It's not libel, technically, because my quotes were accurate. But they were taken massively out of context, to make it seem like I believe something that I explicitly condemned in the article from which the words were taken. The Guardian quoted the Antifa press release as if it were accurate. I wrote to the Guardian demanding a clarification.
But from what I see The Guardian didn’t quote you at all. Postscript now that I am home: The Guardian quoted an Antifa press release that implied you approved of a mass shooting. That's not accurate at all.
It would seem that Rod wrote the phrases “legitimate, realistic concerns” and “declining numbers of ethnic Europeans”, which were quoted in the press release and then in the article.
And looking closer, I guess that by the letter, they didn't misquote Rod's idea: namely, that concern about declining ethnic Europeans is legitimate, and that the shooter had said concern. That much is factually correct.
It's like if I said the Unabomber had legitimate concerns about the environment, and someone took that to mean that I support the Unabomber sending mail bombs.
I think there would be no chance of it being libelous if the reference to the mass shooting was left out and the phrases “legitimate, realistic concerns” and “declining numbers of ethnic Europeans” was used to imply Rod guilty of simple bigotry. Put the shooting in without Rod's disclaimers, and everything changes IMO: Rod goes from a bigot to a murderous bigot.
But the quoted text says that the gunman had legitimate concerns, not that the concerns legitimize him in the gunning. It's rotten, but I could see the defense.
'Misrepresentation' at the very least, or something. Any lawsuit is better than none, even as a pedagogical tool to fight back against the falsehoods. Full page paid statements are another tool that some have used, but good luck finding a major paper that will print it.
I don't think false light can be applied to public persons, as it is basically a violation of privacy. The UK really doesn't recognize a right to privacy. But you are correct, false light would cover something factually true but misleading.
If you were going to do this in Belgium- needed to be somewhere , where the Flemish nationalists are in power. Not Brussels! I love Brussels- great food, beer , chocolate but politically, problematic.
"well, what does that tell you about the reality of democracy in Europe?"
What democracy?
At this point, even if you find a spot to hold the conference, sounds like Antifa is ready to unleash violence on those attending/speaking - and the cops don't seem inclined to intervene.
I mean, this is Europe now - the EU anyway. This is what they value, bashing free speech (literally). But I also have to say, if the right is so powerless that they can't even hold a conference - I mean, that seems pretty meek. Not going to rally people to the cause of national conservatism, though it probably will rally them to something far more extreme.
Just another signpost on the road to a very violent future.
A classic Marcusian tactic: I think the gay lib movement did the same sort of thing with psychiatrists way back when. An interesting gambit, to behave mentally ill because someone calls you mentally ill.
Sounds a lot like USC not letting their valedictorian give a commencement speech because she linked to a pro-Palestine website in her Instagram bio. Their reason: "safety." In her case, it was the anti-Palestine mob that swarmed and threatened.
Rod, this is totally off topic, and of course I cannot say with any certainty that it is related, but I prayed to St Therese for her intercession for your friend Alexander this weekend, and I was just offered an unexpected flower arrangement with 3 yellow roses. I think Alexander will be/has been given his chance for salvation even through the coma. I will keep praying for him, of course.
Hi Jenny. As someone else said, she is associated with sending roses (or flowers but especially roses) in response to prayer to let you know she has heard you. I have received a rose after praying to her for her intercession previously and that prayer was answered.
Before she died (at 24 o f TB) she said: “I feel that my mission is about to begin, my mission of making others love God as I love him, my mission of teaching the little way to souls,” she said. “If God answers my requests, my heaven will be spent on earth up until the end of the world. Yes, I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth.”
Yes, Jenny, St. Therese is connected with roses. She is known affectionately as the “Little Flower”. One of her most famous quotes is: “Upon my death I will let fall a shower of roses; I wish to spend my heaven in doing good upon the earth." She is speaking of spending her heaven acting as an intercessor, that is praying to God for those intentions requested by prayer. Statues of St.Therese are in many Catholic churches, and they usually depict her holding a bouquet of roses. Perhaps it is a sign for you that she joined her prayers for Alexander with your own. It sounds like God has given you a comforting grace.
It doesn't matter what you said, it doesn't matter what ideas you presented, and it's no use appealing to any type of liberal values or sense of fair play. Those days are over.
The Christian God (who is of course also the author of Western liberal democracy) is in his death throes (at least in his traditional homelands) and is being vilified, beaten and replaced by his demented half-Marxist grandchild, Social Justice.
