RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/middle-east/the-wests-metaphysical-blind-spot/

In the wake of Israel’s pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the wider war that erupted just two weeks ago—a revealing fracture has split the American and the Australian right. Some of its loudest voices—Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and an army of self-styled realists—now openly question Israel’s actions and America’s commitment to its ally.

Their scepticism, on the surface, is understandable. Decades of American misadventures abroad have left voters instinctively wary of foreign entanglements. But beneath this wariness lies a deeper blind spot that cripples the West’s ability to deal with regimes like Iran: modern Westerners have forgotten what it means to wage politics according to an uncompromising metaphysic.

Iran sits on one of the world’s greatest oil reserves. Its people are literate, resourceful, and capable of great cultural and technological feats. Yet it remains an economic backwater—poor, unstable, and brutal. For the Western materialist mind, this defies reason. Surely, if the regime wanted prosperity, it could have it.

But that is precisely the point: it does not. The Iranian state is not an ordinary government seeking wealth or security. It is an eschatological machine—an empire run by clerics whose sole claim to legitimacy is their absolute commitment to an idea: the destruction of Israel and, in time, the humiliation of the West.

This is not rhetoric for domestic consumption alone; it is the regime’s raison d’être. Westerners, whose secular technocracies run on the premise that all problems can be traded or regulated away, cannot comprehend this. They see a nuclear deal here, a sanctions relief there, and imagine they are negotiating with rational actors who prize prosperity above purpose.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/23/regime-change-in-iran-can-only-come-from-within/

The spectre of ‘regime change’ in Tehran seems to be haunting the Israel-Iran war. Even more so after US president Donald Trump followed up America’s bombing raid on three Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday with the following social-media post: ‘It’s not politically correct to use the term, “regime change”, but if the current Iranian regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a regime change?’

Trump’s post itself is ambiguous – it’s not clear who or what exactly might change the regime or when it might happen. Today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to clear up any misunderstanding, claiming Trump was simply asking, ‘why shouldn’t the Iranian people rise up against this brutal terrorist regime?’. Moreover, Trump’s cabinet, including some of its more hawkish members, has been keen to emphasise that regime change in Iran is not the US’s objective. Defence secretary Pete Hegseth said Sunday’s ‘precision operation’ specifically targeted Iran’s nuclear programme and ‘was not and has not been about regime change’. Vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio have also been at pains to insist that the US is not looking to enter a full-scale war with Iran.

But if we’re to take Trump’s vague post to mean what his constantly hyperventilating critics say it does – that the US is contemplating carrying out regime change itself – then that would indeed be a dangerous, reckless move. The US’s raid was, itself, not without huge risk. For all the talk of ‘precision’ strikes, they could well embroil America in this war. While Israel is right to fight back against Iran’s very real aggression, sucking in the global hegemon risks broadening the conflict. Even so, the US pursuing regime change would be a truly spectacular folly. Which we can only hope isn’t being countenanced.

https://www.thefp.com/p/what-happens-if-irans-regime-collapses

Trump says it’s time to Make Iran Great Again. But what’s more likely if the mullahs fall: democracy or anarchy?

A lot has changed in the past 48 hours of this war.

Before American B-2 bombers struck Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz, the message from the White House was that regime change was off the table. Indeed, the chatter out of Washington and Jerusalem was that the White House was spooked by some of Israel’s messaging.

Defense minister Israel Katz instructed the military to destabilize Iran’s regime and threatened that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “can no longer be permitted to exist” after an Iranian missile hit the Soroka Medical Center in the southern part of the country. Indeed, the operation’s name, “Rising Lion,” is a not-so-subtle nod to the Iranian flag under the Peacock dynasty, which ruled Iran until the Shah was ousted in the Islamic revolution in 1979. The son of the late Shah, Reza Pahlavi, is now calling for a national rebellion. “The Islamic Republic has come to its end and is collapsing. What has begun is irreversible,” he said in a video message from the United States, where he has lived since 1979.

Now, 10 days into the war Israel began against Iran’s nuclear program—the prospect of a regime collapse is very real. President Donald Trump on Sunday evening floated the idea in a post on Truth Social: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”

This kind of talk has gone out of favor in Washington in recent years. The fall of dictatorships in Libya and Iraq led to confessional sectarian war. The fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt led briefly to a Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo before a military coup. But in Iran, a country that has experienced democratic uprisings five times since 2017, it now seems like a real possibility.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/pro-palestine-thugs-are-becoming-a-threat-to-de

If you want to understand the mentality of 21st-century Leftists, you need to read a writer who died decades before they were born. Aldous Huxley is best known as the author of the dystopian novel Brave New World. But, in my view, his most chillingly brilliant lines are to be found in a foreword he supplied for an edition of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, in 1933.

