The Alt-Left is Real

The Alt-Left is not simply Antifa; it is the ideology that undergirds Antifa.

Keri Smith | September 6, 2017 | 7,059

When writing this piece, a quote kept rattling around in the back of my head. It was the title of the opening chapter of “The Feminine Mystique,” Betty Friedan’s seminal 1963 feminist manifesto: The Problem That Has No Name. Apologies in advance, for appropriating and altering three of the quotes I find most meaningful from that chapter, for my own purposes here:

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American liberals…
Even so, most liberals still did not know that this problem was real. But those who had faced it honestly knew that all the media dismissals, the academic justifications, the intellectualized double speak and the manufactured outrage were somehow drowning the problem in unreality…
How can any person see the whole truth within the bounds of one’s own life? How can she believe that voice inside herself, when it denies the conventional, accepted truths by which she has been living? And yet the liberals I have talked to, who are finally listening to that inner voice, seem in some incredible way to be groping through to a truth that has defied the media.”

The Alt-Left Is Real
There is an effort underfoot, in the media and in academia, to declare the Alt-Left a myth, to sweep it back under the rug, to reduce it, in effect, back to being a sickness not spoken of, a problem that has no name. I have had well-meaning friends tell me I should not use the term Alt-Left (or any of its synonyms: Regressive Left, CTRL-Left, SJWism) because they are ‘pejoratives’ used only by the right to attack the left.
In my experience, this is not true. Like canaries in the coal mine, liberals who do not (or no longer) subscribe to the Alt-Left ideology have been sounding the alarm about this creeping plague of repressive groupthink for quite a while now. I believe this attempt to dissuade our use of the term Alt-Left is purposeful (even if not consciously recognized by individuals who are doing it) — for how can we discuss something we cannot refer to by name?
When asked to define Alt-Left, I would describe it as a leftist but illiberal authoritarian ideology rooted in postmodernism and neo-Marxism that supports censorship, condones violence in response to speech, is obsessed with identity politics (much like the Alt-Right), and functions like a secular religion that gives its believers a sense of moral self-worth.
It masquerades as a form of liberalism, but it has more in common with authoritarianism than its true believers can (or want to?) admit. It claims to speak for the marginalized, but it either ignores or attempts to hatefully shame members of marginalized groups who do not subscribe to the ideology.
It is not simply Antifa; it is the ideology that undergirds Antifa, and it has swallowed much of BLM and intersectional third wave feminism. It wishes to swallow the whole of the left, the country, the world. It is rooted in nihilism, resentfulness, and arrogance, though it presents itself as being rooted in equality, justice, and morality. It favors collectivism over individualism, statism over liberty, forced equality of outcome over freedom.
Now…imagine if I had to say that mouthful every time I wished to talk about the Alt-Left because I bought into the notion that to give it a name it would be insulting to fellow liberals. No, to speak of it by name is to out it for what it is and to reduce some of its power.
What's in a Name?
I can’t tell you how good it felt when I first discovered the work of Dave Rubin, a reasonable liberal, and realized I wasn’t alone in seeing this pernicious belief system for what it really is.
In his video, Rubin offers that it doesn’t matter which term we use, what’s important is that we are allowed to identify the problem. “Whatever name you use for this well-meaning yet painfully misguided set of ideas is largely irrelevant. We needed this phrase to identify this backward ideology which puts groups before people. And sometimes you need a label to get people to understand an idea.”
Reasonable liberal Maajid Nawaz, widely credited with coining the term Regressive Left, also made the following observation last year:

Today’s active, organized left is no longer liberal. A liberal will always prioritize free speech over offense. This behavior, censorship on the organized left, post factual behavior, violence being seen as an option and prioritizing group identity over individual rights. That isn’t liberal.”

Do yourself a favor and watch the whole video:

