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The October 28, 2025, debate between comedians Dave Smith and Steven Crowder on Louder with Crowder over AIPAC and the Jewish lobby reveals a profound misunderstanding of the real power dynamics behind US foreign policy in the Middle East. Crowder has a defensible position. However, calling for Trump’s impeachment, Dave Smith absurdly argues that Trump’s actions toward Iran were driven by Israeli influence—an idea that presumes a kind of Jewish control over American decision-making, one given scholarly heft John Mearsheimer (Professor of Political Science ast the University of Chicago) and Stephen Walt (Progessor of International Relations at the Kennedy School at Harvard University) in their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, published in the summer of 2007. This interpretation, however, overlooks the deeper geopolitical and historical context in which US policy has developed. And, in all fairness, Smith’s argument is a drastic oversimplification of Mearsheimer and Walt’s analysis.

The roots of what we refer to as “neoconservatism” lie not in Jewish identity but in the evolution of Cold War liberalism—or progressivism more precisely. I explained this in 2004, in an analysis published first in Gesellschaft zerstören—Der Neoliberale Anschlag auf Demokratie und Gerechtigkeit, which was translated the following year into English and published by Pluto Press (which was at the time carried by the University of Michigan Press) under the title Devastating Society: The Neoconservative Assault on Democracy and Justice. (The book was later translated into Arabic and Indonesian and widely read around the world.) Readers can find on this platform an essay laying out my argument: War Hawks and the Ugly American: The Origins of Bush’s Middle East Policy. I show there that many of the figures who came to be called neoconservatives (or “the crazies,” as intelligence analysts called them behind closed doors) had been progressives and anti-communist Democrats in the tradition of Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson during the 1970s. Their concerns centered on maintaining American global dominance, particularly in regions vital to energy security. That some of these intellectuals happened to be Jewish is incidental; the driving force was the defense of US hegemony, not ethnic or religious allegiance, although, as I explain elsewhere, Christian Zionism gave the policy some cover (see Christian Neo-Fundamentalism and US Foreign Policy).

The real focus of US strategy is the Middle East’s vast energy reserves and the advance of transnational corporate interests and power. I explained the energy angle in another chapter published in Devastating Society, as well as in an article in Capitalism Nature Socialism in 2005. (To read that article, go here: The Neoconservative Assault on the Earth: The Environmental Imperialism of the Bush Administration. I also explain much of this in War Hawks and the Ugly American: The Origins of Bush’s Middle East Policy.) Saudi Arabia emerged as a crucial ally because of its oil production and its role in stabilizing global energy markets. Iran and Iraq, both with enormous petroleum resources, were also key to the broader geopolitical puzzle. Beyond them lay the mineral-rich Caspian Sea Basin, a region of growing importance in the late twentieth century. Within this framework, Israel’s strategic value derives not from cultural ties or religious affinity but from its geographic and military position as part of a regional network that included Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Jordan in particular became an essential hub for American intelligence and military coordination. The largest CIA installation in the Middle East is located there (keep in mind that CIA installations are secret, so this is not an official claim), serving as part of CENTCOM’s operational base (US Central Command). During visits to Jordan in the mid-2000s, including meetings with diplomatic officials, and my ongoing analyses of the situation, it became even clearer to me that the US presence in the region was oriented toward projecting power eastward—into Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. This long-standing strategy reflects an interest in controlling the flow of resources and countering rival influences, especially Russian and Chinese interests in Central Asia. This also explains NATO and the United States’ provocation of Russia in its current conflict with Ukraine. (See History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War; The US is Not Provoking Russia—And Other Tall Tales; The Urgent Necessity of Purging the Government of Deep State Actors and Warmongers; Progressivism and the Plea for War; Robots and Zombies Assemble! We Must Have War!)

(As an aside, why I am so heavily shadow-banned on social media is because of my critiques of US foreign policy, not only in the book and article noted previously, but in other essays and lectures delivered at the United Nations University in Amman, Jordan, in 2006 and 2007. I document my travels to Amman in Journey to Jordan, November 2006, and Journey to Jordan, April 2007. In hindsight, Freedom and Reason began somewhat as a travel blog. My essay Christian Neo-Fundamentalism and US Foreign Policy was the basis for one of my lectures there.)

The invasion of Afghanistan in the early 2000s, while publicly justified as a response to the 9/11 attacks (while I do see some justification for our actions there, I opposed the full-scale invasion of that country), also served this strategic purpose. It provided the United States with a military foothold near the Caspian region, where energy and mineral wealth were at stake. This was consistent with earlier maneuvers, such as the Carter-Brzezinski strategy of the late 1970s, which lured the Soviet Union into a costly war in Afghanistan. Through these efforts, the United States sought to contain both Russian influence and regional instability, maintaining its dominant position in the energy corridor. (For background, see my essay Sowing the Seeds of Terrorism? Capitalist Intrigue and Adventurism in Afghanistan, which uses content analysis to expose the corporate state media’s attempt to obscure the history of the Afghanistan war and the longstanding covert operations there, including the recruitment of Osama Bin Laden. See also Jimmy Carter, Trilateralist, Entering Hospice; Everybody Loves Jimmy Carter.)

When it comes to Iran, Trump’s policy was shaped by two interlocking goals: preventing Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons and maintaining the balance of power that undergirded US strategic dominance in the region. To be sure, Israel had its own interests in containing Iran, which posed a direct and immediate threat to its national security. Yet, contrary to the assumption of Smith and others, Israel was not dictating American actions. If anything, US intervention limited Israel’s push toward full-scale regime change, as well as the Greater Israel Project, which was also constrained by the ceasefire Trump negotiated between Israel and Hamas (a ceasefire I opposed, for the record). Washington’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities effectively prevented escalation while securing US objectives in the region.

Figures like Mark Levin, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham (often associated with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party) supported—and still support—more aggressive regime-change policies. However, these positions reflected a continuation of the US hegemonic strategy rather than evidence of Israeli control. And they are not part of Trump’s foreign policy reset, which makes Smith and his ilk’s claims and call for Trump’s impeachment all the more absurd. Israel’s national goals have aligned with American interests at times, but Israel remains a secondary player in the larger geopolitical framework dominated by Washington’s pursuit of energy security and global dominance. Israel is not so much an ally of the United States as it is a protectorate. Trump is making sure that country is not also a liability.

