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.

So Cofnas was an imperfect messenger, to say the least. I noticed some discussion of Cofnas in the comments here a few days ago, and I’ve been curious about who Cofnas is and what he’s been saying that’s so controversial. I found this recent interview with him, and this is the most relevant part. You don’t have to go by what other people say that he’s saying. Make your own decisions about his message:

The entire interview can be found here:

And if you want to read more of the details from a source defending free speech, there’s this. An excerpt:

You don’t have to agree with what Cofnas wrote to see that the fact he might be fired for expressing his views violates fundamental principles of academic freedom. If people believe he is wrong, then they are perfectly within their rights to say why and how and to explain the flaws in his arguments. Instead, the principal claim levelled against Cofnas has been that some find his ideas ‘offensive’ and ‘distressing’. That may well be so, but if universities are to successfully fulfil their truth-seeking mission, academics’ right to explore offensive or controversial topics must come before considerations of hurt feelings. This vital principle must always be defended – especially when it comes to hard cases. Nathan Cofnas must be free to speak.

The post Nathan Cofnas and accusations of racism appeared first on The New Neo.

Commenter “Brian E” commented by describing a local school shooting and the tragedy that ensued, and added: “Having seen the aftermath relatively close up, it’s hard to have infringement of personal liberty as the hill to die on.”

Later, he added:

I agree with Neo, he [the killer’s father, Colin Gray] should have been charged with negligence, not homicide– but I do think the sentence needs to be serious enough that people change their behavior on how they store their firearms.

Many or perhaps most laws that restrict liberty are rationalized as being necessary and/or desirable in order to protect the innocent. The problem is how far to go, because at a certain point the infringements become unconscionable, and perhaps they don’t even prevent the behavior. These are constant issues, and not just in the field of gun control.

Arguments about the protective benefit of a restrictive law are nearly always used to justify infringements of personal liberty . There are terrible tragedies that appear to be preventable through restrictions on personal liberty. In the case of Colt Gray (the 14-year-old murderer) and his father Colin (who failed to lock up weapons), however, there was no law in Georgia that required such a locking-up. I see the harsh verdict in the Colin Gray trial as an attempt to rectify that, ex post facto, without actually passing such a law. In the service of this effort, another law – one I see as inappropriate to the facts of the case – was pulled into service in order to label one person, the father, as responsible.

The desire to turn back the clock and undo what happened – an impossibility, of course – is part of the motive behind this. The other desire is the one stated by Brian E, which is for the sentence “to be serious enough that people change their behavior on how they store their firearms.” But I doubt that will happen; people think they’re safe and their family is safe, and they don’t foresee what is an extremely unlikely act: that of their child committing mass murder with a gun found around the house. Or, for many who do foresee or at least imagine such possibilities, they either are already locking up their weapons or not owning them in the first place.

In addition: where does this assigning of responsibility stop? In the Colt Gray case, why not the mother, the school, the police? They all had roles and all failed to fulfill them effectively enough to prevent the murders; some were even arguably negligent (the school, for example). And one could argue that the school authorities possessed more training than Colt’s father Colin had, more resources than he had, and supposedly more objectivity about Colt than he had. For that matter, why not blame the school for not using metal detectors?

There’s also an assumption that if the guns had been locked up Colt couldn’t or wouldn’t have killed people. I agree that it almost certainly would have been more difficult for him to do so, but it still could have been accomplished. He could have used a knife. He could have used explosives. He could have bought a gun on the black market or stolen one. Where there’s a will …

If a state or city wants to require people to lock up their guns, it can do so. If someone fails to follow the law, impose the penalty for violation of that law rather than twisting another law around in order to punish someone you have designated as the one to blame even though everyone is to blame.

SCOTUS has ruled on how much can be required of homeowners regarding gun storage – that is, it has ruled on what cannot be required. The case was District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) (see this):

Provisions of the District of Columbia Code made it illegal to carry an unregistered firearm … The Code also contained provisions that required owners of lawfully registered firearms to keep them unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or other similar device unless the firearms were located in a place of business or being used for legal recreational activities. …

[Heller] sought an injunction against the enforcement of the relevant parts of the Code and argued that they violated his Second Amendment right to keep a functional firearm in his home without a license. The district court dismissed the complaint. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed and held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep firearms in the home for the purpose of self-defense, and the District of Columbia’s requirement that firearms kept in the home be nonfunctional violated that right.

