Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Rustem Umerov – Wiki Commons.
After the ousting of Yermak, Ukrainians try to soldier on.
Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky announced Saturday (29) that a peace talks delegation was on its way to the United States.
The Ukrainian team, now headed by former Defense Minister and Security Council Secretary Rustem Umerov, will continue talks today (30) on an agreement to end the war with Russia.
“Umerov has been put in charge of the Ukrainian delegation after the previous lead negotiator, Zelenskiy’s powerful chief of staff Andriy Yermak, resigned on Friday, hours after anti-corruption detectives searched his apartment.”
Zelensky expects that these talks, to be held tomorrow (30) to develop upon the previous meeting in Geneva.
“U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will meet Ukrainian officials on Sunday in Florida, a senior U.S. official told Reuters.”
“’Rustem delivered a report today, and the task is clear: to swiftly and substantively work out the steps needed to end the war’, Zelenskiy wrote on X.”
The Ukrainian leader is under pressure to find a way to reach peace, since he is losing the war and under fire for a massive corruption scandal in his team.
“Zelenskiy has said Ukraine is in one of the most difficult moments in its history, but promised his people in a dramatic address last week that he would not betray the country.”
President Zelensky says in his address tonight that the Ukrainian delegation is in the US to continue peace talks.
“The American side is showing constructiveness and it is quite realistic to finalize steps in the coming days to determine how to properly end the war,” he says. pic.twitter.com/8cZhkFcLLl
The Trump administration has launched a brand-new “Media Bias Tracker” directly on the White House website.
Unveiled on Friday, this tool is designed to call out and document the endless stream of false, misleading, and biased stories peddled by outlets that have spent years attacking President Donald Trump and his agenda.
According to the White House, the tracker serves as a “record of the media’s false and misleading stories flagged by The White House.”
The tracker highlights “offenses” from major news publications, including an “Offender Hall of Shame” and a leaderboard ranking the worst culprits in spreading misinformation.
Described as “a race to the bottom,” this feature ranks outlets based on repeat offenses.
Topping the Hall of Shame list is The Washington Post, followed by rebranded leftist mouthpieces like MSNBC (now MS NOW), CBS News, CNN, The New York Times, Politico, and The Wall Street Journal.
In response to their top spot, a spokesperson for the Washington Post said, “The Washington Post is proud of its accurate, rigorous journalism.”
The page also features a “Media Offender of the Week,” currently blasting outlets for exaggerating Trump’s calls to hold Democrats accountable for their seditious behavior.
Just days before the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, Democrats released a video urging service members to disobey lawful orders from the Commander-in-Chief, which is nothing short of insurrection.
The launch comes after recent heated verbal exchanges between President Trump and reporters.
For instance, Trump referred to a New York Times correspondent as a “third-rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out” and told a Bloomberg journalist “Quiet piggy” during a discussion about Jeffrey Epstein.
Additionally, several outlets, including The Washington Post, MSNBC (recently rebranded as MS NOW), CBS News, CNN, The New York Times, Politico, and The Wall Street Journal, have relinquished their Pentagon press badges following new Department of Defense reporting standards that require pre-clearance for certain stories.
The administration has also been involved in legal disputes with The Wall Street Journal and settled with CBS.
A Gold Star father has blasted Joe Biden over the shooting of two National Guardsmen in DC by an Afghan brought in by the former president’s policies.
Darin Hoover, the father of Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover, who was one of the US Military members killed in the botched Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, was very outspoken over the tragic shooting this past Wednesday.
Mr. Hoover told Fox News that the Biden administration is to blame for bringing in multiple people from Afghanistan without a vetting process.
EXCLUSIVE — The father of Staff Sgt. Darin “Taylor” Hoover — one of the 13 U.S. service members killed in the Abbey Gate bombing during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan — is blasting the former Biden administration after an Afghan national allegedly shot two National Guardsmen just blocks from the White House.
Hoover gave Fox News Digital a new, forceful statement on Wednesday’s shooting, saying the incident was the direct result of the administration’s failed vetting of Afghan evacuees.
“This is on the feckless Biden administration,” Hoover said of the shooting. “We had no idea who was getting into this country because the Biden administration, especially the State Department run by Antony Blinken, didn’t do the work that was needed to vet all these people. There were so many people put on the planes that got out initially, that we have no idea who they were.”
He continued: “By doing this, all we got is men of fighting age that are most likely terrorists that are here in the homeland to do us all harm and take our beloved United States of America. Maybe if the Biden administration started the process earlier than the truncated timetable that they did, this could have all come out so much better, including all of our most precious men and women of our military coming home.” Fox News Reported.
The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, originally entered the US in 2021 under what was termed “Operation Allies Welcome,” following the disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Hoover had also said that he, along with other parents of the fallen soldiers, knew that welcoming in thousands of Afghans would be dangerous since there was no screening or thorough background checks.
