Has Anybody Noticed? Nothing About Leftist Pressure to Force Tesla Owners to Sell Their Cars Makes Any Sense at All — 3 Pointed Remarks

NEW — On March 19, a masked male suspect hunted down a woman for driving a Tesla in the Seattle area.

The suspect allegedly followed the victim, cut her off, stopped in the middle of the road, exited his vehicle, and demanded she sell her Tesla, stating it was a "Nazi" car.… pic.twitter.com/ihnhV67pPV

— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) March 21, 2025

Have y'all seen Instapundit's post about the video of "a masked male suspect [who] hunted down a [mother] for driving a Tesla"? Katie Daviscourt:

On March 19, a masked male suspect hunted down a woman for driving a Tesla in the Seattle area.  

The suspect allegedly followed the victim, cut her off, stopped in the middle of the road, exited his vehicle, and demanded she sell her Tesla, stating it was a "Nazi" car.  

This incident occurred in Lynnwood, WA, where there have been several attacks on Tesla vehicles and store property. 

This leads Glenn Reynolds to comment: 

SOMEBODY IS GOING TO GET SHOT IF THIS KEEPS UP. AND FRANKLY, THEY’LL DESERVE IT. 

With Stephen Miller adding, for good measure, 

Pretty much right here is when a conceal carry permit comes in pretty handy.

Has it occurred to you — has it occurred to anybody (and especially to leftists) — that the action, beyond being reprehensible (where on Earth was the driver's "safe space"?!), makes no sense whatsoever? (Apart from virtue signalling, natch.) Let's assume the drama queen manages to terrorize (sorry, to peacefully persuade) the woman to sell her Tesla. 

First of all, what does this do Elon Musk (assuming that "Gruppenführer Musk" does indeed deserve punishment)? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The vehicle was paid for when it was first purchased from a dealership — by the woman herself or by someone else who later sold it to her (see third point below). How does pressure to (re)sell the "Nazi" car in any way affect Elon Musk, the Tesla company, or any of its dealerships? Not at all.

Second of all, how is this going to unite the Left?! The vast majority of Tesla users are not Despicable Deplorables but, I think it is fair to surmise, (devoted?) leftists. Isn't having a deranged fire-eater in camouflage and a ski mask — who looks, if anything, like a violent criminal car-jacker who indeed deserves to be resisted with a lethal firearm — threaten you and your car more likely to lead to "a liberal who has been mugged by reality"? 

These are my fellow comrades in arms?! Getting me to sell my Tesla, and/or spray-painting my Tesla, and/or keying my Tesla, and/or firebombing my Tesla, and/or spreading unspeakable filth on my Tesla (not to mention doxxing me and/or crushing my Tesla under a multi-ton Olmec head)?! Maybe Donald Trump's MAGA crowd is not as bad as it first seemed, or certainly not as bad as my fellow leftists have now become. (Spoiler: Yes, Virginia, the Locofocos were always this deranged.) 

Thirdly, and this is the most ridiculous point: So the drama queen manages to terrorize (sorry, to peacefully persuade) the woman to sell her car. Presumably, to sell it to a neighbor or a local and, presumably, to sell it to someone who wants to make use of his or her new purchase. So, guess what! The "Nazi" car has not vanished; it is still going to be on the road! The same Tesla will be driving down the very same road, or a similar road, in a day or in a week or two, and come to the attention of another deranged leftist, or perhaps to that of even the very same Locofoco, who is going to be as outraged as ski mask was a few days prior and (overre)act in exactly the same way. (If the very same dude, will he even recognize that this is the exact same "Nazi" car he did this to a few days or a few weeks before that?!) 

What's our "committed" leftist (or his partner in crime, i.e., in virtue-signalling) going to do? Stop the new owner and terrorize (sorry, peacefully persuade) him or her to sell his or her car?! Well, in that case, we're back to square one, ain't we? If the fire-eater succeeds, the new owner is also going to want to sell it to someone else, a someone who also wants to derive benefit from the purchase. And so the brand-new owner will also soon be driving his "Nazi" car the down the road… We have the makings, here, of a perpetual motion machine (or, rather, a perpetual outrage machine).

NEW — On March 19, a masked male suspect hunted down a woman for driving a Tesla in the Seattle area.

The suspect allegedly followed the victim, cut her off, stopped in the middle of the road, exited his vehicle, and demanded she sell her Tesla, stating it was a "Nazi" car.… pic.twitter.com/ihnhV67pPV

— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) March 21, 2025

Related: • French TV Channel Beclowns Itself While Trying to Defend Leftist VIPs Raising Arms in the Nazi Salute
• The Era of the Drama Queens — Every Crisis Is a Triumph
• Do You Know What Abraham Lincoln Called the Democrats, President Trump? The Locofocos

The GOP's Paul Reen Appears on Radio Courtoisie Discussing the Subject of the Geopolitical Views of Donald Trump

Invited by Antoine Guillaume and Gicquel François-Xavier, Paul Reen, the media director of Republicans Overseas France (ROF), appeared on Radio Courtoisie's Libre Journal de l'Occident (audio at link) show along with Québec's Alexandre Cormier-Denis of Nomos TV.

• Libre Journal de la nuit
• Occident

Libre journal de l’occident du 19 mars 2025 : “Guerre et Paix : la Géopolitique de Trump”

Patron d'émission Antoine Guillaume et Gicquel François-Xavier le 18 mars 2025

Libre journal de l’occident du 19 mars 2025

▶

00:00

 

Guillaume Antoine et François-Xavier Gicquel reçoivent :

• Alexandre Cormier-Denis, fondateur de Nomos TV
• Paul Reen, directeur média des Republicans Overseas France

Thème : “Guerre et Paix : la Géopolitique de Trump”

référence :

Étiquettes : géopolitique guerre Occident paix s1 Trump

Patron d'émission

Antoine Guillaume et Gicquel François-Xavier

Archives du patron d'émission

 

Plantu and France's "Nuanced" Cartoons of the Yankee Nation: Devilish Capitalist stereotypes, Nazi Sieg Heil salutes, bloody vampire teeth, and KKK Klansmen as White House columns

"The exit is thataway!"