Antifa, as the shock troops of the Revolution, are obviously your enemy, they would murder anyone opposed to their faith if they could, and maybe soon will do so (but you already knew this)—what's painful and hard to admit here (especially for just about everyone born and raised in the back half of the 20th century) is that the LIBERAL CLASS WILL NOT SAVE US.
The liberal class, meaning more or less people in high managerial positions that are designed to transmit our culture, values, traditions, basic civics—politicians, journalists, professors, artists, intellectuals etc—are cowardly careerist conformists with no beliefs or values bigger than their paychecks and career paths, and are spineless sell-outs straight outta Houellebecq. And on top of that, as they display every day, they HATE THEIR OWN COUNTRIES AND PEOPLE AND CULTURE.
If tomorrow morning the entire West were conquered by anyone from Chi Com to Putin to ISIS, all of these well-off well-compensated leaders would switch sides in a heartbeat. (It's always those who've received the most who are the least grateful!)
I don't know what the future holds, but one thing I do know is that our liberal class is dead and/or hopelessly corrupted and that all they know and hold sacred is whatever allows them to maintain their exalted status. They will let any real democracy be destroyed in order to maintain their Potemkin Our Democracy™.
Have you read the CV of the NPR babe? Just a few outrageous touches and it could have been written by Terry Southern. This is the managerial class. They don't DO anything, and they don't KNOW anything, but they can certainly break things when ordered to.
I was struck by the same thing when I went and looked at her CV. She's held superficially impressive positions and jobs with pretend responsibility, but she's never had to solve any real problems or deliver anything. Her NPR bio says she "worked on human rights, democracy, and innovation" at her pre-Wikimedia jobs. These pieces of crap are always "working on poverty" or "working on human rights" but never bloody doing anything.
NPR and its employees deserve everything that's going to happen, or more likely not happen, during this nutjob's tenure.
“If tomorrow morning the entire West were conquered by anyone from Chi Com to Putin to ISIS, all of these well-off well-compensated leaders would switch sides in a heartbeat.”
This to me is the key insight. Every civilization has had people like this, but it’s rare that this type accounts for 90% of the elite. That’s our postmodern western difference.
How to account for it? Is it that both far left and reactionary right have always been right about the bourgeoisie? Or it it that our elite are a *managerial* elite? Are these maybe the same thing?
a big serving of Burnham's "Managerial Revolution" with a nice dash of Rieff's "Triumph of the Therapeutic" topped w Lasch's "Revolt of the Elites".
It seems that communism, socialism, liberalism all end up in the same place: rule by a managerial caste. Guess is the modern version of rule by aristocracy.
no mention in the American media. The left have effectively outlawed conservativism. Biden said Trump talking was a threat to democracy. They have always seen the state as a tool to push their ideology. What naive fools we were to think "liberals" would stand against this when it was their side who was doing it to win. They will go along and hope for the best but something tells me this end with the liberals being banned and jailed right next to the conservatives. We were warned for years by people who, like myself, were very leftwing at one time and saw the beast up close when it was still fairly harmless. But no big surprise and shame is not going to work, they are shameless. Only political will at the polls that will elect a gov that can then force the left to off the street and would say no to pressure tactics. Something tells me that Europe is at about the 2020 level of white guilt progressive authoritarianism.
Pearl clutching about this happening in the den of the EU is like a Sooner being shocked he can’t find a crimson T-shirt to buy in Stillwater. Ol’ Pistol Pete is a pretty rough fella. Might oughtta look elsewhere.
"Concert Noble’s owners, Edificio, said its position was one of 'respecting the key European values of democracy which have enabled Belgium and the European Union, of which Brussels is the capital, to enjoy a long period of peace and prosperity since the Second World War'."
Orwell, call your office!
The "peace and prosperity" is coming to an end in Brussels, and these "defenders of democracy" want to ban those raising the alarm.
At whatever major cosmopolitan centre you seek to meet in western Europe you’re going to run into these latter day brownshirts (this time on the left) with whom the political establishment is in sympathy or before whom they’re completely cowed. This being the reality, it would seem to make sense to look for smaller centres with limited ingress and egress, i.e. where the thugs can’t easily get at you and the local authorities can more easily control those who do.
Why on earth anybody confuses fascism with any kind of conservatism is amazing. Simply opposing Stalin and Stalinists is the one, single, absolutely crucial common denominator and sole defining characteristic that seems to unite fascists and conservatives in the diseased minds of the Left as if they were one and the same.
