General

Precarious Orders: Messianic Thought and the Limits of Historical Stability

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This is an excerpt from the Introduction to Mr.Boulaziz’s forthcoming book, The Age of Nuclearized Messianism and The End of History (Truth Press, 2026). He describes his book as offering

a provocative Foucauldian exegesis of history’s perpetual disequilibrium, tracing it to an ancient “Judaic code” rooted in Kabbalistic mysticism and eschatological impulses.

It engages themes of ontological subversion, the dissolution of equilibria, and critiques figures like E. Michael Jones, positioning the force as metaphysical rather than merely political—resonating with your readership’s interest in unmasking hidden historical architectures.

“When the Holy One, blessed be He, sought to create the world, He looked into the Torah and created it… and the sparks remain captive.”
— Zohar I, 134a (Idra Rabba)

On the Persistent Non-Equilibrium of Historical Orders

The historical record indicates that instability is not an anomaly restricted to modernity but a recurrent feature of social formation itself. Whenever societies succeed in establishing durable structures of order, they tend to generate internal tensions that render such orders inherently provisional. Across history, equilibrium has functioned less as an endpoint than as a transitional phase.

Political orders repeatedly proclaim moments of culmination—ends of history, durable settlements, final syntheses—only to witness their rapid dissolution into renewed conflict. Periods identified as peace often reveal themselves, retrospectively, as transitional intervals preceding further upheaval.

This persistent oscillation raises enduring questions for historical and philosophical inquiry:

  • Why do social and political systems appear structurally incapable of achieving lasting equilibrium?
  • Why does international order repeatedly fluctuate between provisional stability and systemic rupture?

Across disciplines, scholars have proposed competing explanations. Philosophical traditions have emphasized dialectical motion; theological frameworks have pointed to inherited moral fracture; economic analyses have stressed desire and scarcity; revolutionary theories have focused on entrenched power structures. While each perspective captures important dimensions of historical change, none has produced a comprehensive account capable of explaining the recurrence and structural persistence of destabilization itself.

This study proceeds from the hypothesis that certain historical dynamics may be better understood not solely through political or economic causation, but through deeply embedded metaphysical and eschatological narratives that shape how communities relate to time, authority, and fulfilment. In this respect, modern political upheavals may be interpreted as surface manifestations of more enduring symbolic and theological tensions.

Existing Explanatory Frameworks

Within contemporary debates, two influential but methodologically distinct attempts to account for recurring patterns of historical destabilization merit consideration.

  1. Michael Jones, in The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, offers a theological interpretation of modern revolutionary movements. He argues that the rejection of the Logos—understood within Christian theology as the divine principle of order and measure—generates a persistent revolutionary impulse directed against logos-centred social forms. Jones’s contribution lies in foregrounding the role of theological dislocation in shaping modern political radicalism. However, his analysis remains bounded by a specifically Christian theological framework.

A contrasting explanatory register is offered by Kevin MacDonald in A People That Shall Dwell Alone and subsequent volumes of his trilogy. MacDonald approaches similar historical phenomena through an evolutionary and sociobiological lens, interpreting Judaism as a highly adaptive group strategy shaped by conditions of diaspora existence. Within this framework, features such as cultural boundary maintenance, intellectual specialization, and competitive resource strategies are understood as functional adaptations that may, under certain conditions, generate structural tension within host societies.

Despite their methodological divergence, both authors identify recurring patterns of historical friction involving minority–majority relations, cultural critique, and institutional destabilization. Each provides a partial explanatory model—one theological, the other evolutionary. The present study departs from both approaches. While acknowledging their analytical insights, it suggests that neither framework fully accounts for the underlying metaphysical and eschatological orientation that may lend coherence to the patterns they describe.

Rather than locating causality in theological rejection alone or in evolutionary strategy alone, this article proposes that a deeper animating logic may be found in enduring conceptions of historical precariousness, redemption, and critique that operate across theological, philosophical, and secularized domains.

Historical Precariousness and Eschatological Tension

Rather than treating revolutionary movements primarily as attempts to replace one political order with another, this analysis explores the possibility that certain traditions articulate a permanent critical stance toward worldly order as such. In this view, destabilization functions less as a means toward a final political arrangement and more as an ongoing condition produced by a persistent orientation toward an unrealized ideal.

From this perspective, political unrest may be understood as the historical expression of a deeper tension between what is and what ought to be. This tension, articulated in various theological idioms, frames existing institutions as inherently provisional and therefore perpetually subject to critique. Stability, under such conditions, is never final but always contingent.

Scholarly discussions of Jewish history and thought have frequently emphasized the conceptual polarity between Exile (Galut) and Redemption (Geulah). Rather than treating this polarity as a mere historical circumstance, some interpretations regard it as a constitutive feature of religious consciousness—one that generates sustained critical engagement with prevailing social orders. Importantly, this tension has been interpreted in diverse and often conflicting ways within Jewish intellectual history itself.

The present analysis does not adopt these interpretations as descriptive facts about historical causation. Instead, it examines how such metaphysical narratives—when secularized, transformed, or reinterpreted—may influence modern ideological formations and political imaginaries.

Analytical Framework: Three Recurrent Thematic Structures

To clarify the analytical hypothesis advanced in this study, three recurrent thematic structures are provisionally identified. These structures emerge within certain theological, mystical, and philosophical discourses and are employed here as heuristic categories, not as causal explanations of historical events. They serve to illuminate how historical actors and intellectual traditions have conceptualized authority, temporality, and transformation.

The three thematic structures examined are:

  1. The Ontology of Election (Am Segulah)
  2. Normative Boundary Construction between In-Group and Out-Group
  3. Active or Transformative Messianism

These categories are not presented as exhaustive, uniform, or universally representative of Jewish thought, which is internally diverse and historically contested. Rather, they function as analytical tools intended to clarify how particular metaphysical and eschatological imaginaries have, at specific moments, informed sustained critiques of worldly order and historical stability.

1. The Ontology of Election (Am Segulah)

The concept of am segulah (“a chosen people”), articulated in biblical passages such as Exodus 19:5 and Deuteronomy 7:6, has generated a wide range of interpretations within Jewish intellectual history. In some readings, election is understood primarily as an ethical vocation or covenantal responsibility; in others, it has been construed in more ontological terms, emphasizing a distinct relationship between Israel and the divine.

Certain rabbinic and medieval philosophical traditions articulated this distinctiveness through metaphysical language, sometimes describing qualitative differences in spiritual disposition or religious obligation between Jews and non-Jews.

Medieval thinkers such as Maimonides, working within an Aristotelian framework, explored gradations of intellectual and spiritual perfection, though modern scholarship remains divided regarding whether such distinctions imply ontological hierarchy.

