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Adenauer, de Gaulle, Nixon, and the Shah of Iran: A Modern Anthology of Jewish Might

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Like Raymond Aron, we believe we need to distinguish between power and might. Power is the organization that makes might effective, but power can also become impotent, meaning that power without might is nothing.

Keeping this in mind, let’s start our anthology

1 – 1965 Konrad Adenauer, “One should not underestimate the might of the Jews”

Konrad Adenauer served as Chancellor of the German Federal Republic 1949–1963. In this interview, given in 1965, he says (in English translation): “One should not underestimate the power of the Jews, even today, especially in America. Accordingly, and it has long been my view, after careful and conscientious consideration, I devoted all my effort to help bring about, as much as possible, a reconciliation between the Jewish people and the German people.”

In the tone of these words, we seem to detect some regret and bitterness at having paid, but not having been paid in return. Otherwise, why giving this interview and why not simply rejoice in the reconciliation—as he did in the case of France and Germany. Why, above all, talk about the might of the Jews?

Konrad Adenauer ueber Juden und Wiedergutmachung (youtube.com) (in German)

2 – 1967 Charles de Gaulle, the “domineering elite nation” news conference 

French president Charles de Gaulle, a towering figure of French political life during the late 1950s and 1960s, talked about Jews and Israel during a televised news conference on Nov. 27, 1967. He spoke of “the Jews, hitherto widely dispersed, and who have remained what they had always been, in other words, an elite people, sure of themselves and domineering.”

De Gaulle said nothing different from Adenauer, but unlike Adenauer, de Gaulle was still in power, and he was to pay dearly for it: some even believe that this conference was behind the events of May ’68, which ousted the general from power. That’s probably going too far: even if May ’68 was essentially a Jewish event (demonstrators in the streets chanted “we are all German Jews”), the whole planet was concerned by the 1960s protest movement (Jewish, in any case), and the successors, Pompidou and Giscard, learned their lesson well. 

 

De Gaulle and the Jews in 1967, the press conference (in French)

3 – 1972 Nixon, “It’s all run by the Jews” 

Four years after de Gaulle’s news conference, in 1972, Nixon and Reverend Billy Graham discussed Jewish control of the media (1972), which, as we know, was followed by Watergate in 1974.

https://ia800901.us.archive.org/35/items/youtube-NRg7xvWyYog/President_Nixon_Reverend_Billy_Graham_Discuss_Jewish_control_of_Media.flv-NRg7xvWyYog.mp4

Here is the transcript of what we can hear on the tape:

Nixon: … Newsweek is totally. — It’s all run by the Jews and dominated by them. Their editorial pages, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Totally Jewish too…

Billy Graham: The stranglehold has got to be broken or the country is going down the drain.

Nixon: Do you believe that?

Billy Graham: yes sir

Nixon: I can’t ever say it, but I believe it

“I can’t ever say it.” Nixon clearly knew all about Jewish power, and politicians at that time and now know that it’s off limits to talk about Jewish power except in a complimentary way, as now-president Biden did in talking about Jewish media power. Ironically, Watergate was born out of the same Washington Post as the one discussed on the tape, and the lead reporter was Carl Bernstein, a Jew.

4  – 1976 Shah of Iran on the power of the ‘Jewish Lobby’ 

In this 1976 interview with Mike Wallace, the Shah of Iran explains that Jews in the U.S. Are doing too much in Israel’s interest and that American president pays attention to the “Jewish Lobby” (as Mike Wallace calls it) because of their power in the media, banks, finance, etc. He then says, “I think I’ll stop there).

But as we know, on January 16, 1979, it wasn’t Israel that fell, nor the Jewish lobby in the U.S., but the Shah of Iran, who was swept away by an Islamic revolution. Unlike in 1953, when he first went into exile, this time neither the US government nor the CIA woulc do anything to save him.

These days, no Western or Westernized leader dares comment on the power of the Jews; they all prefer to light menorahs: Blair, Melonie, Macron, Scholz, van der Leyden, Biden, Putin. Being a successful politician means knowing all about Jewish power, but not saying a word against it.