Dave Smith’s argument thus rests on a false premise—and is moved by a cabalistic theory of Jewish power that has infected many who have previously supported Donald Trump and the MAGA movement (Candice Owens, Tucker Carlson, and others). The argument absurdly overstates Israel’s influence and attributes US imperial ambitions to Jewish ambition and power rather than to the logic of American hegemony. The Middle East strategy—stretching from Saudi Arabia through Israel and Jordan to Afghanistan—has never been about serving Israeli interests. It has always been about securing the global position of the United States in an energy-rich region critical to maintaining its superpower status and advancing the globalist project of world corporate domination. To claim Israel is behind all this more than smacks of antisemitism.

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim, has been asked on multiple occasions by journalists to condemn the slogan “Globalize the Intifada.” He has demurred every time.

“Intifada” is an Arabic word meaning “uprising.” There are two major moments in the history of the Intifada: First Intifada (1987–1993), characterized by civil disobedience, mass protests, and violence; Second Intifada (2000–2005), which was far more violent, involving suicide bombings and other armed attacks against civilians and military.

Proponents of jihadism will tell you that the word means lots of things, but if pushed, will finally admit that this includes, in their words, defensive warfare governed by strict ethical and legal rules. Even this admission is an act of obscurantism. The strict ethical and legal rules of defensive warfare in jihadism derive from the teachings of Islam, found in the Qur’an and the Hadith/Sunnah—the legal rules of Sharia. Anyone who has ever read those materials and studied the history of Islamic conquest knows that “defensive,” “ethical,” and “legal” mean their opposites: offensive warfare decoupled from any rational moral restraints.

The slogan “globalize the intifada” is thus a call to expand the spirit and tactics of so-called “Palestinian resistance movements” beyond war on Israel and into the wider world. Put another way, it is a call for global jihad. Jihadism is a contemporary militant movement that aims to create political systems rooted in its interpretation of Islam through the use of violence.

Jihadists will also tell you that the translation of the word “Islam” is “peace.” In fact, the most accurate translations of the word are “submission” or “surrender.” Jihadism is a modern extremist ideology that pursues the formation of Islamic-based states by means of armed conflict. To claim otherwise is a Big Lie.

Today, there are around fifty Muslim-majority countries. Fewer than half of these countries are mostly (formally) secular. The rest are governed in whole or in part by Sharia. Before 1970, there were fewer than 250,000 Muslims in America. Today, the number is approaching 3.5 million, concentrated in major Blue Cities in the Midwest and Northeast United States. In Europe, the number is projected to reach 9 percent by 2030. It is already greater than 8 percent in France and Sweden. What is driving this growth? Immigration (especially post‑1960s), higher fertility among Muslim immigrant populations, and a younger age structure.

This is an either/or proposition. There is no neutral position for one to take on the question. Jihadism is a militant doctrine advocating the establishment of Islamic-style governance through violent action. Either a rational and moral man condemns the Inifada or he supports it. In this respect, Islamism is like fascism. Either you condemn fascism or you support it. You cannot be neutral on the matter. Mamdani cannot condemn the slogan because he supports the Islamization project. The Islamization project is a clerical fascist project.

With the election of Mamdani, New York City will become America’s London, where the current Mayor is Sadiq Khan, a Muslim. According to the most recent census data for Greater London, approximately 15 percent of the population identifies as Muslim. Sharia councils and tribunals already exist in the UK, primarily for family and personal matters like marriage, divorce, and inheritance. Thus, populations in the UK are already partially governed by Sharia.

Sharia is not only a feature of the UK legal system. In Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, Muslim communities may use informal arbitration or counseling based on Sharia principles for personal or family disputes. In Germany, for example, “religious arbitration” is permitted for civil disputes if both parties agree. Thus, populations in these countries are already partially governed by Sharia.

In the Americas, including in the United States, Muslim communities use arbitration based on Sharia in private, civil matters (e.g., marriage or business contracts). In Canada, Muslim communities have Islamic tribunals for arbitration in family and civil disputes. Defenders of the practice say that Sharia cannot contradict civil law. But why is Sharia allowed in any form?

New Yorkers are going to elect a jihadist for mayor. Not all New Yorkers. Progressives are going to elect a jihadist to be their mayor. The share of the Muslim population of New York City is estimated to be around 9 percent. Consider that Muslims (largely of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry) in Dearborn, Michigan, constitute roughly 55 percent of the city’s population. Michigan has the largest number of Sharia-based arbitration agreements.

Why are progressives proponents of Sharia? Why do they march in the streets and occupy college campuses in support of Hamas and global jihad? Why are Democrats in America and social democrats in Europe proponents of Muslim migration to the West? Americans need to ask themselves these questions. This is not accidental. The Islamization of the West is a project, not only of jihadism but of progressivism and social democracy. This is the Red-Green Alliance. One has to have put out his eyes not to see it.

Illinois’ Ninth Congressional District candidate Kat Abughazaleh, and social media influencer, is facing federal charges. Abughazaleh and her co-conspirators are charged with physically hindering and impeding a law enforcement officer. Their actions represent a textbook example of interfering with law enforcement operations. This is unlawful.

Yet progressives insist that Abughazaleh’s actions amount to “lawful protest.” I’d like to be able to say that I honestly don’t know what world these people inhabit, where the obvious becomes debatable or deniable, but, as readers of the platform now, I can’t say that, because I do know what world woke progressives inhabit—it’s right there in the name; it’s a neo-religious attitude that disorders reason. Do I believe Abughazaleh is deceiving her followers or is a true believer? I cannot know for sure. But that there are deceivers and true believers in this movement is undeniable.

It’s not as if we don’t have the receipts. Photos and videos plainly show the mob obstructing officers who were carrying out their lawful duties. That’s against the law. This is a country governed by the rule of law. If you break the law, there are consequences. It’s cause and effect.

Below is a video in which Abughazalah is claiming that the charges leveled against her constitute “an attack on all of our First Amendment rights.” This is followed by a response @LeftismForU, which documents the unlawful actions of Abughazalah and her co-conspirators.

*Physically attempts to stop federal agents*

"I can't believe I've been charged for it! It's an attack on my freedom of speech! 😭"pic.twitter.com/AXvqWUDmWR

— Leftism (@LeftismForU) October 29, 2025

Let’s recall the First Amendment to the US Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” I have highlighted the relevant portion.

