New Zealand – Strategic Culture Foundation https://www.strategic-culture.org Strategic Culture Foundation provides a platform for exclusive analysis, research and policy comment on Eurasian and global affairs. We are covering political, economic, social and security issues worldwide. Sun, 10 Apr 2022 20:53:47 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.16 Humanity Is Sleepwalking Towards Medical Apartheid. We Need an Honest Debate Before It’s Too Late https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/10/28/humanity-sleepwalking-towards-medical-apartheid-we-need-honest-debate-before-its-too-late/ Thu, 28 Oct 2021 18:01:01 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=759559 The tragic state of affairs, justified by a disease with a better than 99 percent survival rate, cannot continue indefinitely.

Even as scientific studies show that vaccines alone cannot extricate humanity from the Covid-19 crisis, governments are rushing headlong towards the creation of a ‘vaccinated economy’ without any consideration for the consequences. It’s time for an injection of sanity and informed democratic debate.

An astonishing thing happened this week that should have – were it not for a media industrial complex that coddles and cossets the powers that be – incited journalists to scream bloody murder around our increasingly imprisoned planet. What the world got instead was the deafening cacophony of crickets.

When a reporter asked New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern about the possibility of the Pacific island nation being fragmented into two distinct classes of citizens – the vaccinated and unvaccinated – Arden didn’t miss a beat as she responded with her trademark Cheshire grin, “That is what it is. So yep. Yep.”

After being further prodded by the deferential journalist as to why she favored apartheid, Ardern, who has already mandated vaccines for government employees or else, responded, unscientifically, that “people who have been vaccinated will want to know that they are around other vaccinated people; they’ll want to know that they’re in a safe environment.”

Under normal conditions – that is, before scientific inquiry was sent back kicking and screaming to the Dark Ages – Ardern’s outrageous remark would have been greeted by robust and vigorous debate from both the political and medical communities. After all, the vaccinated should feel absolutely at ease mingling among the unvaccinated in stuffy public places given that they are, supposedly, protected? Isn’t that the point of the vaccines, to protect the vaccinated and get us back to some semblance of ‘normal’? If not, then why the incessant push to jab every single person on the planet, and not just once, as initially promised, but multiple times? The answer, at least according to Queen Ardern, is so that everyone can feel “confident” once again among their fellow man. That makes absolutely zero sense, especially as new studies show no discernible decrease in infection rates among the vaccinated. So why hedge our bets when just the opposite seems to be happening?

In a recent study by Harvard researchers, published in the European Journal of Epidemiology, it was discovered that, looking at statistics around the world, “there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases…” The researchers then delivered a brutal body slam to conventional (political) thinking by revealing that “the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have HIGHER (emphasis added) COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.”

That is a truly shocking discovery, and one that deserves a serious public debate now that a mandatory vaccination regime – replete with the loss of jobs and lives – is being bolted down across much of the globe. But instead of addressing the health crisis with a modicum of restraint and humility, many politicians are gleefully capitalizing on the pandemic, using it as an opportunity to accumulate ever greater political power. This disturbing trend is happening across much of the Western hemisphere where, in what must be one of the greatest coincidences of modern times, a coterie of like-minded liberal leaders hold the destiny of mankind in their very hands. This cannot be considered a good thing by any stretch of the imagination. Although these individuals may owe no special favors to the pharmaceutical industry, their collective actions – denying the unvaccinated the same inherent rights to liberty and freedom as other citizens, including the corporate variety  – do not support such a premise.

So how to explain this unprecedented power grab happening around the world? Best to examine the unmatched power of the media that promotes the message of Covid authoritarians, like Jacinda Ardern, and their unflinching devotion to a fragmented apartheid state. All in the name of health, of course.

Political commentator Chantelle Baker told Sky News Australia that Ardern enjoys practically “full control” of the narrative in New Zealand because the government has paid “hundreds of millions” to the media. Now, in return, the citizens are stuck with compromised journalists who will “only push for promotion of Jacinda and…her ideological ideas.”

Around the globe, in another power-grabbing liberal hotspot, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also enjoys no small amount of mainstream media support. In its 2019 budget, the federal government lavished select media outlets to the tune of $600 million in subsidies, the overwhelming bulk of the largesse going to left-leaning publications, of course.

“Trudeau’s media bailout will not save the newspaper business,” warned Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, one of the last free and independent media voices in Canada. “It will put it in a complacent, comatose state on life support, fearful that if it acts against its master, that the plug could be pulled at any time.”

South of the border, in the United States of Submission, the liberal-dominated media is almost 100 percent aligned behind Joe Biden and his mandatory vaccine regime. The media whitewashing of the subject comes even as several states, including Texas, Florida and Arizona have drawn a line in the sand, allowing their citizens loopholes from which to escape the wildly draconian, ‘vaccinate-or-vacate’ your job stance.

Returning to the Pacific basin, in Australia, where new cases of Covid have decreased to a trickle, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews is snorting heavily from the absolute power stash, attempting to ram home a bill that would empower him to pronounce, like any degenerate Caesar, any and all future pandemics and the necessary emergency provisions.

In a delightful document entitled the Roadmap – which comes off a bit like a Mad Max sequel – Andrews, who apparently moonlights as a PhD when he’s not pretending to be a leader, postulates that “there will come a time when Victorians who choose not to get vaccinated will be left behind…” as Australians begin “transitioning to a ‘vaccinated economy’ in this state, and ensure we have the right systems in place.”

Those are some truly disturbing words, and ones that few people would expect to be tossed around blithely by a western leader in the 21st century. In fact, they fly in the face of democratic theory to the point where the question of abuse of powers cannot be discounted. I suspect this is the real reason why the ‘progressive’ radicals now working overtime in the U.S. to fracture societies around the planet are the same people who wish to eliminate Thomas Jefferson from the annals of American history, starting with stone depictions of his existence.

Jefferson, in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which he authored, famously states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Across the so-called Five Eyes alliance, comprised of the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, a homegrown tyranny based on a creeping medical apartheid is threatening the “life, liberty and pursuit of Happiness” worse than all of history’s former tyrants combined. Covid-19 did not create the unbearable conditions for which millions of people from Auckland to Alaska are now suffering; what created our current crisis is the reckless response to Covid-19, which increasingly appears to be based not on medical science, but rather raw political opportunism. This tragic state of affairs, justified by a disease with a better than 99 percent survival rate, cannot continue indefinitely. In fact, it needs to end immediately.

]]> ‘COVID Zero’ New Zealand Has Completed Its Transformation Into a Full-Blown Police State https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/09/05/covid-zero-new-zealand-has-completed-its-transformation-into-full-blown-police-state/ Sun, 05 Sep 2021 19:38:29 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=751499 By Jordan SCHACHTEL

New Zealand, the last of the dedicated “COVID Zero” nations on earth, has completed its transformation into a full-blown tyrannical regime, and shockingly, it has come with the consent of the vast majority of Kiwis.

Once hailed as the media and “public health experts’” favorite COVID-19 managerial “success story,” the puff pieces have been increasingly hard to find, as Wellington has spawned a dystopian concoction of insane, despotic government edicts, claimed as an absolutely necessary part of their everlasting fight against a disease with a 99.8% recovery rate.

