But although I know I watched it, the only thing I can remember from the movie is what I think of as the baby carriage scene. It turns out it’s usually referred to as the Odessa steps scene. I have no recollection of the plot, a summary of which you can find here, and where I learned (or re-learned?) that the movie is actually called Battleship Potemkin:

Battleship Potemkin is a 1925 Soviet silent epic film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by Sergei Eisenstein, it presents a dramatization of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers.

The film is a prime example of the Soviet montage theory of editing, such as in the “Odessa Steps” scene, which became widely influential and often recreated. In 1958, the film was voted on Brussels 12 list at the 1958 World Expo. Battleship Potemkin is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made.

As I said, I remember nothing of it except that scene. And of course, YouTube being YouTube, I was able to refresh my memory by watching that segment. It’s still very disturbing and powerful, and represents pretty much the invention of the montage technique by Eisenstein. See what you think:

Eisenstein was a fervent Soviet supporter at the beginning of Communist rule, but not a Stalin fan later on. This particular Odessa steps scene apparently never happened that way in real life; it’s basically propaganda:

The massacre on the steps, although it did not take place in daylight or as portrayed, was based on the fact that there were widespread riots in other parts of the city, sparked off by the arrival of the Potemkin in Odessa Harbour. Both The Times and the resident British consul reported that troops fired on the rioters; deaths were reportedly in the hundreds. Roger Ebert writes, “That there was, in fact, no tsarist massacre on the Odessa Steps scarcely diminishes the power of the scene … It is ironic that [Eisenstein] did it so well that today, the bloodshed on the Odessa steps is often referred to as if it really happened.

Odessa was a mess at the time, with a great deal of political turmoil and violence. There was also an anti-Jewish pogrom a few months later in Odessa that killed even more people [my emphasis]:

Most modern-day historians argue that pre-1881 pogroms [in Odessa] were “largely the product of frictions unleashed by modernization”, rather than a resurgence of medieval antisemitism. The 1905 pogrom was markedly larger in scale, with over 500 casualties (80% Jewish), 300 injuries, and over 1600 homes and businesses damaged, and with heightened antisemitism spurred by economic and political turmoil.

Historians believe the police and hospital figures were likely an underestimate, with a range of estimates from likely over 800, to over 1000 killed, and approximately over 2000 or even up to 5000 wounded. Even the pre-20th century incidents were incited by perennial antisemitic tropes such as rumors of Jewish desecration of the church, conspiracy theories of Jewish complicity in assassinating the tsar or the patriarch, and blood libels.

While most modern-day historians do not believe there is credible evidence that the tsarist state actively sponsored or centrally planned the pogroms, the tsar and his advisors created an environment of sanctioned antisemitism, toleration and leniency toward pogromists, and blamed Jews themselves for the events. Local authorities often failed to intervene, or in some cases actively abetted or perpetrated further violence.

What was the connection – if any – between the 1905 Potemkin killings in June and the anti-Jewish pogrom later that year? See this:

Yet fear of an impending pogrom resurfaced in June in the aftermath of a general strike and disorders occasioned by the arrival of the battleship Potemkin. On 13 June Cossacks shot several workers from metalworking and machine-construction factories who had been on strike since the beginning of May. Workers retaliated on 14 June by engaging in massive work stoppages and attacking the police with guns and rocks, but the arrival of the Potemkin that night diverted the workers from further confrontation with their employers and the government. On 15 June instead of intensifying the strike, thousands of Odessans jammed the port district in order to view the battleship and rally behind the mutinous sailors. By late afternoon some members of the crowd began to ransack warehouses and set fire to the harbor’s wooden buildings. Although available sources do not allow a precise determination of the composition of the rioters, partial arrest records reveal that non-Jewish vagrants, dockworkers, and other day laborers comprised the majority. To suppress the unrest, the military cordoned off the harbor and opened fire on the trapped crowd. By the next morning well over 1,000 people had died, victims of either the soldiers’ bullets or the fire which consumed the harbor.

Not on the Odessa steps – but still, the above paragraph seems to be describing what the Odessa steps scene in the movie was trying to convey (minus the ransacking of warehouses and the fire set by members of the crowd, and minus the deaths caused by the fire).

More:

During these disorders rumors of an impending pogrom once again surfaced, as right-wing agitators attempted to incite Russian workers against the Jews. On 20 June, only a few days after the massacre, a virulently antisemitic, four-page broadside entitled Odesskie dni appeared. The tract blamed the Jews, in particular the National Committee of Jewish Self-Defense and secondary school students, for the recent disorders and the tragedy at the port.

Accusing the Jews of fomenting the unrest and enlisting the support of unwitting Russians, the author of the broadside stated that Jews initiated the shootings on 14 and 15 June and were responsible for setting fire to the port.

Further events at the time are described at the link. It’s long and complex, but the whole thing culminated in a terrible 10/7-style pogrom in Odessa in November of 1905. There is no doubt that Jews were well-represented among the political agitators involved in the leftist (anti-Tsar) side of the initial and ongoing unrest (about a third of Odessa’s population at the time was Jewish). But the pogrom killed uninvolved Jews indiscriminately and viciously.

Watching the movie clip on YouTube, I’m struck by both the operatic style of the close-ups as well as the realistic feeling of the violence. It’s hard to believe people weren’t really hurt creating that scene, but there’s no record of any problems of that sort.

The post <i>Potemkin</i>: the Odessa steps scene appeared first on The New Neo.

