FRENCH DEEP STATE ALIVE AND WELL AFTER LAWFARE STRIKE AGAINST LE PEN

Putin pawn prevented from becoming queen?

It is open to debate how compromised Marine Le Pen is, but it is fair to say that she has long been the candidate that Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin would prefer to win the French Presidential election (the next one is in 2027).

Not only would her victory lead to France backing out of its support for Ukraine, but it would also threaten France's network of alliances in NATO and the EU, leaving the rest of Europe much weaker in the face of Russian aggression. 

It is therefore interesting to see how what appears to be the French Deep State has managed to cut her off at the knees by banning her from running for public office for five years and giving her a four-year prison sentence (two years suspended and two years to be served with a tag, rather than in custody). Le Pen expected a "guilty" verdict but was reportedly surprised by the sentence.

The actual charges "embezzling" European funds to finance her party, are highly questionable and could probably be levelled at almost any other political party. They rely on technicalities of accounting and are a classic piece of "lawfare," especially in the sentence handed down, which clearly interferes with the democratic choices of millions of French voters.

The point of all this is to politically hamstring Le Pen and discredit her party in the eyes of the voters.

But what this really shows is that the French Deep State is much more potent and willing to act than its feeble American counterpart, which proved to be powerless to prevent the Putinist candidate Donald Trump triumphing in last year's US Presidential election. 

But might this move backfire? Removing Le Pen from the National Rally ticket opens up the way for the party's rising star Jordan Bardella to be put on the ticket. He might perform much better than the now aging Marine Le Pen.

If so, might that be part of the plan, with Bardella being the "safe" National Rally candidate, from the point of view of the French Deep State? Is he in fact someone who is on board with the long-term interests of France's elites?

Is Bardella the fella?

PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF MAGA LAUNCHES HEROIC EFFORT TO MAKE OWN CARS

The People's Republic of Maga (formerly known as the United States of America) has launched an heroic effort to make its own cars, announcing 25% tariffs on all automobiles and automobile parts made by the "foreign devils."

The radical move is entirely in line with Great Leader Donald Trump's "Year Zero" vision of creating an autarkic America that no-longer relies on "imperialist exports" from more advanced countries.

Under the possibly 5-year plan, automobile prices will first soar, followed by a move to empty the cities at gunpoint and march the country's population of workshy office drones, welfare queens, unemployed tech bros, and early retirement boomers to "automobile labour camps" in the countryside.

Here they will be forced to fashion basic automobile components from rocks, twigs, and left-over bits of agricultural machinery.  

Those who fail to reach production targets will have their slop ration cut to starvation levels, or be sent to "re-education" camps run by the non-existent Department of Education, thus greatly reducing the demand for automobiles. 

It is thought that Great Leader Trump's genius plan was inspired by meetings with fellow great leaders Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. 

How the new MAGA cars are expected to look

VANCE "INCEL RAGE" REIGNITED BY GREENLAND REJECTION

 

In a disturbing new twist at the White House, Vice President JD Vance has reacted to his total rejection by the people of Greenland by sinking into a dark abyss of seething bile, bitter self-loathing, and barely-concealed violence and insanity.

The descent into borderline psychopathy follows the collapse of a Vance-authored plan to visit Greenland with his Indian wife Usha, in order to win over the "hearts and minds" of Greenlanders.

The daring scheme, which would have seen Vance and his Indian wife Usha and his three Indian kids, Vivek 1, Vivek 2, and Vivek 3, hailed as "Liberators of the Frozen North," sadly fell apart when not even a single Greenlander agreed to meet the VP and his Subcontinental family of carpetbaggers. 

In the aftermath of the plan's total and humiliating collapse, Vance posted the following disturbing tweet from the White House's own Twitter account.

"Freedom seeds" is believed to be unhinged psychopath code for "dum-dum bullets drilled into the soft, exploding bodies of Inuit children (and the White women who wouldn't sleep with me)." 

Prison psychiatrists and Washington insiders hypothesise that the total rejection of Vance's overtures by the Greenlanders has unwittingly reignited the dark incel rage that has continued to smoulder deep inside him, like a twisted demon, even after he broke his duck just shy of 30 by marrying Usha.

A complicating factor for Vance is believed to be the fact that, as a "national conservative," he could only escape the total degradation of couch-fucking inceldom by entering into what he inwardly views as an "unholy exogamous marriage" that places his own offspring on the grim outer limits of his own empathy heat map.

This is one of the definitions of Hell in the Bhagavad Gita

JD VANCE = JD DENSE

by Colin Liddell

JD Vance should be called "JD Dense." Almost everything this couch-fucking hillybilly does or says sounds incredibly stupid.