Just observe what has happened in the Five Eyes partner nation during this week alone:

1) Virtually the entire country is once again under an indefinite lockdown, after a few COVID-19 cases were reported throughout the nation.  A single case necessitates a “snap lockdown,” in which all rights of millions of citizens are immediately restricted and indefinitely subject to the containment of a seasonal respiratory disease. The current lockdown has been extended over Auckland until at least mid September, with many predicting a much lengthier sentence. According to past precedent, Kiwis will not receive their freedom back until — this is the truly insane part of Zero COVID — there is zero community spread of COVID-19.

And the second another case pops up on the radar, the entire country goes back to square one of the Zero COVID protocol.

2) A man is being shamed by his countrymen for having the audacity to “escape” from a government-sanctioned COVID internment camp. The camps have been described in a more positive, but false light by the press and government officials as “quarantine hotels,” but it is most certainly an internment facility, as leaving is not allowed, and it carries a fine and lengthy prison sentence.

The Hill reported: “The person was charged with failing to comply with New Zealand’s coronavirus health order. Under a new law passed last year, he could face a fine or up to six months in jail if convicted.”

3) The country’s police and military services are installing security checkpoints throughout New Zealand in an effort to make sure citizens are not traveling during the lockdown. Freely traveling during the lockdown now carries a massive fine and/or prison sentence as punishment.

New Zealand is now the only country in the world left that is dedicated to COVID Zero, the pursuit of the total elimination of a virus from their nation, which has been under a government-sanctioned self-siege since the beginning of 2020. All of the other nations that attempted to pursue the pseudoscience behind COVID Zero have failed in catastrophic fashion. New Zealand has transformed from a highly-touted COVID “success story” to a full-fledged house of horrors, and sadly, there is no end in sight to the ongoing madness.

dossier.substack.com

]]> Where Are the Strong Western Leaders of Yesteryear (Now That We Really Need Them)? https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/08/18/where-strong-western-leaders-of-yesteryear-now-that-we-really-need-them/ Wed, 18 Aug 2021 17:46:48 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=748586 Regrettably, the truly great Western leaders of the type that once dominated the world stage are gone, and it seems that that is no accident.

The Western hemisphere is suffering from a dearth of political talent at a time when a wave of Cultural Marxist ideology is being forced on the people, already suffering under the physical and mental strain of a pandemic and its draconian response.

This month, New Zealand’s Green Party, which shares power with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s ruling Labour Party, removed a portrait of Winston Churchill, the famed British statesman, from a public area in the Parliament House. It seems that the left-leaning lawmakers could not handle the daily reminder as to what a devoted leader of the people truly looks like. Thus they proceeded to do what the left does best, which is to play the deranged game of cancel culture with their own history.

The left-wing beef with the ‘British Bulldog’ is that he promoted imperialistic views, as well as hostility towards socialism, so apparently we’re supposed to forget that the British statesman helped to save the world from the scourge of Nazi Germany during World War II. Thus, without any democratic debate on the matter, Churchill’s visage was swiftly moved to a less conspicuous place lest anymore leftist sensitivities come under assault. In Churchill’s place the Greens said they will display “new art by a tangata whenua artist.”

What the asinine stunt by the New Zealand Leftists effectively demonstrates is the pathetic depths to which statesmanship has fallen. After all, are we not in the midst of a pandemic? With the fate of humanity on the line, how is it conceivable that the idea of removing the portrait of a dead white man – and not necessarily the most infamous in the rogue’s gallery – entered anybody’s head? What better way for these politicians to deflect attention away from their own questionable leadership skills than by dragging up the deficiencies of past statesmen?

As to be expected, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern passed on a very good opportunity to take the steam out of the woke movement’s global inquisition as she expressed ambivalence over Churchill’s removal.

“I personally do not care where portraits hang in Parliament – I care about what we do in this place,” she told reporters. “We’ve got a responsibility to look after New Zealanders in a massive crisis we’re facing.”

“Frankly, who hangs on the wall at the time we do it – I don’t care.”

How is it possible that Ardern “doesn’t care” about paying a very humble homage to a talented statesman who helped forge cooperation between New Zealand and Great Britain during World War II in their mutual effort to defeat Hitler? Churchill, in the face of a real existential crisis, demonstrated political acuity and aptitude and not a moment too late. Ardern, facing her own crisis that goes by the name of Covid, unfortunately cannot say the same.

Although her island nation of some 5 million inhabitants has recorded just 26 Covid-related deaths since the beginning of the pandemic and under 3,000 confirmed infections, Ardern just announced that New Zealand will keep its borders closed to international travellers (with exceptions made for Google founder, Larry Page, of course) until the end of the year.

In February, after three new local COVID-19 cases were reported in Auckland, Ardern  ordered everyone to stay home except for essential shopping and essential work. In March, the entire country went into full lockdown for an entire month.  The message is clear: New Zealanders, much like other places where the simple pleasures in life – shopping, traveling, eating at a restaurant – are becoming severely hindred with the introduction of vaccine passports, will be forced to forever coordinate their life plans with that of a viral outbreak.

Is that the sort of action a leader cut from the same cloth as Winston Churchill would have advised under similar circumstances? It’s very difficult to imagine. Regrettably, the truly great Western leaders of the type that once dominated the world stage are gone, and it seems that that is no accident. As the trajectory of international politics moves from the national to the global, the very worst type of politician – weak, craven and more subservient to global institutions, like George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and their warped ideologies – have been thrust into the spotlight.

These new and very underachieving ‘woke’ leaders, typified by the likes of US President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are very poor substitutes for the leaders of yesterday who possessed the conviction, spirit and courage necessary for the success of Western democracy.

Although they had their flaws, is it very difficult to imagine, for example, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and ex-French President Jacques Chirac – two fiercely independent European leaders who, together with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, expressed their opposition to the US and UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 – opening up Europe’s borders to accommodate millions of illegal aliens. Yet that is exactly what Macron, the former Rothschild investment banker, and Merkel have succeeded in doing to Europe, where in the year 2015 alone over 1 million illegal migrants entered various European states for a taxpayer-subsidized lifestyle. That inexplicable decision has an American version now furiously underway on the US-Mexico border – during the peak of a pandemic, no less – thanks to the destructive policies put in place by the Biden administration.

At the same time, Brussels has committed itself to promoting the transgender ideology that first took root in the United States before spreading around the Western hemisphere. In fact, Jacinda Ardern’s New Zealand has the dubious distinction of being home to the world’s first transgender Olympian. In the Tokyo Summer Games, Laurel Hubbard competed for New Zealand in the weightlifting event.

Now, the Eastern European nation of Hungary, which has just passed child protection laws similar to that of Russia’s that forbid sexual propaganda in kindergartens, schools, on television and in advertisements, faces severe sanctions from Brussels for daring to do the right thing. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who singlehandedly halted the flow of illegal migration into the continent with the construction of a border fence along the Serbian border, said he would let the Hungarian people decide on the issue in a referendum.

Hungarians will be asked whether they support the teaching of sexual themes in schools without parental consent, and whether they believe gender reassignment procedures, complete with puberty blockers, hormone drugs and radical surgeries, should be promoted among children.

Now that the global mainstream media largely supports open borders, transgender ideology, and every other leftist narrative (which, by the way, makes the question of premeditated collusion a viable one), the importance of strong and courageous leaders to stand up to the madness is of the utmost importance. Yet for every Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin, who seem to rule with the best interest of their people and nation at heart, there are one hundred venal and spineless leaders who would sell their country and people down the river for a song.