In reality, fascists were modernist revolutionaries themselves (as Rod's recent citation of Italian Futurism indicates--as does everything else about fascists for anyone who cares to look). The Italian Fascists and the German Nazis had little truck with the kind of careful conservative politics of the English-speaking shopkeeping nations that they sneered at so contemptuously. Confusion of Fascism and Nazism with the U.S. GOP and the British Tories is as stupid as it is evil.
Well, one group of people that "confused" National Socialism with conservatism were German bankers and industrialists, whom the Reds had scared the crap out of. Hitler pulled that one off pretty neatly. Read his speeches to the businessmen both before and after January 1933.
No one was confused. And bankers and industrialists aren’t conservative. They’re opportunists. The elements of the Junker class and the Catholics who were swayed might be more of an argument, but the contempt Hitler had for the old aristocracy is legendary.
Re: Why on earth anybody confuses fascism with any kind of conservatism is amazing.
Part of the problem is that we Americans tend to view everything on a left-right axis, when elsewhere politics is more complicated than that. The fascists and their fellow travelers were innovators not traditionalists but they supported the existing moneyed elite to the detriment of the working class. In the US those types are classed with the right, since they usually have made alliance with real conservatives-- and even in Europe the old style "throne and altar" conservatives were more likely to support fascistic parties when their own parties had no hope of power, often in the hopes they could control them (and usually they could not)
"...but they supported the existing moneyed elite to the detriment of the working class..."
That was Orwell's line and I'm afraid it's simply not true. The German working class benefited greatly from the new kind of prosperity Hitler introduced in the '30s and they were the last to desert him in 1945. Italians of all classes will tell you of the good the Duce did as long as they can trust you.
In 1933 Stalin and the Communists would have benefited the German workers. It's often stated, erroneously, that the Nazis rode the German inflation to power. But that was long over with by the 30s. Rather it was the Great Depression, with over one third of the German work force out of work, that propelled them to success. The US was very lucky to have FDR who did not overthrow the constitutional order to respond to our woes in the Depression. We all hate inflation-- but high and sustained unemployment is far more toxic and damaging to a society.
Yes, certainly. What I find amazing is Americans' inability to grasp coalition politics, in other words. Even though our own political parties are odd coalitions. Just look at how much the civil liberties lobby is now regarded not as the heirs of the 1970s ACLU, but of the KKK, being accused of "dog-whistles" for racism whenever free speech is mentioned now. The idea that people like Matt Taibbi secretly want to use the n-word in ordinary discourse without qualification or sanction is ludicrous.
Clearly the goal is to make any and all assemblies of any group opposed to Antifa or its favored causes impossible. Coupled with surveillance state power, things are going to get very dicey soon.
Just awful. The Right really needs its own event space. Some organizations have started to understand this. Corporate hotels will always, always bow to political pressure.
Yes. And the Berkeley Springs Castle is highly secured by fencing. It is helpful that the Brimelows are well-liked in the town. Morgan County went 75 % for Trump.
I do have some sympathy for hotels in cases like this. They make they money by hosting guests and will suffer if some wacko political demonstration is going on blocking access.
I remember hearing radio dispensationalists in the 70's calling the Common Market (which became the EU) the Beast of the Apocalypse, and they were right!
There is no future in Western Europe. None. It is foolish to pretend that there is. If you're any kind of traditionalist of Caucasian descent, your best hope at this point is that Putin really does decide to roll across the continent.
There is not hope here in Maryland as well….the Archdiocese has just announced the closing of 61 parishes to make 21. Bankruptcy with the sex scandals and dwindling attendance. We are truly shrinking as believers in Christ.
That's correct. Peter experienced Christ and his miracles first hand and was still so afraid that he denied knowing Christ (3 times!). It's worrisome to think what most of us will do when facing real persecution. And sadly it's feasible "will do" is more appropriate than "would do".
It's easy to talk tough. Much, much harder to live up to that tough talk when the going gets rough for us, or our loved ones that can still be canceled.
Much of that is due to the fact that the old ethnic communities have moved out to the suburbs, or farther away. When I moved to Baltimore in 2008 there were half a dozen Catholic churches just blocks away from each other on the near east side. I googled this on seeing your comment and I am rather saddened to see that St Vincent de Paul, right by downtown, is going to close. It is one of the older, historical churches, something of a landmark with its federal style architecture, and even when I lived there it was famous (and sometimes infamous) for its charitable work among the homeless.
