obtaining useful DNA evidence highly improbable. The local district attorney declined to prosecute, citing information campus police provided, which he said did not establish a prosecutable case. There is a dispute about whether police police properly communicated to the DA that she believed she had been raped when she reported the incident.
Cornell conducted its own investigation, resulting in disciplinary sanctions, including suspensions and expulsions, although the university has not disclosed individual punishments.
Universities use the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, not beyond reasonable doubt. For this reason, I generally oppose universities handling cases of alleged sexual assault. Rapse is a crime. Criminal justice properly handles criminal cases. Consider the problem of the state pursuing a criminal case wherein the defendants were acquitted. Cornell would have punished men found not guilty of having committed rape.
In September 2026, Doe filed a civil lawsuit against seven fraternity members and the university, and newly reported messages, recordings, and investigative documents have intensified public scrutiny.
The district attorney has subsequently reopened the criminal investigation, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor. No charges have been filed.
All seven men named in the lawsuit deny the allegations, and no criminal trial has established Doe’s claims. The men are innocent until proven guilty. And whatever the outcome of the civil case, no crime of rape will have been adjudicated.
* * *
My first thought is, why do we know the names of those accused but not the name of the accuser? A foundational principle of justice is that the accused have a right to confront their accusers. The accused know who Doe is. They were intimate with her. Some of them more than once. But the public doesn’t know Doe’s identity. This means reporters can neither effectively interrogate the veracity of Doe’s claims nor probe her character (to my knowledge, the press are not forbidden to report Doe’s identity). The particular accusation should not negate the principle. Rape is an assault. In what other type of assault case is the accuser a Jane or John Doe?
The short answer is that it is a civil case, and the Sixth Amendment does not apply to civil cases. This still doesn’t explain why we know the identities of those accused but not Doe’s identity. However, the more important question, as alluded to above, is, if a crime occurred, why wasn’t this a criminal case?
A civil trial is about money. Cornell has deep pockets. This rightly raises suspicion about motive for pursuing this case. If the criminal case is reopened, that comes with its own problems (which I will get to). Shouldn’t we wait for that?
TMZ obtained text messages between Jonathan Newell, one of the accused, and Jane Doe from October 21, 2024. Newell apologized for the situation and said he hoped Doe wasn’t facing as much criticism as he and others were. Doe replied that her memories were unclear because everyone involved had been heavily intoxicated. She said she had enjoyed being with Newell and Matthew Ingalls (also accused of rape), and that she did not believe they should feel ashamed of their consensual sexual encounter. “Our body, our choice,” she wrote in one text.
At the same time, Doe also suggested that others present should have left rather than becoming involved. She emphasized that the encounter had originally involved just the three of them in Newell’s bed. She appears unable to remember who the others were or how they were involved. Some who were present deny engaging in sex with Doe. Finally, Doe expressed affection for both men and indicated that she had previously had a similar encounter with them and was open to having sex with them in the future.
The messages suggest that Jane initially viewed the sexual encounter positively, despite her impaired memory, while expressing objections to other people becoming involved. The messages alone do not establish whether everyone involved could meaningfully consent at the time. Assuming consent was impossible under the conditions, some argue these texts don’t matter. What matters is that several men, who were intoxicated themselves, had sex with an intoxicated female. This raises questions about the prevailing consent doctrine.
Shouldn’t the consent doctrine cut both ways? If the accuser did not consent to sex because of alcohol and ketamine intoxication, then, since (at least some of) those accused were also intoxicated using the same chemicals, how could they have consented to sex? If a man cannot consent to sex with a woman, is he not a rape victim? This begs the question: can men be raped? We presume so, even if the victims of rape are much more frequently women than men.
When Doe reached out to one of the men a few days later, she asked him to help her piece together that night. His response was that he, too, was intoxicated and that whatever they were able to come up with together wouldn’t be a trustworthy account.
If he can’t fully recall the evening because he was intoxicated, then how is he not a rape victim—if we grant this is a rape case? Or is there a double standard? In principle, individuals regardless of sex, when accused of a crime, stand equally before the law. Rape statutes do not specify that only women can be victims. The law does not allow for double standards in such cases.
