Columns

Columns

23
Feb
2019
Will Jussie Smollett be Held Accountable?

Will Jussie Smollett be Held Accountable?

By Erik Rush

Hours before Jussie Smollet turned himself in to Chicago authorities, this commentary appeared in WND.

When black singer, actor and gay activist Jussie Smollett was allegedly assaulted in Chicago on Jan 29, the act was widely denounced across the political continuum. While those of more measured rhetoric called for the prosecution of those involved, many prominent leftists immediately blamed the incident on a culture of intolerance that, they say, is being advanced by President Donald Trump.
Once upon a time, those in the public eye took great care with regard to what they said in public, if only as a point of credibility. Things aren’t always as they appear, and being seen as having rushed to judgment during a media firestorm just doesn’t speak to one’s intelligence. Despite this, very few of those alleging a Trump connection to the Smollett attack exercised such restraint; histrionics ruled the day once this story broke.

Now, when the Jussie Smollett story did break, there were some who considered the possibility that the attack had been staged, either by leftist operatives or by Smollett himself, in order to lend credence to the threadbare claim that America is an institutionally racist nation, and that having elected a bigot like Trump proved this. Very few who courted this idea articulated their hypotheses, and those who did were rather low key about it.

Why would anyone think that Smollett or the politically-kindred might stage such an attack, particularly considering the prevailing sensitivities in America around issues of race and intolerance in general? Because given the left’s track record, this is precisely the sort of craven, deceitful act that is in keeping with their sinister character.

As many are now aware, the Smollett story began to unravel over the weekend when the news of Chicago police examining new evidence connected to the alleged assault came to the fore. It quickly became evident—unless we have a really elaborate conspiracy within a conspiracy here—that Jussie Smollett himself paid two extras from his Fox TV show “Empire” to carry out the “attack,” expressly to gin up racial tensions attendant to the current campaign against the president and his supporters.

So let’s say we acknowledge that Smollett is an individual of low character simply because he’s a dedicated lefty. Why would someone who’s secured an enviable position in such a competitive industry court the ignominy of having been beaten up on the street, as well as being condemned as a hate crime hoaxer should his perfidy be discovered?

Let not those of us who condemn the left for their summary and cavalier appraisal of others (particularly us) fall short in our understanding of what makes them tick.

Once again, we must look to character. Jussie Smollett has been in the entertainment business since he was ten years old, acting in many films such as “The Mighty Ducks” and Rob Reiner’s “North.” As I have attested from personal experience, those who become ensconced in that insular entertainment industry bubble from an early age often become singularly scary people. The tragic lives and deaths of many once-popular child stars stands as testimony to this fact. Those who survive can become even scarier with regard to their worldview and perceptions of themselves.

Thus, it isn’t too difficult to see how a popular but perhaps deeply insecure young actor might choose two aspects of his public persona—his ethnicity and his sexual orientation—and qualify them in such a manner as to engender public sympathy. Further, to do so in a way that would advance a favored political agenda.

In support of this argument, it is now being reported by news sources in Chicago that Smollett’s motivation for staging the January 29 “attack” may have been the failure of an earlier staged incident to gain the desired media traction. Apparently (according to CBS 2 Chicago), a letter containing a white powder of some sort addressed to Smollett was delivered to a Chicago set where “Empire” was filming just days before the January 29 staged assault.

At this point, even some of the prominent lefties who supported Smollett have articulated their disgust with his alleged actions, and I applaud them for this. There are good reasons why our nation holds certain sensitivities around race, and it’s because many good people have sacrificed over many years to improve race relations and conditions for the once-disenfranchised. A spoiled, middle-class puke like Smollett wouldn’t be aware of this, partly because he wasn’t around at that time, and because accurate representations of our history are no longer taught in schools.

Smollett has now “lawyered-up,” expressing the requisite outrage and mortification through his attorneys and pointing to his further victimization via accusations that he orchestrated the assault.
An attack such as the one Smollett claimed had been perpetrated upon him is a serious crime which carries heavy penalties. Fraudulently reporting such a crime is also a criminal offense, with very good reason. The potential for dangerous escalation in the wake of such charges is very real.

It has become abundantly clear in recent years that laws, rules and ethics hold no sway over those on the left. Those quaint conventions are for the “little people,” not them. This of course would provide further motivation for Smollett having staged the January 29 incident, but it also gives rise to the question of whether or not he will be held accountable in any manner if he is indeed found to be culpable.

While the Chicago authorities and the FBI are said to be investigating the “white powder” letter and the January 29 attack, there’s no telling whether or not these will lead to a just disposition. In the meantime, the producers of “Empire” and the network (Fox Broadcasting) announced this week that they intend to keep Smollett on as a series regular.

