Star Baby and Straw Blasphemy: The Complex Simplicity of the First Christian Story

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Varsk’vlavi. That’s a strange word from a strange language. At least, it’s a strange word if your mother-tongue is English and not Georgian, the mother-tongue of Joseph Stalin. As a boy, Stalin himself would have found the word right at the beginning of the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew:

2:9 და აჰა, ვარსკვლავი, რომელიც მათ აღმოსავლეთში იხილეს, წინ უძღოდა მათ, ვიდრე მივიდოდა და დადგებოდა იმ ადგილზე, სადაც ყრმა იყო. 2:10 ვარსკვლავი რომ დაინახეს, მათ მეტისმეტი სიხარულით გაიხარეს.

2:9 da aha, varsk’vlavi, romelits mat aghmosavletsši ikhiles, ts’in udzghoda mat, vidre mividoda da dadgeboda im adgilze, sadats qrma iqo. 2:10 varsk’vlavi rom dainakhes, mat met’ismet’i sikharulit gaikhares.

2:9 And, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. 2:10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

Yes, varsk’vlavi, ვარსკვლავი, means “star.” It’s a strange word for Anglophones because it’s so long and complex. Where English has one syllable and four letters, Georgian has three syllables and ten letters. But you could say that the word is appropriately complex in Georgian and appropriately simple in English. Stars are complex things after all, giant globes of glowing gas that evolve and explode and still challenge the best brains of the human race to explain and predict their behavior. But on the other hand, stars are simple things too, primal things, bright points of light to the naked eye. Stars are complex in physics and simple in stories, bearing messages that even the youngest children can grasp.

Fleeting but fertile

The Star of Bethlehem bore a simple but stupendous message: Here is the Son of God. Jesus was a star-baby, born humbly on Earth but heralded in the Heavens. His star brought Kings from the East, the Three Wise Men, the Magi whose fleeting appearance in a single Gospel has inspired millennia of Christian art, literature and legend. The star’s appearance is fleeting but fertile too. Only Matthew mentions it and only briefly, but Matthew’s is the first Gospel and the star is central to the first story he tells. Stalin must have read that story as a child, but Stalin would grow up to reject the star-baby of Jesus and follow the straw man of Marx.

The Star of Bethlehem (c. 1887) by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (image from Wikipedia)

Another able and intelligent atheist, the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008), rejected the star-baby too. He replaced it with what you might call a straw star. When I first read Clarke’s short-story “The Star” (1955) as a teenager, I thought it was a clever and cutting swipe at Christianity, a swingeing blow delivered on behalf of science against superstition. When I re-read it today, I see it for what it really is: not a successful swipe against Christian irrationality, but a stroking of atheist vanity. And a soothing of atheist fears. The fears were first those of Arthur C. Clarke himself. He obviously didn’t want Christianity to be true, which is why he created a straw star to swallow the joy-star of Matthew’s Gospel.

Stellar spoiler

What I describe next will be a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t read his story, but that will be appropriate enough in its way. After all, Clarke intended “The Star” to be a spoiler for Christianity. It’s about a Jesuit priest three thousand light-years from home. The priest is the first-person narrator of “The Star,” an astrophysicist of the far future who’s part of an interstellar mission to the Phoenix Nebula. The Nebula is the remnants of a supernova, the cataclysmic explosion of a once stable star. It turns out that the star had planets and that one of the planets had an alien civilization on it, advanced enough to predict the supernova but not advanced enough to flee its fury.

The Crab Nebula, remnant of a supernova (image from Wikipedia)

But before the aliens and their home-planet were vaporized by the supernova, they left a memorial of their existence in hope of just such a later mission as the astrophysicist priest is describing. As the priest himself puts it: “A civilization that knew it was about to die had made its last bid for immortality.” The aliens created a vault of records on their star-system’s equivalent of Pluto, a far-out planet that they knew would be the only one to survive the coming cataclysm. Like the other scientists and crew on his star-ship, the priest is deeply moved by what the vault reveals:

If only they had had a little more time! They could travel freely enough between the planets of their own sun, but they had not yet learned to cross the interstellar gulfs, and the nearest solar system was a hundred light-years away. Yet even had they possessed the secret of the Transfinite Drive, no more than a few millions could have been saved. Perhaps it was better thus.

Even if they had not been so disturbingly human as their sculpture shows, we could not have helped admiring them and grieving for their fate. They left thousands of visual records and the machines for projecting them, together with elaborate pictorial instructions from which it will not be difficult to learn their written language. We have examined many of these records, and brought to life for the first time in six thousand years the warmth and beauty of a civilization that in many ways must have been superior to our own. Perhaps they only showed us the best, and one can hardly blame them. But their words were very lovely, and their cities were built with a grace that matches anything of man’s. We have watched them at work and play, and listened to their musical speech sounding across the centuries. One scene is still before my eyes — a group of children on a beach of strange blue sand, playing in the waves as children play on Earth. Curious whiplike trees line the shore, and some very large animal is wading in the shadows yet attracting no attention at all.

And sinking into the sea, still warm and friendly and life-giving, is the sun that will soon turn traitor and obliterate all this innocent happiness. (“The Star,” 1955)

It’s important that the aliens were “disturbingly human” and that they enjoyed “innocent happiness,” because Clarke is setting up the punch-line of the story. The astrophysicist priest studies the rocks of the planet where the vault was delved and is able to calculate the date of the supernova “very exactly.” That’s how he learns when its light must have blazed in the skies of distant Earth and that’s why, as he narrates the story,  he’s grappling with a fierce and probably fatal crisis of faith. He now knows the answer to an age-old enigma and the identity of a hallowed entity. Here are the closing lines of his narrative:

There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem? (“The Star”)

“How clever!” I thought when I read that as a teenager. “How cringe!” I think when I read it now. The supernova of the story is a straw star, a fiction created to fill the mind with a message of disdain for Christianity. And created to mark the mind too: after you read “The Star,” its fiction will cloud the fact of The Star that blazed over Bethlehem. It’s fact for traditionalist Christians, at least, and traditionalist Christians will rightly say that Clarke’s story is blasphemous. I’d say it’s blasphemy on behalf of boy-buggery. Like a disproportionate number of people in science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke was a pedophile and I think the “children … playing in the waves” aren’t there in his blasphemous story just to set up the punch-line. Clarke settled on the tropical island of Sri Lanka in 1956, the year after he published “The Star.” Leftist Wikipedia says that he moved there “to pursue his interest in scuba diving.” I think that the move was also — and more importantly — to pursue his interest in undressed children playing in warm water.

Far, far at sea

Male children, to be specific. But what does Christianity say about pederasty, the “boy-love” that was beloved of the pagan Greeks and philhellene Romans? Christianity says pederasty is wicked and sinful, which is not a message that the pederast Arthur C. Clarke wanted to hear. That’s why, I’d suggest, he created the straw star of his blasphemous story. It’s also why the story won a Hugo Award in 1956. That was one of highest honors in science fiction, because the story was liked by other atheists, other Christophobes and other pedophiles. I liked that star-story myself when I was a teenager, but I don’t like it any more. It’s clever but cheap, designed to fill and fool the mind, not to truly feed it. The star-story in Matthew is different. It does feed the mind. And the imagination. It fed a civilization too, the civilization of Christendom whose star-story was told in Georgian long before it was told in English.

And even longer before it was subverted in English by the pederast atheist Arthur C. Clarke. Nowadays I prefer a Christian star-poem to Clarke’s atheist star-story. It’s a poem that mixes the primality of stars with the primality of an earthly entity that Georgian calls zghwa, ზღვა. That’s an aptly swishing and grumbling monosyllable for what English calls “the sea.” And here is the star-poem, a hymn by a Scottish writer called Jane Cross Simpson (1811-86), who never achieved a fraction of Arthur C. Clarke’s fame and influence but said far more than he did in far fewer words:

Star of peace to wanderers weary,
Bright the beams that smile on me;
Cheer the pilot’s vision dreary,
Far, far at sea.
Star of hope! gleam on the billow;
Bless the soul that sighs for Thee;
Bless the sailor’s lonely pillow,
Far, far at sea.
Star of faith! when winds are mocking
All his toil, he flies to Thee;
Save him on the billows rocking,
Far, far at sea.
Star Divine, O safely guide him;
Bring the wanderer home to Thee;
Sore temptations long have tried him,
Far, far at sea.
“Star of Peace” at Youtube.Youtube.