So the appeals court ruled that the requirements were too strict and effectively disarmed people, making it impossible to use their guns for self-defense. The case ultimately went to SCOTUS and its ruling was 5-4, which is about as close as it can be. The ruling divided along the usual political lines. The majority basically agreed with the need for self-defense and claimed the 2nd Amendment protected that right, whereas the dissenting minority went with the “militia” interpretation and did not think this case unduly limited the right to bear arms because that right only applied to militias or militia-equivalents. SCOTUS has since declined to rule further on the issue of laws about gun locks in the home, which leaves those laws standing. I believe the idea at present is that some restrictions are okay as long as they preserve the right to self-defense.

NOTE: Once again I am reminded of the chilling poem by A. E. Housman, “The Culprit.” Regarding the Gray case, the poem is somewhat ironic, because Colin the father is being punished (15 years), although the son Colt still drew the harsher sentence (life without parole):

THE CULPRIT

The night my father got me
His mind was not on me;
He did not plague his fancy
To muse if I should be
The son you see.

The day my mother bore me
She was a fool and glad,
For all the pain I cost her,
That she had borne the lad
That borne she had.

My mother and my father
Out of the light they lie;
The warrant would not find them,
And here ’tis only I
Shall hang so high.

Oh let not man remember
The soul that God forgot,
But fetch the county kerchief
And noose me in the knot,
And I will rot.

For so the game is ended
That should not have begun.
My father and my mother
They had a likely son,
And I have none.

The post Regulating guns in the home: how far to go? appeared first on The New Neo.

[Ortego said] There won’t be any more elections here. There won’t be any more elections for them [the opposition factions] to try to seize the government, to seize power.

And we are going to work with the national assemblies and the corresponding organizations on the laws because laws need to be made.

Let them build a wall, a blockade against the coup plotters, the traitors and no matter how much money the Yankees give them, they won’t be able to.

The polls must not have been looking so good.

If you’re wondering how long Ortega has been around, he’s 80 years old now and was the country’s head from 1979 to 1990, was voted out, won again in the 2006 election and has been in power ever since:

In June 2018, organizations such as Amnesty International and the Organization of American States reported that Ortega had engaged in a violent oppression campaign against anti-government protests. The violent crackdown and subsequent constriction of civil liberties have led to waves of emigration to neighboring Costa Rica, with more than 30,000 Nicaraguans filing for asylum in that country.

His government jailed many potential rival candidates in the 2021 general election, including Cristiana Chamorro Barrios. Ortega’s government also imprisoned other opponents, such as former allies Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres Jiménez. In August 2021, Nicaragua cancelled the operating permits of six US and European NGOs. Many critics of the Ortega government, including opposition leaders, journalists and members of civil society, fled the country in mid-2021. In his fourth term, Ortega ordered the closure of several NGOs, universities, and newspapers, and resumed his repression of the Catholic Church after a brief rapprochement, imprisoning prelate Rolando José Álvarez Lagos.

Nice guy.

Now he wants the Nicaraguan legislature to abolish elections. Apparently, they have the power to do that. It’s not quite the Enabling Act in Nazi Germany – by which the Reichstag effectively dissolved itself. But the Nicaraguan legislature has been cooperative with Ortega’s accumulation of more and more power, and it will continue down that path:

Ortega and [his wife] Murillo expanded their authority through sweeping constitutional changes that took effect in 2025. The reforms included extending the presidential term from five years to six and placing the legislative, judicial and electoral institutions under the authority of the presidency.

The pair now exercise control over nearly every branch of government, including the armed forces, police and judiciary.

Ortega, Nicaragua’s longest-serving leader, is scheduled to remain in office until early 2028, although his statement on Sunday effectively canceled Nicaragua’s next elections, which had been scheduled for November 2027.

Critics say Ortega had already effectively eliminated meaningful electoral competition during elections in 2011, 2016 and 2021.

As Rubio says:

“Daniel Ortega’s declaration that, under his family’s dictatorship, Nicaragua will never again hold elections lays bare their true authoritarian nature. Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have abandoned even the pretense of popular consent,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday.

The US had already imposed some sanctions and visa restrictions on government officials. The international community has been condemning Ortega for quite some time. But they are powerless to do anything. I doubt Trump will pull another Maduro caper, although I suppose it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

As Turkey’s Erdogan once said, “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.” Ortega stepped off a long time ago, but now he’s telling the world in no uncertain terms. And, in the usual way of Newspeak, he says he’s doing it in order to save democracy.

