I just love this - am I blind to similar contradictions on the liberal side (I stand firm on a 50 year claim there is NO prominent Left in the US, and the DEI/woke uproar was manufactured by Right wing media - so I must be blind)
in any case, just this morning I saw a post about the McCullough foundation report claiming (lying about) a report on vaccines "proved' they cause autism. I noticed in the statement about the foundation that among other things, they are dedicated to protecting and defending the Constitution.
Imagine supporting a president who at least twice a day violates some fundamental constitutional law!
What gets me the most is the allegedly middle of the road Right of center Jewish writers like David Frum, David Brooks and Bret Stephens - "Really guys - you had no idea these neo Nazis have been part of the conservative movement since the 1930s? You didn't notice those "very fine people" were chanting "Jews will not replace us?"
And the good Christians like Peter Wehner who profess to be "shocked - shocked!!" that neo Nazis and white supremacists are in the Republican party. "Really Peter? When you were working for Reagan, it never even occurred to you for a moment that the symbolism of his speaking in Philadelphia, Mississippi - the site of the murders of civil rights workers in 1964 - might be, you know, a tad racist?"
I mean, of course there are racists, misogynists, and anti semites among the .001% of the academic community that feasts in incredible bad, even loathsomely ugly postmodern critical theory type language. But among the 3000 or so Democrats in the state and national legislatures or on the courts - you have anti semitic racists bigots on the Supreme Court appointed by Republican presidents - is there anything in the mainstream Democratic party that remotely resembles anything like support for Fuentes?
I'm with you on "no prominent Left" in the U.S. I was a reasonably sentient young adult when SDS flamed out with RYM-2 and Weatherman, and when radical women exited stage feminist -- see Robin Morgan's classic 1970 manifesto "Goodbye to All That."
Yes to all the rest of it too. I'm 99.9% certain that since the white Southern Democrats became Republicans after the mid-1960s, no Democrat has run around in Klan robes either.
Hi Susanna: I suspect we're close in age. I love the phrase "reasonably sentient" (it's like what they say about Woodstock - which I didn't attend, by the way - "if you remember it, you weren't there" - could be said about the 1960s in general!
As a former NY City resident who is now in the relatively deep south (I was in rural Georgia in the early 90s, back to NY then to South Carolina in 2001 and North Carolina - thank Goddess! - since 2010) I can tell you there are some old Southern Democrats here who are still quite fond of the Klan and no doubt voted for the Donald because, as one elite assemblyman in Greenville, SC said about Obama's election, "That was the worst night of my life."
By the way, Susanna, are you familiar with Heather Cox Richardson? She gave a glowingly positive overview of the results of the Tuesday elections. With Trump's increasing dementia and older Republicans upset about Young Republicans' infatuation with Hitler, MAGA appears to be coming apart at the seams.
By the way, one thing Trump got right? As Thom Hartmann pointed out, Trump won in 2016 with a 3 part message
(1) Left wing, anti neoliberal economics (the one truly Left wing thing that has been put forth in the past decade; leave aside the fact that only a fool could possibly have believed that he would carry any of it out. but the important point is left wing economics, progressive economics, is incredibly popular
(2) Strong on crime and immigration. Again leave aside the fact that it was all lies. Who in the world EVERY came up with "Defund the police???" Do you know, I worked with several police agencies in Greenville, SC from 2010 to 2015 and they desperately wanted something that was part of the defund the police movement. It did NOT mean "take away money from the police" it meant HELP the police by bringing in social workers to deal with things like I saw on one of my ride alongs with the police - a couple arguing intensely in Kmart (remember Kmart??) The police hate doing stuff like that, and extra funding for social workers would free them up to do what they signed up to do)
(3) Relatively quiet on cultural issues. Does this mean NOT supporting important feminist, anti racial issues? Look to Bernie Sanders. He stands strong for progressive cultural issues, but when he's given "gotcha" questions by right wing hacks, he says, "Do you really want to argue about whether or not we should pass laws to prevent 5 year old kids from getting guns in convenience stores while people can't put food on their tables because the millionaires and billionaires are stealing form us?"
Brilliant!
If folks our age and older would leave the Democratic party and let the kids take over, maybe the Republican party will just go the way of the Whigs and something new will emerge!!
I've been subscribing to HCR since she started her Substack. Have since read HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR. I wish more of her online fans would read it and take it to heart.
Who came up with the slogan "Defund the Police"? I agree it's a terrible slogan, but IIRC it came from people who've been persecuted by the police for generations, i.e., people of color. It was partly a reaction to the tactics of the Reagan administration, which included prosecuting more heavily drugs that were most often used by poorer/Blacker people. Read up on the explosion of the prison population that resulted. THE NEW JIM CROW by Michelle Alexander is still very good reading on this.
