Monthly Archives: May 2023

As with every major revelation proving them to be the treacherous, anti-democratic demons they are, the corporate media have instantly gone to work sweeping away the shocking conclusions of Special Counsel John Durhams report on the FBIs conduct as it related to its 2016 investigation of Donald Trump and Russia.

Years of work went into this thing, and the media believe all of its heinous discoveries can be set aside with a few news briefs belittling them as minor, unimpressive matters of mistake and shortcomings.

Thats not what Durham found. What he found was explicit bias within the worlds most powerful law enforcement agency against a democratically chosen presidential nominee.

The report, released Monday, is more than 300 pages, many of which recount information pieced together by Republicans in Congress and right-leaning journalists. But everything you need to know is in Durhams summary, which, as tactfully as possible, describes the FBIs 2016 investigation into Trump as not only without a foundation, but driven by political bias, dishonesty, and an appalling degree of personal animus.

The media wont relay those facts from the report honestly because, of course, the media were complicit in the absolute con from the start. They hated Trump more than top officials at the FBI did and were more than happy to fan the flames that terrified the nation for years and irreparably crippled Trumps entire term.

With that in mind, this is how big media described Durhams findings versus what Durham actually said.

New York Times: Mr. Durhams 306-page report revealed little substantial new information about the inquiry, known as Crossfire Hurricane, and it failed to produce the kinds of blockbuster revelations accusing the bureau of politically motivated misconduct that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies suggested Mr. Durham would uncover.

That suggests there was no proof or even significant evidence in Durhams report that the FBI was hounding Trump for any reason outside of standard, dry agency business. Thats false.

What the report actually said: Our investigation revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially from politically affiliated persons and entities. In particular, there was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trumps political opponents. The Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them

In other words, the FBI willingly accepted allegations from Trumps political rivals, treating them as objective data, rather than what they were: traditional campaign waste material.

Associated Press: The report, the culmination of a four-year investigation into possible misconduct by U.S. government officials, contained withering criticism of the FBI but few significant revelations.

That gives the impression that Durhams report was a symbolic reprimand of no consequence. Thats false.

Heres from the actual report: FBI personnel acknowledge[d] both then and in hindsight that they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the [Trump campaign] was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of a foreign power, or knowingly helping another person in such activities.

In essence, FBI agents participating in the investigation were insincere in their efforts to find a sinister link between Trumps campaign and Russia, because they knew it wasnt likely to exist and didnt believe there was a reason to try finding it anyway.

USA Today: Special counsel John Durham criticizes FBI Trump-Russia probe, but recommends no wholesale changes.

Mistakes were made but who among us?!

Thats not what Durham said. What he said is that the FBI abandoned its mission in pursuit of a political agenda and that if it had simply followed its own rules, one of the greatest political scandals in history would have never happened.

From Durhams report: [T]here is a continuing need for the FBI and the [Justice] Department to recognize that lack of analytical rigor, apparent confirmation bias, and an over-willingness to rely on information from individuals connected to political opponents caused investigators to fail to adequately consider alternative hypotheses and to act without appropriate objectivity or restraint in pursuing allegations of collusion or conspiracy between a U.S. political campaign and a foreign power. Although recognizing that in hindsight much is clearer, much of this also seems to have been clear at the time.

Its not as if Durham is hiding the ball. He notes in his report that there were equal opportunities to investigate Hillary Clintons campaign in 2016, but those were handled more discreetly, either by alerting the candidates team that it might have been targeted by potential foreign influence, or by simply dropping the matter altogether. (Hey, how about that?!)

Again, from the Durham report: The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.

In short, there was a double standard a political one. A democracy cant sustain this kind of scandal perpetuated by its chief law enforcers. But the media gave up on that a long time ago.

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Media's Lies About The Durham Report Vs. What The Report Said - The Federalist

Canadaexpelleda Chinese diplomat early this week, and Chinaretaliatedby expelling a Canadian diplomat. The allegation of Chinas aggressive political interference in Canada is at the center of this tension.

On May 1, The Globe and Mail, a Canadian media outlet, disclosed a 2021top-secret assessment by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the nations top spy agency. The CSIS warned that Beijing is the foremost perpetrator of foreign interference in Canada and that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) operatives have employed incentives and punishment as part of their overseas operations, directly targeting Canadian legislators, business executives, and Chinese immigrants in the nation.