From an analytical standpoint, interpretations that emphasize ontological election may contribute to forms of collective boundary maintenance that are not merely cultural but conceptual. These frameworks can encourage strong internal cohesion and continuity across diaspora contexts, while simultaneously shaping asymmetric modes of engagement with surrounding societies. Historically, such dynamics have been examined in relation to the formation of semi-autonomous communal structures within host polities—structures that functioned both as mechanisms of preservation and as sites of negotiated interaction with political and economic authorities.

2. Normative Boundary Construction between In-Group and Out-Group

A second thematic structure concerns the ways religious legal systems articulate distinctions between members of the community and those outside it. Rabbinic literature employs a variety of terms—such as goy, nokhri, or akum—primarily for juridical and ritual classification rather than ethnographic description.

Scholarly analyses of texts such as Avodah Zarah, Sanhedrin, and Bava Metzia emphasize that many legal distinctions emerge from concerns about ritual integrity, communal survival, and the regulation of economic interaction under minority conditions. These distinctions are neither uniform nor static, and rabbinic debate frequently reflects internal disagreement regarding their scope and application.

From a sociological perspective, such boundary constructions may be understood as normative mechanisms that develop within minority religious communities facing chronic insecurity. Although analogous patterns can be identified in other traditions, the frequency and geographic breadth of Jewish expulsions and exclusions across premodern and modern history have produced a distinctive intensity and longevity in the articulation of communal boundaries.

3. Active or Transformative Messianism

A third structure concerns forms of messianic expectation that emphasize human participation in historical transformation. In Jewish mystical traditions—most notably Lurianic Kabbalah—cosmological narratives describe creation as fractured and incomplete, requiring human ethical or ritual action (tikkun) to restore harmony.

Early modern messianic movements, including Sabbateanism and Frankism, radicalized these ideas in heterodox ways, at times inverting normative religious categories. While marginal and often condemned by rabbinic authorities, these movements have been noted by historians for their long afterlife in intellectual history, particularly through processes of secularization.

Several scholars have explored possible analogies—often metaphorical rather than genealogical—between such messianic imaginaries and modern philosophies of history that emphasize rupture, negation, and transformative struggle. These comparisons remain contested and must be approached with caution, given the complexity of conceptual translation across historical contexts.

Within this analytical frame, “active messianism” refers not to a unified doctrine, but to a mode of historical orientation in which the present is viewed as fundamentally provisional and transformation is conceived as necessary rather than accidental.

Synthesis and Scope

Taken together, these three thematic structures are examined as interpretive lenses through which certain historical actors and intellectual movements have conceptualized instability, continuity, and transformation. They are not treated as timeless essences, nor as exclusive to any single tradition.

This study does not argue that theological narratives mechanically produce political outcomes. Rather, it investigates how metaphysical and eschatological imaginaries—when translated into secular or ideological forms—may shape recurring patterns of critique toward established orders.

Each historical order, as characterized  by a specific épistémè, embeds the conditions of its own destabilization. This instability is structurally produced insofar as critique is epistemically coerced by the three thematic structures that sustain the metaphysical and eschatological imaginaries permeating the épistémè, thereby rendering any stable equilibrium structurally unattainable.

Accordingly, the analysis adopts a diagnostic rather than polemical orientation, seeking to clarify how particular conceptual frameworks persist, mutate, and reappear across historical contexts, especially in periods marked by institutional fragility and ideological realignment.

This article thus prepares the ground for a comparative inquiry into the relationship between metaphysical expectation and historical instability, with the aim of contributing analytical clarity to debates often obscured by moralization or essentialism.

Khaled Boulaziz is chief editor of lanation.net, an independent French media platform.
Khaled@lanation.net

Why Facts Don’t Matter to Liberals

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Moral peacocking by the mentally impaired.


This video is available on Rumble, Bitchute, Odysee, Telegram, and X.

Years ago, I had a debate with a woman about race. At one point she said, “I’m a bleeding-heart liberal and damn proud of it.” I knew immediately she had just said something that left her open to attack, but I wasn’t quick enough to go on the offensive.

Why be proud to be liberal? Because liberals think that makes them better than we are. They think they’re compassionate, tolerant, generous; we’re mean-spirited and selfish. This becomes a central part of their identity — a feeling of moral superiority they hate to give up.

It’s dangerous to be proud of your politics. It means you have an emotional attachment to them that has nothing to do whether they make things better or worse.

If the policies you support make you feel virtuous, it’s a lot harder to wise up even when the results are horrible.

Credit Image: © Marcus Snowden/ZUMA Press Wire

We’ve seen this over and over. For example, how is it possible to get headlines like this?

[link] “Chicago man accused of setting train passenger on fire had 72 prior arrests.”

“Career criminal with more than FIFTY prior arrests and FORTY convictions brutally murders man with machete.”

This guy, who tried to kill a man by throwing him onto railroad tracks, had been arrested “dozens” of times. Every one of these stories, by the way, is from just last month.

A normal person sees these headlines and thinks “this is insane.” Those criminals should be locked up or — maybe even better — executed and dead.

Only people for whom facts don’t matter would set up a system like this or permit it to continue. I know you’ve heard phrase: “The purpose of a system is what it does.” There’s even an abbreviation for it: POSWID.

By that reasoning, anyone who ties the hands of the police, abolishes bail, appoints activist judges and prosecutors, must want criminals on the streets to mug or kill you. That must be the intent because that’s the result.

Wrong. Crazy libs didn’t build this system because they wanted more crime. They built it out of a raging sense of moral superiority. You see, they are paragons of compassion.

Credit Image: © John Marshall Mantel/ZUMA Wire

They believe poverty and “marginalization” cause crime, that the police are brutes, and that locking people up is primitive revenge that turns confused young people into killers. They think they can identify “at risk” youths and save them with love and counseling.

If that doesn’t work, it’s only because we didn’t try hard enough. We need more “programs,” more love, more counseling, more “violence interrupters,” more mentors, more absurd incentives like paying people to stay in school, more of anything but punishment.

And when one of their darling marginalized persons burns someone to death on the subway, they believe it would be barbaric to put him to death.

It is exquisitely difficult for people who believe these things to change their minds. They would have to give up something infinitely precious: their conviction that they are morally superior. It’s hard for anyone to admit he’s wrong. It’s much harder for moral peacocks to admit they’re wrong, because it means that the mean-spirited, bigoted people they despised for years — people like you and me — were right.

Credit Image: © Thomas Trutschel/dpa via ZUMA Press

Oh, the horror!