Tucker Carlson Backpedals Once Again

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Thoughts and Observations of the Spectacle That Is Turning Point USA

As most readers are doubtlessly well aware, the first day of the Turning Point Convention on December 18, 2025 was a notable event for the way that Erika Kirk and above all Ben Shapiro made spectacles of themselves. Vivek Ramaswamy also saw fit to tell Americans what their identity is and how it includes him and his kind. In that speecch he insisted that “There is no American who is more American than somebody else,” replete with more “magic dirt” nonsense. He even made the obligatory allusion to Martin Luther King, Jr” with talk about “content of your character.”

Watching Shapiro in particular was a most unenviable task. Concentrating on his speech is made all the more difficult because of the intrusive but utterly correct utterance from any sensible internal monologue: “how do you do, fellow whites?” That spectacle, replete with a devastating confrontation about the USS Liberty in the question and answer portion, was overshadowed by Tucker Carlson’s speech. Shapiro of course denounced Tucker Carlson for not in turn denouncing Candace Owens and more particularly for daring to have Darryl Cooper aka Martyrmade and above all Nick Fuentes on as guests. Shapiro’s speech seems part of a desperate bid to counteract the discrediting that has occurred over the past few weeks. Time will tell if it reverses that trend, but so far things seem to be turning against the Israeli shill. The very next evening, Steve Bannon skewered both Shapiro and America being beholden to Israeli and Jewish interests, culminating with the declaration that “Ben Shapiro is like a cancer that metastasizes.” Megyn Kelly then lambasted Shapiro in a sit-down with Jack Posobiec, even stating she no longer considers Shapiro a friend.

While Shapiro’s bold provocations and the reaction to it are certainly interesting, comments by Tucker Carlson are likely of far greater interest to this publication and its readers for various reasons, above all because this speech was part and parcel of Carlson’s propensity to hedge controversial comments with statements that negate, qualify, or “backpedal” from these statements, either in the same presentation or in the context of recent statements and presentations. Carlson’s speech is of course in the context of having the guests that Shapiro denounced, as well as the interview with Piers Morgan for which the foppish British twit has been rightly excoriated, including—among many other things—forsaking his nation and its posterity “for a good curry:” a particularly contemptible utterance for many different reasons, not least of which that curry of course originated from Britain and because, as Rowan Atkinson quipped in a famous skit, “now that we [have] the recipes, is there really any reason for them to stay?”

Carlson begins with a stern rebuke of Shapiro’s comments. His reproach of Shapiro’s denunciation of Carlson reads in pertinent part:

I watched [Shapiro’s speech]. I laughed. I laughed. that kind of bitter sardonic laugh that emerges from you and like upside down world arrives when your dog starts doing your taxes and you’re like, “Wait, it’s not supposed to work this way.” To hear calls for. . . DEPLATFORMING AND DENOUNCING PEOPLE AT A CHARLIE KIRK EVENT. . . “WHAT? This is hilarious.” [laughter] Yeah, this is hilarious.

That Carlson laughed at Shapiro (both as he delivered his comments and in the account of his immediate reaction) cannot be emphasized enough. Carlson commented further, urging that Shapiro’s rant was antithetical to what Charlie Kirk himself stood for:

I really thought that the impulse to deplatform people or even to use the word platform as a verb, which it’s not. It’s a noun. Don’t steal my nouns. Deplatform and denounce. Why haven’t you denounced somebody else? The whole. . .. red guard cultural revolution thing that we so hated and feared on the left that we did everything we could to usher in a new time where you could have an actual debate. I mean, this kind of was the whole point of Charlie Kirk’s public life. . . . I think that he died for it. I really believe that.

After this brief foray, Carlson focuses much of his attention mitigating or even disclaiming earlier sentiments in past presentations discussed above and doubtlessly others as well. These comments operate from the basic underlying “universal principle” against “hating” people for how they were born, that “it is immoral to hate people for how they were born.” These comments admonish against “hating everyone in a group.” He stressed that it is immoral to punish a people for crimes individuals in that group did not commit. He even asserts that this is a commandment under the Christian religion and morality: “[Y]ou are prohibited by. . . Christianity from hating people for how they were born because God created them with his spark in his image because they have souls.”

From these other assertions he condemned so-called “Islamophobia” and antisemitism. He did however use these admonitions as a vehicle to condemn prejudice and discrimination against white males, particularly in relation to college admissions practices and even hiring practices in recent years and even over the past several decades. As important as this message is, it is needlessly hampered, neutered even by talk about this supposed universal principle discussed above. Carlson unequivocally denounces (in this speech and elsewhere) in-group preferences for whites, a necessary ethos to protect white, European posterity for the evils he confronted Piers Morgan about as just one example. It is impossible, for example, to rectify and prevent The Great Replacement in Britain and Europe in any meaningful way without measures such as remigration which necessarily entails enacting policy based on group identity.

Carlson of course buttressed such rhetoric by absurd off-the-shelf appeals to civic nationalism. Such appeals include the ridiculous assertion that “Most Americans have more in common” than they do not, a demonstrably false assertion. He also asserted that racially conscious commentary should be denounced because “they are trying to divide the country,” a mindless slogan about as stupid as “The Democrats are the real racists.” None of this should be persuasive to anyone, but the crowd reaction suggests otherwise.

Many of these assertions and contentions require the firmest, most vehement repudiation, even as so much of this counterproductive rhetoric relies heavily on various norms and mores deeply embedded in the American tradition and traditional mainstream conservatism more particularly. To some limited extent, judging individuals as such is fine as far as it goes (not far at all, really). Such musings notwithstanding, to only judge individuals only as individuals without looking at the larger picture from the collective whole is to embrace willful ignorance at its worst. No society can function without making group judgment based on various criteria that define a group. Consider for example age requirements for things like driving, voting, and what not. There are doubtlessly youngsters under 16 who possess the maturity, skill, and even height necessary to drive responsibly and safely, and yet society nonetheless operates on a rule requiring an age of 16 because those youngsters who defy this general rule are outliers. Up until recently, society correctly precluded women from traditional male roles such as combat duty in the military, on-the-beat law enforcement and so on because humanity is a sexually dimorphic species and is so despite certain outliers such as women like Brigitte Nielsen being 6’1 that defy, to some limited extent, general differences between the sexes such as strength and height. There are black individuals who defy certain trends, such as an aggregate, collective IQ gap between one-to-two standard deviations, or who defy the collective racial resentment, even racial hatred that defines much of the black populace, or who are not part of “a racial commitment to crime” that characterizes and defines wild overrepresentation of blacks in crime statistics. The existence of such individuals—who are indeed outliers—does not negate the overall trend that defines a majority of the black population. Nor does it give cause to ignore these overall trends or to refrain from policy considerations based on these trends.

In very real, important ways, Carlson deludes himself and his audience by insisting that we are all just individuals. Innate characteristics that are inherent to any individual, most particularly race, matter a great deal. Differences in race are real—they are not just a social construct—just as race is a core, fundamental component of culture, identity, and any cohesive polity defined by common race, language, and history.

External factors such as cultural milieu, religious upbringing, and myriad others further dispel such naïve notions about individual autonomy. Even a cursory review of history and human nature demonstrates that individuals are profoundly determined and influenced by a variety of external factors, including the time and circumstance one is born into, just as they are influenced by what others do in a variety of ways that one can scarcely fathom. Consider as just one example that people often mimic what others do. This is reflected in various phenomena associated with social contagion, from suicide clusters, to transgender nuttery and bulimia rubbing off on a small group of individuals to others, to how a married couple is far more likely to divorce if other couples in the same social circle have divorced or are considering divorce. There are other phenomena, such as the “mere exposure effect,” which dictates that a critical mass of people will like music, cinema, and other expressions of culture merely due to exposure to these cultural expressions.