Yet another reasonable liberal, Tim Pool, points out that one of the few things Politico gets right about the Alt-Left is that it is a term used by centrist liberals. Pool says, “Yes, I use the term Alt-Left because I want to make sure everybody knows when I say I’m left-leaning, I’m not the kind of person that’s gonna go out and punch somebody in the face or take away their rights because I think mine are more important.”
I’m also a liberal who’s been using the term Alt-Left since I first learned to trust that voice within myself, that voice that denies the conventional, accepted Alt-Left “truths” by which I had been living.
The first time I used it in a public piece of writing was back in May while attempting to articulate my transformation in belief systems in an essay called On Leaving the SJW Cult and Finding Myself. The essay itself was a long time coming. I started to wake up to the creeping authoritarianism and endless internal hypocrisies of the accepted Alt-Left ideology over a year ago. But leaving behind a belief system to which you’ve subscribed for twenty years is a bit like razing your house to the ground and rebuilding from the ground up.
Suddenly you are starting with nothing; everything you thought you knew is suspect. It takes a long time to evaluate each previously held belief and try to discern which ones hold substance. Where before my house had foolishly been built on the shifting sands of postmodernism, this time I want to ensure that, as Dr. Jordan Peterson might say, my house is built on rock.
It makes me think of George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant,” my first introduction to the concept of framing. Lackoff said “Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world….Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts we have — the long-term concepts that structure how we think — is instantiated in the synapses of our brains…If a strongly held frame doesn’t fit the facts, the facts will be ignored and the frame will be kept.”
I devoured this book when a young SJW. It helped me understand how people could vote Republican and why my right-wing Aunt didn’t seem to be swayed to my point of view no matter how many facts I threw at her. What I didn’t think too much about was how this human tendency is just as prevalent on the left as it is on the right.
The Frog and the Pot
I am of the opinion that a lot of well-meaning people have become converts to the Alt-Left ideology without even realizing it. Like the parable of the slow boiling frog, if you had told me at the beginning that one day I’d be expected to perform mental gymnastics in order to defend censorship and violence in response to speech, I would have leaped from the pot.
Instead, I was conditioned to accept as gospel each new tenet of SJWism over a period of twenty years. I believed in the essential goodness of the ideology, and in my own essential goodness in preaching it. When facts about the direction it was taking me made themselves known to me, I rejected them because they did not fit the frame. As the ideology became more noticeably toxic, hypocritical, and authoritarian, so too did the tactics of the true believers. Whether in academia, in the media, at Google, or online — the message is clear: dare to step out of line or express an independent thought, and a mob of zealous SJW zombies will come for you. The fear of losing one’s job, status, friends or personal safety is a strong motivator in forcing reasonable people to remain silent.
I have received a lot of positive feedback about the sentiments expressed in my writing about SJWism from people all over the political spectrum. Most meaningful to me of these might be the messages I get from fellow liberals who are going through the same realization, confusion, and fear.
In addition to the public responses you can read yourself, I have received private messages from people in academia, journalism, and entertainment — many of them liberals — expressing that the piece resonated with them and that they were afraid to share it (or presumably in some cases, to express themselves about anything at all). Excerpts from a handful of these are below:

I honestly was scared to tweet that…that’s how bad things have gotten. I’ve nearly lost work…The world has gone mad.”
“I have definitely taken notice of so many of my friends on the left going to a dark place.”
“It is totally wild. These people are my friends — my community….They’re so angry.”
“…your piece on the social justice cult affected me more than words can say. After being called ‘violent’…because I used a word that someone decided was offensive…I had a bit of an existential crisis about my life and self-worth. Thus, I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit... I remain committed to the idea that privilege exists and it should be combated through both self-reflection and system action. I also am a proud liberal, and that hasn’t lessened. That said, I can’t get behind the individual scapegoating, shouting and intimidation in the name of fighting hate, or defining sharing a point of view as “educating” and “labor.” Ultimately, the world needs more compassion….I’m trying to get there on talking and writing about some of this a little more publicly, but I don’t think I’m quite there yet (also, the fact that I’m on the academic job market makes me a bit hesitant).” 
“I saw your posts and they were refreshing. I hate politics but free speech is so important to me….but then I remember I work in TV and Music and I can’t say anything that’s going to make me lose my job. It’s crazy what’s going on right now.”
“Just wanted to let you know I’m one of those people who greatly appreciates your voice on social media, but am too afraid of the thought police to voice my support.”

Actions Speak Louder Than Words
If the Alt-Left doesn’t exist, why are so many liberals and centrists afraid of expressing themselves? Why are so many people self-censoring for their own sense of safety? I was fascinated by the James Damore story, not because I have an opinion on the legality of his dismissal, but because his online stoning and subsequent firing confirmed for me what I already suspected: Google, like most of the tech space, the entertainment space, the academic space and the media space has become a panopticon of Alt-Left groupthink, self-censorship, and fear.
I know this fear intimately. As I started waking up to the illiberal nature of the growing Alt-Left ideology, I held my tongue for a long time out of fear of losing job opportunities, the safety of anonymity, and friends. After all, I built my career, and by proxy a lot of my friendships, from this SJW frame. I don’t judge anyone for subscribing to this ideology out of misplaced idealism and a desire to do good; I did for twenty years. Likewise, I don’t judge anyone who is currently waking up from it but is constrained by fear. As I tell folks who write me about it: I don’t know the exact way to get over it. I suspect it’s different for every person. But trust me when I tell you, it is so liberating on the other side.
For those self-identified liberals who may have been seduced by this belief system, by its propaganda, and are fuming at this piece, thank you for reading this far. I believe a part of you is struggling to wake up if you stuck it out this long. I encourage you to start listening to that small voice inside yourself, the one that tells you when something doesn’t seem quite right or reasonable, no matter if it’s accepted by all of your peers.
Take a look at who was really at the Free Speech Rally in Boston for starters. This, for example, is Shiva Ayyadurai. You may decide you don’t like him because he’s conservative, but to call him a “white supremacist” is a dangerous Alt-Left falsehood.
Take the time to listen to Will Johnson and Joey Gibson, two of the organizers of the Patriot Prayer Rally in SF this past weekend. Their rally was canceled after successful media (and political) attempts to smear them as “white supremacists” caused subsequent threats of violence from the Alt-Left. Ask yourself if it’s not odd that so many so-called liberals are now smearing people of color with whom they don’t agree as “white supremacists” (Charles Barkley is apparently one now too; so Johnson, Gibson, and Ayyadurai are not alone).
Then ask yourself if these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these students, or these students, or these students, or these students are really fighting fascism, or if they are acting as footsoldiers (some witting, some unwitting) for a pro-censorship and pro-violence ideology. These facts may not fit your frame, but — do the actions depicted here reflect your liberal values?
I read a C.S. Lewis quote some time ago, that has stuck with me during my transformation in thought. Perhaps it will stick with you:

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”

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Keri is Co-Founder of Whitesmith Entertainment. This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

A Time for War

By David Prentice

“To everything, there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”  That’s the beginning of a famous bible verse.   It’s a litany of life’s times and wonders that are dropped in our laps; weeping, laughing, dancing, healing. 
The last line purposely changes tone and says, “a time for war”.
Like it or not, this is that time.
Civil War.   

