Villains of Judea: Ronald Lauder and his War on American Dissent

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Villains of Judea: Ronald Lauder and his War on American Dissent

For Lauder, Israel always comes first.

World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder likes to present himself as a civic minded elder statesman, a sober billionaire warning America about a rising tide of antisemitism.

At the Israel Hayom Summit on December 2, 2025, he framed the moment as a crisis of the West itself, calling it “a full-scale assault on truth, on democracy, and on the safety of Jewish people everywhere,” and insisting, “This is not normal. And it is not ‘just criticism of Israel.’ It is the world’s oldest hatred, once again wearing political clothing.”

Lauder was referring to the rise of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment worldwide in the wake of Israel’s 2-year bombing campaign in Gaza.

Then he sharpened the spear and aimed it at domestic enemies like Tucker Carlson, who has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel in the post-October 7 reality we live in. He told the audience, “Tucker Carlson is the Father Coughlin of our generation.” In the same speech he warned that complacency is over, because “antisemitism is rampant throughout our culture,” and he demanded a political and institutional counteroffensive.

That is the Lauder formula in its purest form. He wraps a totalizing political program in the language of safety and moral emergency, then treats America’s public life as territory to be reorganized around his crusade. The target is never merely hatred. The target is dissent, drift, and disobedience from the priorities he has chosen, priorities that consistently put Israel first.

Lauder did not arrive at this posture late in life. He was born into power in New York City in 1944, the heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, raised in elite institutions, and trained for international influence through business and foreign policy study. He entered the family company early, then moved into government in the Reagan era, where he served at the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy.

Ronald Reagan then tapped him as U.S. ambassador to Austria in 1986. In Vienna, he did not behave like a neutral American emissary. He turned his diplomatic post into a stage for historical confrontation and political signaling. Lauder refused to attend the inauguration of Austria’s president Kurt Waldheim amid allegations of him being involved in or being aware of National Socialist atrocities in the Balkans during his service as a German army lieutenant in World War II. He also fired U.S. diplomat Felix Bloch for engaging in suspected espionage activities.

After government service, Lauder tried to convert his vast wealth into formal power at home. In 1989, he ran for mayor of New York City as a Republican, where he spent big bucks to get his name out and campaign to the right of Rudy Giuliani, only to lose the primary. Even in defeat, the pattern held. He treated politics as an arena where money does all the talking, and he kept looking for levers that could bend public life to his will.

He found one in term limits. During the 1990s he poured resources into imposing term limits on New York City officials, selling it as a democratic reform and a check on machine party politics. Yet in 2008, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg wanted a third term, Lauder reversed course and supported extending those limits, a turn that mainstream critics interpreted as a billionaire bargain dressed up as civic necessity. However, from the perspective of long-time observers of Jewish behavior, Lauder’s support for Bloomberg reflects a pattern of co-ethnic solidarity among Jewish power brokers.

While Lauder played these games in New York, his real career was consolidating leadership in the organized Jewish political world. Notably, Lauder was a member of the Mega Group—a mysterious network of Jewish oligarchs that worked behind the scenes to advance Jewish interests and strengthen pro-Israel bonds among Jews in America. Leslie Wexner, founder of The Limited and Victoria’s Secret, and the late Jewish sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein were among the most prominent members of this Jewish consortium. By 2007, Lauder had become president of the World Jewish Congress, a position that turned him into a roaming power broker who meets heads of state and treats international politics as a permanent lobbying campaign.

From that perch, he repeatedly framed Western security architecture as a vehicle for Israeli priorities. In 2011, he publicly argued that Israel should be admitted into NATO, insisting, “Israel needs real guarantees for its security,” and pressing NATO states to bring Israel into the alliance.

In 2012, he attacked European pressure campaigns on Israel with maximalist rhetoric. When Irish officials floated an EU ban on goods from Israeli communities in the West Bank, Lauder called boycott talk “cynical and hypocritical,” and declared, “Minister Gilmore is taking aim at the only liberal democracy in the Middle East while keeping quiet about those who really wreak havoc in the region: the Assads, Ahmadinejads and their allies Hezbollah and Hamas.” He added that the West Bank was “legally disputed and not illegally occupied.”

He carried the same posture with respect to Iran — enemy #1 for world Jewry at the moment. In 2013, as Western diplomats negotiated with Tehran, he mocked their perceived softness and conjured Munich analogies, warning, “Just as the West gave up Czechoslovakia to Hitler in Munich in 1938, we see what is happening again and the world is silent,” and boasting, “Frankly, only France stands between us and a nuclear Iran.” In 2015, he escalated again, attacking the nuclear deal with a moral curse, saying, “The road to hell is often paved with good intentions,” and arguing that the agreement could revive Iran economically without stopping long term nuclear ambitions.

The story kept darkening as his proximity to Israeli power deepened. In 2016, Israeli police questioned Lauder in connection with “Case 1000,” the Netanyahu gifts affair. Reports said investigators sought his testimony because of his closeness to Netanyahu and the broader allegations involving luxury gifts and favors. Lauder was not charged, but the episode revealed how near he operated to Israel’s governing circle, not as an outside friend, but as part of the broader, transnational Jewish network.

By 2023, he openly wielded donor money as a disciplinary weapon in American institutions. After the October 7 attacks and campus controversies, he warned the University of Pennsylvania that, “You are forcing me to reexamine my financial support absent satisfactory measures to address antisemitism.” The message was simple. If a prestigious American university fails to police speech and activism the way he demands, he will squeeze it financially until it complies.

In 2025, Lauder continued supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza. He categorically rejected the idea that Israel bears any responsibility for ending the conflict, insisting, “The truth is simple: the war could end tomorrow if Hamas were to release the remaining hostages and disarm.” On education and propaganda, he stopped pretending the solution is persuasion alone. At the World Jewish Congress gala in November 2025, he argued that the education pipeline must be rebuilt from the ground up, declaring, “The entire education system — K-12 to college — must be retaught,” and adding, “It’s time we fight back with stronger PR to tell the truth.”

He also made the threat explicit. In a widely shared clip, he vowed, “Any candidate running for a seat… whose platform includes antisemitism, we will target them as they target us.”

Like most of the Israel First set, Lauder was ecstatic about the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria in late 2024. In September 2025, he met former al-Qaeda terrorist-turned Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly and afterward said, “We had a very positive discussion about normalization between Israel and Syria.” Lauder seems to think he has political power in Israel.

Seen in order, the picture is not complicated. Lauder builds influence through money, embeds himself in elite institutions, and uses both to steer policy and culture toward a relentless Zionist agenda. He does not talk like a man defending American sovereignty. He talks like an agent of world Jewry who expects America’s parties, schools, media, and alliances to function as enforcement arms for a foreign cause.

That is why his December 2025 sermon about antisemitism matters. It is not only a warning. It is a blueprint. When Lauder says “If we don’t tell our own story, others will rewrite it,” he is not describing a cultural debate. He is declaring ownership over the narrative, and claiming the right to punish anyone in American life who refuses to repeat it.

In the end, Ronald Lauder emerges not as a guardian of American civic life but as a disciplined enforcer of a foreign political creed, using wealth, intimidation, and moral blackmail to bend institutions to his will. What he calls a fight against hatred looks increasingly like a campaign to subordinate American sovereignty, speech, and policy to the imperatives of Israel and the transnational Jewish clique that sustains it.

Bondi Beach Bloodbath: How Jews Are Exploiting What Their Own Activism Created

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Australia and Britain are on opposite sides of the globe. But mind annihilates distance and the mind of a leading Irish ethicist has recently pondered events in these two widely separated countries. Yes, the Trotskyist libertarian Brendan O’Neill has raised two very interesting questions about two pairs of energetic Muslims, one pair in Australia, the other in Britain. Alas, I can’t say Brendan has supplied good answers, so I’ll try to do so for him. Anyway, let’s review his questions. After a pair of Muslims slaughtered Jews on Bondi Beach,[1] Brendan asked: “Is nowhere safe from the pox of Jew hate?” And after another pair of Muslims raped a White girl in Leamington Spa, Brendan asked: “Why were these Afghan rapists even in Britain?”