Does the following sound familiar?:

Changing your political beliefs is not easy. It’s especially difficult when you’ve invested years of your life believing that your side consists of the Good Guys. If your side is the Good Guys, then the other side must be the Bad Guys. And if the Bad Guys turn out to have been right about something important, you have a problem.

You can either reconsider your beliefs or construct an elaborate series of excuses explaining why reality is being unfair.

She made excuses to herself for a while. But eventually she had trouble doing that:

… I had to admit something. I had been wrong.

I had been wrong about enough important things that I could no longer pretend otherwise, and I changed my political allegiance. I could no longer pretend.

That was about eleven years ago. You might think this would be the end of the story.

HA HA HA.

No. Because the Democratic Party had decided that the Obama years were merely the warm-up act.

Well, yes. Then again, a great many Democrats seem to be able to either continue to make excuses for the party, or to embrace the changes.

And speaking of political changers, here’s a poll that might reflect something real (although as I’ve said many times, polls have gotten iffier and iffier):

Republicans lead Democrats by 31 points among Jewish voters on the congressional ballot, according to a McLaughlin & Associates poll that points to a potential shift among a group that has long favored Democrats.

The poll found that 64 percent of Jewish voters backed Republicans for Congress, while 33 percent supported Democrats, pollsters John and Jim McLaughlin wrote in an article published by the firm Monday.

The result would mark a major shift from the large margins by which Jewish voters have traditionally favored Democrats, though pollsters John and Jim McLaughlin warned that the sample of Jewish voters was small.

Of course, as I’ve written many times, the definition of “Jewish” in the case of US voters is not a religious one, it’s an ethnic one. The more religious a Jew is, the more likely to vote for conservatives. Or, as CBD at Ace’s wrote today:

When a Christian rejects his religion, does not follow its precepts, is openly antagonistic to those who follow Christ, we call him an atheist. When so-called Jews reject their religion, do not follow its precepts, are openly antagonistic to those who follow the Torah, we call them…Jews? Why? Because they have Jewish names and eat bagels and lox on Sunday mornings? I eat fish most Fridays…does that mean I am Catholic?

Well, being Jewish is different from adhering to Judaism, because Jews are also a people. I’ve written about this and related topics before, for example here.

The post Another changer heard from – plus, poll of Jewish voters appeared first on The New Neo.

At any rate, the Democrats must think it’s a winning approach. It’s worked in the past in many parts of the world, after all:

Furthermore, America spends far more on welfare fraud and illegal aliens than it does on Israel, and Democrats are the ones who deliberately fuel inflation and fraud. All of that is information that Jew-hating Muslims and lefties in Michigan hope voters don’t know.

The US also spends far far more on many many other countries; nor does any of that affect the price of our groceries.

More:

Without transcribing the whole ad (you can watch it if you have a very strong stomach or want a Halloween horror film), I’ll say that it features a couple sadly discussing how they can’t buy bananas or eggs because America sent some $60 billion to Israel. The ad ends by disclosing that pro-Israel PACs spent over $220,000 to boost Republican Mike Rogers over jihad-loving Muslim Brotherhood asset El-Sayed. Incidentally, El-Sayed has received many hundreds of thousands of dollars from literal terrorist affiliates, in addition to money from evil billionaires and plutocrats like the Soros family.

The Democrats rely on lies, ignorance, hatred, and envy. Is it a winning combination?

The post Did you know that Israel is responsible for the high price of your groceries? appeared first on The New Neo.

Anti-Mamdani chants at the protest:

“Zohran, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?”

“700,000 dead. Mamdani, your hands are red!”

“Traitor, traitor, come on out! You sold all your people out!”

“Zohran, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide!”

— Peter Sterne (@petersterne) October 8, 2026

Yesterday, on the October 7 anniversary, Mamdani managed to squeeze out a few words of sympathy for victims of Hamas before condemning Israel for fake genocide. That was too many Israel-sympathetic words for the left to stomach, apparently. Nothing will satisfy them, although the destruction of Israel and Jews would be considered a good start.

It is mind-boggling how the people heckling Mamdani wrap themselves in the cloak of virtue. But of course, that’s an old ploy as well – the Reign of Terror comes to mind, in which the killers talked incessantly of virtue and especially of the virtue of the common man. But there is no inherent virtue in a mob.

The post Even Mamdani doesn’t hate the Jews enough to satisfy the left appeared first on The New Neo.

In some ways, the post-10/7 wars have gone better than expected for Israel. At the beginning, it seemed as though Hezbollah, for example, would be a more formidable foe than it has been. That doesn’t mean it’s been easy, or that Israel can ever rest. But it does mean that 10/7 acted more as a wakeup call to galvanize Israel into taking the threats seriously and understanding that its enemies really do mean to destroy it.

Unfortunately, another thing that’s been learned is how powerful Jew-hatred is, including when it’s cloaked in a fake “anti-Zionism” that is nothing more than a vicious double standard that will not allow Israel to defend itself. This did not begin on 10/7; I’ve written two posts so far about how far back it goes, and how instrumental the Soviets were in spreading the word (please see this as well as this).

The anti-Jewish forces got busy right away, as early as 10/8 when Israel had done nothing as yet except be viciously attacked. But Jew-hatred always finds fertile ground, and it has spread immensely since 10/7, both on left and right. A lie really does get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on. It is sobering and depressing, but it’s reality these days.

Please see this:

Has there ever been a people more frequently or more preposterously lied about than the Jews?