I read that this morning. Ethnic Baltimore is virtually all gone. Catholic Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Italians and Irish. Baltimore peaked at 900,000 in 1950. But the ethnics moved out to Baltimore County and northern Anne Arundel in the 50s, 60s and 70s. They pushed further out to Carroll, Howard and Harford Counties in the 80s and 90s. I can't see why the city needs more than the Basilica for symbolic purposes. Baltimore's population today are non-Catholic blacks as a majority with trendy, leftist whites who can't be bothered with religion as the chief minority.
There's still some Italians in Little Italy and some Geeks in Greektown. There is even a small Lithuanian settlement not far from where I lived. But Little Italy is gentrifying as Harbor East becomes the New Downtown, and Greektown is slowly going Hispanic as that demographic spreads out from Highlandtown.
St. Casimir's in Canton is still a robust parish, according to friends who attend.
Remember all the proggie commenters on your AmCon blog who after the Summer of Floyd were saying that Antifa was basically a small, uninfluential group of left-wing cosplayers who really had no power to affect anything and that the Right was overreacting to them?
I actually do have a question about these Belgian radicals: Is it the case of Rod (and others) calling them "Antifa" because of similar ranting and tactics to the American far leftists, or have they adopted the name themselves?
European Antifa were the originals, going back decades. The American ones learned their tactics from them. I have no doubt these most recent troublemakers are Antifa.
Iirc there were also administration talkers who mocked the whole idea that it really exists as an organization. Just a general anti-fascist sentiment. I think Biden himself may have said it.
Rod, you must sue The Guardian for libel. You have no choice.
It's not libel, technically, because my quotes were accurate. But they were taken massively out of context, to make it seem like I believe something that I explicitly condemned in the article from which the words were taken. The Guardian quoted the Antifa press release as if it were accurate. I wrote to the Guardian demanding a clarification.
But from what I see The Guardian didn’t quote you at all. Postscript now that I am home: The Guardian quoted an Antifa press release that implied you approved of a mass shooting. That's not accurate at all.
It would seem that Rod wrote the phrases “legitimate, realistic concerns” and “declining numbers of ethnic Europeans”, which were quoted in the press release and then in the article.
And looking closer, I guess that by the letter, they didn't misquote Rod's idea: namely, that concern about declining ethnic Europeans is legitimate, and that the shooter had said concern. That much is factually correct.
It's like if I said the Unabomber had legitimate concerns about the environment, and someone took that to mean that I support the Unabomber sending mail bombs.
I think there would be no chance of it being libelous if the reference to the mass shooting was left out and the phrases “legitimate, realistic concerns” and “declining numbers of ethnic Europeans” was used to imply Rod guilty of simple bigotry. Put the shooting in without Rod's disclaimers, and everything changes IMO: Rod goes from a bigot to a murderous bigot.
But the quoted text says that the gunman had legitimate concerns, not that the concerns legitimize him in the gunning. It's rotten, but I could see the defense.
I believe such a defense can be pierced, it's paper tissue thin.
I think the real problem would be getting a London court to agree. Trial by judge would have better odds than trial by jury.
That last part, especially sounds like a great phrase for a letter to the editor to the Guardian :)
guardian.letters@theguardian.com
But they might be like, "Wait, what was wrong with the bombs?" Left-wing bombs identify as cupcakes.
Sethu get on GB News live. See my comment toward the end of the thread. I don't understand the remark on bombs but don't explain it right now.
False light is a better fit, but not all jurisdictions recognize it. It shouldn’t cost you much to have an attorney send a demand letter.
Here are the elements: https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/1800/1802/
'Misrepresentation' at the very least, or something. Any lawsuit is better than none, even as a pedagogical tool to fight back against the falsehoods. Full page paid statements are another tool that some have used, but good luck finding a major paper that will print it.
I don't think false light can be applied to public persons, as it is basically a violation of privacy. The UK really doesn't recognize a right to privacy. But you are correct, false light would cover something factually true but misleading.
https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/kslr/2013/06/16/big-brothers-big-brothers-tort-law-and-privacy-in-the-internet-age/
If it's not libel, it could still be actionable as "false light defamation." Worth looking into, Rod.
Maybe. On the other hand, beware the Streisand Effect.
A bit of Scylla and Charybdis here.
If you were going to do this in Belgium- needed to be somewhere , where the Flemish nationalists are in power. Not Brussels! I love Brussels- great food, beer , chocolate but politically, problematic.
Chocolate: Marcolini in the well next to the Conrad.