Carlson makes an even worse error, conflating in-group preference for hatred and asserting that whites advancing white, European interests on a collective basis—that is, having an in-group preference at all—is tantamount to hating individuals in a different group. Implicit in this statement is the absurd idea that such supposed hatred or what might be better described as animus in the context of very legitimate grievances is hatred for each and every individual in that group. Doubtlessly, more and more whites are harboring animus for other groups, and not without good reason. “Black fatigue” is real, and the phrase (as well as a more virulent variant with one racial epithet in particular) has become a familiar adage in Internet parlance for very good reasons: namely, that whites have legitimate grievances about the black collective, involving wildly disparate black involvement in violent and other forms of crime, the racial resentment if not ancient hatred that a critical mass of blacks harbor against whites, and a whole host of other grievances that render black people as a collective irredeemable and incompatible with white society. The same principle applies to Pakistanis, Indians, and other imposters and their role in the reverse colonization of the British Isles and the columns of black and brown hordes in Germany and Europe at large who have no right to even set foot on the sacred continent, let alone seek “refuge” there. A person can rightly hold very negative views about these and other groups collectively while still acknowledging there are outliers to these groups. That there are outliers to these trends, as there are for almost any phenomenon under the sun, does not negate the requirement for collective action, nor does it negate sensible observations and conclusions about the group as a whole. To save British and European posterity will require remigration and resettlement of all such imposters, or at least the vast majority of them. And this is true even if some of them are otherwise nice and decent people. The number of decent, upstanding black individuals does not negate the overall general trend at hand, easily observed and reinforced through centuries of experience and history, that the multiracial experiment has failed, is doomed to fail, and that there are irreconcilable differences between whites and blacks that cannot be solved except by divorce and separation, preferably on a mutually amicable basis.

These and other such utterances, including how Carlson stupidly deflated his confrontation with Piers Morgan about The Great Replacement with silly, pointless disclaimers that he likes Pakistanis and there are many nice individuals who are part of this or that group, demonstrates once again that figures like Carlson are of limited utility. Although some insist they serve no purpose, writings and presentations such as those by Tucker Carlson can be used to help persuade others on those matters they get right, leaving the work of others to explain how and why this sort of senseless pandering and equivocation is wrong. The principal utility of figures like Carlson is that they have helped normalize formerly scandalous topics like anti-white discrimination, The Great Replacement, and other topics that Carlson himself has emphasized but that were taboo even a couple short years ago. That utility must however be harnessed in a way that is separated and bifurcated from these sorts of cowardly, simplistic, and self-defeating qualifications and other sorts of “back-pedaling.”

This unfortunate propensity to backpedal—in comparison and contrast to more sensible utterances—again demonstrates how essential the vital faculties of reason, discernment and discrimination are. Ultimately, to what extent Tucker Carlson will be a net benefit by interviewing figures like Darryl Cooper or even the somewhat unsavory Nick Fuentes will depend on to what extent the larger audience possesses and utilizes these faculties, or more particularly how writers, streamers, and other thought leaders use these faculties and then apply them in any discussion or analysis about events like these. These faculties, used in concert, allow both the individual and a group to discern that Carlson’s denunciation of evils such as The Great Replacement anti-white discrimination, and even his repudiation of Ben Shapiro’s naked Zionism are laudable, but are of limited utility unless such pointless and counterproductive qualifications such as those discussed above are discarded and repudiated outright. The application of these essential faculties in turn allow both the individual and the white collective to discern that such comments against in-group preference, appeals that we are“all God’s children,” admonitions that people can only be judged as individuals are both preposterous and harmful. This underscores the vital role the new populist right has in highlighting when figures like Tucker Carlson “get it right,” while also undertaking the most vital task of arguing and persuading how and why this backpedaling could not be more erroneous or harmful.

Other articles and essays by Richard Parker are available at his publication, The Raven’s Call: A Reactionary Perspective, found at theravenscall.substack.com. Please consider subscribing on a free or paid basis, and to like and share as warranted. Readers can also find him on twitter, under the handle @astheravencalls.

End of an Era: Norman Podhoretz and the Much-to-be-Hoped-for-Decline of Neoconservative Power

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The neoocns captured George W. Bush and his administration, resulting in U.S. involvement in wars throughout the Middle East.

Norman Podhoretz, the pugnacious Jewish intellectual who transformed Commentary magazine into the engine room of neoconservatism and spent half a century waging ideological warfare against enemies foreign and domestic, died December 16, 2025, at age 95. His passing from pneumonia complications closes a chapter in American political thought that increasingly appears headed for the history books rather than the future.

The combative editor who guided Commentary for 35 years represented something increasingly rare in contemporary politics: a complete ideological metamorphosis from liberal literary critic to a neoconservative warrior who constantly advocated for Judeo-American primacy on the world stage. His journey from the working class streets of Brooklyn to the commanding heights of American intellectual life mirrored the broader fracturing of the American Left during the Cold War, when former progressives found themselves “mugged by reality” and remade as champions of military interventionism and unflinching support for Israel.

Podhoretz entered the world on January 16, 1930, in Brownsville, a Brooklyn neighborhood teeming with Jewish immigrants and left-wing sympathies. His parents, Julius and Helen Podhoretz, had fled Galicia in what is now Ukraine, settling into the working-class milieu that would later provide fodder for his most controversial writings on race and class in America.

The young Podhoretz distinguished himself at Boys High School in Brooklyn through his academic prowess, which earned him a scholarship to Columbia University. At Columbia, he studied under the legendary literary Jewish critic Lionel Trilling and simultaneously pursued Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, a dual education that would later inform his fierce defense of Jewish particularism. A Fulbright Scholarship carried him to Cambridge University, where he studied under F.R. Leavis, completing an education that positioned him at the center of postwar intellectual life.

In 1956, he married Midge Decter, herself a formidable thinker and writer. They formed an intellectual power couple whose influence radiated through American conservatism until her death in 2022. Their son, John Podhoretz, would eventually succeed his father as editor of Commentary, cementing a dynastic hold on neoconservative thought.

Podhoretz began writing for Commentary in the early 1950s, but his ascension to editor-in-chief in 1960 marked the beginning of his true influence. Initially, he steered the magazine leftward, publishing countercultural figures like Paul Goodman and early critics of American conformity. The intellectual atmosphere of early 1960s liberalism still seemed congenial to a young editor eager to challenge the status quo.

But the emergence of the New Left, with its embrace of Third World revolutionaries and its hostility to American power and the state of Israel’s supremacist ambitions in the Middle East, alienated Podhoretz profoundly. The counterculture of the 1960s, with its sexual revolution and drug experimentation, struck him as decadent and nihilistic. Most critically, the New Left’s anti-Americanism and sympathy for enemies of the West convinced him that the liberal movement had lost its way.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Podhoretz had transformed Commentary into the primary intellectual arsenal of neoconservatism. The magazine became a bastion of anti-Communism, a fierce defender of Western values, and an unrelenting critic of affirmative action, multiculturalism, and what Podhoretz saw as the excesses of the sexual revolution. Under his leadership, the magazine gave voice to a generation of former liberals who felt the Democratic Party had abandoned them for the radical fringe.

Podhoretz’s political evolution traced the rightward migration of the neoconservative movement itself. In the early 1960s, he identified as a liberal Democrat, supporting civil rights legislation and the Great Society programs. But the 1972 nomination of George McGovern by the Democratic Party represented a breaking point. McGovern’s isolationism and perceived anti-Americanism convinced Podhoretz that the Democratic Party had been captured by forces hostile to American—and Israeli—interests.

By 1980, Podhoretz and his fellow neoconservatives threw their support behind Ronald Reagan, seeing in him a leader who would restore American confidence and confront Soviet expansionism. Reagan’s presidency validated the neoconservative worldview, as the Cold War wound down with the Soviet Union in retreat.

Neocons in the media—most notably David Frum, Max Boot, Lawrence F. Kaplan, Jonah Goldberg, and Alan Wald—have often labeled their opponents “anti-Semites.” An early example concerned a 1988 speech given by Russell Kirk at the Heritage Foundation in which he remarked that “not seldom it has seemed as if some eminent neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of United States”—what Sam Francis characterizes as “a wisecrack about the slavishly pro-Israel sympathies among neoconservatives.” Midge Decter, who, as noted, was a prominent neocon writer and wife of Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, labeled the comment “a bloody outrage, a piece of anti-Semitism by Kirk that impugns the loyalty of neoconservatives.” If the shoe fits …

The September 11, 2001 attacks gave Podhoretz a new crusade. He argued that the Cold War had been World War III and that the War on Terror represented World War IV. He became one of the most vocal intellectual supporters of the Iraq War, defending the Bush Doctrine with the same fervor he had once directed against Soviet Communism. In 2004, President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

His support for Barack Obama’s opponents in 2008 and 2012 reflected his view that Obama sympathized with America’s enemies and sought to diminish American power. He famously declared he would “rather be ruled by the Tea Party” than by Obama, a statement that captured his alarm at the direction of American liberalism.