Hoover has been one of the most outspoken Goldstar parents since his son was killed in 2021. Taylor was in the Marine Corps for 11 years, was on his third deployment in Afghanistan, and was engaged to be married.
Hoover had also made the headlines in 2024 when he spoke to Fox News at the time and blasted Biden for lying during the Presidential debate, claiming that no US Servicemen died while he was President.
He was angry that Biden had never acknowledged the soldiers by name and, at best, had sent identical condolence letters to the families the year following their deaths.
Hoover also explained that the shooting of the National Guardsmen by the alleged Afghan suspect is a carryover from the disastrous withdrawal and is now affecting our homeland.
Venezuelan airspace is nearly empty after President Donald Trump called for an emergency air-closure over the country, a move U.S. officials describe as a necessary national-security step following weeks of heightened instability inside Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
Flight-tracking data throughout the afternoon showed commercial traffic rapidly diverting away from Venezuelan territory, leaving one of South America’s busiest corridors almost entirely empty within hours.
The order immediately triggered condemnation from several foreign governments.
The Caribbean Parliament issued a formal statement criticizing the United States for “escalatory conduct,” despite offering no acknowledgment of the years of cartel activity, political oppression, and regional destabilization driven by Maduro’s government.
WATCH: Caribbean Parliament Statement to U.S. Airspace Closure Explained
Iran followed quickly with a similar denunciation, attacking Trump’s decision to close the airspace while simultaneously positioning itself as Maduro’s global defender.
Inside Venezuela, reports remain fluid.
Multiple intelligence-linked sources indicate there have been unconfirmed but widespread rumors of a direct conversation between President Trump and Maduro in recent days.
According to those reports, Trump made clear that the United States would consider the use of force if Maduro refuses to step down voluntarily after years of dictatorship, economic collapse, and the mass exportation of crime throughout Latin America.
The White House has not commented on the alleged call, consistent with the administration’s posture of not publicly discussing active negotiations that might affect U.S. military operations.
New unconfirmed details also emerged from Venezuelan news outlets claiming that Iran has privately offered Maduro political asylum should he choose to flee Venezuela. Tehran’s involvement underscores a growing concern that hostile regimes are positioning themselves to shield Maduro rather than support a democratic transition.
For years, Democrats in Washington ignored the Maduro-Iran connection, even as Venezuela became a major hub for narcotics trafficking and intelligence cooperation with U.S. adversaries.
The current standoff exposes how deeply entrenched those networks became under previous administrations that refused to confront the problem directly.
President Trump’s emergency order appears to be driven by several compounding factors: escalating cartel movement near Venezuelan airfields, potential U.S. land-based strikes on factories or facilities tied to Venezuela’s drug-trade operations, and intelligence indicating preparations for an emergency evacuation of senior Maduro officials.
Airspace closures of this scale are often a precursor to potential land-strike operations or to block the escape routes of targeted regimes.
Although no U.S. official has confirmed any planned operation, the speed and assertiveness of today’s order suggest that Washington is preparing for multiple contingencies rather than reacting passively as Democrats did during previous periods of Venezuelan instability.
Maduro’s allies immediately attempted to frame the air-closure as an act of American aggression, but the facts point in the opposite direction.
This crisis is the product of Maduro’s own actions: corruption, repression, drug-linked cartels, and a decade of economic devastation that forced millions of Venezuelans to flee.
President Trump’s approach reflects a willingness to confront hostile dictators directly, protect U.S. interests, and prevent further destabilization across the Western Hemisphere.
As this situation continues to unfold—with rumors shifting by the hour and foreign governments scrambling to position themselves—the central question is whether Maduro will step down or attempt to hold power with the backing of Iran and other anti-American governments.
For now, Venezuelan skies remain largely empty, and the Trump Administration appears fully prepared for whatever comes next.
A man obsessed with James Bond movies risked his freedom—and his country’s trust—chasing a spy fantasy that landed him in prison, all for the price of a delusion and a phone call.
A Spy Thriller Played by a Retiree, Not a Super Agent
Howard Phillips, a retired City worker from Essex, did not fit the mold of an international spy. Yet, he fell so deeply for the mythos of James Bond that he set out to play the role himself. Phillips began contacting what he believed were Russian intelligence agents, offering to provide sensitive information about a former UK Defence Secretary. In his mind, he was about to embark on a covert operation worthy of the silver screen. In reality, his “handlers” were undercover British officers running a sting. Phillips’ self-created mission would unravel in the cold light of a British courtroom, not in the shadows of Moscow.
Phillips’ actions were driven by more than just a need for adventure. Facing financial trouble and craving validation, he believed espionage would offer both purpose and profit. He provided the home address and phone number of Grant Shapps, the former Secretary of Defence, and even volunteered to arrange hotel bookings and logistics for supposed Russian operatives. For British intelligence, this was a classic case of a fantasy colliding with national security, and they were ready. The sting operation, carefully orchestrated by MI5 and counterterrorism units, ensured that Phillips never posed a real threat to classified information or national safety.