A Jewish Takeover of TikTok?

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From the Wall Street Journal:

Steven Mnuchin is putting together a consortium to try to buy TikTok, the former Treasury secretary said Thursday, as U.S. lawmakers stepped up the pressure on the popular social-media app.

Mnuchin’s comments come a day after the House voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill that would ban the popular app from operating in the U.S. or force its Chinese owner ByteDance to sell off the company’s U.S. operations within about six months.

“I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin said on CNBC. “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.”

Mnuchin didn’t give details of who he was working with or how his group could raise the funds needed to buy TikTok.

The House bill will now move to the Senate, where lawmakers signaled a more cautious approach on the legislation. President Biden has said he would sign the bill if it reached his desk, and the White House said Wednesday it hoped the Senate would take swift action.

The short-video app has faced scrutiny over the way its algorithm works to select content for users, both on sensitive issues such as teen depression and on global debates such as the Israel-Hamas war. U.S. officials say TikTok’s China-based ownership potentially gives Beijing a way to collect data on Americans and influence public opinion, driving years of start-and-stop efforts to rein in the app. …

Former Treasury Secretary Mnuchin: Government spending is what caused inflation

CNBC/CNBCFormer Treasury Secretary Mnuchin: Government spending is what caused inflation
Any deal could be valued at $100 billion or more, narrowing the field of possible acquirers. There would also be likely antitrust concerns if another large social-media player were to seek to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations.

Other executives have also discussed buying TikTok should ByteDance move to sell it. Bobby Kotick has expressed interest to ByteDance co-founder Zhang Yiming, the Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the situation. …

Mnuchin is Jewish, and Kotick is also presumably Jewish. Kotick says he intends to partner with another Jew, Sam Altman of Open AI.

From the Forward:

Worried about antisemitism on TikTok, Jewish federations ask Congress to act

Jewish Federations of North America says TikTok is the ‘worst offender by far’ in driving antisemitism on social media.

The Jewish Federations of North America asked a U.S. congressional committee to approve a bill that would allow the president to ban TikTok or force its China-based parent company to sell it.

“Social media is a major driver of the rise in antisemitism,” the JFNA said Wednesday in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, adding that TikTok “is the worst offender by far.”

The bill in question would require “foreign-adversary controlled apps” to divest from their foreign owners or else lose access to app stores and web hosting in the U.S.

Any application that “presents a national security threat, has over 1 million annual active users, and is under the control of a foreign adversary entity” could be subject to those terms. The bill would allow the president to decide which platforms should be forced to comply with the proposed regulations, but it does not punish individual social media users or censor speech.

How TikTok works

TikTok is different from other social media sites where users mostly see posts from people they follow. TikTok’s algorithm, in contrast, automatically begins playing videos for users that appear to be related to their interests, rather than only responding to topics the user is actively looking for. The app refines what it exposes the user to based on factors like how long the user watches a given video. If you use the app to consume news, as many young users do, watching videos about topics related to Israel or the war could lead the app to rapidly offer up antisemitic or conspiratorial content.

The Wall Street Journal created test accounts for eight hypothetical 13-year-olds and found that within hours, the app was sending apocalyptic, conspiratorial and “highly polarized content, reflecting often extreme pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel positions.” A majority of those posts “supported the Palestinian view.”

Until recently, researchers and lawmakers used a tool on the TikTok app to search for content related to the Israel-Hamas war. What they found was an inordinate amount of pro-Palestinian content. In January, TikTok quietly turned off that particular search feature, making it harder to do this kind of research.

A poll published in The New York Times in December found that 35% of voters aged 18-29 get their news primarily from social media, and 44% use TikTok “often.” That same poll showed that 48% in that age group believe Israel is intentionally killing civilians in Gaza and 55% oppose providing further aid to Israel. …

Republicans’ Latest Diversity Train Wreck

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Republicans’ Latest Diversity Train Wreck

   Republicans’ embrace of “diversity” has been an unmitigated disaster, as illustrated most recently by Sen. Katie Britt, whose response to President Biden’s State of the Union address came with a double dose of diversity.