The reason for the removal of Winston Churchill’s portrait from the New Zealand Parliament had nothing to do with the shortcomings of the British statesman, and everything to do with the glaring deficiencies of today’s lackluster liberal leaders who could not bear to be reminded of their mediocrity every time they passed the picture of the great man in the hall.

]]> How to Best Defend New Zealand From Nuclear War and Climate Change https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/27/how-to-best-defend-new-zealand-from-nuclear-war-and-climate-change/ Wed, 27 Jan 2021 16:21:49 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=670229 By Hugh STEADMAN

We often hear from Government and Media spokespeople about the need to support the “international rules-based-order” (IRBO). However, the question needs to be asked, just what ‘rules’ is this order – so vigorously promoted by USA, the UK, Australia, NZ, and other nations in Washington’s orbit – based on? New Zealand’s continued existence might well depend on a successful reimagining of these rules governing Global Politics, so such a goal must be a priority for our Government’s foreign affairs agenda in this term.

The Dig recently ran a most timely item by Robert Patman on the foreign policy challenges facing New Zealand’s new Government. Patman advocates New Zealand adding its diplomatic voice to those nations wishing to revise the status quo as exemplified by the international rules-based-order (IRBO) to which western governed spokespeople, including New Zealand’s are so fond of claiming their allegiance.

The fairness of the ‘rules’ on which the IRBO is based, and for that matter, how ‘orderly’ it’s application is, are a subject of great contention for many, particularly for those in the Global South and non-US-aligned nations. A candid debate about – who wrote, who benefits from, and who is preventing change to – these rules, is long overdue.

Such a dialogue could benefit our entire Civilisation, and indeed our global biodiversity system. It could lead to greater peace-building, less inequality, and more collaboration towards solving the greatest problems we face – Climate change and Global War. Reimagining this system, might seek to build a more multilateral, uncorrupted, global governance system based on the free consent of all nations. It would likely be characterised by more proportionate power and wealth sharing, and more equitable enforcement institutions. It would enable the untapping of vast amounts of potential and ingenuity in the underdeveloped world, and truly create for the first time, an International Community of nations founded on respect and equality.

The International Rules-Based order

Rocket Lab’s private launch site: Launch Complex 1 in Māhia, New Zealand. Source Rocket Lab.

“Our defence engagement with the United States amplifies NZ’s ability to contribute to the international rules-based order and international security and to protect and promote New Zealand’s interests.”

Ron Mark, then NZ Minister of Defence,

The above quote is taken from a recent email from Ron Mark, then NZ Minister of Defence, in answer to a NZ peace activist’s questions regarding military satellites being launched from NZ territory by USA owned company Rocket Lab Ltd. His stated reasoning of supporting the ‘rules-based-international-order’ regularly features in New Zealand’s Defence White Papers. In this September’s issue of the NZ International Review, Defence Minister, Ron Mark, in an article looking back on the achievements of his time in office, mentioned New Zealand’s support for this ‘rules-based-international-order’ no less than six times.

Hon. Ron Mark (L) with Former Deputy PM, Hon. Winston Peters.

Perhaps the question needs to be asked just what ‘rules’ are these on which NZ’s defence policy is based and that the USA, the UK, Australia and other nations in Washington’s orbit so vigorously promote? As would be apparent to any follower of international relations since WWII, these rules suit the nations that have the power to set them more than they suit those that don’t. “Britannia rules the waves and Britain waives the rules!”

To the detriment of all mankind, they have allowed the worst offender to steal an imagined short-term economic advantage by unilaterally tearing up the Paris agreement on climate change.  Likewise, the JCPOA, designed to ensure that Iran would not develop nuclear weapons and in return, that its population would be spared crippling economic sanctions, was unilaterally binned by the ‘leader’ of our rules-based-order. Under the present set of rules, torture, assassination, subversion of other nations’ governments, the calculated instigation of hostilities and insurrection through false-flags and the deliberate misleading of public opinion, can be, and have all been carried out with impunity.

These rules have allowed the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Serbia, Libya, the knee-capping by Israeli snipers of hundreds of Palestinian protesters and the displacement of millions of refugees. The system allowed the dropping of 7.5 million tons of bombs on the peoples of Vietnam Laos and Cambodia, and continues to allow untold, long-range terrorisation of populations and sudden death from invisible drones. They allow for the manipulation of the global monetary system to enforce economic sanctions thereby, effectively impairing the livelihoods, health and happiness of a significant percentage of the global population.

Global disorder collapse online by Ingram Pinn

This October, the USA imposed fresh banking sanctions on Covid-19 stricken Iran that will severely limit its ability to provide medical assistance to its population.  Amongst so much else, the rules-based-system accepts the deliberate subversion and sabotage of humanity’s attempts at building effective, multinational institutions such as the WHO, the OPCW and the ICC.

A web-search for ‘treaties unsigned or unratified by the United States’ provides a list of international agreements the leaders of ‘our natural allies’, have withdrawn from, refused to ratify, or have ratified and subsequently unilaterally withdrawn from.

These treaties represent the ‘rules’ on which the global system is meant to be based and which NZ claims to be defending.

How can New Zealand keep a straight face? In order to preserve the ‘international rules-based order,’ on which it claims its national security depends, it is, at the same time, training with,  cooperating with, and giving the comfort of its publicly demonstrated approval to the instigators of these multiple, abhorrent (and what would amount to, were there a universal and enforceable rule of law – criminal) actions?

If NZ’s national security really depends on its being party to this egregious misconduct, at least New Zealanders should be spared our government’s hypocrisy in calling it ‘a rules based order.’ A spade should be called a spade. Let’s acknowledge the present, so-called ‘rules-based order,’ for what it is: an anarchic playground in which the most powerful and least afraid of using coercion, decide the rules by which less powerful nations have to abide. Such a system bears a closer resemblance to the rule of the jungle than to the international rule of law.

NZ governments should stop pretending. They need either to openly admit that NZ prefers to accept that might is right, or take effective action in support of the international rule of law. To do so would entail a refusal to participate in the present ‘rules based order’ with its inherent aggressiveness, so well exemplified by the obscene tonnage of bombs dropped on defenceless nations and the thousands of drone-traumatised children in developing countries.

Now, New Zealand is being frog-marched into supporting this aggressive alliance in its conflict with China, one of NZ’s two main trading partners. Despite the deliberate distortions in the mainstream (or more precisely ‘corporate’) Western media, China remains a scrupulous supporter of international law and institutions, and has dropped no bombs on anyone.

Robert Patman is completely justified in advocating New Zealand seriously consider joining the Non-aligned Nations Movement, or like solution. The NAM is no longer the force it was in its hey-day, and doing so would involve leadership to resuscitate it as the significant force in global politics that the world is in such want of. There are other organisations, such as the G77, that could also be considered as possible vehicles for a New Zealand diplomatic initiative. In this new era of interconnectedness that Patman so well describes, such a move can only be in New Zealand’s best national interest

NZ adopting such an autonomous policy of neutrality or non-alignment would involve a public disengagement from much of Washington’s rules-based-order. From such a position, instead of giving comfort to Washington, and its satellites by offering at least a tacit approval of their belligerence, New Zealand could then convincingly advocate for the world’s two biggest and most urgent ‘needs.’ These are firstly, reconciliation and peaceful coexistence between ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ blocs and secondly, the empowerment of the United Nations to enable it to ensure that the international community functions under an equitable and effective rules-based-international-order.