Originally published in WorldNetDailyate crime

Posted by Erik Rush in Columns
01
Feb
2019
Defeat Socialists Now—Before it’s Too Late

Defeat Socialists Now—Before it’s Too Late

By Erik Rush •

Recently, I found myself puzzling over the social media post of a self-identified conservative. This individual questioned why so many people fear the political left these days given the rise of populism (which resulted in the election of Donald Trump to the presidency) and the fact that prominent operatives on the left are employing histrionics, slander and depraved rhetoric to a degree that—as this individual postulated—they can’t help but alienate an increasing number of Americans, thus decreasing their future chances at the ballot box.

While I certainly appreciate the “glass half full” perspective of such a person, it is at times like this in which I wonder if I’m the one who perceives the dark designs of socialists in America and their single-minded determination for what they are. I for one will readily admit to being more fearful of socialist ascendency in this country right now than I was when Barack Obama was president—and I was pretty damned fearful then.

Yes, it is true that Donald Trump was elected to the office of President because a preponderance of voters were disgusted with the political status quo and the lies of the parasites we’ve been sending to Washington for decades. I suspect that many of those who voted for Trump were also beginning to perceive that the two-party system has become a lie, that the Democrat Party has become overwhelmingly socialist in the operative sense, and that the Republican Party exists to provide little more than an impotent foil against them, misdirecting their base as socialists on the Democrat side gain more and more ground.

Yet, inasmuch as an animal in the wild can become considerably more dangerous when it is cornered, I believe that the left has become similarly more dangerous because of the threat of President Trump and the populist leanings of the electorate. While radicals of many stripes were empowered by the solidarity they enjoyed with the White House when Obama was president, we have nevertheless seen a dramatic expansion of their efforts and an amplification of their rhetoric since Trump became president. The phenomenon of “democratic socialism” presently being marketed by the left like a “Tickle Me Elmo” doll or the newest X-Box certainly evidences this. Under Obama, they were comfortable and assured. Now, they’re desperate and terrified.

Even more disturbing is how evident the insinuation of radicals at the highest levels of our government has become. While the moronic blathering of an aging actress that “Make America Great Again” ball caps are “the new KKK hood” and the pitiful contention on the part of Kamala Harris that an attack on a young black actor in Chicago was somehow Trump’s fault may be emblematic of the left’s penchant for hyperbole and deceit, they’re still just individuals voicing baseless charges.

The degree to which the machinery of our government has become compromised however, should chill the reader to the bone.

Case in point: As pointed out by Fox News’ Sean Hannity this week, the arrest and charging of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone for allegedly lying to Congress in the “Russian collusion” investigation is far more of an existential threat to liberty and the rule of law in America than anything that emanates from the mouth of any agenda-driven or dull-normal leftist.

Many have recognized the disparity between the vigor with which our government (in the person of special counsel Robert Mueller) has prosecuted this investigation and the complete absence thereof when it came to, as Hannity notes, “all the people we know who lied to Congress—former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, ex-CIA Director John Brennan, the folks who lied to the FISA court and years of scandals like Fast and Furious, IRS targeting conservatives and Hillary Clinton [during her illegal email server investigation].”
The foregoing only addresses those who lied to Congress. Even a partial list of high crimes committed by Obama and his surrogates would put me well over the word count for this column.

The fact that those in control of most of the federal government and thus the Department of Justice are preferentially applying the rule of law to serve their statist agenda carries the potential for the most dangerous of developments. Beltway Deep-Staters have repeatedly ignored high crimes on the part of their operatives, but they are clearly intent upon cherry-picking the law until they find some basis upon which to remove this president, even if the charges they ultimately level against him amount to the political equivalent of jaywalking.

Once they have succeeded in doing so, there will be nothing to stop them from freely persecuting those whom they are already demonizing in a systematic manner, and to an alarming degree: Trump’s supporters, who obviously number in the millions. The wholesale persecution of millions of people has never been a problem for leftists, however, as we’ve seen over the last hundred years. Their rabid base, small though it may be, has evidenced that it is up for the challenge.

The bottom line is that we can acknowledge the scope of this threat and begin crushing socialists in America ruthlessly, or we can be ‘civilized’ and wait for them to finish coalescing their power and come for us.

When I come to the defense of Donald Trump, it isn’t because I have a particular affinity for the man or his policies, though most are far superior to those of the last several administrations. I do so because if Americans are looking for someone in high office who is working to stem the tide of socialism, at present, President Trump is the only game in town.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Posted by Erik Rush in Columns
25
Jan
2019
Fake News, the Left and Islam on the March

Fake News, the Left and Islam on the March

By Erik Rush •

If one was to ask the average leftist (as opposed to the few who occasionally read something) who shot Trayvon Martin in 2012, their answer would probably be something along the lines of “a white cop.” In fact, many who are not dedicated lefties might return the same answer, so thorough was the press at proffering that narrative.

The truth is that George Zimmerman, the man who shot Martin, is a self-identified Latino who looks about as much like a white guy as I do. Neither was Zimmerman a police officer; he was a neighborhood watch coordinator with a concealed carry permit.

I was singularly horrified at the time that the fake news campaign (before the term “fake news” was even coined) depicting Zimmerman as some sort of blond Asgardian prowling the neighborhood with his warhammer and looking for black children to smash, was not only as brazen as it was, but that it got sufficient traction to effectively transform Zimmerman into a white cop in the eyes of so many.