The rise of Donald Trump presented Podhoretz with a dilemma. In the 2016 Republican primaries, he initially backed Marco Rubio. But faced with a choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton, Podhoretz endorsed Trump as the lesser evil. Despite private reservations about Trump’s character and temperament, he publicly defended Trump’s policies, particularly his hawkish stance toward Iran and his unwavering support for Israel. The Times of Israel would later describe him as “the last remaining ‘anti-anti-Trump’ neocon.”

No issue animated Podhoretz more than Israel. He viewed the Jewish state not merely as a refuge for persecuted Jews but claimed that Israel was a frontline defender of Western civilization. He served on the executive committee of Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, using his platform to rally American support for Israeli military action.

Podhoretz harbored deep skepticism about the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, viewing Yitzhak Rabin’s negotiations with Yasser Arafat as dangerously naive. He long believed that Arab hostility toward Israel was existential and could not be appeased through land concessions. He argued that anti Zionism represented merely the latest manifestation of ancient anti-Semitism, prompting him to get into a public feud with conservative gatekeeper William F. Buckley Jr. over the conservative movement’s tolerance of anti-Israel rhetoric.

Podhoretz thrived on intellectual combat and described himself as a provocateur. His 1963 essay, “My Negro Problem—And Ours,” remains one of the most controversial pieces ever published in an American magazine. In brutally honest prose, he confessed to the fear and envy he felt toward black youths while growing up in Brooklyn, challenging the liberal pieties of the Civil Rights movement. He concluded with a radical suggestion that only complete racial amalgamation through intermarriage could solve America’s racial divide. It was never clear if that meant intermarriage with Jews.

On Iran, Podhoretz advocated military action with characteristic bluntness. “If we were to bomb the Iranians as I hope and pray we will,” he stated in a 2007 interview, “we’ll unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we’ve experienced so far look like a love fest.”

Podhoretz’s death arrives at a moment when neoconservatism itself appears embattled. The American public has grown weary of the endless wars that Jewish neoconservatives championed. The Iraq War, which Podhoretz defended to the end, stands as a cautionary tale about the limits of American power and the dangers of ideological hubris. Even support for Israel, long a bipartisan consensus, has frayed, particularly among younger Americans disturbed by Israel’s recent genocidal campaign in Gaza.

Podhoretz’s passing follows the recent deaths of Michael Ledeen and David Horowitz, fellow travelers in the neoconservative movement. Together, these losses mark a generational transition. The intellectual architecture that Podhoretz and his Jewish contemporaries built over decades faces an uncertain future. Populist Republicans show little interest in the democracy promotion and nation-building projects that animated the neoconservative foreign policy consensus.

The movement that Podhoretz helped create now finds itself orphaned, embraced fully by neither political party. His death symbolizes not just the loss of a single thinker but the twilight of an entire worldview that dominated American foreign policy for a generation. Whether neoconservatism will find new champions or fade into historical memory remains an open question, but the era of Podhoretz’s influence has unmistakably ended.

He is survived by his son, John Podhoretz, and his daughters. His legacy endures in the pages of Commentary, in the foreign policy debates that continue to roil American politics, and within the corridors of American Jewish discourse.

Like Michael Ledeen and David Horowitz before him, Podhoretz exits the stage without eliciting mourning from those who bore the consequences of the wars and doctrines he championed. History will record his influence, but it will also reckon with the wreckage left in its wake.

Rating Trump: 14 viewpoints on the right

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Talk radio host James Edwards assembled a special panel of accomplished academics and activists to evaluate President Trump’s first year back in office. The panel included a diverse mix of both American and international respondents. Listed alphabetically, each participant was asked to assign a grade to Trump’s first year on a scale of 1-10 and provide a brief explanation for their rating. 

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Dr. Virginia Abernethy, professor emerita of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University (U.S.): 7/10. I would give a higher rating, but his uneven foreign policy has brought Trump down a bit. I think it was very bad to bomb Iran, and wrong to provide Zelensky with so much rope. By disfavoring Russia, we push Russia and China closer together than they would otherwise be, which is dangerous. China is our most dangerous, possibly impulsive, and aggressive adversary.

Recall that the US and our allies had been promising, for decades, that Ukraine would never join NATO. Then, suddenly, President Biden invited Ukraine to join NATO, and Ukraine appeared delighted to accept. One cannot blame Russia for feeling betrayed by the United States and our allies. In this light, Russia’s attack on Ukraine seems almost reasonable. Also, recall that Ukraine was part of Russia until Krushchev declared its independence sometime, I think, in the 1950s. Trump is trying to settle the mess, but he has not pushed Zelensky hard enough and has allowed too much money and military material to flow Zelensky’s way.

Peter Brimelow, former editor of Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and VDARE (U.S.): 10/10. He gets a 10 because he’s not Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. It really is that simple. The Biden administration was an absolutely catastrophic, incipient communist coup–communist in content but fascist in form because it often worked through private sector entities. It turns out, for example, that it was the federal government that was pressuring banks to force payment processors to drop Dissident Right content creators. (My wife, Lydia, and I mentioned we suspected this in our VDARE swan-song videos). A second Biden/Harris administration would have been worse. Appropriate symbol: the J6 martyrs would still be in jail.

Trump is infuriating in many ways, such as the rhetorical flip-flopping, Zionist whoring, and apparent inability to get Congressional Republicans to actually do anything. But from my immigration-obsessed perspective, he has already triggered a serious exodus — the foreign-born population has fallen by more than 2 million in 10 months. He seems to be hampering legal immigration through regulatory changes (which also occurred during his first term). And he’s surfacing issues that VDARE.com was writing about going back 25 years–Birthright Citizenship, the refugee racket, cultural incompatibility of Third World immigration, etc. It adds up.

Rev. Jim Dowson, pastor of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene (Ireland): 7/10. Trump has revolutionized politics not only in the United States but has shocked Europe out of its slumber. His ICE initiative has given us Brits hope and ended the government’s mantra of “There is nothing we can do about illegals here.” He has also sparked a massive reawakening of British patriotism and the belief that “We ain’t done yet” among our people, which has manifested in the incredible rise of right-wing parties across many European nations.

I think he still has much to do to free America and his own administration from the steel grip of the Zionists and the Israel lobby, but given his position and their strength, I think he is doing as much as he possibly can at present without dodging another assassin’s bullet. It is my earnest prayer that Donald Trump avoids the next election by whatever means, i.e., national emergency powers or martial law, so he can have another four years to crush the woke and the left. May God guide him and defend him in the years ahead, and may God truly bless America. If you fall, we all fall. That’s a fact.

Andrew Fraser, professor emeritus of law at Macquarie University (Australia): 6/10. I live in a small town at the top of the Blue Mountains, about 50 miles from downtown Sydney. The people here are generally Anglo progressives in outlook. So, back in 2016, I received a lot of dirty looks as I walked around proudly wearing a MAGA hat. But Trump’s first term was a bitter disappointment. And, so far, his second term hasn’t been much better. He often talks big about immigration, for example. Unfortunately, he never follows through with a consistent program of legislative and executive action. For example, let’s see a serious campaign to repeal the demographically disastrous 1965 Hart-Celler Act. Or how about penalizing corporations employing illegal aliens in flagrant disobedience of laws already on the books?

Even in that department, it gets worse. Trump’s mind seems to wander all over the map, even on immigration. He criticizes European countries for their immigration policies. But then, he turns around and calls for an infinite H-1B Indians, apparently because there aren’t enough white Americans possessing the stellar skills displayed by folks such as Kash Patel and Vivek Ramaswamy. And what was the point of those up one day, down the next, tariff policies? Still, I give him 6 out of 10 for showmanship.

Paul Fromm, director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression (Canada): 8/10. President Trump has done more for White Americans than any American president since Calvin Coolidge, whose administration passed the strict Immigration Act of 1924, which sought to preserve the racial balance in America. Trump has banned the anti-White DEI in the federal government and its institutional funding. He has closed the border to illegals and has begun the Herculean task of deporting at least the worst of Biden’s invasion of illegals. He has announced at least a temporary end to immigration from utterly incompatible Third World countries. He is currently taking on the criminals, thieves, and grifters in the Somali community.

Sadly, Trump remains a captive of the Israeli lobby. He has permitted Netanyahu to devastate and commit genocide in Gaza. Netanyahu’s assassins shamelessly storm into Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank — sovereign nations — to kill perceived enemies. National boundaries mean nothing to the Israelis, who recently broke the ceasefire in Gaza by killing more civilians.