The CSIS assessment identified Michael Chong, a member of parliament (MP) from the Conservative Party, as one of the CCPs targets. Chong, the son of a Chinese immigrant, is an outspoken critic of the CCP. In 2021, a non-binding motion sponsored by Chong to declare that the CCPs treatment of the Uyghur Muslims constituted genocide was passed by the House of Commons 266-0. The Chinese ambassador to Ottawa, Cong Peiwu, condemnedthe motion and claimed, There is no so-called genocide in Xinjiang at all.

Soon after, China put Chong and several other MPs on its sanction list. The CSIS alleged that Zhao Wei, a diplomat at the Chinese embassy in Toronto, instructed Hong Kong authorities to locate Chongs relatives in the city. Zhao sought to make an example of Chong and silence other China critics in Canada by going after Chongs relatives.

Other than offering Chong a vague warning, CSIS never shared the specifics of its assessment with him in 2021. Chong only learned about it afterThe Globe and Mail contacted him recently. Since Chong cut off ties with relatives in Hong Kong years ago to protect them, he didnt know if the Chinese authorities had hurt any of them due to his political activities in Canada. In astatement, Chong called Beijings political interference in Canada a serious, national threat. He accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of withholding the CSIS report from him for more than two years and failing to address the foreign interference activities of China.

Since March, the Trudeau government has struggled to deal with allegations of Chinas meddling in Canadas 2019 and 2021 elections. CCP operativesreportedlyhelped keep China-friendly Trudeau and his Liberal Party in power while defeating several Conservative Party MPs who were critical of Beijing. When he first came to office, Trudeau vowed to improve Canadas relationship with China and explored signing a free-trade agreement with Beijing.

According to CSIS, Chinas sophisticated interference operations in Canada are managed by the United Front Work Department (UFWD), a CCP agency tasked with helping the party aggressively and yet covertly dictate its messages and narratives about China domestically and overseas. The CSIS report alleged the interference tactics UFWD deployed in Canada included utilizing Chinese diplomats and pro-Beijing Chinese-Canadian organizations to spread misinformation about Conservative Party MPs who are critical of the CCP; donating money to liberal organizations such as the foundation for Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, named after the father of Justin Trudeau; co-opting some Chinese language media to publish pro-Beijing articles; and spying on and silencing critics of the CCP, especially if they are ethnic Chinese who have families in China.

One of the most severe allegationswas that Chinas Toronto consulate directed a large clandestine transfer of funds to a network of at least eleven federal election candidates and numerous Beijing operatives who worked as their campaign staffers in 2019. Chinas former consul-general in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling,reportedly bragged about how she helped defeat two Conservative MPs in 2021. Tong has since returned to China.

Under tremendous public pressure, Trudeauorderedan independent investigation in March to help identify and combat foreign interference in Canadas elections and its democracy. This months revelation about Chinas attempted intimidation operation against Chong only fueled more public furor that Trudeau has failed to prevent authoritarian regimes like China from undermining the nations democracy. Trudeau did an about-face byannouncing the expulsion of Zhao Wei, the Chinese diplomat identified by the intelligence report.

China retaliated byordering Jennifer Lynn Lalonde, consul at the Canadian consulate in Shanghai, to leave China. In addition, the Chinese government vowed to take other retaliatory measures to punish Canada. Given the precedent that Beijing wrongfully detained Canadian citizensMichael Kovrig and Michael Spavor for nearly three years as political retaliation for Canadas detainment of a high-level Chinese business executive, Canadian citizens and businesses in China are understandably concerned about whether they will become the next victims of Beijings hostage diplomacy.

Canada wasnt the only target of Chinas foreign interference. In 2016, Australias Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ordered an investigation into Chinas interference in his country after Chinese-Australian businessmen with close ties to the CCPreportedly made campaign contributions and covered the expenses of a prominent politician in the Labor Party. The investigation led to an explosive intelligence reportalleging Beijing has attempted to influence Australias political parties for years and there had been infiltration at every layer of the Australian government, right down to local councils.

The revelation prompted the Australian legislature to enact the Foreign Interference Law in 2018. But early this year, former PM Turnbull complained that the law wasnt rigorously enforced, despite the fact that the most active state and political party seeking to influence public affairs in Australia is that of China and the Communist Party of China we know that.

What happened in Australia and Canada illustrates how the CCP, under its leader Xi Jinping, has taken brazen actions that far exceeded legitimate diplomacy in exploiting other countries loopholes in their espionage and counterintelligence laws, infiltrating their political systems and seeking to influence and shape public opinions and policies by all means necessary.

