RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/27/heroic-doubling-and-supporting-hamas/

Psychologists who have studied violence in young men and especially young men’s willingness to forsake everything they know, everything they’ve been taught, and everything they might otherwise believe about right and wrong, say that there is a set of shared circumstances and “revelations” that link spree killers and self-radicalized terrorists.  Faced with the emptiness of their own lives, isolated from many of their contemporaries, and desperately in search of something substantive to give their lives meaning and purpose, young men—especially young men who find refuge on the internet and in social media—tend to create fantasy lives for themselves, alternate realities in which they not only find the meaning and purpose they crave but do so in heroic fashion.

For more than a decade now, the journalist and editor Robert Beckhusen has noted that the ties that bind spree shooters and self-radicalized terrorists are both numerous and consistent.  Young men confronted by the social and spiritual emptiness of their lives and society default to what is often called “heroic modeling” or “heroic doubling,” which is to say that they take on a symbolic cause and kill not just to slake their own bloodlust but to exact revenge for a whole class of people with whom they believe they find common cause.

Almost exactly ten years ago, just after the spree shooting in Isla Vista, California, Beckhusen interviewed Roger Griffin, a professor of Modern History at Oxford-Brookes University in the UK and the author of Terrorist’s Creed: Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning.  Griffin explained the phenomenon of “heroic doubling” as follows:

[I]n the mind of the killer, they’re not just killing someone as the sole purpose of the destruction. They’re killing someone symbolic of something more general, which is also meant to send a message to the survivors….

…what happens psychologically—the person has undergone a process whereby a rather confused, pained, ordinary self puts on a sort of mask, which turns them into an actor—or a protagonist—in a personal narrative drama. . . .

In his avatar double, he achieves the ability to run and fight.  I believe that’s a very powerful metaphor for what happens in the process of heroic doubling.  Because the person who’s previously felt impotent and had no agency . . . is made to feel potent and have agency returned to him by adopting this mission.  So in that moment, he becomes a heroic version, or avatar, of himself.

Although the parallels are hardly perfect, over the years, I’ve found this concept of heroic doubling to be a useful heuristic for assessing the otherwise seemingly pointless embrace by American young men—and, increasingly, young women—of foolish, intellectually abhorrent, and often violent ideologies and practices.

https://www.objectivityistheobjective.com/post/one-tenth-of-one-percent

College campuses across America, especially Columbia. Yale, NYU, USC, are being overrun by anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrators. USC has even canceled its graduation ceremony due to security concerns relating to anti-Israel protests. These protesters are responding to Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack on Israel where 1,400 innocent Israeli civilians were targeted and murdered by Hamas terrorists, and somehow, these moral geniuses are protesting Israel. They are protesting the country that had their elderly shot in cold blood, their women brutally raped and murdered, and their babies beheaded. The country that suffered those atrocities is being vilified and protested. But this is what Islam does. It twists and vilifies the justified actions of their enemies to their own gain. So, Islamic terrorists attack Israel, Israel fights back, and Israel is painted as the bad guy.

The Muslims completely memory hole the fact that they drew first blood because in their mind, they can do whatever they want with impunity. No one’s speaking about all of the vicious murdering that the Islamic terrorists did. We’re supposed to forget about that, or ignore it, or write it off because those are just extremists, and they don’t represent all of Islam. But where are the Islamic leaders who are denouncing what happened on October 7 in the name of Islam? Why do they refuse to distance their religion from the terrorists? Where is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Where is Kyrie Irving? Where is Barack Obama? They are imitating crickets. Every time there is an Islamic terrorist attack, the Muslims in America are not required to stand up and denounce the attack. Only the non-Muslims are warned about Islamophobia. We haven’t even processed the terrorist attack, and we’re being accused of Islamophobia because Muslims targeted another group of people because of their religion. Every white person in America has to denounce white supremacy over and over and over again. We have to denounce slavery that ended 160 years ago, but Muslims are never required to denounce Islamic terrorism that happened the day before. And they never do because many tacitly approve.

This is the way it always works with Islam. Between the 6th century AD and the 10th century AD, the Muslims invaded and took over all of Byzantine Christianity, sacking city after city, town after town, murdering and raping, and giving the people a choice – convert to Islam or die. The Muslims took over all the Holy Lands, and pushed into Southern France and Southern Italy, leaving a river of blood in their wake. We never hear about that, but when the Pope organizes the Crusades to take back the Holy Lands and southern Europe which had been stolen from the Western world by Muslims, the Crusaders are painted as the bad guys. Most of the ancient mosques in the Middle East used to be Christian churches that the Muslims turned into mosques after they conquered that city by force. They never mention all the murdering brutality that the Muslims did which created the need for the Crusaders. But the Crusaders are always framed as the bad guys and Islam is always portrayed as the innocent victims.