You would get some of this in an all-white society, but it’s much, much worse in a jungle like the US. Besides preening themselves on their love for their fellow man, peacocks get the much bigger thrill of standing with the victims of slavery, the middle-passage, ICE raids, detention centers, red-lining, 400 years of white supremacy.

Credit Image: © Holden Smith/ZUMA Press Wire

When facts are an obstacle to righteous indignation, it’s the facts that have got to go.

That’s why the peacocks must stay deliberately and forever blind to the most glaring fact about our rainbow country: that many of their pets don’t have enough brains and impulse control to behave like white people.

If people of color bring misery on themselves, that takes away the immense joy of being able to blame us, and there’s nothing more thrilling for white progressives than feeling so, so, so superior to “racists.” White people despising white people. That is the pinnacle of moral superiority.

Credit Image: © Isabel Infantes/PA Wire via ZUMA Press

And so, in the teeth of mountains of evidence, they jabber nonsense about biased tests and spout the craziest idea ever: that race is a social construct.

Credit: Album / quintlox

You cannot believe that unless you are mentally impaired, and what most impairs the liberal/egalitarian mind is this compulsion to feel morally superior. If you are deeply, emotionally attached to 2 + 2 = 5, if you think believing makes you a good person, it’s hard to see you’re wrong.

I’m not talking here about non-whites. They are completely different, and white liberals don’t understand them at all. Their “progressive” politics have nothing to do with virtue. It’s team sports, and they are on Team BIPOC.

Take Decarlos Brown, who casually stabbed Iryna Zarutska to death.

Who turned him loose despite all his felony arrests? Not white loonies. The magistrate who let him walk out the door, the  clerk of the superior court of Mecklenburg County who nominated her and the  senior resident superior court judge who appointed her were all black.

Not just black; professionally black, angrily black.

They weren’t peacocking. They just wanted to give the brutha’ another chance. Blacks are a cinch to understand. But it was white loonies who set up the system that gave a black woman the discretion to turn a killer loose on Charlotte, North Carolina .

There’s an excellent book called Pathological Altruism that helps you understand white people.

It points out that feeling righteous indignation stimulates the basal ganglia in the brain just as addictive drugs do. Peacocks can become addicted to that feeling. “I’m good. I’m really good, not like those selfish, racist brutes.”

But there’s a warning here for our side, too. Don’t let your basal ganglia fool you. Remember the phrase, “The purpose of a system is what it does”? It’s tempting to think the people on the other side aren’t just loony, but evil. They want more crime. They want us dead.

No, probably not. Remember: They think that if you care about the survival of white people, it’s only because you hate everyone else — that you want them dead.

They utterly fail to understand us. Don’t misunderstand them. Yes, it looked like German Chanceller Angela Merkel wanted to destroy Germany when she let in millions of brown men.

Credit Image: © Imago via ZUMA Press

It’s just the sort of thing someone who wanted to destroy Germany would do. But she probably thought she was being wonderfully kind, atoning for Nazism, living the universal ideal, transcending race and religion, spreading sweetness and light. Pathological altruism. Deluded, not evil.

Do their motives matter? Maybe not. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” said Jesus, and the tree of progressive liberalism bears poisonous fruit. But quite a few on the other side still have to come our way for us to win. We are more likely to persuade them if we understand them.

Nathan Damigo on the Venezuela adventure

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From Nathan Damigo’s Substack

I oppose the toppling of the Maduro regime in Venezuela for the same reason I oppose the war in Gaza and against Iran; they are all being done on behalf of Jewish power. Internationally, Jews will no longer have to deal with Venezuela as a thorn in their side at the United Nations or elsewhere globally. Jews will become richer from the recapturing of Venezualan oil fields and use that money to further fund anti-White NGO’s to fuck us over. They will also use the money from the oil to stabilize the judeo-capitalist regime in Washington, either creating a new petrodollar or taxing its import. The more stable the jewish regime is financially, the longer they can continue to use it/us for their interests. Jews won all around on this one, anyone celebrating is a fool or bad actor.

Viktor Orban on migration and the EU

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3. The third major issue is migration.

The implementation of the Brussels migration pact is unacceptable for Hungary. Under the pact adopted by Brussels, Hungary would be required from June onward to process 23,000 applications within a single year. This would only be possible if a migrant camp with a capacity of 10,000 people were established. The Hungarian government’s position remains unchanged: Hungary will not accept a single migrant, will not build refugee camps, will not alter its border protection regime, will not become a country of immigration, and will not accept Brussels dictating with whom Hungarians must live.

Viktor Orbán thanked God that Hungary kept its borders secure and refused migrants during the 2015 crisis. Today, he said, it is entirely clear that “we backed the winning side.” As he put it, many Western European countries would give half an arm to become migration-free.

The PM called it unprecedented that Hungary has been ordered to pay one million euros per day for refusing to admit migrants. He added, however, that Hungary is better off not admitting migrants, and not assuming the financial, social, and societal burdens that come with them.

In conclusion, he said he expects that over the next 10–15 years there will be significant demand for people from Western Europe — “not migrants, but native Europeans, making use of freedom of movement” — to work and live in Hungary. This, he said, will contribute to helping Hungary address its own demographic challenges, adding: “We will not have migrants, but Germans, French, and Italians.” His point was that fellow Europeans can far more easily integrate into Hungarian life than people from outside of Europe. …

· The Prime Minister said that, in his view, the EU leadership elite has strong interest in a change of government in Hungary. Brussels does not even hide this, he added, noting that he was told “quite bluntly” to “step aside, because new people are now needed — people who will pursue a Brussels-aligned policy instead of a sovereigntist one.” He stressed that this election is of particular importance to Brussels because Hungary demonstrates in practice that there is a clear and workable alternative to the pro-war strategy promoted by the Brussels elite.The Prime Minister said that, in his view, the EU leadership elite has strong interest in a change of government in Hungary. Brussels does not even hide this, he added, noting that he was told “quite bluntly” to “step aside, because new people are now needed — people who will pursue a Brussels-aligned policy instead of a sovereigntist one.” He stressed that this election is of particular importance to Brussels because Hungary demonstrates in practice that there is a clear and workable alternative to the pro-war strategy promoted by the Brussels elite.
Balázs Orbán
After the Liberal World Order: How Hungary Reads the New Global Reality

An in-depth reading of Viktor Orbán’s year-opening international press conference on global shifts and Hungary’s national interests
Balázs Orbán
Jan 07, 2026

2025 marked a turning point in international politics: the liberal world order has come to an end — the election of Donald Trump delivered the final blow. It is clear that from 2026 onward, we have entered a new era — one that can rightly be described as the Age of Nations. Hungary is not merely enduring this change; it is shaping it. Since 2010, Hungary has been among the forerunners of this new era and intends to remain an active force in shaping it.