Devilish capitalist stereotypes, Nazi armbands, Sieg Heil salutes, bloody vampire mouths n teeth, and Ku Klux Klan members as White House columns, all of which are contrasted with innocent baby-faced Ukraine, baby-faced Europe, and the rest of the baby-faced planet… 

The nuance and fair-mindedness of Plantu has hardly improved since he was the daily cartoonist on the front page of Le Monde…

"What's more, the faggot didn't even wear a tie!"

Closed border crossing: "Fuck Everybody Else"

  Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog can also serve as a description for Europeans:

Having utterly and spectacularly failed at preventing Donald Trump’s second term, the loony leftists in the Democratic Party are gradually shedding their Trump Derangement Syndrome for other targets upon which to demonstrably and irrationally vent their spleen. Vance Derangement Syndrome raged for a while, but it seems that the left has settled on Musk Derangement Syndrome as the best way to demonstrate their ludicrous, self-defeating behavior. So much so that Doug Ross compiled a list of Top 20 Violent Anti-Musk Protests: The Unhinged Left’s Greatest Hits.

 … [Leftists tell each other that] you simply didn’t call people who disagree with your politics Nazis hard enough. Doubling down on that will surely make your agenda of child mutilation, trannies in women’s sports, open borders and wasting taxpayer money to secretly fund the far left super popular.

"The exit is that over there!"

"What's more, that faggot didn't even wear a tie!"

Closed border crossing: "Fuck Everybody Else"

The NYT Interviews 14 Voters Hit by Hurricane Helene; Rare Are Those Who Defend the Left

In the wake of disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, along with ever-increasing doubts about the government, The New York Times decided to let 14 Hard-Hit Voters Debate a Big Question in the Era of Trump and Musk:

‘What Is Government For’?

The problem, for the left, is that no more than one or two of the participants — and they are of all races and from all walks of life — seems to be willing to defend the Democratic point of view outright; and that barely.

In the wake of the crises of the decade so far — the pandemic, extreme weather and natural disasters, among others — Americans have increasingly expressed their doubts about institutions, the government especially.

Since Donald Trump’s return to office and the rise of Elon Musk as a major political figure, there’s been intense focus on a simple set of questions: What should the government be for? Who should it help? What explains its failures? In Opinion’s latest focus group, we spoke with 14 people from North Carolina who were either directly affected last year by Hurricane Helene, or who had close friends or family members who were. Because of that event, many of them were directly confronted with these questions of government help and trust in institutions. At a time when the future of many government services could change significantly, we asked them about what Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are doing and how other leaders, like Joe Biden, handled the crisis.

“The whole system of fixing things is broken. Everything that’s supposed to be in place is not there,” one participant said, describing his worries about not only North Carolina but also places devastated by wildfires in recent years. Some worried about FEMA’s future, even if they were deeply dissatisfied with the recovery efforts last year, others wanted to rethink it entirely, and others expressed frustration with the lack of understanding in this hyperpoliticized environment and the false claims that circulated last fall.

And at a time when people — including participants in this group — expressed real concern and worry about government cuts, layoffs and funding changes, many also expressed a skeptical and dissatisfied view of how government performs today. What does government do well? One participant answered, “Provide complicated explanations for why it does what it does.”

Katherine Miller, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Adrian J. Rivera

 Read all the questions and the various answers…

Another Chinese Belt & Road Victory; This Time, in a Black Sea Harbor on the Georgia Coast

Not content with building, only three or four months ago, the largest harbor on South America's Pacific coast (in Peru), Ivan Nechepurenko reports that China is engaged in the process of constructing a deep-water port project on the Black Sea (in Georgia), something that one would think should upset Beijing's ally Russia at least as much as, if not more than, Western nations. But apparently not, according to the New York Times. 

This, as Xi Jinping rails and sputters about having suffered a loss at the hands of Donald Trump at the Panama Canal, although China did succeed in having its preferred candidate emerge as the head of the OAS. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal's Walter Russell Mead reports that 

China strengthens its ties with Russia and Iran while Western alliances are fraying … While Western attention was largely on events in Ukraine and the Middle East, China has been steadily moving toward its long-term goals.

Ivan Nechepurenko in the New York Times:

For more than a year, pro-Western marchers in Georgia, a former Soviet republic that borders Russia, have been accusing their government of allowing Moscow to increasingly reassert its sway over their country.

But driving around this nation of 3.6 million people in the heart of the mountainous Caucasus region, the influence of another ambitious power becomes apparent. China has been stepping up its activities in the region in recent years, building infrastructure and expanding trade routes that it hopes will boost its economy.

  … To the west, preparations are underway for another Chinese company, China Communications Construction Company, to develop Georgia’s first deep-sea port on the Black Sea as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure and trade initiative.

The port, as yet unnamed, is now at the center of a debate in Georgia and abroad about China’s growing influence in the region and the Caucasus nation’s pivot away from the West. Inflaming the situation is the fact that the project was stripped from a group of Georgian, European, and U.S. companies — the Anaklia Development Consortium — before eventually being promised to the Chinese company last May.

Salome Zourabichvili, the former Georgian president who emerged last year as a leading voice for the pro-Western opposition, said the move was like “stabbing our relations with our American and European partners.”

