freedom and reason

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.

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?

* * *

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

Also, What’s Up With People Still Wearing Masks?

Most people who died with COVID (SARS-CoV-2) also had other conditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted that approximately 6 percent of certificates listed COVID as the sole condition. What other conditions were present among the rest of those who died? Diabetes, frailty, heart disease, respiratory conditions, etc. Official guidance treated COVID as the underlying cause when it was thought to have initiated or significantly contributed to the fatal chain of events. However, this practice overcounts deaths in a high-comorbidity syndemic. It is a judgment call, and many things can affect judgment.

Researchers at Stanford University analyzed 57 million US death certificates. They found that reclassification almost doubled COVID assignments, while classifications that weight multiple listed causes (rather than assigning 100 percent of the death to a single underlying cause) reduced the COVID burden by 44–63 percent. In other words, around half of reported deaths were due to other factors.

Another study by Stanford researchers, “Large-scale assessment of socioeconomic, demographic and health system structures with US county excess mortality, 2020-2024,” concluded that the true pandemic burden of COVID-19 in the US for 2020–2023 was likely less than half—or even around a third—of the officially assigned deaths. They estimate around 100,000 deaths under age 65 and 300,000 among those 65 and over, for a cumulative total on the order of around 400,000.

When one considers years of life lost (many decedents were elderly with limited remaining expectancy—indeed, the average age of COVID deaths was well above the average life expectancy), as well as whether excess mortality itself includes substantial indirect effects from responses rather than the virus alone, the death toll usually cited is almost certainly exaggerated by a considerable amount.

Considering all these matters, the death toll was closer to a few hundred thousand direct COVID deaths rather than the official one or more million. Coding practices, multimorbidity weighting, and the distinction between deaths primarily caused by the virus versus those in which it played a lesser or incidental role drove the overestimate. But that is not the only driver of the overestimates. The profit motive played a significant role. And politics. The pandemic response was a power grab by the corporate state.

When confronted with the Stanford studies, defenders of the pandemic response pivot to excess deaths. Excess deaths measures are purported to capture direct COVID deaths plus indirect effects (overwhelmed health systems, delayed care for other conditions, behavioral changes). The public is told that this makes excess death measures more comprehensive than reported COVID counts.

Of course, excess deaths do not comprise a pure measure of SARS-CoV-2 fatalities. Methodological choices matter. Those concerns aside, estimates for excess deaths for the first full pandemic year (March 2020–February 2021) indicate around 656,000 people died with COVID. The second year statistics are somewhat lower, around 586,000. This yields a total of 1.2 million excess deaths for the two years.

However, even if one were to accept the numbers, it is rational to suspect that a sizable share of excess deaths, especially early on, may have stemmed from pandemic responses or other causes rather than the virus itself. Meta-analyses of invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) outcomes in COVID patients typically report case-fatality rates around 45–52 percent overall (higher early in the pandemic and in older patients). By contrast, mortality among non-ventilated hospitalized COVID patients was substantially lower. Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) was a problem.

Moreover, early caution against routine corticosteroids contributed to many deaths. When doctors finally administered corticosteroids, they reduced 28-day mortality by about one-third among patients on IMV. The WHO issued strong recommendations in September 2020 for systemic corticosteroids in severe and critical COVID-19, but retained a conditional recommendation against them in non-severe disease. By then, many patients had died.

If COVID deaths are exaggerated by death certificate processing, which the evidence indicates they were, then the excess deaths beyond what can be attributed to COVID, and even COVID-related measures, indicate that something beyond COVID and COVID-related measures killed hundreds of thousands of people in the aftermath of the Pandemic. Indeed, excess deaths did not return to normal in the two years (2022-2023) following the first and second years of the pandemic. It was not until 2024 that the numbers returned to normality (assuming the pre-COVID baseline). What occurred during this period?

I think readers know. The rise and decline of the mRNA jab. Confirmed and well-documented risks of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (primarily Pfizer-BioNTech and Comirnaty and Moderna and Spikevax) are associated with serious adverse events. Large-scale monitoring systems (VAERS, VSD, international cohorts covering tens to hundreds of millions of doses) have characterized these over years of use. Myocarditis and pericarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle or its outer lining) are established serious risks linked specifically to the mRNA platform.