Reopening the criminal case is problematic. The local district attorney originally declined charges in 2024 in part because of a provision in New York law known as the “voluntary intoxication loophole.” Under state law at the time, which is all that matters, since ex post facto laws are constitutionally disallowed, if a person voluntarily consumes drugs or alcohol, it is difficult for prosecutors to prove criminal incapacitation and a lack of consent in a courtroom. How would one know whether Doe consented to group sex and now regrets that choice?
New York State monkeys with the law all the time—most notoriously, the Zombie case against Donald Trump, resulting in a 34-count felony conviction of the then-former President. The judge in that case effectively set aside Trump’s conviction, but, as I have written about on Freedom and Reason, the state pursuing the case in the first place was a travesty of justice. Prevailing law governed the case against Trump. Likewise, prevailing law governed the Cornell case.
Is there anything unusual about Doe’s experience? Not really. Sex parties with multiple partners have been a thing for a very long time. One nationally representative study found that 12% of men and 6.3% of women reported having had group sex (that twice as many men report this as women is an interesting question that I will have to set aside for now). Moreover, group sex often involves intoxicants. This isn’t just a porn thing. Indeed, pornographers got the idea from the real world.
* * *
Is this a case of regret? Post hoc revocation of consent? To be sure, one can withdraw consent at any time—presuming consent were possible—but after the fact? I’m not saying there was no guilty party if it can be established that rape occurred. What I am suggesting is that this case is complex and raises questions about how we think about such cases generally. Even if we grant that most accusations of rape are real, we know that not all of them are. Society should not shy away from the reality of false accusations or regret.
In 1995, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a 38-year-old Minneapolis exotic dancer alleged that she was raped by multiple New Orleans Saints players at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse dormitory where the team stayed during training camp. She said she met players after the team’s August 6 preseason game and was invited to a party at the dormitory, where sexual encounters occurred. At least four players reportedly had sexual contact with her. But the players maintained that the encounters were consensual.
After investigating, La Crosse County prosecutors declined to file rape charges, citing inconsistencies in the woman’s accounts and concluding that they did not believe the evidence would establish nonconsent beyond a reasonable doubt.
Readers might also take a look at the case of Crystal Mangum, the former exotic dancer who accused three Duke men’s lacrosse players of rape in 2006. She later confessed to having lied about the encounter. No charges were filed against the men. But why were no charges filed against Mangum for falsely accusing three men of rape?
While the identities of those accused in the Cornell and Duke cases were known and the men were dragged through the dirt, the accused were unidentified in the New Orleans Saints case. Why do we know the identities of any of the accused? Their identities unknown, they could not be tried in the court of public opinion. The obvious answer is that the public has a right to know. So then why is Doe in the Cornell case anonymous?
Anonymity is no small matter. Charges can be dropped. Cases can be dismissed. Defendants can be acquitted. But once falsely accused, what office does one go to restore his reputation? There is no such office. Once accused, a man will be forever stained by the false accusation because there will always be people who reflexively believe alleged victims. Once the names of the men are out there, the damage is done. The process is the punishment.
Moreover, why are those who make false accusations not held accountable for the reputational damage they cause, not to mention the waste of taxpayer resources in pursuing such cases? If an accusation harms a man’s reputation, those who have harmed him should suffer consequences. This would not only deter the accuser from leveling false accusations in the future, but would deter others from making false allegations. Some will say this will have a chilling effect on the victims of sexual assault. So society should let those who bear false witness do so with impunity?
This is why I don’t like the mind-closing slogans like “Believe all victims,” “Believe women,” or “Believe her.” The rational default position is to disbelieve any claim unless the evidence convinces otherwise. There’s nothing special about women that justifies violating the rational position. Women are as capable of lying as are men.
The rational rule is straightforward: the person making the claim must justify her claim with evidence. If a man tells me he was abducted by aliens, I will need evidence before believing his claim, and that evidence better be convincing. Hitchens Razor: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Without compelling evidence, there is no reason to believe Doe’s accusations.
* * *
Finally, returning to the matter of consent, do we really want to live in a world where consent to have sex must be in writing? I am not being hyperbolic. How else could we know, with no compelling evidence to the contrary, whether consent was obtained without some contract? Obtaining provable consent is not ordinarily how a sexual encounter goes. Humans typically go at such things semiotically; the signs of receptivity are usually rather obvious.