Thus, it should be no surprise that I find the current media firestorm over the Covington Catholic High School students who have been targeted by the left over alleged racist behavior after a tense encounter with a Native American activist on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial last week almost passé. Sure, the students from the Kentucky high school behaved impeccably and did nothing any casual observer would find untoward—but none of that matters. They were white (well, most of them were), and some were wearing “Make America Great Again” swag, so they must have committed some subtle hate crime. If not, they surely intended to.

So the positively Orwellian coverage of this non-story is nothing at all new. Since Barack Obama publicly charged that the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts “acted stupidly” when they arrested his pal Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2009, the left and the establishment press have attempted to foment racial tension at every opportunity. Bereft of a viable opportunity, they’ve shown that they’re quite capable of making up stories out of whole cloth. Even with the benign intent of the Covington students having become apparent, the left continues to try new ways to affix the racist label onto the young men. President Donald Trump’s defense of the students, while appropriate, has of course only fanned the flames of the left’s ire.

As has become typical following one of these racially-charged incidents, prominent leftists came out of the woodwork, spouting their boilerplate foul invective against the students. One of those who weighed in was Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn). She is one of two freshman Muslim congresswomen who’ve been roundly disparaging America, the President, and his policies since the midterm election. Apparently, Omar overstepped and is now facing harsh criticism for going after the Covington students on a social media venue.

Back in the days when President Obama was regularly hosting Islamists at the White House and then scrubbing the visitor logs, many of us began to engage in discussions of why Islam and those on the far left seemed to be hitting it off so well, particularly since some of the identity groups under the umbrella of the left (women and gays in particular) don’t fare at all well in Islamic societies.

Some said it was simple: Both have the common goal of dismantling the representative republican model of government in America.

While this is certainly true, I think the affinity runs a bit deeper.

I’ve made no bones about the fact that my charity and tolerance with respect to Islam are extremely limited. Islam and the model of Western society are wholly incompatible, and anyone who argues otherwise is either deluding themselves, or they are attempting to delude others. I do not believe that Muslims should be allowed to hold office in America. I do not believe that there are “peaceful” Muslims, unless one counts those who would give their militant brethren sway but prefer not to take up the sword themselves. Nowhere in the 1400-year history of this creed do we see evidence of Muslims playing well with others in the long-term.

Nor do I believe that Islam ought to be venerated simply because it is old, or because it claims to be an Abrahamic religion, like Judaism or Christianity. Islam is not a religion; it is a social system with a religious component.

Similarly, leftism in the West is very much akin to a social system with a religious component. Like Islam, leftism has stringent social controls—on thought and speech, for example. We can see this quite clearly in the doctrine vociferously espoused by the left. To run afoul of these results in swift and terrible retribution from leftists at large. As in the Islamic world, this retribution can even encompass corporal punishment.

In the Islamic world, Islam is the State, and the State is Islamic. This is very much the case with the left—or at least, how those on the left would like to see things shake out in that religion is to be supplanted with socialism (the “religion” of the State). Leftism even has its own pantheon of deities, if you will, in the special interests its devotees venerate: the environment, and the various identity groups leftists ostensibly defend being among these.

Once could expound upon these similarities more deeply, and they would become more numerous and eerie with the telling. The most significant one is this: in the end, both Islam and leftism (socialism) are incompatible with our system of governance. Both find themselves at odds with the Bill of Rights on a regular basis and ironically, both have found a platform for their subversive poison due to dangerous but commonly accepted misinterpretations thereof.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Posted by Erik Rush in Columns
16
Jan
2019
‘Transmania’ and the Subversion of Masculinity

‘Transmania’ and the Subversion of Masculinity

By Erik Rush •

A couple of weeks ago, a talk radio host in my local market began discussing a brewing controversy around a local library district’s plans to host a “Drag Queen Story Hour” this month for children aged 2-8. This obscene event is in fact part of a highly-organized nationwide campaign spearheaded by a San Francisco-based group ostensibly “geared toward promoting inclusivity and diversity,” according to a local newspaper.

The proliferation of pro-trans propaganda has given rise to coverage of child drag queens in the alternative press and how they are being exploited by the LGBTQ lobby. One story covered a 10-year-old Canadian boy who was recently featured in a very disturbing alternative culture magazine article. In said article, the young lad poses in a photograph with a naked adult drag queen.

So, when did a child appearing in media with a naked man cease to be considered child porn? This remains to be determined, I suppose.

In a revolting but not entirely surprising move, the American Psychological Association (APA) publicly released a report this month stating that “traditional masculinity” is “harmful” and can lead to “homophobia” and sexual harassment. Given the APA’s track record in contributing to the normalization of deviant behavior in recent years, I’m not quite sure why many who should know better continue to validate the organization as an arbiter of healthy psychological paradigms.