In July, a State Department official said that awarding the port project to the Chinese company was “incompatible” with wanting to join “U.S. and E.U.-based international organizations.” In 2019, the United States had billed the port as something that could “prevent Georgia from falling prey to Russian or Chinese economic influence.”

  … For Georgia, the port would help develop the country as a regional transport hub.

For China, the port would become a gateway to the Caucasus, linking Asia with Europe across what it calls the “middle corridor.” It would allow Chinese companies to ship their goods from China via railways in Central Asia and across the Caspian to Europe, skirting Russia, which has been the target of Western sanctions because of the war in Ukraine.

 

… Russia, which is still considered to be Georgia’s main trading partner, could also be a major beneficiary of the project. Novorossiysk, the main Russian port on the Black Sea, has been hobbled by Western sanctions, and with the new Chinese-built routes, goods could flow into and out of Russia unimpeded across the Caucasus.

The port situation highlights how the rivalry between China and the United States is growing in the region, pulling in smaller countries like Georgia.

Related: You Cannot Understand Trump's Greenland-Panama-Canada Declarations Unless You Recognize the Extent of the China Threat
• A national security imperative: By doubling down on partnerships with Ukraine and Greenland, the U.S. aims to break free from Chinese dependency while reinforcing its technological supremacy
• Beijing's Road & Belt: China is not only trying to junk the Monroe Doctrine, it wants to establish itself as the head of the OAS

Pure Jacobin hatred for anything pro-American: Every other decision in the Biden administration was intended to harm our country and destroy the United States as we know it

What is the Democrat message?

asks John Kass (thanks to Glenn Reynolds and also to Sarah Hoyt). 

Do they even know?

Is the Democrat message pure Jacobin hatred for anything pro-American and anything that could be considered pro-President Donald Trump?

They’re feral creatures now, lonely, isolated, frightened without leadership, desperate for relevance, without any cogent message, terrified at what’s to become of them.

And quite mad, like inmates in Victorian lunatic asylum.

 … Long ago, the Democrat Party had a choice:

Cleanse themselves of their Barack Obama infection, cleanse themselves of Obama’s racist and radical addiction to racial preferences that we now know as DEI, amputate any limbs that had become sodden with jacobin  gangrene and become what they had been: a patriotic American party of the American working class.

Or, they could continue following the discredited Clintons and Obamas down the sewer.

The Democrats chose the sewer.

They didn’t do a damn thing except scream. And their childish foot stomping was on display for all the world to see last week at President Trump’s Congressional address.

 … Democrat open borders policy that ushered in an untold number of foreign terrorists and deadly street gang members from Latin American prisons are to be protected. Anyone who threatens their power will be demonized and hounded by the jacobin mob that has been paid by U.S. tax dollars funneled through Dark Money and Soros operations via U.S. AID and other sources. These money funneling operations are protected by left-wing federal judges by Obama and his meat puppet who was on the Ukrainian payroll Joe Biden.

The aforementioned Instapundit's blogfather goes on to link Bravo Blue's John A. Lucas quoting Judd Garrett's What's Important:

Today Judd Garrett posted an article on Substack that, at least for me, is a must-read. I will link and summarize it briefly and will then add a reflection from my own experience. Judd’s article is here: What's Important - by Judd Garrett. Here are some excerpts to whey your appetite:

There is a lot of talk, speculation and fear mongering surrounding what Donald Trump has been doing since he was inaugurated in January. He is starting a trade war; the tariffs are on, they are off, they are back on again; the stock market has been very volatile; the jobs numbers were not great; we don’t have a peace deal in Ukraine; there isn’t a ceasefire in Gaza; all of our hostages are not home yet; maybe we are sliding into a recession. Democrats are claiming that Trump voters are having buyer’s remorse.

. . . . The approach to illegal immigration is a touchstone issue for me when I am evaluating a President and his administration’s performance. Under Biden, illegal immigration was at an all-time high and now less than two months into Trump’s administration, it is at an all-time low. Why is this such a defining issue? It tells me how much our President cares about the country or how much he is actively trying to destroy our country. Joe Biden was actively destroying the United States of America by not only flinging our southern border wide open and inviting the rest of the world to come in, he was actively flying plane loads of illegals to the interior of the country with pre-paid debit cards, cell phones, essentials bags and housing lined up at taxpayer expense.

That was all designed to destroy the United States as we know it. The PHDs and engineers from other countries were not coming en masse; the uneducated, the unskilled, the criminal aliens, the drug smugglers, the gang members were the ones who came. Everyday under Biden our country was getting worse and worse, regardless of what the economic indicators were saying, and it was all done intentionally which made me believe that every other decision that the Biden administration was making was intended to harm our country or at least was not designed to make our country better. Everything that was done by the previous administration was done to help ensure permanent Democrat power in Washington for decades to come and if that meant destroying the country in the process, so be it.

It is dramatically different under Trump. Trump solved our most glaring problem from day one - the threat to our national sovereignty from mass illegal immigration. I sleep better at night knowing that Tom Homan is on the job, and thousands of illegal aliens are being shipped back to their own country every day. The country gets better with every criminal alien, gang banger, cartel member who is removed from the country. Our country is not about our politicians or our laws or even about our Constitution - it is about our citizenry and removing thousands of people every day who came here to poison our communities or commit violent crimes or exploit our system and generosity, makes us better.

I don’t know how many of those other issues are going to resolve themselves - will Trump’s tariffs improve our economy? Was the Ukraine-Russia peace deal good? Will Trump’s threats to Hamas end that conflict and bring our hostages home? I don’t have the answers to those questions, but what I do know is after 4 years, we finally have a President who is putting America first, who is working in the best interests of our country and not trying to destroy it, who is willing to attack and destroy the mass unelected bureaucracy which was bankrupting America. It is finally good to know we have a president who is working for the best interests of America and its citizens.