National Security Act Used to Set a New Precedent
The trial took place at Winchester Crown Court, where on July 22, 2025, Phillips was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison. The prosecution under the National Security Act was notable, as such cases remain rare even in the current climate of heightened UK-Russia tensions. The law, modernized in response to recent threats and high-profile incidents like the Skripal poisoning, gave authorities new tools to address espionage attempts—no matter how amateurish. Legal experts have pointed to the case as a milestone, demonstrating the UK’s seriousness about countering hostile state activity and deterring would-be informants, regardless of their competence.
The court described Phillips as a “narcissistic fantasist” who betrayed his country for cash. The Crown Prosecution Service, eager to send a clear message, emphasized the potential consequences of such reckless actions. “Phillips was brazen in his pursuit for financial gain, and unbothered about the potential detriment to his own country,” said Bethan David, head of the CPS counterterrorism division. The sentence was meant not only to punish but to serve as a stark warning to anyone tempted by the allure of espionage—real or imagined.
The Real-World Fallout from an Espionage Fantasy
Phillips is now serving his sentence, his dreams of secret missions reduced to a prison routine. The fallout from his misguided adventure rippled far beyond his personal fate. For Grant Shapps, being targeted—even ineffectively—underscored the real risks posed by individuals lured by espionage fantasies. For British intelligence, the case validated the use of proactive sting operations and highlighted the importance of vigilance, even against unlikely threats. The episode has sparked debate in legal and security circles about the psychological drivers behind such acts, and whether more should be done to identify and intervene with individuals at risk of being seduced by delusions of grandeur.
The broader message is clear: in the UK’s current security environment, fantasy is no excuse for betrayal. The National Security Act’s teeth have been bared, and the consequences for crossing the line—even clumsily—are severe. The story of Howard Phillips stands as a peculiar but powerful warning, not just to would-be spies, but to anyone who confuses the world of fiction with the hard realities of national loyalty, law, and consequence.
Pakistani Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP), courtesy of Haqooq-e-Khalq Party – HKP via Facebook.
Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral race was driven by a coordinated South Asian political machine with extensive links to Pakistani Marxist organizations, Islamist-aligned extremist networks, CCP-funded activist structures, and foreign influence operations that collectively shaped the election’s outcome.
The central engine of this operation was Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) and its political arm, DRUM Beats, two entities sharing the same address, leadership, and personnel, and which received roughly $20,000 from Mamdani’s campaign.
Behind DRUM’s organizing stood a tightly woven network of activists tied to Pakistan’s Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP), a radical socialist movement founded by Cambridge-educated historian Ammar Ali Jan and veteran leftist Farooq Tariq. The party is formally registered with Pakistan’s Election Commission and seeks to unify workers, peasants, students, and ethnic minorities under a socialist revolutionary program. HKP operates within the same global far-left ecosystem as The People’s Forum, the Tricontinental Institute, and other institutions funded by China-linked billionaire Neville Roy Singham.
Jan himself is a council member of the Progressive International, participates in programs with CCP-aligned groups, and maintains visible ties to U.S. activist institutions in Singham’s network.
HKP’s leadership worked directly with U.S.-based activists involved in Mamdani’s campaign. In January 2023, Ammar Ali Jan announced plans to build a “solidarity network for Pakistani activists in the U.S.” and identified three DRUM organizers, Raza Gillani, Mohiba Ahmed, and Zahid Ali, as key members. All three played active roles in DRUM’s pro-Mamdani efforts. Gillani, a Pakistani journalist and HKP co-founder, joined DRUM as a communications specialist and led campaign rallies with Mamdani standing behind him.
Mohiba Ahmed, an NYU graduate student and longtime HKP member, worked full time on the primary before returning to Pakistan to speak at HKP rallies. Zahid Ali, an HKP founding member and Rice University doctoral student, was praised by Jan as a “struggle partner” who helped secure Mamdani’s win. DRUM executive director Fahd Ahmed publicly highlighted his meetings with Jan, Gillani, and Ahmed, calling their exchanges “encouraging and impressive.”
DRUM’s director of organizing, Kazi Fouzia, oversaw the ground mobilization across immigrant neighborhoods. A Bangladeshi immigrant who entered the U.S. undocumented and later received asylum through a State Department exchange program, Fouzia described DRUM’s influence bluntly: “We’re like a gang. When we go to any shop, people move aside and say, ‘Oh my God. The DRUM leaders are here.’” Her dual role raises legal questions, as 501(c)(3) nonprofits like DRUM are barred from political campaigning, yet she publicly identifies herself as DRUM’s organizing director while directing political mobilization for Mamdani.
These networks did not operate alone. DRUM and DRUM Beats co-hosted events with The People’s Forum, a militant Marxist organization in New York that received more than $20 million from Neville Roy Singham between 2017 and 2022 through shell companies and donor-advised funds.