I don’t ask that in expectation of sympathy. It’s perversely flattering to excite the sort of malign curiosity that cannot be satisfied by what’s observably true. But there’s also been a heavy price to pay for being a figment of such superstitious fear and loathing that even the presence of Jews isn’t necessary for fear and loathing to take root and flourish. Distant hearsay can be enough. …

… [F]olklore hasn’t quite given up on the figure of the Wandering Jew, cursed to roam the earth homeless as punishment for taunting Jesus on the way to the crucifixion. Long before academic anti-Zionists began to call for the expulsion of Israelis from Israel, Luther had posited their eternal exile as an expression, sanctioned by God, of their vagabondage of soul. And as for the Jew as companion of the devil, not to say the devil himself, I can personally vouch for the tenacity of that superstition, as more than one of my schoolfellows have asked—in Prestwich, north Manchester, England, 1954—if I would show them what remained of my tail.

Regarding the Blood Libel, the malicious medieval defamation that told of Jews kidnapping and killing Gentile children for their blood, either to add zest to matzah or to replenish the blood of male Jews who menstruated profusely as a consequence of circumcision—another fantasy, too lurid and deranged to be simply called a falsehood—it too has resurfaced in recent years, determining the way the deaths of Palestinian children in the latest Gaza war have been presented as the result of Israel Defense Forces soldiers killing little ones “for sport” and laughing as they do so. No footage of such vile behavior exists, of course. I myself was widely misreported as arguing, in a piece in the [London] Observer a couple of years ago, that the press should cover up all word of such deaths. In fact, I argued for no such thing, nor would the left-leaning Observer have printed the piece had its staff thought that was my meaning. My target was the narrative strategy of the BBC and other news outlets, in which nine stories out of 10 led with the latest death count of Palestinian children—too cruel had they been even a quarter true, but which time and again proved unverifiable.

The charge of genocide leveled at Israel, a charge that invariably comes with the pseudo-authoritative definite article—the genocide, to muffle dissent and to rejig the hierarchy of genocides in favor of Israel’s victims—could be said to be the biggest lie of all.

And an extremely successful lie, at that. On the left in the 2026 election in the US, it is almost required that a Democrat candidate support the claim. The right – or the former right, such as Tucker Carlson – has its adherents, as well.

Powerline has this post of remembrance. The stories remain heartbreaking, just like the 9/11 stories. But there is no going back and undoing what happened. The only way is to go forward. But how to do that in the face of the remarkable moral inversion of much of the world? Here is a comment there which deals with that question:

The most stunning thing to me is the response of Western Civilization to the horrendous Satanic acts of Hamas on October 7th. In a functional, optimistic and honorable civilization, our collective response should have been total commitment to the eradication of Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamism in general. Sadly, the opposite has happened. Many (mostly European) countries have doubled down on Jew hatred, admiration for the sub-human “palestinian cause” and total fecklessness in the face of their suicidal choices of importing millions of proto-terrorists into their own countries.

Israel and the United States of America* have stood virtually alone against the creeping scourge of “submission”.

And there’s this, on Britain’s Green Party:

‘Tell me what you accuse the Jews of [and] I’ll tell you what you are guilty of’, said the great Soviet writer Vasily Grossman. Today, that grim, eternal truth was starkly illustrated by the Green Party’s passing of a motion saying ‘Zionism is Racism’. To throw around the word ‘racism’ even as you single out Jewish sovereignty as uniquely demonic, to pose as an enemy of bigotry even as you dream of the erasure of the world’s only Jewish state, takes moral duplicity to sickening new heights. In their snivelling whisperings about ‘racism’, these scumbags reveal their own.

It was at their conference in Brighton that the Green Party of England and Wales voted in favour of the ‘Zionism is Racism’ screed. The motion expressly defines the Greens as an ‘anti-Zionist party’. It says Zionism is a species of racial hatred, and will henceforth be ‘treated as any other form of racism’. Most obnoxiously of all, it commits the Greens to campaigning for the scrubbing of the Jewish nation from the face of the Earth. It calls for ‘the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital’. So no more Jewish homeland. No more tiny patch of land, a poxy 263 by 71 miles, for the Jews to call their own. All of it would disappear. Imagine accusing others of being ‘genocidal’ even as you agitate for the total dismantling of the ancestral kingdom of the Jews.

I have been meaning to post this interview with Dara Horn, who has written penetratingly on Jew-hatred and what is actually behind it. Now seems like a good time to recommend watching it. A great many people have tackled that topic, to be sure. But I’m especially impressed with her insight:

The post On the third anniversary of 10/7 appeared first on The New Neo.

Aren’t they a flight risk? Supposedly they’re being monitored closely, but I really don’t trust that process. And note that this entire article manages to keep any description of the men out of the story:

Five men arrested over a suspected bomb plot targeting RAF Fairford have been released on bail.

The men, who are all British nationals aged 23 to 25, were arrested on Sunday on suspicion of terrorism and explosives offences, after three vans were discovered 400m from the Gloucestershire air base.

The suspects are from the London areas of Camden, Westminster and Willesden, police confirmed on Monday. …

“To be very clear, this does not mean that the investigation is over. They are subject to stringent conditions on their movement and contact with others. They absolutely remain under investigation as we explore multiple lines of inquiry.”

Just a bunch of British chaps? I doubt it. Iran may be involved:

Police are understood to be investigating a possible Iranian link to the alleged plot. However, the Iranian embassy “categorically rejected” it had any involvement.

Well then, that settles it.

Speaking of Iran involvement, attacks on Jewish site in Europe have been linked to Iran:

Pro-Iranian terror cells were involved in a blast outside a historic synagogue in the city of Liege in March and a subsequent arson attack in Antwerp’s Jewish quarter, Belgium’s intelligence agency Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA) found.