In modern constitutional jurisprudence, two categories matter. First, there is genuinely peaceable protest—people who assemble without violence or coercive physical interference, whether or not a minor law is technically violated. Second, there is civil disobedience, which is by definition unlawful but still nonviolent and willing to accept legal consequences. Even under contemporary First Amendment doctrine, once you cross into intimidation, obstructing law enforcement, vandalism, or violence, you leave civil disobedience behind. That conduct is neither protected, nor peaceable, nor principled. However, when the First Amendment was written, eighteenth-century usage of peaceable implied conduct that was lawful, orderly, not riotous, not disruptive, and not obstructive. In other words, “peaceable” originally denoted conduct that does not disturb the peace, not merely “conduct that does not involve physical violence.”

Either way (and what you’re hearing here is a distinction made with no real difference—peaceable is not synonymous with nonviolence), assault, physically obstructing a police officer, property destruction, rioting, and vandalism do not count as elements of a peaceable assembly. A crowd that quietly blocks a police officer from performing official duties may be nonviolent, but it is not peaceable, because it interferes with lawful authority. So let’s not pretend that interference with law enforcement officers is some form of “lawful protest.” It isn’t. Calling it that is a deceptive misrepresentation—it convinces people to accept a false narrative to encourage them to engage in unlawful behavior.

Crucially, and this gets to the neoreligious piece, Abughazaleh and her defenders cannot declare unlawful behavior to be lawful simply because they think their cause is righteous (it isn’t—but that’s beside the point). Reality doesn’t rearrange itself to accommodate personal belief. A man may think himself invincible, but if he steps in front of an eighteen-wheeler barreling down the interstate at 65 mph, reality—not his illusion—wins. And he won’t live to admit his error. Progressives often behave like children in this way. They believe they can wish away realities they dislike. This is what animates their chanting and rituals: magical thinking. The real world eludes them because they want it to.

Karl Marx put it well in The German Ideology: “Once upon a time, a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads… they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water… This valiant fellow was the type of the new revolutionary philosophers in Germany.” That is today’s progressive—the new “revolutionary philosopher” who rebels not against power, but against reality itself. How they manage to call themselves leftists without shame is beyond me. They are reactionaries, at war with reason and truth.

Look, civil disobedience has its place. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement practiced it openly—and they accepted the consequences. King told his followers that they were breaking the law and that they would face penalties. That was the price of pursuing what they believed to be moral action. He understood the costs and accepted them—and he asked his followers to understand and accept those costs alongside him.

So my message to those engaging in this sort of behavior is this: have the courage of your convictions. If you choose to break the law, and if law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges uphold the rule of law, then you will face consequences. Wear them as badges of honor if you must. But don’t lie to the public about what constitutes lawful protest. I know you will, of course, since you want rebellion and insurrection. And, for that reason alone, you should not be allowed to stand for election in a free republic.

That 42 million Americans utilize SNAP, the federal government’s food assistance program, came as a surprise to many Americans, an awareness triggered by the Democrats’ shutdown of the government in their attempt to continue government subsidies to the medical industry to provide health care to illegal aliens.

Predictably, Democrats are blaming Trump for not using SNAP’s emergency reserves to feed Americans dependent on the program who will lose access on November 1. However, an emergency is a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action. The government shutdown is a choice Democrats made. It is not unexpected. It is intentional; Democrats want to drain emergency SNAP reserves so they can continue holding the American people hostage for policy goals the public did not endorse. With the rise of populist nationalism, Democrats lost their majorities in Congress, so they are using the government shutdown to obtain what they could not at the ballot box.

The only way the Democrats can sustain any illusion about who’s responsible for the government shutdown is because of corporate state media complicity. This is where it becomes critical that every individual use their rational skills of cogitation to see what is plain before their eyes. An important initial step in clearing the path for clear reason, therefore, is recognizing that the corporate state media is a propaganda apparatus that provides a platform for progressive social engineering. This is at the behest of global corporate power and the project of managed decline. The propaganda is becoming increasingly shrill because the network of alternative media bears the truth of the situation. We can thank populist nationalism for weakening the ideological hegemony of the power elite—and Democrats for poor timing.

The reason why 42 million Americans depend on SNAP is a direct result of the free trade policies pushed by Democrats and RINOs. It is, moreover, the result of containing black and brown citizens in impoverished inner-city urban areas, which is an adjunct to the globalization project. Ever wonder why Red States get a relatively greater share of government resources directed to the poor than Blue States? In part, it’s because half of all blacks live in the US South, and they are overrepresented in impoverished inner-city urban areas. But that’s not the only reason the program has expanded over the years. Nor is progressive social policy unrelated to the reasons SNAP has grown exponentially.

Free trade—offshoring of manufacturing and mass immigration—has hollowed out our nation’s industrial core and driven down the wages of American workers by exploiting cheap foreign labor abroad and domestically. These developments have harmed tens of millions of our citizens. As for the ghettoization of black Americans, I will be publishing an essay next week that will go into detail about the dynamics and history of progressive containment of particularly black Americans in impoverished inner-city urban areas. It will have to suffice here to say that ghettoization has decimated the black family and given rise to a culture of poverty and violence.

The expansion of SNAP has come with a myriad of problems. For example, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service, 42 percent of women who participated in the SNAP program were obese, compared with 30 percent of eligible nonparticipating women and 22 percent of women with incomes above the eligibility limit. This means that it is not just about meeting the needs of people displaced by globalizaiton, but about expanding government to the detriment of people who have been made dependent upon it. The program must be reduced both by restructing the global economy to put American workers first, and by reforming the SNAP program itself.

With the help of ChatGPT in obtaining statistics, I took some time this morning to analyze trends in SNAP utilization, as well as changes in the demographic profile. These findings are quite revealing. Today, more than 1 in 8 Americans, or 12-13 percent of the population, receive SNAP benefits. In 1969, it was only around 1 in 100 Americans, or 1.4 percent of the population. Let that sink in. In 1969, before globalization began taking its toll on American workers, fewer than three million people used SNAP. Today it is 42 million Americans.

Moreover, the demographic profile of SNAP utilization has drastically changed. In the early years of the modern food stamp program (late 1960s–1970s), participation was heavily concentrated among low-income households with children, particularly in urban areas, and the caseload was disproportionately black due to both higher poverty rates and targeted regional rollout patterns. Through the 1980s and 1990s, as eligibility rules evolved and poverty became more geographically widespread, due to the ramping up of globalization and rising inequality, SNAP participation became more geographically and racially diverse, with growing numbers of rural and white households enrolling.