Above-average American stupidity, by the way, seems to be the defining qualification for being included in this American administration, but Vance is supposed to be the Peter-Thiel-annointed intellectual heart of the MAGA "soft coup." He isn't, it's a void and it will fail.

On the recent infamous Signal chat with a number of other top-ranking MAGA morons about military strikes against the Houthis -- on which the Russians, Chinese, Iranians and probably the Houthis themselves listened in on -- Vance, in addition to being party to a major breach of security, expressed his usual moronic views on Europe, a continent that he seems to have a deep, seething hatred of.

Vance argued (rightly) that very little US trade passes through the Red Sea to the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean:

"3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message."

From these basic facts, Vance then, like the complete moron he is, concluded that the attacks were therefore the US pulling Europe's ass out of the fire.

"...if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again."

To this, Defence Secretary (and alcoholic) Pete Hesgeth replied: 

"VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike [Walz] is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close."

Yes, the words that will be remembered by all America's supposed NATO allies in Europe are "loathing," "free-loading," and "PATHETIC."

There is obviously some truth in the fact that America has more ability to conduct these kind of rock-and-sand-blasting strikes in remote Third World shitholes than the European part of NATO, but that's because Euro-NATO and Murica-NATO were evolved for different purposes, as this graph should make clear:

Yes, Euro-NATO is more designed to bear the brunt of a real war, while US-NATO is more designed for sailing happily around the Third World blowing up colourful bits of tent and mountain goat. This is also an admission that the USA is a country that bleats like a stuck pig and runs away any time it suffers military causalities and even when it doesn't. 

As for military spending, it is not clear how efficient any of this is, but it seems highly likely that there is a lot more waste and pork barrel on the American side. This is because one of the key functions of the US "military" budget is to keep areas of the USA that would otherwise economically atrophy alive.

Not sure Wing House could survive without US military pork barrel

But this is not the main problem with the arrogance and stupidity of the Signal chat. The real problem is that the Houthis are an entirely American created problem.

Houthi attacks on shipping are a direct response to US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, where there is currently a massive push to both directly kill Gazans and to render living conditions so bad that they will be forced out or killed by malnutrition and disease.

These actions are only possible by Israel because it is backed up by a US administration prepared to torch American soft power and moral authority in return for corrupt Zionist donations into the Trump family. 

The key point about all this is that what the Trump administration is doing is not going to help anyone anyway, least of all itself or its Israeli bribers.

The Houthis will just become more determined, while America will look weak and stupid and continue to alienate allies. Then, with the degrading of America's superpower brand, Israel will be increasingly left out on a limb. Let's see how this works out.

____________________

Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

Follow on Twitter and Bluesky

PUTIN'S UKRAINIAN WAR "MEAT CUBE" GROWS TO 24.25 METERS

Conservative estimates of the number of Russian soldiers killed in the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine reveal that enough Kremlin conscripts have now been slaughtered in the ongoing war in the Ukraine to make a giant meat cube measuring 24.25 meters in length. This is about the height of an eight storey building. 

This meaty metric is based on conservative UK Ministry of Defence estimates from November (700,000 killed or wounded) extended to the present day via reported daily casualty rates (e.g. 1,531 per day in early November 2024). This gives a conservative estimate of 835,000 to 900,000 casualties (killed and wounded).

Using a middle point of 867,500 casualties and estimating the number of killed at one for every 3 or 4 wounded (1:3.5), gives us a grand total of 192,778 Ivans slotted since the war began. As the average Russian soldier weighs 77.5 kg, this gives us a total Russian "death weight" of 14,940,295 kg.

A reasonable average density for raw lean meat (of the type typical of soldiers) is approximately 1,050 kg to the cubic meter (slightly denser than water, which is 1,000 kg/m³).

14,940,295 kg in cubic meters would be 14,288 cubic meters. Made into a meat cube, this amount of slaughtered Slavic squaddie meat would give us a giant glistening red cube that would be twice as high as the Hollywood Sign, several meters higher than the Kremlin's own walls, more than half the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and as high as the giant bronze statue of Germany's Hermann Memorial, which shows an angry German treading on a dead bird.

Sadly, all this pointless carnage is not compacted into a neat and aesthetically pleasing 24.25-meter cube but is instead spread out all over the Ukraine (and parts of Russia) in various states of neglect, decomposition, or consumption by wildlife, including rats, dogs, pigs, crows, foxes, and the occasional housecat.

While the amount of dead meat caused by this war is shocking, it is still ridiculously short of the amount needed to construct a 1:1 scale model of the Grand Pyramid of Cheops, as this would require 2,590,000 cubic meters of human flesh or around 77,331,384 dead Russians (and their North Korean allies), by which time most of the prisons and ethnic areas of Russia would be empty.