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause,” wrote Huxley, “is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating someone… To be able to destroy with a good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour ‘righteous indignation’ – this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”

I remember those words every time I read about the gleeful cruelty of modern progressive “activists”. Such as the anti-Israel protesters who have taken to targeting Luke Charters, the Labour MP for York Outer.

Last week, Mr Charters has revealed, a group of masked thugs flung a tin of baked beans at him in the street, while chanting, “Labour, Labour, genocide.” Then, on Saturday, around 20 of them tried to block the entrance to his constituency surgery, while bellowing, “Luke Charters, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” As a result, he says, several constituents were too scared to attend meetings they’d arranged with him.

What on earth could possess someone to think it’s acceptable to hurl a tin at an MP (or, indeed, anyone?). Huxley knew. These foaming narcissists clearly believe that their cause is so unimpeachably righteous, they’re entitled to bully anyone who doesn’t share their fanaticism. And they do it with the most jubilant relish.

Of course, Mr Charters isn’t the only MP to be plagued by such people. One night in February last year, a mob of anti-Israel protesters angrily demonstrated outside the family home of the then Tory MP Tobias Ellwood.

When a society can no longer distinguish between good and evil, between victim and perpetrator, it gives up.

This dynamic is one of the great constants of human history. It is a lesson people in free societies — and people in totalitarian societies who yearn to be free — should keep in mind during the climactic showdown underway in the Middle East. Israel has struck a blow to prevent Iran from developing nuclear bombs — weapons that it might credibly use toward its stated goal of removing Israel from the planet. Make no mistake: This is not simply a matter of regional security. Nor should it be a proxy for whether one supports or opposes the current Israeli government’s policy on Gaza or other subjects. This conflict is a central front in a global contest in which the forces of tyranny and violence in recent years have been gaining ground against the forces of freedom, which too often are demoralized and divided.

In a world full of bad actors, Iran is the most aggressive and dangerous totalitarian force of our time. Its leaders seek to weaken and destroy free society, democracy and human rights with Russian and Chinese support. In Iran, women are systematically oppressed and abused. Homosexuals are murdered. Those who think differently are imprisoned and tortured. In Tehran, the cynical abuse of the civilian population in Gaza as human shields is also cold-bloodedly conceived and financed.

According to official state doctrine, the primary goal of the mullahs in Tehran is the annihilation of the State of Israel. Ayatollah Khamenei has described Israel as a “cancerous tumor.” And clocks in the streets of Tehran celebrate countdowns to the “destruction of Israel.”

But Israel is only the first target. Once Israel falls, Europe and America will be the focus. Radical Sunni and Shiite Islamism has been preparing for this for decades. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie, 9/11, the attacks in Paris, the caliphate of ISIS — each event was a warning sign. Only those who did not want to see the signs are surprised today. The attacks are directed against our values, our way of life.

It is therefore surprising that Israel is not being celebrated worldwide for its historic, extremely precise and necessary strike against Iranian nuclear weapons facilities and for the targeted killing of leading terrorists, but that the public response is dominated by anti-Israel propaganda. The intelligence and precision of Israel’s actions are not admired but are instead used here and there to perpetuate blatantly antisemitic stereotypes. This attitude is characterized not only by racist undertones, but also by a strange self-forgetfulness.

If the perpetrator-victim reversal that has been repeatedly observed since Oct. 7 applies even in the most obvious case — Iran — then this can only be interpreted to mean that we are in the process of losing the culture war, which in reality has long since become a war of civilizations. And we seem to have no problem with that. It is what Michel Houellebecq called “submission” in his visionary novel 10 years ago.

As someone who has 40 years’ experience as a journalist and publishing executive, I believe every government should be questioned critically about all the details of its policies — above all on matters of war and its consequences. But those details should not be allowed to obscure larger historical truths. Perhaps a German of my generation has a useful vantage point. Born in 1963, I grew up in a country and continent still shadowed by World War II and its crimes, including an effort by Germany to eradicate Jews across Europe. The first half of my journalism career saw freedom on the march. The Soviet Union collapsed, authoritarian governments across Eastern Europe were routed, Germany was reunited under democracy. The second half of my career, however, has seen authoritarianism on the rise in all directions — with governments hostile to the very idea of journalism, as well as democracy, pluralism, rule of law and basic standards of decency. These unwelcome developments highlighted how fragile the triumphs of the late 20th century may be in the 21st. The contest between free societies and murderous tyrants is enduring.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/germany-alternative-for-deutschland-afd-party-committee-chairmanships

Germany’s self-proclaimed democracy defenders are at it again: blocking a law-abiding party from exercising its rights—all in the name of protecting democracy.

The Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), a pro-free market, anti-EU, anti-mass migration party, placed second in Germany’s recent parliamentary elections, earning nearly 21 percent of the vote to the top vote-getter’s, the Christian Democratic Union’s, 28 percent. The AfD placed well ahead of the once-dominant Social Democratic Party (16 percent) and the Greens (11 percent).

By longstanding tradition, the AfD should have been allotted committee chairmanships and vice chairmanships based on its February vote share. Doing so would have meant that the powerful budget, interior, and finance committees, along with three other committees, would have been under AfD direction, giving it the possibility of shaping legislation. But in a reversal of what is normally an automatic affirmation, on Wednesday, May 21, the other parties in Parliament voted down the AfD chairmanships and put those six committees in the control of other, often less popular, parties. The far-left Die Linke (the Left) party, which had garnered just 9 percent of the parliamentary vote, was awarded two chairs.

The rationale given for this anti-democratic coup is a recent designation of the AfD as a right-wing extremist party. On May 2, 2025, four days before parliamentary power was to change hands, outgoing Interior Minister Nancy Faeser from the Social Democratic Party announced that Germany’s domestic spy agency (the BfV) had slapped that label on the AfD, based on a 1,000-page secret dossier. According to press leaks, the dossier appeared to consist of public statements by AfD leaders, many already chewed over endlessly by the party’s opponents, relating to Germany’s mass migration problem.

AfD representatives have asserted, for example, that Germans have a cultural history tied to their ethnic and national identity; that this history and identity deserve protection; and that unchecked illegal migration threatens national cohesion.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-collision-of-islamic-culture-with-western-civilization/

There was a time when Europe stood as a beacon of liberty — the birthplace of Enlightenment ideals, the defender of individual rights, the champion of human dignity.

Today, that same Europe hosts classes to teach adult men — not boys — that women are not public property, sexual objects, or spoils of war.

Not because these men are mentally unstable. Not because they come from war zones. But because they come from Islamic countries, where modesty is law, where female autonomy is rebellion, and where sexual violence is normalized — by culture, by clerics, and sometimes by the law itself.

These aren’t fringe cases. They are embedded practices. This is not satire. This is policy.

In Norway, asylum seekers — overwhelmingly from Islamic-majority nations like Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan — are now enrolled in government-sponsored “rape prevention classes.” These men are shown images of Western women in dresses, walking alone, drinking wine, or dancing — and are told: “This is not an invitation.”

They are taught that a woman’s smile doesn’t mean she consents. That women are equal. That sex without permission is rape.

Here’s the chilling part: to many of these men, this is news. This isn’t remedial education — this is reprogramming.

Because the worldview they bring isn’t just incompatible with Western norms.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/05/the_west_eats_itself.html

Western governments undermine elections, religious freedom, free markets, and free speech.

The same Western leaders who speak endlessly about “protecting Democracy” continue to rig elections, outlaw political parties, and prosecute candidates.  Germany has declared Alternative for Germany — now the country’s most popular party — an “extremist group” on par with domestic terror organizations.  The European Union helped Marxist globalists in Romania invalidate a presidential election and ban the winner from office.  France and Brazil have followed the U.S. example of bringing ludicrous criminal charges against popular anti-Establishment politicians, and while President Trump overcame the sham prosecutions targeting him, Marine Le Pen and Jair Bolsonaro are fighting just to survive. 

Let’s not forget either that the Ukraine-Russia War drags on today only because U.S. and European forces helped overthrow the legitimately elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, back in 2014.  His transgression?  Yanukovych’s government was pushing back against the EU’s efforts to absorb Ukraine into its continental empire.  The same NATO and EU talking-heads who denounce Russia’s conquest of its neighbor are mostly mad because they hoped to conquer Ukraine first.

It’s a disorienting time for Westerners who once respected their civic institutions.  The Cold War mentality of the twentieth century created clear distinctions between closed, communist systems and rights-based, free societies.  In the West, people could freely practice the religious tenets of their respective faiths; in communist societies, people were expected to obey the quasi-divine strictures of the State.  In the West, people could own property and freely exchange goods and services; in communist societies, people owned nothing and received only what the State gave them.  In the West, people could speak their minds and publicly debate new ideas; in communist societies, people adhered to politically correct ideology under the constant threat of arrest, torture, and even death.  The West was supposed to err on the side of individual freedoms, even when those freedoms permitted awful people to say awful things. 

Western societies did not always live up to the principles that distinguished them from totalitarian regimes, but respect for personal freedom did serve as an effective guardrail that kept Western governments from careening toward totalitarianism, too.  

What’s going on today is entirely different.