Another important and related demographic feature of the change is that the age profile of recipients slowly expanded: children have consistently made up a large share of participants, but the proportion of adults has grown steadily. This is the consequence of job loss and falling wages caused by free trade. By the 2010s and into the 2020s, a greatly expanded social program was serving a more varied cross-section of the population—geographically, racially, and by household type. The program reached its highest share of the population in 2013, during the aftermath of the Great Recession, when about 15 percent of Americans—nearly 48 million people—received benefits. Participation declined gradually, especially under Donald Trump, but then rose again during the Biden years and has remained around the 12–13 percent range.

Overall, between 1969 and 2025, SNAP transformed from a narrowly concentrated anti-hunger program into a broad, stabilizing support used by low-income working families and households across every demographic category in the country. What started out as a social program targeting the very poor has become a safety net for a significant proportion of the American population.

Returned to office in 2024, Trump is presently taking a beating in the polls (the most accurate poll, Rassmusen, has Trump at 45 percent approval for the week) because of his heroic efforts to reconfigure the global economy (and stave off World War Three), which will address the problem of dependency on SNAP and other government programs. In the long run, if he is successful, America will have a real shot at reversing the damage Democrats and RINOs have visited upon this nation over the last several decades. This will take more than economic restructuring, however. Trump must also address the rising fallout from artificial intelligence and other technological advances. Americans need jobs so they can support themselves free of big, intrusive government.

Was the Watergate scandal more than just a burglary and a cover-up? Was Richard Nixon targeted by elements of the deep state? Were Democrats, bureaucrats, and journalists working together to construct a delegitimizing narrative about Nixon? The scandal resembles what we saw happen to Donald Trump during his first term and in the interregnum afterward. More than resembles—it looks like it’s from the same playbook.

Several of the Watergate burglars had intelligence backgrounds, and the key leaker, “Deep Throat,” turned out to be FBI deputy director Mark Felt, who hated Nixon. It would be naïve to deny that entrenched figures in the CIA and FBI resented Nixon’s efforts to rein in and reform the intelligence agencies. Were their leaks and maneuvers part of a broader struggle for control?

President John Kennedy was likely assassinated over his intent to reform the intelligence apparatus. We don’t think these same forces would bring down a president by manufacturing a scandal? It would also be naïve to not wonder if Democratic operatives and sympathetic journalists weren’t simply investigating or reporting events but actively shaping the narrative and timing to maximize Nixon’s political damage.

Back then, the public had more trust in the media than they do now, and there were only a handful of TV stations—and they were all pumping out the same gospel. Imagine if Americans had had the Internet back then and the myriad of alternative news channels they now enjoy. However, then, Democrats had been through a period of remarkable hegemony going back to Roosevelt. A popular and populist president in Nixon threatened the administrative state project and consolidation of progressive power across all facets of government. Moreover, having so successfully crushed Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, to have Nixon crush the Democrats in 1972 must have been an insufferably humiliating moment.

The same rhetoric we hear today used against Donald Trump was used against Nixon back in the day. In this frame, Nixon was an authoritarian who sought total state power. His support for law and order, his crackdowns on “peaceful protestors,” his push for expanded executive authority—his exercise of Article II powers were cast as excesses and used to paint him as a “fascist.” Taken together, it feels less like an isolated scandal and more like a historical example of lawfare and a propaganda offensive being deployed to remove a president who had become a threat to the existing order. Had I recognized this growing up, the persecution of Trump might feel more like Nixon 2.0 than a novel historical moment. But I was just a kid—and my parents raised me to hate Republicans, especially Nixon.

I wasn’t alive—nor anybody living—when Democrats and journalists incessantly accused Lincoln of being an authoritarian, likening him to a dictator or a king. They decried the extraordinary powers he claimed during the Civil War—his suspension of habeas corpus, his use of military tribunals, and his expansion of federal authority—as unconstitutional grab” meant to centralize power in Washington. Democratic newspapers railed against Lincoln as a “tyrant” who was destroying “states’ rights.” Democrats in the North painted him as a usurper bent on establishing despotism under the guise of “saving the Union” (i.e., “Make America great again.”)

These criticisms emanated from the executive branch itself. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase criticized him over the “expansion” of presidential power. General George McClellan criticized him as incompetent and too willing to transgress the guardrails of the separation of powers. Democrats and journalists of the era advanced a narrative of Lincoln as a threat to democracy, not unlike the charges later hurled at Nixon and Trump. A Democrat assassinated Lincoln.

As I have argued on this platform, the Democratic Party, going all the way back to the Slavocracy, is hellbent on undermining the American Republic. They don’t believe in the Constitution, re-describing the inherent powers of the Executive as authoritarian in themselves.

Humans are pattern recognition machines. However, some forces would throw a wrench into the machine and accuse those recognizing patterns of being “conspiracy theorists.” I see patterns. They’re everywhere. Watergate fits a pattern—the pattern of lawfare.

A phobia is an irrational and persistent fear or aversion to something. It refers to an intense and persistent fear disproportionate to the real danger posed by the activity, idea, object, or situation.

A philia, in the psychiatric sense, is an irrational and persistent attraction or desire toward something. It refers to an intense and enduring fascination disproportionate to the appropriateness or safety of the activity, idea, object, or situation.

🚨 Jon Stewart Calls Zohran Mamdani’s Mayoral Run a ‘Jackie Robinson Moment’

“A muslim, a young person, a progressive, a democratic socialist. There are so many different communities that are looking to you.” pic.twitter.com/4Q4aOAnk8M

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) October 28, 2025

Suppose one can suffer from Islamophobia, an irrational and persistent fear or aversion to Islam. In that case, one can suffer from Islamophilia—an intense and enduring obsession with a dangerous and inappropriate belief system.

While what is defined as Islamophobia may not be a phobia, since Islam is harmful to others (especially children, homosexuals, and women), as well as inappropriate to a free and open society, and therefore one is rational to fear and loathe it. However, Islamophilia is a pathology for precisely the same reason: it constitutes an irrational and pathological adoration of an ideology that is dangerous and inappropriate.

Islamophiles tell you that the word “Islam” means “peace.” In Arabic, الإسلام literally means “submission” or “surrender,” specifically submission and surrender to the will of Allah. You have to be crazy to want to live in that world.

You can apply the same reasoning to such notions of transphobia or fasciophobia. Such constructions are designed to normalize dangerous ideas by smearing their critics with a false accusation of irrationality and pathology. They are making rational fear and loathing appear as bigotry.

The real problem is Islamophilia. The Islamophile desires to live in a totalitarian society run by Muslim clerics.