Prominent critics of the mRNA platform include cardiologists such as Peter McCullough and Aseem Malhotra, early mRNA researcher Robert Malone, and others who have argued that the absolute risks of serious adverse events (especially cardiovascular ones) are higher than official figures suggest. Moreover, myocarditis cases are more frequently severe or leave lasting damage than commonly acknowledged by the industry. Re-analyses of the original Pfizer and Moderna randomized trials (notably Fraiman et al.) found an excess of serious adverse events that, in their view, approached or exceeded the reduction in COVID hospitalizations in the trial populations. In other words, Big Pharma knew the risks and concealed or obscured them.

The dark reality of the pandemic response is revealed by the broader signals of excess mortality, sudden deaths, or multi-system harm after rollout that are under-investigated or suppressed: autopsy case series, ambulance data, all-cause mortality trends—that is, evidence of net harm in certain groups. Additional concerns include residual DNA contamination, prolonged spike protein expression, frameshifting, lipid nanoparticle effects, or potential for autoimmune or oncogenic risks.

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There’s another matter related to the pandemic response worth commenting on. This is the question of masking. You may have noticed that people are still masking. If the threat of COVID has passed, then why do people continue to wear masks? Moreover, since it has become widely understood that cloth and surgical masks provide little to no protection from viruses, what is the point of wearing masks even if the COVID threat were elevated?

In a late September 2026 episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, in the context of the ongoing controversy at a Massachusetts lesbian bar (Last Ditch) that faced intense backlash for making one night a week mask-optional in 2026, plus broader observations of people still masking at DSA meetings and on the street years after the acute pandemic phase, Maher asked neuroscientist Andrew Huberman to explain.

Huberman charitably responded that while some have medical reasons, most do not. “It’s a political statement,” he said. He linked it to symbolism (referencing Banksy-style protest imagery) and noted masks also serve as a form of anonymity, as well as social signaling. Masks are tribal; they signal affinity. Huberman is not speculating. There is substantial evidence that mask-wearing became (and in some circles remains) a form of political/social identity signaling rather than purely a health decision.

During the pandemic, multiple studies documented strong partisan divides on the question. Mask use correlated more strongly with political affiliation than with local COVID severity or policy. It functioned as a visible social identity marker: people cooperated more with those who matched their masking behavior, with Democrats and Republicans showing clear differences in attitudes and compliance. Mask-wearing signalled loyalty to progressive ideology, where faith in medicine is of a religious quality. We saw that as well with receptivity to mRNA jabs. Progressives marched their children to doctors’ offices and pharmacies to get their children jabbed and shared pictures of the moment on social media. Dr. Anthony Fauci became a saint.

Medical reasons still exist for a minority, such as immunocompromised people and specific high-risk situations (this presuming that masking offers protection). To clarify, then, the claim is not that no one has a health reason, but that for many visible, ongoing cases in non-medical contexts, the primary driver is political and symbolic. In progressive or left-leaning activist spaces (e.g., DSA meetings, identity-focused venues), continued high rates of masking long after mainstream public health guidance shifted and excess mortality largely normalized cannot be explained solely or even mostly by individual medical risk. It aligns with it becoming a tribal or ideological marker—similar to other visible signals of group belonging.

We see this in the rationalizations of left-wingers when the COVID pandemic comes up for discussion. I was told in a recent encounter that the BLM protests were not problematic, despite churchgoers being kept from services, because a large majority of protestors were wearing masks. The claim about mask-wearing is true. But for what purpose were BLM protestors wearing masks? The type of masks worn is revealing. For the most part, protestors wore bandanas or cloth masks with political slogans on them (“Black Lives Matter” and, ironically, “I can’t breathe”). Surgical masks appeared much less often (in fact, the government dissuaded the public from wearing surgical masks because of shortages), and N95/respirators rarely appeared.

Given that bandanas, cloth masks, and surgical masks do not protect the wearer from transmitting and receiving the virus, what other function might masks serve beyond signalling tribal affinity? As readers know, the protests were not peaceful, but riotous. Rioters often wear masks to conceal their identity. Taken together, shared anonymity and tribal affinity represent a unified political front. BLM was a color revolution, its purpose: to disorganize civil society. Those who continue to wear the masks several years out from the pandemic indicate the continuation of the political project.