Surely you see the drawbacks of funding an occupation that for generations -- centuries! -- has been key to keeping Black people down? (Just read that NYC cops are retiring in droves because they're freaked out about Zohran Mamdani's win. No idea how true this is. The problem is that I'm not a bit surprised.)
And don't get me started about Bernie Blowhard, the sexist ex-New Lefty who ran away from scrappy multiracial politics in NYC and set himself up as a white "progressive" in lily-white Vermont.
As to "folks our age" leaving the Democratic Party -- what crap. Generational memory is a thing, and it's important. OTOH, if the XY-chromosome people left, it wouldn't be a bad thing. I've been voting Democratic my entire life -- like there was an alternative? I 100% understand why people don't vote at all -- but I was only a registered Democrat (and an officer in my local Dem group) for 6+ years, following Trump's first election. The local group was great, but what I learned about the Democratic _party_ in my state (MA) and elsewhere was infuriating. I went back to being unenrolled after I left office.
all great points! I'm familiar with all the points you're raising. I actually attended 3 left wing events in the early 70s and never went back. My heart went along with EF schumacher's perennial philosophy and contemplative anarchy! But not much of that in the world today. Well, we're in the midst of a 2nd copernican revolution bigger than the first one 4 centuries ago, and I still am convinced - after 55 years of watching it - when the foundations of materialistic science change the world world will change.
Great piece - thank you! I'm hoping that you'll pursue this further and examine more deeply how the Jewish henchmen for MAGA, in & out of the administration, fit in to the now glaring antisemitism of their movement. I just cannot understand where Stephen Miller fits in for example. Does he think that he's the one Jew whom the antisemites will embrace? Or Jared, or Ivanka for that matter? Or the Adelsons (as you refer to in your piece)? Or do you think there really will be a crack up?
But Jews have provided such a useful pretext to persecute Muslims ... and universities – all in the name of fighting antisemitism. Where would Trump be without them?
Who decides who gets to be called a white person in America? That is the question the white supremacist have never been able answer since the Irish Catholics became white people.
The Yenor detail really crystallizes where Heritage is headed. They didn't just tolerate Roberts's defense of Tucker, they rewarded the enablers and kept the most extreme voices embedded in positions of influence. Fields is right that the silence has been deafening for years, but what's different now is the cracks are too visible for even sympathetic observers to ignore. The question isn't whether MAGA will choose antisemitism over pro-Israel conservatism, it's whether anyone still pretends there was ever a real choice to make in the firs place.
No doubt the Fitzgerald quote will live for another 100 years as based on what? Unless some idea has stood the test of thousands of years, such as the Bible or books from ancient Greece, "The Iliad", "The Odyssey" onward in the Adler-Van Doren list of books, how can we take this seriously?
You had a good interview with Sidney Blumenthal last week on "Legal AF". We should speak of "the Trump phenomenon" as it is a lot less about a person than about a contemptible trend in modern American culture, especially the depraved NYC area frothy mix of obscene wealth, disgusting people and their ostentation and manipulative tactics to exploit others for advantage with many victims.
We should be plumbing the depths of psychological and other literature that addresses the demonic obsessions and plumbs the depths that people sink to especially with power. Navarro, Miller, Bannon, Bove, Blanche and the rest are like characters out of the underworld of pulp novels of the last century. Milton and CS Lewis (Screwtape) would have insights. The inability to fight the abysmal Trump creature was due to a lack of courage, will and imagination as the threat of this malignant narcissist haunted us.
I meant that the Epstein connections seemed to have been centered in NYC, probably because of proximity to Wall Street. Miami seems to be another city that drew them.
Just to add further context to the Fuentes remark comparing Jews murdered in the holocaust to cookies. His comparison was an attempt to cast doubt on the numbers killed and incinerated as a matter of system capacity.
A loathsome and dangerous individual. That Carlson feels emboldened to lend him whatever credibility he still has is not something we can ignore.
I just love this - am I blind to similar contradictions on the liberal side (I stand firm on a 50 year claim there is NO prominent Left in the US, and the DEI/woke uproar was manufactured by Right wing media - so I must be blind)
in any case, just this morning I saw a post about the McCullough foundation report claiming (lying about) a report on vaccines "proved' they cause autism. I noticed in the statement about the foundation that among other things, they are dedicated to protecting and defending the Constitution.
Imagine supporting a president who at least twice a day violates some fundamental constitutional law!