* * *

I had to carefully prompt ChatGPT to generate the cover image for this essay. I copied a paragraph from a website promoting Islamization. ChatGPT was more than happy to create an image based on the new prompt. ChatGPT will tell you that it is not ideological or political. It is profoundly ideological and political.

“All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.” —Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)

It’s important to know what fascism is if we’re going to fight it. This is one of the great frustrations in contemporary discussions of antifascism: some of what is described as antifascism has a definite fascist character. To recognize something, we must first clarify what it is. Such clarification must proceed based on objective factual analysis—that is, science. It must examine the thing in itself, not in its surface appearances. As Karl Marx famously argued, if the surface appearance of a social phenomenon perfectly revealed its underlying structure, then science would be unnecessary. In other words, the purpose of science is to look beneath appearances to understand the real forces and structures shaping the world.

Historically, and particularly in its German variety, fascism often goes under the name “National Socialism” (Nazism). Yet the ideology of Nazi Germany was neither nationalist nor socialist. It was, in truth, anti-nationalist (globalist) and corporatist. The name given to the movement was clever party propaganda, designed to confuse workers over their interests by appealing to their patriotism and class interests. As Franz Neumann explains in Behemoth, fascism is best understood as a form of totalitarian monopoly capitalism—or corporate statism. Failing to grasp this structural foundation conceals fascism’s true nature from its observer.

Many who voice (or at least feign) concern about fascism rely too heavily on surface-level descriptions, such as those found in Robert Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism or Umberto Eco’s list in The New York Review of Books, “Ur-Fascism,” commonly known as the “Fourteen Points of Eternal Fascism” (you can find the list here). These types of (typically ideographic, even while feigning the nomothetic) analyses are superficial, offering historicist explanations that do not penetrate to the deeper structure of fascism. Such oversimplifications lead many wannabe antifascists to misidentify certain social phenomena—nationalism, populism, and traditionalism—as inherently fascist. Indeed, these are attributes that fascists have historically borrowed to manufacture hegemony. However, they are not intrinsic features of fascism itself. But it helps that people want them to be (hence the power of motivated reasoning).

Readers of this platform know that I often use the materialist conception of history to interrogate the structure of social formations. This method works from the observation that the development of human societies is primarily shaped by material conditions rather than beliefs or ideals. According to the method, the material base of a society—that is, the forces and relations of production—determines its social, political, and intellectual life.

Historical materialism asks the observer to consider that history is a dynamic process rooted in the material conditions of life, where the conflict between opposing classes is the engine of social change and thus the true ground of politics. This does not mean that we disregard ideology. Rather, it means that we understand ideology as a way the ruling class justifies the material arrangements that benefit them. Fascism employs a “double movement” in its tactics: elite interests are portrayed as popular interests, while elites feign an embrace of common sentiment. This is, as Antonio Gramsci explains in his Prison Notebooks, the social logic of ideological hegemony.

Nationalism, in essence, is the political philosophy supporting nation-states and, in the American context, government in the form of constitutional republicanism. Populism, properly understood, refers to popular democracy and citizen participation in law and policy formation. Traditionalism—community concern, pro-family values, and religious faith—predates fascism by millennia.

Again, although historical fascism has used nationalism, populism, and traditionalism to legitimize its rule, none of these is inherently fascist. What is central to fascism are these things: administrative control and the technocratic organization of society, i.e., bureaucratic and elite command over the population. An easy way to understand this is to take your experience with any corporation and imagine that to be your government. It has little to do with nationalism, populism, republicanism, or traditionalism. Indeed, at its eternal core, it has nothing to do with them.

Understanding deep structure must be the starting point for any serious analysis of fascism (or any other social formation) because fascism today will not look as it did in the past; its old symbols and rhetoric would only serve to alert the public to its reemergence. We aren’t studying fascism for general knowledge, but to know how to combat it. This was the central insight of Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy, Inc., which described modern fascism as “inverted totalitarianism.” Wolin’s term refers to a form of corporate statism that hides technocratic governance behind the appearance of democracy—a “managed democracy.”

Of course, historical features of fascism are important to keep in mind, as these may have bearing on the present manifestation of this phenomenon. For example, paramilitary organizations remain important to recognize within this theoretical framework. Paramilitary groups have appeared under both nationalist and socialist movements.

The original Antifa, for instance, was founded in 1932 by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). It served as a vehicle for organized street-level violence under Marxist-Leninist direction, aimed at overthrowing the Weimar Republic—an aim shared by the Nazi Party and its Brownshirts. Both sought not only to overthrow the republic but also to export their totalitarian ideologies internationally. Today, there is no equivalent to the Nazi Party or Brownshirts on the right. However, Antifa exists. But to what end?

To answer questions like this, one has to employ a comparative methodology. To wit, the essential difference between the totalitarian systems discussed above lies in who wields control over the technocratic state. Communists seek to eliminate the capitalist class, transferring economic power to party elites and their intellectual cadres. Fascists, on the other hand, aim to maintain corporate and financial elites’ control over the population through the state. Both abolish genuine representative democracy and liberal freedoms—freedom of conscience, speech, and writing. Elections may continue, but they become mere formalities within a “managed democracy”—if any appearance of democracy is allowed to exist at all.

In light of this, without a deeper structural understanding of fascism, modern forms of inverted totalitarianism are easily mistaken for their opposites. Leaders can appear to tolerate anarchist, communist, or socialist rhetoric to maintain the illusion of popular struggle, while using these movements for what Barrington Moore Jr. called “revolution from above.” This dynamic is plainly visible in contemporary Antifa movements. Although members often identify as anarchists, communists, or socialists their actions—designed to disrupt public order—serve elite interests by destabilizing republican governance and advancing corporate statism. This mirrors how the Nazis used the label “socialist” to disguise what was: a corporate-capitalist form of totalitarianism.

Indeed, today’s fascism manifests in what is commonly described as the “progressive left.” However, progressivism is not truly left-wing in the historical sense. Were it so, it would defend liberal freedoms and meaningful public participation in governance. Instead, progressivism represents corporate statism and technocratic control. It promotes an expansive state apparatus designed to manage the population for the benefit of corporate power and profit.

Antifa’s street-level actions support the corporate project by undermining republicanism and public safety. Progressives, in turn, portray constitutional republicanism as authoritarian—an inversion that reveals their hostility toward democracy itself. Resisting this totalitarian drift need not involve reciprocal violence. Rather, citizens must use what remains of democratic machinery—most importantly, the ballot box. But progressives seem determined to bring the other side to violence.