     Why was this first-term senator chosen? To boost her reelection chances? She’s from the reddest state in the Union, won her last election by 30 points, and her term doesn’t end until 2026.

Because she’s an amazing public speaker? Quite obviously, it wasn’t that.

She gave the response because she’s not a white male. The last time Republicans picked a white man to give the GOP response was in 2012, when Gov. Mitch Daniels gave a great speech, despite the glaring absence of any blubbering over the unique suffering of women and minorities.

Which brings us to Katie. Asked to give the GOP response, she delivered it from her kitchen table because she’s a mom just like you, suburban woman who will never vote Republican.

She not only was “diverse” herself, but she made sure to drag a minority into her argument against Biden’s border policy, which is to have no border.

An open border, Britt told us, is bad for the illegals. This was in accordance with the modern rule of etiquette requiring that no policy be criticized unless it can be shown that it harms someone other than whites, men or Americans.

Thus, for example, affirmative action has been actively screwing white people out of college admissions, jobs and promotions since at least 1970. (Allan Bakke found this out in 1973, when he was rejected from the University of California, Davis, medical school in order to make way for hilariously less-qualified minorities.)

Even after decades of this open, egregious race discrimination, Republicans are terrified of stating the obvious: Discriminating against white people is unfair to white people. Instead, the preferred argument is: “It’s not good for black people, either!”

Perhaps, but they’re not complaining.

And we’re still stuck with the unfairness to whites.

It is a remarkable fact that, after more than half a century of rank race discrimination against whites, the Supreme Court finally decided affirmative action was unconstitutional only after it was shown that racial preferences harm Asians.

Similarly, Britt’s argument against the Biden policy of dragging millions of illegal aliens into our country was not that it’s unfair to Americans, although it’s their home that’s being wrecked. No, it was that our nonexistent border is bad for Mexicans.

Thus, Britt said:

“I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex-trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped.

“The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoebox of a room, and they sent men through that door, over and over again, for hours and hours on end.

“We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it.”

Democrats are permanently destroying the greatest country on Earth — which happens to be where we live — but Rosalita’s life has gone from a negative 9, living in Mexico, to a negative 10 being human-trafficked.

As with affirmative action, the GOP can only attack illegal immigration by saying it’s bad for the illegal immigrants, who apparently are driven by some invisible force to stream into our country. Their illegal behavior is something we’re doing to them.

Help! Someone keeps burning down my house!

     GOP: Oh my gosh — was the arsonist hurt?

In producing a diverse person to make her case, Britt botched the story six ways from Sunday.

As we now know, the serial rapes didn’t happen in this country, but in Mexico. Even if they had occurred here, who did Britt imagine was doing the raping? As described in my book “Adios, America!”, child rape is rife in Latin America. It’s their culture, having nothing to do with our enticing open border.

My idea: Let’s not let that rape culture come here.

The rapes also didn’t happen under Biden, but under President George W. Bush.

So that was great. Britt’s bleating for a diverse person gave Democrats something to talk about other than the thousands of American lives snuffed out by illegals at a rate of about 40 a week.

Britt could have talked about 27-year-old Washington State Trooper Christopher Gadd, killed days before the SOTU by an illegal in a “sanctuary state”; 10-year-old A.J. Wise, killed while walking home from school last month by an illegal alien hit-and-run driver in Midland, Texas; Travis Wolf, killed in Missouri by a boozed-up illegal in December — the night before Travis’ 12th birthday; Diane Hill Luckett, mother of three, who died in March of last year after being smashed into by a drunk illegal alien with a string of criminal convictions to his name (and zero deportations); or David Breaux and Karim Abou Najm, stabbed to death by an illegal alien on a killing spree in Davis, California, last April.

Half of the murdered Americans I just listed were black. But when it comes to immigration, black Americans might as well be white men. “Illegal immigrant” trumps “American” because diversity is our greatest strength.