 … I sleep well at night, knowing that we have a President who puts us and our country first.

Related: •  Mark Levin points out that The Democrat Party Hates America
• Trump's Wow Moment — The only reason for wanting open borders: you're either stupid or you hate the country

A national security imperative: By doubling down on partnerships with Ukraine and Greenland, the U.S. aims to break free from Chinese dependency while reinforcing its technological supremacy

Over at the Washington Examiner, Sebastien Laye digs deep to unearth the truth about how Trump’s rare earth mineral deals are about AI. 

In the rapidly shifting landscape of artificial intelligence, the United States faces an urgent challenge: securing a stable and independent supply of rare earth minerals.

Indeed, AI hardware and chips rely on these rare elements as essential building blocks. 

For decades, China has dominated this market, controlling around 70% of global production and an even larger share of processing capabilities. This near-monopoly directly threatens the U.S. AI industry, which relies on these materials for everything from semiconductor manufacturing to energy storage. To counteract this dependency, President Donald Trump is increasingly focused on forging strategic partnerships with mineral-rich nations, particularly Ukraine and Greenland.

Trump’s more transactional approach to global leadership is reshaping America’s economic diplomacy. No longer driven by abstract commitments to shared values, U.S. foreign policy is shifting toward securing concrete strategic advantages to cement its position as the world’s preeminent technological and economic power. The ability to command global AI leadership depends on maintaining a decisive edge in raw materials, manufacturing, and research. Rare earth minerals, vital for electronic components, AI chips, and green energy solutions, are set to reconfigure America’s geopolitical alliances in the future.

Ukraine possesses substantial, untapped deposits of lithium, graphite, and other rare earth elements — resources that have drawn increasing U.S. interest. As part of a broader minerals cooperation agreement, the Trump administration is negotiating terms to secure access to these critical materials in exchange for financial aid and investment. This arrangement benefits both parties: Ukraine receives economic support and long-term development opportunities, while the U.S. gains a reliable alternative to Chinese-controlled supply chains. Russian President Vladimir Putin could propose the same deal in the Russian-controlled Donbas region.

But there’s more at stake than just economic gains. By tying its financial and industrial interests to Ukraine’s post-war recovery, the U.S. is making a strategic commitment that extends beyond minerals. The deal effectively secures American involvement in Ukraine’s economic trajectory, making it a protected asset reminiscent of how Kuwait’s oil reserves shaped U.S. Middle East policy. This alignment of interests strengthens Ukraine’s position, signaling to adversaries that Washington is not just an observer but an embedded stakeholder. The implications are clear: in a resource-driven world, economic ties translate into geopolitical influence.

Greenland and its untapped reserves represent another pivotal front in America’s bid for supply chain security. With its vast deposits of rare earth elements, the Arctic island offers an opportunity to build a supply chain free from Chinese interference. The Kvanefjeld site, home to one of the world’s largest multi-element deposits, has long attracted international attention. Recognizing its strategic value, the U.S. has ramped up diplomatic efforts to strengthen ties with Greenland and Denmark while aiming to prevent Chinese firms from securing a foothold in the region.

 … Securing diverse, independent sources of rare earth minerals is more than an economic necessity — it is a national security imperative. The future of AI, advanced computing, and clean energy will be dictated by those who control the raw materials that fuel those industries. Continued reliance on a single supplier, especially a strategic rival, exposes the U.S. to supply chain disruptions, geopolitical leverage, and economic vulnerabilities.

By doubling down on partnerships with Ukraine and Greenland, the U.S. aims to break free from Chinese dependency while reinforcing its technological supremacy. These efforts will not be without hurdles, but in the high-stakes race for AI and critical technologies, securing resources today will determine the superpowers of tomorrow.

Previously, Sébastien Laye quoted Elon Musk over on X:  

We are facing the collapse of the European Union.  The debt is just unbelievable.  They never consolidated.  Between Covid, Climate Change and sanctions on Russia, the German economy has shrunk . . . 3% to 5%. France average growth over the last 10 y does not exceed 1% with a huge welfare state hangover. The economic growth (of the EU) is appalling.  Europe is falling, and this is why they might need war. 

@elonmusk

The Trump Administration Is Further Right-Wing than the Netanyahu Government

On a visit to Israel, Philippe Karsenty was interviewed by Studio Qualita, where he pointed out that the Trump Administration in Washington is even further right-wing than the Netanyahu government in Tel Aviv, stating that Pete Hegseth insists on re-building the third temple in Jerusalem. 

The head of the Comité Trump France also discusses the Mohamed Al Dura hoax, which occurred some 20 years ago and which led Karsenty to engage in a personal fight against one of the major state-owned TV channels in France for almost a decade. It is time for Israel, he insists, to insist that France recognize that the Charles Enderlin "reportage" on the France 2 channel was nothing but a Pallywood fraud.

L'administration Trump est plus à droite que le gouvernement Netanyahou - L'invité du 13 mars 2025

Qualita

Mar 13, 2025 #francophone #DIRECT #REPLAY

Philippe Karsenty, répresentant du Président Trump en France : L'administration Trump est plus à droite que le gouvernement Netanyaou. L'actuel secrétaire d'état à la Défense prône la reconstruction du Troisième Temple!" * Retrouvez toutes les #émissions en #REPLAY et classées par thème : http://www.qualitapedia.org.il

In Europe, a "lot of politicians thrive on having a population dependent on government because you get a lot of votes from a lot of people who depend on government"

"Many Americans say the United States should follow Europe’s example," writes John Stossel in The Death of Europe: High Taxes, Too Many Regulations… Economic Stagnation (tack så mycket till Glenn Reynolds och Sarah Hoyt, video embedded below): "free healthcare, generous welfare benefits, protection for workers... But what they don’t tell you is that Europe is falling behind."