The Jewish recipe for societal bliss

The questions are very easy to answer, but Brendan declined do so. Here’s the answer to the first: Yes, there are many places safe from the pox of Jew hate. There’s Hungary, for example. That’s the birthplace of Brendan’s guru, the Jewish sociologist Frank Furedi. Jews don’t get massacred there for a very simple reason. It’s because Hungary has never followed the Jewish recipe for societal bliss. Jews don’t like living as an obvious minority in homogeneous White nations, because they fear that Whites will turn on them for absolutely no reason, as Whites have so often in the past. Accordingly, Jews throughout the West have worked hard for non-White immigration, especially by Muslims. Jews have long seen Muslim immigration as “Good for Jews.” And what other consideration matters? In Britain, the Jew Dr Richard Stone has said “Muslims and Jews are natural allies.” In Holland, the Jew Arnon Grunberg has said “Joden en moslims […] zijn natuurlijke bondgenoten,” which means the same. In Australia, Jews led the campaign to dismantle the “White Australia” policy that prevented immigration by Muslims and other non-Whites (see also Brenton Sanderson’s 5-part series on the Jewish campaign to end the White Australia policy) . In America, Jews like Emmanuel Celler exploited the ethnic resentments of the Irish Catholic Teddy Kennedy, who fronted the campaign to open America’s borders to Third-World enrichment.

Some of the Jews who worked to end the White Australia policy

In Britain, Irish Catholics like Brendan O’Neill have been exploited by the Jew Frank Furedi in the same way. When they operated as the Revolutionary Communist Party, Frank and his resentment-filled, revenge-hungry disciples demanded “an end to all controls on immigration.” In 2015, under the no-nonsense title of “Let Them In,” Brendan issued a moving plea on behalf of energetic Muslims aspiring to enter Europe:

We shouldn’t demonise or infantilise African migrants. We should welcome them. […] We shouldn’t pity these migrants; we should admire them, for using guile, gumption and perseverance to come here. They’re precisely the kind of people sluggish Europe needs more of, an antidote to our students who can’t even clap without having a mental breakdown and our new generation who think that being told to ‘get on your bike’ to look for a job is tantamount to abuse. Let’s relax the borders and let them in to try their luck in our countries and see how they fare. If we do that, we’ll put the traffickers out of business, end the deaths in the Mediterranean, and, more importantly, do our part to enable the aspirations of human beings who have committed no crime other than wanting to realise their potential in our towns, our cities, alongside us. (“Let Them In,” Spiked Online, 21st April 2015)

That was ten years ago. In 2025 Brendan has seen — but not admitted — the error of his ways. Where once he waxed lyrical in support of open borders for sluggish Europe, he now lists that very support among the three worst examples of the “cranky shite” urged upon sane folk by the woke left: “transwomen are women, open the borders, Israel is bad.” You see, Brendan has belatedly realized that some unsluggish and guileful migrants have “aspirations” to be “fascist filth.” That, at least, is how Brendan described Sajid and Naveed Akram, the Muslim father and son who massacred Jews at Bondi Beach. I think that his description is both ideologically inaccurate and ethically inane. Calling one’s ideological opponents “filth” might be fun for the woke left and other self-righteous adolescents, but it’s not a label I expect to see used by ethically serious adults. A label like that justifies stripping people of their rights and torturing or murdering them (à la Frank and Brendan’s hero Leon Trotsky, in fact). Perhaps Brendan should have a word with himself, because he piped a very different tune in another of his articles:

One Afghan human being is worth more than a million Afghan dogs

There have been many disturbing things about the manner in which American and NATO forces have withdrawn from Afghanistan. It has been chaotic and bloody. The US has left a vast cache of weapons and humvees and helicopters for the Taliban to claim. But for me, one of the most disturbing things has been the British media elite’s warped focus on Afghan pets, on getting animals out of Afghanistan. I have always felt a little perplexed by British people’s soppy relationship with beasts; nothing reminds me of my foreignness more than seeing full-grown British adults cooing over their cats or snogging their dogs. And yet even I have been shocked by the undue emphasis — scrap that: the immoral emphasis — that the British media have given to Afghanistan’s four-legged creatures. It is a disgraceful failure of humanity to fret about animals when so many human beings are in mortal danger. […]

To my mind, every human life is almost immeasurably valuable, for the sentience and consciousness and promise that it embodies. One human life is worth a million animal lives. If saving just one Afghan person’s life might somehow have entailed condemning every dog in that country to destitution or death, I would not hesitate to do it. Until we rediscover what is different and important about humanity, we will be forced to inhabit the cesspit of moral relativism in which 150 cats and dogs tug at our heartstrings more than the cries of our desperate and scared human allies. (“One Afghan human being is worth more than a million Afghan dogs,” Spiked Online, 31st August 2021)

It’s interesting that Brendan regards himself as “foreign” to Britain but still feels entitled to lecture the British on how to conduct their affairs. As folksy Brendan himself might comment: Arrogant, much? It’s also interesting that Brendan thinks that “every human life is almost immeasurably valuable.” But what about the lives of “fascist filth,” Brendan? Did you ever stop to consider whether those “scared and desperate” Afghans might hold “fascist” views on Jews, women and homosexuals? Apparently not.

The “fascist filth” and Afghan rapists whose lives are “almost immeasurably valuable” to the mind of Brendan O’Neill

Anyway, Brendan’s article waxing lyrical in support of Afghans supplies the simple answer to his second question: “Why were these Afghan rapists even in Britain?” It’s because of leftists like Brendan O’Neill, who regard Afghans not as autonomous human beings with their own agency but as faceless, fungible tokens in a narcissistic game of moralistic posturing. As for me: I would have welcomed Afghan dogs into Britain and refused entry to Afghan humans. This is because, unlike Brendan O’Neill, I take humans seriously and properly understand their “promise” and “potential.” You see, I’ve noticed that dogs from Afghanistan don’t commit rape or throw flesh-eating chemicals into women’s faces or stab women to death and lick the bloody knife afterwards. Dogs from Afghanistan enrich the lives of British Whites. Humans from Afghanistan blight the lives of British Whites. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to animals and humans from other vibrant Third-World countries. That’s why I say “Yes, by all means” to the dogs or cats, and “No, absolutely not” to the humans.

Hamas-hating fascist Itamar Ben-Gvir at a Jewish Power rally

Does my preference for Third-World animals over Third-World humans make me “fascist filth”? If it does, then the same label must apply to Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who has kept Hungary free of the “pox of Jew hate” by declining to “Let Them In” when Hungarian leftists and libertarians have called for Third-World enrichment. And if Brendan is so concerned about “fascist filth,” perhaps he should investigate some of the ministers in the Hamas-smiting Israeli government he has just spent two years loudly supporting. There’s Itamar Ben-Gvir, for example. He’s the current Israeli Minister for National Security and heads a party called Otzma Yehudit, which means “Jewish Power.” Does that name sound a trifle fascist to you, Brendan? It should, because Otzma Yehudit is the direct “ideological descendant” of a now banned party called Kach (“Thus”), which was headed by a notorious Jewish fascist called Rabbi Meir Kahane. Before Ben-Gvir entered politics and had to clean up his image, he proudly displayed a portrait of someone called Baruch Goldstein in his living room. As I described in “Fingernails and Fascism,” Goldstein was a martyr with a machine-gun. He entered a mosque on Purim Day in 1994, murdered dozens of innocent Arab Muslims, and was beaten to death by the survivors.

That obviously racist massacre surely makes Goldstein and his admirers “fascist filth” to Brendan O’Neill. If it does (and how can it not?), then Brendan should note that Goldstein has a lot of admirers in Israel. The Jerusalem Post has reported that “10% of Israeli Jews think terrorist Baruch Goldstein is a “national hero’.” By Brendan’s logic, there must be huge amounts of “fascist filth” in Israel, including powerful government ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir. And yet Brendan is a firm supporter of Israel and only ever applies the label “fascist” to Hamas. Inconsistent, much? As for me: I’m happy to call Ben-Gvir “fascist,” because that’s what he is.[2] But I would never describe him as “fascist filth.” I’m not a self-righteous adolescent or a member of the woke left, you see, and I don’t want to think or act as though I am. You should try it, Brendan. It’s much easier than it might look. It might also help you understand how Jews and their “natural allies” are very bad for something you claim to hold very dear. Jewish activism created the Bondi Beach Bloodbath and Jewish activists are now exploiting the bloodbath to further restrict free speech. Otzma Yehudit!