It’s here.  Now.  Thankfully this is not yet the blood in the streets kind of war, but war it is.  It’s a war for the soul of this country, it’s a war that will affect everyone; none will escape having to deal with it directly, or indirectly.
How did we get here?  It’s complicated.  But one thing for sure: what’s not complicated is who started this war, why, and who it is with.  During our lives, it was started by the hard left, and it’s a war to achieve power for them, for them to change the entire workings of our country.  They want to remake every institution they can, with themselves in control of as much as possible.  Power to them, belongs in the hands of their brilliant ideas, and their overwhelming moral superiority.   They believe this war is necessary in order to root out the injustice inherent in our country’s institutions and its tawdry citizenry.  
The war in its current form began in the sixties.  It was envisioned by the radicals in the SDS days, spurred by the luminaries of the Frankfurt School, furthered by the activities of Herbert Marcuse, Howard Zinn, Bill Ayers, and the leftist academic institutions we send our children to.  They have taken over institution after institution in a long, calculated preparation for this war.
First the universities.  Then Hollywood.  They took over the major media outlets such as the NY Times, the Washington Post, most journalism schools, all the major television networks, and most cable news outlets.  They took over our education system, down to kindergarten.  They have infiltrated our political parties, our government institutions, and our bureaucracies.  These already leaned left; now they fully took them over and want to force their ideas on us.  And they hate us.
I am not suggesting everything and everyone that takes part in any of these institutions is a hard leftist; what I am suggesting is the left has wrested control, to one degree or another, of all of them.  Some more than others, but all have been affected.
Examples of the current battles in the war:
Racialism, black lives matter, NFL kneeling, and the war on being white.
The new feminism, and the war on being male.
The new feminism, and the war on the unborn.
Turning sex into a cesspool.  Weinstein, Hollywood, preying on children, rampant unfaithfulness, broken families, transgenderism. 
Turning race baiting and sex allegation into weapons of mass destruction.
Environmental catastrophism. 
Health care control.
Spending our grandchildren’s money.
Allowing immigration to strangle what’s left of our institutions.
Pretending radical Islam is okay, but Judeo-Christian culture is not.
Teaching that socialism is just another form of government and not a failure.
Teaching that our country is inherently evil, and must be changed throughout.
There are many others. 
But the important thing to understand is every one of these major battles is going on simultaneously.  Our nation’s military command used to pride itself on being capable of handling two major war fronts.  As you can see, we aren’t fighting two fronts at home, it’s dozens and all at the same time.  And they’re hot battles, many of them being fought with the other side spending our own money to prop themselves up.
It’s like watching old war films of the Nazi air raids on London, or the allies carpet bombing German cities.   It’s designed to overwhelm, cause collateral damage, and overwhelm the opposition into giving up.
We on the right are the targets.  We on the right are the opposition. 
Unfortunately, we on the right haven’t had a good organization to counter the shock and awe tactics of the left.  The party that is supposed to lead us doesn’t even know we’re in a war.  They think it’s just the same old politics, and they can go to the pubs and parties of Washington in the evening and pal around with leftists, toasting their amusement as the country succumbs to poison.  After all, they’re rich and powerful and having fun.
Oh, I forgot to mention the Republican Party in the list of battles.  Unfortunately, it’s one of the larger battles in this hot war.  Its leadership, or lack thereof, is what has allowed us to be on the losing side for so long.  It’s filled with a combination of Benedict Arnolds (McCain, Flake, Corker, etc.), Wishy-washy General McClellans (Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnel, most of the GOP elite), with a lot of officers who are bought and corrupted by donors who don’t share the goals of winning any of these battles.
So here we are, and thankfully, with a few aces up our sleeves.
In our realignment, we fortunately found one excellent leader.  He won the last great battle of 2016.  Yes, he won it with us on the right; most of us fought with him.  ‘Twas a major victory that has put many of the above-mentioned battles on pause for the left.  They have all pivoted and are aiming for Trump, doing their best to take him out, doing their best to depress us by carpet bombing him.  Regrettably for them, it’s a little like watching Yosemite Sam shoot off his own foot with guns a-blazing.   Trump has their number so far, and it looks like he will continue to do so.  Other than having to watch the insane dramas and psychotic breakdowns of the left’s generals (and foot-soldiers), it’s not been this much fun for us on the right since Reagan.  Winning covers a lot.
For us on the right, we need to not get stuck watching shiny things (as the left has been doing since Trump won).  We need to mobilize our forces alongside Trump.  Now.
We need to know that in spite of recently winning, we can still lose this war.  We need to recognize the consequences of losing this war.  We need to continue to wake up the great coalition on the right in order to win against an enemy that will stoop to lying, cheating, stealing, slandering, and destroying anyone that is in their way.   
That’s no exaggeration.  Just a few examples:
The left has taught the next generation white guilt.  Alongside Uncle Tom guilt.  Both lies.  Racialism is mental slavery.
The left has convinced the next generation that socialism is good.  That free enterprise is evil.  That we are destroying our environment.   All destructive lies.
They are lying about their own sexual moral superiority.  They created a depraved culture on the left, and then blamed it on the right and used it as a weapon against our candidates.   Instead of a degree of shame for what they have done, they preen as if it’s the right that has ruined everything good about sex.  Roy Moore is evil without any real evidence other than accusation.  Al Franken and the Clintons are to be forgiven in spite of genuine, hard evidence of depravity. 
You get the picture; each battle is filled with lies from the left.  It’s their MO.  Tokyo Rose is their model.  Hillary is their face.
Ace number two.  Our ships are burned.  Alexander the Great used that tactic with his army, as did Cortez.  Burn the possibility of retreat so your soldiers will fight harder and never give up.  Well, I wish the GOP were that smart; instead, they simply let our ships drift out to sea, let them rot, and let them be corrupted.  Now, we really do have to fight harder just to stay alive.  And people are rising up to fight, and fight without reservation.  It’s the great realignment, and it really exists.  People will have to fight harder because of the stupidity of the GOP, and they are.
Ace number three.  I label it the calling of Gideon’s Army. 
Those who are fearful have gone, or are going home.
Those who are the best fighters have been called, and are being called right now.  They are fervent, intense, trained, and desire victory.  They keenly lap up the water.  They see the stakes, they know their enemy, they know the cost. 
Before there is bloodshed in the streets, we must beat them at their own game.  
The left must be defeated before they can regroup.   Bring.  It.  On.