Food and beer: Rendezvous des artistes, behind the Conrad.
Done and dusted.
https://wittamer.com/
At Marcolini the girls, wearing black parochial school jumpers, put on white gloves to fetch the chocolate under glass.
II’ll stop but one more https://spinnekopke.be/
"well, what does that tell you about the reality of democracy in Europe?"
What democracy?
At this point, even if you find a spot to hold the conference, sounds like Antifa is ready to unleash violence on those attending/speaking - and the cops don't seem inclined to intervene.
I mean, this is Europe now - the EU anyway. This is what they value, bashing free speech (literally). But I also have to say, if the right is so powerless that they can't even hold a conference - I mean, that seems pretty meek. Not going to rally people to the cause of national conservatism, though it probably will rally them to something far more extreme.
Just another signpost on the road to a very violent future.
This tactic of closing down venues is regularly used by the Trans Activists.
Any place that allows women to gather to discuss the trans insanity gets targeted. It's an absolute outrage.
A classic Marcusian tactic: I think the gay lib movement did the same sort of thing with psychiatrists way back when. An interesting gambit, to behave mentally ill because someone calls you mentally ill.
Yes but this, shutting down a mainsteam conservative conference, is an escalation.
If people genuinely think that we shouldn't be allowed to hear what Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman have to say then I fear for the future.
Yeah, because the radicals who used to be marginal succeeded in their deployment of Alinsky and Marcuse, and now they own the institutions.
These people want everyone who doesn't agree with them silenced. Apparently even the caterer has pulled out because they threatened his wife.
This is full on fascism. I can't believe people are putting up with it.
It's just like the Cavafy poem: a tired demoralized society, waiting for the barbarians, who would be a kind of solution.
Not only that, in Brussels at least, basically encouraging it.
At some point the choice becomes - meekly acquiesce, or fight (and I don't mean with words)
Ernst Rohm and the SA redux!
Sounds a lot like USC not letting their valedictorian give a commencement speech because she linked to a pro-Palestine website in her Instagram bio. Their reason: "safety." In her case, it was the anti-Palestine mob that swarmed and threatened.
Suella, that fireeater.
This is a neat introduction to the future of anarcho-tyranny.
Agreed
Rod, this is totally off topic, and of course I cannot say with any certainty that it is related, but I prayed to St Therese for her intercession for your friend Alexander this weekend, and I was just offered an unexpected flower arrangement with 3 yellow roses. I think Alexander will be/has been given his chance for salvation even through the coma. I will keep praying for him, of course.
Is she associated with yellow roses?
That's connected to, um, another kind of woman here in Austin TX.
Eyes as bright as diamonds, sparkle like the dew.
Oh, boy 😬
My parents used to call me the Yellow Rose of Texas.
She's associated with roses in general.
Dana
Thank you!
Hi Jenny. As someone else said, she is associated with sending roses (or flowers but especially roses) in response to prayer to let you know she has heard you. I have received a rose after praying to her for her intercession previously and that prayer was answered.
Before she died (at 24 o f TB) she said: “I feel that my mission is about to begin, my mission of making others love God as I love him, my mission of teaching the little way to souls,” she said. “If God answers my requests, my heaven will be spent on earth up until the end of the world. Yes, I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth.”
You can read more here: https://www.catholicherald.com/article/local/st-therese-of-lisieuxs-heavenly-flowers-and-little-way/
An article with other people’s stories is here:
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/when-st-therese-showers-roses-and-miracles-on-her-friends?amp
Thank you ☺️
Oh, there are two different Jennys here with the same icon: got it. That was confusing for a minute.
I've heard her called "the Little Flower".
Yes, Jenny, St. Therese is connected with roses. She is known affectionately as the “Little Flower”. One of her most famous quotes is: “Upon my death I will let fall a shower of roses; I wish to spend my heaven in doing good upon the earth." She is speaking of spending her heaven acting as an intercessor, that is praying to God for those intentions requested by prayer. Statues of St.Therese are in many Catholic churches, and they usually depict her holding a bouquet of roses. Perhaps it is a sign for you that she joined her prayers for Alexander with your own. It sounds like God has given you a comforting grace.
Thank you for your reply! It was the Jenny above who got the comforting grace, though. Not me. Maybe I should change my substack name… ☺️
Hi Jenny! You aren’t in Texas by any chance are you? If not I could become “Jenny of Texas” (or something more creative I haven’t thought of yet.)