[1]  The Jews on Bondi Beach were “celebrating” Hanukkah, the minor Jewish festival that Jewish ethnonarcissists have used to compete with and dilute the significance of Christmas.

[2]  I don’t think Hamas and other Islamists are fascist, however. Fascism is racially exclusive and supremacist in a way that Islamism isn’t. For example, Itamar Ben-Gvir and other fans of Baruch Goldstein follow venerable Jewish tradition in regarding Blacks as halfway between humans and monkeys (see the teaching of the great Jewish scholar Maimonides). In complete contrast, Islamism regards Blacks as fully human and welcomes them as recruits and fighters.

More Signs That America’s Youth Are Breaking with Israel

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For decades, support for Israel functioned as one of Washington’s few unchallenged orthodoxies. That consensus is now cracking, and the fracture line runs straight through the American youth electorate. The latest findings from the Yale Youth Poll confirm that a generational realignment is well underway, one that cuts across party lines and increasingly places Israel at odds with America’s youth.

Conducted by an undergraduate-led research team at Yale University, the poll surveyed registered voters ages 18 to 34 alongside the broader electorate. Its Fall 2025 results show younger Americans abandoning the reflexive pro-Israel posture that once defined U.S.  politics. What replaces it is not a single ideology but a growing skepticism toward Israel’s actions in Gaza, American military aid to Israel, and the political networks that enforce silence on the issue.

The numbers are stark. Younger voters are far more likely than older Americans to hold negative views of Israel and to endorse statements critical of Israel and broader Jewry. Among voters ages 18 to 22, 30 percent agreed that Jews in the United States are more loyal to Israel than to America. 21 percent said it is appropriate to boycott Jewish-American owned businesses to protest the Gaza war. 27 percent agreed that Jews in the United States have too much power. Each figure exceeds the national average by a wide margin.

The poll also exposes widespread uncertainty around elite language policing. Among voters overall, 56 percent said they were not sure whether the phrase “globalize the intifada” is antisemitic. A plurality of 47 percent said calling the situation in Gaza a genocide is not antisemitic.

That credibility gap appears again in how younger voters understand Zionism. While the electorate as a whole most often defined Zionism as Jewish self-determination or the continued existence of Israel, voters ages 18–22 gravitated toward sharply negative definitions. Many described Zionism as maintaining a Jewish demographic majority in Palestine by displacing native Palestinians, creating a state where Jews receive more rights than others, or functioning as a form of racism and apartheid. Roughly one-third of all respondents said they were unfamiliar with the term entirely, underscoring how little resonance elite slogans now carry.

Nowhere is the generational divide clearer than on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. While 46 percent of voters overall supported that position, fewer than 30 percent of voters under 30 agreed. 15 percent of that cohort said Israel should not exist at all. By contrast, 64 percent of respondents aged 65 and older supported Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

Policy preferences follow perception. Nearly two-thirds of voters under 30 favor reducing or ending American military aid to Israel, with 46 percent supporting a total cutoff. The broader electorate remains split, but the direction of change is unmistakable. Younger Americans no longer treat Israel as an untouchable ally.

The Yale findings do not stand alone. They align closely with a growing body of polling that documents the same generational revolt. A University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll found that while 52 percent of Republicans aged 35 and older sympathize more with Israel, only 24 percent of Republicans ages 18 to 34 do. With respect to the Gaza conflict, 52 percent of older Republicans say Israeli actions are justified, compared to just 22 percent of younger Republicans. As Shibley Telhami told Responsible Statecraft, “The change taking place among young Republicans is breathtaking.”

Data summarized by RealClearPolling reinforces the pattern. Among Republicans under 50, unfavorable views of Israel jumped from 35 percent in 2022 to 50 percent in 2025. Older Republicans shifted only marginally. The same University of Maryland data shows that 41 percent of Americans believe Israeli military actions in Gaza constitute genocide or are akin to genocide, including 14 percent of Republicans. 21 percent say the Trump administration’s Israel Palestine policy was too pro-Israel, while 57 percent believe U.S. support has enabled Israeli war crimes.

Even evangelical Republicans are no longer immune. While 69 percent of older evangelicals sympathize more with Israel, that figure drops to 32 percent among younger evangelicals, and only 36 percent believe Israeli actions in Gaza are justified. A September 2025 AtlasIntel poll found that just 30 percent of Americans support financial assistance to Israel, a dramatic departure from Washington’s bipartisan habits.

Media consumption helps explain the shift. Younger Republicans rely far less on Fox News and far more on online platforms where Palestinian perspectives circulate freely. Seventy two percent of Republicans who rely on Fox News support Israel. Among those who get their news primarily from social media, support drops to 35 percent.

This grassroots revolt has begun to surface inside Congress, though only at the margins. Two Republicans stand out. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s shift has been abrupt and public. In November 2023 she defended her voting record funding Israel’s Iron Dome. By July 2025 she described Israel’s Gaza campaign as genocide. Writing on X, she stated, “It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza.” Days later, in remarks reported by Anadolu Agency, she asked, “Are innocent Israeli lives more valuable than innocent Palestinian and Christian lives? And why should America continue funding this?” Her later resignation from Congress does not erase the significance of her break.

Rep. Thomas Massie represents a steadier challenge. The Kentucky libertarian has long opposed Israeli wars and U.S. military aid. In testimony covered by Arab American News, he said, “I don’t want to condone what Israel’s doing. I don’t want to condone the way Netanyahu is waging the campaign against Hamas because I think there are too many civilian casualties.” On X he later wrote, “Nothing can justify the number of casualties inflicted by Israel in Gaza. We should end all US military aid to Israel immediately.”

Since October 7, Massie has not shied away from taking shots at the Israel lobby. He has described how every Republican member of Congress has an “AIPAC babysitter.” As a response to Massie’s strident critics of Jewish influence on American foreign policy, pro-Israel donors have mobilized millions against him, as this author has previously documented. The Republican Jewish Coalition has pledged unlimited spending, according to Jewish Insider.

Taken together, the Yale Youth Poll and its companion surveys point to a transpartisan realignment that Washington can no longer ignore. Young liberals, independents, and conservatives increasingly converge on the same conclusion that Israel’s Gaza campaign and its privileged position in U.S. politics demand scrutiny. This skepticism draws on an older American anti-war tradition, from Pat Buchanan’s opposition to the Gulf War to Ron Paul’s non-interventionism, but it now resonates with a generation that has grown hostile toward Zionism and organized Jewry’s vice grip on American foreign policy decision-making.

What was once an elite taboo has become a mass attitude. Israeli influence on U.S. politics no longer hides in plain sight. The numbers suggest that Israel’s greatest strategic loss may not be on the battlefield but in the hearts and minds of the next generation of American voters.

 

July 14, 1555 – Creation of the Rome Ghetto by PAUL IV, Bull Cum nimis absurdum (Since it is absurd)

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This is not a creation of Hitler or Goebbels, let alone Mussolini, who was not an anti-Semite and whose first mistress, Margherita Sarfatti, was Jewish. It is a bull published by Pope Paul IV on July 14, 1555, i.e., in the middle of the Renaissance and not in the darkness of the Middle Ages.

This bull does not come out of the blue. There were at least 24 anti-Semitic papal bulls before that of Paul IV and 38 after! To these bulls, it would be appropriate to add the statements of the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church.

The general position of the Church in the past seems to have been that it was necessary to discriminate against the Jews, to regulate their behavior vis-á-vis Christians, to designate them for opprobrium, but not to physically attack them: this is the doctrine of the “witness people” of Saint Augustine; the Jews must subsist so that everyone can see what happens to a people who do not recognize Christ. The declarations are clearly defensive in nature, aimed at protecting Christians against Jewish behavior.