Singham, an American businessman based in Shanghai, has attended CCP propaganda forums, met with senior CCP officials, and financed institutions, including The People’s Forum, the Tricontinental Institute, and Dongsheng News, that echo pro-Beijing talking points, deny CCP human-rights abuses, and promote narratives aligned with China’s geopolitical interests. The People’s Forum glorifies the Chinese revolution, offers CCP propaganda courses, and partners with pro-PRC groups, while Dongsheng News, which shares its address, produces weekly pro-Beijing messaging.
The Program on Extremism at George Washington University identifies The People’s Forum as part of a Singham-funded network engaged in pro-Palestinian activism influenced by CCP-aligned entities. These ties triggered congressional scrutiny, with Senators Chuck Grassley and Marco Rubio and House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith demanding investigations into whether The People’s Forum and its affiliates acted as unregistered foreign agents in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Another key component of Mamdani’s support structure was the ANSWER Coalition, run by activists from the Workers World Party (WWP), a hardline Marxist-Leninist group the FBI once described as “dedicated to world revolution.” WWP has defended North Korea’s Kim regime, supported Saddam Hussein, justified the CCP’s Tiananmen Square crackdown, and opposed democratic movements in Hong Kong. ANSWER has been operated “to such an extent that it seems fair to call it a WWP front,” with senior officials, including spokesman Brian Becker, belonging to both organizations.
Shut It Down for Palestine, the national protest network behind major pro-Hamas demonstrations, is dominated by WWP and ANSWER activists and functions as a de facto WWP extension. The Network Contagion Institute reports that Shut It Down for Palestine has received significant support from CCP-aligned donors, amplifying narratives that weaken U.S. influence and bolster Beijing’s portrayal of itself as an anti-imperialist power.
ANSWER also works closely with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist-Leninist organization that claims the United States is a “dictatorship of the capitalist class” that can only be dismantled through socialist revolution. PSL defends the Chinese Communist Party’s human-rights record, denies the Tiananmen Square massacre, supports Beijing’s repression in Hong Kong, and endorsed Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Although it did not formally endorse Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, PSL blamed the war on NATO and the United States. The House Committee on Oversight is investigating Singham’s financial support for PSL and the group’s role in violent disturbances, including the Los Angeles riots.
These far-left networks overlap with Islamist organizations implicated in Hamas-linked activism. Representatives Bruce Westerman and Paul Gosar detailed ANSWER’s partnerships with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), and the Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation (AJP). Several activists in these groups have documented ties to Hamas-affiliated charities and Muslim Brotherhood front organizations dismantled by U.S. courts.
SJP and AMP founder Hatem Bazian previously raised funds for KindHearts, a Hamas-linked charity shut down after federal investigators determined it had assumed the Holy Land Foundation’s overseas accounts following that group’s conviction for sending $12.4 million to Hamas.
AMP’s executive director, Osama Abuirshaid, formerly worked for IAP’s newspaper, published material aligned with Hamas, and documented communications with Hamas officials. Other AMP leaders served in shuttered or sanctioned Hamas-connected entities. Senator Bill Cassidy has launched an inquiry into these groups, citing evidence of leadership with past or present ties to Hamas.
Mamdani also benefited from Islamist-aligned financial support. The Unity and Justice Fund PAC, associated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), donated approximately $128,500 to a pro-Mamdani super-PAC. CAIR has long faced scrutiny over alleged ties between some founders and individuals linked to extremist groups.
Foreign influence was further evident online. From June 1 to July 1, Mamdani’s Instagram following rose from 213,000 to nearly 3 million, a 1,295-percent surge, while TikTok engagement increased more than 1,000 percent. Analytics showed much of this activity originated from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, with hundreds of near-identical comments indicating coordinated foreign engagement rather than organic support from New York voters.
Financial disclosures revealed another vulnerability. Mamdani’s campaign received roughly $13,000 from donors listing foreign addresses; by October 14, ninety-one of those contributions had been refunded, totaling $5,723.50. The Coolidge Reagan Foundation filed criminal referrals alleging illegal foreign donations. Combined with DRUM’s nonprofit status, these contributions raise questions about unlawful political activity by foreign-linked networks and potential violations of U.S. campaign-finance law.
Taken together, the Pakistani Marxist activists, Islamist-aligned operatives, CCP-funded institutions, WWP and PSL networks, foreign digital amplification, and foreign-address donations show a mayoral campaign shaped by a transnational ecosystem of foreign ideological movements, extremist sympathizers, and political operatives, an influence nexus that poses serious legal, ethical, and national-security concerns.
A Thanksgiving Day tragedy was averted in Texas when a 12-year-old girl was rescued from a collapse while digging a hole in a sand bar.
The young girl was trapped after she became buried. Numerous local agencies responded and were involved in the rescue effort. The Montgomery County Sheriff, along with the Woodlands Fire Department and medics were among them who helped save the girl’s life.
Before the emergency services arrived, the girl’s father quickly responded by removing as much sand as possible to allow her to breath.