“Belgium has confirmed that Iran was behind the attacks in the country six months ago,” Israel’s Ynetnews reported Saturday.

Tehran is suspected of directing a series of attacks targeting Jewish sites across several European cities since the beginning of 2026, including Liège, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and London. “An Iran-affiliated jihadist group called the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, also known as IMCR or Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, previously claimed responsibility for similar attacks, including an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam and an attack against a Jewish school in Amsterdam,” the news website added.

Note that these are not necessarily Israeli targets, but Jewish ones.

What a great idea to import a bunch of Middle Eastern terrorists into Europe and the US.

The post RAF base terror suspects in Britain released on bail appeared first on The New Neo.

Remember Daniel Pearl? Why do I start this post with him? He was the first terrorist victim – at least the first I can remember – whose death contained that special element of horrific sadism and psychopathic brutality crossed with modern technology, in that his beheading was videoed and purposely broadcast by the perpetrators. This was way before ISIS, but it foreshadowed the behavior of that group. It was something out of a psychological horror movie, and yet it was real.

Pearl was held hostage first, too. And then before the terrorists killed him he was forced to say things such as, “I am a Jew.” That was very very important to the terrorists, although the US seemed to be their main target for the moment.

Here’s an interesting fact that I never knew before, about Daniel Pearl’s mother, which is that she was an Iraqi Jew who fled that country in the 1940s because of persecution and violence:

Pearl was born Eveline Rejwan on November 11, 1935, in Baghdad, Iraq. Her father, Joseph, was a tailor who ran an import business, and her mother, Victoria (Abada) Rejwan, was a homemaker. … When Pearl was 5, she lived through the Farhud, an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in Iraq following a failed nationalist coup. She and her family hid in their home for days, protected by their Arab neighbors who told rioters that no Jews lived there.

Her family then moved to a suburb of Baghdad but anti-Jewish attacks persisted and she herself witnessed the bodies of Iraqi Jews hanging from gallows in a square. Her father lost vision in one eye after an assault and he had to bribe a police officer to free his two sons after they were arrested on false charges.

In the late 1940s, Pearl worked with an underground Zionist movement that facilitated the emigration of Jews, then illegal, to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. At this time, Pearl began using the Hebrew name Ruth. Around 1948, her two older brothers were smuggled into Palestine from Iraq. In 1949, Ruth’s oldest brother was killed fighting for the Israeli army, which she did not learn about until years later as her father had withheld the information from his family. In 1951, Pearl arrived with her family in Israel as part of the mass exodus of Iraqi Jews.

So the horror of Arab anti-Semitism was one of her earliest experiences, long before the nightmare returned in a very personal way.

Pearl’s mother met her husband Judah Pearl in Israel, and they moved to the US in 1950 for graduate studies. Both were scientists. Ruth Pearl died in 2021, but her husband is still alive at 87, and he was born in Tel Aviv in 1936 to Polish-Jewish immigrants who had had the prescience and good fortune to be able to emigrate to Israel.

Daniel Pearl was abducted, held hostage, and murdered by various jihadi groups in 2002, when he was 38 years old. That was over 20 years ago, so you may have forgotten some of the details that perhaps didn’t seem so important at the time. But here are a few:

On February 21, 2002, a video was released titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl. The video shows Pearl’s mutilated body …

The Jew Daniel Pearl. And of course there was the broadcasting, with great pride, of not just the killing but the mutilation. What seemed so unusual back then stopped being unusual a long time ago, because we’ve seen many such videos over the years. And now, with social media, we have refinements such as this: filming the murder of a young man on his cellphone, and sending the video to his mother.

But back to Pearl and the video of his killing. During the video, Pearl was made to say at the outset:

My name is Daniel Pearl. I’m a Jewish-American from Encino, California, USA. I come from, uh, on my father’s side the family is Zionist. My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish. My family follows Judaism. We’ve made numerous family visits to Israel.

Jewish, Jewish, Jewish; Israel, Israel, Israel. That was no mere detail to Pearl’s killers. It’s not that they won’t kill non-Jews; they certainly will, and with relish. But it is Jews they wish to eliminate from the earth first. One can argue about what the Koran says about Jews; it says a lot of contradictory things, many of them not good. But you can’t argue about what hadith Hamas chose to put in its charter as inspiration:

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him

So do not be surprised when Palestinians and Palestinian sympathizers in Western countries stand in public squares and celebrate the killing of Jews and scream that they want to kill more. As courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes:

In short, anti-Semites the world over have been emboldened by this crisis, and Jews are once again being blamed for their own massacre. And I am not remotely surprised. In my childhood, I was steeped in the Islamist movement’s noxious anti-Semitism — which has been on such ugly display this week.

Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, I spent my early years escaping political strife after my father was imprisoned for being an anti-government activist. We moved between countries before settling in Kenya.

The worst insult in the Somali community was to be called a ‘Jew’, not that any of us actually knew one. To be called a ‘Jew’ was so abhorrent, some felt justified in killing anyone who so dishonoured them with this ‘slur’.

As a teenager in Nairobi in the 1980s, I joined the Muslim Brotherhood — the strict Sunni Islamist movement, founded in Egypt in 1928, from which Hamas ultimately descends.

I vividly remember sitting with my female fellows in mosques, cursing Israel and praying to Allah to destroy the Jews. We were certainly not interested in a peaceful ‘two-state solution’: we were taught to want to see Israel wiped off the map.

When I was 16, my school’s teacher of religion was Sister Aziza. She read to us the Koran’s lurid descriptions of the everlasting fire that burns flesh and dissolves skin — the place reserved for Jews.