The object of the bull revolves pretty much around the same discriminatory measures, one could say, of apartheid: wearing special clothes, expulsion or confinement in special quarters, prohibition to exercise certain public functions, prohibition of mixed marriages, encouraging forced conversions and special taxes to fund these conversions, prohibition of the Talmud and Autodafe, cancellation of Christian debts towards Jews, prohibition on Jews from having Christian servants or nannies etc.

The official justification is always the same, the Jewish people are cursed by God since they do not recognize their Son and are condemned to dispersion and wandering. Unofficially, however, a purely racial justification cannot be ruled out, as Pope Gregory I (540 – 604) put forward the doctrine of the Jews as a carnal people, in constrast to the Christian people, who are spiritual; this theme of the ‘carnal people’ could easily lead to the people of the ‘beast’, of the ‘antichrist’ and of ‘the Devil’.

In the Middle Ages, when popes received tribute from delegates of the Jewish-Roman community on the day of their coronation, they traditionally replied: “Legum Probo, sed improbo gentium” (“I approve of the law, but I disapprove of race”). We should also recall the existence in Spain, from 1449 onwards, of certificates of racial purity, in Spanish ‘estatuto de limpieza de sangre’ – ratified by PAUL III. Among the Jesuits, the requirement for this certificate, which had been instituted in 1593, was not lifted until 1946…

Returnig to the bull of Paul IV himself, in addition to confining the Jews in a district of Rome (now a very touristy area!), it imposed the wearing of a yellow pointed hat on men and a yellow headscarf on women. Jews were prohibited from owning real estate or practicing medicine with Christians (as a precaution!). 

  • Lungotevere de’ Cenci (along the Tiber River)

  • Via del Portico d’Ottavia (its lively central street)

  • Teatro Marcello and the nearby Capitol Hill

The neighborhood itself was surrounded by walls, with three doors locked at night. Only one synagogue per city was allowed. The successor of Paul IV, Pius IV extended the system of ghettos to other Italian cities, and the successor of the latter, Pius V, forbade the presence of Jews in his domains outside Rome and Ancona. Pius V is considered the most anti-Semitic Pope. He is canonized and his canonization has not been abrogated…

Here is the translation of Paul IV’s bull establishing the Roman ghetto, Cum nimis absurdum (Because it is so absurd)

Bull Cum Nimis Absurdum

Laws and ordinances to be followed by Jews living in the Holy See decreed by the Bishop Paul, servant of the servants of God, for future recollection.

As it is completely absurd and improper in the utmost that the Jews, who through their own fault were condemned by God to eternal servitude, can under the pretext that pious Christians must accept them and sustain their habitation, are so ungrateful to Christians, as, instead of thanks for gracious treatment, they return contumely, and among themselves, instead of the slavery, which they deserve, they manage to claim superiority: we, who newly learned that these very Jews have insolently invaded our City Rome and a number of the Papal States, territories and domains, their impudence increased so much that they dare not only to live amongst the Christian people, but also in the vicinity of the churches without any difference of dressing, and even that they rent houses in the main streets and squares, buy and hold immovable property, engage maids, nurses and other Christian servants, and commit other and numerous misdeeds with shame and contempt of the Christian name. Considering that the Church of Rome tolerates these very Jews evidence of the true Christian faith and to this end [we declare]: that they, won over by the piety and kindness of the See, should at long last recognize their erroneous ways, and should lose no time in seeing the true light of the Catholic faith, and thus to agree that while they persist in their errors, realizing that they are slaves because of their deeds, whereas Christians have been freed through our Lord God Jesus Christ, and that it is iniquitous for it to appear that the sons of free women serve the sons of maids.

§ 1. Desiring firstly, as much as we can with God, to beneficially provide, by this. that will forever be in force, we ordain that for the rest of time, in the City as well as in other states, territories and domains of the Church of Rome itself, all Jews are to live in one and if there is not that capacity in two or three or however many quarters may be enough; they should reside entirely side by side in designated streets and be thoroughly separate from the residences of Christians, by our authority in the City and by that of our representatives in other states, lands and domains noted above, and that there must be only one entrance and exit from this quarter.

§ 2. Furthermore, in each and every state, territory and domain in which they are living, they will have only one synagogue, in its customary location, and they will construct no other new ones, nor can they own buildings. Furthermore, all of their synagogues, besides the one allowed, are to be destroyed and demolished. And the properties, which they currently own, they must sell to Christians within a period of time to be determined by the magistrates themselves.

§ 3. Moreover, so that Jews should be distinguishable everywhere: men must wear a hat, women, indeed, some other evident sign, yellow in color, that must not be concealed or covered by any means, and must be tightly affixed; and furthermore, they cannot be absolved or excused from the obligation to wear the hat or other emblem of this type to any extent whatever and under any pretext whatsoever of their rank or prominence or of their ability to tolerate this adversity, either by a chamberlain of the Church, clerics of an Apostolic court, or their superiors, or by legates of the Holy See or their immediate subordinates.

§ 4. Also, they may not have nurses or maids or any other Christian domestic or service by Christian women in wet-nursing or feeding their children.

§ 5. They may not work or have work done on Sundays or on other public feast days declared by the Church.

§ 6. Nor may they incriminate Christians in any way or promulgate false or forged agreements.

§ 7. And they may not presume in any way to play, eat or fraternize with Christians.

§ 8. And they cannot use other than Latin or Italian words in short-term account books that they hold with Christians, and, if they should use them, such records would not be binding on Christians.

§ 9. Moreover, these Jews are to be limited to the trade of rag-picking, or “cencinariae” (as it is said in the vernacular), and they cannot trade in grain, barley or any other commodity essential to human welfare.

§ 10. And those among them who are physicians, even if summoned and inquired after, cannot attend or take part in the care of Christians.

§ 11. And they are not to be addressed as superiors [even] by poor Christians.

§ 12. And they are to close their [loan] accounts entirely every thirty days; should fewer than thirty days elapse, they shall not be counted as an entire month, but only as the actual number of days, and furthermore, they will terminate the reckoning as of this number of days and not for the term of an entire month. In addition, they are prohibited from selling [goods put up as] collateral, put up as temporary security for their money, unless [such goods were] put up a full eighteen months prior to the day on which such [collateral] would be forfeit; at the expiration of the aforementioned number of months, if Jews have sold a security deposit of this sort, they must sign over all money in excess of the principal of the loan to the owner of the collateral.

§ 13. And the statutes of states, territories and domains wherever they presently live, concerning primacy of Christians, are to be adhered to and followed without exception.

§ 14. And, should they, in any manner whatsoever, be deficient in the foregoing, it would be treated as a crime: in Rome, by us or by our clergy, or by others authorized by us, and in the aforementioned states, territories and domains by their respective magistrates, just as if they were rebels and criminals by the jurisdiction in which the offense takes place, they would be accused by all Christian people, by us and by our clergy, and could be punished at the discretion of the proper authorities and judges.

§ 15.Not to be confuted by conflicting decrees and apostolic rules, and regardless of any tolerance whatever or special rights and dispensation for these Jews of any Roman Pontiff prior to us and of the aforementioned See or of their legates, or by the courts of the Church of Rome and the clergy of the Apostolic courts, or by other of their officials, no matter their import and form, and with whatever, even with repeated derogations, and with other legally valid sub-clauses, and erasures and other decrees, even those that are “motu proprio” and from “certain knowledge” and have been repeatedly approved and renewed. By this document, even if, instead of their sufficient derogation, concerning them and their entire import, special, specific, expressed and individual, even word for word, moreover, not by means of general, even important passages, mention, or whatever other expression was favored, or whatever exquisite form had to be retained, matters of such import, and, if word for word, with nothing deleted, would be inserted into them in original form in the present document holding that rather than being sufficiently expressed, those things that would stay in effect in full force by this change alone, we specially and expressly derogate, as well as any others contrary to them.

 

Declared at St. Mark’s, Rome, in the one thousand five hundred fifty fifth year of the incarnation of our Lord, one day before the ides of July, in the first year of our Papacy.