Update on AIPAC: It’s All About the Benjamins.”

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NYTimes:

… AIPAC has criticized at least one Republican lawmaker recently, but its campaign spending in this year’s election has focused largely on opposing candidates in Democratic primary elections it judges not to be in sync with its agenda. AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has already spent money seeking to defeat candidates in Democratic primaries for House seats in California and Illinois deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel, including a Chicago community organizer who has described Israel’s offensive in Gaza as “genocide.”

And AIPAC has blasted its closest — though far smaller — rival, the more dovish pro-Israel group J Street, which has criticized Mr. Netanyahu and called for a negotiated stop to the war.

J Street “is many things,” AIPAC has said repeatedly on social media, “but it is not pro-Israel.”

Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s president, responded, “Intra-communal bickering and organizational food fighting does nothing to advance the security and well being of the people of Israel.”

AIPAC’s bare-knuckled approach has sparked protest. On Monday, a coalition of progressive interest groups launched an initiative called “Reject AIPAC,” an effort to counter the $100 million that AIPAC is expected to spend to defeat congressional candidates who have decried the civilian suffering in Gaza produced by Israel’s war against Hamas. …

Marshall Wittmann, a spokesman for AIPAC, said in a statement: “Our sole criteria for evaluating candidates from both parties is their position on strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship. We believe it is entirely consistent with progressive values to stand with the Jewish state.” [!!! Actually, he’s probably right. Many progressives in the West would have no problem with genocide if it was against White Christian conservatives.]

AIPAC’s bare-knuckled approach has sparked protest. On Monday, a coalition of progressive interest groups launched an initiative called “Reject AIPAC,” an effort to counter the $100 million that AIPAC is expected to spend [$100,000,000! Just try to find that kind of money to promote our ethnic interests. Jewish activism begins and ends with money—and media and academic power.]  to defeat congressional candidates who have decried the civilian suffering in Gaza produced by Israel’s war against Hamas. [AIPAC: “There has been absolutely zero civilian suffering in Gaza.”] …

AIPAC’s tactics have had a chilling effect in Congress, according to some Democrats.

“I’ve seen people who have said I really can’t vote this way because I don’t want an AIPAC opponent,” said Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin and an outspoken critic of the group. “That gets said a lot.” [Politicians being politicians. No principles. Just get elected.]

AIPAC remains one of the most powerful interest groups in Washington. It raised a record amount of money in 2023, and its super PAC began this year with more than $40 million on hand to spend in campaigns. Some of its biggest donors are Republicans like the hedge-fund manager Paul Singer and the WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum. …

[At an AIPAC conference,] Officials [never shy about pressuring Jews for money] urged the donors to give more, casting the moment as perilous for the group’s mission, even as the programming demonstrated AIPAC’s enduring clout.

On Sunday evening, Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, spoke at the conference. On Monday, attendees heard from President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, as well as Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, and Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet. Mr. Gantz warned the crowd that an Israeli invasion of Rafah — the area of southern Gaza where Hamas leaders are believed to be hiding — was a question of when, not if, one listener said.

Mr. Schumer received a standing ovation when he declared that “as long as Hamas exists, there will never be a two-state solution,” according to two people who heard his remarks, “with Israel and a Palestinian state living side by side in peace, prosperity, security and dignity.” [What a joke. The two-state solution is nothing more than a sick joke at this point, but useful for Israeli propaganda.]

 

Paul Craig Roberts: “What’s Up with Conservatives?”

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Paul Craig Roberts: “What’s Up with Conservatives?”

[It] is depressing that [Gov Noem of South Dakota] is so uninformed that she cannot connect her enthusiasm for halting the inflow of immigrant-invaders with her unbridled support for Jews. Governor Noem stresses that she “called on every governor to follow my lead and send troops to the border, and I offered to personally drive more razor wire down to Texas in the back of my truck.” Yet, she seems unaware that principal among the NGOs recruiting and financing the overrunning of America by “immigrant-invaders” is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, of which the current director of the US Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, himself a Jew, was a board member. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/02/18/the-genocide-of-the-west/ and https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/02/06/america-is-undergoing-genocide/
So here we have Governor Noem pimping for Jews as she complains about the immigrant-invaders the Jews are helping to bring into our country.