The Tired Canard of 'Tax Cuts for the Rich'

By Howard Hyde

Behold a tax plan, or more precisely, two tax bills, one of the House signature, the other of the Senate. I’m told that there are all kinds of juicy (or disastrous, depending on whom you ask) bits in it, but what stands out to the casual observer is the top line. The House version defines four income tax brackets, topping out at a rate of 39.6%, while the Senate proposes seven, with a top rate of 38.5. Apparently, this is the best we can expect from a federal government supposedly dominated by small-government Republicans.
Yet the Democrats weep, gnash their teeth, rend their garments and exhibit other well-rehearsed expressions of impending Armageddon. 
“The Deficit!” they cry. “The Holy, Sacrosanct Deficit!”
Let us set aside for the moment the Laffer Curve effect, acknowledged by such right-wing conservative Republicans as John F. Kennedy, John Maynard Keynes, and Woodrow Wilson, that lower rates result in HIGHER revenue to the treasury. On second thought, scratch that -- let’s NOT set that aside. Quoting Thomas Sowell citing Benjamin Rader, “In 1921, when the tax rate on people making over $100,000 a year was 73%, the federal government collected a little over $700 million in income taxes, of which 30% was paid by those making over $100,000. By 1929, after a series of tax rate reductions had cut the tax rate to 24% on those making over $100,000, the federal government collected more than a billion dollars in income taxes, of which 65% was collected from those making over $100,000.“
Democrats shed nary a crocodile tear for the Deficit when it was their guy blowing it up for eight years. We may take seriously their claim that Uncle Sam lacks even trousers with which to cover his nakedness when ten of the top twenty wealthiest counties in the country (out of 3,144) are no longer within spitting distance of Mother Sow D.C.
“Tax cuts for the rich!” they chant, and the rats and cockroaches scamper in terror for the wall cracks and under the refrigerator.
Laugh or cry? Squishy, squeamish Republican politicians need to grow a few organs, beginning with a brain, extending down the spine to at least a couple of reproductive gonads, and aggressively smack down this tired canard whenever the Dems trot it out like some kind of trump card (pun intended).
Tax cuts for the rich? George Soros is not going to pay that 40% rate. Dianne Feinstein is not going to pay that rate. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, Michael Bloomberg, and the rest of the Democrat aristocracy aren’t going to pay it, because they already have their billions and the high-priced tax accountants to find them the loopholes, dodger schemes, and unproductive shelters where capital goes to die. Which is why they, the true permanent wealthy class, are laughing all the way to the bank about “tax cuts for the rich”.
The people who are paying that 40% rate are the men and women who might otherwise be giving you your next job or raise: small business entrepreneurs who have not yet accumulated cushy fortunes and high-priced tax accountants. Except that with that tax rate, instead of hiring ten new workers, they can only hire six; or if they hire more than six, each will have to live with less -- up to 40% less. Multiply that by a million business owners, and that’s another four million people who won’t be getting a new job or raise next year. 
Some accounting geniuses will say that’s not true, because all the business owner has to do is reinvest any surplus in new workers, thereby turning taxable profit into a non-taxable expense. But this is an argument from a bureaucratic mentality, a world where everything happens on a regular, predictable schedule, year in and year out. That is indeed the way Washington and Sacramento work, but it is not at all how entrepreneurial business works. The fickle winds of annual profit and loss do not guarantee any such regularity. The entrepreneur who made $500K this year may have made $250K last year and may make -- or lose -- a million dollars next year. He or she has been working 80 hours per week for 20 years and had many failures and loss years along the way. She is not a member of the privileged permanent wealthy class, getting fat in her sleep. Entrepreneurial business -- the leading driver of job growth -- is creative, risky, difficult and volatile. It grants privileges to no credentials, no pedigrees, no races, sexes, ethnicities, birthrights, or approvals from authority. 80% of startups fail within five years. Yet we feel we just must punish them whenever they succeed. 
The multi-billion-dollar quasi-monopoly corporations that the left owns now are laughing all the way to... themselves.  The progressive income tax code is their protection racket, ensuring no upstarts like Apple Computer in 1984 (enabled by Reagan’s tax cuts) ever disturb their comfortable status quo. 
Since Democrats are going to scream about the end of the world anyway if we do much as cut 1% from the budget of the Department of the Interior (hey -- I think something like that actually did happen), then why not give them something worth screaming about, like a Steve Forbes/Herman Cain/Ben Carson flat tax?
Timidity is a self-inflicted wound for which Republicans will pay at the polls next year if the economic resurgence sputters. Incremental progress toward the ultimate goal is good, but I remind my colleagues that one of the key reasons Trump got elected was that Americans got fed up hearing from the Bushes, the McConnells, the McCains, and the rest of the landed gentry of the GOP why it was their most well-considered judgement, don’t you know, yes, based on decades of selfless public service, that nothing could be done.