Brad Griffin, editor of Occidental Dissent (U.S.): 7/10. The Big Beautiful Bill, which delivered tax cuts and border security, passed Congress through budget reconciliation in the summer. World War III with Iran, Russia, and China didn’t happen in 2025. Trump quickly brought the border under control. There have been multiple “Overton Window victories” that have made it easier to talk about racial realities.

Trump succeeded in stopping illegal immigration. The Supreme Court had a good ruling on anti-White discrimination, and major legal battles over the Voting Rights Act and birthright citizenship are pending. We avoided getting sucked into any new wars. These are all good things.

Trump’s second term has been far from perfect, though. He bungled the Epstein files, attacked Iran for Israel, purged Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress in a petty fight, and lacks a solution to economic anxiety and malaise. Mass deportations have also been underwhelming so far. My only regret is being too optimistic in the spring that Trump would break out of the pattern of thermostatic politics in his second term and build a durable governing majority.

Nick Griffin, former Member of the European Parliament (England): 8/10. This score is specifically from a British/European perspective. Big pluses: The significant shift in policy pertaining to Ukraine/Russia, slamming the European Union, protecting American industry, intervening on behalf of the Boers, and bringing humor (intentional and inadvertent) into international affairs.

Minus points: The dithering over Epstein, pushing to steal Venezuela’s oil, and signs of continued subservience to the Zionist lobby all pull the rating down, although he did slap down Netanyahu and block the attempt to exterminate or expel the whole of Gaza.

Ruuben Kaalep, former Member of Parliament (Estonia): 5/10. As a nationalist, I view Trump’s emphasis on the foundations of a strong nation-state: border security, cultural cohesion, and resistance to the dominance of globalist elites, positively. His election gave voice to those who understand that great nations fail not because of external enemies, but because of internal cultural and political decay. Trump challenged entrenched media power, questioned prevailing ideological dogmas, and reaffirmed the principle that the American people – not transnational structures or unaccountable bureaucracies – should decide the fate of their country. Yet a contradiction runs through his presidency: nationalism and imperial habits do not go easily together. Large, centralized power structures tend to weaken rooted, trust-based national communities and favor bureaucratic expansion. A consistent nationalist course would require greater respect for decentralization at home and genuine national self-determination abroad.

On the world stage, Trump entered office with a genuine desire to reduce conflict and pursue peace while limiting direct American military involvement. That instinct is understandable and, in many ways, healthy. However, lasting peace cannot exist without justice, and justice would require containing imperial aggression by great powers against their neighbors. Trump’s record here is mixed. Positively, he challenged European complacency and pressed the European Union to take greater responsibility for its own defense, aligning with a sober understanding of national sovereignty. His efforts in the Middle East also show potential, though it remains uncertain whether they can lead to a durable settlement that respects the national self-determination of both sides. Negatively, occasional rhetoric about territorial expansion or the use of force for adventurist purposes risks undermining his own nationalist logic. His first year has revealed strong instincts, but also strategic inconsistencies that limit their realization.

Jason Kessler, author of Charlottesville and the Death of Free Speech (U.S.): 8/10. Trump’s second term has had so many successes it impossible to list them all: pardoning the J6ers, ending the war in Gaza, reducing border crossings to the lowest levels since the 1970s, shrinking the foreign born population for the first time in generations, advocating for White South Africans, ending affirmative action, possibly ending birthright citizenship, and gutting state funding of leftist patronage networks like USAID.

The criticism boils down to “there aren’t enough deportations,” and Trump isn’t hostile enough to Israel. The first is totally unfair and belies the facts. Trump has about 120 nationwide injunctions against his policies, including immigration, more than every other modern president combined. The Israel issue is totally subjective. I think it is dangerous to attack the central person with power and will to fight the Great Replacement over Israel, when, if they just wait a generation, the support for Israel will collapse on its own.

Dr. Kevin MacDonald, professor emeritus of evolutionary psychology at California State University-Long Beach (U.S.): 7/10. On the good side, Trump has been tough on immigration — shutting down illegal immigration and deporting illegals (2.5 million have left whether via ICE or self-deporting — a good start), shutting down the endless refugee flow but exempting White South Africans, requiring increased vetting of student visa and H-1B visa applicants and attaching a $100,000 fee to admitting H-1B visa holders (now being litigated by 20 blue or purple states). He has condemned the immigration policies of Western Europe as leading to “civilizational erasure.” Europe’s immigration policies have resulted in increasingly authoritarian practices, such as suppressing free speech, aimed at containing public discontent on immigration and multiculturalism (especially in the United Kingdom, which must be the most unhappy country in the world).
Meanwhile, Trump is litigating the birthright citizenship boondoggle at a time with a conservative SCOTUS majority. Additionally, he is making a strong effort to repatriate American manufacturing and jobs, strongly encouraging foreign investment in the United States as an alternative to disastrous free trade policies and massive trade deficits. He is ending DEI policies across the government and pressuring universities and private companies to scale back DEI policies, amid a more positive legal atmosphere created by Trump’s DOJ. He is preventing transgenders from serving in the military and preserving women’s sports from transgender female opportunists. I think he has done the best possible regarding Ukraine, given strong opposition from European countries and Ukraine to any reasonable settlement in the face of non-negotiable but reasonable Russian demands for territories it has conquered (and perhaps the small part of the Donbas it has not conquered), keeping Ukraine out of NATO, and making it a neutral buffer zone country. These are reasonable demands given aggressive NATO expansion and the CIA’s role in toppling the previous pro-Russian government. I believe Zelensky and friends will happily fight to the last Ukrainian and then abscond with their stolen millions.

On the bad side, the Trump administration has cooperated with the Gaza genocide, continued to give Israel weapons used in the genocide, and forced a ceasefire in Gaza that Israel routinely violates with impunity and continues to limit aid severely, cooperated with Israel in bombing Iran, and stands by as Israel continues its aggression and ethnic cleansing on the West Bank. A lot of his pressuring of universities has been motivated by preserving Jewish influence — essentially banning free speech and peaceful protests from pro-Palestinian protesters, those protesting the Gaza genocide, and deporting pro-Palestinian activists. I am also doubtful about Trump’s anti-Venezuelan adventure, apart from it being a naked expression of U.S. power that could easily backfire if the U.S. invades — another foreign war that Trump has often said he is against.

Sheriff Richard Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (U.S.): 9/10. First and foremost, President Trump inherited a horrible mess left behind by a treasonous and corrupt Biden administration. Within the first few months, Trump and his team pulled off some real miracles; they had the border safe and secure with a complete cessation of illegal immigration. Of course, there is a great deal yet to be done, but the first year has been a huge step in the right direction.

Second, the worst thing any government can ever do is put innocent people in prison. Yes, I am referring to the J6 lies and distortions. Due to the lies and dishonesty of many DC corrupt politicians and their bed partners in the media, over 1200 people were arrested by the Federal Government. Some were given extreme sentences for simple trespass. President Trump stood firm and courageously pardoned all the J6 Biden/Pelosi victims.

Amazingly, on September 23, Trump stood before the United Nations and tore them a new one. It was about time that a leader of our country accused the UN of what it genuinely is, corrupt and worthless. Thank you, President Trump!

José Niño, journalist and political analyst (U.S.): 4/10. While his administration has not fully collapsed or descended into chaos, it has failed to deliver on its most consequential America First promises. There has been no immigration moratorium, no move to end birthright citizenship or chain migration, no nationwide E-Verify mandate, and no serious overhaul of the legal immigration system. It is true that border crossings are at historic lows, and the deployment of the National Guard to cities such as Memphis has restored a basic level of order. Yet even the border crackdown largely originated under the late Biden administration as a cynical election-year maneuver, not as part of a bold Trump-led reset.

On foreign policy, Trump has been equally disappointing. While he has avoided launching new prolonged wars, he remains firmly aligned with Israel, even to the point of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities on its behalf. His promise to end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours has gone unfulfilled. Although he has not authorized new aid packages, the United States continues to provide intelligence and targeting support, suggesting a concern with optics rather than a commitment to decisive disengagement. Trump appears unwilling to accept that the Ukraine project has failed, fearing an Afghan or Saigon-style collapse. Likewise, despite his skepticism toward NATO, he has taken no steps toward a complete U.S. withdrawal. Overall, Trump’s first year reflects a presidency that plays it safe, prioritizes image management, and increasingly resembles a conventional Republican administration rather than the transformative America First force voters were promised.