The Ottoman Empire is the only empire in the history of the world, that is never taken to task for the mass atrocities that they committed in building their empire.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-to-defund-the-leftist-non-profit-empire-behind-the-campus-riots/

There are some very well-researched articles making the rounds connecting the dots when it comes to who’s funding the pro-Hamas campus riots.

Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium secured documents showing that the Columbia occupiers were getting advice from Palestine Legal which is funded by the Ford Foundation.

The New York Post had a widely circulated piece connecting the dots to George Soros. I had my own article on the Soros links last week.

Other organizations in play include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund which has extensively backed the anti-Israel movement.

This is not an either/or situation. Most pro-terror orgs benefit from multiple funding sources.

The bigger issue beyond Soros or the Ford Foundation is the work that the David Horowitz Freedom Center has been doing in looking at the rise of radical nonprofits.

The nonprofits involved are casually violating tax regulations with no response from the IRS (which has been persecuting the Freedom Center for 5 years). Some of the worst abuses involve WESPAC, a fiscal sponsor for some of the ugliest players around. (The same incidentally is true of the nonprofits behind the ecoterrorism including the attacks on classical art museums around the world.)

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a campus group at the core of the pro-Hamas protests, has local chapters who are funded by student activity fees while its national group is fiscally sponsored by WESPAC.

https://wokecapital.org/freedoms-messiah/

EXCERPT FROM A COLUMN ON BARUCH SPINOZA

Right now, on American college campuses, the Jewish people are under attack, from Arabist antisemites, from ideological/intellectual antisemites, and from nihilistic students with nothing else to believe in and nothing better to do with their time.  Now is, in other words, an important moment to remember that this great nation and the liberties that those foolish students and faculty are squandering are far more seriously derived from Jewish origins and Jewish thinkers than most people are aware.  Ancient Israel helped form all of what is now known as “Western Civilization,” and, as such, also helped form the underpinnings of the United States.  And Baruch Spinoza helped transmit all of that to the Founders in ways that became uniquely and profoundly American.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20600/us-campuses-incubating-terrorism

Some of the signs say “pro-Palestine”, “ceasefire now” and “end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza”. But these benign statements hide a far more malignant agenda, the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the end of America as the world’s leading power and the end of democracy and the free market economy. Even if there were a unilateral ceasefire, accompanied by massive humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, many of these protests would continue, because Gaza is merely an excuse for a much wider agenda: to destroy Israel and destroy America.

One never sees a sign calling for a two-state solution or for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. These are not the goals. What is demanded is the end of any Jewish presence in the Middle East. “Death to America,” similarly, means the end of America’s influence and Western values.

Many of the signs call for “revolution.” These are not directed against Israel, but rather against America, American Jews and all other Western democracies.

As in the 1960s, many of these students are being groomed to be the terrorists of the future — in the manner of Kathy Boudin and Bernardine Dohrn back then – and, in the United States, a fifth column, the aim of which is taking down America.

That these useful idiots are young does not make them less dangerous. Young students were instrumental in bringing to power tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot and Mao.

Where are the armed guards escorting Jewish students to class, as there were escorting the threatened Black youths to integrated school in the 1960s in the South?

Universities are failing not only their Jewish students but all their students by refusing to educate them about what behavior is acceptable and what is not.

Thousands of young students – from universities, high schools and even middle schools – are joining in demonstrations, marches and protests against Israel, against the United States and against Jews. Some even are Jews. They are joining Muslim and Arab anti-Zionists, radical anarchist anti-Americans and community organizers who oppose Israel’s right to exist.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/04/marxist_health_officials_want_you_committed.html

One of the more insidious features of Marxism’s manipulation of language is its stigmatization of opposing points of view as some form of mental disorder.  Opposition to “gay marriage” is said to be a “sign” of homophobia.  Distrusting Islamic terrorists who celebrate 9/11 and shout, “Death to America,” is a “symptom” of Islamophobia.  Wanting the federal government to secure our borders and enforce existing immigration law “reveals” underlying xenophobia.  Not wanting biological men to force their way into ladies’ locker-rooms and showers suggests that a person “suffers” from dreaded transphobia.  

Notice that all these purported psychiatric disorders are categorized as “phobias,” or more plainly, as “irrational fears.”  Marxists routinely use loaded medical language not only to demonize or disgrace their foes but also to transform any political disagreement into something that it is not.  Respecting marriage as a millennia-long institution that celebrates the bond between one man and one woman has nothing to do with being afraid of homosexuals.  Being prepared to defend yourself against those who want you dead does not mean your worries are unfounded.  Insisting that foreigners immigrate to the United States lawfully is entirely rational.  Ensuring that your mother, wife, sisters, or daughters are safe from strange (and frequently dangerous) adult men intent on intruding into their private spaces requires selfless courage.  Still, because Marxists depend upon distortions of reality to instigate cultural friction and manipulate the masses, opposition to whatever politically expedient wedge issue is currently being used as a battering ram against society must be diagnosed as a psychological abnormality.  You could say that Marxists are committed to the lie that opposition to Marxism rests on irrational fear.