World War II Islam and Modern Islam: Know Thy Enemy

By Eileen F. Toplansky

At the end of his eminently important and succinct book, titled Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, author Dr. Sebastian Gorka includes the original secret telegram written in 1946 at the onset of the Cold War, wherein the American diplomat and Russia expert George Kennan explains "how the behavior of the Soviet Union cannot be understood unless an individual understands the totalitarian ideology that drives it.  This 'fanatical' ideology of communism is absolutist and global and will not countenance peaceful coexistence with America or any democracy."  Keenan describes how "Democratic-progressive" elements abroad are to be utilized to maximum to bring pressure to bear on capitalist governments along lines agreeable to Soviet interests."
In a book purchased in the USSR in the early 1960s, titled Face to Face: The Story of N.S. Khrushchov's Visit to the U.S.A., a young American, who later became my husband, came face to face with the propaganda of communism when he read "that with great patience and persistence, the head of the Soviet Government continued to discharge  the great mission he had undertaken, to remove the ice piled up by the 'cold war,' to open the eyes of people deluded by malicious [American] propaganda, to explain to them the essence of the idea of peaceful coexistence to blaze the trail to peace and friendship among all peoples irrespective of what social system they live under."  Only one problem: the book neglected to mention the 50 million people who would perish under communism or this so-called peaceful coexistence.  Just ask the Victims of Communism.
And almost sixty years later, as American leftists align themselves with communist ideology, we can see that they act, not in the interests of America, but in the interest of an ideology that has always sought to destroy America.
And, horrifyingly, as W. August Mayer has written in Islamic Jihad, Cultural Marxism and the Transformation of the West, "the morphing of the Democrat party over the last century from the conservative, traditional liberalism of President Grover Cleveland to the statism of Barack Hussein Obama" is a "downward slope to totalitarian rule towards which political gravity irresistibly draws us ever nearer."
Only a few years before the Keenan analysis, a document was carefully hidden and preserved in a kerosene can in the hopes that it would be discovered once World War II concluded.  In his searing diary written under the most excruciatingly difficult times, Chaim A. Kaplan in his Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary wrote an "extraordinary first person record of the Nazi occupation and destruction of Warsaw's Jewish community."  Kaplan is believed to have died in late 1942 or early 1943, but his words reverberate to this day.
These documents stand as testaments to the nature of totalitarianism – whether it be Nazi socialism, Russian communism, or jihadist fascism.  As Kaplan wrote:

If anyone in the democratic lands is attempting to write a book on the nature of Nazism, I know without seeing it that the author will not be able to express the truth of Nazism's cruelty and barbarism. Nazism has two faces. On the one hand, it is full of hypocrisy and submissiveness when it is necessary to obtain some benefit from someone; and on the other hand, it is full of brutal strength, trampling all humanism under foot, hardening its heart against the most elementary human emotions.