For the last couple of decades or so, “the experts” (mainly LGBTQ activists, the press and the APA) have maintained that homosexual men are not predisposed to pederasty or sexual predation; further, that pedophilia, homosexuality and transvestitism are discrete behaviors and that their participants never cross the line from one to another. These summary decrees were meant to soften the blow (no pun intended) attendant to homosexuality being normalized in the eyes of the general public.

This wisdom is going the way of earlier debunked conventions which held that women never lie about rape and that children never lie about molestation. As we’ve learned, occasionally these things do occur.

Over the last two weeks, Democratic Party megadonor Ed Buck has been embroiled in a media firestorm over the highly-suspicious deaths of two men in his Los Angeles County home. Much of the controversy has been attendant to Buck’s status as a friend to powerful Democrats (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and top California politicians among them) and the apparent reticence of the criminal justice system to pursue the cases. Many have charged that the latter is due to Buck’s standing and the fact that the deceased men were black.

The sinister nature of these deaths due to methamphetamine overdoses and the accounts of other parties who claim to have narrowly escaped similar fates in Buck’s company however, merit closer scrutiny in this context.

It’s obviously unseemly (at least to most people at present) that a high-profile donor to political heavyweights from any party would fancy illicit drug and sex parties, regardless of the race or gender of the participants. Buck’s alleged practices also have the trappings of an unhealthy fetish; the consent of the participants has come into question, which is even more alarming.

Were one to postulate that a lot of gay men would simply adore having a bevy of prepubescent drag queens flitting about their homes and attending to their every wish, with no worry over legal repercussions, and that the push toward normalizing transvestitism among men and boys is intended to manifest a future in which such things are accepted and commonplace, LGBTQ activists would laugh (or more accurately, titter), accusing such a person of being an alarmist as well as a bigot.

On the other hand, were one to have warned 30 years ago against the specter of transgender bathrooms, “gay marriage” and arcane hate speech laws, the same LGBTQ activists would also have laughed and leveled similar charges. They know from experience that all it takes is sufficient time and the requisite softening-up of the public with propaganda, and ultimately, we’ll swallow anything (again, no pun intended).

When one examines the behavior of an Ed Buck, the rhetoric of Barack Obama’s anti-bullying czar Kevin Jennings or LGBTQ activist Dan Savage, it becomes clear that the lines concerning acceptable behavior are very easily blurred once one enters the LGBTQ realm.

It is painfully obvious (in fact, excruciatingly so) that the entertainment industry is fully on board with “transmania,” male-bashing and generally promoting sexual ambivalence, since they are aggressively producing fare dedicated to normalizing deviant behavior. A great deal of this is aimed squarely at children. It is also obvious that the various efforts in this area across entertainment, academia, and the press are being executed in concert with one another.

While we’re being bludgeoned with the innocuousness of youth transvestitism and such concepts as “toxic masculinity,” “hypermasculinity” and “hegemonic masculinity,” it is important to realize that all of this is part of the left’s war against traditional gender roles, which has been going on since the 1960s. Since the last century, radical leftists have acknowledged that the family is the lynch pin of society, and that compromising the family was essential in their gaining political preeminence in America. Their various campaigns advancing sexual ambivalence over the years have had a great deal of success, and each successively more appalling measure is intended to breed increasing societal dysfunction, thus making the population far easier to control than a population of morally-grounded individuals who know what gender they are.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Posted by Erik Rush in Columns
12
Jan
2019
Even Socialists Follow the Money

Even Socialists Follow the Money

By Erik Rush •

When an individual litigates against another individual or an organization for damages, one of the first things attorneys for the defendant(s) will do is determine the plaintiff’s need for capital. If the plaintiff is flush, it tends to negate the perception and the likelihood that they’re in it for the money, whereas many a frivolous civil complaint has been lodged by plaintiffs who were sorely in need of money.

In a brief filed two weeks ago in federal court by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, it was revealed that Northern California utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) could face murder or manslaughter charges if the company is found negligent in the case of recent wildfires that have ravaged that state.

With the caveat that PG&E most certainly should face charges if they were somehow negligent in the case of the wildfires, bear in mind that there could be a vast difference between the company having been negligent, and being found negligent in the estimation of quirky California law.

California is broke. Several municipalities in the state have sought bankruptcy protection over the last decade or so, and California’s fiscal woes have been apparent to even the most casual observer for at least that long. As in other large, liberal-run states across the U.S., lavish salaries and pensions for municipal workers have contributed significantly to financial shortfalls. In California’s case, an almost slavish devotion to accommodating millions of illegal aliens from south of the border have added billions to that state’s expenditures and economic deficits.

For decades, we’ve seen California voters exhibit a profound naiveté in their assent to politicians’ pie-in-the-sky governance, particularly in the area of superficial, “feel good” legislation, entitlements, and deference to the environmental agenda. California’s resources are vast (particularly in the agricultural realm), but as I recently stated here, no resources of any type or measure can offset a sufficient degree of taxing financial obligations. It’s a simple matter of mathematics.