Since, according to doctrine, consent can be withdrawn at any time, should a scribe be present to record when consent is withdrawn? Again, sexual encounters don’t work that way. A man or woman may later regret what he or she did, but this is a risk associated with intimate encounters.
I don’t think many people want sexual encounters to work with legal formalities. Such an imposition takes an interpersonal experience and burdens it with rules that have historically stood outside intimate encounters. And those rules are always changing. How deeply involved in our sex lives do we want the state?
Parents should educate their children to respect boundaries and to honor the wishes of others. If a woman does not wish to have sex, or wishes to stop the encounter in progress, then the man should respect that. He should feel shame for not doing so. The same is true for women, who are also capable of sexual aggression. That some people violate boundaries or refuse to respect the wishes of others should not change the way humans have been having sex for millennia.
As a general rule, we should resist the colonization of our most intimate social relations by bureaucratic rules shaped by particular ideologies. This is a major source of double standards.
In the Cornell case, Doe insisted that those she knowingly and willingly had sex with feel no shame for having participated. With respect to the two men I named, it does not appear they raped Doe. By her own admission, she wanted to have sex with them. As for others allegedly involved, how is one to determine whether she consented in those cases? Moreover, how do we know whether the other men consented to group sex?
As a liberal, I am inclined to tolerate sex among consenting adults in any configuration. Heterosexual sex. Homosexual sex. Bisexual sex. Multiple partners. As long as children are not involved, then what would be the reason the law would forbid it apart from the imposition of a religious framework, which, in a secular society, the state is wont to do? I certainly don’t want religious morality governing my sex life. I also don’t want people to worry that a consensual encounter could later result in an accusation of sexual assault.
* * *
The question of consent bears not only on sex between strangers or acquaintances. For centuries, English common law followed the doctrine that a husband could not legally rape his wife because marriage was treated as implying permanent consent to sexual intercourse. That doctrine influenced American law and remained in place in many jurisdictions well into the twentieth century.
More recently, many jurisdictions created exceptions to the marital exemption before eventually removing it entirely. The crime of marital rape became legally recognized in the United States beginning in 1976, with all 50 states criminalizing it in some form by 1993. That does not mean the law treated marital and nonmarital rape equally at that point, but it did erase implied consent for married couples.
Should a husband or wife always seek consent before having sex? Or does having sex happen organically without a tangle of legal abstractions? Bloodsport debaters Andrew and Rachel Wilson have been entering Internet spaces to record their arrangement about sex in their marriage. Both grant the other permanent implied consent to sexual intercourse. Feminists on the panels scold Rachel for violating the consent rules they’ve established. Rachel responds with the feminist slogan: “Our Body Our Choice.”
Shouldn’t it be the case that, if a married couple agree that each has full access to the other’s body, this should be the prevailing rule? Why should the consent rules of a political-ideological movement govern Andrew and Rachel’s intimate relationship?
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What are we to make of Jane Doe’s invocation of the feminist slogan? It strikes me as paradoxical that the movement for women’s liberation should come with strict rules governing the sexual behaviors of women. Is there something wrong with a woman having sex with multiple men? Perhaps from a given religious standpoint. But religion should have no role in governing the affairs of free men and women.
What should govern rape cases is evidence. Regarding the Cornell situation, there’s a reason prosecutors did not initially bring charges in this case: they did not think it was winnable. Reopening the case strikes me as a political decision.
Protecting the rights of the accused is paramount in a free society. The accused should be presumed innocent. The burden of proof must rest squarely on the accuser. Society must set politics and ideology aside if justice is to prevail. Rape is never okay. But whether a rape has occurred is a matter determined by evidence and circumstances. And it must be determined beyond a reasonable doubt.
Islam, which is in truth a militant political ideology, is incompatible with the West.
Religion in the West is privatized and pluralistic. Westerners treat religious belief primarily as a matter of individual conscience. A person may hold very strong religious convictions, but he doesn’t expect others to share them or organize society around them. The West is marked by religious liberty, which supports religious diversity. People of all faiths thrive in the West.
The contrast between religious attitudes in the West and those in the Islamic world could not be sharper. Islam is not simply a personal commitment. Nor is it merely a collective identity that establishes boundaries between believers and outsiders. It is intolerant of other religious faiths. Three features of Islam make it a threat to Western religious pluralism.