Moreover, while National Socialism is widely recognized for its regressive and reactionary features, it shares ideological and structural elements with early progressivism and social democracy, particularly in its embrace of state-directed social engineering and corporatist organization.

One prominent example is the eugenics movement, which cut across political lines in the early twentieth century. Progressive reformers in the United States and Europe often advocated eugenics as a means to improve public health, reduce poverty, and optimize the population. Similarly, the Nazi regime integrated eugenics into its social policies, though in an extreme, coercive, and ultimately genocidal form. In both cases, there was a belief that society could be scientifically engineered toward a “better” future through centralized planning and intervention.

From a critical theory standpoint, particularly through the lens of the Frankfurt School, transhumanism—manifested today in the Promethean drive to advance artificial intelligence, robotics, and cybernetic integration—represent not liberation but a technocratic aspiration toward total control. This impulse to transcend human limitation through technological means mirrors the dialectic within historic fascism, which combined atavistic nationalism and traditionalism with a fetishization of modernity and machine power. The fascist glorification of technology as an instrument of domination and transcendence reemerges in the contemporary faith in technological progress.

Under the guise of rational planning and human improvement, such projects risk reproducing the same totalitarian logic that critical theorists like Adorno and Horkheimer identified in Enlightenment reason itself—the reduction of life to systems of administration and control. In this sense, the technocratic and biopolitical mechanisms of modern governance, from public health regimes to population management to transgenderism, echo both the authoritarian and the progressive sides of this Promethean legacy.

Beyond biopolitics, there are structural similarities in how the state interacted with economic and social life. Both National Socialism and progressive and social democracy are rooted in corporatist arrangements—mechanisms that organize society into functional, state-regulated sectors, such as labor, industry, and agriculture. In progressive contexts, corporatism aimed to mediate class conflict, regulate labor relations, and streamline economic planning for social welfare purposes. Under Nazism, corporatism was a tool for authoritarian control, subordinating labor and industry to the goals of the state rather than to the interests of social justice. In essence, the formal structures—state oversight, planned coordination of economic actors, and emphasis on social engineering—bear resemblance across these political currents.

These parallels illustrate that the distinction between “progressive” and “reactionary” is not always structural but also often ethical and ideological. Both progressivism and Nazism embraced rationalized social planning and scientific approaches to social improvement; yet, the outcomes depended on whose well-being was prioritized and whose autonomy was suppressed. The historical lesson is that seemingly technical or administrative innovations—central planning, corporatist arrangement, population management—can be morally harnessed or perverted depending on the regime’s ultimate vision for society.

The 2024 election illustrates the dynamic at play: The public, by electing a Republican government, demonstrated its ability to restore policy and governance to align with constitutional republicanism. Yet this democratic action is often distorted by academia, the culture industry, and the mass media—institutions that have been deeply compromised by the very corporate statism they claim to oppose.

Nationalism, populism, and traditionalism are now misrepresented as fascist tendencies when, in fact, they may serve as antidotes to real fascism. This ideological inversion signals how far the corporate state project has advanced. If Democrats and progressives regain power, they could complete the totalitarian transformation of the United States. The election of Donald Trump temporarily halted this process, which explains the widespread institutional hostility to his presidency. But Republican dominance in politics is not guaranteed.

Thus, Trump’s election alone has not eliminated the danger. The only safeguard is to prevent Democrats from returning to power. This is why the public must recognize the true nature of movements such as Antifa and color revolutions, such as Black Lives Matter and “No Kings,” as well as the influence of transnational corporate power, the deep state (which I explained in my last essay is real), and the corruption of media, medicine, and science. The reality is that the 2020 election represented a four-year coup to deny democratic choice, followed by an interregnum marked by lawfare and attempts to prevent Trump’s return to office. The evidence before us makes this plain. The ongoing desperation of progressive elites and their street-level operatives is further confirmation of their totalitarian ambitions—an identity that becomes unmistakable once one understands the deep structure of fascism.

Several years ago, I read a paper by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page about who gets what in American politics. I revisited that paper yesterday. It’s an interesting read. Here’s the source: Gilens, Martin, and Benjamin I. Page. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Perspectives on Politics 12, (3): 564–581. It’s a social science treatment, so it may take a moment to get acclimated to it, but its conclusions are clear enough. Perhaps it tells you something you already knew. But science papers sometimes come in handy when people demand sources for your claims.

Here’s what they did: The study evaluated several theories about the dynamics of political influence in the United States, analyzing more than 1700 policy decisions from 1981 to 2002 to test competing theories of how American democracy functions. “Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics—which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism—offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented.”

Here’s the gist: The authors found that the preferences of average citizens have little or no independent impact on US government policy. However, economic elites and organized interest groups exert substantial and statistically significant influence. In other words, policies favored by the wealthy are far more likely to be enacted than those supported primarily by ordinary Americans, even when the latter represent a majority view. The authors concluded that the US operates more on “Biased Pluralism” or “Economic-Elite Domination.” Economic-elite domination is the corporate state and technocratic control I keep telling readers about.

With Trump, the country is breaking out of this pattern of economic-elite domination. To be sure, Trump is a capitalist, but he is highly critical of the corporatist arrangements that are wrecking the nation. Ordinary Americans are finally getting the things they want—crime control and public safety, immigration restrictions and mass deportations, restructuring of the world economy to put America first (tariffs and all the rest of it), tax cuts, combating the woke progressive project to change culture and education, etc.

This is what the “No Kings” protests are about: a corporate-funded color revolution to return to the status quo Gilens and Page identify (“No Kings” Redux—There They Go Again). Corporate elites loathe populism, and so they are spending millions to create the illusion that the people are opposed to Donald Trump. It’s having some effect, but not nearly the effect the corporate-state media is telling you it’s having.

The “No Kings” project rests on the concept of an “authoritarian breakthrough” (sometimes called “autocratic breakthrough”), which originates with Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way in their 2010 book Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War, where the term denotes the process by which a competitive authoritarian regime transitions into a fully authoritarian one. In contrast to earlier notions of democratic breakdown or autocratic consolidation, Levitsky and Way use the term to describe a specific trajectory in which limited pluralism and formal democratic institutions are effectively eliminated, consolidating power entirely in the hands of incumbents. Before their work, the phrase had appeared only sporadically and without theoretical precision; it was Levitsky and Way who systematically incorporated it into a comparative framework for understanding regime evolution after the Cold War. Their formulation situates “authoritarian breakthrough” as one of several possible outcomes for “hybrid regimes,” alongside democratization, regime collapse, and continued competitive authoritarian stability.