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The politics of masking matches broader patterns of how pandemic behaviors became and remain polarized and sticky as cultural signals. Bringing this back to the first part of this article to illustrate, those who need the COVID Pandemic to be as bad as it possibly can be will treat the CDC estimate of more than one million people who died from the virus as if they are sacrosanct. They need for there to be millions of deaths to justify authoritarian desire.

One will find the attempt to educate them about statistics futile. What one is likely to get instead is a challenge: “What would you have done differently?” Not that what I would have done matters in clarifying facts, but I do know what I would not have done. I would not have locked down society, forced people to wear masks and socially distance, derailed the developmental trajectory of millions of children, or made continued employment or organizational presence dependent on whether the individual was jabbed with an experimental mRNA vaccine we knew years earlier causes systemic inflammation throughout the body.

Achieving herd immunity early in the pandemic would have solved the matter. My pandemic plan would have started there: let the young and healthy go about their lives as they normally would. Most cases of infection were asymptomatic. After all, SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus, one of the three virus types associated with the common cold. Over time, the more lethal form would have attenuated. All the calamity associated with lockdowns and all the rest of it would have been avoided. Yes, people would have died (people died anyway), but this is nothing new in history when a novel virus spreads through a population. We would have avoided all those deaths caused not by the virus but by the medical industry’s response to it.

Contemplating deaths in the name of freedom, I am reminded of Patrick Henry’s rousing March 1775 speech in which he concluded with: “What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

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One last thing. In the early days of COVID-19, Democrats fought against a travel ban. Thousands of Chinese were arriving in the US daily on planes originating in the very place where the virus first appeared, yet Trump was smeared as a racist for restricting travel from China. Remember that? Don’t ever forget it. And don’t ever forget that churches and schools were shut down while rioters burned buildings and cars and assailed police and civilians, their actions valorized by Democrats.

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This article is an elaboration of last week’s article, Is the DSA Socialist or Communist—Or Neither? That article was concerned with semantics. In today’s essay, I show why it’s important to understand what words mean and what those who use them really mean when deploying them. When the meaning and purpose of words are made clear, so are the politics they convey.

Democratic Socialism is not socialism. Socialism is worker control of the means of production. Democratic Socialism is in fact corporatist. Corporatism is not worker control, but a tripartite arrangement with corporations at the top of the hierarchy of power, working through the state they have commandeered, with labor contained by co-opted private sector unions, joined by the public sector unions formed to entrench the administrative state.

In its extreme manifestation, corporatism is fascism. The name of the philosophy underpinning National Socialism, i.e., Nazism, was not accidental. However, as I have noted before, the name is misleading (see Understanding the Deep Structure of Fascism). National Socialism was not nationalist in the way Republicanism is nationalist. National Socialism was globalist in ambition. Moreover, it was socialist not in the sense of industrial democracy, but in the sense of collectivism organized by the corporate state.

This is why Hitler sought a pan-European superstate and a pan-European military apparatus. Eventually, he sought a global order organized by corporatist logic. Regionalism was a step toward globalism. This was Hitler’s ultimate goal: a New World Order under the command of banking and corporate power. What is the European Union? It is openly a pan-European superstate based on corporatism under the control of transnational banks and corporations. What is NATO? A pan-European military apparatus. The European Union is a manifestation of regionalism with the end goal of globalism. Who was at the hub of the Nazi superstate? Germany. Who is at the hub of the EU superstate? Germany.

In The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies, published by the Trilateral Commission’s Task Force on the Governability of Democracies, globalists explained that Trilateral world consists of three major centers of advanced industrial democracy: North America (with the United States in the lead), Western Europe (with Germany at the center), and the sphere of Japan, which was then a major power. Japan was then the hub of industrial power in East Asia. The report treats these three regions as interconnected political and economic centers whose governments faced related problems of democratic governance during the 1960s and 1970s. The goal was to align elites in their efforts to marginalize democratic-republicanism and contain liberal freedoms.

The Crisis of Democracy was not an obscure document. The Trilateral Commission was not a marginal or secret society. It was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller to openly bring academics and economic, media, and political elites together for world planning. Now should I refer to the organization in the past tense; the Trilateral Commission is still in operation. It is joined by other world-planning organizations, such as the World Economic Forum. This network of elite organizations does not merely recommend to elites how they should govern the world population. The Trilateral Commission groomed elites, such as Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, to carry its agenda into public office and restructure the world according to its agenda.