Undoubtedly, the CCP has conducted similar interference campaigns in the United States as in Australia and Canada. In 2020, a suspected Chinese spy, Fang Fang,reportedlydeveloped extensive ties with local and national politicians in the U.S., including Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. The U.S. Department of Justice recentlychargedtwo individuals with the operation of an illegal Chinese police station in New York City, targeting ethnic Chinese who are critical of Beijing.

Early this week, Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountabilitypresentedevidence that foreign nationals, including those from China, sought access to then-Vice President Joe Biden through questionable business dealings with Bidens family members and business associates. All these cases are the tip of the iceberg of the CCPs meddling in the United States.

The CCP is unconcerned about repercussions whenever it gets caught because it has plenty of tools in its toolbox. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the CCP relies on a range of economic and non-economic tools to punish, influence and deter foreign governments in its foreign relations.

The U.S. government has been complacent and has been slow to counter Chinas political interference. Canada and Chinas diplomatic tit-for-tat should serve as a warning. Since another presidential election is coming, if President Biden is serious about defending democracy in the U.S., he should reach out to his counterparts in Canada and Australia and learn from their experiences in dealing with the CCPs political interference, especially the mistakes they made.

The Biden administration must understand the CCPs strategy and tactics and work with Congress to develop comprehensive measures to curtail the CCPs interference operations in the U.S. and protect the integrity of our elections and Americans right to free speech.

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Canada And China's Tit-For-Tat Is A Warning For America - The Federalist

Elon Musk shared a Federalist article on Twitter this week that detailed how Zuckbucks were used to influence the outcome of the 2020 election, and leftists are livid.

On Tuesday, the Twitter CEO linked to an October 2021 article, written by Federalist contributor William Doyle, that examines how Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gavehundreds of millions of dollarsto nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) leading up to the 2020 presidential contest. CTCL and CEIR then poured these Zuckbucks into local election offices in battleground states around the country to change how elections were administered, such as by expanding unsupervised election protocols like mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes.

Notably, Doyles article examines how these grants were heavily skewed toward Democrat-majority counties, essentially making it a massive, privately funded Democrat get-out-the-vote operation. Organizations such as the Capital Research Center have also released detailed analyses on the partisan distribution of these funds.

While Musk simply referred to the article as interesting, that was apparently too much for Washington Post columnist Philip Bump to handle. In response, Bump penned an article titled, Musk shares baseless election claim with millions of Twitter users, in which he attempted to smear the Twitter CEO and discredit The Federalists article.

This is a common way in which Musk elevates right-wing rhetoric. Hell often engage with fringe voices by declaring their commentary to be concerning suggesting its just something worth mulling over, complained Bump in melodramatic fashion.

But then Bump openly admits the purpose of Zuckbucks wasnt to help election offices promote safe and reliable voting during the Covid outbreak, as CTCL and CEIR originally claimed, but to increase voter turnout in Democrat-majority areas.

Much of the analysis in the Federalist article centers on the idea that these investments were larger in more-Democratic counties, using that as a peg for the argument that the investments were partisan and critical to Bidens success.

But that argument is easily countered. CTCLs investments were often in heavily Democratic areas because those areas often have lower turnout rates. If you want to increase turnout, the smartest place to try to do so is places where turnout is lowest. In the United States, thats often lower-income communities and communities that have high populations of Black and Hispanic residents, two groups that often vote heavily Democratic.

In trying to explain away the disparities in Zuckbucks distribution, Bump instead admits a Democrat get-out-the-vote effort is exactly what happened. While Zuckerbergs donations to CTCL and CEIR were marketed as just a good-faith initiative to ensure Covid didnt disrupt local election administration, House Republicans later discovered that less than 1 percentof CTCLs 2020 funds were spent on personal protective equipment.

The argument has gone from: Private funding from CTCL for election administration offices was only meant to help the elections run smoothly, to CTCL poured money into Democratic strongholds to boost turnout and thats a good thing, tweeted Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project.

Whether they realize it or not, Bump and the Post are admitting the main purpose of Zuckbucks was to boost turnout among voters in Democrat strongholds. Its a remarkable fact that, for once, the Post got right.

Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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WaPo Admits 'Zuckbucks' Were Used To Turn Out Dems In 2020 - The Federalist

Democrats pursued the most recent Republican president with impeachment three times over allegations he had partnered with a foreign government to influence U.S. government policies. If equal standards were applied to the Biden family, Joe Biden would be impeached both in the press and in Congress for treasonous collusion with foreign governments.