First, Islam is triumphalist. Muslims assert the superiority of their religion and seek its dominance over other religions. Second, Islam is aggressively proselytizing. It seeks converts, preying on the disaffected and disordered. Once it, it is dangerous to get out. Third, Islam is integralist. Muslims believe that religious principles should organize political and social institutions rather than remain matters of private conscience.
Whereas the West has established rules that maximize religious liberty, Muslims institute rules that place other religious faiths in a subordinate position to Islam. Islam is by nature incapable of religious tolerance. Therefore, an open and pluralistic society must be intolerant of Islam. Islam is to other religious pluralism what communism and fascism are to liberalism. It’s the difference between totalitarianism and freedom. Defending liberty requires rejecting totalitarian ideologies and keeping their bearers at bay.
I have noted on the pages of Freedom and Reason that a tolerant society practicing intolerance towards Islam is accused of engaging in a paradox. The paradox is only apparent. First-order tolerance is allowing people to hold and advocate views fundamentally opposed to one’s own. However, there is a second-order: tolerating challenges to the institutional framework that guarantees first-order tolerance. A society cannot enjoy first-order tolerance if it fails to protect the institutional framework that guarantees it.
Think of it this way: the distinction between (1) rules governing a game and (2) moves made within the game. Allowing every legal move does not entail permitting a player to abolish the rules governing play. In chess, one’s opponent is free to make any move he thinks will win the game as long as he moves his pieces according to the rules. The rules allow for free play.
In the West, a Christian is free to practice his religion as long as he does not make it impossible for others to practice theirs. Christians, Jews, and those of other faiths play by the rules—rules that foster religious plurality. Muslims seek to change the rules to make religious pluralism impossible.
The same is true with communism and fascism. Liberals play by rules that maximize equality and freedom. In Western societies, an individual’s fate is not predetermined. He may make of himself what he will. Westerners even help the losers. By contrast, communists and fascists control the fate of individuals. They pick the winners. And the majority loses. Authoritarians do not tolerate free play. And so liberal society cannot tolerate authoritarians.
US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s father, Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, was a senior Soviet-trained Somali military officer serving under dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. The Barre regime, which lasted more than twenty years (1969-1991), was a Soviet satellite. The Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party integrated Marxism-Leninism with Islam. That’s right, it was a Red-Green totalitarian state.
A major state-directed genocide occurred during Barre’s reign. Widely known as the Isaaq genocide (or the Hargeisa Holocaust), the Isaaq people were systemically eliminated in a state-directed campaign.
After the fall of the Barre regime, Colonel Mohamed and his family fled to Kenya. They came to the United States in 1995 as “refugees” and settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Colonel Mohamed almost certainly committed atrocities. But is it not enough that he was a high-ranking officer in a brutal military dictatorship?
Why were the colonel and his family allowed into the United States? How did his daughter, a vehemently anti-American and anti-white racist, come to sit in Congress?
Dictator Mohamed Siad Barre
Democrats want fraudsters, pirates, crime, and chaos. Minneapolis is a paradigm of the Democrats’ penchant for corruption. But Minneapolis is hardly the only example. The facts make it irrational to be charitable and chalk up the mess Democrats have created in our cities to unintended consequences. Progressives are not paving the road to hell in good intentions, however much they present themselves as bleeding-heart liberals. They aren’t even liberals. They’re authoritarians.
Democrats are not stupid people. They know what they’re doing. One need only look at policy and its effects to see the plan. The plan? To disorder American society so progressives can obtain and keep power. They seek total power, not just for power’s sake, but also to advance the agenda of world financial institutions and transnational corporate power. Obtaining power has a purpose: denationalizing the global space.
Nationalism and globalism have different ends. Nationalism is about keeping the Republic. A sovereign nation-state puts its people first. World financial institutions and transnational corporations put their own interests and profits first. Globalism seeks to abolish sovereign nation-states and subsume the world population under one world government run by banks and corporations. We don’t have to speculate about this. But even if it wasn’t its stated goal, it’s the obvious entailment of transnationalization.
We see these ends in the way Democrats and progressives constantly run down America and white people. America is racist. White people are racist. Patriots are mouth breathing neanderthals. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is not an outlier. She is a spokesperson.