The post Ortega of Nicaragua decides to become official dictator appeared first on The New Neo.

Some of history’s greatest empires have devolved into genocidal lunacy—often with shocking compliance from their own people. What methods can create this madness?

In Manufacturing Delusion, acclaimed conservative commentator and former CIA officer Buck Sexton offers answers. Drawing on his intelligence experience, expertise in crowd psychology, knowledge of propaganda, and research into some of history’s darkest totalitarian chapters, he equips you to identify mind control tactics used to form compliant citizens. He explores the eight tactics of mass delusion through examining:

— How Stalin used Pavlovian mind games to establish absolute control
— How Chinese thought reform transformed opposition into terrorized pawns
— How Jihadist preachers replace shared humanity with weaponized fear

Using these examples and others, Sexton walks you through a history of controlling regimes and the methods they used to create passive citizens. More importantly, he shows you how some of the early stages of mass delusion have already occurred right here in the United States of America, on issues of public health, gender, and racial justice.

I heard about the book through this interview with the author. Although the book’s title only mentions the left, he says in the interview that he also sees it on the right (or the former right, or the pretend right – aka Carlson and Owens). However, that is still a fringe group on the right, whereas it’s a widespread and mainstreamed tool of the left.

Here’s the interview:

In the interview, Sexton also mentions a much older book, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing by Joost A. M. Meerloo. It was first published in 1956 and this is from Amazon’s description:

In 1933 Meerloo began to study the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective “truth” on their victims’ minds. In “The Rape of the Mind” he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people’s minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized “rape of the mind.” He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion. The “Rape of the Mind” is written for the interested layman, not only for experts and scientists. Contents: Part One: The Techniques of Individual Submission. 1. You Too Would Confess. 2. Pavlov’s Students as Circus Tamers. 3. Medication into Submission. 4. Why Do They Yield? The Psychodynamics of False Confession. Part Two: The Techniques of Mass Submission. 5. The Cold War against the Mind. 6. Totalitaria and its Dictatorship. 7. The Intrusion by Totalitarian Thinking. 8. Trial by Trial. 9. Fear as a Tool of Terror. Part Three: Unobtrusive Coercion. 10. The Child is Father to the Man. 11. Mental Contagion and Mass Delusion. 12. Technology Invades Our Minds. 13. Intrusion by the Administrative Mind. 14. The Turncoat in Each of Us. Part Four: In Search of Defenses. 15. Training Against Mental Torture. 16. Education for Discipline or Higher Morale. 17. From Old to New Courage. 18. Freedom — Our Mental Backbone

I think “our mental backbone” has gone rather squishy lately.

The reason I have highlighted the Meerloo book, though, is that – strangely enough – I read it when I was about ten years old. Did I understand it? Certainly not deeply. But the topic already interested me so much that I plowed through it.

How did it fall into my hands? My family had received a free and unsolicited catalogue in the mail from Marboro Books, which was (according to Google AI) “a notable discount book retailer and publisher founded in 1947, famous for selling remainders and overstock books at steep discounts through retail stores and mail-order catalogs, the chain was acquired by Barnes & Noble in 1979.” When the catalogue came, I pored over it, fascinated. It was the first time it occurred to me that I could order an adult book – and by “adult” I certainly don’t mean anything to do with sex.

My childhood interests were a portent of things to come as a blogger, because not only did I order that Meerloo book with my allowance, but I also ordered Charles MacKay’s classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds. That one was first published in 1841:

The subjects of Mackay’s debunking include alchemy, crusades, duels, economic bubbles, fortune-telling, haunted houses, the Drummer of Tedworth, the influence of politics and religion on the shapes of beards and hair, magnetisers (influence of imagination in curing disease), murder through poisoning, prophecies, popular admiration of great thieves, popular follies of great cities, and relics.

I think I’m going to order the Sexton book. I seem to have lost the others along the way, although I had them for a long long time.

The post Writing the book on mass indoctrination appeared first on The New Neo.

I’m thinking that the country feels like it’s under internal siege. But you know, I’ve felt that way before. I write about the dangers often, and so I’m not going to write about them today. It’s a holiday, a big one.

Today I’m just going to note that I really do believe this is the greatest country on earth. Although threatened at times, our commitment to liberty is unmatched by that of any other country. The World Cup visitors from afar are surprised at our friendliness, our energy, our huge portions, our generosity.