        America needs more rules to protect workers, say some from both parties. 

        Sen. Josh Hawley wants more rules empowering unions.

        Barack Obama's Labor Secretary says there's "no fairness, no equity, no concern for safety, no concern for children, even!" 

        European countries, they say, have more laws protecting workers, and so "Europe is better."

        That's nonsense, says economist Sven Larson in my new video. He grew up in Sweden, but now says, "If you're a worker, you don't want to live in Sweden!"

        One reason is that unemployment is 10%.

        "If you get fired," says Larson, "There's no job out there for you."

        Years ago, America's economy grew neck and neck with the European Union's. Then, about 15 years ago, Europe stopped growing.

        Today, the USA is 50% richer -- even though the European Union has 100 million more people.

        Europe is kind of like a big museum. Tourist money keeps it going, but there's so little growth that, per person, America's poorest state (Mississippi) is now richer than most European countries.

        The reason is the very same policies ignorant Americans want to copy -- like higher taxes on the rich.

        "But what do you do when you run out of the rich?" asks Larson. "Tax the almost rich. Then you run out of them."

         … So, tax is taken from the average worker.

        In Sweden, he says, "Average workers pay (a higher percentage of) taxes than you do if you make $400,000 here in the United States."

        But at least their health care is free.

        "No!" he replies. "You get the right to free health care, but whether you get health care is a different story. I have friends who died in the Swedish health care system because they couldn't get treatment in time."

        Still, Europe offers generous welfare benefits.

        "They take care of people!" I tell Larson.

        "But it also entraps you," he says. "People get stuck in low-end jobs. They don't start businesses like we do."

        One reason they don't start businesses is because Europe's rules meant to "protect" workers make it hard to fire lazy ones.

        "You have to go through an extremely bureaucratic sequence," says Larson. "Government will decide whether you are right in saying this person is not doing his job. ... Why would you hire anybody when you are essentially responsible for them for the rest of your life?!"

        I wouldn't. It's a big reason why the unemployment rate in Europe is 50% higher than in the U.S.   

        I often complain about America's excessive regulations. But Europe has many more.   

        "Here in America," says Larson, "You can put a sticker on a pickup truck that says, 'Bob the carpenter,' and you have a small business. You can start making money. In Europe, you have to wade through fees ... talk to bureaucrats."

        EU rules also protect unions.

        In Sweden, says Larson, "(Unions) can act like a mafia, force utility companies to shut off power, stop garbage collections, stop banks from processing your checks."

        They do. Unions punished non-union Tesla by refusing to deliver new license plates.

        That union power, excessive regulation and high taxes are why Europe now has zero of the world's largest companies. The list constantly changes, but as I write, no European company is in the top 20. American firms lead the list.

        I ask Larson, "Don't European governments see what this has done to their economies and change these rules?"

        "No," he answers. "A lot of politicians thrive on having a population dependent on government because you get a lot of votes from a lot of people who depend on government. America still has this spirit of understanding that you can actually make life better for yourself, which I don't find in Europe."

        We do have that spirit ... now.

        But it's challenged by the 300,000 bureaucrats who write and enforce regulation. And that's just federal regulators. States and cities employ even more!

        That's a lot of people who believe that if they're not adding more rules, they're not doing their job.

        Stop them before they make America as stagnant as Europe.

Related: A fundamental misunderstanding — The truth about European "conservatism" that American conservatives must understand

The Censorship Industrial Complex: Vance's Message to Europe Was in Fact "Stop secret information warfare against the United States"

Over at TCW Defending Freedom, NS Lyons gives us Vance’s real message to Europe – halt this secret war against America, an article which appeared on The Upheaval on March 4, 2025 (danke schön zu Sarah Hoyt von Instapundit).

THE political elite of Europe and the Anglosphere appeared shocked by J D Vance’s wonderfully blunt speech in Munich last month. The US Vice President declared Washington’s top security concern to be ‘the threat from within’ the Nato alliance and castigated assembled leaders for their increasingly brazen assaults on ‘democratic values’ including censoring speech, suppressing popular opposition parties, and cancelling elections. But if this shock isn’t feigned, it is rather remarkable, given that these elites were in their own way already effectively at war with the United States. All Vance did was point out the nature of this hidden conflict.

Vance delivered multiple messages in his speech, the broadest and most historic of which was that the era of ‘post-national’ globalist liberalism is over. The United States, he indicated, now has a core interest in seeing a Western world that is collectively strong because its sovereign nations are strong, with the self-confidence to independently defend themselves physically, culturally and spiritually. His emphasis on promoting free speech and democratic legitimacy tied into this message, but was about far more than the importance of ‘shared values’ or even Washington’s new friendliness to nationalist parties. Practically, it was an implied warning that the role Europe has been playing as a proxy actor in the political and ideological conflicts raging in the United States will no longer be tolerated. More specifically, it was a declaration that transatlantic institutional, technological and legal support for America’s embattled left-wing deep state must end – or else.

After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, America’s panicked establishment elites reacted by attempting to construct a system for managing public opinion through strict control of information, especially online information. The idea was that growing public support for populism was fuelled by ‘low-information voters’ and their consumption of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ including from foreign actors, and that if their ‘information diet’ could just be controlled they would stop voting wrong. The underlying assumption here was of course that the elite’s own increasingly radical policy preferences were the only rational path, opposable only by the stupid and easily manipulated. As Trump’s defeated opponent Hillary Clinton would later put it, social media platforms had fundamentally changed the information environment and ‘if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control’.

This intended system of thought-control would later grow into the censorship industrial complex that was partially revealed following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. But a big obstacle initially stood in the way: the US Constitution and its protection of free speech. The public might be receiving the ‘wrong’ information on the internet, but ‘our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence’, as John Kerry lamented in a speech to the World Economic Forum.