Reading the above, it is impossible not to substitute Nazism for Islamic jihadism.  In fact, as has been well documented, the two have been intertwined since the beginning of World War II, when, in November 1941, the grand mufti met with Hitler, who told him the Jews were his foremost enemy.  The mufti offered Hitler his "thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches[.] The Arabs were Germany's natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely ... the Jews[.]"
As a result of this meeting, "Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle [since] Germany's objective [was] ... solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere[.]"  In return, the mufti recruited "20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary."  In a "letter released by the National Library of Israel Archives in March 2017, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler heaps praise upon Mufti al-Husseini, stating that the Nazi leadership has been closely following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs – and especially in Palestine – against the Jewish invaders. Himmler ends the letter by bidding the Mufti warm wishes for the continuation of your battle until the big victory.  This letter was delivered in the Fall of 1943, two years after the Mufti's famous meeting with Adolf Hitler."  
Many writers have meticulously examined the close philosophical ties between the jihadists and the Nazis, but "only one who feels the taste of Nazi rule in all his 248 organs and 365 sinews; only one who has bared his back to the lashes of its whips; only one who has examined the various nuances of its administrative and legal tactics in relation to the Jews, unequaled in hard-heartedness, sadistic cruelty, warped sensibility, petrification of human feeling, and stupidity – only such a writer ... might be able to give a true description of this pathological phenomenon called Nazism."
Daily, the West hears of the atrocities committed against young Christian and Yazidi women by ISIS and other jihadist murderers, and little is done for these people.  At the same time, alleged Muslim refugees are allowed into western Europe only to wreak havoc on France, Germany, and Great Britain because the leaders of these countries will not acknowledge "this pathological phenomenon."  These feckless leaders will not state outright that "only those afflicted with a disease of the soul are capable of being joined to a party such as this. Only one who has a defect of the soul and the senses is able to be numbered in its ranks.  It is not impossible for an entire class of human beings to suffer a mental illness, and attempt to put into practice a diseased, unclean ideology by such barbaric means as the human race has never recognized and never known, and which it would have been incapable of inventing even in the remotest Dark Ages."  Will the remnants of these communities write about their own people as did Kaplan?

The gigantic catastrophe which has descended on Polish Jewry has no parallel, even in the darkest periods of Jewish history. First, is in the depth of the hatred. This is not just hatred whose source is in a party platform, and which was invented for political purposes.  It is a hatred of emotion, whose source is some psychopathic malady. 

This is the face of jihadist terror today.  Despite the overwhelming acts of terror around the globe, the world still appears to be in denial.  Thus, Dr. Gorka repeatedly reiterates that unless we perceive the endgame as the jihadists do, we are not mentally, tactically, or physically ready to save ourselves.  Every person who opposes the sickening aspect of jihadist terror must realize that this war they have unleashed "serves only one purpose: the realization of Allah's sovereignty here on earth."  Nothing else will suffice.  The infidel must be overcome or murdered since, in the jihadist mindset, "all war must serve only the objective of re-creating the caliphate, the theocratic empire of Islam, so that Allah's writ may once again reign supreme."  And the most critical target of importance in this war of ideas is the "soul of the enemy. The infidel foe must be converted to Islam or crushed."
So when American schools start by teaching the practice of Islam, which, in essence, is the indoctrination of the religion; when hijab day is celebrated so as to make the head cloth a fashion statement; when legitimate concerns about mass Muslim immigration to the United States are fluffed away as "not being who we are," let that person be reminded of mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who revealed that "al Qaeda's plan to kill the United States was not through military attacks but immigration and 'outbreeding non-Muslims' who would use the legal system to install sharia law," we need to fight tooth and nail to thwart each and every attempt to islamify this country.
The fact that "jihadism" can be substituted for USSR "in a threat analysis from seventy years ago without any loss of accuracy" and that Nazism can also be substituted without any loss of truth exemplifies the unholy alliance among these three hateful ideologies.
Consequently, political correctness and a distorted sense of morality only aids the enemy.  While it is critical not to do a "disservice to those Muslims who are most immanently in danger" by the jihadists, it is equally incumbent upon every congressional leader and the president to rectify the deliberate erasure under Obama of any reference to jihad.  That is, "the politically motivated censorship of government analysis, training, and education must end."  How can our analysts, armed services, and FBI know how to perceive the enemy when all references to their ideology and ultimate goals are deliberately scrubbed?  Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood must be designated as a terrorist organization.
Subversion, infiltration, and intimidation are always the weapons of choice by those who despise Western values.  If we don't lose our souls, we can and will win this war that threatens us – but only if we stay strong and understand that this totalitarian, religiously motivated cancer must be completely eradicated will we be victorious.

MAJOR DEVELOPMENT — Discovery of Oil in ISRAEL Ten Times Larger than World Average

Oct 11, 2015 by Jews News in ISRAEL

Discovery of oil in ISRAEL means the Jewish state could soon produce ‘significant quantities’ of ‘black gold’… and potentially change the face of the Middle East


Vast oil reserves have been discovered in Israel that could transform the country into world energy power and change the face of the Middle East for years to come.

Afek Oil and Gas, an Israeli subsidiary of the U.S. company Genie Energy, said the breakthrough came in the Golan Heights, near the border with Syria.
Yuval Bartov, the firm’s chief geologist, said there was ‘enormous excitement’ about the immense wealth it could bring to the Jewish state, which has long yearned

THIS IS HUGE: The Most Evil Clinton Email… IT’S HERE

WikiLeaks Founder calls recently leaked email "most significant" of the group.

By Jessie Domingo | Monday Monday Staff -

November 11, 2016

106166

We dodged a bullet.
Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks revealed emails that might link Clinton and ISIS.
He also accused defeated Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of misleading Americans about the true extent of Islamic State’s supports to Wahington’s Middle East Allies.