Sister Aziza described Jews as physically monstrous, with horns coming from their heads, out of which flew devils that would corrupt the world. Jews controlled everything, she told us, and it was the duty of Muslims to destroy them.

It was a lot to take in for a teenager who read Western romance novels in secret, but I believed every word. …

[Much later] I abandoned my religion, but I have never lost my clear-sighted understanding, forged in my childhood, of Islamism’s pathological hatred of Jews, as well as Muslims considered as heretics and non-Muslims in general.

The former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi — a one-time leader of the Muslim Brotherhood — declared that Muslims should ‘nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred’ of Jews.

One of the most chilling things about the 10/7 terrorist attacks was that for several previous years Hamas pretended to be backing away from violence, and fooled Israel into thinking that actually was true. Now they are bragging about the success of their deception, which caused the Israelis to give them travel permits and also to let down their guard somewhat. According to a Hamas official:

“We made them think Hamas was busy with governing Gaza, and that it wanted to focus on the 2.5 million Palestinians [there] and had abandoned the resistance altogether. All the while, under the table, Hamas was preparing for this big attack.”

And they want this to be a worldwide effort. They’ve been preparing the ground for decades: emigrating to Western nations, using propaganda in the MSM, and enlisting many allies in academia (see this). Perhaps they have overestimated their support and overplayed their hand, causing at least some of their erstwhile allies in the Western Left to recoil in horror. Perhaps. But perhaps not. There is no mistaking their intent anymore, nor the lengths to which they are willing to go to achieve it.

9/11 was a wakeup call for a lot of people. And so is this. The question is whether it will be heeded.

The post Don’t forget the murder of Daniel Pearl, “the Jew” appeared first on The New Neo.

Even before the Arday incident, Cofnas was a figure of controversy for his writing and research on race and intelligence:

He became an early-career research fellow at the University of Cambridge and research associate at Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 2022. Controversy developed after Cofnas published a 2024 blog post saying that black people are, on average, less intelligent than other groups, and that they “would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment” under a meritocratic system. He was dismissed from his position at Emmanuel College as a result.

In 2026, Cofnas secured a position at Ghent University. Following student protest and a petition calling for his dismissal, the university defended his appointment, citing academic freedom. Cofnas attracted further attention after publishing a blog post in which he catalogued multiple examples of alleged plagiarism by University of Cambridge sociologist Jason Arday …

In that Wiki article I just quoted, I don’t see it mentioned that Cofnas says he got these facts from Harvard’s own study on the matter. Cofnas discusses it in the interview I posted, and it’s also mentioned here:

[Cofnas] cites Harvard University data which suggest that were the college to use a colourblind system for academic selection, judging applicants by academic qualifications alone, its proportion of black students would fall dramatically, from around 14 per cent to just 0.7 per cent. When it comes to Harvard faculty, Dr Cofnas added that in a meritocracy they ‘would be recruited from the best of the best students’, meaning ‘the number of black professors would approach 0 per cent’. He adds that black people would ‘disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment’ in this society.

Cofnas is labeled a racist, but basing a statement like that on Harvard’s own statistics doesn’t make him one. Whether he is or is not, I don’t know. He definitely is a person unafraid of making waves, which is also evident from the interview in my previous post. Cofnas waded into Arday’s background where others feared to tread. Now, with Arday’s suicide, Cofnas has been suspended from his current post at Ghent University:

Nathan Cofnas, suspended by the rector of Ghent University, Petra De Sutter, in the wake of Jason Arday’s death, notes that De Sutter used ChatGPT for her inaugural address, which included fabricated quotes.

Previous news reports confirm this.https://t.co/xppHNZk3Wo https://t.co/XjaV0P6zZk pic.twitter.com/9gCl3NsjXs

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) August 20, 2026

For those lacking access to X:

Nathan Cofnas, suspended by the rector of Ghent University, Petra De Sutter, in the wake of Jason Arday’s death, notes that De Sutter used ChatGPT for her inaugural address, which included fabricated quotes.

To top it all off, Ghent’s rector De Sutter is a gynecologist who was born a man and transitioned around the age of forty, in 2004.

The reason given for Cofnas’ suspension:

Ghent University said it had suspended Cofnas “as a precautionary measure” pending a preliminary disciplinary investigation, but did not go into further detail on the reasons.

It could not comment any further “to safeguard the confidentiality of the personnel file and the disciplinary proceedings,” it said in an emailed statement.

Pretty closed-mouthed, but my guess is that they are afraid of an uproar from students, faculty, and the public if they keep him. He is identified as the mean racist guy who lynched Arday.

Here’s more on the matter from the University of Ghent:

The suspension comes after Ghent said that following Arday’s death it had “received many enquiries” about Cofnas’s appointment.

“We attach great importance to academic freedom and to open academic debate, even when views are controversial. However, that freedom is not unlimited. It goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others,” Ghent said in its statement.

“For this reason, the university takes the recent public statements made by a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University regarding this matter very seriously. Ghent University has decided to take appropriate action within its powers and the applicable framework.”

In March, more than 300 staff and students wrote an open letter to the university, questioning the appointment of Cofnas and accusing Ghent of violating its code of conduct.

Ghent defended itself then. But will it defend free speech now, or succumb? A robust defense of free speech doesn’t really exist in Europe anywhere; at least, I’ve never found one.

Cofnas is an American, however, and the Trump administration is sticking up for him:

U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Bill White gets right to the point in the X post below. He calls out the Ghent University rector for “retaliat[ing] against an American scholar [Cofnas] following his accurate whistleblower reporting on academic fraud.”