Is this Putin's final goal?

HOW TO TURN TESLAS INTO TOILET PAPER

by Grok

Converting a Tesla car or Cybertruck into something resembling toilet paper in its effective function is an imaginative and unconventional idea. Here's a theoretical breakdown of how one might approach this, assuming we’re working with the materials of the vehicle:

Step 1: Disassemble the Vehicle

Target Materials: Focus on parts that could be broken down into soft, fibrous, or absorbent components. Tesla vehicles and Cybertrucks are primarily made of steel (stainless steel exoskeleton in the Cybertruck), aluminum, glass, plastic, rubber, and some fabric (e.g., seats).

Process: Strip the vehicle of its usable components. Remove batteries, electronics, and mechanical parts, leaving the body panels, interior fabrics, and insulation materials.

Step 2: Isolate Potential "Paper-Like" Materials

Interior Fabrics: The seats (often synthetic leather or textile) and carpeting could theoretically be shredded into fibrous material. These are the closest analogs to paper in terms of texture.

Insulation: Some insulation materials inside the vehicle might be fibrous or cotton-like, which could be processed further.

Step 3: Shredding and Pulping

Shredding: Use industrial shredders to break down the fabrics and insulation into fine fibers. This mimics the initial stage of paper production where raw materials are reduced to small pieces.

Pulping: Mix the shredded material with water to create a pulp, similar to how wood pulp is made for traditional paper. Add chemicals (e.g., softeners or bleach) to improve texture and hygiene.

Step 4: Forming Sheets

Pressing: Spread the pulp thinly over a flat surface or use a makeshift mold to create sheets. Press out excess water using heavy rollers or weights.

Drying: Allow the sheets to air dry or use heat to speed up the process. The result would be a crude, paper-like material.

Step 5: Refining for Function

Softening: The resulting "paper" would likely be rough and abrasive. Sanding or additional chemical treatment might soften it, though it’d never match commercial toilet paper’s quality.

Cutting: Trim the sheets into usable squares or rolls.

Conclusion

In theory, you could shred and pulp a Tesla’s interior fabrics and insulation to create a crude, paper-like substance vaguely resembling toilet paper. However, the process is wildly impractical, wasteful, and inefficient. You’d destroy a $50,000+ vehicle to make something worse than the cheapest toilet paper available at any store. A more effective approach would be to sell the vehicle and buy a lifetime supply of actual toilet paper instead!

IS CHINA STILL STRUGGLING WITH CORRUPTION OR SIMPLY USING IT TO CENTRALISE POWER?

The three main centres of global power -- America, Europe, and China -- all have their strengths and weaknesses. China's main weaknesses are a particularly toxic demographic situation combined with a rather opaque political system in which nepotism and corruption can thrive. 

According to a U.S. intelligence report made public Thursday (20th March), the second problem is as bad as ever with China's leader holding a reported $1 billion in hidden wealth through family members. 

As reported by the Washington Times, a newspaper that is owned by the totally unbiased Moonie religious cult:

"Chinese President Xi Jinping has amassed more than $1 billion in assets through relatives, according to a U.S. intelligence report made public Thursday revealing 'endemic' corruption at all levels of the ruling Chinese Communist Party." 

The unclassified Director of National Intelligence report, Wealth and Corrupt Activities of the Leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, was drafted by David O. Shullman, head of the National Intelligence Office for China, following 2024 legislation sponsored by Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles (Republican) and then-Florida Senator Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State.

However, at only six pages long, the report is rather lightweight and seems more intended to give an "overview" or "characterization" of the situation in China, possibly for propaganda purposes.

As many as 65% of all government officials in China receive unofficial income through bribery or graft — despite more than a decade of anti-corruption efforts that have ensnared over 5 million Chinese Communist Party officials.

According to the document:

"Corruption is an endemic feature of and challenge for China, enabled by a political system with power highly centralized in the hands of the CCP, a CCP-centric concept of the rule of law, a lack of independent checks on public officials, and limited transparency."

The unwitting message of the report is that both corruption and anti-corruption are effectively being utilised like a carrot and stick by the CCP leadership mainly to impose central control and ideological discipline, rather than to just to facilitate enrichment.

"The report suggests that Mr. Xi’s high-profile 13-year campaign as president to stamp out corruption has been a failure. Anti-corruption efforts instead are focused on imposing political discipline and ideological purity rather than rooting out rampant financial crime, the report said, to preserve party control and hide illegitimacy."