The governability of democracies has long concerned authoritarian-minded elites. The National Socialists of Germany suppressed free speech and political opposition, commandeered the mass media, and organized public education—including the university system—according to the ideology of National Socialism, i.e., the pan-European ideal and, eventually, a New World Order. The Democratic Socialists of Europe today likewise suppress free speech and political opposition. They have commandeered the mass media and organized public education—including the university system—according to the ideology of Democratic Socialism, i.e., the pan-European ideal and, eventually, a New World Order.

The problem with Nazism was that it was open about its ambitions, and its authoritarianism was obvious. The dictatorship of Hitler and his one-party rule announced the presence of totalitarianism and attempted to legitimize it. Too much, too soon, and the wrong strategy. The European Union attempts to solve this problem by dissimulating authoritarianism, dressing it in democratic clothing. To be sure, there is a plurality of political parties, but the ones that have heretofore dominated the political landscape are unified in the goal of entrenching corporatism. The parliamentary systems of Europe, which lacks a bulwark against the rise of authentic authoritarian elites, makes it possible for a coalition of political parties to act as a unified force, dissimulating their authoritarian via the rhetoric of democracy.

When elites paint Marine Le Pen and the National Rally of France, and Alice Weidel and Alternative for Germany (AfD), as fascists, they are inverting reality. They do the same thing with Donald Trump and the MAGA Republican Party. They portray movements and parties rooted in genuine national sovereignty as their opposite to make corporatism appear to be the democratic force. This is why they smear nationalists and patriots as “authoritarian,” “fascist,” etc. They’ve even managed to make nationalism an objectionable word, when nationalism is really simply the doctrine that a particular people should have a nation of their own.

The National Socialists also erred in attempting to pull the indigenous populations of Europe into their superstate by purging Europe of non-Germanic ethnic groups. Confronted by obvious racism and denationalization, Europeans resisted and Hitler was defeated. After Hitler’s defeat, the corporatists changed strategies. Instead of organizing the indigenous populations to destroy liberal democracy and national sovereignty through ethnic cleansing, the corporate elite today disorganize the indigenous population through mass immigration, flooding the zone with Third World ethnicities. Turning European antiracism against Europeans themselves, they convinced enough of the indigenous populations to feel guilt sufficient to prevent widespread defense of their indigenous cultures.

Beneath the different strategies is the same goal: to entrench a pan-European corporate state that aims to incorporate the Western Hemisphere into the global economy to create a New World Order. Just as National Socialism was a ruse to manufacture consent, so is Democratic Socialism a ruse for the same purpose. Along with making nationalism as dirty word, obscuring racism by rebranding it “antiracism” was a spectacular propaganda achievement. Freedom-lovers weren’t the only ones reading George Orwell.

The Democratic Party is the entity on this side of the Atlantic that is aligned with Democratic Socialism. The goal of the Party is to denationalize the United States. Think about it. Why did the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, under the control of neoconservatives and Trilateralists, push NAFTA, etc.? Why did both parties before the rise of MAGA invite China into the world economy to take control of global supply chains and dominate consumer markets? Now you know why—if you had already figured this out.

The Democratic Party is working to undermine the American Republic. The Party is the main player in the transnationalist project. The Democratic Socialists of America is the openly progressive arm of the Democratic Party that pulls a portion of the masses into the gravitational pull of transnationalism. It is corporatism’s popular front. Progressivism is the praxis of corporatism. The function of progressivism is to normalize the administrative management of social life. It is totalitarian in logic.

Putting Democrats back in power advances the transnationalist project. Democrats are presently only distancing themselves from the DSA to maintain the illusion that the Party represents the interests of ordinary Americans. Corporate elites—the same ones that bankroll and organize the street protests the mobilize Hoffer’s true believers—manufacture consent by playing both sides of a divide that have not figured out the scheme. They then marginalize those who have figured it out by painting them as extremists.

Elites also co-opt elements of the conservative movement and effectively pull them to their side. Antisemitism and Islamophilia—which exist on the left and the right—plays a major role in this strategy. This explains politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie. This is why social media influencers like Tucker Carlson champion Islam and rail against Trump, MAGA, and Israel. They are joined by left-wing influencers such as the demagogues in The Young Turks.