No convincing arguments can be made that the US and its allies are not an aggressive force liable to harm those refusing to submit to their self-interested ‘rules.’ It is much easier to find evidence that among those at the receiving end of the West’s aggression, China and Russia, despite the claims of the Western media’s highly effective PR machine, would willingly conform to an international rules-based-system.  Such a system would have to be governed through uncorrupted multilateral institutions in which the rules were arrived at multilaterally and with a much larger degree of consensus than seems attainable under the current UN constitution in which the victors of WWII still unjustifiably wield such disproportionate power.

Given that New Zealand’s continued existence might depend on the successful outcome of such an endeavour, such an end would be worth New Zealand’s full and enthusiastic advocacy.  The most recent issue of The New Zealand International Review contained an article about how Lichtenstein (population 38,000) has been instrumental in ensuring that waging aggressive war should be universally viewed as a crime against humanity.

Given the will, even the smallest nations can achieve major wins for humanity.

thedig.nz

]]> The Obligation to Discredit Colonial ‘Regret’ https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/10/12/the-obligation-to-discredit-colonial-regret/ Sat, 12 Oct 2019 11:00:12 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=211235 To mark the 250th anniversary since Captain James Cook invaded New Zealand, the British Ambassador Laura Clarke issued a private statement of “regret” to the indigenous groups, for the killing of Maori people upon landing.

“What we did today, really acknowledged, perhaps properly for the first time, that nine people and nine ancestors were killed in those first meetings between Captain Cook and New Zealand Maori, and that is not how any of us would have wanted those first encounters to have happened,” Clarke stated.

British colonialism, however, is replete with the genocide of indigenous populations to maintain the fabrication of terra nullis, or barren land, which justified and normalised colonial settlement. Cook’s first endeavours in New Zealand were followed by the systematic killing of the Aboriginal people in Tasmania and Australia. Clarke’s acknowledgement is nothing but a perfunctory statement which fails to even acknowledge indigenous collective memory.

The commemorations, which are state-funded and will be attended by New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, included the welcoming of a replica of the HMS Endeavour which brought bloodshed to New Zealand. The government’s approach to the commemoration sparked protest among the Maori groups for keeping in line with the colonial narrative. Maori leaders have rallied against the colonial narratives of Cook “discovering” New Zealand, rightly describing the landing as an invasion and Cook as part of the imperialist expansion endeavours which massacred the indigenous populations.

Tuia – Encounters 250 describes the commemoration activities as “an opportunity to hold honest conversations about the past, the present and how we navigate our shared future.” Yet the marginalisation of Maori voices, including the New Zealand’s government’s refusal to engage with Maori protestors, are clear indication that the “shared future” rhetoric is being used to eliminate the importance of indigenous narratives and memory. One main objection was the use of “euphemisms like encounters and meetings to disguise what were actually invasions.”

The government spent $13.5 million promoting the colonial narrative and held little consultation with the Maoris regarding the planned events. New Zealand’s Ministry for Culture said the flotilla would only stop “where a welcome is clear”. This specification indicates the government’s knowledge of indigenous disapproval and opposition, as well as its failure to mark the 250th anniversary of the invasion from an indigenous perspective.

In this regard, the New Zealand government’s stance is closer to the British statement excusing the colonial crimes against the Maori.

To mark the 250th anniversary, New Zealand could have embarked upon a different path – one that creates space for indigenous narratives to thrive and take precedence. It could also have demanded that Britain acknowledges its colonial theft and violence, instead of forcing equivalence between the coloniser and the colonised.

Speaking at the UN earlier this year, indigenous rights activist Tima Ngata declared with reference to the invasion, “to call that an ‘encounter’ is egregious in the extreme and a complete purposeful minimisation.”

Giving in to the colonial narrative as the New Zealand government has done legitimises colonial conquest and the massacre of the indigenous, besides outlining a tacit complicity in ensuring that colonialism remains cloistered as a historical topic. The truth is that colonialism is preventing indigenous narratives from taking their rightful place. Hence the massacres are being purposely overlooked to maintain the fictional narratives of exploration and discovery.

Understanding the colonial project is not tantamount to endorsement. What the British Ambassador and the New Zealand Prime Minister have achieved as a prelude to the 250th anniversary is a dilution of indigenous rights, narratives and memory. Regret is not an acknowledgement of colonial violence, especially when it refuses to acknowledge the victims murdered by the British Empire. Likewise, the New Zealand’s government’s dismissal of the Maori as “groups of people who have strong feelings” and who are expected to participate in an event that prioritises the glorification of Cook’s invasion is an aberration. The obligation, in New Zealand and elsewhere, is to discredit colonial ‘regret’.

]]> Clash of Civilizations 2.0 Sponsored by Prince and Bannon https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/26/clash-of-civilizations-2-0-sponsored-by-prince-and-bannon/ Fri, 26 Apr 2019 10:47:15 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=85325 Bannon, Prince, and other far-rightists are now attempting to impose on their followers and fellow-travelers the same sort of “groupthink” Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels applied to Germany.

Blackwater mercenary company founder Erik Prince and the self-appointed leader of Fascist International, Steve Bannon, have joined forces and dusted off the old discredited neo-conservative theory of “Clash of Civilizations,” to threaten global stability with religious and ethnic nationalism.

One of the more important revelations in former Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 election is the close working relationship Bannon established with Prince. Sensing fertile political ground for their far-right beliefs, Bannon and Prince have established, under the aegis of their professed Catholicism, a movement that threatens both the current pope and the European Union.

The Clash of Civilizations was the main tenet of Harvard University’s Samuel P. Huntington. Huntington also defended the pro-fascist Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Mexico and the military dictatorship of Brazil. Huntington was also a champion of South Africa’s apartheid state and advocated its “reform” rather than its abolishment. Huntington’s approaches to Latin American immigration into the United States serves a basis for the draconian anti-immigration policies of Donald Trump and his “immigration czar,” Stephen Miller. Huntington saw Europe and Western Europe, including Croatia and Slovenia, along with Australia and New Zealand as a “core civilization” against the rest of the world. Huntington made it a point to exclude from the core civilization the Christian Orthodox nations of the Balkans, including Greece, as well as Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Armenia.

To advance political domination by far-right political parties and politicians, Bannon has been busy establishing a training academy for far-right wing Christian zealots at the Trisulti Charterhouse in Collepardo in central Italy. Bannon has admitted that he is following George Soros’s global playbook. Instead of a neo-liberal global network, like that of Soros, Bannon is creating a far-right political movement in Europe that will extend its tentacles around the world, primarily in Huntington’s “core civilization” countries plus Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. With his political group, called “The Movement” in operation in Brussels and targeting upcoming European Parliament elections, Bannon has taken advantage of a schism within the Roman Catholic Church to convincing those opposed to Pope Francis I to permit him to set up shop in the 13th century monastery in Collepardo.

Bannon is clearly setting the stage for a revised “clash of civilizations” between Judeo-Christianity and the rest of the world. Fascism is seen as the preferred political system for the Western “core.”