Under the Biden administration, this legal problem was partially solved by simply ignoring it, the federal government directly colluding with technology companies and a network of ‘independent’ (state-funded) ‘fact-checking’ organisations to impose mass censorship on American citizens. The result was, as one federal judge later described it, effectively ‘the most massive attack against free speech in United States history’.

A more subtle and sustainable work-around was discovered, however. This was to circumvent the US Constitution by outsourcing the policing of the internet and populist movements to other countries around the world. This could be done because the internet is global and so the whole network is affected by government regulations on any local market of sufficient size. Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic immediately grasped that legal and regulatory structures imposed by the European Union, with the leverage of its huge unified market, could for example force internet companies the world over – including US companies – to change their behaviour in order to comply and avoid losing access (this imperialistic regulatory strong-arming was dubbed the ‘Brussels Effect’, becoming Europe’s only significant innovation this century).

American ‘partners’ quickly began setting up a network of structures to force global internet content ‘moderation’ as part of a de facto counter-populist alliance. This began in 2016 when Brussels pressured Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube into signing the ‘Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online’ which required the ‘removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours’ and ordered them to ‘remove or disable access to such content’. Decisions on what counted as illegal speech would henceforth be determined by a new category of ‘trusted reporters’, i.e. a network of ideologically aligned media organisations, often funded by the state.

 … This process of regulatory political containment reached its ultimate form in the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which began to come into legal force in 2023 and is now fully operational. … Following this, the world saw hundreds of ‘non-governmental’ organisations, think tanks, ‘fact checkers’ and academic misinformation ‘researchers’ sprouting up to help co-ordinate censorship without borders. These organisations provided ready-made ‘expertise’ on which governments and technology platforms could draw when deciding who to target for silencing or worse. Additionally, they could provide cover by giving the whole scheme a sheen of independence and scientific objectivity. They quickly became integral to the counter-populist project. In particular, these outfits became adept at co-ordinating campaigns to cut off financing for political opponents and ideological adversaries by pressuring advertisers into boycotting dissenting websites, platforms and media outlets by smearing them as dangerous extremists.

 … [The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a British Labour Party cutout,] is just one of many such organisations performing a similar role, however, including groups like Newsguard and the Global Disinformation Index. Collectively, these organisations have, as an UnHerd investigation found, successfully established a cartel of ‘invisible gatekeepers within the vast machinery of online advertising’ and media ‘fact-checking’. Their purpose has been to distort and control the factual information and narratives reaching the public. In other words, they were established as political weapons.

It is striking that a significant proportion of these organisations and similar outfits, such as the Atlantic Council and the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), are commonly both partially state-funded (often by multiple countries on both sides of the Atlantic) and maintain deep connections to the various agencies of the security state.

 … These security services had folded the perceived domestic threat of populist movements into their emerging theories and doctrines of ‘fifth-generation warfare’, in which the digital revolution is believed to have transformed the world of geopolitical competition into a global ‘omnipresent battlefield’ characterised by persistent cyberwarfare and a constant struggle over ‘information and perception’. In this view, the minds of citizens (or ‘cognitive infrastructure’ as governments began to unironically refer to them) are terrain that has to be constantly fought over with rivals such as Russia. This made populists the equivalent of foreign adversaries, rather than merely normal domestic political opponents.

Such a pressing threat seemed to necessitate what was described as a ‘whole of society‘ approach, meaning the totalising integration of government, military, private sector and non-profit spheres, as well as international organisations, in service of defending ‘democracy’. This united front of public and private organisational power is the real ‘deep state’. And it is why we quickly began to see intelligence services working so closely with activist NGOs like CCDH, or with putatively private firms like Graphika, a for-profit ‘social network analysis’ company that was initially funded by the US Defense Department to fight terrorist propaganda, then redeployed to identify and censor public discourse about covid and other concerns.

In short, the transatlantic alliance has for years been waging a hybrid information war on the American public (among other nations). Above all, the objective of this politics by other means was to stop the rise of Donald Trump and the populism he represents. But that war failed; now Trump is back and, as Vance warned the political and military leaders assembled in Munich, ‘there is a new sheriff in town’ in Washington. Much as they risk being abandoned and left standing alone holding the bag in Ukraine, the allies of former president Joe Biden on this side of the Atlantic have been left stranded in the digital trenches of America’s cold civil war, still combatants on what’s now distinctly the losing side. Vance was politely informing them that their cyber-soldiers had better pack up and leave the conflict zone immediately.

Vance reiterated this message directly to UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in the White House last week, saying: ‘Look, I said what I said, which is that we do have, of course, a special relationship with our friends in the UK and also with some of our European allies, but we also know that there have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British but also affect American technology companies and by extension American citizens.’ He was not talking just about American discomfort with British and European disregard for the abstract value of free speech; he was pointing to their active information warfare against the United States, its new government, its companies and its citizens. So when Starmer stammered in reply that ‘certainly we wouldn’t want to reach across US citizens, and we don’t . . .’ that excuse was both transparently false and unlikely to cut it with the new sheriff. 

If the countries of Europe and the Anglosphere don’t want to be treated as enemies of the United States instead of allies, they are going to need to retreat from the war they’ve been waging on behalf of Washington’s old regime and disarm their censorship machines. That means reigning in their intelligence services, cutting off support for their non-state armies of transnational censorship organisations like CCDH, and backing off of legal frameworks like the DSA and the Online Safety Act that are designed to control information and political discourse across borders. 

 … Washington’s message to its putative allies is straightforward: end the information war and get the hell out.