When they arrived on the scene, only the girl’s face and head were above the sand.
A 12-year-old girl was rescued in Texas after becoming buried in a “large hole” that she was digging in the sand, officials said.
The Woodlands Fire Department outside of Houston said multiple agencies responded around 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day to a “report of a child trapped after a cave in.”
“Firefighters, medics and Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office deputies were directed to a sand bar on the West Bank of Panther Creek just south of the pedestrian bridge, where a 12-year-old girl on a family outing was trapped after a large hole she was digging in the sand collapsed, covering her completely,” the Woodlands Fire Department said.
“Crews worked quickly to shore up the area and then carefully cleared away the sand to extricate the patient,” the fire department also said. Fox News Reported.
Along with the above agencies mentioned, the South Montgomery County Fire Department and the Montgomery County Hospital were also involved.
The girl was evaluated by the medics onsite, released to her parents, and was not transported to the hospital.
The cooperation of four agencies prevented what could have been a Thanksgiving Day tragedy. Instead, it was a rescue that saved a life.
To refute the “yes” is one thing, to refute the “no” another.
(Photo by: Touring Club Italiano/Marka/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
In order to “come to grips” with the podcaster Nick Fuentes, Daniel Mahoney in his latest article for the American Mind rightly calls for “sober evaluation from a critical distance,” but his own response is at best insufficient. A robust rejoinder to Fuentes demands more than reified appeals to Churchill.
Mahoney simply does not seem to take his opponent seriously. His familiarity with Fuentes seems limited to decontextualized soundbites. He is hoodwinked by Fuentes’s trolling and youthful antics, attributing to him a somewhat paradoxical weakness for both Hitler and Stalin (and harping on the latter’s atrocities, as if Fuentes is somehow unaware of them). He ignores how Fuentes’s and the lifestyle influencer Andrew Tate’s visions contrast and incorrectly conflates Fuentes’s brand of Catholicism and the “new pagan Right.” He seems not to realize that Burkean platitudes are unpersuasive under our antiracist constitution, or that unironic pleas to “authentic Americans” and “true conservatives” appear preposterous to young men who have seen the wholesale cheapening of American identity and reckon there is little left of America to conserve.
Mahoney approaches subjects like neoconservatism and the Russo–Ukrainian war with insight and nuance, but the refusal to take seriously the more substantive and timely issues raised by Fuentes—and, similarly, the tendency of others to discount Fuentes’s ideology as mere rebellion—will only further alienate the marginalized and disaffected young men who follow him.
Leo Strauss described in German Nihilism how the opponents of the young German nihilists, those adolescents who mounted a moral protest against liberal democracy and the prospect of a universal and homogenous state, committed a “grave mistake.” They
believed to have refuted the No by refuting the Yes, i.e. the inconsistent, if not silly, positive assertions of the young men. But one cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood. And many opponents did not even try to understand the ardent passion underlying the negation of the present world and its potentialities. As a consequence, the very refutations confirmed the nihilists in their belief; all these refutations seemed to beg the question; most of the refutations seemed to consist of pueris decantata, of repetitions of things which the young people knew already by heart. Those young men had come to doubt seriously, and not merely methodically or methodologically, the principles of modern civilisation; the great authorities of that civilisation did no longer impress them; it was evident that only such opponents would have been listened to who knew that doubt from their own experience, who through years of hard and independent thinking had overcome it.
An effective refutation of Fuentes would not simply exalt Churchill, but distinguish between his transhistorical magnanimity and his historical and all-too-human shortcomings. It would not imply that National Socialism posed a threat to “Western civilization” without explaining how it posed a threat. It would not appear to minimize Israeli ethnonationalism or to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, no matter how “militant, obsessive, and emotionally charged” the latter might be. It would not mistake Fuentes’s moral protest for mere rebellion, and it certainly would not from its position of relative comfort dismiss his daring as only “skin deep.”
An effective refutation would address the substantial questions raised directly and indirectly by Fuentes’s polemics. How do diversity and particularity differ? Are Roman Catholicism and particularity consonant? What about Roman Catholicism and the American way of life? Are moral actions justifiable as such, or should they be judged in light of their consequences? Is meritocracy possible under multiculturalism, or is ethnic nepotism intrinsic to human nature? Under what circumstances, if any, is it just to champion the national or ethnic identity of one political community but not another? Is it possible to be both a dual citizen and a good citizen? Is Israel, viewed in a certain light, postliberal? Does Israel feature prominently in both right- and left-wing discourse because it so brightly illuminates the contradictions within postwar liberalism? Have the deracinated youths of the West fashioned a chalice out of Israel into which they pour their struggles with identity, belonging, and meaning?