In fact, the central allegation of the report, namely that Xi Jinping has amassed $1 billion in hidden wealth, backs up this analysis, as $1 billion is a relatively small amount of graft for someone in charge of what is now the World's biggest effective economy.

According to equally reliable reports and guesstimates, Vladimir Putin who is President-Dictator of a relatively poor nation in the North of Eurasia has amassed over 200 times as much wealth, while Donald Trump a prominent politician in the area formerly known as the United States of America has illicitly raised up to $6.2 billion in a few days from the floatation of a dubious meme coin. 

A HISTORY OF HATRED

by Duns Scotus

It was not part of their blood,

It came to them very late,

With long arrears to make good,

When the Euros began to hate.

It is not exactly clear when Europeans first felt the clawing tug of hatred towards America and the Americans.

Early on, there was just sneering contempt, ably expressed by the likes of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707 – 1788) who said that America was "a land best suited for insects, reptiles, and feeble men." He believed that the cold swamps and deserts of America led to a degeneration both in man and beast, and also said "Man thinks, and immediately becomes the master of beings who do not think." This may also have been aimed at Americans.

This early disdain for "colonials" and "creoles" slowly abated, helped by the dividing waters of the Atlantic and the fact that Europeans were too busy hating (and killing) each other to seriously hate their unfortunate colonists with their half-caste or quarter-caste children.
  

A typical American with more than a hint of racial mystery

It was familiarity, as usual, that bred contempt, or at least refreshed it, with the advent of the Doughboys and GIs, drawn deep into Europe's world-shaping conflicts in WWI, WWII, and beyond.

Post-war conditions led to a situation in which Europeans had to finally set their differences aside -- or at least most of them. They soon realised that whatever past crimes and atrocities they had mutually committed there was much to admire in each other. Their hatred was also been directed towards Russia and the East, but as the Soviet Union naturally weakened during the course of the Cold War, a growing amount of their animosity started to be directed towards America.

GIs were always cheered on their way out

In Britain, a virulent strain of anti-Americanism was boosted by President Eisenhower's decision to "stab Britain in the back" over Suez in 1956.

Geopolitically, Britain may have been acting in a counter-productive way, and Eisenhower's decision might have been the correct one in terms of defeating the Soviet strategy of subverting the Third World, but it reminded some if not all Britons that American "friendship" was fake and could not be relied upon in a pinch. 

As for the French, the humiliating experience of being liberated by the Anglo-Americans and then the bruisings their colonial ego had suffered in Indo-China and Algeria, created an understandably twisted mindset that turned what should have been gratitude into implacable resentment, a vein that De Gaulle mined, and which led to his moves to block Britain from EU membership and to keep NATO at arm's length by removing France from NATO's integrated military command structure in 1966.

Another strand of anti-Americanism was evident in the 1960s, stemming from shills and useful idiots in academia, the intellectual and cultural world, and student radicals. This was stirred up by Kremlin ops, but America's well-intentioned but ill-fated campaign in Vietnam and its Civil Rights problems at home fuelled the flames of what would otherwise have been an astroturfed operation.

The USA was depicted as crude, materialistic, aggressive, unsophisticated, and racist, and the "racism" was even coded as inverted with the "inferior" whites being racist against their coloured "superiors":

Black maid putting her lowly White employer in her place with her noble kweenly ambiance

At this stage most of Europe was overwhelmingly White, so looking down at the interracial problems of others was relatively easy and involved little need for awkward self-reflection.

Despite all these elements of Anti-Americanism, however, Europe still maintained a largely positive view of America going into the 1970s. But this began to unravel when America started to elect Presidents who, to European eyes, seemed excessively stupid or toneless.

Ronald Reagan was the first of these, Clinton another, then George "Dubya" Bush made it even worse. These Presidents may all have been a lot more intelligent than they chose to appear, but the affectation of "democratic stupidity," while winning elections in America, also provided Europeans with a focus for the growing hatred of America that they were feeling.

This does not mean that they actually and openly hated America. Most Europeans were too intelligent to do that. They realised that with the Soviet Union still around, America was very much a force for good in the World, while many of them were attracted by certain cultural and consumerist aspects of America.

Also, from 1989 onwards, the "American system" had apparently succeeded, with the collapse of Communism. The tug of hatred was there, but there were both positive and negative reasons holding it back. 

Sympathy for America in its apparent "hour of need" when the country was attacked by Al Qaeda terrorists in 2001, rallied most Europeans behind America at the time, even the ones who had given in to the urge to hate it. But this was quickly followed by a sense, as with "anti-Semitism," attacks on Israel, and the overreaction, that this sympathy was being somewhat overplayed and exploited.