Media talking heads are telling us that the antidote to autocratic breakthrough lies in the 3.5 percent theory of political change. This is the work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan on nonviolent movements, presented in their 2011 book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. The authors studied hundreds of campaigns for regime change over a century and found that, if 3.5 percent of a population actively participates in sustained, peaceful protest, major political change almost always succeeds. Sounds promising to those swept up in the mass hysteria surrounding Trump’s Presidency. They argue that nonviolent movements work well because they allow broad participation, disrupt economic and social systems, and weaken loyalty among elites and security forces.

We see this presently not only in the “No Kings” project, but in the Democratic shutdown, and calls for corporate elites and the military to turn on Trump. This nonviolence route must be pursued, according to Chenoweth and Stepham, because violence limits participation and strengthens government crackdowns. Hear that, Antifa and other assorted resisters? Chenoweth and Stepham are telling you to knock it off. You’re only making it worse.

While the emotionally dysregulated among Hoffer’s true believers are fighting law enforcement in the streets, the organizers of “No Kings”—Open Society Foundations (George Soros), the Tides Foundation, and the United Community Fund and the Justice and Education Fund (Neville Roy Singham)—are beavering away trying to get to the 3.5 percent mark. To reach 3.5 percent, the organizers will need around 11-12 million people marching in the streets of America. The organizers are already planning a third “No Kings” installment, October 18th’s protests having fallen far short of the goal, even by the mark of organizers’ absurd claim of 7 million (Cutting Through the Hype: How Did “No Kings 2.0” Do Saturday?). By exaggerating the numbers of the October event, the idea is to create the illusion of momentum in building the non-violent resistance movement against Trump. If the exaggeration becomes a belief, they hope to exaggerate the next one by even greater numbers. Unfortunately, Chenoweth and Stepham stress, illusory numbers won’t cut it. They need a hard 11-12 million. And that ain’t happening.

You have to check out this video. Democratic strategist James Carville delivers.

Bill Maher: Scott Adams and Cernovich actually think Republicans will be hunted and rounded up, lol

The next day

James Carville: In 2029, Trump collaborators should be rounded up, head shaved, paraded and spit on. @ScottAdamsSays / @Cernovich pic.twitter.com/At7fYEJ7IC

— jay plemons (@jayplemons) October 26, 2025

Understand what’s happening to the Democratic Party. They’ve become radical Jacobins.

Remember those dudes? Back in the French Revolution. They started out as republicans and secularists, but under the leadership of radicals like Maximilien Robespierre, they became increasingly extreme, paradoxically arguing that terror and “virtue” were necessary to protect the revolution from internal enemies.

Who were their enemies? Moderates and conservatives—you know: “reactionaries.”

Doesn’t all this ring a bell?

Robespierre chaired the Committee of Public Safety (oh boy) and used that post to spread fear and suspicion across French society.

This was called the “Reign of Terror,” and the Jacobins relied on coercion and violence to prosecute a war on the clergy and political opponents.

The madness didn’t stop until reasonable Frenchmen stopped it and held unreasonable Frenchmen accountable—Robespierre and his closest allies were arrested without trial and guillotined. Extreme in itself, to be sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Robespierre died on the same device he used on tens of thousands of his victims. Due process notwithstanding, there’s poetic justice here: Robespierre had made a rod for his own back.

It is a legend that Henry Kissinger, or perhaps another US diplomat, and Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Premier under Mao Zedong, were discussing the French Revolution in the early 1970s. When asked about the effects of the French Revolution, Zhou reportedly said: “It’s too early to tell.”

Western observers took this as a sign of China’s long historical perspective—that Zhou viewed history over centuries and, having occurred only 180 years ago, the full consequences of the French Revolution were still unfolding. However, later research suggests that Zhou Enlai was probably referring not to the eighteenth-century French Revolution, but rather to the French student protests of 1968, which had happened just a few years earlier.

Even better. I have argued on this platform that the student protests in the West in the sixties were, at least in part, inspired by Mao’s Cultural Revolution. When they finally grew up, those radicals gravitated to the Democratic Party in America. They now teach our children using the curricula they developed. It’s all about how awful the West is, and men can be women.

Whichever moment in the history of French radicalism Zhou was assuming, he was right: it was too early to tell.

Today, the mainstream media routinely dismisses any discussion of a deep state as a conspiracy theory, a label meant to discredit the idea that entrenched elements within government operate with autonomy and secrecy. By “deep state,” I mean a network of covert operations and intelligence programs that functions outside the normal boundaries of democratic oversight, running covert operations against the American public in the same way intelligence services run covert operations against the populations of foreign countries. The Church Committee’s revelations of the mid-1970s, which I discuss below, showed that such activities are not the stuff of imagination but verifiable matters of record—if a government is so inclined to interrogate them. Yet modern journalists, once defenders of transparency, at least more so than now, treat any questioning of intelligence agencies as irrational or unpatriotic. This is an act of memory-holing what they know to be historical fact to obscure the contemporary fact that the deep state still exists.

When I was in middle school, in the 1970s, television brought the events of the nation straight into my den and bedroom—on the big color TV and my little black-and-white set. Information was much less censored in those days, and arguably less biased. To be sure, it was still corporate-state media, but there was a sense of integrity among journalists so scarce today. Moreover, postmodernist philosophy and its permutations had not yet fully corrupted the corporate intelligentsia—they still had one foot in reality and some commitment to truth-telling. Coverage of the Vietnam War was the most notable, and my parents would shoo my sister and me out of the room when the more graphic footage appeared on the screen. That coverage stood in stark contrast to CNN’s reporting of the Gulf Wars, prosecuted years later by George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush.

Among the many historic moments I remember seeing unfold on TV were the Church Committee hearings, formally known as the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church of Idaho. The hearings were held from 1975 to 1976, beginning in the summer of 1975, when I was thirteen. I can still picture them vividly with my mind’s eye, memories clarified and reinforced years later by reviewing recordings and reports of the committee’s work (for those sessions not held in secret over classified materials).

The House of Representatives had its own oversight efforts, most notably through the House Select Committee on Intelligence (later the Pike Committee). The Pike Committee, like the Church Committee, examined intelligence activities and alleged abuses, though, unlike the Senate committee, President Gerald Ford’s administration blocked the publication of the Pike Committee report in 1976. I will leave readers to look into that. Perhaps it will suffice to say that Ford served as a commissioner on the Warren Commission that was charged with investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. At the same time, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Its final report in 1979 concluded that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. However, in that report, it said that it could not identify all the conspirators. Could not, or would not?