Unfortunately, given the knee-jerk, “stick it to the corporation” mentality so many under-informed citizens hold, the climate is often ripe for government agencies to fleece companies like PG&E. Should they escape the ignominy of murder charges, PG&E will probably be more than happy to face a civil suit and cough up a pile of cash to the state.

We all know how this plays out in the end, much in the same way it does when any business is hit with hefty, unexpected expenses: They pass it on to their customers, who already feel that they’re being gouged—and the cycle continues.

While “follow the money” may sound like a cynical refrain, money is obviously a central motivator in many areas of human endeavor where a viable economy exists. Ironically, it is doubly significant when dealing with socialist power players as they seek to usurp control of key economic sectors.

This was the sole motivation behind the passage of Obamacare and is behind the ongoing push for a “one-payer” government-controlled health care system in America. For those who doubt the validity of this assessment vis-à-vis California and PG&E, bear in mind that it was a prominent California Democrat who floated the idea of the state taking over oil companies in 2008.

As I said last week in this space,the usurpation of power and resources (money) from the private sector is also the motivation behind some extremely radical environmentally-focused legislation being advanced by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). While it isn’t likely to get passed given the character of the current administration, in the eyes of Beltway socialists, it’s still quite important to get people used to the idea of living with less for the sake of the planet—normalizing these radical concepts, if you will. For more on how this plays out, a web search on the “green riots” in France should be most enlightening.

In the end, socialism doesn’t so much represent a struggle between workers and capitalists, or the haves versus the have-nots, or even between two competing economic systems. It’s simply the device presently being employed by a group of like-minded megalomaniacs seeking to abolish modern concepts of self-governance and democracy.

We already know how rapacious our federal government and many state governments can be through something as simple as a breakdown of financial disbursements for each gallon of gasoline Americans purchase. Factor in socialist objectives, and we have a level of greed surpassing anything of which leftists accuse corporations.

What’s truly frightening is that we have come to a place where a U.S. lawmaker can proffer the notion of a marginal tax rate as high as 70% with a straight face, and without fear of being dragged into the street and strung up by an angry mob.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Posted by Erik Rush in Columns
04
Jan
2019
Why Ocasio-Cortez is Allowed to Carry the Ball

Why Ocasio-Cortez is Allowed to Carry the Ball

By Erik Rush •

Amidst the hubbub of Democrats taking over the House of Representatives and their excitement over the prospect of really being able to stick it to President Donald Trump, freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is calling for the creation of what she calls “Green New Deal” legislation, an insane collection of far left wet dreams ostensibly addressing environmental issues, but which would send the economy into a tailspin. At a recent town hall meeting, Ocasio-Cortez announced that “This is going to be the New Deal, the Great Society, the moon shot, the civil-rights movement of our generation.”

With the first two having been economic dumpster fires and the last usurped and horribly perverted by the far left, you do the math.
Ocasio-Cortez has pledged to push this agenda as the firebrand far left outsider in her party (ignoring for a moment the oxymoron attendant to being far left and an outsider in the Democratic Party). Among the measures that Ocasio-Cortez favors are the elimination of all fossil-fuel-powered electricity, compulsory upgrades of all residential and industrial buildings for state-of-the-art energy efficiency and eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from essentially everything.

One does not have to be an economist to get the idea that such measures would make the Bush-Obama economic crisis look like a house party. All of these have their genesis in baseless junk climate science coupled with the feelgood component of saving the planet, but are simply part and parcel of the globalist agenda to transfer power and wealth to the political class.

Before you laugh, do consider for a moment that Ocasio-Cortez already has the support of key congressional Democrats and a host of other Congress critters for this proposal.

Here’s my take on this: Whether or not Ocasio-Cortez gains any ground with this hideous legislative package (it could die in the Senate and of course the President has veto power), the reason this starry-eyed socialist is spearheading the strategy is quite clear.

In addition to her youth and comeliness, Ocasio-Cortez has been tapped to deliver this grotesquely deformed offspring because she’s Latina. While this may seem dubious to those of us who don’t play the game of identity politics, we—as well as non-ideological unaffiliated voters—would be gravely remiss if we did not consider Ocasio-Cortez and her plans in light of the previous administration.

If Ocasio-Cortez does gain ground with her “Green New Deal” legislation, it would not be the first time a cult of personality ethnic darling was given carte blanche to sabotage the economy by virtue of nothing other than their status as an ethnic minority. The power players on the left are keenly aware that Americans still hold deep sensitivities around issues of ethnicity. They know that some of these are quite irrational, and thus can be very effectively exploited. This is why they so frequently employ race-based invective against their political opponents, and why the “racist!” refrain is so often is so often heard even before other measures fail.

If you consider the aggregate of grounds upon which people vote for candidates, Barack Obama was elected as our president in 2008 for no other reason than his status as an ethnic minority. His high crimes and unconstitutional measures, and those of certain of his surrogates and cabinet members were overlooked by his detractors for the same reason. Even his political opponents were loath to criticize or condemn him despite his gross deficiencies because none wanted to risk being labeled as racists; indeed, this was borne out with any who did dare to do so.
We have this dynamic to thank for the passage of Obamacare, which is financially damaging (if not crippling) Americans to this day. Crimes attendant to the Fast and Furious gun running scandal, the IRS nonprofit-targeting scandal, the NSA domestic spying scandal, Benghazi and a host of others were handily ignored on the same basis.