I’m not anymore (I grew up there though!!) what another interesting coincidence. I changed my “profile” picture - I think that’s fine. 😁
Oh, thank you! This is very, very important.
I have been asking St. Alexander of Munich for his intercessions. He is also associated with roses, albeit white.
Rod,
It doesn't matter what you said, it doesn't matter what ideas you presented, and it's no use appealing to any type of liberal values or sense of fair play. Those days are over.
The Christian God (who is of course also the author of Western liberal democracy) is in his death throes (at least in his traditional homelands) and is being vilified, beaten and replaced by his demented half-Marxist grandchild, Social Justice.
Antifa, as the shock troops of the Revolution, are obviously your enemy, they would murder anyone opposed to their faith if they could, and maybe soon will do so (but you already knew this)—what's painful and hard to admit here (especially for just about everyone born and raised in the back half of the 20th century) is that the LIBERAL CLASS WILL NOT SAVE US.
The liberal class, meaning more or less people in high managerial positions that are designed to transmit our culture, values, traditions, basic civics—politicians, journalists, professors, artists, intellectuals etc—are cowardly careerist conformists with no beliefs or values bigger than their paychecks and career paths, and are spineless sell-outs straight outta Houellebecq. And on top of that, as they display every day, they HATE THEIR OWN COUNTRIES AND PEOPLE AND CULTURE.
If tomorrow morning the entire West were conquered by anyone from Chi Com to Putin to ISIS, all of these well-off well-compensated leaders would switch sides in a heartbeat. (It's always those who've received the most who are the least grateful!)
I don't know what the future holds, but one thing I do know is that our liberal class is dead and/or hopelessly corrupted and that all they know and hold sacred is whatever allows them to maintain their exalted status. They will let any real democracy be destroyed in order to maintain their Potemkin Our Democracy™.
" cowardly careerist conformists" - Nailed it.
thanks!
"nittering nabobs of negativism"
A man before his time.
Fyi: it was "nattering"!🙂
PJB.
Have you read the CV of the NPR babe? Just a few outrageous touches and it could have been written by Terry Southern. This is the managerial class. They don't DO anything, and they don't KNOW anything, but they can certainly break things when ordered to.
I was struck by the same thing when I went and looked at her CV. She's held superficially impressive positions and jobs with pretend responsibility, but she's never had to solve any real problems or deliver anything. Her NPR bio says she "worked on human rights, democracy, and innovation" at her pre-Wikimedia jobs. These pieces of crap are always "working on poverty" or "working on human rights" but never bloody doing anything.
NPR and its employees deserve everything that's going to happen, or more likely not happen, during this nutjob's tenure.
oh yeah that is one awful AWFL
“If tomorrow morning the entire West were conquered by anyone from Chi Com to Putin to ISIS, all of these well-off well-compensated leaders would switch sides in a heartbeat.”
This to me is the key insight. Every civilization has had people like this, but it’s rare that this type accounts for 90% of the elite. That’s our postmodern western difference.
How to account for it? Is it that both far left and reactionary right have always been right about the bourgeoisie? Or it it that our elite are a *managerial* elite? Are these maybe the same thing?
a big serving of Burnham's "Managerial Revolution" with a nice dash of Rieff's "Triumph of the Therapeutic" topped w Lasch's "Revolt of the Elites".
It seems that communism, socialism, liberalism all end up in the same place: rule by a managerial caste. Guess is the modern version of rule by aristocracy.
A sundae from Hell.
They've both always been right, and yes, those are the same thing.
A man like David Frum gladly served George W. Bush. He would serve Joe Biden or Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Wittmer or Justin Trudeau if asked.
no mention in the American media. The left have effectively outlawed conservativism. Biden said Trump talking was a threat to democracy. They have always seen the state as a tool to push their ideology. What naive fools we were to think "liberals" would stand against this when it was their side who was doing it to win. They will go along and hope for the best but something tells me this end with the liberals being banned and jailed right next to the conservatives. We were warned for years by people who, like myself, were very leftwing at one time and saw the beast up close when it was still fairly harmless. But no big surprise and shame is not going to work, they are shameless. Only political will at the polls that will elect a gov that can then force the left to off the street and would say no to pressure tactics. Something tells me that Europe is at about the 2020 level of white guilt progressive authoritarianism.
I hope rather than believe that voting will get us out of this
If Trump wins in November, the streets will be full of leftists rioting and burning and breaking into stores and buildings.
It's not a prediction if the thing you predict has already happened.
This would have been a prediction in 2016.