See how it works? All one needs to do is study patterns and historical trajectory to see the scheme. I have attempted to falsify my interpretation of the patterns and history and I can’t. This is what is going on.

This essay does several things. First, it explains the difference between communism and socialism and their relationship to one another. Second, whatever their differences, it clarifies the problem of collectivism in complex societies. Third, it details the self-described character of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) using these understandings. Finally, it analyzes the DSA’s role in Democratic Party politics. Since the Democratic Party is a bourgeois party, why would it associate with a political organization actively promoting socialist ambition? This association raises a question about the actual function of the DSA and other openly socialist organizations in corporate state society. Are these organizations really socialist? Or are they something else?

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Semantics are important. Communism is not socialism. Socialism is a social formation in which workers control the means of production through a proletarian state. To the extent that private firms and therefore a capitalist class exist, they are subjected to law and policy determined by a committee of the working class. By contrast, communism is a classless/stateless society.

In the above sense, communism is no different from anarchism, as Alexander Berkman told us. At least in the end that they seek. Anarchists and communists disagree over the means to achieve that end, and this disagreement is what differentiates them. Communists do not think man gets to a classless society by overthrowing the state. Instead, workers must seize and command the state, using it to dismantle the class structure. At this point, the state will wither away, and the common goal will have been achieved. Anarchists believe class relations exist as long as the state remains, since it is an instrument of the ruling class; therefore, abolishing the state removes the instrument of class power that perpetuates its existence.

Both anarchists and communists see the future society as, in principle, the same society in which prehistoric man lived. At least that is the framing. Karl Marx and Frederich Engels describe the original society as “primitive communism.” Such societies were clan-based and family-centered. Admitting to relatively insignificant or symbolic status hierarchies, these societies were otherwise democratic and egalitarian. With the absence of class relations in prehistory, no state apparatus was required. Everybody had the same interests and preferences and, moreover, shared the same worldview (its beliefs, norms, and values).

For Marxists, the state (as well as organized religion and the patriarchy) comes into existence with the emergence of segmented social formation. In segmented societies, people must navigate a complex system of exchange and production relations, as well as social divisions. These divisions come with competing interests and perspectives. This complexity requires law, governing institutions, and a formal social control apparatus. The emergent situation has been true in many places for thousands of years. Today, it is true almost everywhere.

The reader will note that I have strayed from the theory that reduces social relations to class relations. There is an important reason for doing this. Seizing the state and dismantling social class will not alter the complexities of modern life. Complexity requires a greater level of social organization. The state will not wither away with the abolition of social class. The proliferation of social divisions since the emergence of social class make the complexity of the situation irreducible to property relations. Hence the need for coercive institutions persists in the wake of their abolition.

As noted, socialism puts ownership of the means of production in the worker’s hands. This requires coordination and planning, i.e., bureaucratic administration of the population. Socialists will claim that, in ideal terms, the state is proletarian; it is no longer the bourgeoisie’s purview. For communists, socialism is seen as a necessary step towards a stateless society after the bourgeoisie is abolished as a class. However, beyond theory, in part for the reason stated above, it never works like that.

But there is another reason socialism is not a precondition to communism: accepting the complexities of modern life, the theory must also presume that all workers have the same interests and preferences—and share the same beliefs and commitments. Since this is not true of large, diverse populations, this requires shaping individual minds to align with a collective worldview. This raises two questions: Whose worldview? Furthermore, is it possible to bring all the minds of millions to a singular worldview?

The answer to the first question, which I will come to, is obvious. The answer to the question seems just as obvious. Because some will always resist such an alignment, since they do not prefer it and their preferences are stubborn, especially those that are rooted in natural history, alignment requires coercive institutions. Those who prefer liberty over collectivism represent a discordant element in the attempt to impose a singular worldview.

Many—if not most—individuals want to be free from intrusive government. They prefer market-based systems; they believe (correctly) that such systems maximize liberty and the pursuit of self-actualization. Marx argues this is because of socialization in a world shaped by bourgeois logic. Since capitalists rule over others, their ideas are the ruling ideas. The masses have been conditioned to think in bourgeois terms. Replace the present ruling class, and new ideas will inhabit mass consciousness. Here is the answer to the first question: the new ideas are those of the communist.

