The cartoon shared below is from a time when the Irish were routinely depicted as apes and monkeys. Zookeepers gave the primates Irish names. I can produce many more cartoons like this (the reader can easily find them by searching Google using various search terms). Cartoons depicting the Irish as apes and monkeys were rampant during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact, images depicting the Irish as simian during this period are far more prevalent than images of blacks depicted similarly. Why are the Irish not running around with their big red heads on fire when they’re portrayed as apes and monkeys? Do those of Irish descent sit around dwelling on the time when they were? Are they offended that I just described them as having “big red heads”?
It’s not like this never happens today. Joe Biden is of Irish descent. The controversial cartoon video by 𝕏erias that Trump did not share on TruthSocial (le scandale du jour) depicting Biden as a baboon is racist if history matters. The Anglo-Protestant culture that produces such images is so racist that it’s racist against other whites. But this doesn’t matter anymore, the likely objection goes, because Anglo-Protestant culture no longer treats those of Irish descent this way. The portrayal of Biden as a banana-munching baboon is not offensive because the Irish are accepted in American society. Why does this rationalization work? It doesn’t, actually.
That those of Irish descent no longer experience significant societal-wide racism, and therefore depicting Biden as a baboon, implies that blacks still suffer such discrimination. Except for the Blue cities and states, those places run by progressive Democrats, where systemic anti-black racism prevails ideologically as infantilism and, institutionally, as ghettoization, there is no systemic racism targeting blacks across America. Certainly not in conservative towns and small cities. And those who keep blacks in poverty and dependency are the last to appeal to supposedly racist expressions—at least those directed at blacks by whites (which is why progressives take offense at such images). Progressives use the language of antiracism to conceal the systemic racism upon which they depend for electoral power and to replace black labor with foreign labor.
The charge of racism in the depiction of the Obamas as apes necessarily appeals to history, which applies at least as much to those of Irish descent as it does to those of African descent. Even if we were to grant that a situation of systemic racism is no longer true, it was true at one time (and not that long ago by the standards of woke); therefore, such cartoons should always be offensive to those of Irish descent—even if they do not themselves take offense to it (I am sure if aware Biden would say he is unbothered by his depiction in the video). After all, we are told that similar cartoons where the descendants of Africans are offensive, even though institutional racism involving blacks was abolished some seventy years ago.
One reason why outrage over Biden being portrayed as a baboon is absent from the narrative is that if consistency were applied, then admitting the experience of the Irish was racist means that racism affects whites, as well. And that means that the woke claim that whites cannot be the victims of racism is false. From the woke standpoint, admitting to the fact that whites ever were the victims of racism admits that the anti-white racism rampant in contemporary society is wrong.
While blacks are no longer the victims of institutional discrimination (again, except in those urban areas under the thumb of white progressives and their collaborators), whites have, since the 1960s, been discriminated against in society’s prevailing institutional arrangements (affirmative action, DEI), as well as in interracial crime and violence. Remember how we have been told for decades that there is no such thing as “reverse racism”? That’s only true in the following way: it’s not reverse racism—it’s racism sui generis.
Before proceeding, what is racism? As I argued in my previous essay, racism must have a definitive meaning, or it will be used, as it was on Enoch Powell in the context of his so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech, and as it is used every day to malign politics to which progressives object, as a term of abuse. Without a definitive definition, the term will be arbitrary, devoid of meaning.
Racism is the belief that races can be hierarchically ranked according to traits such as behavioral tendencies, cognitive abilities, and moral aptitude. As long as these claims are false, this constitutes the ideology of racism. The Irish were viewed as racially inferior to those of Anglo-Protestant culture. Racism in practice is a system of institutions, laws, and policies organized around and enforcing that hierarchical worldview. The perception of the Irish as racially inferior was deeply embedded in and reinforced by systemic structures, e.g., by the Penal Laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which deliberately restricted the rights of Catholic Irish, barring them from voting, holding public office, and serving in Parliament, while severely limiting their ability to own or inherit land. This was justified by ideological racism (not merely religious discrimination), hence the prevalence of cartoons depicting the Irish as simian.
Later, in the United States, similar barriers persisted: Irish immigrants were steered into low-paying, dangerous labor and denied access to housing in many areas, again, justified by racial ideology. Together, these institutional mechanisms enforced a hierarchy that treated the Irish as a permanent underclass, shaping social mobility and life chances for generations.