It is really quite astounding that a governor, a conservative hope, cannot see the contradiction or inconsistency in her positions. What it looks like is that politicians simply grandstand on issues that they don’t bother to understand and, thereby, end up with inconsistent positions.

Of course, it’s not so astounding to readers of this website. And it’s bereft of any analysis of how we got here—in particular, that the activist Jewish community views multicultural, multiethnic immigration as a net positive (with few small bumps mainly as a result of Muslim immigration) because it precludes a homogeneous White society that might come to see Jews as enemies, as happened in Germany in the 1930s. And it’s not just liberal-left Jews who see things this way, but Jewish neocons are totally accepting of the “invite the world, invade the world” ideology.

Neocons have been incredibly influential in the Noem’s party, basically dominating U.S. foreign policy in both parties until Trump’s candidacy resulted in wholesale defection among GOP neocons because of his declared non-interventionist foreign policy and his rhetoric against multiculturalism (e.g., claiming that Brussels isn’t Brussels anymore). Hence Victoria Nuland, who was Dick Cheney’s top foreign  policy advisor as well as having important positions in the Obama and Biden administrations.

A big part of the decline of the U.S. is that politicians of both sexes and both parties overwhelmingly see getting elected as their only real goal, and supporting Jewish causes, especially Israel, is a fundamental sine qua on for election. Hence subservience to the interests of our hostile, Jewish-dominated elite, is the only real option. It’s where the money (particularly from the Republican Jewish Coalition) and media coverage are.

Victoria Nuland Resigns—Not a Moment Too Soon

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Arch-neocon Victoria Nuland, who has been discussed many times on TOO, has resigned as the State Department’s Secretary of the Ukraine War. I have seen very little commentary on her resignation, so an article on ZeroHedge got my attention. Unfortunately, the comments are admittedly speculative, but seem at least reasonable.

While there have been rumors that maybe [Nuland] could be in poor or declining health, McGovern has told Russia’s Sputnik that the notoriously hawkish Nuland was a liability at a moment NATO and Russia are inching closer to direct nuclear-armed confrontation.

From the Sputnik article: “The CIA would have, the NSA would have those conversations as well,” said McGovern, referring to leaked recordings of discussions between Nuland and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius that appeared to reveal plans for an imminent attack on Russian soil. The leaks generated significant embarrassment for German officials as attention was drawn to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s support for the Ukraine proxy conflict.
[McGovern:] My best guess here is that the CIA and the Defense Department and the NSA got this message around saying, ‘look, Victoria’s got her own agenda here,’” said the analyst. “‘The president doesn’t really want to strike these ammo depots in Russia or knock down the [Crimean] Bridge. So we got to rein her in, I guess it’s time for her to go to early retirement.’”

“My best guess here is that the CIA and the Defense Department and the NSA got this message around saying, ‘look, Victoria’s got her own agenda here,’” said McGovern.

The former CIA official continued to speculate: “‘The president doesn’t really want to strike these ammo depots in Russia or knock down the [Crimean] Bridge. So we got to rein her in, I guess it’s time for her to go to early retirement.’”

Another theory, though not necessarily contradictory to the above, has been advanced by professor of national security at Bowie State University Dr. Matthew Crosston.

He laid out what “a staunch anti-Putinist Nuland was and how fervently she wanted to continue to utilize Ukraine as a platform in which to continue to weaken and/or slight Russia on the global stage — and perhaps even up the ante in that conflict with her support of sending ballistic missiles into Ukraine.” But she also knows the Ukrainian side is losing.

She may have seen the writing on the wall as Ukraine forces are in retreat, and wanted to bail before potential total defeat:

“She undoubtedly understood that if American support lessons or wanes, Ukraine loses, period,” Crosston pointed out. “Perhaps she did not want to be in the Administration that would be responsible for that outcome.”