Democrats claimed Donald Trump committed treason because his son had met with a Democrat-planted Russian lobbyist. In exchange for Russian assistance with election-influencing social media memes, the allegations went, Trumps campaign promised a more Russia-friendly U.S. foreign policy.

Joe Bidens familys use of his high-level U.S. government positions to rake in millions from product-free business deals has been documented since before the Obama administration, perhaps most extensively by journalist Peter Schweizer. Last week, Republicans in Congress added more evidence to the accruing pile indicating the Biden family has been selling influence with the American government to foreign bidders for decades.

House Republicans called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate evidence at least nine Biden family members functioned as cutouts for some $10 million in foreign payments to the big guy. The nest of foreign payments to Biden family members under nearly two dozen shell companies looks like a mafia ledger.

Corporate outlets largely ignored the new evidence that would have led to another impeachment push if Trump were president. The same day Republicans called on the Department of Justice to investigate the Bidens millions in payments, DOJ arrested their Republican colleague over trumped-up tax charges concerning an allegedly errant couple hundred bucks. Democrats play for keeps, while Republicans for some reason still cant figure out what year it is.

Its been eight years since Democrats openly used their political power to upend every norm in the playbook. They filed impeachment charges on the first day of Trumps presidency. They spent years contesting presidential elections. They are sweeping elections with low-quality absentee ballots. Their cronies are turning domestic disagreement into domestic terrorism, targeting Christian pro-life moms as extremists who warrant surveillance and curtailment of online speech.

If Republicans cant figure out what era were in and how to stop the lefts destruction of self-government, our country is toast. Republican voters figured this out good and hard when the Russiagate hoax was unraveled. Why cant their representatives? Its long past time for Republicans to start using Democrats standards against Democrats until they agree to play fair.

When Democrats were pushing for impeaching Trump, the source of the fabricated dossier used as a pretext both for the Obama administration spying on the Republican presidential nominees campaign and later for impeaching Trump told Congress that Don Trump Jr. merely talking to a Russian lawyer indicated treason.

Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson testified: [T]he issue with the Trump Tower meeting, as I understand it, is that the Trump people were eager to accept intelligence from a foreign government about their political rivals and that is, you know, I would say, a form of interference. If youre getting help from a foreign government and your help is intelligence, then the foreign governments interfering.

Again, apply this to the Biden familys business deals, and Joe Biden should have been impeached as a traitor the day he took office. According to Schweizer, many of the Chinese officials who paid Biden family members were connected with high-level Chinese government intelligence.

[T]he Biden family received some $31 million from Chinese businessmen with very close ties to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence during and after Joe Bidens tenure as vice president, Schweizer documented in his 2022 book, Red-Handed.

Is the same true about Ukrainian payments to Hunter Biden? A 2020 U.S. Senate committee report said those illustrate serious counterintelligence and extortion concerns relating to Hunter Biden and his family.

Although the suggestion will surely prompt howls from the uniparty, its an entirely fair question whether and how any of these payments have affected Bidens foreign policy that includes proxy war with a nuclear power. What do Ukrainian officials know about the Biden familys years of financial dealings in their famously corrupt country that the U.S. president might not want American voters to know? Isnt it election interference to withhold that information from the public?

The Biden administration has committed an amazing amount of American funds and materiel to Ukraines war with Russia. That extensive backing may be damaging U.S. readiness for other looming conflicts, such as with China over Taiwan.

Americans need to know what the Biden family did and may still be doing for Ukrainian officials in exchange for Hunter Bidens well-documented Ukranian sinecure. How many of those American war billions for Ukraine that we cant trace are going to oligarchs who made payments to Biden family members?

The Biden administration is also ignoring South American drug cartels highly profitable war on the U.S. border. That war is boosted by the same Chinese government whose officials also reportedly bought Biden family influence. Funny how foreign payouts seem to manifest everywhere the United States is bleeding out.

Its farcical for Republicans to demand that the Biden-corrupted Department of Justice investigate the president of the party on whose behalf theyve been repeatedly ignoring congressional oversight, protecting corrupt politicians, raiding opposition party leaders homes, leaving opposition court justices homes surrounded, and endlessly leaking lies to media outlets. Its the height of political wankery to complain for TV about rogue federal agencies Republicans ridiculously keep pretending have any legitimacy and agreeing to fund.

Its long past time for elected Republicans to take their opponents seriously and metaphorically, feds return political fire with loaded guns. All Im asking is for Republicans to apply to the Bidens the same alleged standards Democrats cynically brandished against Trump.