We see the same anti-West, anti-white politics in Europe. The worst possible outcome for elites is that populist nationalism would reclaim the nation-state and thwart the globalist agenda. But what alternative do the people in France have to putting Marie Le Pen in power and embarking on a project of mass deportation? Are the French supposed to stand by idly while France becomes part of the Third World?
The desire for technocratic control over the population is another chief indicator of the agenda. Technocracy is necessary from the progressive standpoint because too many white Americans are assumed to be backwards or, concerning black Americans, incapable of self-sufficiency. These populations need containing and managing. Meanwhile, in America and Europe, Islam is elevated.
Los Angeles
Democrats have been preparing the denationalization of America for decades. If they don’t keep them from office, Americans will lose their country. The Midterm Elections are not routine. November 2026 represents a fork in the road. Either America continues the path to restoring its greatness, or it takes the road to a world of shit.
We can see what Democrats bring to the table. Los Angeles and San Francisco exemplify progressive politics in action. Do we really want America to be Los Angeles or San Francisco?
Homeland Security has raided Omar’s home. The Party is rallying around her. They insist that Democrats are above the law. The Party is pro-Islam. Its members are anti-American. Omar is above the law because the Party does not believe in the law.
So, I ask again: Why were the colonel and his family allowed into the United States? How did his daughter, a vehemently anti-American and anti-white racist, come to sit in Congress? Because Ilham Omar and her ilk are key to advancing the agenda.
You are sleeping. Wake up, sleepy heads. Take back the country your forefathers entrusted to you.
Update (October 15, 9:49 pm): The photo widely shared on social media does not appear to be that of the shooter. I believe I have located the shooter’s photo. Why are neither the police nor the media sharing the photo?
Update (12:05 pm): Erie police have identified the shooter as Matthew Stone, Sr.
Oddly, the City of Erie police haven’t released the name of the perpetrator of the recent mass familicide in Pennsylvania. We know that it was a 45-year-old male who was related to the victims, but that is all. The police are also withholding other crucial facts. For example, we know that one of the victims was the shooter’s daughter, Angelina Stone, who was pregnant. But we don’t know if her mother was one of the victims.
Angelina Stone (right) with Julius Windham and their baby
The Internet believes it knows who the perpetrator is, but I am waiting for the police to reveal his identity. X is alive, with profiles claiming the man was a white man radicalized by the Republican Party. It may be a white man, but I don’t see how Republican Party politics would radicalize a white man to kill his family. The Republican Party is pro-family.
The shooter’s daughter, Angelina, clearly has black ancestry. Julius Windham, referred to in local interviews by his middle name, Ezekiel, the father of Angelina’s nearly 2-year-old daughter, Amari’anna, who was also killed, is black. Was the shooter black? Was her mother black? Although the police have not revealed whether Angelina’s mother was killed, the Internet is reporting that she is among the victims. But no race has been identified.
I am interested in these questions because social media profiles immediately jumped to the conclusion that, since this was a mass shooting and because white men perpetrate most mass shootings, this must be a white man. Again, the shooter may very well be a white man, but the inference is based on false assumptions.
First, most mass shootings—three or more victims—occur in black-majority urban settings. It is a myth that white men are more often mass shooters compared to black men or that they are statistically overrepresented in mass shootings. Black men are dramatically overrepresented in homicide overall, perpetrating roughly half of all murders in the US. Black men are only 6 percent of the population.
Second, while it is true that white men perpetrated more familicides involving three or more victims, they are statistically less likely to perpetrate this murder type. One-third of all familicides involving three or more victims are perpetrated by black men. This means that black men are drastically overrepresented in this crime type. To be sure, most of those who perpetrate this crime type are white men, but then most men in the US are white. This is a majority-white country.
What is behind social media profiles within moments of the shooting jumping to the conclusion that this was a white man? The posts often come with the gleeful assertion that this was not a black man. They desperately want it to be a white man, not only to smear white men as dangerous (the posts often come with this assertion), but to take the focus off of the overrepresentation of black men in homicide.