Sascha Roßmüller, journalist and board member of Die Heimat (Germany): 5/10. Given that I would rate the previous Biden presidency with a zero, Trump’s score here is relatively respectable. I appreciate his extraordinary dynamism immediately after taking office, his clear language when naming political opponents or grievances, and his courage to break new ground, for example, in tariff policy, thereby breaking with globalist doctrines. Most importantly, I believe that Trump has increasingly opened the door to discourse on topics that were previously more or less taboo, such as criticism of migration and Antifa crime. Furthermore, I hope that Trump’s involvement will bring an end to the war between Ukraine and Russia.

However, I am very concerned that the excessively Zionist character of the Trump administration is a sign that the Deep State is not being dried up, and that ultimately the key architects of the woke replacement of Western culture are still pulling the strings.

Dr. Tomislav Sunic, former diplomat (Croatia): 9/10. From my neck of the woods in Croatia, and from my childhood in what was once communist Yugoslavia, I am grateful to President Trump for discerning the pathology of the communist mindset and its postmodern, diverse, woke, hybrid, transgender avatars in America — such as non-European mass migrations and the failed multicultural experiment. Such utopian globalist DEI promiscuous dreams, once tested in communist multiethnic Yugoslavia, ended in chaos. President Trump deserves credit for realizing the nightmarish side of such modern-day proto-communist experiments.

Trump and his team — especially Tom Homan and ICE — are doing a fantastic job. Unlike any politician in the Western hemisphere, Trump has been able to reject the fraudulent name-calling used by the Western media and leftist academics; their arsenal of shut-up words like “fascists,” “Nazis,” and “white supremacists” no longer sounds credible.

In order not to sound too laudatory, I would advise him not to try to be less generous to the state of Israel. If MAGA means America First, billions of dollars sent to Israel (and other countries) should instead be spent on impoverished, jobless, and ailing Americans.

Recap: This panel consisted of 14 contributors: 7 from the United States and 7 living abroad. The American contributors rated Trump’s performance in 2025 at 7.4/10, while the European, Canadian, and Australian contributors rated his performance at 6.8/10. The overall combined average score for Trump’s first year back in office was thus assessed at 7.1/10.

This article was originally published by American Free Press – America’s last real newspaper! Click here to subscribe today or call 1-888-699-NEWS.

When not interviewing newsmakers, James Edwards has often found himself in the spotlight as a commentator, including many national television appearances. Over the past 20 years, his radio work has been featured in hundreds of newspapers and magazines worldwide. Media Matters has listed Edwards as a “right-wing media fixture” responsible for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton personally named him as an “extremist” who would shape our country.

Overlooked No More: Inclusive Bullies!

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Man Bites Dog: NYT’s Rules for Covering Crime

The New York Times must have thought it had died and gone to heaven when it discovered a group of violent high school bullies — and they weren’t all black! Members of Arizona’s “Gilbert’s Goons” were not only multiracial — white, Hispanic and black — but they victimized one student who appears to be half-black. The featured victim, Tristan, who was regularly wailed on by the Goons, is at least a “person of color,” judging by the multiple photos of him that ran with the article.

Meanwhile, white kids at majority black high schools are subjected to daily beat-downs; internet videos regularly show black teenagers sadistically torturing their white classmates — never the other way around; and “the community” responds by saying the white victims had it coming.

The Department of Justice’s aggregate statistics are troubling but indisputable. From 2008 to 2021, per capita data show that blacks commit violence against whites 25 to 30 times more often than the reverse. In raw numbers, blacks assault whites 6.4 times more often than whites commit violence against blacks.

Thus, for example:

— Just last week at North Atlanta High School, a black student attacked a white special needs kid with scissors, repeatedly stabbing him in the eye. As he walked away, the assailant hissed, “white bitch.” This suggests, at least to me, a racial dimension to the attack. The special needs kid never even fought back.

— In June, a black girl at a Cape Cod high school slapped around a 15-year-old white girl, dragged her by the hair and forced her to lick the bathroom floor. An accomplice filmed the whole thing and posted it on Snapchat, naturally.

— In April, a white student, Austin Metcalf, was stabbed to death by Karmelo Anthony, a black competitor at a track meet in Frisco, Texas. The assailant’s family raised half a million dollars on GiveSendGo — for “legal expenses.” The victim’s family raised half that sum — for funeral expenses.

But the Times didn’t mention any of these attacks.

So you can imagine my surprise when that same paper gave a whole magazine cover story — 6,400 words! — to some school toughs in Arizona. These used to be called “man bites dog” stories. Now we call them “white kid bullies black kid” stories.

Reporter: I have a story about high school bullies who killed a kid.

New York Times: Ho-hum.

Reporter: The perps aren’t black.

New York Times: I’m listening.

Reporter: One of their victims is dusky.

New York Times: DROP EVERYTHING! KILL WHATEVER YOU PLANNED FOR THE SUNDAY MAGAZINE AND SPLASH THIS STORY ACROSS THE COVER.

It’s not obvious why the Arizona story was more Times-worthy than the one about the student athlete fatally stabbed in Texas, or the disabled kid whose eye was gouged out last week.

Nor is it apparent why the featured victim in the Times story was a person of color. The same gang killed another kid. But he was white.

Doesn’t it ever get tiring being so predictable, New York Times?

What is the point of enforcing a total embargo on stories about the epidemic of black-on-white violence — as is evident in the crime statistics — while billboarding a one-off story about a multiracial gang that beats up multiracial victims?

To fool their readers? But what if they ever accidentally encounter the real world?

I couldn’t help wondering a couple weeks ago if an elderly Queens couple, Frank and Maureen Olton, were Times readers. Perplexingly, they admitted a complete stranger, a 42-year-old black man, Jamel McGriff, to their home, allegedly to borrow their phone charger. He proceeded to tie up the couple, torture them for five hours, then murder them and set their house on fire.

McGriff had tried the phone charger ploy on others, but no one else fell for it. (The neighbors were probably Daily Mail readers.)

Or maybe the Times is simply determined to keep fanning the flames of black resentment. The paper’s lusty promotion of BLM fantasies in 2020, liberating black criminals from having to listen to the police, got thousands additional blacks killed — more excess deaths than any other ethnic group.

The Times has been a real friend to black people, except for everything the paper has ever said or done.

COPYRIGHT 2025 ANN COULTER

The Evidence is Clear: Poverty Does Not Cause Criminality

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We all know why certain areas have high crime rates, right? It’s because the people who live there are poor and they’re either forced to commit crime to make ends mean or their poverty makes them so unhappy that they start taking drugs and this induces them to commit crime. Alternatively, being poor causes a kind of psychological strain which makes such people angry and resentful and, hence, more likely to be criminals. If you ask, “What has made them impoverished in the first place?” then the answer is that “It’s bad luck.”

Even though twin studies have shown that the genetic component for criminality is about 50%, the key personality traits that predict criminality – low impulse control, low empathy and altruism, high mental instability – are around 50% genetic, and even though the other key predictor, low intelligence, is around 80% genetic, falling into criminality is, essentially, a matter of bad luck. Even though some people, raised in the same environment as a criminal is raised do not fall into criminality, it’s just bad luck, okay? All you have to do to get rid of criminality is to get rid of poverty . . . so runs the leftist argument. Well, there’s great news for all of us. A study in Sweden has finally put this argument to the test.

The study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, is entitled “Does Wealth Inhibit Criminal Behavior? Evidence from Swedish Lottery Winners and Their Children.” The players used information on the winners of four Swedish national lotteries and matched them to data on criminal convictions and child delinquency among the offspring of lottery winners in order to discern what effect, if any, an increase in wealth had. This is a particularly useful sample because poorer people are more likely to gamble via mechanisms such as the National Lottery.

You say, “That’s because they have nothing to lose” (they can lose their stake) or “That’s because they’re desperate.” However, according to the study “The relationship of pathological gambling to criminality behavior in a sample of Polish male offenders,” gambling is associated with psychopathy – poor impulse control, the need for immediate thrills – which is, in turn, associated with poverty. Further, the study “Estimated verbal IQ and the odds of problem gambling,” finds that gambling is associated with low intelligence, which also predicts poverty. Low IQ people cannot comprehend how unlikely it is that they will ever win. They also tend to “live in the now;” enjoying the thrill in the moment.