Its not that complicated. Here are a few ideas in the right direction that could be refined by congressional lawyers: Tell Democrats no votes for any federal judicial nominees until the U.S. Department of Justice enforces federal law against the agitators menacing the homes of U.S. Supreme Court justices. Defunding every department, grant, and personnel member involved in suppressing Americans speech as misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation is now a non-negotiable precondition for voting on any federal spending bill.

The Biden administration will enforce federal law and deport border-crossers immediately, or Republican governors will send their National Guards to do it. Agencies that dont respond in the legally required timeframe to congressional inquiries and subpoenas will lose a tenth of their funding for every infraction. The FBI will be broken up into its useful departments, such as child trafficking and drug cartel dismantling, and those departments headquartered in red states like Utah, Florida, and Texas.

Red-state police will be instructed to refuse to cooperate with the FBI on any cases that arent of an obvious criminal nature, such as child sex crimes and kidnapping. Republicans will vote nothing else for the war in Ukraine until the Biden familys business dealings there are fully investigated and published.

Refuse to work with these people or their corrupted institutions in any way until they start manifestly obeying the U.S. Constitutions guarantee of equal protection of the laws. No one is above the law, right? Including the Bidens.

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By The Standards Democrats Applied To Trump, Biden Is A Traitor - The Federalist

From Rosa Parks to George Floyd, the left has reduced complex events to singular images that help its cause. Parks, for example, was a lifelong activist before the bus incident. George Floyd was a massive violent criminal high on meth and fentanyl. The screaming woman in the Little Rock Nine photo became close friends with the girl she yelled at, and Jane Roe became an anti-abortion activist, at least for a while. But these details dont matter. Americas ceaseless leftward march runs on reductive imagery. Poke the right until it bites, snap a picture of it, and use it to win.

The left is now trying to do this with its manufactured image of Daniel Pennys arrest. It wants us to see a brusk, racist, out-of-control white man finally, thankfully, corrected by the rainbow alliance.

Given that Penny surrendered himself, his photographed perp walk was entirely unnecessary, conducted only for the sake of theater. But not every manufactured image works out the way they want it to.

When Bernie Goetz shot four black subway attackers in the 1980s, the left painted him as a crazed racist, but he became, much to their surprise, a local hero among New Yorkers regardless of race or politics. Liberal DA Robert Morgenthau a DNC fixture if there ever was one had to charge him twice to even get an indictment. At trial, the jury acquitted Goetz of everything besides a gun charge, for which he served eight months.

Malcolm Gladwell later identified Goetz as the tipping point between hellish 1980s New York and the pinnacle years of the 1990s. Having worked at the Manhattan DAs office under Morgenthau himself the same office where Pennys fate now lies in the hands of Soros-funded DA Alvin Bragg I can say for certain that the Goetz case serves as a foundational New York myth for cops, prosecutors, and citizens alike. Even as recently as 2017, a Brooklyn DA refused to charge William J. Groomes, who shot and killed a guy on the subway, even though Groomes himself seems to have initiated the conflict. Despite being a working-class victory, the Goetz case is not seen as a Dem win.

And now this one too is blowing up in their faces. In the image, Penny looks like a superhero oppressed by a dark and grumpy empire. It has already sparked $2.4 million and counting in GiveSendGo donations, a link to which both Google and Fox News attempt to hide. Venomous headlines sought to control the damage: The Right Has Raised $2 Million For the Guy Who Choked a Homeless Man to Death. They tried different angles, upping the contrast and making it fuzzy, and making it a collage with other, darker images. They even sent in a body language expert for reinforcements.

He believes hes highly attractive. Its obvious his appearance is important to him, a body language expert told The Sun. Hes not showing fear, hes not showing shame.

None of it worked. Penny still looks like a total Chad, and everyone knows it. When I posted the image on Instagram without comment, my gayest, most progressive friend DMed me: he can choke me to death any time. Nobody is buying that this guy is an evil racist. He and his family have been incredibly smart and disciplined about staying silent so as not to fall into any rhetorical traps.

The reason the image backfired is because of a principle best articulated by Osama bin Laden: When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse. You see this same pattern replicated elsewhere in culture right now, such as in the Bud Light fiasco, as self-hating propagandists scramble to create images that arent as ugly as their souls.

Every now and then, an actual superhero appears. Theyre not super because of their physical powers, but because of their heightened image in our collective consciousness. Some criticize this mythologization, but why? Humans create demi-Gods; its just what we do. In being instantly elevated to myth status, Daniel Penny isnt like a superhero, he actually is one.