Bannon’s colleague in the 2016 Trump campaign, Michael Ledeen, the notorious neo-conservative, wrote a book in 1972 that promotes the fascist political philosophy. Titled “Universal Fascism: The Theory and Practice of the Fascist International, 1928–1936,” Ledeen describes in glowing terms Mussolini’s efforts to create an international Fascist movement in the late 1920s and early 1930s. According to an interview Ledeen gave to the neo-con “National Review” in 2002, the Ledeen Doctrine boils down to the following credo: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Mussolini’s template has largely been adopted by Bannon, who, still has, along with arch neo-con national security adviser John Bolton, still have Trump’s ear on foreign policy.

Bannon is attempting to purge the nexus of his Judeo-Christian core civilization of perceived enemies, who include Vatican loyalists of Pope Francis. Bannon – in cooperation with the extremely conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke and former Pope Benedict XVI – has been waging a political jihad against Pope Francis. Bannon believes the current pontiff to be a dangerous liberal and a “Cultural Marxist,” who supported many of President Barack Obama’s policies. Bannon and a right-wing Catholic group close to Burke, the Institute of Human Dignity, or Dignitatis Humana Institute, which runs Bannon’s new headquarters at the Trisulti Abbey, opposes Francis’s goal of avoiding a “clash of civilizations” between Christianity and Islam.

Bannon, in cooperation with Cardinal Raymond Burke and former Pope Benedict XVI, has been waging a war against Pope Francis I. Bannon sees Francis as a dangerous liberal and a “Cultural Marxist,” who supported President Barack Obama’s policies. Bannon and a right-wing Catholic group close to Burke, the Institute of Human Dignity, or “Dignitatis Humana Institute,’ which owns Bannon’s new headquarters at the Trisulti Abbey, opposes Francis’s goal of avoiding a “clash of civilizations,” particularly one between Christianity and Islam.

Bannon’s financial firm, Bannon & Company, is investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, believed by many financial experts to be a giant scam. Cryptocurrencies are favored by neo-Nazis and fascists to fund their activities without the worry of financial surveillance from bank regulators and financial intelligence agencies. Bannon, as a former Goldman Sachs executive, understands how to avoid financial network roadblocks.

One of the mandatory studies at Bannon’s academy for neo-Nazis will most certainly be on the works and thoughts of Julius Evola (1898-1974), a far-right Italian philosopher, who provided the inspiration for several fascist terrorist attacks in Italy during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, including the deadly Bologna central rail station bombing in 1980. Bannon is a promoter of Evola’s doctrine, which is known as Traditionalism. The followers of Evola are called the “Children of the Sun” and they include adherents of two leading neo-Nazi parties in Europe: Golden Dawn in Greece and Jobbik in Hungary. Other Traditionalist philosophers, all of whom dabbled in Indo-European Aryan occultism and, to varying degrees, embraced fascism in the interwar years, include Romanian Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), French/Egyptian René Guénon (1886-1951), and Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) Ananda Coomaraswamy (1887-1947).

US neo-Nazi leader and “alt-right” term creator, Richard Spencer, a college friend of Trump’s anti-immigration czar, Stephen Miller, is also a follower of Evola. Evola’s writings were an inspiration to Benito Mussolini Fascist movement and Heinrich Himmler’s Schutzstaffel (SS). Evola even visited SS headquarters in Germany to proselytize his philosophy of fascism to the SS rank and file.

Bannon’s and Prince’s intertwined political finances were exposed during the 2016 presidential campaign. Prince donated some $150,000 to the pro-Trump PAC “Make America Number 1 in 2016.” In turn, the PAC funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Cambridge Analytica and Glittering Steel, a video production company. Bannon co-founded both companies. Bannon was also buoyed by generous funding from hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. Currently, with a seemingly endless supply of funds, Bannon is waging a far-right insurgency in Europe involving neo-Nazi, fascist, and right-wing Catholic organizations close to Opus Dei.

Erik Prince abandoned the conservative Calvinism of his auto parts-manufacturing wealthy father to embrace Catholicism, Opus Dei, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta – based in Rome and a rival-laden headache for Pope Francis – and the Legionnaires of Christ. Opus Dei was founded by Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá in 1928 as a pro-fascist and pro-Francisco Franco answer to the more liberal-minded Jesuits. It is noteworthy that Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pontiff, is currently experiencing a virtual civil war within the catholic Church and Vatican hierarchy, spurred on by the likes of Bannon, Prince, former Pope Benedict, and other right-wing members of the College of Cardinals.

Bannon, Prince, and other far-rightists are now attempting to impose on their followers and fellow-travelers the same sort of “groupthink” Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels applied to Germany. In his seminal work, Yale University professor Irving Janis summed up “groupthink,” particularly how groups can, conversely to bringing out the best in people, also bring out the worst. Janis’s 1982 book, “Groupthink,” describes the phenomenon by quoting 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.” Europe’s current fascination and widespread support for political parties that were largely banned and shunned after the Nazi defeat in 1945 have created an environment where Bannon, Prince, and their collaborators find ready audiences for their extremism. In such climates, a strategy of tension permits a clash of civilizations, which is nirvana for the neo-cons and extreme right.

The recent deadly Christchurch mosque attacks appear to have been the first act in a strategy of tensions conflict being waged by the far-right. The Easter Sunday bombings of churches in Negombo, Batticaloa, and Colombo, Sri Lanka, as well as three five-star hotels in Colombo – killing well over 300 people, were reportedly claimed by a hitherto unknown group called the National Thowheed Jamath or National Monotheism Organization. Sri Lanka’s government alleged the attacks were in retaliation for the Christchurch mosque bombings. Some things are known about the group claiming it carried out the attacks in Sri Lanka. It is not connected operationally to either the Islamic State or Al Qaeda, although the Islamic State made unverifiable claims of responsibility. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that New Zealand’s intelligence has no indication that the Sri Lanka attacks were in retaliation for the Sri Lanka attacks. It should be noted that New Zealand, as a member of the FIVE EYES signals intelligence alliance, has access to countless communications intercepts.

While flames leaped from Paris’s iconic Notre Dame Cathedral on April 15, a fire broke out at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Islam’s third-holiest shrine. In the weeks preceding the Notre Dame fire, vandals broke into Notre-Dame-des-enfants in Nîmes, France and smeared excrement on the crucifix and walls of the church. In March, a fire broke out at another famous Paris church, Saint-Sulpice. In February, a fire broke out in Lavaur Cathedral in Lavaur, France. That fire was preceded by vandalism of Saint Nicolas in Houilles and Saint Nicolas in Maisons-Laffitte in Yvelines.

Arson also destroyed three African-American churches in Opelousas, Louisiana. The son of a sheriff’s deputy was arrested for arson. Louisiana has recently been the scene of renewed activities by Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups.

All of the incidents – in New Zealand, Sri Lanka, France, and Louisiana – those confirmed as terrorism and those for which the jury is still out, should be viewed through the lens of the strategy of tensions and a final showdown between Christianity and Islam advanced by Bannon, Prince, and their supporters in Brussels and the Trisulti monastery.