When the demographics of homicide are discussed, the accusation of racism hovers above. Yet more than half of all homicide victims are black, and their killers are most often other blacks. Do the victims not matter because they are black? They seem to matter when the perpetrator is white. But white-on-black homicide is rare. Why are progressives so determined to selectively obscure the race of killers at the expense of the race of their victims? Why do they immediately presume a mass murderer is white or feel relief when he is not a black man? I didn’t make this political. I am addressing the politics of the phenomenon.
I also have a moral concern. How are we going to confront the pathologies of urban black neighborhoods if we make it a sign of racism to talk about racial demographics of serious crime? The fact that black men are overrepresented in homicide is a problem that the nation must address. We must talk about this for the victims’ sake. Their lives matter. We cannot ignore them because progressives find the facts inconvenient.
For several decades, earlier in my academic career, I followed the evolution of white supremacy and its numerous manifestations. I have two bookshelves devoted to studies of white supremacy and antisemitism. I turned my attention to other matters over time; however, the rise of antisemitism has brought me back to the subject, and recent interactions on social media knocked off some of the rust on my knowledge base.
One strand of white supremacy I have encountered lately is Christian Identity (not to be confused with Christian nationalism or evangelical Christianity). In this essay, I briefly explore Christian Identity and its affinity with Nazism, as well as its affinity with Islam. Considering the threat Islam poses to Christianity, observers may find it odd that some Christians would align their politics with those of Muslims. The heart of the convergence is virulent antisemitism.
A Christian Identity symbol
Before turning to the Christian Identity worldview, it is useful to note where one is most likely to encounter Christian Identity adherents. Christian Identity is mostly found in the Pacific Northwest, especially Idaho and neighboring areas (Northern Idaho became a major center through Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations compound). However, it is also found in the Ozarks and the Midwest, including parts of Arkansas, Missouri, and surrounding states, where Identity churches and ministries have operated. Christian Identity adherents also dwell in Appalachian and Southern regions. Small groups have been documented in states such as Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
What is Christian Identity doctrine? Emerging in the United States during the twentieth century from earlier British Israelism, the movement teaches that white Europeans and their descendants, rather than Jewish people, are the true heirs of the biblical Israelites. Its adherents claim that the ancient Israelite tribes migrated into Europe and that biblical promises concerning Israel therefore apply to white people.
Within this worldview, Jews are falsely identified as God’s chosen people, and this alleged deception is often attributed to Satan. Some adherents identify Jews with the biblical tribe of Judah while denying that they are the legitimate heirs to God’s promises; others reject the claim that Jews descend from the ancient Israelites altogether. The doctrine thus constructs a racial and theological opposition between white Europeans, portrayed as the true Israelites, and Jews, portrayed as impostors or enemies of God’s plan.
Where do Christian Identity adherents get this idea? Careful Bible readers will recall that, in 1 Kings 12, the ancient Kingdom of Israel split into separate kingdoms around 930 BC, following the death of King Solomon. Most of the northern tribes rejected Solomon’s heir, Rehoboam, and established a separate kingdom, known as the Kingdom of Israel, under King Jeroboam I. The southern kingdom, known as the Kingdom of Judah, remained under the House of David, with Jerusalem as its capital, and was associated primarily with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
Christian Identity doctrine takes the biblical account and builds a racial narrative around their separate histories. After Assyria conquered the northern kingdom around 722–720 BC, biblical tradition came to know the northern tribes as the “lost tribes of Israel.” Christian Identity adherents claim that these tribes migrated across Europe and eventually became the ancestors of white Anglo-Saxons and other northern Europeans.
Christian Identity is ideological, not historical. Whereas Judaism and mainstream Christianity understand the biblical narratives within their historical (and theological) contexts, Christian Identity adherents use them to construct a racial hierarchy. This hierarchy must presume that Jews are not white. It must also reject the Jewish people’s historical connection to ancient Israel. To reach these conclusions, adherents reinterpret biblical passages to establish the supposed superiority of white people over other racial groups.
The involvement of Jews in civil rights and other liberal causes is interpreted as a plot to corrupt the white race. As readers will know, Christians of this persuasion associated Jews with the evils of communism. This is one of the things that separates far-right antisemites from the antisemites in the popular progressive movement, who associate Jews with the evils of capitalism. These differences do not obviate the political convergence of the far right and far left. Antisemitism is the strong core that unites them.