This ignores another crucial fact about humans. In addition to the love of liberty among many, some are overly ambitious and seek not just the good life, but also power over others. This problem is not exclusive to capitalist society. Thousands of years of history make clear that the overly ambitious individual is a perennial problem. Under primitive communism, the tribe could bring such persons to heel (and did so without law and state). The tribe knew who the overly ambitious were and could put them in their place. But in large and complex societies, the few become many, command enormous resources, and move beyond awareness. The power dynamic becomes dissimulated in vast, impersonal social relations. Therefore, the question is not whether some rule over others, but who rules, and what structures have been emplaced to prevent the rule from becoming totalitarian in character.

Democratic socialists insist that true socialism is democratic, substituting the rhetoric of democracy for socialism to smuggle socialism in under cover of a glittering generality. As a system of individual freedom, democracy remains undefined. Democratic socialists promise freedom, what they describe as liberation from controlling private power. A more thorough-reaching democracy is the goal. Thus, a crucial question to ask here is: what type of democracy leaves the individual free?

If democracy means the right of the individual to have a say-so in the major decisions that affect him (this definition seems reasonable), but not having a say-so over decisions men make that do not affect him (the liberty principle), then man remains free. If the second principle falls to the wayside, then democracy becomes majoritarianism, a situation where the individual is subjected to the tyranny of the majority—not because he is necessarily overly ambitious, as in the tribal situation (and, again, without the means of formal coercive institutions), but because he must be aligned with a plan to administer a complex society.

What will democracy be under socialism? Could it be anything other than majoritarian? It is hard to imagine how. To be sure, a technocratic core could manufacture the appearance of majority rule. It could dress the whims of a governing elite as the common good to which individuals must submit. Indeed, it would have to maintain control over the population. In this case, freedom would be a simulation.

To protect the individual from the tyranny of the majority, which is, in truth, a cover for the overly ambitious few, the individual must have unalienable rights, that is, immunities and privileges that governments cannot intrude upon without rationally justifying limitations. Any limitations on freedom in such arrangements must be for others’ rights under conditions of formal equality. Such a situation is only possible under a republican government governed by liberal principles. These principles preserve individualism among social animals. Individualism, which we grant as a basic human desire, is not possible under any other arrangement. Legal and political arrangements based on these principles allow for the many to check the majority and the overly ambitious few.

I have tried to falsify this proposition. I cannot. I conclude that socialism cannot be reconciled with the demand for a free and open society. Either socialism is, and freedom isn’t, or the other way around. It is not that capitalism does not come with discontents. Inequality, for example, is inevitable. It is that capitalism, for all its flaws, when governed by republican principle, is the only system that allows for maximal personal freedom. Capitalism leaves space for individuals to choose their path in life. Indeed, inequality to a substantial degree is the result of liberty.

This explains why socialism, wherever it has been instituted, has always been illiberal and undemocratic. It’s not because man isn’t doing it right. Socialism always works out this way when it moves from theory to practice. This is the result of natural history. Evolution made people both self-interested and social for reasons of survival. Self-interestedness is not the result of bourgeois indoctrination. Nor is singular social consciousness a thing the organized proletariat can grasp.

Natural history operates via variability in individual attributes in a population, with some being smarter, stronger, faster, and more motivated than others. These differences become more consequential in larger populations. Achieving equal outcomes—the goal of substantive equality embraced by communists—necessitates state control over all aspects of social life. The control socialism necessitates is qualitatively different from the control type required in a market-based economy.

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Marx described the communist motto this way: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Many readers will know the motto. But many are less familiar with the socialist motto: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” The socialist motto may at first blush sound rather Protestant, but it is stamped on a society in which private property has been or is being abolished. Socialist arrangements thus preclude the entrepreneurial spirit; the state replaces the exceptional individual. The “dictatorship of the proletariat”—technocrats of the communist party (which becomes the only party)—determines what is produced and who receives the fruit of collective labor. Socialism is necessarily totalitarian.