The world has seen this particular play before. From the late 1960s to the 1980s, over two thousand people died in terrorist attacks blamed mainly on left-wing terrorists, including the Italian Red Brigades and West German Red Army Faction. The victims included the former Christian Democratic Prime Minister of Italy, Aldo Moro. The deadliest attack was the bombing of the Bologna rail station in 1980. Originally, there was an attempt to blame all the attacks, mostly bombings, on the left-wing groups. In fact, most of the attacks were carried out by neo-fascist groups hoping to have the Communists blamed. Inquiry commissions later determined that the neo-fascists and far-left groups all had links to the Central Intelligence Agency – which once employed Erik Prince’s Blackwater as a contractor – and the intelligence services of NATO members. It was the late Turkish Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, who revealed the name of the sinister association of NATO spies and false flag terrorists: Gladio.

]]> Who Spawned the Christchurch Killer? https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/19/who-spawned-christchurch-killer/ Tue, 19 Mar 2019 10:25:22 +0000 https://strategic-culture.lo/news/2019/03/19/who-spawned-christchurch-killer/ Patrick J. BUCHANAN

Last Friday, in Christchurch, New Zealand, one of the more civilized places on earth, 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, an Australian, turned on his cellphone camera and set out to livestream his massacre of as many innocent Muslim worshippers as he could kill.

Using a semi-automatic rifle, he murdered more than 40 men, women, and children at one mosque, drove three miles to another, and there killed seven more. Dozens are still wounded, suffering, and dying.

It was an atrocity and act of pure evil by a man with a dead soul.

Yet predictably, within 48 hours, the president of the United States was being publicly indicted as a moral accomplice.

Donald Trump, it was said, used a word, “invasion,” to describe the 76,000 migrants caught illegally crossing the US border in February. At the same time, the killer used that word to describe Muslim migration into the West.

The killer also mentioned Trump in his 74-page manifesto.

What further need have we of proof?

Trump also failed to express America's revulsion and his country's condolences to Muslims everywhere, and failed to denounce the “white nationalist” ideology that motivated the killer.

From there, it was a short jump to declare that we Americans have too long ignored this growing menace. Charlottesville, where a woman protester was run over by a neo-Nazi, was trotted out again and again.

But does the vision of America as a country where white racism is rampant and an unleashed white nationalism is running amok correspond with reality?

America's elites are familiar with the Acela Express, the train that runs from DC's Union Station to Penn Station in New York.

In which of the five Eastern Seaboard cities at which the Acela stops to take on and discharge passengers—Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, and New York—are white nationalists responsible for a significant share of the assaults, robberies, rapes, and shootings?

Chicago may lead the nation in total gun deaths. But the murder rate was highest in 2018 in St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, and Kansas City. In how many of these places are Klansmen and neo-Nazis regularly hauled in for violent crimes?

As for the mass murders of our new century, the racist right has perpetrated its share. Dylann Roof's killing of the black women and men at the Charleston church qualifies, as does the massacre of Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Yet a Muslim major, Nidal Hasan, fatally shot 13 soldiers at Fort Hood. In the 2015 San Bernardino massacre, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik left 14 dead and 22 wounded.

According to Forbes, of the 18,814 deaths caused by terrorists around the world in 2017, well over half were due to the actions of four groups: Islamic State, the Taliban, Al-Shabab, and Boko Haram.

All are Sunni Muslim; none are alt-right.

Undeniably, atrocities that exceed in bloodshed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre by Al Capone's gang, where seven men were stood against a wall in a Chicago garage and executed, have become all too common.

But the atrocities seized upon by the left as most representative are those that conform to a vision, a narrative, a pre-existing script. This preconceived idea is that America is a hotbed of white nationalism where the worst crimes are committed by white racists. And this is a myth.

Now, there are no excuses or defenses for what happened in Christchurch. But there is an explanation.

All peoples to some degree resent and resist the movement of outsiders into their space. Some migrants are more difficult than others to assimilate into Western societies. European nations that had not known mass migrations for centuries were especially susceptible to a virulent reaction, a backlash.

Americans, after all, reacted viscerally to the Irish migration of 1845-1849, and again to the Great Migration from Central and Eastern Europe from 1890 to 1920. Inter-ethnic violence was not uncommon.

Our leaders in the 1920s understood this and took steps to halt the migrations until those who had come could be assimilated, and, in a word, Americanized. It worked. By 1960, we were a united people.

Then, without the people's consent, the great experiment began.

America's doors were thrown open to peoples of every religion, race, culture, and creed, to create a different nation that mirrored all mankind in its diversity—in Ben Wattenberg's phrase, a universal nation.

The problem: a universal nation is a contradiction in terms. A nation of all races, religions, and tribes had never before existed.

The liberal democracies that embraced this ideology, this idea, are at war with human nature, and are now losing that war to tribalism and authoritarianism.

As for Christchurch, unfortunately, such horrors appear to have become the new normal. But Brenton Tarrant alone is responsible for what he did. And it was not Trump but the new world order globalists who fertilized the soil that spawned him.

theamericanconservative.com

]]> NZ Threatens 10 Years in Prison for ‘Possessing’ Mosque Shooting Video; Web Hosts Warned, ‘Dissenter’ Banned https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/18/nz-threatens-10-years-prison-for-possessing-mosque-shooting-video-web-hosts-warned-dissenter-banned/ Mon, 18 Mar 2019 14:26:00 +0000 https://strategic-culture.lo/news/2019/03/18/nz-threatens-10-years-prison-for-possessing-mosque-shooting-video-web-hosts-warned-dissenter-banned/ Tyler DURDEN

New Zealand authorities have reminded citizens that they face up to 10 years in prison for "knowingly" possessing a copy of the New Zealand mosque shooting video – and up to 14 years in prison for sharing it. Corporations (such as web hosts) face an additional $200,000 ($137,000 US) fine under the same law.

Terrorist Brenton Tarrant used Facebook Live to broadcast the first 17 minutes of his attack on the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand at approximately 1:40 p.m. on Friday – the first of two mosque attacks which left 50 dead and 50 injured.

Copies of Tarrant's livestream, along with his lengthy manifesto, began to rapidly circulate on various file hosting sites following the attack, which as we noted Friday – were quickly scrubbed from mainstream platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Scribd. YouTube has gone so far as to intentionally disable search filters so that people cannot find Christchurch shooting materials – including footage of suspected multiple shooters as well as the arrest of Tarrant and other suspects.

On Saturday, journalist Nick Monroe reported that New Zealand police have warned citizens that they face imprisonment for distributing the video, while popular New Zealand Facebook group Wellington Live notes that "NZ police would like to remind the public that it is an offence to share an objectional publication which includes the horrific video from yesterday's attack. If you see this video, report it immediately. Do not download it. Do not share it. If you are found to have a copy of the video or to have shared it, you face fines & potential imprisonment."

 

Dissenter blocked in New Zealand

Along with the censorship of online materials and investigation of content sharing platforms such as BitChute and 8chan – where the shooter posted a link to the livestream of his attack, social discussion service Dissenter has been blocked in New Zealand. Created by the people behind Twitter competitor Gab.ai – Dissenter is a browser extension which pops up a third-party comments section for any website where people can discuss content outside of the control of the website owner. 

On Saturday, Gab's official accounts (@gab and @getongab) reported that "New Zealand ISPs have banned dissenter.com until it is "censorship compliant.""

Update: Shortly after this article published, we were informed that ZeroHedge is unable to be reached by Votafone customers.