How did invading Iraq make amends for the destruction of a couple of boring-looking skyscrapers in New York by random Muslims? The simian face of Bush superimposed on the Middle-Eastern morass led many Europeans, rightly or wrongly, to conclude that anything Al Qaeda or ISIS did was at root the fault of the Americans or their Israeli friends. 

More and more gave in to the tug of hatred they were feeling, but the majority of Europeans still clung to the "official alliance" bolstered by the occasional "good omen."  The advent of Obama reassured them that America wasn't entirely the backwards cesspit that they suspected. Obama was America showing a degree of humility, a condition that most Europeans felt suited it far better than its characteristic arrogance. Obama, for Europeans, was America putting on sackcloth and ashes and seeking expiation for its sins.

Geopolitical sackcloth and ashes: Obama in Berlin

Perhaps such an America was one that Europeans could feel comfortable working with. But alas it was not to last. The advent of Obama helped feed the backlash that led to Trump and then, after a sterile Biden interlude, Trump and Vance.

In the "First Coming of Trump," many Europeans still kept their flickering candle of affinity with America alive because so many other Americans were opposed to him. There were, it seemed, millions of "good Americans" after all.

There was even a minority position that Trump was somehow "good", that he would "shake things up" and push America off its perch back into the real world in which Europeans believed they lived. An America concerned with its balance of trade and drawing in its imperial claws, after all, was essentially not dissimilar to themselves, no matter how garish and graceless the whole process appeared. 

But Trump 2.0 destroyed all these copes in one fell swoop.

The Americans who had so strongly opposed him in his own party and the wider country suddenly gave up the ghost after the failure of the abysmal Biden-Harris campaign in 2024. They were all acquiescing in Trump's ascendency, or at least it seemed so.

As for those Europeans who thought of Trump as a possible "positive force," it was now clear that he was only "shaking things up" for the benefit of the direct enemy of Europe in Vladimir Putin, or because he wanted to behave like a corrupt gangster.

To the rancid smell of cultural and racial inferiority was added the dank perfume of moral corruption and subversion, so amply demonstrated in the events in the Oval Office when President Zelensky came to visit.

There are still Americans who oppose Trump, and some of them even do this for good reasons. In time, they may even gain in strength and power. But it has been too little too late and the damage has already been done. The vast reservoir of hatred that Europeans have been building up for America over the course of the 20th century has breached its final dam.  

WHO'S WHO IN THE DISSIDENT RIGHT: (((VINCENT LAW)))

Male pattern baldness denial is a bitch

by Colin Liddell

Sock name. Real name Bogdan Olegovich Polishchuk. One of Richard Spencer and Daniel Friberg's creatures at Radix and Alt-Right.com. He is a Ukrainian-born Kremlin tool, afflicted with premature male-pattern baldness (Androgenic Alopecia), which is why he is frequently photographed wearing a bandana. The child of Soviet-era diplomats, he has remained loyal to the Kremlin.

He was first active online as a "left-winger" and "Obama supporter" in 2008, before being told to swing right and infiltrate the Alt-Right.

He wrote initially for a site called Atavistic Intelligentsia (from around 2014, the year in which the Kremlin intensified on-line psy-ops against the West). He also co-hosted the "RedDawn" podcast with another Spencer pick Greg Conte, and even wrote for The Daily Stormer, before going on to Spencer's Radix and AltRight.com sites, where he churned out crude and rather toneless content until the site collapsed due to poor management.

In 2018, under his real name, he was active as deputy editor of the Kremlin-backed Russia Insider disinfo website (founded in 2014 by Kremlin agent Charles Bausman). 

Great evidence of the strong Kremlin-to-Alt-Right connection. His 2017 interview with Robert Stark and Pilleater is also quiet revealing. The link between his alias "Vincent Law" and his real name Bogdan Olegovich Polishchuk became known around 2022, possibly as part of the long-suspected Spencer plea-deal with the US Feds. 

___________________________________

Read other entries like this in Who's Who in the Dissident Right, an ever-expanding biographical guide to the colourful characters and quaint Quislings of the on-line Right.

____________________

Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

Follow on Twitter and Bluesky

SHORTPOD (103) CLOWN MAGA vs. SERIOUS MAGA

Also available on Bitchute and Odysee 

Neokrat editor Colin Liddell scrapes the greasepaint off the clown face of Trump 2.0 to see what lies beneath. Despite the buffoonish antics of Trump, Musk, and Vance, MAGA has become the repository of some quite serious, hard-hitting geopolitical and economic ideas. Can MAGA achieve radical change or will it be doomed by "authoritarian mismatch"?