A Christian Identity symbol: The Phinehas Priesthood
Readers will note the significant ideological connection between Christian Identity and Nazism, particularly through racial antisemitism and the belief that Jews are the enemies of the white Christian world. What distinguishes Nazism from other forms of fascism is the centrality of antisemitism and the belief that Jews constituted a racial enemy responsible for Germany’s supposed decline. The America Firsters who reject the populist-nationalism of the MAGA movement work from this assumption. Some America Firsters are Christian Identity, but all of them are antisemites.
Antisemitism is also the source of Nazism’s historic affinity with Islam. Like Hitler and the Nazis, Muslims blame Jews for the problems in the Arab Muslim world. This brought them into a coalition with the Third Reich. Christian Identity carries forward Hitler’s vision of a Jew-free world. To clarify, Christian Identity did not originate with Nazism; it preceded National Socialism. And, of course, antisemitism in the Islamic world preceded Nazism. But all that is neither here nor there, since all three forms of hatred are founded upon anti-Jewish hatred—and the structure and content of that hatred are essentially identical. The convergence is organic.
Obviously, Christian Identity beliefs do not reflect mainstream Christian theology. Nor do these beliefs accurately depict biblical history. To put the matter bluntly, Christian Identity is cracked; one can easily debunk its claims. The claim that white Europeans are the true Israelites is not established by biblical references to the twelve tribes (or variations in their number), by the history of the word Jew, or by credible historical evidence. But historical accuracy is not important to white supremacists (nor is scientific accuracy with respect to the race question). The distinction between ancient Israelite identity and later Jewish identity is necessary to a racialized narrative that denies Jewish historical belonging and privileges white ancestry—a narrative that must deny Jewish whiteness or the fact of Jewish ethnicity (Jews are racially Caucasian and a distinct ancestral group organized by matrilineage).
Consequently, the movement must be understood not simply as an alternative interpretation of Christianity, but as a form of religiously framed white supremacy. One can suspect Christian Identity belief in the fact that its adherents promote conspiracy theories about Jewish influence over financial institutions, governments, and the media. This is what knocked the rust off my white supremacy knowledge base. I am seeing conspiracy theories about Jewish influence everywhere on social media. To be sure, conspiracy theories about Jews also indicate other worldviews—Islam and Nazism being two obvious examples. Isolating Christian Identity belief comes by paying attention to the specific Biblical interpretation the antisemite is working from. Once enough has been revealed through interrogation, then a diagnosis can be made.
As noted at the outset of this essay, one of the more interesting pieces of today’s antisemitic frenzy is the affinity between some Christians and Muslims. The point of overlap arises most clearly with Islamist political movements that define Jews or Zionism (i.e., Jewish nationalism) as a fundamental enemy. Christian Identity and Islam converge in their shared hostility toward Jews, Israel, and what they portray as Jewish influence in world affairs. This aligns them with street-level progressivism, which is profoundly antisemitic, a sentiment deepened by left-wing Islamophilia. Antisemitism makes for strange bedfellows!
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I cannot leave this essay without noting a specific historical example of the affinity between Christian Identity and Islam in the United States: The Nation of Islam (NOI). NOI is a black nationalist religious movement that promotes racial separatism and antisemitic teachings that closely resemble Christian Identity’s claims about Jews, Satan, and illegitimate Jewish identity. Cameron Rowlett’s 2019 article, “In God’s Own Image: Race, Politics and Millennialism in the Nation of Islam and Christian Identity Movement,” explicitly compares the two movements, identifying racial separatism, racialized religious identity, and apocalyptic expectations as areas of overlap.
Although the connection here is more about shared belief, there are direct points of contact between white supremacists and NOI. The American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell was invited to speak at a Nation of Islam Saviours’ Day convention. Tom Metzger attended a Nation of Islam rally in San Diego and donated money to NOI on behalf of his organization. Years ago, some 200 white supremacists gathered on a farm roughly 50 miles west of Detroit and expressed support for the Nation of Islam. The event followed contact between NOI leader Louis Farrakhan and Metzger. Readers should know that Metzger founded White Aryan Resistance (WAR). He moved in the same circles as Aryan Nations, led by Richard Butler, which was closely associated with Christian Identity theology.