He notes that the U.S. often funds research projects with foreign universities and that “dishonest, corrupt institutions that engage in, or reward, scapegoating mob behavior are not desirable partners for us.” Therefore, the U.S. plans to review “any relationships we have with Ghent University.”

It will be very interesting to see what ultimately happens to Cofnas. I hope he has a security detail.

NOTE: In doing research for this post, I came across this tweet on X praising the Trump administration for doing the right thing in this instance. But when I looked at the responses to the tweet, there were many that said that Trump only did this because he’s controlled by the Jews and Israel, and Cofnas is Jewish. It was quite the barrage of Tuckeresque contempt, such as (for example):

The Trump administration defended Nathan Cofnas because he’s jewish, and it would have done so regardless of whether it was the right thing to do or not.

The absolute only reason they are defending Confas is because he is aggressively Jewish, and the singular aim of this administration is to serve the Jews.

[Trump] would never do this for a White person

Ok, but Trumps law: ‘everything he does, he does for *them*’ holds true in this instance. No matter how repellently obnoxious the other side is, it’s hard not to notice the consistent pattern. If Confas wasn’t a Zionist Jew it would be very different.

Oh please, let’s not be oblivious here.

Cofnas is Jewish and this administration is controlled by Jews.

You don’t see this “based” administration going to bat for nationalist figures in Europe.

Cofnas is a jew. There have been plenty of times they could have defended this rhetoric, but they aren’t defending the rhetoric they are defending the tribe.

There are plenty more where those came from, but you get the idea. Are they bots? Paid trolls? Muslims in foreign lands? Or real people from the US and Western Europe who are Tucker fans? Probably some mix of all three, but I don’t know the proportions.

Note that they don’t consider Jews “white.” The left, on the other hand, considers Jews extremely privileged whites. This double-edged sword is a really good example of how Jew-hatred works – the Jews are regarded as allied with whatever the Jew-hating group sees as the enemy.

[ADDENDUM:

Cofnas tells his side of it here. An excerpt:

I have been flooded with death threats, smeared in countless newspaper articles, and accused of targeting Arday because I think that, as one commentator put it, “people like Cofnas simply don’t believe that Black people deserve to be professors at all.” Speaker after speaker at the vigil held for Arday in Trafalgar Square on Monday denounced me by name, including a prominent politician. Many have claimed that I fabricated the evidence against Arday, although this is easily refuted.

On Aug. 18, the U.K.’s National Union of Journalists released a “Statement on the Death of Jason Arday.” After “condemn[ing] attacks against individual journalists,” the statement singles out one person for criticism: me. “That one of the highest profile critics of Arday was Nathan Cofnas, a former Cambridge academic and self-described ‘race realist’, is deeply concerning.” Although no one has found so much as a mistaken comma in the article I wrote about Arday, I’m apparently not entitled to protection against attack for telling the truth.

On Thursday afternoon, I received a message from the rector of Ghent University, Petra De Sutter, notifying me that, in the wake of the backlash from the Arday affair, she was suspending me from my position as a postdoctoral researcher. Her letter made it clear that the school has laid the groundwork to fire me.

I’m an easy scapegoat because I hold views about race that are controversial and easily misunderstood. I argue that differences between ancestral populations aren’t entirely due to environmental forces, and that some group disparities stem from natural differences for which no one is to blame. I made a widely quoted statement: “Under a colorblind system that judged applicants only by academic qualifications, blacks would make up 0.7% of Harvard students.” That sentence has been cited repeatedly as evidence that I’m a racist.

Few people are aware that my statement about Harvard admissions was summarizing a finding by Harvard itself. In the course of the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard lawsuit, Harvard disclosed an internal study conducted in 2013, which found that, if admissions were based only on grades and test scores, the undergraduate population would be 0.7% African-American—a significant reduction from current levels. Racial representation at many American institutions is maintained by Harvard-style affirmative action.

I didn’t quote Harvard’s statistic to celebrate it, or because I believe that black people don’t belong at universities. There are many brilliant black scholars. But it’s a difficult fact to face that in a truly colorblind system that didn’t take race into account, there would be a shocking lack of diversity in certain institutions. As I said in the controversial essay that mentions the Harvard statistic, “when it comes to policymaking in a multiracial society, we might need to make sure that everyone feels they have a voice in determining our collective fate.” To this end, I argued for taking measures to ensure meaningful representation of major demographic groups. But we shouldn’t do this under the banner of DEI, which automatically blames differences in outcome on white racism.

The number of people hearing Cofnas’ side of the story is miniscule compared to the number who think he’s a racist who murdered Arday with malice aforethought.]

The post Ghent suspends Cofnas – the Arday fallout appeared first on The New Neo.

But it’s a topic so important that I need to deal with it more often. Why is it so important, and not just to Jews? It’s an old saying but it’s true that the Jews are the canaries in the coalmine. Jew-hatred is the mark of a society that’s sick. It’s also a sign of evil, if you want to get metaphysical about it. And it’s one of the longest hatreds in the world, perhaps the longest hatred, and so flexible that it can shape-shift endlessly from old reason to new reason and back again.

There’s the envy part and the contempt part, the “Jews secretly rule the world and are trying to destroy the rest of us” part, the “Jews kill little children and use their blood to make matzoh” part and its current manifestation about Jews purposely killing Palestinian children in a genocidal war, there’s the ancient Islamic hatred of Jews and the ancient Christian “they killed Christ” part that sparked murderous pogroms against Jews, there’s the “Jews poisoned the wells” part and the “Jews want to destroy the white race” part and the “Jews are whites and colonist agents of oppression” part. I’m sure I’ve left some parts out, as well, but you get the idea[s]. Israel-hatred and its double standards are often a screen for Jew-hatred, which gives it a special oomph to which no other country is subjected.