At his year-opening international press conference, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán made it clear which four key issues will define Hungarian politics through 2026.

1. War or peace?

According to the Prime Minister, the most important question facing Europe in 2026 is the choice between war and peace. He defined the Hungarian government’s task as keeping Hungary away from the dangers of war. Referring to the EU summit last December, he stressed that decisions were taken in Brussels to move toward war. The most vocal advocate of this course is Manfred Weber, President of the European People’s Party. It is no exaggeration to say that the 2026 Hungarian election may be the last election before war. The government elected in 2026 will decide the question of war or peace for Hungary, he stated.

Viktor Orbán also noted that 2026 will be marked by the rise of social movements across Western Europe opposing the pro-war elite. Beyond Hungary, only a few countries currently propose a fundamentally different strategy for the EU — one that rejects the logic of a war economy, war loans, and permanent militarisation. Instead, they advocate peace, stability, peace agreements, and a peace economy, he said. “Recently, there were three of us — and there will be more,” he added.

He also pointed out that, according to Ukrainian government statements, excluding military and security spending, Ukraine is requesting €800 billion over the next ten years, at a time when the European economy is already in decline. Whoever pays this bill will ruin their own people, the Prime Minister warned, adding: “People do not usually allow themselves to be ruined.”

2. The second key issue is energy.

Viktor Orbán stressed that national sovereignty is increasingly dependent on energy supply, which has also become one of the most critical issues of technological development. Those countries that are able to provide affordable energy for emerging industries, such as artificial intelligence, will be the winners of the new era, he said. Hungary’s task, he added, is to ensure strong supply chains, stable infrastructure, and robust national energy companies. He stated that Hungary’s energy supply and energy security are guaranteed, that energy independence is secured, and that the country is capable of producing the energy required to build new capacities. Achieving this, he noted, required a change in Hungary’s previous energy policy and the expansion of Hungarian companies’ presence across multiple regions of the world.

At the same time, he emphasized that certain EU regulations affecting the gas and oil sectors are damaging to Hungary. Hungary is defending itself against these measures through legal means, both because they constitute an abuse of legal authority and because the EU treaties assign energy policy to national competence. In parallel, Hungary is also working politically and indirectly against Brussels’ energy regulations, by seeking to help bring the war to an end by 2027. This would allow energy sanctions against Russia to be lifted. He pointed out that current Brussels price regulations increase energy prices in Europe by 20 percent, while the next round of regulations would lead to even greater price increases.

3. The third major issue is migration.

The implementation of the Brussels migration pact is unacceptable for Hungary. Under the pact adopted by Brussels, Hungary would be required from June onward to process 23,000 applications within a single year. This would only be possible if a migrant camp with a capacity of 10,000 people were established. The Hungarian government’s position remains unchanged: Hungary will not accept a single migrant, will not build refugee camps, will not alter its border protection regime, will not become a country of immigration, and will not accept Brussels dictating with whom Hungarians must live.

Viktor Orbán thanked God that Hungary kept its borders secure and refused migrants during the 2015 crisis. Today, he said, it is entirely clear that “we backed the winning side.” As he put it, many Western European countries would give half an arm to become migration-free.

The PM called it unprecedented that Hungary has been ordered to pay one million euros per day for refusing to admit migrants. He added, however, that Hungary is better off not admitting migrants, and not assuming the financial, social, and societal burdens that come with them.

In conclusion, he said he expects that over the next 10–15 years there will be significant demand for people from Western Europe — “not migrants, but native Europeans, making use of freedom of movement” — to work and live in Hungary. This, he said, will contribute to helping Hungary address its own demographic challenges, adding: “We will not have migrants, but Germans, French, and Italians.” His point was that fellow Europeans can far more easily integrate into Hungarian life than people from outside of Europe.

4. The fourth issue is Hungary’s path to development.

Hungary’s goal remains achieving economic growth and rising living standards, even as much of Europe is forced into austerity. To do this, Hungary must carefully shepherd its own financial resources. Therefore, Hungary will not participate in financing Ukraine, whether through war loans or financial aid. “We will mobilise the economic resources available to us in the interest of Hungarians,” Orbán emphasised.

He continued by stating that Hungary will not accept Brussels’ decisions aimed at shifting Member States’ economies toward a general European war economy. Transitioning to a war economy, he said, serves neither the cause of peace nor the economic interests of Member States.

Hungary will stay out of the war economy and instead build a “peace economy” that enables development. This, he said, is the Hungarian path — in contrast to Brussels’ war-driven approach.

Viktor Orbán concluded by noting that because Hungary is building a peace economy, measures have entered into force as of 1 January that would be unimaginable in much of Western Europe:

· Family tax allowances are being doubled: the more children a Hungarian family has, the greater the tax benefit for parents;

· Full personal income tax exemption from January for mothers under 30 with one child and mothers under 40 with two children; three-or-more-child mothers already exempt

· The minimum wage has been increased by 11 percent,

· A corporate tax reduction of approximately €230 million is being implemented to enhance competitiveness, encourage investment, and support economic growth;

· A 14th-month pension has been introduced, effectively adding two extra monthly payments to annual pensions for retired workers;

· Fixed-interest housing support loans are being continued to support first-time homebuyers,

· Uniformed service members receive a six-month salary bonus in recognition of their service and efforts to safeguard peace.

Hungary will continue to pursue a policy of peace, sovereignty, and development in this new era as well.

What to Expect in Hungary’s 2026 Parliamentary Elections

Responding to journalists’ questions, the Prime Minister also assessed the situation surrounding Hungary’s upcoming parliamentary elections.

· He stressed that in the 2026 parliamentary elections Hungary will have to choose between the Brussels path and the Hungarian path. The options facing the country are clear: either it follows the Brussels path, which leads to war and economic austerity, or it follows the Hungarian path, which offers peace and opportunities for development — enabling a stronger country, a stronger economy, and a better life for Hungarians.

· The Prime Minister said that, in his view, the EU leadership elite has strong interest in a change of government in Hungary. Brussels does not even hide this, he added, noting that he was told “quite bluntly” to “step aside, because new people are now needed — people who will pursue a Brussels-aligned policy instead of a sovereigntist one.” He stressed that this election is of particular importance to Brussels because Hungary demonstrates in practice that there is a clear and workable alternative to the pro-war strategy promoted by the Brussels elite.

· Viktor Orbán said he sees a situation similar to that of 2022, when parliamentary elections were last held. Everything is exactly the same as it was then — an opposition alliance, even if it has now been recalibrated, with the same people, advisers, experts, and economists. “We have to fight the same battle,” he said, “only the stakes are higher, because now there is a war.” He added that the only significant difference between 2022 and the current situation is that the war has since become a defining part of political reality, raising the stakes, and that Brussels-alignment has been expanded with openly pro-Ukraine and pro-war positions.