Related: A fundamental misunderstanding — The truth about European "conservatism" that American conservatives must understand

For 35 years, France's leaders have unilaterally disarmed their country

Just like with Denmark's politicians, France's "leaders have unilaterally disarmed the country", Jean-Philippe Feldman explains on IREF Europe. 

Since "the Red Army no longer [represented] a threat", according to former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius in 1990, it was therefore appropriate to reduce military spending. And to reduce it, of course, did not mean to reduce state spending, but to redirect it to other departments! Successive governments, whether right-wing, left-leaning, or central, all followed his advice like a single robot.

Considered (with Britain) one of the Europe's two military superpowers (thanks to its nuclear weapons capacity), an RTBF TV documentary nevertheless adds that a front line that the French army could reasonably defend would barely be 80 km long. 

"The latest generation of tanks in reduced numbers, military vehicles poorly suited for heavy combat, lack of gunpowder, delays in the drone delivery program": in case of war with the Kremlin, France would in addition have to deprive itself of some of its top troops, as the Foreign Legion has hundreds of Russians and Ukrainians among its ranks…

Related: The Systematic Destruction of Denmark's Military Over 30 Years: "Ships that cannot sail; Planes that cannot fly; And cannons that cannot fire — Everything is missing"  

Jean-Philippe Feldman:

Nos hommes politiques, de droite, de gauche et du centre, pour une fois à peu près d’accord, semblent subitement se rendre compte que notre pays a tiré les « dividendes de la paix » depuis trop longtemps. Il s’est désarmé, ce qui le rend vulnérable. Comment en sommes-nous arrivés là ? 

Une précision tout d’abord : il devrait être aisé de donner les chiffres relatifs à l’évolution du budget de nos armées. En réalité, les chiffres disponibles sont très divers parce qu’ils renvoient à des données différentes. Certains donnent les statistiques globales de l’armée et des anciens combattants. D’autres, en vertu du changement des règles budgétaires, renvoient à des missions, et non plus au ministère. D’autres encore retranchent les dépenses de pension, voire de gendarmerie. Les derniers concernent des euros courants ou bien des euros constants sur la base d’une année particulière.

Cette précision étant faite, nous pouvons dévoiler à nos lecteurs un ensemble de statistiques, puisque ce sont surtout les ordres de grandeur qui importent.

 … En 1988, le budget des Armées était encore le premier budget de l’État devant l’Education nationale (Jean-Marc Daniel, « Finances publiques : les dividendes de la paix ? », Observations et diagnostics économiques, n ° 47, octobre 1993). En 2018, un auteur se lamente du fait que le budget de la Défense soit devenu en 2015 seulement le sixième poste de dépenses publiques (Friederike Richter, « Les budgets de défense en France », Les Champs de Mars, 2018/1, n° 30).

Les raisons de la chute des dépenses militaires

Comment expliquer les chiffres des dépenses militaires en chute libre ? Un article récent (Julien Damon, « Dépenses militaires versus dépenses sociales ? », Telos, 25 février 2025) livre un tableau fort éclairant en pourcentage du produit intérieur brut que nous reprenons :

                                        1960                      1990                       2023

Dépenses sociales        15 %                       25 %                       33 %

Dépenses militaires        5 %                         3 %                         2 %

Ce tableau se passe à peine de commentaires. Le 10 juin 1990, un certain Laurent Fabius, alors Président de l’Assemblée nationale, parlait des « dividendes de la paix » à la suite de la chute du mur de Berlin. Il convenait donc selon lui de baisser les dépenses militaires puisque « l’Armée Rouge ne (représentait) plus une menace ». Et de les baisser non pas bien entendu pour diminuer les dépenses de l’État, mais pour les réorienter ! Les gouvernants successifs, tant de droite que du centre ou de gauche, ont suivi son conseil comme un seul homme. Selon la formule consacrée, les dépenses militaires sont devenues une variable d’ajustement pour assurer la croissance du modèle social français, d’autant plus que la « Grande muette » qu’est l’armée ne pouvait guère renâcler.

Pour le dire autrement, nos gouvernants successifs ont unilatéralement désarmé le pays. Il faut savoir gré à Emmanuel Macron d’avoir pris conscience de la gravité de la situation fin 2017, mais, du fait de la croissance continue de la dette publique et, ceci expliquant cela, de l’État providence sous ses mandats, les efforts restent aujourd’hui très insuffisants. Et de toute façon, on ne rattrape pas en quelques années des décennies d’errements…

RTBF L'armée française est-elle prête à la guerre ? 

L'armée française est-elle prête à la guerre ?

Les points faibles de la Défense nationale

45 min

| Publié le 28/01/25

|Disponible jusqu'au 05/05/2025

80 kilomètres, c'est l'étendue de la ligne de front que l'armée française pourrait tenir si elle était confrontée à un conflit de haute intensité. Une étendue très limitée qui illustre les capacités actuelles des forces françaises en cas de guerre. Chars de dernière génération en nombre réduit, véhicules militaires peu adaptés à des affrontements lourds, manque de poudre à canon, retard dans le programme de livraison de drones. Une enquête sur les points faibles de la Défense nationale. En cas de conflit avec la Russie, l'armée française pourrait aussi devoir se priver de plusieurs centaines de soldats parmi les plus aguerris, ceux de la Légion étrangère, qui comptent dans ses rangs 1200 combattants d'origine russe ou ukrainienne.

Casting et équipe

Réalisateur

Sarrade Benoit

Réalisateur

Palencia Juan

Réalisateur

Nicolas Duchêne

A fundamental misunderstanding: The truth about European "conservatism" that American conservatives must understand

Over at the Washington Examiner, Ian Haworth insists that American conservatives must understand the truth about European ‘conservatism’ (danke zu Stephen Green).