But for the purposes of this post I’ll stick to one idea which I’ve seen expressed more and more often online by Jew-haters. It is, in my opinion, the main reason why Holocaust education not only doesn’t work these days to counter Jew-hatred but often actually works to amplify it. There is also the general tendency of today’s young people to say that the history they’re taught is a lie, but I think another very important part goes like this [my emphasis]:

One lesson … is not to indulge the “fantasy … that imparting information about the murder of the Jews of Europe will ensure its never happening again.” Showcasing one’s own weakness does nothing to placate illiberal enemies. To the contrary, what to the West looks like “innocence” appears more like an admission of guilt to those for whom violence is routine. “Something must be wrong with the Jews if they were selected as a target.”

Paul Berman would elaborate upon this point a decade later, analyzing the seemingly paradoxical success of grotesque Palestinian suicide bombings in turning world opinion against Israel. “Each new act of murder and suicide testified to how oppressive were the Israelis,” because the liberal mind could not could not otherwise make sense of such depravity. “Palestinian terror, in this view, was the measure of Israeli guilt.” Politics against the Jews—indeed against the West that abhors depravity—has only become more explicit over the last three years. If Hamas and the Gazans that followed them to rape and pillage could commit such unspeakable acts, Israel’s sins must be even graver than previously thought. American support for the iniquitous regime, moreover, could not be because it sees Israel as a decent nation and democratic ally, but because the United States is controlled by Zionists.

It seems a paradox, but it has its own logic. Among other things, it makes sense of evil – defining Hamas’ acts on 10/7 as not so much evil as motivated and in some sense justified. It makes order out of the chaos of human life. I’m speaking not of those who spread the lies and hatred with full knowledge that they are spreading lies and hatred, but those who accept the lies as truth and believe themselves to be virtuous in doing so. The argument is that if Jews are attacked far and wide, and have been for centuries, they must have deserved it and continue to deserve it.

Even some Jews succumb to the reasoning. It’s something like what happens with certain abused children: rather than believe the world can be so unjust, they believe that they themselves must have done something very very wrong to be treated that way.

The post Why attacks on Jews lead to more Jew-hatred appeared first on The New Neo.

The Madison police officer who shot and killed Corey Ruiz should face criminal charges, civil rights attorney Ben Crump said Friday, after protests erupted in anger over videos of their struggle.

“They not only tackled him, not only tased him, not only kicked him, but you saw they shot him three times in his head and other parts of his body,” Crump said.

He spoke at an emotional news conference with Ruiz’s mother, siblings and 13-year-old daughter, Kah’liyah Aliomar.

Crump again.

What is left out? This:

Ruiz, 38, was killed on a busy city street Wednesday, just a couple of blocks away from his daughter’s home and along the route she walks to school. Police say Ruiz pulled a knife during a struggle with four officers, injuring one of them. That officer then fired the shots, according to police.

There is video, but it’s not from the police, it’s from a cellphone, and it does not show the incident from the police point of view. Madison is one of the few municipalities where the use of police videocams has been repeatedly blocked:

But unlike nearly every other similarly sized city, Madison doesn’t require its police to use body-worn cameras, so there is no footage from the officers’ perspective. Over the last decade city officials have repeatedly debated adopting the cameras — at times creating subcommittees and doing studies on the idea — but local officials have primarily blamed budget concerns and political inertia for the ongoing stalemate.

Another common source of opposition, identified in a 2021 feasibility study, came from community groups worried the cameras would be used to surveil and criminalize marginalized groups. Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said Thursday that she expects the new budget that takes effect in January to include funding for body-worn cameras.

I wonder how the protestors address the fact that the police officer was stabbed. Perhaps they deny it happened. Or perhaps they think a little stab wound isn’t so much; police should just let themselves be knifed.

More:

Wisconsin court records show Ruiz had been in and out of jail over the past decade for mostly misdemeanor offenses including disorderly conduct, drug possession, auto theft, battery and invasion of privacy. He was also convicted of felonies including possession of cocaine and marijuana, robbery, strangulation, resisting an officer and causing bodily harm.

“People are saying he’s a criminal. So what? He had a family, he had me,” Aliomar said, breaking down into tears.

A person can be a dangerous criminal and also have a family. In fact, most criminals have families. The two things are unrelated.

More:

Police said they were at the street to investigate reports that someone was trying to enter parked cars, something Crump said amounted to only the suspicion of a low-level property crime.

Well then, no need for the police to be there at all, right?

And then you have this sort of thing:

Nearly 500 people marched from the intersection of Williamson Street and South Baldwin Street [in Madison] — where the 38-year-old was shot three times on Wednesday during a struggle with several police officers — to the Madison Police Department headquarters on Friday.

Video showed some demonstrators stopping traffic and confronting at a female motorist who insisted she was an “ally” during a streetside struggle session.

“You’re going to sit there and watch it all go by and you’re going to think about it, c–t!” one yelled at the helpless driver.

“I am 100 percent an ally of the community,” she pleaded with the protestors who surrounded her car.

“I have lived in this neighborhood for 27 years. F–k the cops. I wanted to join the protest!” she said. “This guy calling me a c–t doesn’t help anyone’s cause.”

She added: “I’m an ally. I wanted to join the protest. I want to be part of this.”

That may read like a Monty Python skit, but it’s very real.

Also this:

“White silence is violence!” protesters chanted at others sitting outside [at a restaurant] enjoying their dinner.