TAPESCRIPT

Hello, this is Colin Liddell and this is The Short Pod, a brief and succinct podcast commenting on the events and issues of the day. And today it is the 15th of March 2025.

We are now about six or seven weeks into the Trump presidency and it's been a pretty bumpy ride. It's easy to make fun of Trump. He is a ridiculous character. He has no internal filter. He seems to just spout out whatever rubbish comes into his head, without reflecting on it or thinking about it in any serious way. He wears thick orange make-up. He has a vice president who fucks couches and walks around in heavy eye-liner. He has a second “vice president,” Elon Musk, who is an autistic ketamine addict. Almost everybody that he has appointed to important positions is some kind of brain-worm-eaten nutcase. So it's really becoming very, very hard to take this American government, this Trump administration 2.0, seriously.

But there is also, I think, a serious side to the Trump administration. And the MAGA camp has become a kind of repository for certain not entirely unrespectable ideas. And these ideas are in some respects related to greater geopolitical and economic realities. And that's sort of what I want to kind of focus on here, even though it's very, very hard to ignore the clown show that is presenting them. Now, if you dig far enough beneath the grease paint, so to speak, what we're talking about with the MAGA camp is this attempt to reposition America economically and geopolitically. 

Now, why is that even necessary? Well, because the world has changed a lot in the last 30 years. 30 years ago, America was in a very dominant position. Countries like China had not risen up. Russia was still, so to speak, on its knees. India was still an unimportant Third World economy. There was no such thing as BRICS, etc. But since then, especially with the rise of China, the whole global position has greatly altered, and MAGA is a kind of lame-brained recognition of that reality. And so it should at least get points for that. Now, people talk about Trump betraying NATO, Trump betraying Europe… And yeah, it's possible to see things that way. But really what this is all about is America doesn't have enough strength vis-a-vis its main challengers to face in different directions. So Trump is really all about withdrawing American power from Europe, and possibly the Middle East, and refocusing that power on Asia, where America is going head-to-head with China. 

Now, also with America going head to head with China, this reveals lots of deficiencies in American power, especially industrial power. Compared to China, America is a minuscule power in industrial terms. I think China has the capacity to make 200 times as many ships as America. China's steel industry completely dwarfs America's steel industry. So in a long-term battle between these two superpowers, whether in a Cold War or Hot War form, America would be found extremely wanting. So I think the discernible logic of the MAGA position is that America has to kind of turn the clock back. It has to become a great industrial power again. This would explain Donald Trump's apparent love of tariffs. Trump wants to bring back a major steel industry to America. He probably wants to see other industries like shipbuilding return to America, etc., etc. This would create the basis for a long-term industrial, economic, political, and ideological struggle with China. So that's what MAGA are kind of aiming at.

Going along the road that America was already on, which is to outsource production to all these other countries, mainly China, to rely upon the power of the dollar to support mass imports and a massive trade deficit, that was ultimately a self-destructive route. So it's entirely possible to have at least some sympathy with MAGA's big picture vision of change in America.

But the real problem that America has, and that MAGA has, is that they are essentially acting in a radical and therefore an authoritarian way in a country that is not yet an authoritarian system. America is still a consumerist democracy where people are overly concerned about things like inflation, things like living standards, GDP, the stock market, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're not really ready to make serious sacrifices to radically transform and change the country and to gird its collective loins for a long geopolitical struggle.

So this is the problem that Donald Trump is running into. I think we can probably call this an “authoritarian mismatch.” It's essentially, ‘How does a democratically elected president who relies on polls and popularity and keeping his party on board and in line, how does such a politician manage to navigate a country as large and complex and essentially divided as America towards such goals?’

The kind of radical reform that MAGA is essentially aiming at is something that can only really be done by a Xi Jinping or a Kim Jong-un or a Vladimir Putin or, dare I say, an Adolf Hitler. So I think Elon Musk, in his highly autistic way, intuitively senses that, which is why you see him increasingly channelling Nazi memes and tropes. The inner logic of MAGA-ism, which is based upon changing geopolitical realities and America's very, very profound economic weaknesses, is towards radical transformation that can only be carried out by a non-democratic government, one that can coerce and manipulate the population in quite repressive ways.

America is still very much a democracy, a country where people still have free speech, where they can still vote. And so it's going to be incredibly difficult for Donald Trump and MAGA to follow the path they are now on, simply because of this vast “authoritarian mismatch.” So, at some point MAGA is going to collapse or it's going to completely water down its radical and long-sighted goals. And it's going to start getting a lot of push-back.

Already seen signs of that with the Supreme Court, with various other legal challenges. And with Donald Trump's polls in the toilets, we're going to see a lot of push-back electorally. So I don't think MAGA will succeed under those conditions. And especially not with the clown show that Donald Trump is using to dress up the whole thing for the world's entertainment. Over and out!