The Jewish Billionaire Circle Hiding in Plain Sight

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Most Americans have never heard of the Mega Group. Yet this quiet consortium of Jewish billionaires has drifted back into public view because of renewed scrutiny of Jeffrey Epstein. His name dominates headlines again, and with it a strange supporting cast of oligarchs, intelligence veterans, and philanthropic power brokers.

At the center of this cast of shadowy figures stands Leslie Wexner, one of the most influential patrons of the Zionist project. In 1991, he joined Canadian liquor heir Charles Bronfman to create what they called the Mega Group, also known in some accounts as the Study Group. A profile in the Wall Street Journal from 1998 described it as “a loosely organized club of 20 of the nation’s wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen” focused on “philanthropy and Jewishness,” yet even early reporting hinted at something more profound. One overview at Miftah portrayed the Mega Group as an informal but potent club of Jewish American billionaires and entrepreneurs that quickly attracted attention in Jerusalem and Washington alike.

Israeli intelligence sources later described the Mega Group as a vehicle for influence operations in the United States. Analysts pointed to the group’s contacts with the Israeli Mossad, its alignment with the broader Israel lobby, and its habit of operating behind closed doors. What looked like philanthropy on the surface increasingly resembled a private political machine beneath it.

The Architects of a Jewish Network of Oligarchs

The official story holds that Wexner and Charles Bronfman co-founded the Mega Group in 1991 to coordinate large scale Jewish philanthropy. A later sketch of the network placed its origins with about 20 members, almost all billionaires or near billionaires. By 2001. the membership reportedly grew to nearly 50, according to coverage in Executive Intelligence Review and other sources, with annual dues around $30,000 as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The roster reads like a map of elite Jewish institutional power. Among the central figures were

  • Leslie Wexner, founder of The Limited and Victoria’s Secret.
  • Charles and Edgar Bronfman, heirs to the Seagram liquor empire and longtime leaders of the World Jewish Congress.
  • Michael Steinhardt, pioneering hedge fund manager described in Hedge Fund Alpha and MicroCapClub as one of Wall Street’s most successful investors.
  • Max Fisher, Detroit oil magnate and Republican powerhouse who advised presidents from Eisenhower through George W Bush on Jewish and Middle Eastern affairs.
  • Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder fortune and later president of the World Jewish Congress.
  • Harvey Meyerhoff, Baltimore real estate magnate and founding chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, profiled by his own charitable foundation and Pi Lambda Phi.
  • Laurence Tisch, chairman of Loews Corporation, whose son James later led United Jewish Communities.

Various investigations, including an in depth dossier at MintPress News, have argued that this circle functioned as far more than a charity club. In effect, the Mega Group served as a central node in a network where money, media, intelligence, and Zionist lobbying fused into a single oligarchical venture that bypassed the traditional legislative process.

Wexner, Epstein, and the Manhattan Townhouse

Leslie Wexner may be the most important figure in this story, not only because of his corporate empire but because of his unique relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Wexner built his fortune through The Limited beginning in 1963, later expanding to Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works, Abercrombie and Fitch, and other brands under L Brands. His net worth in the early 2020s generally ranged between $4.5 billion and $7 billion dollars, making him one of the richest men in the United States and the longest serving chief executive of a Fortune 500 company.

Then there is Epstein. A former high school math teacher with no college degree somehow became Wexner’s financial manager in the early 1980s. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Wexner granted Epstein control of “all of his money.” Vanity Fair later revealed that Wexner transferred his 51,000 square foot Manhattan townhouse to Epstein, along with a private jet originally belonging to The Limited, a transfer that turned Epstein’s residence into one of the largest private homes in New York City.

Former Victoria’s Secret executives described a strange dynamic. They recalled seeing Wexner defer to Epstein in meetings and one remembered that “Les would put his hand on Epstein’s shoulder.” In his 2019 letter to his own foundation after Epstein’s arrest, Wexner claimed he had been financially manipulated and insisted that he knew nothing of Epstein’s criminal behavior. The explanation only deepened the mystery. Epstein’s fortune reached an estimated $559 million, according to Vanity Fair. Wexner was his only fully documented client. No public record explains how those numbers add up.

The most explosive interpretation comes from intelligence veterans and investigative writers who argue that Epstein operated as part of an Israeli sexual blackmail apparatus. Ari Ben Menashe, a former Israeli intelligence operative, told Electronic Intifada and other outlets that Epstein and British Jewish socialite Ghislaine Maxwell worked for Israeli military intelligence and specialized in blackmail. Ben Menashe said he saw Epstein in the office of Ghislaine’s father Robert Maxwell (well known to have been an Israeli spy) in the 1980s. The Manhattan townhouse that Wexner handed to Epstein reportedly had hidden surveillance cameras, as described by various investigative writers including those at MintPress News.

Former NSA counterintelligence officer John Schindler, writing in the Washington Times and cited in multiple summaries, argued that Epstein operated within a broader Israeli covert action framework. He stressed the link to Wexner and noted that “we know that it was co-founded by Jeffrey Epstein’s billionaire benefactor. The rest remains speculation,” and suggested that Congress or serious investigative reporters could use the Mega Group as a starting point to untangle the entire affair.

Philanthropy as Social Engineering

The Mega Group excelled at using charitable projects to reshape Jewish identity and align diaspora communities with Israeli interests. Nowhere is this clearer than in Birthright Israel, known in Hebrew as Taglit. The program provides free ten-day trips to Israel for Jewish young adults. Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt launched Birthright in 1999. Reports in eJewishPhilanthropy and the Jewish Journal describe how Bronfman and Steinhardt each pledged between $8 and $10 million dollars. 12 additional donors, including Edgar Bronfman and Lynn Schusterman, committed $5 million dollars each over five years. The Israeli government matched this funding, producing an initial pool close to $140 million.

Leonard Saxe of Brandeis University called Birthright “the largest Jewish educational program ever,” as cited in the Jewish Journal. The program aims to strengthen Jewish identity, discourage intermarriage and assimilation, and deepen attachment to Israel. At its core, Birthright is a wide-ranging identity-construction initiative funded by Jewish billionaires, backed by Israel, and designed to activate Jews in America.

The Mega Group also poured money into Hillel International and Jewish education in North America. A 1998 Wall Street Journal piece on the group’s philanthropy detailed how a small cluster of members pledged a combined $1.3 million dollars annually over five years to re-finance Hillel in 1994. Later six members each provided $1.5 million to create the Partnership for Jewish Education, which funded matching grants for Jewish day schools. These moves strengthened a vast network of day schools and campus organizations that promoted a strongly Zionist worldview.

In effect this philanthropic empire did not simply fund religious or cultural work. It helped build an infrastructure that fostered unwavering support for Israel among younger generations of Jews in the United States.

Think Tanks, Conferences, and Political Messaging

The Mega Group’s reach extended deep into Washington. Multiple members sat on the board of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, known as WINEP. This think tank, which grew out of the orbit of AIPAC, has been described by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt as part of the core of the Israel lobby in the United States. As outlets like Media Bias Fact Check and Militarist Monitor note, WINEP produces research, trains military officers, and briefs government officials on Middle Eastern policy. As of the late 1990s, WINEP board members included Charles and Edgar Bronfman, Max Fisher, Harvey Meyerhoff, and Michael Steinhardt. (WINEP is now headed by Robert Satloff, referenced previously in two TOO articles, here and here; current Board of Directors are listed here.)

The network’s reach into organized Jewish leadership was equally impressive. Malcolm Hoenlein, who moved in the same circles, served as executive vice chairman and later chief executive of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The Conference serves as the de facto public voice of the American Jewish community on international affairs.

In 2003, this already formidable apparatus added professional Republican messaging expertise. The group hired pollster Frank Luntz, famous for his focus group-driven language manuals. Luntz produced extensive guides for Israel advocates, including a document known as the Global Language Dictionary. He told his readers that settlements were Israel’s main public relations problem and urged them to shift the conversation toward “terror, not territory.” The core lesson this guide imparted was blunt, “it is not what you say that counts. It’s what people hear.”

With Luntz’s help the Mega Group and its allied institutions helped lock U.S. discourse into a frame where Israeli security trumped Palestinian rights and where criticism of Israeli policy easily slipped into accusations of extremism or bigotry.