Here is what racism is not: Racism does not apply to criticisms of culture, except where culture is said to issue from the constitution of race. It does not intrinsically apply to questions of immigration (it can, but not necessarily). Nor does it apply to religious faith. Moreover, racism is not merely the recognition that human beings belong to different races, understood as abstract constellations of phenotypic characteristics emergent from observation of factor analysis. We are told that race is a social construction. While there are social constructions around race, race itself is an anthropological fact, one merely acknowledging that there are group differences in our species (which is true for all living things).
The election of John Kennedy to the Presidency was a big deal, but America is well past that now. Joe Biden served not only as a Senator for decades, but also as Vice-President for eight years and then as President for four years. As Senator and Vice-President, he served with Barack Obama, who also served as a Senator and President for eight years. There is no evidence that either Biden or Obama suffered systemic racism. In fact, Obama’s status as a black man worked to his advantage in a nation where the need to elevate the descendants of Africans as atonement for past sins has long been paramount, a phenomenon Obama has himself acknowledged.
That an Irish-American and a black-American can rise to the highest office in the land disproves the claim that systemic racism represents a barrier to either historically racialized group.
In reality, cartoons harm neither group because the institutional structures reinforced by such expressions were long ago abolished. Institutional and systemic racism do not begin when racist institutions and systems end, but end with the abolition of racist institutions and systems. This is how a concept like “structural racism” comes into usage—the political need to manufacture the perception of racism.
A nation cowers in the long shadow of cancel culture. The woke doctrine of atonement for white guilt is why whites can’t say things about blacks or depict them in certain ways, but blacks can say whatever they want about whites and depict them however they wish. Thus, the moral panic over the video exposes the imposition of an ideology foreign to American culture. The American citizen is supposed to have faith in the doctrine of blood guilt and accept sacred words that must never be uttered lest he blaspheme—words permitted to be uttered by the totems and their allies.
That is what lies at the heart of this matter: the antiracism of the progressive plays a central role in the delegitimation of the American Republic—cast as the bastion of white supremacy—to prepare the population for reincorporation into the New World Order, a world that promises the abolition of whiteness. Blacks and their allies are conditioned by a progressive-captured culture and educational system to harbor resentment towards whites, thus creating racial antagonism that serves the interests of the transnational corporate elite. This is harmful to the republic.
Should it be the case that (a) blacks can say whatever about whites without consequence, but whites cannot; (b) anybody can say offensive things about anybody, absent harassment and intimidation, without consequence (albeit still subject to criticism); (c) nobody can say offensive things about anybody based on race?
(c) Cannot be allowed to stand from the woke progressive standpoint because the expropriation of the wealth of whites and the destruction of Western culture could not, under those circumstances, proceed. Leave aside for the moment the harm that such a rule has towards freedom of conscience, speech, and publishing, since progressives don’t believe in these freedoms except where it advances their agenda. Therefore, (a) is the state of affairs in a society under progressive hegemony.
However, from the standpoint of liberty (the Republic’s foundational principle), (a) cannot be allowed to stand because it is a double standard that violates the principle of equal protection, which grants immunity and privileges to all citizens and requires the government to protect the rights just mentioned. To apply a standard to whites that does not apply to blacks treats whites as second-class citizens, an obvious injustice.
When this unjust rule is in operation, we find that, if a black leader criticizes whites (white culture and sensibilities, etc.), he is speaking truth to power; if a white leader criticizes blacks (black culture and sensibilities, etc.), then he is a white supremacist. The black leader’s anti-white rhetoric is the foundation of his ceremonial elevation. The white leader’s criticism of black culture is said to validate the claim that white supremacy prevails, just as the denial of white privilege admits there is such a thing.
So what is the solution? It’s an easy one, actually. It’s (b). Since the government cannot reach an opinion without violating the fundamental rights of man, i.e., liberty and the pursuit of happiness and property, but can only reach injurious action, nobody should suffer on account of his expressions, but only on his harmful actions, which I define here as a condition in which a person (or other moral subject) is made worse off than they otherwise would have been, through impairment, injury, loss or violation of their interests, which include health, life, liberty, and the pursuit of hapiness and wealth.