Viktor Orbán at his year-opening international press conference, outlining Hungary’s strategic reading of a changing global order and the national-interest framework guiding Hungarian policy in the years ahead.

On the U.S.

The liberal world order has come to an end — the election of Donald Trump delivered the final blow, said Viktor Orbán.

In a previous interview, the PM had stated that in contrast to the Biden years, Hungarian–American relations are experiencing a golden age, with excellent cooperation between the two countries, including at the highest levels of political engagement. There is full alignment between the two governments on the issues of peace and war, the protection of family values, and migration. “This is a comradely relationship, where the American president represents the interests of the American people, and I represent the interests of the Hungarian people,” he said.

He also recalled that since Donald Trump took office, 13 major U.S. investments have come to Hungary — a “remarkable achievement” at a time when Americans are increasingly bringing companies back home. Further significant investments are expected this year as well. All of this shows that there is life beyond Brussels, he added.

On Venezuela

The Venezuelan military operation will have consequences beyond the country itself, Orbán said. Treating it as an isolated event with no impact on global politics would be naïve. Similar developments may emerge elsewhere.

Viktor Orbán said Hungary assumes that the United States may be able to reintegrate Venezuela’s oil resources into global trade. This could increase supply and lower energy prices, in line with U.S. industrial policy interests, and could also be beneficial for Hungary. He added that Donald Trump may be right in arguing that future global power positions will be shaped by control over natural resources. At the same time, he considers it premature to draw moral conclusions or give a final interpretation of the new world order. The postwar liberal world order has ended, but the new era — the Age of Nations — is still taking shape.

The PM stressed that Hungary is not making predictions, but seeking to understand these processes and their impact on our home country. He expressed hope that the United States will succeed in mobilising Venezuela’s resources, establish democratic conditions, and bring an end to narco-state governance. He also recalled that Hungary has taken in several hundred Hungarian-origin families who fled Venezuela and welcomed the changes now underway there, adding that Venezuela has a strong future ahead.

Explaining why Hungary chose not to be part of a joint EU position on Venezuela, Viktor Orbán recalled that under the EU treaties, foreign policy remains a matter of national competence. Coordination is useful, he said, but a common foreign policy is neither necessary nor possible, as there is no agreement — not on Venezuela, nor on Ukraine, nor on the Middle East. Trade policy, he noted, is the only area on which Brussels speaks with authority, under EU rules.

On China

Hungary sees China not as a threat, but as an opportunity, according to the Prime Minister. Hungary consistently pursues cooperation with China — this is not a new direction, but a long-standing practice of Hungarian foreign policy that the government continues. As Viktor Orbán said, within China’s foreign policy classification, Hungary belongs to the so-called “all-weather” category – meaning that the partnership is maintained under all circumstances. This is an exceptional achievement that clearly serves Hungary’s interests.

Viktor Orbán also noted that this cooperative approach toward China is not the majority position within the European Union. Some seek to restrict relations on ideological grounds and label China a “systemic rival.” He considers this approach misguided. In his view, the modern world is not defined by a clash of systems: culture matters more than politics. China is China, Europe is Europe, and America is America — each has a system of governance rooted in its own cultural foundations.

The PM stressed that Hungary does not seek to judge or copy the way others live, but to follow a path that suits the Hungarian people.

Hungary’s Place in a Changing Global Order

Viktor Orbán also said that, in line with the philosophy of connectivity, Hungary should maintain the best, closest, and most constructive relations possible with all major economic blocs of the world.

This applies to the United States, China, Russia, the Arab world, and the Turkic world alike, he stated. He added that, as a member of the European Union, meaningful politics in Brussels is only possible if countries remain sovereign; therefore, Hungary does not wish to take part in any form of federal arrangement, insisting on the rights granted to it under the EU’s founding treaties.

Orbán Viktor emphasized that Hungary envisions its future within the European Union, under the protective umbrella of NATO, while pursuing a sovereign foreign policy and a sovereign economic policy — and that this is both feasible and necessary.

What emerges from Viktor Orbán’s year-opening international press conference is a clear strategic position: in an era of war, instability, and global realignment, Hungary is choosing peace, sovereignty, and development. The Hungarian path is built on connectivity — maintaining open channels with all major powers while preserving national independence. This is how Hungary intends to secure stability and opportunity in 2026.

Woman Killed In Minneapolis Was “ICE Watch” Left-Wing Activist Trained To Resist Fed Agents: Report

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ZeroHedge: Woman Killed In Minneapolis Was “ICE Watch” Left-Wing Activist Trained To Resist Fed Agents: Report

The New York Post reports that Renee Nicole Good was an anti-ICE “warrior” and part of a network of left-wing activists who worked to “document and resist” ICE operations in Minnesota.

Key details from the NYPost report:

Good, who moved to the city last year, linked up with the anti-ICE activists through her 6-year-old son’s woke charter school, which boasts that it puts “social justice first” and “involving kids in political and social activism,” multiple local sources said.

“She was a warrior. She died doing what was right,” a mother named Leesa, whose child attends the same school, told The Post at a growing vigil where Good was killed Wednesday.

Good and her wife Rebecca, 40, who were raising the child together and sent the boy to Southside Family Charter School, a K-5 academy opened in 1972 which has from its inception been “unabashedly dedicated to social justice education,” according to co-founder Susie Oppenheim.

It was through her involvement in the school community that Good became involved in “ICE Watch” — a loose coalition of activists dedicated to disrupting ICE raids in the sanctuary city.

“From my understanding, she was involved in social justice … we are a tight-knit community and a lot of parents are [activists],” former Southside gym teacher Rashad Rich, who resigned from the school last month, told The Post.

. . .

County worker Kristin Peter, 30, who was also at the vigil, said Renee was on the same ICE Watch team as one of her coworkers, and that she herself was attending a meeting of the group Thursday night.

*   *   *

Update (1755ET):

Renee Nicole Good, the woman shot and killed by ICE, was driving a Honda Pilot SUV that the Missouri Department of Revenue confirmed was registered with Missouri license plates. Business records show that Good operated a maintenance company in Kansas City, Missouri, called “B.Good Handywork LLC.”

Even though the Minneapolis City Council released a statement saying Good was “a member of our community,” it does not answer whether she was a full-time resident or simply part of an out-of-town left-wing resistance network conducting pressure campaigns against ICE operations in the sanctuary city.

One eyewitness described Good as “the main car in the protest, as I understand it. She was very successful in blocking traffic. She was doing exactly what she set out to do.”