* * *
Perhaps not incidentally, in antiquity, arya, meaning “noble” or “dignified,” was a cultural and linguistic self-identifier used by ancient Indo-Iranians, including the people of the Vedic sub-continent and ancient Persia. The word Iran literally translates to “land of the Aryans.” It might strike the reader as odd that white supremacists would adopt Aryan for their identity. Ironically, it is an admission that Irans are, in fact, white. Since Jews originate in the Middle East, why are they not also considered white? White supremacists twist themselves into knots attempting to reracialize the Jews. It is an attempt to turn the religious differences between Jews and Christians into a genetic reality. It also enhances the affinity between far-right Christians and Muslims. Thus, the hatred of Jews by some Christians and almost all Muslims becomes a war between Caucasians and the common racial enemy—the Jews. This is an earthly manifestation of the spiritual war between God and Satan.
* * *
It is troubling that, all these years later, we find the convergence achieving broad-based support for anti-Jewish antipathy not only on the far right, but on the far left. It is also troubling that, while the mainstream right understands the problem and has purged its ranks of antisemites, the mainstream left, either explicitly or implicitly, by failing to condemn the antisemites in its ranks, has not followed suit.
Just last night, in a debate between Democratic candidate for Senate, Abdul El-Sayed, and his Republican opponent Mike Rogers, El-Sayed refused to acknowledge that Iran poses a greater threat to world peace than Israel. The correct response would have been to correct the premise of the question: Israel presents no threat to world peace. A nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat. Iran seeks terrible weapons to bring about the apocalypse. El-Sayed dismissed the question altogether. Yesterday, this would have immediately disqualified him as a candidate for high office in a free country. Today, he is leading Rogers in public polling.
One may identify three positions regarding freedom of conscience. First, the standard liberal position is one of tolerance. For the liberal, a person who believes a thing is free to do so as long as what he believes does not limit another man’s freedom. A second position, which I characterize in a moment, holds that a person who believes a thing is not free to do so. He must either never say he believes the thing or, if he openly expresses that belief, he must be suppressed. The third position is that those who do not believe the thing must be compelled to do so. If they do not, they must face consequences.
Let’s use Scientology as an example. According to this belief, at some point in the distant past, alien beings called thetans were scattered across the universe, and some wound up inside each of us. A technique called auditing reveals their presence. Although the thetan is unobservable, it is real to the person who believes in it. The standard liberal position is to tolerate the Scientologist. Insofar as others are unaffected by his belief, the man is free to believe in thetans if he chooses. For those who assume the second position, the man should not be free to hold this belief, and society must therefore suppress him. In the third position, all people must subscribe to Scientology, and those who do not must face the consequences of their disbelief.
One can replace Scientology with Islam, transgenderism, or any number of beliefs and practices, and the same three situations obtain. Let’s use the queer doctrine to illustrate. Queer doctrine involves the belief that gender identity is something inside of us that must be discovered and affirmed. For the transgenderist, gender identity, a subjective thing, may not align with the person’s sex. Because it is unobservable, gender affirmation is necessary to reveal one’s true gender. Gender identity is perfectly analogous to the Scientologist’s thetan or the Muslim’s soul.
The standard liberal position is to tolerate the trangenderist. A man is free to believe he is a woman if that’s what he chooses—as long as his belief makes no demands on those around him. Those working from the second position say the man should not be free to believe this, so society must suppress him. In the third position, all men must subscribe to the queer doctrine and its rules, and those who don’t must face the consequences for their disbelief and refusal to participate in queer norms.
Two of the three positions involve a specific type of coercion known as offensive force. One might think of this type of coercion as aggressive. In the first (the second position described above), people are punished for what they believe. In the second (the third position described above), people are punished for refusing to believe something. Both positions reduce to a single standpoint: authoritarianism.
The first position, which may involve a form of coercion known as defensive force, is the only one in which a person is free to believe what he will—or not believe what he won’t. If coercion is deployed, it is to protect freedom of conscience. Coercion is not used to force belief upon or from others.
The first position, defined above as the standard liberal position, sometimes called libertarianism, is the only standpoint that allows for personal liberty, and the only one in which coercion is rationally defensible. The rule is simple: compelling belief among others involves offensive force, and is thus aggression; deploying force to prevent others from compelling speech is defensive—and necessary for the sake of liberty.