What gets me the most is the allegedly middle of the road Right of center Jewish writers like David Frum, David Brooks and Bret Stephens - "Really guys - you had no idea these neo Nazis have been part of the conservative movement since the 1930s? You didn't notice those "very fine people" were chanting "Jews will not replace us?"
And the good Christians like Peter Wehner who profess to be "shocked - shocked!!" that neo Nazis and white supremacists are in the Republican party. "Really Peter? When you were working for Reagan, it never even occurred to you for a moment that the symbolism of his speaking in Philadelphia, Mississippi - the site of the murders of civil rights workers in 1964 - might be, you know, a tad racist?"
I mean, of course there are racists, misogynists, and anti semites among the .001% of the academic community that feasts in incredible bad, even loathsomely ugly postmodern critical theory type language. But among the 3000 or so Democrats in the state and national legislatures or on the courts - you have anti semitic racists bigots on the Supreme Court appointed by Republican presidents - is there anything in the mainstream Democratic party that remotely resembles anything like support for Fuentes?
Anyway, please forgive the rant - thanks again!
I'm with you on "no prominent Left" in the U.S. I was a reasonably sentient young adult when SDS flamed out with RYM-2 and Weatherman, and when radical women exited stage feminist -- see Robin Morgan's classic 1970 manifesto "Goodbye to All That."
Yes to all the rest of it too. I'm 99.9% certain that since the white Southern Democrats became Republicans after the mid-1960s, no Democrat has run around in Klan robes either.
Hi Susanna: I suspect we're close in age. I love the phrase "reasonably sentient" (it's like what they say about Woodstock - which I didn't attend, by the way - "if you remember it, you weren't there" - could be said about the 1960s in general!
As a former NY City resident who is now in the relatively deep south (I was in rural Georgia in the early 90s, back to NY then to South Carolina in 2001 and North Carolina - thank Goddess! - since 2010) I can tell you there are some old Southern Democrats here who are still quite fond of the Klan and no doubt voted for the Donald because, as one elite assemblyman in Greenville, SC said about Obama's election, "That was the worst night of my life."
By the way, Susanna, are you familiar with Heather Cox Richardson? She gave a glowingly positive overview of the results of the Tuesday elections. With Trump's increasing dementia and older Republicans upset about Young Republicans' infatuation with Hitler, MAGA appears to be coming apart at the seams.
By the way, one thing Trump got right? As Thom Hartmann pointed out, Trump won in 2016 with a 3 part message
(1) Left wing, anti neoliberal economics (the one truly Left wing thing that has been put forth in the past decade; leave aside the fact that only a fool could possibly have believed that he would carry any of it out. but the important point is left wing economics, progressive economics, is incredibly popular
(2) Strong on crime and immigration. Again leave aside the fact that it was all lies. Who in the world EVERY came up with "Defund the police???" Do you know, I worked with several police agencies in Greenville, SC from 2010 to 2015 and they desperately wanted something that was part of the defund the police movement. It did NOT mean "take away money from the police" it meant HELP the police by bringing in social workers to deal with things like I saw on one of my ride alongs with the police - a couple arguing intensely in Kmart (remember Kmart??) The police hate doing stuff like that, and extra funding for social workers would free them up to do what they signed up to do)
(3) Relatively quiet on cultural issues. Does this mean NOT supporting important feminist, anti racial issues? Look to Bernie Sanders. He stands strong for progressive cultural issues, but when he's given "gotcha" questions by right wing hacks, he says, "Do you really want to argue about whether or not we should pass laws to prevent 5 year old kids from getting guns in convenience stores while people can't put food on their tables because the millionaires and billionaires are stealing form us?"
Brilliant!
If folks our age and older would leave the Democratic party and let the kids take over, maybe the Republican party will just go the way of the Whigs and something new will emerge!!
Heh. In some kind of order . . .
I've been subscribing to HCR since she started her Substack. Have since read HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR. I wish more of her online fans would read it and take it to heart.
Who came up with the slogan "Defund the Police"? I agree it's a terrible slogan, but IIRC it came from people who've been persecuted by the police for generations, i.e., people of color. It was partly a reaction to the tactics of the Reagan administration, which included prosecuting more heavily drugs that were most often used by poorer/Blacker people. Read up on the explosion of the prison population that resulted. THE NEW JIM CROW by Michelle Alexander is still very good reading on this.
Surely you see the drawbacks of funding an occupation that for generations -- centuries! -- has been key to keeping Black people down? (Just read that NYC cops are retiring in droves because they're freaked out about Zohran Mamdani's win. No idea how true this is. The problem is that I'm not a bit surprised.)