At the beginning of the interview, the eyewitness said, “I woke up to some commotion out front. I heard some whistles going on out front.”

We must note that the whistles sounded before Good accelerated her car forward after blocking the street, prompting the officer to fire several shots into the vehicle, killing the activist.

Reuters associates “shrill sound of whistles” as an “anti-ICE resistance tool”…

Democrats were quick to label Good as a “legal observer.”

Local media confirmed.

Left-wing activists can train to be legal observers with the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild. As the Capital Research Center notes, the NLG has been consistently identified with radical-left politics and was heavily influenced by communists in its early years. Key Weather Underground figures like Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers had strong ties to the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). Dohrn served as the first law student organizer.

“The idea of community members watching law enforcement officers through organized patrols originates from the Black Power Movement,” NLG wrote on its website, adding, “The National Lawyers Guild, as the first integrated bar association in the U.S., took components from this practice and developed its Legal Observer Program in 1968 in New York City in response to protests at Columbia University and city-wide antiwar and racial justice demonstrations.”

Not even a week ago, we noted, “Today, the Guild provides legal support and protest training for Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other left-wing street movements, teaching activists how to push confrontation to the legal edge without crossing into prosecutable domestic terrorism.”

It appears the White House has some understanding of why Good was blocking the street or impeding ICE agents, as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier that the Minneapolis ICE shooting “occurred as a result of a larger, sinister, left-wing movement that has spread across our country.”

MSM being MSM.

Meanwhile…

MSM’s narrative…

Democrats have been seeking a proper narrative to justify new rounds of protests and riots, similar to the Los Angeles unrest last summer, to reshape public perception of ICE.

*   *   *

It didn’t take long. Within hours of an ICE-involved shooting in the Minneapolis area, the Democratic Party’s protest industrial complex moved into action, quickly creating conditions for coordinated demonstrations across multiple cities. The rapid response suggested these nonprofit activist networks were on standby, waiting for a catalytic event, as an army of radicals intensified pressure campaigns against federal agents, blocking streets, harassing officers, and openly doxxing them.

Shortly after the ICE-involved shooting that left one woman dead, multiple videos of the incident went viral on X. In at least one video, she appears to be blocking the street with her vehicle in an attempt to impede ICE agents and is later shot and killed after advancing toward one of the agents. Numerous angles of the incident are circulating on X, offering competing narratives.

The Democratic Party’s propaganda machine, desperately searching for the next narrative after the optically displeasing Somali-linked daycare fraud scandal, was quick to deploy a new storyline.

As we noted hours before protest activity erupted in the Minneapolis area (read here), the left-wing nonprofit Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee functioned as a rapid-response mobilization hub, coordinating a coalition of left-wing activist groups to flood the streets by late evening.

Footage of the demonstrations:

The rapid response extended beyond Minnesota. In New York, Party for Socialism and Liberation New York City, reportedly funded by China-based far-left billionaire Neville Roy Singham, mobilized activists within hours.

Communist Jackson Hinkle appeared enthusiastic about what appeared to be multi-city coordinated protests.

In Seattle:

Looking ahead, the socialists are planning pro-Maduro protests in the US, funded by PSL.

Democrats appear prime for a George Floyd 2.0 moment.

How Israel’s move in Somaliland fits in its broader strategy for regional dominance

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Israel views any fixed political agreement as a liability constraining its freedom of action. War is no longer an exceptional condition but a way of life, a normalized instrument of regional order.

There is some truth to this. But it also papers over something more important: Israel views any fixed political arrangement — even an agreement that is overwhelmingly in Israel’s favor — would serve as a constraint on its freedom of military action. Israel’s moves in Syria and Lebanon, alongside its broader regional realignments, point to an emerging strategic preference for a model of managed, perpetual conflict, rather than a stable political status quo that cannot be altered. War is no longer an exceptional condition but a way of life, a normalized instrument of regional order.

Mondoweiss: How Israel’s move in Somaliland fits in its broader strategy for regional dominance

Israel’s strategic posture favors a constant state of war over political deals that might constrain future aggression. Its recognition of Somaliland is part of this strategy, and an attempt to plant the first flag of its would-be empire in Africa.
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As Donald Trump proclaimed a “forever peace” in the region last October, Israel proceeded to dramatically escalate its military operations, launching repeated assaults across Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and beyond. In Gaza, Israel has violated the ceasefire over a thousand times; in Lebanon, it continues to target resistance forces; in Syria, it attempts to destabilize the new regime by exacerbating sectarian divisions; and more recently, it has continued to beat the drums of war with Iran. Its recent recognition of Somaliland also signals an Israel that seeks to regionalize its terror regime, challenge Turkey’s presence in Somalia, and position itself closer to Yemen and Iran for future skirmishes.

Some might consider this a failure of Israeli policy — that Israel is incapable of translating military success into a new political reality, and its war grinds on while the political horizon remains frozen. Without such a political transition, the argument goes, military success remains transient: decisive in appearance, yet incapable of altering the structural conditions that generate and sustain resistance.

Israel views any fixed political agreement as a liability constraining its freedom of action. War is no longer an exceptional condition but a way of life, a normalized instrument of regional order.

There is some truth to this. But it also papers over something more important: Israel views any fixed political arrangement — even an agreement that is overwhelmingly in Israel’s favor — would serve as a constraint on its freedom of military action. Israel’s moves in Syria and Lebanon, alongside its broader regional realignments, point to an emerging strategic preference for a model of managed, perpetual conflict, rather than a stable political status quo that cannot be altered. War is no longer an exceptional condition but a way of life, a normalized instrument of regional order.

For now, this model is sustainable for Israel because its consequences are largely externalized: peripheral arenas and adversarial societies bear the brunt of the damage of its operations, while the Israeli home front remains relatively insulated from sustained disruption. The absence of a definitive political settlement is not a liability but a boon.

Perpetual war, so long as it remains geographically displaced and technologically mediated, allows Israel to defer the difficult work of political resolution while maintaining strategic initiative, leaving the door open for unilateral military action in the future.

The strategic logic of this model is reflected in two developments, respectively spatial and geopolitical in nature.

The first development is most immediately felt, with Israel expanding its buffer architectures in Syria, spatially dispersing resistance formations in south Lebanon, and continuously expanding its buffer zone within Gaza by bringing more parts of the Strip under its control.

These aren’t tactical adjustments, but long-term arrangements based on the logic of “security perimeters” and the preemptive management of threat horizons.

The other development is less visible but no less significant, represented in Israel’s entanglement in the byzantine geopolitics of states jockeying for influence across the region. There is the Saudi-Turkish-Qatari scramble to determine Syria’s future — each backing different factions, pursuing incompatible visions, yet united in their determination not to be left out of whatever arrangement eventually emerges from the rubble.