Fortunately, it will be mostly peaceful.
Pearl clutching about this happening in the den of the EU is like a Sooner being shocked he can’t find a crimson T-shirt to buy in Stillwater. Ol’ Pistol Pete is a pretty rough fella. Might oughtta look elsewhere.
Perhaps the point was to trigger them.
I can't believe Burgomeister Meisterburger didn't get a call from some hack outside Ursula's office with some suggestions.
"Concert Noble’s owners, Edificio, said its position was one of 'respecting the key European values of democracy which have enabled Belgium and the European Union, of which Brussels is the capital, to enjoy a long period of peace and prosperity since the Second World War'."
Orwell, call your office!
The "peace and prosperity" is coming to an end in Brussels, and these "defenders of democracy" want to ban those raising the alarm.
Sue the Guardian. They need a reality check.
You’re like the weatherman being blamed for the storm here.
It's the U.K. It might stand a chance if he can get a U.S. venue on account of the Internet, but I don't like the sound of that either.
At whatever major cosmopolitan centre you seek to meet in western Europe you’re going to run into these latter day brownshirts (this time on the left) with whom the political establishment is in sympathy or before whom they’re completely cowed. This being the reality, it would seem to make sense to look for smaller centres with limited ingress and egress, i.e. where the thugs can’t easily get at you and the local authorities can more easily control those who do.
Point of order: the brownshirts were always on the left. It's called the National Socialist party, after all.
Why on earth anybody confuses fascism with any kind of conservatism is amazing. Simply opposing Stalin and Stalinists is the one, single, absolutely crucial common denominator and sole defining characteristic that seems to unite fascists and conservatives in the diseased minds of the Left as if they were one and the same.
In reality, fascists were modernist revolutionaries themselves (as Rod's recent citation of Italian Futurism indicates--as does everything else about fascists for anyone who cares to look). The Italian Fascists and the German Nazis had little truck with the kind of careful conservative politics of the English-speaking shopkeeping nations that they sneered at so contemptuously. Confusion of Fascism and Nazism with the U.S. GOP and the British Tories is as stupid as it is evil.
Well, one group of people that "confused" National Socialism with conservatism were German bankers and industrialists, whom the Reds had scared the crap out of. Hitler pulled that one off pretty neatly. Read his speeches to the businessmen both before and after January 1933.
No one was confused. And bankers and industrialists aren’t conservative. They’re opportunists. The elements of the Junker class and the Catholics who were swayed might be more of an argument, but the contempt Hitler had for the old aristocracy is legendary.
Um, scare quotes?
Re: Why on earth anybody confuses fascism with any kind of conservatism is amazing.
Part of the problem is that we Americans tend to view everything on a left-right axis, when elsewhere politics is more complicated than that. The fascists and their fellow travelers were innovators not traditionalists but they supported the existing moneyed elite to the detriment of the working class. In the US those types are classed with the right, since they usually have made alliance with real conservatives-- and even in Europe the old style "throne and altar" conservatives were more likely to support fascistic parties when their own parties had no hope of power, often in the hopes they could control them (and usually they could not)
"...but they supported the existing moneyed elite to the detriment of the working class..."
That was Orwell's line and I'm afraid it's simply not true. The German working class benefited greatly from the new kind of prosperity Hitler introduced in the '30s and they were the last to desert him in 1945. Italians of all classes will tell you of the good the Duce did as long as they can trust you.
In 1933 Stalin and the Communists would have benefited the German workers. It's often stated, erroneously, that the Nazis rode the German inflation to power. But that was long over with by the 30s. Rather it was the Great Depression, with over one third of the German work force out of work, that propelled them to success. The US was very lucky to have FDR who did not overthrow the constitutional order to respond to our woes in the Depression. We all hate inflation-- but high and sustained unemployment is far more toxic and damaging to a society.
"It's often stated, erroneously, that the Nazis rode the German inflation to power. But that was long over with by the 30s. "
Please indicate where I said that. Oh, look at the time.
Yes, certainly. What I find amazing is Americans' inability to grasp coalition politics, in other words. Even though our own political parties are odd coalitions. Just look at how much the civil liberties lobby is now regarded not as the heirs of the 1970s ACLU, but of the KKK, being accused of "dog-whistles" for racism whenever free speech is mentioned now. The idea that people like Matt Taibbi secretly want to use the n-word in ordinary discourse without qualification or sanction is ludicrous.
NatCon has met in Brussels before. And in Rome. And in London. No problems. This is new.