The 1997 Mega Spy Mystery

A separate story about something called Mega exploded in Washington in 1997. The Washington Post revealed that United States signals intelligence had intercepted a phone call between two Israeli intelligence officers. One officer said, “The ambassador wants me to go to Mega to get a copy of this letter,” referring to correspondence from Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Yasir Arafat. His superior replied, “This is not something we use Mega for.”

Investigators in the United States suspected that Mega referred to a high level informant inside the government. Some believed this figure might be connected to the Jonathan Pollard espionage case, possibly the mysterious Mr X who guided Pollard on which documents to request. Israel claimed at first that Mega was just a codeword for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Former NSA counterspy John Schindler later noted that Israeli intelligence officials viewed MEGA as a vehicle for espionage and influence operations in the United States. When the public finally learned that there was a separate entity known as the Mega Group, co-founded by Wexner and Bronfman, speculation about those two stories intensified. No official investigation has fully clarified whether there was any direct link. The timing and overlapping actors have kept the question alive.

Robert Maxwell, PROMIS, and the Surveillance Backdoor

If Epstein and Wexner form one pole of this saga, Robert Maxwell forms another. The British media tycoon and father of Ghislaine Maxwell has long been described as a Mossad asset. Gordon Thomas and other researchers chronicled his activities in works like Robert Maxwell Israel’s Superspy.

Maxwell maintained close business ties to Charles Bronfman, as highlighted by MintPress News. He allegedly helped Israeli intelligence distribute a modified version of the PROMIS software, originally developed by Inslaw for the United States Justice Department as a case management tool that could integrate separate databases and track individuals.

Israeli operatives then allegedly added a secret backdoor to PROMIS and distributed it to foreign governments and sensitive institutions, including nuclear laboratories like Los Alamos, using Maxwell as a salesman. This backdoor allowed covert access to the data of clients who believed they were simply modernizing their information systems. Former intelligence figures, including Ari Ben Menashe, testified that Maxwell brokered deals to sell the enhanced software to Israeli intelligence and other clients.

Maxwell died in 1991 after falling from his yacht under highly suspicious circumstances. Official accounts called it an accident or possible suicide. Many observers suspected a clean-up operation once his role became too visible.

When one places Maxwell’s activities alongside the rise of the Mega Group, the Epstein saga, and Mossad’s documented aggression in the United States, the pattern that appears is less a string of coincidences and more a coherent architecture of covert influence.

Organized Crime and Media Control

Several Mega Group members carried legacies that touched organized crime. Michael Steinhardt’s father, Sol “Red McGee” Steinhardt, was a mob associate of the Jewish criminal kingpin Meyer Lansky, one of the most powerful figures in twentieth-century organized crime. Accounts of these connections appear in various profiles and analyses of Steinhardt’s life, including critical takes such as the Instagram essay that explores the “Mega Group mafia” idea. The Bronfman empire grew in part through liquor distribution during Prohibition, a sector heavily intertwined with bootlegging networks.

The Mega Group also possessed direct media power thanks to its extensive ties in the English-speaking media world. Wexner served on the board of Hollinger Corporation, which owned the Jerusalem Post, the Chicago Sun Times, and British papers such as the Daily Telegraph. The Bronfmans held a major stake in AOL Time Warner, one of the largest media conglomerates of its day. Ronald Lauder controlled influential outlets in Israel and Eastern Europe.

These holdings did more than shape public opinion. They protected the network itself. Critical coverage of Epstein’s ties to Israel remained rare for years, a pattern noted by Electronic Intifada and others who studied how mainstream outlets avoided serious scrutiny of his alleged intelligence connections.

From Philanthropy to Oligarchy

From its founding in 1991 until its last confirmed meeting in 2001 at Edgar Bronfman’s Manhattan mansion, the Mega Group functioned as a private council of oligarchs. At its biannual meetings, wealthy Jewish donors made critical decisions affecting United States policy regarding Israel. Altogether, the group functioned as a de facto informal policymaking body.

After 2001, the Mega Group receded from public view. It may have dissolved. Or, more likely, it may have become even more discreet. What clearly remains is the infrastructure it helped build. Birthright Israel continues to be one of the most successful Jewish educational programs in the world. United Jewish Communities, the umbrella structure created out of earlier federations, still channels billions in annual funds. The World Jewish Congress, now led by Ronald Lauder, remains a major player in global diplomacy.

In the end, the Mega Group’s public footprint may have faded, but the power structures it assembled continue to operate out of sight. The deeper one looks, the less America resembles a self-governing republic and the more it resembles a stage managed by private Jewish networks that answer to no electorate. The greatest mystery is not what the Mega Group once was, but what its successors may now be quietly directing in the shadows.

What Victor Davis Hanson Neglects to Say About Pearl Harbor

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Once again, historian and conservative pundit Victor Davis Hanson feels the need to play whack-a-mole with World War II revisionism. Whenever it rears its ugly mug in mainstream society—often thanks to a free-thinking guest on Tucker Carlson’s podcast—Hanson dutifully reinforces the official, government-approved account of how the United States entered the war.  According to the narrative, President Franklin Roosevelt abhorred war and reluctantly entered the global conflict only after his hand was forced by the nefarious Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor. Most recently, Hanson posted a ten-minute video entitled “America Didn’t Provoke Japan—Here’s What Really Led to Pearl Harbor” on his Daily Signal YouTube channel. In it he does not even attempt to refute revisionism; he merely assures his viewers that revisionists are wrong, as if that alone would do the trick. The vast swaths of revisionist evidence he neglects to mention speaks either to his incompetence, dishonesty, or both. He also fails to describe revisionism beyond what he put in his video’s title—that revisionists believe the US provoked Japan, and not the other way around. His efforts are so tired and lame that, in rebuking him like this, I almost feel guilty for beating up on an old man.

Yet I must—despite the fact that I appreciate most of his takes not involving World War II or the Jewish Question. If revisionism needs to go down, then let it go down after a fair fight. Unfortunately, Hanson does not offer one, and thus cannot be allowed to run victory laps after exploiting the ignorance of his audience and telling them that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor “for no reason.”

[G]iven that we’re in the era of revisionism, especially about World War II, I think it’s wise if we just review what Pearl Harbor was about. Remember, the United States was not at war. The war had broken out in Europe on September 1st, 1939. So all of the last four months of 39, all of 40 and most of 41 . . . the United States had watched the Germans absorb most of Western Europe and the Balkans and had been in Russia. And at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, they were at the gates of Moscow, literally at the first subway station. So it seemed that they would take Russia. Meanwhile, the Japanese had done two things. They had invaded China again a second time in 1937, and they had half of what is now China under Japanese control in addition to . . . what is now South and North Korea.

And remember that the European colonial powers, the Netherlands and France had ceased to exist as independent countries. So their colonial possessions in the Pacific, specifically the bread basket of Asia in the Mekong Delta of Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, were no longer under independent French control. And the Japanese had absorbed them. But more importantly, what is now Indonesia, then called the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch had control of these islands. They were very rich in oil. The Dutch Shell Oil Company had substantial oil wells on there and the Japanese wanted to absorb those. It was that context that they attacked us. We didn’t attack them.

Hanson then contends that the Japanese had claimed they wanted peace while plotting war. He also implies that the United States had the right to check Japanese expansion because the territories they were conquering did not belong to them. This justified the oil embargo FDR leveled against them because “we had no other mechanism to convince them to get out of China.” This made America the innocent victim on December 7th, 1941.