Sure, communism murdered over a hundred million people in the twentieth century alone, but that’s no reason to fear an ideology that seeks only to empower the “common man.”  Right?  I don’t know whether it reveals more about the persistent malevolence of Marxism’s unashamed supporters or the human race’s inexhaustible supply of gullibility that Marx continues to lure willing disciples to further his vile legacy of mass starvation, torture, and death.  Marxism is the evil clown lurking in the sewer that reappears every generation to feast on tender human flesh, but almost every college campus in America would insist that such a description is hyperbole stemming from irrational fear.  To oppose socialism and communism today because of the murder spree the twin philosophies undertook in the past is Marx-o-phobic and should be treated like any other mental illness.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-v-u-s-supreme-court-jack-smith-michael-dreeben-333fddb2?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Special counsel Jack Smith should have been reading our contributor David Rivkin. If he’d been reading these pages, he might have foreseen Thursday’s oral argument at the Supreme Court before he indicted Donald Trump. Instead, the argument was a legal defeat for him and the Justice Department that could delay his prosecution past the November election.

Michael Dreeben, the Biden counsel, told the Justices that Mr. Trump and any other President deserve no immunity from criminal prosecution. But he ran into a skeptical set of Justices focused not on Mr. Trump’s case, but on the implications of the Dreeben-Smith position for the office of the Presidency.

“I’m not concerned about this case,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch. “But I am concerned about future uses of the criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives.” He added that “we’re writing a rule for the ages.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh offered a similar concern about the future impact of prosecutions on presidential decision-making on controversial subjects.

Mr. Dreeben’s reply was to suggest that this isn’t a problem because prosecutors don’t bring cases when there isn’t sufficient evidence for a conviction. He also said a President gets good legal advice from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel about what official acts are legal, so no President would commit such a crime.

The Justices made short work of that one, with Justice Samuel Alito reminding Mr. Dreeben that two Attorneys General were convicted of crimes, and how easy it is for a prosecutor to cajole a grand jury to indict someone.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-biden-admin-covered-up-a-major-assault-at-kabul-airport/

The Biden administration recently released a report clearing itself of any negligence in the Kabul airport terrorist attack that killed 13 servicemembers during Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal.

The report claimed that all personnel who contradicted the official story were confused and didn’t know what they were talking about.

Instead of shutting down questions, the report opened up some much bigger ones.

Video captured by a Marine’s GoPro camera that has not been seen publicly in full before shows there was far more gunfire than the Pentagon has ever admitted. A dozen US military personnel, who were on the scene and spoke to CNN anonymously for fear of reprisals, have described the gunfire in detail. One told CNN he heard the first large burst of shooting come from where US Marines were standing, near the blast site. “It wasn’t onesies and twosies,” the Marine said. “It was a mass volume of gunfire.”

An Afghan doctor who spoke to CNN on the record for the first time said he personally pulled bullets from the wounded, and with his hospital staff counted dozens of Afghans who died from gunshot wounds.

The Biden position was that a suicide bomber had gotten in close. Why keep that lie going?

Because the alternative would be to admit that the Taliban deal was a disaster. The Biden administration had relied on “our Taliban partners” to screen, secure and provide access to the area around the airport.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/04/25/these-are-the-students-biden-wants-you-to-bail-out/

It’s not entirely coincidental that just weeks after President Joe Biden announced his latest plan to cancel student loan debt, antisemitic protests broke out on elite college campuses across the country. Biden’s bailout schemes only embolden these entitled brats.

Students at some 18 colleges have staged anti-Israel “encampment” protests. At Columbia University (where a four-year degree will set you back north of $350,000), the protests got so out of hand and so virulently antisemitic that a rabbi at Columbia urged Jewish students to “return home as soon as possible” and the university moved to mostly hybrid classes.

This has been going on for more than a week at Columbia and, since colleges don’t have the stomach to stand up to students, protests have spread to Brown, New York University, MIT, Yale, Vanderbilt, Emerson, and Tufts, all of which cost well over $200,000 for an undergraduate degree, as well as other not-cheap schools, such as the universities of Michigan, Pittsburg, and North Carolina, the University of California, Berkeley and others.

Protesters have been heard shouting antisemitic slogans, namely “intifada” and “f–k Israel,” wearing keffiyehs and COVID masks, and carrying signs to “Honor The Martyrs Of Palestine” and express the solidarity of “trans people for Palestine.”

It’s these students who will, as soon as they graduate with their mostly useless four-year degrees in anthropology or peace studies or gender queer theory, start demanding that taxpayers cover the costs of their massive student loans.

After all, Biden is already promising that they won’t have to repay them. He tried to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt early in his administration, only to have the Supreme Court strike it down.