Most importantly, it was known well in advance of his election by avowed lefties and closeted socialists in the GOP that Obama would be given this latitude simply because he was black. This is why he was positioned to run for the office in the first place. A Deep State agenda, with Obama as the wedge.

The same rationale can be applied to why the Beltway machine was so threatened by Herman Cain during the 2012 election cycle, and why they saw it as an imperative to take him out of the running decisively and early on. Like Donald Trump, Cain was a true outsider and worse, he was black. In their eyes, it was entirely conceivable that voters might jump one black ship for another, because it was already plain at the time that Obama’s governance was abysmal. A vote for Cain would have allowed voters to save face in the name of diversity, but his election would have derailed the statist agenda for at least four years.

So, a sex scandal was concocted to knock Herman Cain off of the campaign trail, and it worked. Those who followed the story may recollect strong indicators that the Cain sex scandal originated with GOP operatives rather than Democrats.

Personally, I tend to resist the notion that so many voters evaluate political candidates this superficially, but the fact is that many do—and politicians know this. While we may scoff at the idea that a cute freshman Latina representative who is nevertheless inexperienced and wholly ignorant of real economic processes might succeed in upending our economy through manifestly imprudent, socialistic legislative measures simply because she’s a cute freshman Latina representative, history has already told us that this is entirely plausible.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Posted by Erik Rush in Columns
28
Dec
2018
Venezuela, Socialism and the Definition of Insanity

Venezuela, Socialism and the Definition of Insanity

By Erik Rush •

As the orchestrated refugee crisis involving émigrés from Central America trekking across Mexico in the hopes of gaining entry into the U.S. plays out, there is a similar—but very real—refugee crisis playing out in South America. In recent weeks, thousands of Venezuelans have been pouring into Colombia at the border city of Cucuta, giving rise to scenes and circumstances right out of refugee scenarios which follow natural disasters.

The state of these people and the conditions they are facing are beyond appalling, and far surpass the ginned-up squalor that’s been reported concerning the Central American caravan. Among the Venezuelans, there are both women and men selling their bodies for food, women selling their breast milk and hair, malnourished mothers carrying equally malnourished infants, all hoping against hope for better conditions in Colombia, of all places.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a Venezuela in steep economic decline; it is now clear that the glorious socialist revolution of Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro has essentially destroyed that nation. Their health care system has collapsed, and Third World diseases which had been eradicated have become rampant once again. Hospitals in neighboring nations—particularly Colombia—have been inundated with Venezuelans seeking medication and vaccines because there simply aren’t any left. The suicide, maternal and infant mortality rates have exploded, and over 50% of the educated professionals who have been able to leave the country have done so.

Puzzlement over the nearly-deafening silence concerning the reason for Venezuela’s woes is compounded by the fact that Venezuela is not the only nation in the region suffering in this manner. In Brazil, incoming president Jair Bolsonaro has said that he intends to establish an international coalition of anti-socialists to thwart the efforts of highly-organized leftists at home and abroad who have influenced policy in that nation, very much to its social and economic detriment.

Considering the scope of the problem in Latin America, one would think that it would be garnering more press coverage than it is, but as I recently pointed out regarding the nationwide “green riots” in France, it’s likely that this is because the dedicatedly leftist Western press is reluctant to feature crises in which leftism itself is the cause thereof. In fact, one of the most comprehensive articles on the Venezuelan crisis didn’t even use the word “socialism.”

The plight of Venezuela (and to a lesser degree Brazil, where things aren’t nearly as dire) is significant because Venezuela was once the wealthiest nation in Latin America, rather than an undeveloped nation with limited resources. The human and natural resource potential in Venezuela is vast, yet it has been stultified into dormancy by socialist policies.

What this means is that there is no reason to presume that this could not happen here, the delusion to which far too many Americans currently subscribe. Just enough socialism, and no resources of any type or measure are sufficient to keep the ship afloat.

Yet in America, despite the election of Donald Trump as president—a mandate against Obama-era socialist policies whether voters realize it or not—grinning young fools, activists and liberal politicians are celebrating “democratic socialism” as the salvation of our nation. This brings to mind the axiom which asserts that doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result is essentially the definition of insanity.

Taking Brazil’s example—or that of their president-elect: the key first step is in identifying the nature of the malady. Bolsonaro has done this, in charging domestic activists, as well as the governments of Cuba and Venezuela with having conspired to influence policy in Brazil for many years.

In America, while some on the right have had a pretty clear picture of the designs of the hard left for a long time, many conservatives, libertarians and unaffiliated voters have been duped by an illusory “left-right” paradigm which is no longer accurate. This goes beyond the presumption that any politician with an “R” after their name is trustworthy; it encompasses the sobering fact that many who once positioned themselves as conservatives are in fact Deep State apparatchiks, every bit as dedicated to the oligarchical collective as George Soros or the most rabid Democrat operatives.