A few hours later, a pair of protesters hit a car window when the driver refused to stop for their procession.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation held signs reading “jail killer cop. Kiel Peterson. Justice for Corey Ruiz.” …

One woman held up a sign that read: “Corrupt cops deserve to die too!! …

“You’re gonna say the same thing you all say every time a black body gets shot down in this city!” [a] man, who identified himself as Carlos Jackson, shouted. Jackson then launched into a tirade about corruption, revolution and “Zionists.”

It all comes back to the Zionists, right?

I wonder who funds the so-called “Party for Socialism and Liberation.” Here’s the Wiki entry:

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is a communist political party in the United States. PSL formed in 2004, when its members split from the Workers World Party.

PSL describes itself as a revolutionary socialist party in the Leninist tradition, because the party believes that only a revolution can end capitalism and establish socialism. PSL pursues this goal by participating in local protests, running candidates in elections, and conducting political education. …

PSL does not release membership numbers. In 2019, PSL reported branches in “some 90 cities” or “nearly 100 cities”. In 2022, PSL reported an “organized presence in over 100 cities”. In 2024, PSL reported being “in over 50 cities”.

PSL is a democratic centralist party, which means that “all members, including those who disagree, are duty bound to publicly defend and carry out” all PSL decisions.

So, “liberated” party members are not allowed to disagree with the Party of Liberation.

It’s no real surprise to learn that they are heavily involved in pro-Palestinian causes:

Since 2023, PSL has organized numerous rallies in favor of Palestinian liberation, including many of the Gaza war protests in the United States.

In 2024, PSL and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) organized a protest outside of Ohr Torah synagogue in Edison, New Jersey, in opposition to the synagogue holding auctions for property in illegal Israel settlements in the West Bank. A minor scuffle ensured. …

In May 2025, Elias Rodriguez killed two employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. Rodriguez was a former PSL member. PSL stated that they “do not support” the shooting. …

In May 2026, PSL campaigned with Hasan Piker on behalf of Cori Bush in Missouri. In June 2026, PSL campaigned for Seattle socialist Kshama Sawant.

This group seems to have its finger in a lot of pies. The group also unites with some of the “woke right” in blaming the US and NATO for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also supported Assad in Syria. More here on its campaign against Israel and Jews, which turns out not to be peripheral but rather central to its purposes:

[The party] incorporates virulent anti-Zionism as a core organizing principle.

PSL has been involved in anti-Israel organizing since its establishment in 2004, ramping up its activity significantly following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror massacre against Israel. In the first 18 months after Hamas’s attack, PSL sponsored or co-sponsored over 1,700 anti-Israel rallies around the U.S.; the majority of these rallies featured antisemitic rhetoric, as well as expressions of support for Hamas’s attack, belligerent calls to “smash Zionism,” and flags and other materials of U.S.-designated terror groups and more. Some PSL events also included on-the-ground harassment.

The party legitimized Hamas’s attack in an October 7, 2023, statement as a “bold counter-offensive,” said “the actions of the resistance” were a “morally and legally legitimate response to occupation” and called to cut off all U.S. aid to Israel.

One of the group’s members is Jodi Dean, who is still a professor at Hobart teaching courses such as Feminist Theory as well as Communism. Shortly after 10/7 she wrote this:

The images from October 7 of paragliders evading Israeli air defenses were for many of us exhilarating. Here were moments of freedom, that defeated Zionist expectations of submission to occupation and siege…The paragliders who flew into Israel on October 7 continue the revolutionary association of liberation and flight.

Helping to shape young minds.

But the reason I went to that ADL link was to find out about funding of the group. This is all I discovered:

PSL offers little organizational transparency and does not release membership numbers. …

PSL’s funding sources are also unclear. The group claims not to take money from foundations or corporate sources. Members are expected to contribute to PSL’s major annual fundraiser, the National Fund Drive.

The article discusses the funding of an affiliated group, The People’s Forum (there are many many affiliated groups; it’s really a huge web):

The PSL-affiliated group is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that receives funding from various sources. In 2022 and 2021, for example, The People’s Forum received $21,539 from the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation and $8,350 from CodePink, a virulently anti-Zionist group, respectively. In 2018, The People’s Forum received $3,015,000 from the United Community Fund (UCF), a grantmaking body primarily associated with Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman who has been accused of having associations with the Chinese Communist Party.

UCF has given most of its grants to The People’s Forum and the left-wing research institute Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. The People’s Forum’s Manolo de los Santos is also a researcher at Tricontinental.

In the fiscal year ending 2022, The People’s Forum had revenue of $4,428,869, significantly more than 2021’s $486,926. …

In 2023, the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) granted The People’s Forum $26,894. AFGJ is an Arizona-based organization that serves as a fiscal sponsor to several progressive and anti-Israel initiatives, including Samidoun, which is labeled as the international fundraiser of the U.S.-designated terror group the PFLP, and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

And this utterance by a speaker at one of the many meetings organized by the group says a lot about their point of view on the relationship between capitalism and Israel:

As far as organizational activity, The People’s Forum convenes numerous panels, protests, events, and other “educational” experiences, many of which are virulently anti-Israel.

At one such event, De Los Santos said: “When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”

Whether or not that has any logic isn’t especially relevant. It has logic to a large group of very dedicated leftists.

When I began this post I did not expect it to end up with anything to do with Israel. And yet here we are. To the left, these things are all related – or at least can be described as related to a mostly ignorant and willing group of mostly young people.

The post And now there’s Corey Ruiz (or, do all leftist roads lead to Israel-hatred?) appeared first on The New Neo.