Marx did not call this phase of social formation socialism. He called it the “lower phase of communism.” That’s known as truth in advertising. The party platform announced in the Communist Manifesto, as radical as it is, is modest given the final destination—it is an initial step to the final solution. Thus, for communists, what we call socialism is a pupal stage in the transition from caterpillar to butterfly. Socialism is not the final destination. It paves the road to communism—which it never does; the state never “withers away,” as Marx promised, for all the reasons I have already explained.

If you examine the DSA platform, it is essentially lifted from the Communist Party platform. As radical (and awful) as it is, it is still modest. This is because it is a means to an end. When the DSA objects to being called communists, they’re being disingenuous. The end goal is communism—at least this is what the rank-and-file hope for. Thus, when Donald Trump calls the DSA communists, he is not wrong, if by using this designation he means to say that this is what the DSA comrades believe.

There’s a reason that actually existing socialist societies are run by parties openly calling themselves communist. Once in power, they openly declare their ambition. But some do not wait to make their ambitions known. For Marx and the First International, they felt it was important to announce this upfront. They sought to haunt the bougeoisie with the specter of communism. The DSA lies about itself.

We don’t need to wait for them to admit to the end they seek. We have history. It’s not just the end that is objectionable—however unobtainable given the complexities of the modern world. The means are more objectionable than the end because socialism is obtainable. One need only study the history of the Soviet Union or the present reality of Red China to know what awaits.

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However, there’s a twist. All this presumes that those who run the DSA actually seek communism. Moreover, it presumes that socialism is the end sought. That the DSA is joined at the hip of the corporate-controlled Democratic Party—even when the Party keeps the DSA at arm’s length—suggests that the DSA functions to dissimulate corporate power. It is absurd to suggest the Democratic Party is a socialist party. Democrats defend administrative rule not to achieve socialism, but to manage the population and entrench corporate power. So why would they associate with an openly socialist organization?

Is it not obvious? The DSA is not a revolutionary organization but a tool of hegemony. In the early twentieth century, the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci argued that a ruling class maintains power not merely through coercion—laws, police, military force, and the suppression of dissent—but through consent: it persuades subordinate groups to accept the existing social order as legitimate and natural. The ruling class—today, this is the corporate class—exercises cultural and intellectual leadership by shaping institutions such as education, the mass media, political organizations, and religion, thereby influencing what people regard as common sense, desirable, and possible.

This does not mean the masses are simply brainwashed; rather, Gramsci saw political stability as depending on a combination of coercion and active or passive consent, with ruling groups making concessions and incorporating some subordinate interests while maintaining the basic structure of their dominance. Thus, for Gramsci, effective rule involves not only commanding people, but also leading them—winning enough acceptance that the existing order can reproduce itself without constant reliance on force. Progressivism and social democracy are not socialist. They are ideologies designed to disrupt organized socialist sympathies.

The DSA is an arm of the hegemonic structure of the corporate-dominated Democratic Party. The DSA’s relative independence from the Democratic Party gives the Democrats plausible deniability. It keeps a distance to keep those who oppose socialism in the fold. At the same time, it downplays the DSA’s significance, with a wink to those who think the DSA is actually socialist. It need not reject the DSA since the DSA isn’t oppositional—not because the Democratic Party is socialist, but because the DSA isn’t. The DSA is a simulacrum of a socialist organization. It exists to steer those who find socialism appealing to the Democratic Party and rob them of the capacity to disrupt corporate power. The DSA is an instrument elites use to transmit corporate desire in popular terms.

At the core of Democratic politics is the essentiality of administrative rule. Administrative governance reproduces existing illiberal power relations. The DSA provides an ideological framework for people whose preferences conflict with those relations. The DSA deceives the socialist-minded into believing that they are participating in a transformative political project. The end sought is not socialism, terrible as that end is, but the corporate state, which is just as terrible. What the DSA calls socialism is an illusion masking the true collectivism elites are entrenching, namely the corporate state. And the rank-and-file socialist has fallen for the ruse.

The DSA is a method of controlled opposition, a vehicle for hegemonic incorporation. By channeling discontent with capitalism into institutions and political practices that ultimately remain compatible with the existing order, the DSA should be understood as a containment field. The elite need not suppress opposition and alienate millions; instead, they incorporate and redirect oppositional aspirations in ways that help stabilize the very system those aspirations seek to transform. The rank-and-file socialist has been coopted and neutralized. An obstacle has been removed from the path to total corporate power.