The authors had access to a national database which included all criminal convictions on those aged 15 or over between years 1975 and 2017. Each Swede has a unique identity number and this could be matched to the identity number that appeared in the lottery data. The result is a large and highly representative national sample. Their definition of juvenile delinquency was whether a child accrued a criminal conviction within 10 years of the lottery event or within 10 years of turning 15. For adults, they focused on whether there was a criminal conviction up to 7 years after the lottery event.

All this being so, what do they find? Fascinatingly, they find that winning the lottery actually very slightly increases the likelihood that a person will obtain a criminal conviction, although this misses statistical significance. They certainly did not find that winning the lottery reduces the likelihood that you will receive a criminal conviction. Put simply, if you give someone money, it will have no impact whatsoever on whether they will commit a crime. Similarly, parental wealth, obtained via a lottery win, has zero impact on delinquency among their children.

This finding, interestingly, is consistent with evidence presented in Gregory Clark’s book A Farewell to Alms, that sudden increases in wealth in a family, such as winning the lottery, wash out within a few generations. He observes that across many generations the heritability of socioeconomic status (SES) is about 0.75 if not higher. The reason is that SES is predicted by personality and intelligence, these traits are strongly genetic, people marry assortatively for these highly genetic traits in order to maximise the extent to which their genes are passed on and, so, social classes are, to some extent, genetic castes. If a low-IQ person wins the lottery, he is likely to make very poor decisions with that money, as are children, meaning that his family will return to their original status within a few generations.

The Swedish study completely refutes the idea that poverty causes crime. If you give people a large amount of money it has absolutely zero impact on whether or not they will receive a criminal conviction. The obvious explanation is that such a big part of criminal behaviour is genetic. A lottery win may possibly make a person less likely to steal or embezzle, though even that is open to question, but will make them no less criminal in any other respect. Moreover, there are very poor people who do not steal or embezzle, which raises the question of why some very poor people do.

Thanks to this study, we can now put to bed the idea that poverty causes crime. It does not. There are certain strongly genetic psychological traits which cause, independently, both criminality and poverty.

Europa alterizada: hotéis de luxo para os invasores

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James Orr é professor associado de Filosofia da Religião na Universidade de Cambridge. Ele preside a Fundação Edmund Burke da Inglaterra, entidade de defesa dos princípios do nacional-conservadorismo nos países ocidentais eou democráticos.

Ele foi nomeado, recentemente, presidente da comissão consultiva de um novo grupo de reflexão em pró do reformismo britânico, o Centre for a Better Britain. Ele avalia que o Reform UK seja a única força política britânica com chance real de sucesso que “ainda acredita na nação”. Nosso companho Zoltán Kottász encontrou-se com James Orr na cidade húngara de Esztergom, durante a MCC Feszt de 2025.

 

Numa recente entrevista dada à BBC, Vossia declarou que o Centre for a Better Britain movia-se “pelo impulso da ambiência do pós-Brexit, favorável à nação, à soberania, à Inglaterra“. Isso significa que os recentes governos britânicos não se moviam pelo impulso dessas mesmas causas?

Prof. James Orr: há no seio do Partido Conservador grupo que adora posar como os “One Nation Tories“ (conservadores de uma só nação), uma evocação de Disraeli e seu Sybil. Mas eles não são conservadores de uma só nação; são, isto sim, conservadores sem nenhuma nação (e noção). Esse grupo não acredita mais na nação; eles acreditam nas estruturas supranacionais às quais querem subordinar nossa soberania.

O Partido Trabalhista, uma das lâminas da tesoura que arruinou a Inglaterra durante 25 anos, consta de uma clientela repartida em três classes: a classe formada pelo setor público, fiel ao erário; a classe do assim chamado “rainbow people”, ou seja, os hiperliberais progressistas da libido, que preconizam a política identitária das minorias; e há a classe do “Crescente”, o islamismo político, sempre mais ousado, que rejeita totalmente a soberania do Estado-nação. Nenhuma dessas classes é fiel à Inglaterra enquanto nação.

A razão de não ser possível salvar a Inglaterra sob o poder desse duopólio é que eles não reconhecem a Inglaterra, eles não amam a Inglaterra, eles renegam a Inglaterra, renegam a herança inglesa, a história inglesa, o povo inglês. O Reform UK, em contrapartida, resta como a única força política com chance de sucesso que ainda acredita na nação.

 

O que foi que aconteceu com os partidos conservadores tradicionais como os tories na Inglaterra e o CDU na Alemanha?

Prof. James Orr: a mim me parece que os partidos conservadores não sejam sempre capazes de mudar radicalmente sua visão e sua política, quando a realidade muda. No entanto, ao longo dos últimos 25 anos, deparamos desafios sem precedentes: o suicídio do saldo líquido zero de emissões, a loucura das políticas de energia, a imigração massiva fora de controle, a desintegração social e cultural. Os tories tentam recuperar sua credibilidade ante suas próprias elites. Eles se preocupam mais com sua boa recepção num elegante jantar de liberais no norte de Londres do que com serem aclamados num botequim em Wolverhampton.

Por isso é que alguém como Nigel Farage goza de tão boa reputação pública. Ele fica à vontade entre as pessoas comuns. Faz um ano, vivi momento maravilhoso numa importante partida de futebol disputada pela seleção inglesa. Keir Starmer não queria ser visto torcendo pela Inglaterra. Achava que isso não seria comportamento adequado para um primeiro-ministro britânico. Então, alguém da comitiva lhe disse para “pelo menos vestir camisa branca”. O conselho foi acatado ― a contragosto.

Essa imagem de homem “que não é gente nossa” importa muito na visão dos eleitores. Não se trata apenas de questão de imagem publicitária. Quando Nigel Farage veste a camisa da Inglaterra num botequim, em meio a dezenas de torcedores, todos sorrindo de orelha a orelha, isso faz ver que ele está em seu lugar.

Atualmente, há muita vitalidade intelectual à direita. Do lado esquerdo, porém, não há nenhuma energia intelectual. Desesperada, a esquerda lança mão dos recursos de que ainda dispõe em termos de influência, de poder estatal e midiático, tentando sustentar projeto fadado ao fracasso, que já afunda. Isso lembra a União Soviética dos anos oitentas, quando a troika tinha perdido contato com a realidade.

 

Outro incidente envolvendo Keir Starmer ocorreu quando ele retirou a papoula, símbolo da rendição alemã na I Guerra, do seu paletó, antes de discursar sobre o mês de conscientização da islamofobia. Na ocasião, por sua vez, os dirigentes alemães declararam que o islã era parte da Alemanha. Que mensagem tudo isso passa?

Prof. James Orr: os dirigentes alemães só podem pensar o islã como constitutivo da Alemanha, porque já não têm a mínima noção do que seja a identidade nacional alemã. Evidentemente, a rápida islamização da Alemanha está correta em termos de descrição demográfica. De fato, a Alemanha está em via de se tornar, em razão dessa islamização, um dos países mais antissemitas do mundo e certamente o mais antissemita da Europa. Uma ideologia fundada no projeto de apagar e inverter tudo o que foi a Alemanha nos anos trintas resultou exatamente nessa transformação.

Como pensa que seria um governo dirigido por Nigel Farage?

Prof. James Orr: primeiramente, ele acabaria com a catástrofe econômica do saldo líquido zero. Só isso já elevaria enormemente a produtividade do país.

Depois, ele atacaria o problema da imigração: sairia do Tribunal Europeu do Direitos Humanos, deixaria Strasbourg, escapando à jurisdição de tribunal estrangeiro. O Brexit tinha por objetivo resgatar nossa soberania, particularmente sobre nossas fronteiras.

No entanto, continuamos sob a jurisdição de um tribunal forâneo, que determina quem podemos ou não podemos acolher em nosso país, quem podemos ou não podemos expulsar, e por que razão. Um absurdo! Nós firmamos numerosos tratados que agora devemos denunciar. Nós devemos restaurar a soberania parlamentar: o Parlamento deve retomar o controle, e a Corte suprema deve ser dissolvida.

Em matéria de tributação e empresarismo, a Inglaterra é um dos países mais pesadamente tributados do mundo desenvolvido. Criar uma empresa custa caro e envolve muita complicação. O partido Reform UK deve, portanto, revisar profundamente a estrutura fiscal e a situação dos incentivos fiscais.