Two weeks ago, the billionaire Koch brothers—long considered to be conservative activists—publicly came out against the Trump administration’s intent to implement a policy that would protect American taxpayers from funding the mass importation of welfare-dependent foreign nationals, claiming that ending this type of immigration would do “serious harm” to the nation.

If this contention seems to fly in the face of common sense, it’s because it most definitely does. Leaving aside the question of why the U.S. would allow for the admittance of even one welfare-dependent foreign national, obviously this reveals that the “conservative” Koch brothers are, like so many wealthy socialists, simply looking to protect their stake in the supply of cheap labor.

Then last week, it was revealed that a fabricated dossier which has been central to the left’s witch hunt against President Trump was in fact passed on to the press by a surrogate of the late Sen. John McCain, another notorious “conservative” poser.
The politically-uninitiated individual might look at such examples and think “See? Even conservatives hate Trump!” That’s the spin the establishment press might put on it for obvious reasons, but this, like the faux conservatives cited above, serves the same function: to re-define conservatism as being the benign realm of the posers, and marginalize actual conservatives and Trump supporters as extremists.

These wolves in sheep’s clothing remained difficult to detect for many years, but many were revealed during Barack Obama’s presidency for their abject refusal to hold him accountable for his high crimes. The universal “tell” that’s given many more away lately has been their zeal to chime in with Beltway socialists in condemning all things Trump.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Posted by Erik Rush in Columns
21
Dec
2018
It’s Time to Move Against Facebook and Google

It’s Time to Move Against Facebook and Google

By Erik Rush •

Earlier this month, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC, Australia’s analogue to our Federal Trade Commission) issued a report criticizing online giants Google and Facebook, and even recommended that a new government watchdog organization be formed for the purpose of watching over the two companies.

The ACCC report addressed the fact that Google and Facebook have developed “significant market power in terms of news discovery and digital advertising—and have, up until now, operated in an almost completely unfettered fashion,” as well as concerns over how the companies have collected and disseminated user data without consumers’ knowledge.

Meanwhile in America, alarm over the deportment of these tech racketeers is growing with mounting revelations of their unethical practices. On December 7, Liberty Vittert published a piece for the Fox News website entitled “Facebook is the villain and we all finally know it.” The column discussed highly confidential documents and company emails that had been released by a British lawmaker that week, and which revealed that Facebook has indeed been selling its users’ data, despite repeated denials that it has done so. Further, that Facebook “leveraged our data to reward developers who spent a lot of money on the platform, and ice out its competitors, all the while making sure we, the users, never found out.”

This is all in addition to the shameless manner in which Facebook has advanced a far left agenda whilst taking great pains to silence opposing views on its platform. On December 10, Fox News’ Brian Flood published a column on how foreign governments, as well as state and local governments in America are beginning to wake up to Facebook’s chicanery. Recently, WND covered the pushback campaign of a very powerful private advocacy organization that is threatening to lobby Congress to remove legal protections from these tech companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act if they continue to censor conservative content.

Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified before the House Judiciary Committee to address allegations of anti-conservative bias and privacy violations on that platform. In his prepared remarks, Pichai said:
“I lead this company without political bias and work to ensure that our products continue to operate that way. To do otherwise would go against our core principles and our business interests. We are a company that provides platforms for diverse perspectives and opinions—and we have no shortage of them among our own employees.”

To which I tweeted in response:

In March of this year, I shared in this space how Google had sent me a notice via email that my website contained unacceptable “social engineering content” and subsequently designated it a “deceptive site”—such as those where one might pick up a nice case of malware, a computer virus, or fall prey to a phishing scam. That tech companies like Google and Facebook have engaged in draconian practices to stifle that of which they do not approve is simply not open for debate, so brazen have their methods been.

The significance of the Australian agency’s reference to “significant market power” cannot be overstated. Market power carries the ability to influence hearts and minds, and the more market power someone has, the greater their influence. Facebook had 2.17 billion users worldwide at the beginning of this year, and Google is already the Kleenex of search engines.

The ACCC report on Google and Facebook also stated as follows:

“Australian law does not prohibit a business from possessing significant market power or using its efficiencies or skills to ‘out compete’ its rivals. But when their dominant position is at risk of creating competitive or consumer harm, governments should stay ahead of the game and act to protect consumers and businesses through regulation.”

In this vein, I would encourage online consumers (and certainly the Trump White House, if it hasn’t already done so) to study the history of Antitrust law in America. While some forms of antitrust legislation have been opportunistic government power grabs, others involved circumstances wherein powerful corporate interests engaged in activities so precedent-setting in their lack of ethics that said activities were criminalized.

While the politically-motivated antics of tech giants like Facebook and Google are craven, subversive, and border on sedition, they aren’t merely trying to socially engineer a leftist America; they’re attempting to own all of cyberspace and rule it with an iron fist. If left unchecked, they will become the sole arbiters of what is acceptable online fare, regardless of whether it’s politics, products, fashion trends—you name it.