But both McGovern and Crosston would agree that with Nuland as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (in this capacity she basically ran all of US foreign policy in Europe), ceasefire talks between Kiev and Moscow remained an extremely distant prospect or even an impossibility.

“One thing is certain: as long as Nuland remained in that chair, there was literally no chance such talk could even be theorized. Now it can,” Crosston concluded.

ZeroHedge also includes this video of an interview of Glenn Greenwald. Much of this will be familiar to readers of TOO, but there is a discussion of Adam Schiff as a warmonger endorsed by AIPAC and now the presumed next Senator from California. Schiff was buoyed by billionaires, presumably Jewish or at least rabidly pro-Israel, who donated millions to Republican Steve Garvey (who has no chance to win in a very blue state) in order to prevent a runoff between two Democrat candidates. As expected, no mention of Nuland’s strong Jewish connections — also prominent among neocons generally (see here, p. 32ff).

Judge Carney Defends the First Amendment

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Editor’s note: This FEF article on selective prosecution is very important. It is a huge problem for our side and happens repeatedly. The prosecution of the right — even though the same behavior or worse on the left is tolerated — is paradigmatic, but there are many other examples, including the lawfare against Vdare, the deluge of lawsuits against Trump (e.g., inflating property values is common in the real estate industry, and banks can certainly do their own due diligence), and the J6 and Charlottesville defendants. All of these suits have been brought by leftist prosecutors who depend on the courts to uphold their arguments. And people on our side don’t file civil suits related to free speech either because it’s unlikely we could succeed in the courts, no matter how much the facts are on our side (e.g., James Edwards’ lawsuit for defamation against The Detroit Free Press—no libel protection for White advocates). It’s hard to find judges who will apply the rule of law in these situations, but Judge Carmac Carney is doing that. But of course the evil forces of repression are doing their best to overcome that.

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JUDGE CARMAC CARNEY DEFENDS THE FIRST AMENDMENT AND THE RULE OF LAW

Written by: FEF Staff

There is an old adage that a judge is a combination of a lawyer and a politician. Hard experience by attorneys representing the Dissident Right in First Amendment cases has shown that this adage often – too often – carries much truth. But there are exceptions. There are judges who wear their robes with honor and interpret and enforce the law impartially and in accordance with basic First Amendment principles. Judge Carmac Carney, federal judge for the Central District of California, is one such judge.

FEF’s supporters may have taken note of Judge Carney’s recent bombshell ruling ordering the release from custody of former Rise Above Movement (RAM) members Robert Rundo and Robert Boman, who were in police custody after being charged under the federal Anti-Riot Act with engaging in violence with hard-left groups at a pro-Trump rally in 2017. Rundo, who had been living abroad since the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally and was extradited from Romania to face charges last year, has become a fixture in dissident right circles across North America, principally for founding a network of health and fitness societies, called Active Clubs.

Thus far, this highly rare ruling has been covered with unsurprising outrage in the New York Times and CNN, among others, but more interestingly by mainstream conservative sources as well, including the Daily Wire, Hot Air, and the Daily Caller.

From the Daily Wire:

Judge Carney objected to the fact that federal prosecutors charged only right-wing participants, even though left-wing agitators performed identical conduct or worse at the same event—which prosecutors’ own evidence acknowledged.
…
“Antifa and related far-left groups decided they needed to ‘shut this down.’ … They came prepared for violence, bringing weapons including pepper spray, fireworks, knives, and homemade bombs,” Judge Cormac J. Carney of the US District Court for the Central District of California wrote on February 21. “And they used those weapons, as well as their bodies, against Trump supporters and law enforcement.”

As part of Rundo’s and Boman’s defense, Judge Carney was presented with photographs from the pro-Trump event showing that Antifa engaged in violence more egregious than the alleged violence the RAM members were charged with. But no Antifa were ever charged. FEF’s Glen Allen witnessed similar photographs of Antifa violence from the Charlottesville UTR rally presented by prosecutors during the sentencing of an RAM member. The prosecution used these photographs to send the RAM members to prison for two years or more but here again Antifa’s violence was ignored.