It’s a nice story from an American viewpoint, but is it true? Revisionists say no. And if Victor Davis Hanson ever wants to convince someone even slightly acquainted with revisionism about the innocence of FDR, he should first mention the main proponents of revisionism and describe their works. These include Charles Beard, Harry Elmer Barnes, George Morgenstern, William Henry Chamberlain, Charles Tansill, and others. Then he will need to address the following points (all raised by Barnes in Barnes Against the Blackout, published in 1991 by the Institute of Historical Review), which threaten the accepted narrative about Pearl Harbor:

  1. Did FDR, at his very first cabinet meeting in March 1933, not float the idea of war with Japan as a way to end the Great Depression? (pp. 72, 87)
  2. Did the US not pressure Chiang Kai-shek of China to provoke the Japanese prior to the fighting at the Marco Polo Bridge in July 1937? (p. 89)
  3. Did the Japanese in late 1940 not offer to retreat back to Manchuria if given, in the words of Barnes, “a little time and a face-saving formula” only to have the offer contemptuously rejected by FDR? (p. 85)
  4. Did Secretary of War Henry Stimson not write of the Japanese thirteen days before Pearl Harbor, “The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” (p. 213)
  5. Did Roosevelt and Winston Churchill not plot America’s “backdoor to war” through Japan when they met in Newfoundland in August 1941? (p. 91)

After this Hanson must address the following points raised by Navy veteran Robert Stinnett in his 1999 work Day of Deceit which all but proves that FDR goaded Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor:

  1. Did the Eight-Point McCollum Memorandum, written in October 1940, not outline the strategy the US employed during the 14-month lead up to the attack? (p. 6-10)
  2. Did US cryptoanalysis not break Japanese codes and reveal that US forces knew the attack was coming and did nothing to stop it? (pp. 21-23, 226–229)
  3. Was Pacific Fleet Commander Rear Admiral Husband Kimmel not kept in the dark regarding this cryptoanalysis? (pp. 66-67, 79-81, 223)
  4. Were there not 129 intercepts of Japanese naval communication between November 15 and December 6, 1941, which busted the myth of Japanese “radio silence” as their ships sailed towards Pearl Harbor? (p. 208-210)

Hanson should keep in mind that these nine points come from a mere two sources and represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Pearl Harbor revisionism. Of course, it would be unreasonable to ask him to debunk it all in one YouTube video, but it would be (and was) equally unreasonable for him to attempt  to debunk it all without the slightest mention of the these or any other revisionist points. Barnes describes this high-handed approach as one of the methods used by the “court historians” of his day to deal with revisionists: they “overlook the decisive evidence which would overthrow their basic thesis.”

I am not arguing that the Japanese were completely blameless or always told the truth or did not commit atrocities. Hanson makes it clear how lethal, cruel, and expansionist the Japanese armed forces were. One can argue that this was reason enough for America’s entry into the war. Despite documenting all the skullduggery surrounding the Pearl Harbor cover-up, Stinnett himself justifies the subterfuge and exonerates FDR and his people for committing it.

This, of course, does not refute revisionism. One can espouse a revisionist view of history and America’s entry into World War II at the same time. It would just require a good deal of study and thought—which Stinnett undoubtedly put in. The problem is that for the vast majority of people (who don’t think and study as much as Stinnett did), supporting America’s entry into the war would be a lot easier if the revisionists were wrong and the court historians were correct. This is where history becomes political. Victor Davis Hanson, despite his conservative bone fides, wants to maintain the founding myth of modern liberalism—that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were the embodiment of evil, and anyone who had truck with them were evil as well. Given the highly disproportionate control Jews have over almost every aspect of Western culture and politics these days, this founding myth must not be challenged, truth be damned. Pearl Harbor revisionism, if left unchecked, has two uncomfortable outcomes for such people: it humanizes the Japanese, and it leads to D-Day revisionism, which could result in humanizing the Nazis and Adolf Hitler as well. And this terrifies the Jews.

To prevent this from happening, Hanson simply sweeps revisionism under the rug and does not dignify it with a counter argument. To those who actually pay attention to him, however, this is hardly convincing. Here is Hanson discussing Pearl Harbor in August of this year, giving his halfhearted approval of revisionism (emphasis mine):

I do know that FDR ordered in May of 1940, Admiral Richardson, the head of the Seventh Fleet, to move the base in San Diego all the way to Pearl Harbor. And he said, “I’m putting my head in a noose. The Seventh Fleet is not able to deter the Japanese Imperial Fleet in the Pacific. If you put me way out in the middle of nowhere in Hawaii, I will not have the infrastructure, the air support that I would have in San Diego.” And he kept complaining and they relieved him. Then Admiral Kimmel took over and he was relieved of command. I think 3 weeks afterwards, he was the fall guy. And out of that came a conspiracy that Roosevelt was doing anything he could to provoke the Japanese with sanctions, putting us out very vulnerable so we would be attacked. There may be some truth to that, but the idea that there’s a big untold story of Pearl Harbor is not true. We pretty much know that Roosevelt wanted to get in the war sooner or later. He felt that Europe would fall and he underestimated the ability of the Japanese to harm the US Navy, but he didn’t plan to have Pearl Harbor attacked.

Hanson’s viewers should ask him the following question: If there is “some truth” to the idea that “Roosevelt was doing anything he could to provoke the Japanese with sanctions,” why is he now claiming that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor “for no reason?”

Victor Davis Hanson can’t have it both ways.

War and peace

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This article was originally published in Danish on December 5, 2025.

War is one of the fundamental conditions of humanity, and it was originally a factor of selection. The best were those who survived. However, war has developed into mass extermination, where it is often the best who are killed. During the Thirty Years’ War, what is now Germany lost more than 25% of its population. In World War I, the British lost so many capable people that it became difficult to continue administering India – in 1947, the “Crown Jewel” had to be abandoned. World War II cost so many lives that no one can put a credible figure on it. At least 27 million Soviet citizens, 2 million Germans alone during the post-war expulsion – the number of soldiers killed in German units amounts to at least 5.5 million. Added to this are British, French, Japanese, American, and other soldiers, bombing victims, especially in Germany, but also in England, victims of the siege of Leningrad (at least 1.5 million), the German policy of starvation towards Russian prisoners of war (and civilians), the partisan war in Russia, the starvation and random shootings of German or Russian prisoners of war by the Americans, the attempts to exterminate the Jews of Europe, the victims of the bombing of Tokyo, not to mention the victims of the atomic bombs. A total of 70 million in all theatres of war – and that is probably an understatement. And the vast majority of those killed were Europeans of the highest quality – at least 100 million in total in the last century – 100 million who did not have children and grandchildren, etc.

Demographically, Europe cannot afford any more wars – especially not today, when any war is almost certain to develop into a global nuclear war that will destroy all life in Europe – and on the entire planet.

Wars have almost always been a question of power, influence, and enrichment – even if they have sometimes been disguised as religious wars and crusades. With the advent of ideologies, these took the place of religion as the purpose of war. The Soviet Union, for example, had world revolution on its agenda, but it was well aware that this could not be achieved through war, but only perhaps through influence. The Soviet Union’s wars were either directly about defense or security.

With the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, the desire to unite one people in one state became a new reason for warfare. A good example is the Schleswig Wars.1 Unreasonable border demarcations after World War I were the immediate trigger for World War II. When the borders were revised after this war, the indigenous population was expelled – which is a crime against humanity. However, Germany was on its knees and could do nothing. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the indigenous populations of the individual Soviet republics were once again ignored. The borders were completely arbitrary and took no account of the nationality of the populations, but were instead an expression of the divide-and-rule principle. This was the trigger for the Ukraine conflict, the problems between Armenia and Azerbaijan, between Georgia and Abkhazia and South Ossetia – to which Adjara may eventually be added – and for the problems in the Fergana Valley, which have triggered several local conflicts and are a plague on trade and mobility between Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. I often talk to people who regret the dissolution of the Soviet Union—not for political reasons, but for practical ones. In some places, life has become unnecessarily difficult.

With the possible exception of the Soviet Union, foreign policy has traditionally always been interest-based. Individual countries have looked at which policies benefit them. In Germany, the government swears upon taking office to defend Germany’s interests and avert harm from the fatherland. In connection with the Ukraine conflict, this basis for foreign policy seems to have been replaced by a “value-based” foreign policy that takes no account of the interests of the countries involved. However, it is difficult to see what values are being defended. There is talk of Ukraine’s sovereignty and its inviolable borders, but no principled position is taken on what constitutes a country. Is it a random area on the map – or is it a population that feels a connection to a particular area and shares a history, language and culture? It should be obvious that it is a population that constitutes a country. At least, that seems to have been Turkey’s motivation for invading Cyprus and dividing the island, just as it was allegedly the partly Albanian population that defined the “nation” of Kosovo and prompted the US to change the borders in Europe again and install the American protectorate of the same name. Indeed, the entire dissolution of Yugoslavia naturally led to several border changes, which were not even adjusted according to the wishes of the population. This led to the creation of the bastard state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is in fact also a NATO-controlled protectorate that no one really wanted and which has little future. So it is perfectly possible to change borders in Europe and detach areas at will – as long as it is the US doing it.