Meanwhile, Israel has been cultivating relationships with Greece and Cyprus, building up a network of eastern Mediterranean partnerships that look suspiciously like an attempt to outflank Turkey, with whom competition is becoming increasingly open.

It’s a messy business, and the alliances don’t follow any neat ideological lines. Yesterday’s enemy can become today’s tacit partner if the circumstances require it, with Israel dealing with the Saudis on some fronts while watching them bankroll projects elsewhere that run counter to their interests. The Israeli-Turkish relationship oscillates between functional cooperation on trade and energy and bitter rivalry on everything from gas exploration rights to influence in post-Assad Syria.

But even though Israeli actions suggest a growing comfort with inhabiting a permanently offensive posture in the region, its imperial entanglements also create new liabilities. Yes, Israel’s room for maneuver has been enlarged, but it has also been constrained — and not always in predictable ways — due, in part, to its relatively new relations with states such as the United Arab Emirates. More partners mean more options, to be sure, but they also entail more obligations and points at which things can unravel once the interests of the various actors inevitably diverge.

So the question isn’t whether Israel wields influence in the region (it plainly does), but whether this dense thicket of diplomatic activity constitutes a coherent strategy or a mere accumulation of tactical expedients whose long-term durability remains uncertain.

And then there’s Israel’s boldest move yet: its attempt to plant the first flag of its would-be empire in Africa.

Somaliland: the Horn of Africa gambit

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland on December 26, 2025, adds yet another layer to this already congested landscape, operating simultaneously across multiple vectors of competition: with Turkey over influence in the Horn of Africa, and against the ability of Yemen’s Ansar Allah (commonly known as “the Houthis”) to disrupt trade routes.

Turkey has maintained its largest overseas military base in Somalia since 2017. Camp TURKSOM in Mogadishu has trained some sixteen thousand troops and secured, in February 2024, the exclusive rights to train, equip, and modernize Somalia’s navy and patrol its exclusive economic zone. This consolidation of Turkish strategic presence transforms Somalia into something approaching a client state, not through direct annexation but through the patient accumulation of security, infrastructural, and economic dependence.

The Israeli move was framed explicitly as being “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords,” yet it functions equally as a counter to Turkish maritime ambitions and as a wedge into a region where Ankara has spent over a decade building institutional depth.

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is not an isolated diplomatic gesture, but an attempt to secure a foothold in proximity to these competing networks. Somaliland’s coastline sits directly across from Yemen, offering monitoring and intervention capacity over Ansar Allah’s activities while simultaneously complicating Turkish ambitions in the region. What emerges is a field of overlapping projects: Turkish military infrastructure consolidating Somalia as a projection platform into the Red Sea; Iranian weapons flows moving through Somali territory to sustain Ansar Allah operations; and the Israeli recognition of Somaliland in an attempt to disrupt both.

The recognition of Somaliland appears minor but it reverberates across multiple strategic theaters at once — the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea shipping lanes, the Turkish sphere, the Emirati-Israeli alignment, and the broader axis of resistance.

The question is whether these entanglements represent calculated strategic depth or merely additional commitments that generate their own unforeseen vulnerabilities, binding each actor to the volatile fortunes of a region where clarity remains perpetually deferred, and alliances shift faster than the institutional arrangements meant to stabilize them.

What we are witnessing is not chaos but rather the return of classical balance-of-power politics. It is something far more familiar to students of European statecraft: a multipolar regional system where even ostensible allies pursue contradictory objectives, and where every gain by one actor automatically triggers compensatory maneuvers by others.

Consider the balance of forces. Turkey, a NATO member, builds military infrastructure in Somalia while competing with Israel — another American partner — for influence across the Horn and the eastern Mediterranean. The Saudis and Turks back opposing factions in Syria while both maintain channels to Washington. Israel cultivates Greece and Cyprus as counterweights to Turkey, yet all remain within the American security umbrella. This isn’t alliance breakdown — it is alliance complexity. The trouble is that it requires a kind of diplomatic sophistication that the current regional leadership often lacks.

More centrally, however — as with much of Israel’s regional conduct — this move is best understood as part of a broader preparation for future war.

The recognition of Somaliland is instructive precisely because it appears minor. On its own, it registers as a small diplomatic gesture; in practice, it reverberates across multiple strategic theaters at once — the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea shipping lanes, the Turkish sphere, the Emirati-Israeli alignment, and the broader axis of resistance. This is how power increasingly operates in a multipolar environment: not through singular, decisive moves, but through the cumulative positioning of nodes whose strategic value emerges relationally and in anticipation of the other’s actions.

More centrally, however — as with much of Israel’s regional conduct — this move is best understood as part of a broader preparation for future war. Perpetual war, here, isn’t an emergency condition to be avoided, but a governing paradigm to be managed, expanded, and spatially pre-configured long before war erupts again.

Regionalizing Israel’s strategy towards Palestine

Israel’s reorientation toward perpetual war is not unprecedented. States that enjoy overwhelming technological and military superiority often discover that victory is less useful than managed instability. An unresolved conflict preserves freedom of action, allowing borders to remain elastic, threats to be continuously redefined, and exceptional measures to become permanent. Israel’s conduct across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and now the Horn of Africa suggests a growing comfort with precisely this condition.

Seen in this light, the apparent failure to translate military dominance into political settlement begins to look less like an inability and more like a choice. Political closure would impose constraints: fixed borders, binding obligations, and reciprocal guarantees. Endless war, by contrast allows Israel to act preemptively, redraw security architectures, and embed its power into the geography of the region without having to negotiate or seek international ratification.

Israel is expanding territories under its control not to govern them, but to shape them for the purpose of absorbing shock. This strategy isn’t new to Israel when it comes to its relationship with the Palestinians, having for decades sustained a managed, perpetual war in the West Bank and Gaza that it has continuously modulated between alternating cycles of escalation and containment. The difference is that Israel is now moving to regionalize this model.

What’s new about this strategy isn’t its logic, but its scale, transplanting a decades-old strategy of managing its colonial frontier within Palestine to geographies far beyond it.

In other words, what’s new about this strategy isn’t its logic, but its scale, transplanting a decades-old strategy of managing its colonial frontier within Palestine to geographies far beyond it. Yet with this increase in scale, things get more complicated, giving the people of the region more reasons to resist.

As for the forces of resistance, it is precisely Israel’s refusal to entertain a political arrangement with them that keeps resistance alive. They have not been defeated because they can’t be so long as Israel’s only acceptable notion of defeat is total collapse or surrender. Certainly resistance won’t be defeated through Israel’s method of targeting the entire social and infrastructural body of what it declares to be “enemy societies.”