We must confront these and other questions unflinchingly if we are to reach disaffected young men. Mahoney is correct that they have “grown up in a culture afflicted by many false pieties,” but he is wrong to attribute all false pieties to the left. Many originated within conservatism and are promulgated to this day by conservatives. It is no wonder that Fuentes and his followers—the rootless progeny of an immoderate “age of the adolescence”—have come to question all received opinions. What they need are “old-fashioned teachers . . . undogmatic enough to understand the aspirations of their pupils”—teachers who can “explain to them in articulate language the positive, and not merely destructive, meaning of their aspirations.” Only then might they be receptive to an education in moderation and the other virtues.
None of this is to deny the odious stench of ressentiment that pervades Fuentes’s speech, his dubious personal motivations, or his aspirations for power. But kneejerk recitations of liberal orthodoxy and the synonymous charge of “willful and systematic distortion of empirical realities” will not accomplish much, given the depth and severity of the problem. They may in fact compound the problem. But, unlike the interwar Germans, we still count among us a few teachers of the old breed. Now is their time.
Movement conservatism’s excommunications have always centered on one set of issues.
When Murray Rothbard passed away in January of 1995, William F. Buckley Jr. obituarized him in National Review, excommunicating the libertarian and his followers one final time. “Yes, Murray Rothbard believed in freedom, and yes, David Koresh believed in God,” he remarked acidly.
Rothbard’s sins according to Buckley? He cites Rothbard’s disdain for a joke Buckley made about privatizing lighthouses, and also a scrupulosity that brought him to denounce such beloved figures as “Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and — yes — Newt Gingrich.” Mea culpa! Mea culpa!How dare we critique the great Milton Friedman or Newt Gingrich?
But among other denunciations is Buckley’s account of Rothbard rushing out to applaud Nikita Khrushchev on one of his visits to President Dwight Eisenhower, insinuating one last time that Rothbard was in bed with or insufficiently hostile to the communists. Rothbard remembered this differently; he hoped for peace talks between the two world leaders, and was shocked by the militant opposition National Review had to meeting the “butcher of Ukraine.”
There’s more than meets the eye to the differences between Buckley and Rothbard, particularly the memory of this episode. Rothbard alleged that the modus operandi of fusionism and especially National Review was to excommunicate the non-interventionist right from the mainstream of American conservatism. Little has changed. It appears that today’s attempted Buckleyite and neoconservative excommunications are less because of bigotry or conspiracism, but more because of foreign policy.
National Review quickly went to bat against the non-interventionists of the Cold War from its founding.
John T. Flynn had been one of the most popular writers opposed to Franklin Roosevelt and leader of the New York chapter of the America First Committee. He had begun as a progressive and turned rightward. He began to denounce communism and socialism in the United States, but he did not fall into lockstep with the post-war Cold Warrior consensus.
Rothbard recounts in his The Betrayal of the American Right that Flynn submitted an article to Buckley, criticizing the militarism of the Cold War as a continuation of the corrupt New Deal system and Roosevelt’s foreign policy. Buckley sent the article back, telling the veteran Old Rightist that he did not comprehend the danger of the Soviet Union adequately; he included a $100 check. Flynn sent the money back.
National Review also soon began to enforce an orthodoxy about American-Israeli relations. In an article in the November 1956 edition, defending America against the accusation that segregation would reflect on the nation internationally, Guy Ponce de Leon included a line that caught the eye of the University of Chicago’s Leo Strauss: “Even the Jews, themselves the victims of the most notorious racial discrimination of modern times, did not hesitate to create the first racist state in history.”
Strauss sent NR Editor Willmoore Kendall a letter defending the Jewish state as an exemplar of conservative principles, despite its politics at the time being dominated by Labor Zionists. National Review never allowed severe criticism of the state of Israel to grace its pages again. (James Burnham would argue at times that Middle East policy should not be oriented around it, but nobody was able to tell Burnham off.)
National Review was a publication not dedicated to the Cold War’s liberal containment, but rather by confrontation and rollback. Often forgotten are James Burnham’s arguments for limited nuclear warfare against Russia. Sam Tanenhaus in his authorized biography of Buckley documents National Review’s faux Pentagon Papers in order to counter anti-Vietnam War sentiment. Buckley and National Review had cooked up their own version of the Pentagon Papers in an attempt to undercut the loss of morale around the war, as well as to suggest the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia.
But, of course, the excommunication of the John Birch Society is cited as the shining moment of Buckley’s career. There, we are told, conservatism excised the antisemites and the conspiracy cranks. Never mind that Ludwig von Mises was on the Editorial Board of the Society’s publication, American Opinion, and would defend Welch to Buckley.
The reality is much more revealing of Buckley’s priorities. In 1962, anticipating Barry Goldwater’s eventual presidential run, Buckley, William Rusher (then National Review’s publisher), and Russell Kirk helped the senator from Arizona plan how to handle the popularity of the JBS. They feared that some of Welch’s more outlandish claims—that Eisenhower was a conscious communist agent, for example—and the group’s crusade against Earl Warren’s Supreme Court would rub off poorly on Goldwater. They decided upon a denouncement of Welch and a subsequent letter by Goldwater distancing him from the Society’s leader while not accusing the average Bircher of being a kook.