When Mette Frederiksen defends the war on “moral” grounds and talks about “European values” and the inviolability of borders, she therefore seems to be on very thin ice. At the start of hostilities, more than half of the population of Ukraine spoke Russian as their mother tongue, and in the five oblasts that have joined Russia through referendums, the population is Russian. These were administratively transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1922 and 1954, respectively, without the populations being consulted. At least four other oblasts probably have a Russian majority – the two definitely do. However, the only reasonable way to determine Ukraine’s borders would be through referendums in the individual oblasts – as the Russians have already done in five oblasts. Nevertheless, there will of course still be minorities, and these must naturally be treated in accordance with “European values,” which give minorities the right to education and worship in their own languages and to use their own languages in all contexts. Added to this, of course, is the freedom to produce television programs and publish publications in their own languages. These values are self-evident – even if not all Western countries are good at complying with them. France, for example, violates the rights of linguistic minorities on a daily basis – without any consequences. The conflict should not have been difficult to resolve, had it not been for the fact that the US carried out a coup in Ukraine and the new government changed Ukraine’s constitution, depriving the majority of the population of their linguistic and cultural rights. What Mette Frederiksen supports is a thoroughly corrupt system of oppression without political freedom and without elections, which we would protest against and impose sanctions on anywhere else.

Ukraine has become a pawn in a geopolitical game in which the US insists on determining the world order according to its own ideas. Ever since the Cold War, the US has been working purposefully to encircle Russia. Would the US have accepted such encirclement? No, we know from the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, that it would not. The US has around 800 military bases spread across the globe – why? It is an expression of a failed state’s desperate attempt to cling to world power. But Russia will no longer tolerate it. Four times in the last 300 years, Russia has been attacked through what is now Ukraine – and it will not risk a fifth time.

The West is trying to portray the current conflict as a showdown between “the good” and “the evil” – between ‘democracy’ and “dictatorship” – but this is a primitive division of the world, quite apart from the fact that Russia is not a dictatorship and that America and its vassals are not democracies. The US is a kleptocracy, where a number of oligarchs and interest groups pay politicians to promote certain causes. The most prominent are the Israel lobby, the arms lobby, and the pharmaceutical lobby – but there are, of course, others. While Putin enjoys the support of 80% of the population, Trump has to settle for half that, Starmer for 18%, Macron for 11-16% (depending on who is measuring), and Merz is historically unpopular. After a relatively short time in power, his popularity is below 25% and falling. Elections are rigged, in Germany through vote counting fraud (as in Denmark), in Moldova by de facto preventing opponents from casting their votes, in Romania by excluding unwanted candidates, in Germany by attempting to ban opposition parties, and in many other places by using so-called NGOs to pour huge sums of money into election campaigns and support certain candidates from outside. This can be seen, for example, in Georgia and Armenia, and attempts have been made in both Belarus and Russia. Any talk of “democracy” is a lie and a fraud. Within the EU, 85% of all legislation is implemented by bureaucrats who have never been elected by anyone. “No one above and no one beside the national parliament” has become an empty phrase.

Everyone has their fingers deep in the honey pot. Corruption in Ukraine is well known, but the US is at least as corrupt, and Denmark cannot claim to be free of it either – but we have decided that we do not have corruption, so we do not investigate it. But it is very telling that washed-up politicians can always find well-paid sinecures in the business world…. My guess is that all Western politicians are profiting handsomely from this war, in which the Ukrainians are merely pawns. Ukraine is no longer demographically viable, but that does not concern Mette Frederiksen and the other gang members at home and abroad. It is not their children who are dying – the fighting is not taking place in their living rooms, and it is not they who are lacking electricity, water, and heat – it is the Ukrainians, and they are not being asked if they want to go to war. As mentioned, there have been no elections in Ukraine for ages. Zelensky was elected on a peace platform. Ukraine is now a dictatorship – effectively run by a gang of gangsters who only have their own bank accounts in mind. Zelensky’s family is not in Ukraine. His wife and children are in England, his parents are in Israel – together with members of the government who have fled as a result of corruption charges.

All this talk about Ukraine defending our freedom is obviously nonsense. What on earth would Russia want with us? We have absolutely nothing that Russia needs – or wants. We only have economic and demographic problems, foreign hordes ravaging our streets, gender confusion, and pride parades. We have no raw materials, soon no industry – and a level of education that can only provoke laughter in Russia. We are not worth a drop of Russian blood! Unfortunately!

Countries that oppress large Russian minorities – i.e. Estonia, Latvia and, to a lesser extent, Lithuania – should, however, come to their senses and give these minorities back their rights. Otherwise, sooner or later, they will share the fate of Ukraine. NATO will not be able to save them; indeed, NATO will hardly survive Ukraine’s fall, and the same fate may well befall the EU. At least, that is to be hoped.

Our politicians seem to be basing their views on Francis Fukuyama’s thesis that the victory of “democracy” over communism marks the end of history, since, in Fukuyama’s opinion, “democracy” is the highest step on the ladder of historical development. Let us just note that “democracy” has only been around for about 150 years and that it is a dangerous path that will lead to the downfall of culture and humanity if it is not stopped. This does not mean that we should have a dictatorship in the classical sense, but that we must ensure that it is not the majority that decides, but the best and most highly educated of the nation. What eighteen-year-old schoolgirls think is completely irrelevant. If we are to follow Fukuyama’s and Mette Frederiksen’s line of thinking, we are back in the days of the Crusades, when power struggles were camouflaged as noble battles for the victory of good and truth. But they remain power struggles.

The US claims to be “the exceptional nation” – “the shining light on the hill.” In reality, the US is the world’s anus, from which all filth and evil emanates. After World War II, the US was the only significant country that had not suffered significant damage during the war. Its economy was intact, and it was able to take advantage of this by investing in the war-torn countries. The Soviet bloc wisely rejected this form of economic colonization. The US became the world’s policeman, respecting no form of law but only narrow American interests. Over the past 80 years, the US has thus played the role of world ruler with the right to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and to intervene militarily at will without asking anyone – not even the UN or NATO for that matter. During this period, the US has left a trail of blood across the globe. It is time for the US to realize that those days are now over. Both Russia and China want a seat at the table. Peace cannot be achieved through military force, but only through mutual respect and mutual negotiations. This requires knowledge and understanding of other nations’ interests and security. As long as empty-headed fools like Mette Frederiksen, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Kaja Kallas (a particularly malignant and ignorant specimen of homo erectus), and Ursula von der Leyen are directing European foreign policy, peace is impossible. Alliances caused World War I (which no one really wanted), and alliances and interference in other countries’ affairs will cause World War III. Europe’s insane and incompetent so-called leaders want World War III to cover up their incompetence, and as already mentioned, it will at least lay waste to Europe—perhaps the whole world.

Povl H. Riis-Knudsen

Translated with the help of AI

Note

  1. A summary of the Schleswig Wars – made with Grok
    The “Schleswig Wars” refer to two connected 19th-century conflicts over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.1. First war (1848–51): Danish nationalists vs. German nationalists + Prussia. Denmark barely kept the duchies because the Great Powers forced Prussia to back off.

    2. Second war (1864): Bismarck used the issue as a pretext to humiliate Denmark and later Austria. Denmark lost the duchies forever.

    The wars were a classic 19th-century clash of rising nationalism (Danish vs. German) combined with dynastic succession complications and great-power politics (especially Bismarck’s masterful manipulation). The modern border between Denmark and Germany (fixed in a 1920 plebiscite after World War I) still roughly follows the linguistic/ethnic line from the 1860s. ↩︎