Depicting Joe Biden as a baboon or Barack Obama as a chimpanzee does not harm them. These are cartoons—like the cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. A bomb-bearing Muhammad may offend Muslims, but it does not harm them. That they believe it does no more make it true than a man who believes he is a woman is one. The reason for the offense-taking is to stifle criticism of Islam, which impedes the Islamization of the West. This is why the construction “Islamophobia” appears, and is now being folded into law: to smear and persecute those who criticize Islam with the abusive label of racism.
The reader may at this point object that, while the cartoons harm no one (if he admits this), the person who shares them—or doesn’t share them in the case of the 𝕏erias video—is still subject to criticism. That’s free speech, after all. Indeed.
Yet, even if we grant that the cartoon is subject to criticism, the broader context matters. In a democratic republic where the electorate has chosen a president, deliberate efforts to undermine his legitimacy—through caricature, misrepresentation, or selective outrage—threaten not merely the man, but the cohesion of the polity itself. This is a concerted effort to undermine the will of the People.
The 𝕏erias video controversy is not a vigorous debate over the policies that affect all of us, but the deployment of weapons of reputational destruction to delegitimize an American President. When criticism is wielded primarily as a weapon to erode the authority of an elected official, it imposes harm on the population at large: it sows distrust in democratic institutions and fuels perpetual political instability. It even exposes the President to physical danger, as we saw with language smearing Trump as a fascist.
This is the purpose of manufactured outrage. Since Trump was elected, progressives have smeared him as a racist and included in that smear all those who support him. MAGA, shorthand for patriotic Americans advancing populist nationalism, is renamed MAGAt (pronounced “maggot”), or, as Hillary Clinton called them, “a basket of deplorables.”
Progressives not only use the smear of racism for this end, but also make black leaders from their side immune to mockery because such mockery—even in cartoon form—is racist. Conservatives criticized Obama—and continue to criticize his legacy—not because his policies proved bad for America, but because he was a black man. Were there people who rejected Obama because he was black? Sure, but nowhere near a majority; otherwise, he wouldn’t have twice won the popular vote in a national election.
In this sense, a harm has occurred. The injury is structural, not personal: the people who voted according to aspiration and conscience are thwarted in their expectations to see their will manifest in policies (ending the madness of gender identity doctrine and protecting women’s spaces and sports, restoration of the American system, etc. strong borders and mass deportations, etc.), and the social fabric is weakened, because their leaders are illegitimate, not on policy grounds but on personal ones.
It’s ad hominem. “Donald Trump is a racist.” That’s why the SAVE Act must be defeated. It’s “Jim Crow 2.0.” The real goal of defeating the measure by turning Americans against it: keeping elections vulnerable to fraud. Smearing leaders who allegedly share offensive but harmless depictions—even when they do—carries collective consequences that diminish the liberty, security, and trust of society as a whole.
Moreover, rather than assuming the resiliency of the American citizen in the face of cartoons and jokes, certain citizen groups are presumed fragile and must therefore be protected from expressions that offend them (this is pathological empathy). Indeed, white progressives take offense for the sake of the groups they have infantilized. With this, they mean to turn the population against a duly-elected President to do what they could not during the 2024 campaign—stop his return to power.
Put another way, progressives lord their agenda over popular power by smearing the people and their leaders as backwards and bigoted and portraying progressives as the conservatives’ betters. In this case, they do it by accusing the President of racism for a video he did not share. The Big Lie tactic makes this particular instance an especially destructive form of political warfare. Here we enter the realm of defamation. The 𝕏erias video is harmless. The moral panic over the Big Lie is not.
I submit that criticisms framed as moral policing—when they serve to delegitimize the office of a duly elected president—transcend personal grievance and become a tangible harm to the citizenry. While there is no legal recourse to stop the smear, adults can use their words to condemn it and expose its purpose, which is, at heart, anti-democratic.
What makes this difficult is that even those who support the President fear retribution for appearing to defend a racist video by denying that it’s racist. They feel compelled to operate by the rules of those they rejected in 2024. Even some of Trump’s fellow Republicans feign shock at the video.
Republicans fueling moral panic is especially concerning. That so many Republicans pretend like they don’t understand what happened suggests that the Establishment is moving against Trump. They believe they found a way to make their move with limited blowback from MAGA. This move depends on whether the threat of being smeared as a racist works on a significant proportion of MAGA. We’ll see.
I end on a lighter note. In the spirit of Frederick Burr Opper’s “Outrageous,” which I shared above, here’s the same joke in contemporary form:
freedom and reason 