Buckley declared victory (although Goldwater in the end did not). But the number of Birchers would continue to grow, even drawing in Buckley’s own mother. Soon they provoked Buckley once more.
By 1965, Welch and the Birchers were claiming that the Vietnam War was a communist plot to distract from an internal subversion by communists in the federal government. While this was a stretch, to say the least, the dissent on the Vietnam issue was unacceptable to Buckley.
Aided this time by the former (or “former”) CIA man and senior editor Burnham, Buckley dedicated an issue of National Review to the Bircher question.
Frank Meyer in his column declared that the conspiratorial mind of Welch was “why the patriotic and anti-Communist followers of the Birch Society are now, in the Vietnam crisis, being lined up by its leadership directly in opposition to the interests of the United States and to the struggle against Communism.”
Burnham himself, who had held off from the first round of attacks against the John Birch Society, dedicated his column––Third World War––to attacking Welch for his position on Vietnam. The mastermind behind National Review’s foreign policy had never been a fan of Goldwater, always being more of a Rockefeller Republican. But the John Birch Society’s new stand against the Vietnam War (“Get US out!” their publications and billboards cried) bothered Burnham: “Its stand on Vietnam confirms, not for the first time, that any American who seriously wants to contribute to his country’s security and well-being and to oppose Communism will have to stay clear of the JBS.”
The issue also featured letters from Goldwater, Sen. John Tower, and Russell Kirk denouncing the Society. National Review’s dedication to the Vietnam War led it to expel the John Birch Society once and for all. Buckley would denounce even his own disciples, like Gary Wills, for opposition to the Vietnam War.
The magazine’s interventionist line was not limited to Vietnam. Later, the Manhattan Twelve—the alliance of Buckley, Burnham, Meyer, and other fusionist hawks—revoked National Review’s support for President Nixon. Their contention was that Nixon had opened talks with Communist China and was thus insufficiently hawkish. (Nixon’s failed price controls would come after the Manhattan Twelve issued their documents.) Skepticism of American involvement with Israel met similar punishment. Buckley’s rambling monograph In Search of Antisemitism would give ground for the media and neoconservatives to attack Pat Buchanan for his criticism of the Israel lobby in the United States. Even if one holds that Buckley did not intend to excommunicate Buchanan, he certainly laid the groundwork for the neoconservatives to finish the job. National Review’s “Unpatriotic Conservatives” condemned those members of the right who were skeptical of the American war in Iraq.
At every turn, the fusionist excommunications have been primarily over the issue of foreign policy. Everything else takes the back seat. Buckley declared in 1952 that “we have to accept Big Government for the duration [of the Cold War]—for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged . . . except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.” For a man who styled himself a conservative, a libertarian, and an individualist at different moments of his life, he seemed more than willing to sacrifice members of his movement on the altar of confronting the Soviet Union.
Today the story repeats itself. At every turn, the excommunications always demand we excommunicate those who maintain opposition to foreign wars (today, most often Israel’s wars). Dave Smith, the libertarian comedian, is cast out because of his lack of credentials to speak about foreign policy––unlike Douglas Murray, with his bachelors in English and his guided IDF tours. Tucker Carlson, the most vocal and popular of restrainer voices, “platforms” evil people—never mind that he pushes back on them, he doesn’t do it adequately––and so has become an “antisemite.” Some have begun to turn on J.D. Vance for his anti-interventionist views, playing games of guilt by association for his friendship with Carlson to try to get rid of the vice president.
The great excommunicators are out once more to defend the establishment’s hawkish foreign policy. They may pretend it is over bigotry, but every excommunication always focuses upon those who express skepticism of war. It has always been about foreign policy.
Labour’s leftist pieties are finally buckling under the weight of public opinion on mass migration.
Britain’s home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, may seem like the unlikely face for a harsh crackdown on migration. She is herself a second-generation migrant—a Muslim of Pakistani descent. She once called for a general amnesty for all illegal migrants working in Britain. Yet last week, she unveiled a package of measures she described—quite reasonably—as the “most substantial reform to the UK’s asylum system in a generation.” Her critics on the left immediately accused her of channeling Donald Trump, Tommy Robinson, and even Adolf Hitler.
Mahmood deserves credit for recognizing two things. First, that the UK’s asylum system—supposedly designed to help those fleeing war and persecution—has simply become a funnel for illegal immigration, facilitating the mass arrival of small boats over the English Channel. This is a system that is so dysfunctional as to be actively dangerous, failing to keep out serious criminals, let alone sort the genuinely deserving from those gaming the system for access to the labor market. Second, that the British public will not put up with this any longer. From the multibillion-pound cost to the taxpayer of housing thousands of arrivals to the now frequent, highly publicized attacks by asylum seekers on members of the public, the consequences of allowing unchecked illegal migration have pushed the British people to breaking point.