Milo banned

Meanwhile, far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from Australia in the wake of the New Zealand shootings after he said on Facebook that attacks like Christchurch happen because "the establishment panders to and mollycoddles extremist leftism and barbaric, alien religious cultures."

Australia's immigration minister, David Coleman, said in a Saturday statement that Yiannopoulos's comments were "appalling and forment hatred and division," adding "Milo Yiannopoulos will not be allowed to enter Australia for his proposed tour this year." 

UK man arrested

While the Christchurch attacks were utterly reprehensible, supporting them is now punishable in the United Kingdom. On Saturday afternoon, a 24-year-old man from Oldham was arrested on suspicion of sending malicious communications in support of the mosque attacks. It is unclear what he is alleged to have written. 

The Greater Manchester Police said in a statement that they "became aware of a post on social media making reference and support for the terrible events in New Zealand," adding "Police have made urgent enquiries and a man aged 24 from the Oldham area is now under arrest on suspicion of sending malicious communications."

"It is clear that people are worried and we really understand that… It is truly terrible what happened yesterday. It is hard to put into any form of words," said Assistant Chief Constable Russ Jackson, who added "We have nothing to suggest any threat locally, but none of this can diminish how people feel and that is why we want to be there to offer more support at this difficult time."

zerohedge.com

]]> Trump Supporters in Denial over New Zealand Massacre https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/17/trump-supporters-in-denial-over-new-zealand-massacre/ Sun, 17 Mar 2019 10:00:00 +0000 https://strategic-culture.lo/news/2019/03/17/trump-supporters-in-denial-over-new-zealand-massacre/ US President Donald Trump condemned the New Zealand massacre of 50 people by a self-declared white fascist as “horrible”. In an ambiguous choice of words, Trump said he sent his “warmest [sic] sympathies” to the victims of the mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch. He also seemed to downplay white supremacy violence as a problem.

With several surviving victims still in a critical condition, the death toll could rise in coming days.

Of course, Trump would be obliged to join in the international outpouring of condemnation over the barbaric cold-blooded act of mass murder. How could he not, given the shocking horror and depravity of the crime?

But his repeated nationalistic and nativist rhetoric as well as the ideologues whom he associates with make it very hard for Trump and his supporters to deny that there is a link between the White House occupant and the terrorist attack on Muslims in New Zealand, or white supremacist violence generally.

Supporters of Trump have scoffed at media claims made against Trump following the massacre insinuating the president is associated with “white nationalism” and thereby linked to the violence.

Admittedly, anti-Trump media in the US, such as CNN and MSNBC, will always seek every opportunity to undermine Trump. Nevertheless, on the point of Trump’s dalliance with extremist rightwing groups and their ideological memes there is a valid criticism to be made.

The alleged shooter in the New Zealand attack Friday was named as Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian citizen. He openly declared himself to be a fascist, avowing white supremacist ideology. In a so-called manifesto, the suspect refers to Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity”.

More significantly, the themes the alleged murderer espouses are central to the Alt Right movement and numerous other white nationalist groups in the US and Europe, issues which Trump has also promoted for political gain.

The themes of Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, white genocide by “invasion” or “replacement” by brown-skinned foreigners are run-of-the-mill talking points for far-right nationalist movements, which Trump has at times endorsed or given credence to.

Only days before the New Zealand massacre, Trump gave an exclusive interview with Breitbart News. The publication is a proponent of many of the themes surrounding fears of the “white race” being over-run by hordes of foreigners, and especially Muslim foreigners.

In his latest interview for Breitbart, Trump appeared to be inciting street violence by imploring his followers in the police and military to “get tough”. He tweeted a link to the publication. But following the horror in Christchurch, Trump deleted his tweet. That move suggests the president is fully aware of the toxic association with Breitbart at such a politically sensitive moment.

Trump and his supporters may try to play the innocent card, decrying what they would call are scurrilous attempt by the “liberal media” to bracket him with the violence of the far-right.

However, what else is one to conclude about Trump when he has personally amplified the touchstone causes of numerous fascist, white nationalist groups?

This week, Trump has pushed on with his border wall project. He has repeatedly sought to justify that project in sensationalist, scaremongering terms of preventing an “invasion” into the US from Mexico. The actual figures of migration over the southern border do not merit such high priority given by Trump to the “problem”. The proposed expenditure of $8-9 billion and declared state of emergency are “dog-whistling” techniques by Trump to mobilize far-right nationalist support.

Look at the people who associate with Trump. He may claim that their association is not reciprocated.

White neo-Nazi groups like Proud Boys and Alt Right have been hosted at Trump rallies. Alt Right leader Richard Spencer is partial to giving Nazi salutes at conferences and declaring “Hail Trump!”

David Duke, the grandmaster of the Klu Klux Klan, has publicly endorsed Trump.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former political strategist in the White House, is a big proponent of the “replacement theory” whereby it is claimed that Muslim, African and other immigrants are “invading” the US and Europe to obliterate traditional white Christian communities. This was a prime motive for the alleged shooter in the New Zealand massacre. It was also a motive for the mass murder in 2011 by Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik.

Trump has taken up the cause of white South African farmers who claim that they are being expelled from colonial lands by the ruling ANC black government. This theme has also been taken up in Zimbabwe, and is a major touchstone issue for white supremacist, fascist groups around the world. For Trump to dally with the issue is an unmistakable sign of his witting – albeit tacit – support to such ideology, even though he may publicly try to distance himself at times, such as in the aftermath of the Christchurch atrocity.

Typically with Trump there are abundant contradictions. His son-in-law and special advisor Jared Kushner is Jewish. Yet Trump was accused of giving support to a “Unite the Right Rally” in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, where the torch-bearing marchers chanted slogans about not being replaced by Jews.

There seems little room for denial by Trump or his supporters about his links to the rise of extreme rightwing, white nationalist, fascist groups. His blanket ban on asylum-seekers from Muslim countries, his unhinged rhetoric about “invasion” by foreigners, and Trump’s association with racist, fascistic ideologues all put this president in the dock for incitement. The reckless rhetoric of Trump’s demagoguery is manifest in depraved actions such as the mass murder of 49 Muslims in New Zealand.

Trump can’t wash his hands after cynically dabbling in the cesspool of fascist ideology. 

]]> Christchurch, Birmingham, and the Power of Islamic Victimhood https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/16/christchurch-birmingham-and-power-of-islamic-victimhood/ Sat, 16 Mar 2019 08:55:00 +0000 https://strategic-culture.lo/news/2019/03/16/christchurch-birmingham-and-power-of-islamic-victimhood/ It’s the massacre heard ‘round the world! Leaders react across the globe! Religious bigotry and hate must be rooted out!

Oh wait, not this one. This is just another Muslim massacre of Christian villagers in Nigeria. Ho-hum, nothing to see here folks. Just move along now…

Ah, here’s the right one! In the initial hours following the fatal shooting of several dozen Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the verdict was already in: this was a manifestation of white nationalism, which is a kind of “white ISIS.”

The only secondary question left to settle remains: Who bears the most blame, Donald Trump individually, Serbs collectively, or Robert E. Lee posthumously?

One thing we will not see is any effort to avoid a “backlash” from Christchurch. Remember in 2015, “After Charlie Hebdo attack in France, backlash against Muslims feared”? Well, as one Twitter user notes, you won’t see any headlines like “After Christchurch attack in New Zealand, backlash against white males feared.”