O governo atual não faz outra coisa senão deteriorar a condição do país. Isso reforçará o apoio ao Reform UK. E sempre que os tories se insinuarem novamente, todo o mundo vai se lembrar dos catorze anos do seu governo desastroso, o que também fortalecerá o Reform UK. Eu tenho certeza que, daqui até 2029, o Reform UK estará em condições de conseguir uma maioria eleitoral esmagadora.

 

O Reform UK não é o único partido nacional-conservador em plena ascensão na Europa: há o Rassemblement National, de Marine Le Pen, na França, como também, por exemplo, o Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) na Alemanha. Essas forças políticas estão na iminência de se tornarem dominantes?

Prof. James Orr: desde as ondas migratórias de 2013 a 2015, o empoderecimento dos partidos soberanistas e nacionalistas tem sido extraordinário. A única resistência que deparam é a do aparelho do Estado, da guerra jurídica, da espionagem, da demonização midiática. Apesar disso tudo, tem havido sucessos eleitorais incríveis, estando os eleitores cada vez mais frustrados com a quase nula influência de seu voto, que não tem correspondido à nenhuma responsabilidade democrática.

Ainda assim ou por isso mesmo, partidos como o Vox na Espanha, o Chega em Portugal, a Liga e o Irmãos da Itália, o AfD, o Rassemblement National, o Vlaams Belang [Interesse Flamengo] na Bélgica, Geert Wilders na Holanda, o Fidesz na Hungria ― todos estão ganhando terreno. O Reform UK representa essa mesma tendência. Eu penso que o futuro pertence à direita em toda a Europa. O caminho, porém, será doloroso. Haverá casos chocantes de tentativas de exclusão de políticos populares. Haverá declarações de inconstitucionalidade contra partidos ― como já sofre o AfD. Haverá ativismo judiciário ― como já sofre [a primeira-ministra italiana], [Giorgia] Meloni, desde que tentou mudar a política migratória, conforme prometera aos eleitores que, por isso mesmo, a elegeriam. Acredito que a direita acabará por se impor, que veremos uma virada radical para a direita nos próximos cinco ou dez anos.

 

A migração é um dos principais temas abordados pelo Reform. O que os eleitores pensam dessa questão?

Prof. James Orr: a migração é hoje, e de longe, a questão mais importante para os eleitores britânicos. E se considerarmos as outras questões relacionadas a ela, veremos que todas são agravadas pela imigração massiva. É o caso, por exemplo, da saúde, da educação, da habitação. Nós importamos milhões de pessoas, mas poucas passam a trabalhar no sistema público de saúde, ao contrário do que sempre alegam os liberais para “justificar” a imigração massiva e descontrolada. Por outro lado, ― que “surpresa”! ― os migrantes também ficam doentes. Na verdade, os seus problemas de saúde costumam ser mais complexos que os dos etnobritânicos.

Quanto à educação, há vastas áreas em Londres onde as crianças nativas não podem estudar, porque lá, simplesmente, o inglês não é mais falado. Nesses lugares, em havendo crianças etnobritânicas, elas aprendem a detestar o seu país, a odiar sua herança cultural e a ter vergonha de tudo quanto os seus pais admiravam no passado.

Todo o país fica angustiado com a imigração. O Times começou a publicar os números desproporcionais sobre as agressões sexuais cometidas por estrangeiros, por migrantes. As estatísticas são, absolutamente, assombrosas. E, depois, há as gangues de proxenetas, há os estupros coletivos de meninas inglesas por violadores estrangeiros vindos de culturas moralmente atrasadas. Durante décadas, recebemos e hospedamos esses agressores e bandidos.

Os ingleses estão furiosos. A raiva nessa situação não vem da direita ou da esquerda. Vem de uma reação humana. O partido da reforma é a única força política que já se mostrou disposto a agir seriamente contra tudo isso.

 

A longo prazo, qual é o efeito da imigração na sociedade?

Prof. James Orr: a imigração nos impede de utilizar o pronome da primeira pessoa do plural. Fica impossível dizer “Nós, o povo”. Eu não tenho nada em comum com os violadores de Oxford, de Totherham, de Telford. Eu não quero nada com eles. Eu quero que eles sumam deste país o mais rápido possível. Eles não são ingleses, eles não são britânicos, eles não têm nenhum direito de pertencer à nossa família nacional. E, no entanto, os liberais me obrigam a fingir que eles sejam tão britânicos quanto eu. Não, quando pronuncio a palavra “Nós”, eu não penso nesse tipo de gente. Tampouco penso nas centenas de migrantes que todo dia desembarcam nas praias de Dôver e que, como por magia, conseguem passaporte daí a cinco ou dez anos. Esse tipo de empatia que nos forçam a sentir por todos os povos, exceto o nosso próprio povo, é tóxico, é antinatural. Eis aí um modo de pensar totalmente estranho para nós. Nenhuma civilização jamais convidou invasores, nunca os hospedou em hotéis de luxo e lhes deu todo o dinheiro que poderiam desejar.

 

E qual efeito terá a outra crise ― a guerra, na Europa?

Prof. James Orr: Vossoria se refere ao conflito eslávico entre a Rússia e a Ucrânia?

 

Vossia não pensa que se trate de uma guerra?

Prof. James Orr: eu não chamaria aquilo de “a” guerra. Antes se trata de um conflito que se desenvolve no mundo e que não me interessa muito.

 

Não obstante, aquele é conflito que se desenvolve bem perto de nossas fronteiras. Não passamos por nada disso desde a Iugoslávia dos anos noventas. Isso leva as nações da Europa à corrida das armas.

Prof. James Orr: se a Inglaterra estivesse em melhor situação, talvez os políticos pudessem se preocupar mais com Kieve do que com Kent. Por enquanto, eu me preocupo com Kent. Nós não somos nem capazes de proteger Kent contra os invasores ilegais ― por que, então, deveríamos nos preocupar com Kieve? Vamos primeiro resolver os problemas de Kent e, depois, poderíamos tratar de Kieve.

Ninguém duvida que [o presidente russo] Putin seja perigoso, malevolente, mas ele não é louco. Putin não é irracional. Nós achamos que ele seja Hitler, que a Ucrânia seja a Polônia e Kieve seja Varsóvia e nós aderimos, então, à teoria do dominó. Esta teoria reza que, depois de tomar a Ucrânia, ele atacará os países bálticos e, a seguir, atacará a Polônia. Essas premissas levam à conclusão de que deveríamos partir para o rearmamento. A meu ver, tudo isso é, simplesmente, uma loucura. Putin não cometeria a insanidade de ignorar o artigo 5.o e partir para a guerra contra a Otan.

Há toda sorte de razões pelas quais a Rússia tem os olhos postos sobre a Ucrânia. A expansão contínua da Otan desde 1991 foi provocação. A Otan é aliança militar que só passou a existir por uma razão: defender a Europa ocidental contra o Pacto de Varsóvia. O Pacto de Varsóvia se dissolveu, mas não a Otan. E quando a Rússia deu lembrança disso ao Ocidente, James Baker respondeu, em 1991, que a Otan não se deslocaria “nem um dedo” para leste. Apesar da bonita promessa, sabemos que os anos noventas testemunharam avanço da Otan na direção oriental de bem mais do que “um dedo”. E a expansão otaniana continua.

Isso não justifica as ações de Putin. Por outro lado, está ficando claro não ser verossímil que a invasão da Ucrânia prenuncie a invasão do restante da Europa. Não por essa bobagem, pois, deveríamos todos nos unir para a “guerra“.

Considero como dever mais fundamental de qualquer país o ser capaz de autodefesa. Não importa se liberal, marxista ou de extrema direita, o contrato social tem na segurança o seu elemento primacial. Ocorre, porém, que nós investimos muito pouco em defesa. Agora, depois de oitenta anos, os Estados Unidos fazem bem ao advertirem a Europa de que deve crescer e voar pelas próprias asas. Já é hora de começar a ganhar algum dinheiro e conquistar certa independência. O conflito entre a Rússia e a Ucrânia teve o efeito positivo de fazer ver à Europa que não pode mais seguir contando sempre com o tio Sam.

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Fonte: Breizh-info | Autoria: James Orr | Título original: Professeur James Orr: “Aucune civilisation n’a jamais invité des envahisseurs et les a logés dans des hôtels quatre étoiles”. | Data de publicação: 17 de agosto de 2025 | Versão brasilesa: Chauke Stephan Filho.