COVER-UP: BALFOUR SLASHER WALKS FREE AND KEEPS ANONYMITY

Apparently it's perfectly OK now to slash any painting in the UK that you don't like. This is the legal state-of-play after police closed, without charge, an investigation into a woman who sprayed paint on and slashed a valuable painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, Cambridge, back in March 2024.

As reported by the BBC:

"A police force has confirmed it will take no further action after an activist attacked a portrait of a politician linked to the creation of Israel. The Palestine Action activist slashed the 1914 painting of Lord Balfour at Trinity College, part of the University of Cambridge, on 8 March 2024.

A Cambridgeshire Police spokesperson said: "A thorough investigation was carried out but the investigation has now been filed pending any new information coming to light."

In a statement, Trinity College said it 'continues to condemn this act of vandalism in the strongest terms'. It continued: 'Trinity College will continue to cooperate with the police in the event further evidence becomes available so that the perpetrators can be brought to justice.'"

Even stranger, the woman has not even been identified. This is absurd because images of the women slashing the painting were released by the Pro-Palestinian group, of which she was a member, and Trinity College is heavily monitored by CCTV cameras in the interests of student safety.  

The refusal to identify, arrest, or prosecute the knife-wielding, culprit must therefore be intentional and part of a cover-up, either by Cambridgeshire police or Trinity College.

One possibility is Trinity College's CCTV system had been disabled by an insider. If so, that in itself is a serious crime that should be relatively easy to solve. Another possibility is that the person is extremely important or well-connected (possibly the daughter of a major donor to the college), or has "diplomatic immunity" of some kind.

One to keep an eye on.

THE AMERICAN LEFT IS WRONGLY FRAMING ITS FIGHT AGAINST TRUMP

Using an elaborate Star Wars metaphor, Nix Jeelvy explains why the Left can't defeat MAGA. The left sees itself as the "Rebel Alliance" fighting against "Darth Vader." But Trump is no Darth Vader. He is much more akin to the anarchic, anti-statist, and corrupt Jabba the Hutt.

JONATHAN BOWDEN UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

Bowden, patron saint of the Dissident Right

by Colin Liddell

Jonathan Bowden was one of the "intellectual energies" that flowed into the swirling maelstrom of the early Alt-Right -- very early in his case, because he kicked the bucket in 2012 at the tender age of 49, after doing a series of podcasts with Richard Spencer.

Now, it seems, Bowden is under the spotlight, with a biography on him by Edward Dutton ("Shaman of the Radical Right" on the Neo-Nazi Imperium Press), and there is even an article in the "highly respectable" Spectator, a well-known, right-leaning UK periodical.

Dutton, of course, is well known as a fake academic Nazi and part of the Kremlin-boosted social media cluster that includes the full gang of idiots (Arktos, Academic Agent, Scandza Forum, Millenniyules, etc).

It is interesting, however, that this biography is being boosted by the Spectator. This might possibly have something to do with the fact that it was recently purchased with Kremlin-adjacent dark money. Yes, Britain definitely does not have a proper Deep State, or it would be able to stop its organs of influence falling so easily into the hands of dubious dark money!

The Specky article is written by Damian Thompson, an "associate editor" of the magazine who has always been drawn to rather questionable subjects. Check out his books The End of Time: Faith and the Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium (1997) and the equally upbeat Waiting for Antichrist: Charisma and Apocalypse in a Pentecostal Church (2005), or rather don't!

In the article, written from the viewpoint of his own personal association, Thompson is happy to admit that he was Bowden's only friend during their days together at Presentation College in Reading.

So, what do we learn about Bowden from this article? Not much about his ideology, but, then, maybe that is not entirely Thompson's fault.

Bowden's connection with the anti-immigrant BNP is mentioned, and the fact that "fascists" like him. Thompson also mentions that Bowden was apparently well-read and familiar with a lot of thinkers and philosophers:

"When we briefly resumed our friendship in our late twenties, before he’d gone full fascist, I was dazzled by the facility with which he juggled the ideas of Marx, Enoch Powell, Plato and Samuel Beckett."