I remember hearing from my son, when he lived in South America for quite a while, that although in some ways he could pass for a native, people always knew he was an American even before he opened up his mouth and demonstrated that he had an accent. Why? It was because of the way he walked. And I’ve heard other people say that Americans stride in a different way, a more open and free gait that identifies them.

America may just be the most beautiful country in the world in the sense of natural wonders, too. It’s certainly one of them, anyway. That’s partly because it’s so large and the terrain and climate and flora and fauna so varied. I recall learning in art history class that many of the early paintings of the American West – such as, for example, by Bierstadt – were designed to show Easterners and denizens of the Old World the wonders of the New. They could scarcely believe what they saw. And granted, it was a somewhat idealized version – but not that far off from reality:

I remember the 1976 Bicentennial vividly. But that was a long time ago. I was young, and now – well, let’s just say I’m not young anymore. But that star-spangled banner still waves o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Have a wonderful celebration!

The post Reflections on the 250th Fourth appeared first on The New Neo.

I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.

When you approach the Promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is the city.

And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.

I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.

All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a preponderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.

The garden is more advanced in time than gardens where I live, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyacinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees whose names I don’t know.

In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.

As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in the Sixties, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early Seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on subsequent visits. So what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.

I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.

The sight is intensely familiar to me – I used to see it frequently when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.

NOTE: I was going to add a photo of the Statue of Liberty here. But instead I was very taken with a video about how the statue was constructed. I’d never previously thought about the challenges involved and how they were surmounted, but I learned about them here. And the video also caused me to reflect, and not for the first time, on how the forces arrayed against the US right now are good at destroying but not at building. Destroying is so much easier:

The post For the Fourth: on liberty appeared first on The New Neo.

The post For the Fourth appeared first on The New Neo.

It’s been ten years since the purges began, and I still have a hard time believing it actually happened. Did so many of my friends really go along with it? Did institutions, corporations, and all of Hollywood allow themselves to be shamefully cowed by the fanatical mob? Yes.

Stone underwent her political change in recent years, and this phenomenon still has the power to surprise her. I experienced it over twenty years ago, and so I’m more used to the idea that most people will follow the tyranny du jour. From my observation, this mentality is more common on the left, but the right is hardly immune. It just takes a different form.

Many years ago I read Dorothy Thompson’s 1941 essay that appeared in Harper’s and was entitled, “Who Goes Nazi?”. It’s a catchy title, isn’t it? Thompson presents it as a parlor game, but a deadly serious one:

It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.

I have many quarrels with Thompson, and I also disagree with some of what she wrote in the essay. That’s not the subject matter of this post, however. I’m introducing it here because I very much agree with her basic premise, which is that most people are susceptible to totalitarian leanings and to propaganda. In the essay it’s “Nazism” – after all, it was written in 1941. But it’s hardly limited to that; we’re talking about the totalitarian impulse, either “for your own good” which turns into evil, or for outright evil.

Some embrace it wholeheartedly and some half-heartedly, some think they are being virtuous, some are indifferent but go along to get along, some don’t pay any attention, and some do it out of fear. But to defy it takes a great deal of insight and courage.

In addition to the Thompson essay, I sometimes think of the Milgram experiment. This particular post from 2008 explains the phenomenon best. An excerpt:

If you’re unfamiliar with the Milgram experiments, here’s a summary. The gist of it was Milgram’s shocking (literally) finding that ordinary people in this country could be persuaded to inflict what they thought were painful electric jolts to “subjects” (actually, actors) in what was billed as a learning experiment, if an authoritative “researcher” (also an actor) told them it was okay.

This was true for most subjects even if the “victim” was screaming in pain and complained of a weak heart. It was also true if the “doctor” didn’t have a white coat, and was in a lab in a seedier part of town. No actual shocks were administered, but I recall that, in follow-up interviews, most of the subjects thought the shocks were real.

Milgram varied the details of the experiment over and over (read his book if you have time; it’s a masterpiece of its genre), but the results always pointed to the troubling fact that the majority of people failed to “question authority” …

“Authority” can vary. It can, for instance, be some online charlatan whom a person has come to trust. It can be a leftist professor, or a series of leftist professors, at a university. It can be the baying hounds of cancel culture, or the Furies of the “Me Too” witch hunt. It can be Jew-haters of all persuasions. It’s a shape-shifter exploiting a fact of human nature.