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks

“Most significant email”

In the interview with John Pilger broadcasted last Saturday by RT and produced by Dartmouth Films, Assange calls the newly leaked information “the most significant email in the whole collection.”
In the September 27, 2014 email made public by WikiLeaks last month, Clinton urges then advisor to President Barack Obama John Podesta to “bring pressure” on Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
The email reads:
“This entire effort should be done with a low profile, avoiding the massive traditional military operations that are at best temporary solutions. While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”
Later in the email chain, Podesta became discomfited discussing the matters on an unsecured network, and replied, “Yes and interesting but not for this site.”
“All serious analysts know, and even the US government has agreed, that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS and funding ISIS, but the dodge has always been that it is some ‘rogue’ princes using their oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves,” he said.
“But that email says that it is the government of Saudi Arabia, and the government of Qatar that have been funding ISIS,” he added.
The interview between Assange and Pilger took place at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange has been staying as a refugee since 2012.
 Excerpt from the interview:
John Pilger: The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis, particularly the first two, are giving all this money to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton is secretary of state, and the State Department is approving massive arms sales, particularly Saudi Arabia.
Julian Assange: Under Hillary Clinton – and the Clinton emails reveal a significant discussion of it – the biggest-ever arms deal in the world was made with Saudi Arabia: more than $80 billion. During her tenure, the total arms exports from the US doubled in dollar value.
Pilger: Of course, the consequence of that is that this notorious jihadist group, called ISIL or ISIS, is created largely with money from people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation?
Assange: Yes.
There have been talks in the past that Clinton and ISIS are linked, but no strong evidence has surfaced. These were dismissed at conspiracies.
Meanwhile, Pilger asked Assange about the accusation that WikiLeaks is looking to tilt the favor of the voters to Donald Trump, perhaps at Russia’s bidding. This accusation came from Clinton’s camp and several Western media outlets.
He dismissed the potential of a Trump presidency. He said that this is not due to his standing with the voters, but because he “would not be permitted to win.”
If this interview and the emails weren’t leaked, do you think President-elect Donald Trump could still have won? Does this information prove Clinton and ISIS are related?

Spike in felony crimes

Problem: A 50% rise in criminal filings over five years may be partly attributable to a recent surge in drug arrests.
Dilemma: As lawmakers push for further sentencing reforms, DAs fear that leniency puts the public at risk.

By Christopher N. Osher
The Denver Post

Zebulon Montgomery is accused of shooting and killing his grandfather in the parking lot at Cañon City’s McDonald’s.

Felony criminal filings across Colorado increased by nearly 50 percent in the past five years, prompting concerns that recent criminal justice reforms are letting dangerous individuals roam the streets.

Prosecutors and state officials still are trying to identify the causes for the swifter pace of felony filings. State statistics indicate that a recent surge in drug arrests may be partly responsible.

The Colorado District Attorneys’ Council has alerted officials in Gov. John Hickenlooper’s office to the increase and sought their help in analyzing crime trends. The council also has reached out to district attorneys throughout the state for more information on felony filings as it prepares to fight plans to push for further sentencing reforms in the upcoming legislative session.

Lawmakers ranging from Republican Sen. Kevin Lundberg of Berthoud, a member of the influential Joint Budget Committee that writes the state budget, to Democratic Sen. Daniel Kagan of Arapahoe County, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, want to overhaul Colorado’s sex offender and habitual offender statutes to give judges more flexibility when sentencing offenders.

Prosecutors are pointing to the rise in felony filings as cause for caution. Several said they fear the legislature sent the wrong signal in 2013 when it created more leniency in drug sentencing. Under that change in law, defendants convicted of lower-level felony drug possession can have their convictions changed to misdemeanors after completing their probation. The new law restricted the ability of judges to sentence offenders convicted of certain drug crimes to prison, requiring them to first exhaust all other options.

District attorneys also blame the rising felony filings on state initiatives to keep more offenders out on parole and probation and under pretrial supervision instead of behind bars. Others say the 2012 ballot initiative voters passed to make recreational marijuana legal has enticed career criminal transients to move from other states to Colorado.

“There has been a lot of criminal justice reform in the last 10 years in Colorado,” said Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, who said his office is overloaded with a surge in crime. “Sometimes those pushes go too far and the pendulum needs to swing a little bit back in the other direction. There was needed criminal justice reform, but not everything has to always be about diverting people away from prison.”

Downward trend until 2011

Before the reform measures, felony filings were on the decline throughout the state. From 2007 through 2011, felony filings statewide gradually declined each year, decreasing from 44,245 to 35,966, a nearly 19 percent drop.

Now, the trend is in the opposite direction. Statewide, felony filings increased from 35,551 in the fiscal year that ended in June 2012 to 51,775 this fiscal year, a 46 percent increase. The state’s population has risen by 8 percent during those years.

“I want to make sure this reality is included in the conversation, that the narrative isn’t just about over-incarceration, and that we remember the criminal justice system has a mandate to ensure public safety,” said Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett, who in August became president of the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council.

Garnett has discussed the increase in felonies with Hickenlooper’s chief of staff Doug Friednash and chief legal counsel Jacki Melmed.

“We’re certainly concerned and want to understand it better,” Melmed said. “Until we have a better sense of what’s going on, I don’t think anyone right now can point to anything. No one really knows what’s behind this. It would be foolish to jump to any conclusions too quickly.”