Alas, I suspect what you’re encountering now is soon going to become the norm
Clearly the goal is to make any and all assemblies of any group opposed to Antifa or its favored causes impossible. Coupled with surveillance state power, things are going to get very dicey soon.
Someone is nervous about the next EU elections?
Bingo.
Probably NatCon needs to look at other venues-- Budapest most obviously, but Krakow, Bucharest or Sofia might be possibilities.
Just awful. The Right really needs its own event space. Some organizations have started to understand this. Corporate hotels will always, always bow to political pressure.
VDARE took that approach. I understand that they have their own meeting space funded through a few wealthy donors.
Yes. And the Berkeley Springs Castle is highly secured by fencing. It is helpful that the Brimelows are well-liked in the town. Morgan County went 75 % for Trump.
I do have some sympathy for hotels in cases like this. They make they money by hosting guests and will suffer if some wacko political demonstration is going on blocking access.
Particularly when they can’t trust the local authorities to provide substantive protection
I remember hearing radio dispensationalists in the 70's calling the Common Market (which became the EU) the Beast of the Apocalypse, and they were right!
:) To be fair, I think there was a time in the 70's with the Common Market had 10 members.
Too bad they can't get Jack Chick. He's otherwise engaged.
Chick's little comic books were comedy gold.
There is no future in Western Europe. None. It is foolish to pretend that there is. If you're any kind of traditionalist of Caucasian descent, your best hope at this point is that Putin really does decide to roll across the continent.
There is not hope here in Maryland as well….the Archdiocese has just announced the closing of 61 parishes to make 21. Bankruptcy with the sex scandals and dwindling attendance. We are truly shrinking as believers in Christ.
Were they ever actual believers? We are nowhere close to the kind of mob pressure that Peter experienced to deny Christ.
That's correct. Peter experienced Christ and his miracles first hand and was still so afraid that he denied knowing Christ (3 times!). It's worrisome to think what most of us will do when facing real persecution. And sadly it's feasible "will do" is more appropriate than "would do".
It's easy to talk tough. Much, much harder to live up to that tough talk when the going gets rough for us, or our loved ones that can still be canceled.
Much of that is due to the fact that the old ethnic communities have moved out to the suburbs, or farther away. When I moved to Baltimore in 2008 there were half a dozen Catholic churches just blocks away from each other on the near east side. I googled this on seeing your comment and I am rather saddened to see that St Vincent de Paul, right by downtown, is going to close. It is one of the older, historical churches, something of a landmark with its federal style architecture, and even when I lived there it was famous (and sometimes infamous) for its charitable work among the homeless.
I read that this morning. Ethnic Baltimore is virtually all gone. Catholic Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Italians and Irish. Baltimore peaked at 900,000 in 1950. But the ethnics moved out to Baltimore County and northern Anne Arundel in the 50s, 60s and 70s. They pushed further out to Carroll, Howard and Harford Counties in the 80s and 90s. I can't see why the city needs more than the Basilica for symbolic purposes. Baltimore's population today are non-Catholic blacks as a majority with trendy, leftist whites who can't be bothered with religion as the chief minority.
There's still some Italians in Little Italy and some Geeks in Greektown. There is even a small Lithuanian settlement not far from where I lived. But Little Italy is gentrifying as Harbor East becomes the New Downtown, and Greektown is slowly going Hispanic as that demographic spreads out from Highlandtown.
St. Casimir's in Canton is still a robust parish, according to friends who attend.
And how would he do that?
And why would he want to?
Hold the next one in Hungary. (But they would have to watch the border crossings carefully for a while.)
Remember all the proggie commenters on your AmCon blog who after the Summer of Floyd were saying that Antifa was basically a small, uninfluential group of left-wing cosplayers who really had no power to affect anything and that the Right was overreacting to them?
As I recall, "What Antifa?" as Portland was racked night after night after night.
I actually do have a question about these Belgian radicals: Is it the case of Rod (and others) calling them "Antifa" because of similar ranting and tactics to the American far leftists, or have they adopted the name themselves?
European Antifa were the originals, going back decades. The American ones learned their tactics from them. I have no doubt these most recent troublemakers are Antifa.
Thanks for the info
Molly Hemingway did a great deep-dive into the roots of Antifa a few years ago. Should be easy to find.
Iirc there were also administration talkers who mocked the whole idea that it really exists as an organization. Just a general anti-fascist sentiment. I think Biden himself may have said it.
Better go to Antwerp, which has a right-wing mayor.