And don't get me started about Bernie Blowhard, the sexist ex-New Lefty who ran away from scrappy multiracial politics in NYC and set himself up as a white "progressive" in lily-white Vermont.
As to "folks our age" leaving the Democratic Party -- what crap. Generational memory is a thing, and it's important. OTOH, if the XY-chromosome people left, it wouldn't be a bad thing. I've been voting Democratic my entire life -- like there was an alternative? I 100% understand why people don't vote at all -- but I was only a registered Democrat (and an officer in my local Dem group) for 6+ years, following Trump's first election. The local group was great, but what I learned about the Democratic _party_ in my state (MA) and elsewhere was infuriating. I went back to being unenrolled after I left office.
all great points! I'm familiar with all the points you're raising. I actually attended 3 left wing events in the early 70s and never went back. My heart went along with EF schumacher's perennial philosophy and contemplative anarchy! But not much of that in the world today. Well, we're in the midst of a 2nd copernican revolution bigger than the first one 4 centuries ago, and I still am convinced - after 55 years of watching it - when the foundations of materialistic science change the world world will change.
Great piece - thank you! I'm hoping that you'll pursue this further and examine more deeply how the Jewish henchmen for MAGA, in & out of the administration, fit in to the now glaring antisemitism of their movement. I just cannot understand where Stephen Miller fits in for example. Does he think that he's the one Jew whom the antisemites will embrace? Or Jared, or Ivanka for that matter? Or the Adelsons (as you refer to in your piece)? Or do you think there really will be a crack up?
Excellent question. The Repugnants pursued votes wherever they could get them. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Nazi are great. JD Vance says so
J D is truly willing to say whatever Peter Thiel is spouting.
But Jews have provided such a useful pretext to persecute Muslims ... and universities – all in the name of fighting antisemitism. Where would Trump be without them?
Indeed, where would trump be?
Who decides who gets to be called a white person in America? That is the question the white supremacist have never been able answer since the Irish Catholics became white people.
The Yenor detail really crystallizes where Heritage is headed. They didn't just tolerate Roberts's defense of Tucker, they rewarded the enablers and kept the most extreme voices embedded in positions of influence. Fields is right that the silence has been deafening for years, but what's different now is the cracks are too visible for even sympathetic observers to ignore. The question isn't whether MAGA will choose antisemitism over pro-Israel conservatism, it's whether anyone still pretends there was ever a real choice to make in the firs place.
No doubt the Fitzgerald quote will live for another 100 years as based on what? Unless some idea has stood the test of thousands of years, such as the Bible or books from ancient Greece, "The Iliad", "The Odyssey" onward in the Adler-Van Doren list of books, how can we take this seriously?
You had a good interview with Sidney Blumenthal last week on "Legal AF". We should speak of "the Trump phenomenon" as it is a lot less about a person than about a contemptible trend in modern American culture, especially the depraved NYC area frothy mix of obscene wealth, disgusting people and their ostentation and manipulative tactics to exploit others for advantage with many victims.
We should be plumbing the depths of psychological and other literature that addresses the demonic obsessions and plumbs the depths that people sink to especially with power. Navarro, Miller, Bannon, Bove, Blanche and the rest are like characters out of the underworld of pulp novels of the last century. Milton and CS Lewis (Screwtape) would have insights. The inability to fight the abysmal Trump creature was due to a lack of courage, will and imagination as the threat of this malignant narcissist haunted us.
I’m with you on all of that except your view of nyc. Last night’s election should disabuse
You a little of your opinion.
I meant that the Epstein connections seemed to have been centered in NYC, probably because of proximity to Wall Street. Miami seems to be another city that drew them.
Oh, we all know exactly who will win this battle. I don't think there's even a tiny doubt as to which viewpoint will become dominant.
YOU NAILED IT! Needs to be SHARED EVERYWHERE!
A rabbit hole somewhere down which JB Pritzker (not personally) gave Charles Haywood (SACR founder) $20M.
JDVance admires the German Alt-Right Political Party-ADF.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/14/jd-vance-alice-weidel-meeting-germany-far-right
Excellent piece.
Just to add further context to the Fuentes remark comparing Jews murdered in the holocaust to cookies. His comparison was an attempt to cast doubt on the numbers killed and incinerated as a matter of system capacity.
A loathsome and dangerous individual. That Carlson feels emboldened to lend him whatever credibility he still has is not something we can ignore.
Oh I don’t know, I have been ignoring Tucker fastidiously since Jon Stewart called him out.
O, i have been ignoring them both way longer than that.