While much of its work was conducted in secret, the public Church Committee hearings were a spectacle. During the fall, winter, and spring, I would come home from school, turn on the television—back then, as my peers will recall, we had only the three major networks and PBS—and see senators questioning witnesses about the secret activities of the CIA, FBI, and NSA. The committee had been formed in 1975 to investigate abuses by US intelligence agencies, following revelations of assassination plots, illegal surveillance, and political interference. It was one of the most important congressional inquiries of the era, rivaling the Watergate hearings a few years earlier. I remember those as well (and am preparing to write about the removal of Nixon, one of America’s most popular Presidents, in the near future). I don’t recall a time when I wasn’t politically interested—looking back, that came naturally as my parents were politically engaged.

Again, although many sessions of the Church Committee were held behind closed doors for security reasons, a number of the hearings were televised. Public sessions aired during the day, and the networks or PBS would replay them later or show highlights on the evening news. PBS, in particular, offered gavel-to-gavel coverage, giving Americans an unfiltered look at the proceedings. Americans across the nation would watch senators asking pointed questions, and witnesses—often high-ranking officials—having to answer for activities that, until then, had been shrouded in secrecy. One moment that became famous was when the committee displayed the CIA’s so-called “heart attack gun,” a weapon that could fire a toxin dart meant to leave almost no trace. But many other revelations shocked the conscience of any American concerned about his beloved republic. 

The Church Committee devoted significant attention to COINTELPRO, the FBI’s secret counterintelligence program that targeted domestic political groups, ostensibly dismantled in 1971 when it was exposed. I have written about this program in an academic outlet (Encyclopedia of Social Deviance) and on my platform, Freedom and Reason (see, e.g., The Black Panthers: Black Radicalism and the New Left). I frequently show the documentary FBI’s War on Black America in my criminal justice classes. The hearings and reports revealed how the FBI had surveilled, infiltrated, and disrupted civil rights organizations, antiwar activists, and political figures, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. COINTELPRO not only targeted black civil rights organizations, but also targeted many other groups, including the American Indian Movement (AIM). For example, the FBI surveilled AIM during events like the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation, orchestrated internal conflict, and manipulated media coverage against them. These activities involved unauthorized wiretaps, mail openings, and smear campaigns.

The committee’s investigation of COINTELPRO exposed serious violations of civil liberties and helped prompt the establishment of permanent congressional oversight of intelligence agencies, including the Senate and House intelligence committees. One reform of significance was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, established in 1978 to provide judicial oversight for government requests to conduct electronic surveillance and collect foreign intelligence within the US. The Act aimed to balance national security needs with constitutional protections. However, the FISA process has, over time, become susceptible to misuse, with courts rubber-stamping surveillance requests, undermining its original role as an independent check on administrative power. For example, Trump and his supporters have argued that surveillance programs under FISA were improperly used to monitor his 2016 campaign and associates. What is alleged, and there is considerable evidence to support the allegations, is that officials within the Obama-era Justice Department and FBI sought FISA warrants—particularly regarding Carter Page and Russia-related investigations—based on questionable or unverified evidence (see The Conspiracy to Overthrow an American President).

The committee also investigated the CIA’s relationships with journalists and media organizations, activities often associated later with Operation Mockingbird. The hearings documented that the CIA had cultivated ties with members of the American and foreign press, providing funding, guidance, or cover identities for operations. These revelations raised obvious concerns about press independence and the influence of intelligence agencies on public information. While not as central as the COINTELPRO findings, the committee’s work on media influence, historians of the period tell us, highlighted the need for greater transparency and limits on intelligence operations that intersect with civil society. However, Operation Mockingbird should be recognized as a major finding of the committee’s work, especially as we witnessed something very much like it at work during Trump’s 2020 campaign and after during the Biden years, when agents of intelligence services worked with social media corporations—Facebook, Twitter, etc.— to censor user content by various means. 

Looking back, I realize how significant those televised hearings were, and how important it is to return their significance to the minds of the living. They helped ordinary citizens like you and me understand what our government’s intelligence agencies were doing in our name, and they led to crucial reforms—such as the creation of permanent Senate and House intelligence committees and the passage of FISA in 1978, however corrupted those institutions have become. At the time, I didn’t fully grasp how deeply those hearings would shape my understanding of government power and accountability. As debates about secrecy and oversight have continued, I have often thought back to the Church Committee and how it made me aware that, even in a democracy, power can expand quietly unless someone is willing to ask hard questions in public. I wouldn’t expect such an event to happen again, of course (instead, we get fake congressional hearings orchestrated for television like the January 6 Committee). But I do expect that people like me will ask those hard questions.

Remembering this period is essential, because it reminds us that democracy requires constant vigilance, and that secrecy, once—and still, in the minds of agents of these agencies—justified as “national security,” can quickly become a shield for abuse. Today, it’s justified by the appeal “defending democracy.” But, as I have shown on Freedom and Reason, these services, nor the media that runs interference for them, are not defending democracy or civil liberties but ensuring that technocratic control over the American populace continues unconstrained by the right of the people to be free from government surveillance and intimidation. 

Here’s the takeaway: The Church Committee hearings demonstrate that covert power within the intelligence community can and does act independently of public accountability. The committee documented CIA assassination plots, FBI domestic surveillance programs like COINTELPRO, and secret operations to influence the press, all carried out without congressional approval or public knowledge. There was evidence, testimony, and sworn admissions. It’s all a matter of public record. These findings, televised for the nation to see and for anyone to revisit today, left little doubt that what we now call a deep state truly existed, no matter how hard the corporate-state media tries to gaslight the public about such matters.

The deep state is not a conspiracy theory—not in the sense that the media wishes to convey. To be sure, there were, and are, conspiracies. And, as I often say, a rational mind can and should develop theories about them. After all, conspiracy is a category in criminal law. But the conspiracies revealed by the Church Committee, and the myriad of conspiracies currently in operation, aren’t the products of paranoid minds. Indeed, paranoia is warranted given the revelations, not only of the Church Committee, but also of contemporary work exposing the machinations of today’s intelligence services. The corporate-state media’s job is to obscure the conspiracies presently at work shaping the destiny of the American Republic by making citizens concerned about being labeled “conspiracy theorists.” They do this work to advance the ambitions of the globalist project: the managed decline of the West—which is the grandest conspiracy of them all.