More about Judge Carney from the Daily Wire:

“Defendants have established selective prosecution. There is no doubt that the government did not prosecute similarly situated individuals. Antifa and related far-left groups attended the same Trump rallies as Defendants with the expressly stated intent of shutting down, through violence if necessary, protected political speech. At the same Trump rallies that form the basis for Defendants’ prosecution, members of Antifa and related far-left groups engaged in organized violence to stifle protected speech,” he continued.

FEF’s supporters may value a background on the defense of “selective prosecution” and the Anti-Riot Act, the latter a law FEF has particular expertise in, as FEF has filed numerous amicus briefs in Rundo and other cases challenging the Act’s constitutionality.

Traditionally, our criminal justice system has been the purview of state and local governments. This changed in the 1960s as the federalization of crime began to take root. As critics of this growing trend contend, it is rare when federal charges are not duplicative and the criminal activity in question cannot be adequately handled by state authorities operating under state laws. More fundamentally, the Founders, particularly Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Number 17, sought state jurisdiction over public safety specifically to hinder the prospect of central government oppression. As the Founders correctly foresaw, such oppression might come from laws passed or enforced for reasons of politics, inflamed public opinion, and grandstanding Congressmen—and, one might add today, overly ambitious judges and prosecutors.

Thankfully, there are procedural defenses against this increased federalization of criminal prosecutions. Derived from the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, selective prosecution, or disparate enforcement of the law, is essentially an allegation of discrimination by prosecutorial authorities. Unlike federal and most state anti-discrimination laws, the defense of selective prosecution allows for claims on the ground of political-opinion discrimination (in addition to discrimination based on the more traditional grounds of race, religion, etc.). Due to the wide discretion prosecutorial authorities enjoy, however, the defense is rarely successful.

The Anti-Riot Act is a prime example of such needless federalization as well as dramatic overreach and over-criminalization in American society. This rarely applied law, enacted in the violent late 1960s, makes it a federal offense to plan or engage in what later becomes a riot, e.g., by travelling across state lines. Enacted, argue some, as a way to deal with then-burgeoning black nationalist and hard-left violence, the long dormant Act has recently been revived by prosecutors, perhaps ironically so, in the Trump-era and used against dissident right-wing individuals and groups. For instance, other members of RAM have previously been charged under this law for communicating about the Charlottesville rally by smart phone messaging apps and travelling in interstate commerce with the “intent to riot” in violation of the Act. In an early iteration of the Rundo indictment, parts of that law, thanks to FEF’s help, were struck down on First Amendment grounds as protected advocacy.

Despite the broad deference accorded prosecutorial discretion, defendants can successfully show selective prosecution by presenting clear evidence that the government’s prosecutorial policy had a discriminatory effect and was motivated by a discriminatory purpose. This is just what Judge Carney, a Bush II appointee, found in the Rundo case.

Unfortunately for Rundo and Boman, the Department of Justice and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals appear to be doing their best to blunt Judge Carney’s ruling:

But after prosecutors filed an emergency motion to appeal, the Ninth Circuit had one of the right-wingers arrested the next day, February 22. Robert Rundo “is to remain in custody pending resolution of appellant’s motion to stay release pending appeal. No lower court may order his release absent further order of this Court,” the appeals court wrote.

On February 21, Carney again dismissed the charges based on their second argument, of selective prosecution.

Rundo was released from jail, but prosecutors immediately filed an emergency appeal to the Ninth Circuit, asking for Rundo to be arrested and held without bail, and saying they thought he might flee through the southern border if he was not.

On Feb. 23, appeals judges wrote that “Defendant-Appellee Robert Rundo has been arrested” and that lower courts were prohibited from releasing him as the government’s appeal proceeds.

Despite the Ninth Circuit’s rulings, Judge Carney’s decision is a welcome precedent from a law-abiding judge at a time when such rulings seem unfortunately rare. Watch this space to keep apprised of this case as well as FEF’s involvement in it and other similar cases.