Thompson also mentions one of Bowden's lectures and its wide -- perhaps too wide -- array of intellectual references:

"Entitled 'Bill Hopkins and the Angry Young Men', the lecture is a survey of the influences on his mentor Hopkins (1928-2011), a far-right Welsh writer who was close to Henry Williamson, author of Tarka the Otter, and Colin Wilson, whose 1956 book The Outsider has never been out of print. Speaking from notes, Bowden flits across the chaotic intellectual landscape of 20th-century Britain, in which Williamson and Wilson rubbed shoulders with John Osborne, Kingsley Amis and Doris Lessing. Lessing was a communist at the time, which didn’t trouble Bowden. He had a soft spot for ‘culturally independent leftists’, and he speaks admiringly of Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital, a far-left black comedy about the NHS whose cast included Leonard Rossiter and Arthur Lowe. His lecture also squeezes in the Sitwells, Theodor Adorno, John Buchan, Simone de Beauvoir and Jimmy Tarbuck."

The end of this description is telling:

"Alas, we’ll never know how it tied together because the tape recorder broke, a typical Bowden mishap."

My guess it that it didn't tie together at all. Bowden's thought seldom did.

My view of Bowden was that he was merely an intellectual dilletante, able to talk impressively and rhetorically on a range of topics, and to sound rather clever (especially to Americans like Richard Spencer with their lower cultural level), but who lacked the ability of a true intellectual to use logic and evidence, and to parse extraneous language into concise and consistent thought. As a supposed "political thinker" he was also completely deficient at creating any kind of political policy from this.

Thompson, while using fake rhetorical distance, does in fact try to dress up and present a consistent Bowden ideology, but it just sounds lame and vague:

"Although it’s tempting to pathologise people who hold extreme views, I don’t think Bowden’s political philosophy can be attributed to mental illness. At its heart lay a yearning for a society of stable, ethnically homogenous families. I may get into trouble for this, but I think his racism was essentially theoretical: deplorable but not motivated by cold hatred. In the countless hours I spent talking to him, he never said anything nasty about black people. Nor did he bang on about Jews; indeed, he told me he was proud of being part-Jewish. That was also pure invention."

In fact the picture that emerges from Thompson's article and presumably Dutton's biography and Bowden's life (a food-chain of three very weird individuals) is that Bowden was just someone with severe mental, emotional, and behavioural problems. Various details pop out.

His social awkwardness:

"[Jonathan's father] was hurt that Jonathan was only invited to my house once; I didn’t tell him he was banned after turning his nose up at my mother’s cooking."

Eating disorders:

"His imitations of his Mancunian grandparents scoffing boxes of chocolates were almost worthy of Alan Bennett – though a bit rich coming from Jonathan, who once devoured a club’s entire cheeseboard in 20 minutes. I was paying, of course: he was massively stingy."

Complete untrustworthiness: 

"Bowden emerges from Dutton’s biography as a compulsive liar. He wasn’t working on a PhD; he didn’t even have a degree."

This is kind of ironic as Dutton's own "professorship" is likewise a crock of lies. But back to Bowden's fibs:

"[Bowden] once told me he was divorced from a woman called Karen; Dutton can find no trace of her, or of the five children he claimed to have fathered by another woman."

He also claimed to be wealthy, but died pathetically impoverished in Britain, a welfare state, where it actually takes effort to be really poor:

"Bowden was ‘a childless bachelor’ who ‘lived alone in a decrepit mobile home in a caravan park in Reading, never really worked and didn’t have the internet where he lived, so he used to research his essays at the local library’. In fact, Jonathan told me he was proud of living austerely in a caravan, refusing to spend his vast income from rental properties and a printing business. That was fantasy, too. He died penniless and his mobile home had to be towed away because it was a health hazard. He had even managed to get himself banned from the library."

Remember this is actually meant to be a sympathetic essay by Thompson, who also comes up with a defence for the allegations of paedophilia that dogged Bowden and drove him out of that "repository of moral rectitude," the British National Party:

"...his rivals...had earlier forced him to resign from the BNP by spreading rumours that he was a paedophile. Bowden denounced the claim as 'lying filth' – which it was. Dutton reports that a man of the same name had been convicted of downloading child pornography in 1999..."

Whether Bowden was a paedo or not, one could well understand people assuming he was one from his many other aberrant characteristics. 

Then there was his drug addiction and outright mental illness:

"These allegations, coupled with the disorientating acclaim from the United States, probably accelerated Bowden’s descent into paranoid schizophrenia. In 2011 he was picked up by police in Reading, semi-naked, holding a samurai sword. He was sectioned, and it’s possible that anti-psychotic drugs triggered his fatal heart attack."

But were his failings his fault? Thompson unwittingly makes the case that rather than a man in charge of his own destiny and able to exercise agency, Bowden was, in fact, a pathetic slave of his "mutant genes":

"On the other hand, we can’t ignore Dutton’s discovery that Bowden’s mother Dorothy died at 48 from a heart attack after apparently suffering from mental illness."

But, hey, even the Dissident Right needs role models and heroes!

____________________

Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

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