Quite to the contrary, backlash against the perceived ideology behind the mosque attack and its presumed toxic racist purveyors will be front and center worldwide. (How soon before it’s Putin’s fault?) Nor will we see the killings breezily dismissed as just “part and parcel of living in a big city,” as London’s mayor Sadiq Khan waved away the threat of terror after a bombing in New York.

As pointed out by Srdja Trifkovic (himself a deplorable Serb by birth) in Chronicles magazine (“New Zealand Attacks: Repercussions and Perspective,” March 15):

‘The developing frenzy of compassion with the victims of Christchurch will result in a number of mathematically predictable consequences:

· ‘The ruling elites and their media cohorts all over the Western world will have a field day equating “violent extremism” (which has nothing to do with “true Islam,” of course) with the neo-nazi, right-wing, white, Christian-inspired racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and all other traits of the deplorables; and yes, it will be Trump’s fault to boot.

· ‘Various Islamic activist in the West, such as the sharia-promoting CAIR in the US and its fellow-conspirators elsewhere, will clamor for ever more stringent laws criminalizing “Islamophobia,” effectively defined as any form of meaningful debate of Islam, its scriptural message, historical practice, and current ambitions.

· ‘Such demands will be promptly translated into legislative proposals by the jihadophile liberal class which will proclaim zero tolerance of “Islamophobia” as defined by CAIR et al. And, of course, they will demand additional Soviet/Nazi style gun laws.’ [ … ]

‘There will be no attempt to place today’s killings “in perspective,” as is invariably the case after Muslim terrorists strike Western targets—in Nice, Paris, Berlin etc.—killing hundreds of people. That “perspective” should include the fact that some 30 million Muslims reside in the Western world today (many more on their own reckoning), which makes the probability of any one of them falling victim to a deplorable attack in any given year roughly one in ten million… The odds of a Christian in a majority-Muslim country being murdered by a Muslim—simply for being what he is—approximately one in 70,000. This means a Christian living in a majority Muslim country is 143 times more likely to be killed by a Muslim for being a Christian than a Muslim is likely to be killed by a non-Muslim in a Western country for being what he is.’

Despite what by any metric is a gross imbalance between Islamic violence committed against the innocent and violence committed against innocents by Muslims, the Christchurch attack will be a new milestone in Islam’s empowerment as an aggrieved category, along with “other marginalized groups [that] have become victims of white supremacist ideologies in recent years.” Victimhood is the ultimate form of empowerment, with CAIR already calling for social media to further muzzle criticism of Islamic intolerance and opposition to jihad terror.

Another testament to the power of victimhood was provided recently in Birmingham, England, where angry parental opposition successfully, for now, beat back efforts to institute a program aimed at primary school pupils “to promote LGBT equality and challenge homophobia.” The parents, citing offense to their religious sensibilities, organized, protested strenuously, and threatened to yank their kids from the school in question. The school shelved the program.

Yay! Bravo for the parents! A win for the good guys!

Of course it’s relevant that 98 percent of the families in the school are Muslim. As Rod Dreher comments in The American Conservative:

‘Good for those Muslim parents! They have guts. They have a hell of a lot more courage than many US Christians do. What they are standing up to is not homosexuality, but the state’s sexual indoctrination of little children. Andrew Moffat, the gay teacher who came up with the program, and who has been teaching it to Muslim students in that school, knows perfectly well what he’s doing. The strategy liberals use in cases like this is that they have to make schools “safe” for kids, and to fight bullying. It’s nonsense. What they are doing is trying to sexualize little children, and to destroy the substance of what their religiously and socially conservative parents teach them, and in so doing undermine the authority of the parents.’

How would such a protest have worked out for any Christian parents with “guts”? It’s no mystery. First, we can be sure they’d have lost. Second, they’d be vilified and likely subjected to reprisals.

Birmingham illustrates the rock-paper-scissors nature of intersectionality. On this occasion anti-Islamophobia and the educational establishment’s dread of being called racist outweighed what in other contexts would be the invincible LGBT++ doubleplusgood ideology. The remnants of a disenfranchised Christian England are literally irrelevant spectators watching a fight between two empowered certified victim groups sparring with each other.

As pointed out by “Seoulite” in TAC, in the victim grievance department –

‘Muslims will continue to come out on top, for several reasons.
‘1. They have the numbers and will steadily keep increasing in relation to the LGBT brigade, especially in particular locales.
‘2. They can always play the race card, which will always beat the LGBT card.
‘3. They can always make subtle references to “marginalization” and “radicalization”. These are basically threats of blackmail: let us do what we want or we might start blowing ourselves up at pop concerts.
‘Unless the LGBT brigade start actually murdering Muslim children, bombs will always trump twitter criticism.’

In the intersectional pecking order the trump card is anti-racism (of which “Islamophobia” is a subset, even though Islam isn’t a race). Similarly, anti-racism and migrants’ rights outweighed feminism and #MeToo, resulting in the dropping of charges against two illegal aliens who repeatedly raped and sodomized a 14-year-old middle school girl in Maryland. Ditto European authorities’ inaction against migrant abuse of local women in Germany and Sweden and cover-up of Muslim “grooming gangs” raping girls throughout the United Kingdom. No price in native European women’s flesh is too high to pay to signal virtuous rejection of racism and Islamophobia.

Thus, while LGBT++ and feminism might yet win an occasional skirmish, in the long run these are nothing more than noxious precipitates of the demoralized, decaying homegrown culture. Once that culture is gone, sexual pathologies will have no ability to sustain themselves against the militant, unapologetic newcomer that, ironically, embodies the very anti-homosexual and misogynistic attitudes they deplore.

That’s no reason to celebrate, though. Pick your metaphor: rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, choosing which sauce you wish to be eaten with, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s all just sound and fury unless and until we see the (very unlikely) resolve of English (and French, German, Dutch, Swedish, – and American, Australian, and New Zealander) parents and the rest of the native population join Poles, Hungarians, Russians, Italians, and other nations still determined to exist on their own historical cultural and moral terms, not the ones allowed them by this or that faction among their gravediggers. As noted by Christine Douglass-Williams of Jihad Watch:

‘At Parkfield Community School in Birmingham, we see a possible collision between two unlikely allies in the West: the socialist Left and Islamic supremacists. Such a collision is inevitable, as neither believes in freedom of belief and thought, or in the freedom of speech. For example, Christians who fully believe in the equality of rights of all people before the law but do not believe in promoting LGBT causes have been mercilessly attacked by LGBT socialist-Left activists for having a difference of faith and opinion, despite supporting the human rights of gays. Yet peculiarly, social justice warriors have given Islamic supremacists a free pass, despite their opposition to gay rights and the equality of rights of all people before the law, and also despite the gay hate-preaching from many mosques and the call for the murder of gays in many Islamic states.’

Whether in Christchurch or Birmingham, or anywhere else in what until recently were indisputably societies that were ethnically European and spiritually, or at least culturally, Christian, the forces of the rising dictatorship of victims, despite their internecine squabbles, understand all too well who their common enemy is. Whichever faction might have the upper hand at any moment just boils down to scavengers scrapping over the rotting, barely living carcass of a legacy society begging to be put out of its misery.

“There’ll always be an England”? Don’t count on it. Or a New Zealand or an America, for that matter.

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