And the Israelis actually understand this better than they publicly admit: the buffer zones, the spatial fragmentation, the preemptive configurations — these are all tacit admissions that victory in any meaningful sense is unattainable.

What’s being managed and perhaps even perpetuated is the desire to sustain an intractable situation without any form of resolution. The resistance elements — whether Palestinian, Lebanese, or Yemeni — can certainly be weakened, perhaps even contained, but they can’t be eliminated entirely, because they’re embedded in political contexts that military force alone cannot address.

The regionalization of Israel’s regime of violence is generating an unintended strategic effect: the idea of a unified arena, encouraging coordination, resource-sharing, and political alignment among resistance forces.

At the same time, the regionalization of Israel’s regime of violence is generating an unintended strategic effect: by extending its operations across multiple theaters, it has renewed the salience of the idea of a unified arena, encouraging coordination, resource-sharing, and political alignment among resistance forces, including those that for long stretches viewed one another with suspicion.

It is true that, for now, many of these actors remain preoccupied with survival, political relevance, and the arduous work of rebuilding. Israel is determined to keep it that way, working to further fragment Syria, consolidate partnerships with Greece and Cyprus, deepen military cooperation with the Emirates across the Red Sea, operate in tandem with select Kurdish forces, and continue to bomb targets in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran.

Yet the longer Israel pursues this strategy of regional entanglement, the more it collapses once-discrete arenas into a single, interconnected field of confrontation.

In doing so, it pushes previously separated actors into closer proximity, lending renewed force to the idea of resistance not as a collection of isolated struggles, but as a set of interlinked campaigns increasingly compelled to operate in tandem.

Israel’s victoryless war is not an aberration, nor a failure of translation. It is the mature expression of a political order that can neither resolve resistance nor survive its resolution — and therefore reorganizes space, diplomacy, and force around the permanent modulation of war.

The Trump Corollary: We’re Nation-Building OUR Nation

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Things went much better when we called the shots in Latin America

We’re not “nation-building” in Venezuela. We’re “puppet-government-installing.”

And not a moment too soon. Our complete withdrawal from the Western Hemisphere over the past fifty years, while we concentrated on turning distant hellholes like Somalia into “a proud, functioning and viable member of the community of nations,” as Madeleine Albright said in 1993, seems to have left the U.S. sitting in the middle of a crime-ridden ghetto.

Back when the U.S. was constantly meddling in Latin America, removing and inserting leaders at will, I note that 100,000 Americans weren’t dying of drug overdoses every year. Cuba and Venezuela weren’t emptying their prisons and mental institutions into our country for fun. Third Worlders weren’t streaming across our border, killing, raping and robbing Americans. Instead of cocaine and Fentanyl, the region’s main exports were things like oil and sugar. Today, they can’t manage to extract natural resources there for the taking.

To be sure, mistakes were made, such as the State Department backing Fidel Castro (based on the Walter Duranty-like reporting of The New York Times’ Herbert Matthews).

If only we’d kept intervening, that error might have been corrected half a century ago.

But liberals got sanctimonious about the U.S. bossing around lesser countries. Why, they’re just as capable of self-government as we are!

No, they’re not. With rare exceptions, brief periods of prosperity in Latin America are invariably followed by revolution, seizure of major industries, grandiose promises to “the people,” graft, corruption, gangsterism, violence and economic collapse. As historian Paul Johnson put it, “Everyone in [Latin America] talked revolution and practiced graft.”

Vice President Kamala Harris was tasked with getting to the “root cause” of illegal immigration from Latin America. It turns out the “root cause” is Latin Americans.

The first clue was Argentina, a bustling, on-the-move country with a booming economy and burgeoning middle class in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Alas, in 1946, “the people” voted, and, in their wisdom, chose the demagogue Juan Perón. In short order, their economy was in shambles and they were being ruled by a dictator. Even after having seen how he immiserated their country, “the people” proceeded to elect Perón again. And then a third time.

This national self-immolation became the template for Latin American governance — up to and including Venezuela.

Venezuelans had their chance at self-government and blew it, electing the communist Hugo Chávez by acclamation four separate times, and Nicolás Maduro once (contested). Now, they can’t keep the lights on and the entire Venezuelan economy runs on shipping cocaine from Colombia to Mexico.

Since our seizure of Maduro, word has gone out for everyone in the media to compare his arrest to our adventurism in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Nigeria, Bosnia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia and so on. This is absurd.

Whatever happens in any of those places has very little effect on any American’s life. By contrast, Latin Americans are killing, raping, addicting and pickpocketing Americans every single day.

We’re nation-building all right, but the nation we’re building is ours. That’s what the Bushies got wrong: They were nation-building other nations.

POP QUIZ: Please explain how teaching Afghan school girls to read benefits me. (I’m not against it, I just don’t want it on my AmEx.)

Maduro was not seized because he killed a bunch of Christians in Nigeria — and for the record, I’m against that. He was captured and put on trial because he has been repeatedly indicted in U.S. courts for trafficking cocaine that has killed a quarter million Americans.

He was also sitting on the largest proven oil reserves in the world. We need oil — and we need China not to get Venezuela’s oil.

This is why the Monroe Doctrine “once ranked with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the pantheon of American reverence,” in the words of the late Yale historian Gaddis Smith.

The gist of President James Monroe’s 1823 statement was that the Western Hemisphere is ours, and any European incursion would be seen as “dangerous to our peace and safety.” (That was before we had to worry about Chinese incursions.) In return, we’d stay out of their affairs.

Overseeing Latin America wasn’t a walk in the park.

In 1950, legendary diplomat George Kennan wrote a memo, warning that “most of the Latin American world” exhibited “tremendous helplessness and impotence,” adding that he could think of no place that had produced a more “hopeless background for the conduct of human life than in Latin America.” [Africa?]

Because of the strategic importance of the region to U.S. national security, Kennan argued that “harsh governmental measures of repression may be the only answer,” even measures that violated “American concepts of democratic procedure.”

This became known as “the Kennan corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.

In accordance with that corollary, then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles pushed for a U.S.-backed coup d’état to depose the communist president of Guatemala in 1954. No “boots on the ground.” No “nation-building.” Secretary Dulles did not proceed to “rule” Guatemala. Our puppet did. And that was it for a communist Guatemala.

Commenting on the successful mission, Dulles said, “This intrusion of Soviet despotism was, of course, a direct challenge to our Monroe Doctrine, the first and most fundamental of our foreign policies.”

The media are in a dither, demanding to know who’s going to “run” Venezuela. The president should tell them, “Whomever the CIA chooses.”