Illegal immigration has led to mass protests outside asylum hotels. It has led to national flags (both the St. George’s Cross of England and the Union Flag of the United Kingdom) springing up in towns, cities, and villages across the country. It is an issue no political party intent on its own survival can afford to ignore.
Mahmood’s plans aim to reduce the pull factors drawing illegal migrants to Britain. These include tightening the criteria for gaining asylum, reducing the number of appeals for failed asylum claims, making refugee status temporary rather than permanent, threatening visa bans on countries that refuse to repatriate their own citizens, and forcing asylum seekers to pay for the cost of processing their claims and housing them.
A cynic might say that Mahmood and the Labour government have simply been panicked by the polls. If an election were held tomorrow, Keir Starmer’s party would face a total electoral wipeout. The prime minister’s personal approval ratings are even lower than disgraced Prince Andrew’s. And the failure to get a grip on migration—consistently shown in polls to be the number one issue facing the country—is one of the major factors behind Labour’s woes. (One dimwitted Labour MP accused the home secretary of trying to “appease” the voters with her hardline messaging, as if fulfilling the electorate’s demands were not the very purpose of democracy.)
Yet there is every reason to believe Mahmood is sincere in her desire to get a grip on this issue. She has argued, convincingly, that the broken asylum system is driving racial division, and restoring control over the borders is not capitulating to bigotry, but necessary to keep it in check. “The pace and scale of change has destabilized communities,” she says. This rebounds against all people of color, who are suddenly made to feel like they don’t belong, that their place in Britain is somehow illegitimate.
Mahmood has been on a journey towards a faction within the British Labour Party known as “Blue Labour” (blue being the color of the UK Conservative Party). This is a faction that mixes social conservatism and patriotism with a more socialistic or social-democratic view of economics. Its enemies are the woke left and the libertarian right. It has no truck with trans rights or no-borders utopianism.
What Mahmood has left unsaid—even if some of her reforms undoubtedly touch on this—is that the public are furious about the two-tier treatment towards new migrants. There is a widespread sense that the welfare of asylum seekers is prioritized over that of British citizens. Indeed, this was even made explicit in a recent court case over a now notorious asylum hotel in Epping, Essex, on the outskirts of London. After an Ethiopian residing in the hotel, who had arrived on a small boat just days before, sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and an adult woman who tried to rescue her, months of protests ensued locally. When the local authorities tried to shut the hotel down, Mahmood’s predecessor, Yvette Cooper, fought back. In court, Home Office lawyers argued that the British state’s legal duty to prevent asylum seekers becoming destitute trumped any and all concerns voiced by the Epping residents.
There is also widespread anger that the criteria for gaining asylum are overly generous and, in any case, rejection rarely leads to enforced removals. Migrants—including criminals slated for deportation—have gained asylum on the most spurious and illogical grounds imaginable. An Afghan flasher successfully argued that his “sexually disinhibited behaviour” would put him at risk in his own country. An Albanian gangster avoided deportation because his son would not like the taste of “foreign chicken nuggets.” Being transgender, being an alcoholic, and being a paedophile have all in recent years been successfully cited as reasons for bestowing refugee status on illegal migrants.
Not that it matters especially whether asylum is granted or not. Migrants are rarely removed from the UK, even when their claims are rejected in court, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Emad al-Swealmeen, a Jordanian posing as a Syrian, was twice denied asylum but managed to remain in the UK long enough to try to blow up the maternity ward at Liverpool Women’s Hospital in a (mercifully unsuccessful) suicide bombing. The Afghan illegal immigrant Abdul Ezedi was granted asylum on his third attempt, even after racking up several sexual assault convictions. He then went on to throw a corrosive substance on a female refugee and her children before killing himself in London’s River Thames. Seemingly every week brings a new horror story with a small-boat migrant or asylum seeker at the centre: a child raped in Nuneaton, Warwickshire; a restaurant owner stabbed to death in a bank in Derby in the East Midlands; a woman who worked in an asylum hotel, stalked and murdered by a Sudanese resident. The Home Office’s policy of dispersing migrant accommodation around the country means that the kind of violent depravity that might once have been limited to criminal gangs in big cities is no longer a rare sight in deep England.
So can Mahmood stop the boats and restore Britain’s sovereignty over its borders? There is one main reason to be doubtful: Her party’s (and her leader’s) ironclad commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights, the source of many of the most absurd asylum decisions, is likely to blunt the impact of any reforms.
Nevertheless, it is telling—and not before time—that the British government feels it can no longer duck the issue of mass illegal migration and hide behind the vapid virtue-signalling of the left, who insist the “real” problem is the super-rich on their yachts (who are, in any case, mainly leaving the UK), rather than unchecked arrivals on small boats. Migration is the single largest issue in the UK because it is where the voters most keenly feel their powerlessness. Their views and life experiences cannot be reconciled with the “no borders” pronouncements of their supposed betters. Shabana Mahmood’s migration controls may be too late to save this struggling Labour government, but they may help the voters feel they have a voice in British politics once again.