Behold the most popular movies of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. All kinds of movies, all kinds of stories, all kinds of protagonists. Then in 2000, abruptly, only one kind of movie, only one kind of story, only one kind of protagonist: the superhero.

Most people pass this off as global monoculture. Sheep love big explosions and recognizable IP, so thats what they get.

But I take a contrary view: Our love of superheroes betrays an innate populist intelligence. It reflects an overwhelming frustration at our loss of control, especially in the cities. Sheep dont turn to superheroes only for escape, but for hope too.

Western society grounds itself in the rights of the individual, yet gig-ified techno-urbanity entirely subsumes the individual into its panopticon. Work. Live. Play. All in your neat little box. We own nothing, and were not happy pillars of salt crumbling at the hands of an invincible surveillance state that packs us in like sardines.

Only an individual with great powers powers that match that of industrialized urbanity itself can save us. So Batman fights corrupt Gotham. Superman protects innocent Metropolis. Spiderman spins his web on erratic New York. Lately, we mix and match our superheroes and their cities, sampling them like our flights of local IPA.

Neelys recorded death transformed Penny into something far greater than himself: a literal urban legend. Not just because Penny chose to risk his life protecting innocents on a subway car, but because hes up against monumental forces of evil and their best weapons: the violence of the state-sanctioned drug zombie, the corruption of the Soros-funded DA, and the venom of the corporate media.

What sets superheroes apart from normal heroes? Heroes vanquish threats to innocent people. Superheroes take it a step further. They dont just vanquish the threat, they go to the source of the problem. The source is always conveniently embodied by a supervillain.

Supervillains, usually out of resentment from past wrongs, decide to take out their fury on the world by trying to conquer it. They are the final boss in a third-act showdown, the brain criminal behind the body criminals that the superhero faces in the first act. At the core of supervillain efforts always lies some half-brained moral plan about how things will be better for everyone once theyre in control, even if we cant understand it yet.

George Soros, a global citizen, never sets foot on the streets of cities he corrupts by electing ultra-liberal DAs that refuse to enforce the laws. Working-class, ordinary people have to send their children through dangerous filthy parks and subways because a random man from Hungary has decided it must be so.

Soros shares a similar backstory to the X-men supervillain Magneto, which is why Elon Musk just tweeted that Soros reminds [him] of Magneto, and that Soros wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. He hates humanity, which is something youd only say about a supervillain. Magneto turned against humanity after being thrown into a concentration camp during World War II. A Hungarian Jew, Soros is also a Holocaust survivor who helped the Nazis confiscate fellow Jews property, something he is on record saying he doesnt regret.

Even as crime rates spike and innocent people pay the price for Soros strange ideology, his true motivations remain shrouded. But they arent really mysterious at all. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one. Soros isnt like a supervillain, he literally is one. Hes driven by a genuine hatred of humanity. Thats it.

Like all fundamentally Marxist regimes, ours struggles with naturally occurring heroism. Moral flatness abhors tall trees. Historically, totalitarians solve this via blind adoration for a handful of leaders: cults of personality.

This also works in the other direction. Totalitarians form anti-personality cults toward their enemies Orwells two Minutes Hate. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a communist takeover that saw students literally imprisoning their teachers on campus, Red Guards used Big Character Posters to identify the crimes of their enemies. They were sort of text-only wanted posters put up in public places with long lists of accusations toward specific individuals. They often preceded struggle sessions.

The Daniel Penny arrest photo is an American Big Character poster. His stated crime is racist violence, but this is obvious fiction. In reality, his crime is being white, strong, and bold enough to stand up to the regimes drug-addled shock troops, on whose behalf they willingly destroy entire cities. Penny violated their ideology that protects the most vulnerable, but their real ideology is resentment, and the real protectors of the vulnerable are who they resent.

But unlike a Big Character Poster, an image speaks words of its own. In warping truth, the regime has flipped a hero into a villain. It does this a lot, and usually it works. But theres something different about Penny, just as there was something different about Goetz. They were meant to be images of fear and division, but they were transmuted into images of strength and honor.

Were naturally drawn to them, these strong horses next to weak ones. They both did something we all yearn to do a fulfillment of the hopes we pin on dreams and superheroes: First, to protect innocent people against bodily harm. Second, to stand up to an oppressive regime. And third? To look great doing it.

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Daniel Penny Is A Real-Life Superhero - The Federalist