So far, the increase in felony filings hasn’t exploded the state’s monthly prison population, which declined by about 3,000 inmates from October 2008 to October 2013. But the surge in filings still has concerned lawmakers and corrections officials because the pace appears to have stalled efforts to reduce the monthly prison population in Colorado, which for the past four years has hovered around 20,000 inmates. Corrections officials had to spend $10.6 million this year to temporarily lease a private prison to relieve crowded conditions in the state prison system.

Officials want more clarity on how many of the felony filings are for violent offenses, how many are for repeat offenders, what role drug crimes are playing, and how many of the offenders were under pretrial, probation or parole supervision.

Data show sharp increases in felony filings in the past five years in every judicial district except the one that covers Huerfano and Las Animas counties, and even there felony filings in the past two years increased by about 10 percent.

“This affects everyone in the criminal justice system,” said Garnett, who has seen filings in Boulder jump by nearly a third since 2012. “It’s putting a real strain on resources. It is impacting district attorneys and the public defenders and the clerks of courts.”

Drug arrests on rise

Arrests for drug crimes rose steeply from 2013 through 2016, increasing more rapidly than other arrests, according to Colorado Department of Public Safety statistics. Drug arrests had been on the decline before 2013, but since then they have been on the upswing, rising from fewer than 15,000 in 2013 to more than 20,000 arrests in 2016.

In some areas of the state, the increase in felony filings is dramatic. The 11th Judicial District, which covers the counties of Park, Chafee, Fremont and Custer, has seen filings almost double since 2012. DA Molly Chilson said her area of the state has been hit hard by the scourge of heroin. Drug addicts are fueling other crimes, contributing to a rise in robberies, thefts, burglaries and assaults, she added.

“We should be responsible and honest when we have a discussion on what is driving crime rates in Colorado,” Chilson said. “It includes some of the leniency we have seen in our system recently.”

Her office is prosecuting Zebulon Montgomery, 25, who is accused of shooting and killing his grandfather in the parking lot at Cañon City’s McDonald’s. A prosecutor said in a court hearing that Montgomery had past problems with meth and heroin abuse.

Denver has seen felony filings increase by nearly 71 percent in the past five years. Denver District Attorney Beth McCann, who took office in January, said drug crimes are driving much of that rise, but she does not want to abandon programs that divert drug users out of the court system and into rehabilitation programs.

“Drug offenders repeat, and we are looking really hard at how do we deal with drug offenses in a more intelligent way,” McCann said. “We are analyzing and assessing our drug possession cases. We want to get drug offenders into treatment or into alternatives to conviction earlier.”

She and other prosecutors said the enactment in 2015 of a new law that made a fourth and all subsequent DUI offenses felonies is contributing to the spike. Last year, the state also made strangulation a felony offense, which also has created a jump in filings, she added.

Felony strangulations and felony DUIs are responsible for about 80 more felony filings annually in Mesa County, but that increase doesn’t come close to accounting for an increase of more than 500 felony filings in that jurisdiction from 2015 to 2016, said Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein.

Other causes identified

As the state tightened those laws, it relaxed laws for thefts, Rubenstein said. The state used to impose felonies for thefts that equaled more than $750. Now the threshold for a felony theft charge is for losses of more than $2,000, with amounts less than that charged as misdemeanors.

In Mesa County, felony filings from the fiscal years 2012 through 2017 increased by 56 percent. That dramatic rise is having a budgetary impact, Rubinstein noted. Voters this month supported a 0.37 percent increase in the county sales tax that will raise an estimated $7 million a year for the sheriff and DA’s offices. Part of the money will help pay for new hires and equipment. It’s the first local sales tax initiative that voters there have passed since the 1980s.

Rubinstein suspects that a statewide push to release more defendants from jail while they wait for their trials, and efforts to keep low-level offenders out on probation and parole, has contributed to the surge in felonies. In 2015, 27 percent of defendants charged with felonies in Mesa County had been under pretrial, parole or probation supervision when they were arrested. That jumped to 43 percent in 2016 and 37 percent in 2017, according to statistics Rubinstein tallied.

“We all believe we should manage people in the least restrictive environment possible as long as we can keep people safe,” Rubinstein said. “That is what we would prefer to do. But public safety is the number one thing. I know there is budgetary pressure on the Department of Corrections. But, to me, public safety has to rule the day.”

The 8th Judicial District, which covers Larimer County, has seen felony filings increase by 65 percent from fiscal year 2012 through 2017. Five years ago, it was rare to see transients who had committed crimes in multiple states charged in Fort Collins, but not anymore, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Daniel McDonald.

“Yesterday, I filed eight felony cases, and not one of them was originally from Colorado,” McDonald said. “They were all transient. Now I see multi-state offenders, and I mean multi-state. This one guy had felony filings out of Florida, Maryland, Wisconsin and New York. That’s common now.”

McDonald said that when pressed on why they popped up in Colorado, those transient offenders often cite the recent legalization of recreational marijuana and the move to allow those convicted of lower-level drug possession felonies to have their convictions reduced to misdemeanors. The transients are changing the nature of the Old Town square of Fort Collins, the college town’s destination spot for dining, shopping and strolling, he added.

“The Old Town area is very different than it used to be 10 years ago,” McDonald said. “It’s very noticeable.”