Like the monopolies that were legitimately reined in during the last century, these companies are only getting away with what we’re letting them get away with. Australia’s ACCC is making a beginning in mitigating their influence in the same spirit of fair play that America has exercised in the past.

It may be somewhat more difficult to initiate a move against them than in bygone days since their industry and our government are infested with the same class of socialistic vermin, but with the proper impetus from the public and a few stalwarts in our government, it can—and must—be done.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily.

Posted by Erik Rush in Columns
14
Dec
2018
Riots in France: Coming to America Next?

Riots in France: Coming to America Next?

By Erik Rush •

Many reading this will be familiar with the 2001 nature documentary series “The Blue Planet” and “Blue Planet II,” which aired in 2017. Produced by the BBC, both have been hailed as among the greatest documentaries ever made on our oceans. It is difficult to argue against this, given the time and meticulousness that went into the production of both series.

Unfortunately, like most nature documentaries produced in recent years (as well as a great deal of wholly unrelated media), the Blue Planet series pay gratuitous deference to the environmentalist movement in the form of alarmist propaganda embedded within the installments: “Unfortunately, vistas like these may soon become a thing of the past due to climate change…” [author paraphrase].

While we may roll our eyes at such doomsaying tripe, it is insidious little tidbits like these which often do sway uninitiated viewers, who are unable to read between the lines: “So vote for liberals and socialists, because they care about the planet…”

Of course, the initiated viewer of such fare knows that the liberals and socialists they’d be voting for don’t care any more for the planet than they do for ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals, the handicapped, the sexually abused, or any other group they’ve managed to coax into their tent. Here, they’re simply seeking the support of those who are concerned about the environment in order to cement their power.

This brings us to the current public unrest in France. For the last couple of weeks, hundreds of thousands of protestors all over the country have been demonstrating against President Emmanuel Macron’s green policies and onerous increases on fossil fuel taxes.

The demonstrations have garnered a fair amount of coverage in the press, since it involves a major Western nation essentially blowing up. However, considering that it does involve a major Western nation essentially blowing up, it hasn’t gotten nearly as much coverage as it deserves.

Why? Because it involves a major Western nation essentially blowing up due to its citizens’ opposition to socialistic policies.

While the demonstrations in France started out reasonably peacefully, they have become increasingly violent over time, with current damage estimates at around $1 billion. French police have employed tear gas and water cannons against demonstrators, and well over 1,000 of these have been taken into custody. Several deaths have been reported, including an 80-year-old woman in Marseille who died after being struck in the face with a tear gas canister.

Macron has been widely criticized for having a detached attitude toward protestor complaints which, due to the scope of the demonstrations, have far wider support than those who’ve taken it to the streets. The international press reported that Macron literally disappeared over the past weekend, and his subsequent appeals to the French people have ranged from impassioned to authoritarian to incoherent; on Monday, the beleaguered Macron pleaded with French employers to give workers a bonus, presumably in order to settle things down.

Well, this is socialism. It was sold to Europeans over the last several decades—much in the same manner in which it’s currently being sold to Americans—but Europeans are discovering that they don’t much like it. In principle, many still defend socialism, particularly if they’re young and ignorant, but in practice, it’s killing them.

In 2015, globalist elites and the grifters who run the European Union passed the Paris Agreement, a vehicle of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Under the Paris Agreement, each of 196 subscribed nations must “determine, plan, and regularly report on the contribution that it undertakes to mitigate global warming.”

While some nations are offering more resistance to this measure than others (President Donald Trump has expressed his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement), obviously it has been seen by politicians in some nations as license to really put the screws to the people in the name of the environment.

When the latest thirty cent tax on diesel fuel hit in France, as press reports indicated, the rioting began.

I doubt that I need to point out that this will be a sign of things to come in America if we fail to stem the tide of socialism here. Culturally, Europe, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom have been rocketing down the toilet at breakneck speed for some time; now, things are starting to fall apart in terms of these ostensibly free societies being able to sustain socialist systems.

As we know, they can’t—not without the wholesale oppression of their citizens. At such a time, they become totalitarian regimes—which is the intended outcome. Green policies, carbon taxes and the like are no more than a money-grubbing, government-bloating con; the idea is that when those who’ve voted for all of these wonderful, nanny-state measures wake up one morning and find nooses around their necks, it will be too late to save themselves.

When I see such things as the violence in France, or the French university protests of 2009, or the ongoing demonstrations against illegal immigration in Germany, I often think of our Second Amendment. Why? Because it’s become clear that there are no lengths to which socialist power players will go, it’s just a question of how far they’re willing to go at a particular time.

In the context of how European socialism has evolved, it’s easy to see why leftists in America are so intent upon getting firearms out of the hands of private citizens. At this particular time, were our government to emulate that of Macron’s in the name of a U.N. environmental mandate, the protestors would probably be armed.

Which is as it should be.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily.

Posted by Erik Rush in Columns