Our Founders believed it was possible to create a system of government that would be at least somewhat resistant to these forces. They did the best they could, and they were brilliant men. Perhaps they did the best possible. But no system can guard against the tendency well enough to make tyranny impossible, and the Founders were well aware of that, too.

[NOTE: Sasha Stone’s entire essay is worth reading, and there are some especially good short videos there.]

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So, will they wear out their welcome and be just a passing phase? Maybe, but I absolutely wouldn’t count on it. Another phrase occurs to me:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I’ve quoted the poem many times over the years. But it now occurs to me that the first part isn’t correct. In other words, do “the best lack all conviction”? Not in the least. If they’re “the best,” they have plenty of conviction and principles and are serious about them. The real question is whether those convictions are a match for the obvious “passionate intensity” of the far left.

Note also that “the worst” are riding almost entirely on emotional intensity; reason really doesn’t enter into it for them. Thus we have today’s cuckoos, who – although they talk academic theory gobbledygook – are full of such passionate intensity that I don’t doubt they would “cut down every law” to get their way.

Another relevant quote occurs to me, and it’s this one from Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, uttered by O’Brien to Winston Smith as he’s being interrogated and tortured:

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?

In another cuckoo-like move, however, the Party pretends to be interested in the good of others. Perhaps certain members even think they are interested in that. But the gleaming attraction of power is tantamount (true of many politicians, by the way).

Plus, also from Orwell:

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.

Forever? Well, maybe not, but once these things get going they are difficult to reverse. Most Democrat politicians of the more “moderate” sort are loathe to condemn the Democratic Socialists, who already seem to have a lot of power in blue areas. The old-time Democrats seem to think the crocodile will eat them last. Hakeem Jeffries doesn’t have that luxury (although he refuses to address it); the chant at some of the NY primary victory get-togethers, when Jeffreys’ face appeared on the screen for a moment, was “You’re next!”

As that article says:

“To be shouting ‘you’re next’ — a majority white audience to a Black man — just harkens back to some dark times in history,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who endorsed Valdez’s opponent Antonio Reynoso. …

In interviews with the New York Times and CNN, New York Attorney General Letitia James spoke about “hurt feelings” in communities of color. She said she was disappointed by Mamdani’s lack of understanding about race and class issues in the city.

“Some of the candidates that he has supported are individuals who do not understand the politics of New York City, the cultural differences from district to district, who have not been part of the history and the struggle of some of these districts …

So there’s a very interesting racial aspect to all of this, and it seems to be the case – from an analysis of the results in different areas of New York – that the main DSA support comes from affluent and highly educated white people rather than black or Hispanic voters. But the overall voting turnout was very very low, reported variously as between 10% and 15%. That makes it somewhat more difficult to analyze.

Why is turnout so low in these primaries? I don’t know. If I lived in NY, I’d be strongly motivated to vote. I think that, in many deep blue enclaves, it’s a foregone conclusion that the Democrat nominee will win the regular election, and that all Democrats are at least somewhat alike. Therefore, people who aren’t political junkies and aren’t paying a whole lot of attention don’t realize what’s actually happening here and who these candidates are and how much they differ. So the 10% or 15% who do turn out and vote are the ones filled with that “passionate intensity” of the far-left fanatic. That’s the best I can do for an explanation for such tremendous voting apathy on the part of most people there.

One of the few Democrats speaking out against the DSA is James Carville, of all people. But he’s an old fossil [emphasis mine]:

True to form, Carville lit into the party crashers with his colorful “Ragin’ Cajun” rhetoric. Focusing on Chevalier, he said that she “has attacked interracial relationships and the American flag. Lady, I ain’t in the same party as you. I’m sorry, I’m just not.”

He then revealed how very serious he considered the situation to be by calling for his own party to do something drastic: “And I actually do think it’s time for Democrats to talk the S word: schism. I really do.”

“Everybody’s always said, ‘No, no, we’re a coalition, we’re a big tent,’” Carville went on, but there’s “just some s**t that I can’t be in the same tent with.” …

“But, and understand, these people do not like Democrats; not only are they not Democrats, they wish Democrats poorly. …

“I am totally comfortable in a political party that spends time questioning the policies of the government of Israel. In fact, I’m enthusiastic about that,” Carville clarified, but “I don’t want to be in a political party that denies the right of the state of Israel to exist. That’s just not — I just can’t do that. I’m sorry. It’s just not doable.”

But Carville is an outlier on this. Must Democrat politicians seem to be finding it very doable indeed – so far.

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