The American political system is unique: a system built in pursuit of deadlock rather than “progress,” a system that fully understands human nature and proactively defends against it, and a system that holds itself accountable, at least when it works as designed.

But at its heart, American politics is unique because the United States of America is unique. It is a miracle of human ideological experimentation that, thanks to the genius of the Founding Fathers, has almost single-handedly provided the country and the world with levels of peace and prosperity that would have seemed unimaginable at any other point in human history.

Despite these marvelous attributes, however, there is a persistent and dangerous flaw in the American psyche: an assumption that the rest of the world is just like us. You see it when leftists make the laughably absurd argument that all cultures are equal. If you think that’s the case, please explain how life in modern-day Nashville, Tennessee, for example, is as good as, say, that of the Mayans, who routinely performed child sacrifices to satisfy the hunger of supernatural beings.

The other side to this misguided coin is an insistence on seeing all other nations and cultures through an American lens as if Disney’s image of multiculturalism provided in Orlando’s Epcot is a window into global reality. And how does this manifest in the context of politics? One clear example is the projection of American politics onto other political movements in Europe.

How many times have British conservative politicians or figures been celebrated by American conservatives as their ideological counterparts, with even President Donald Trump praising former Prime Minister Boris Johnson as the British Trump?

How often do American conservatives celebrate nations such as Hungary for their supposed commitment to conservative principles? How often do American conservatives throw their weight behind foreign political campaigns after skimming the blurb and picking the self-professed conservative choice, as with Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk’s recent rush to cheer on the German AfD party?

But at the center of these misguided alignments, and so many others, is a fundamental misunderstanding: the assumption that foreign conservatism bears any meaningful resemblance to American conservatism. Newsflash, it doesn’t. In fact, it’s about as similar as chalk and cheese.

American conservatism is built upon a set of foundational principles, principles enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The rights to free speech, gun ownership, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly and the notion of limited government are not mere policy preferences. They are the core tenets that define what it means to be an American conservative. At least, they used to be.

True American conservatism is not just a political leaning. It is a philosophy rooted in the preservation of individual liberty and our God-given inalienable rights. Meanwhile, European conservatism is mere branding. What passes for “conservatism” in Europe depends entirely on the alternative, which often makes it little more than a nationalistic version of its left-wing opposition with a half-hearted call for marginally lower taxes and a growing opposition to unfettered illegal immigration.

Sure, these European conservative parties might occasionally borrow from the American conservative playbook in terms of their rhetoric, speaking passionately of freedom or tradition or liberty, but they lack the ideological backbone and the political will to turn these words into action. Let alone the fact that American conservatism is tied to the ideology that birthed the nation itself. European conservatism is tied to nothing.

In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party enjoyed power for more than a decade before being unseated by Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. What conservative values that are central to American conservatism did the Conservative Party defend? The U.K. is still anti-gun, still pro-abortion, still pro-socialized medicine, and still hostile to free speech.

Our trans-Atlantic cousins have hate speech laws that criminalize political expression, knife control laws that would be laughable if they weren’t so dystopian, and a public healthcare system that is as mandatory as it is inefficient. If that’s what passes for “conservatism,” count me out.

Hungary’s right-wing populist Fidesz party, led by Viktor Orban, is often praised by American conservatives for its hard-line stance on immigration and defense of national identity. While there certainly are aspects of Orban’s policies that merit discussion, let’s not kid ourselves. Hungary is not a beacon of conservatism in the American sense, and its claims of conservative victories often rely on a heavy dose of marketing-based creativity.

What about Germany’s Alternative fur Deutschland? While it brands itself as a nationalist, anti-globalist party while being arguably and oxymoronically pro-Russia, it is by no means a party that champions the ideals of small government and individual liberty. Germany remains deeply embedded in the European Union’s bureaucratic nightmare, and the AfD, despite its populist rhetoric, has shown no real commitment to dismantling this supranational control. Just like there is no word for “fluffy” in German, there is no German word for “small government.”

Then there’s France, where “conservatism” is often nothing more than a slightly slower march toward socialism. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party may reject mass immigration and Islamic extremism, but it is hardly a bastion of free-market policy or constitutional rights. You could even argue that it represents a nationalist brand of leftism, with economic policies that would make Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blush.

Of course, the “America First” crowd will now ask: Why does this matter? Well, because if you care about American conservatism, you should care when our flag bearers start waving other flags at the same time. While it’s obvious that European politicians have a lot to gain by aligning themselves with us, when we align with European “conservatives” in return, despite sharing few or no actual ideological positions, we risk diluting our movement and becoming more like them.

If American conservatives look to Europe for inspiration, we risk normalizing the idea that big government is acceptable as long as it wears a different hat, and we risk embracing a watered-down version of our own ideology that makes room for policies we would otherwise reject.

The truth is we don’t need to look abroad for examples of conservatism. We already have the greatest example right here at home. We are a nation built on not only independence from a foreign government but independence from big government, a nation that enshrined inalienable rights into our Constitution.

Instead of looking to Europe for guidance, we should be strengthening what makes American conservatism unique. We should be fighting to uphold the principles of limited government, free markets, and individual liberties — not seeking validation from parties that wouldn’t recognize true conservatism if it smacked them on the nose.

So, the next time you see a European politician being lauded as the “Trump of [insert country here],” take a step back and ask yourself: What do they actually stand for? Do they defend the right to bear arms? Do they oppose government overreach in healthcare and the economy? Do they protect free speech from government interference? If the answer is no, non, or nein, then they are not conservative in the American sense. 

And the American sense of conservatism is the only one that matters. Here’s a radical idea: Stop looking to Europe. We are still the best. Act like it.

Related: The Censorship Industrial Complex — Vance's Message to Europe Was in Fact "Stop secret information warfare against the United States"