Main Edition
US
FR
Q Shaman takes over. Credit: Win McNamee/Getty
At just about the time that America’s Congress was scheduled to recognise Joe Biden as the winner of the Electoral College’s vote, the Senate dais was occupied by the stunningly athletic figure known as Q Shaman. A known figure in the online conspiracy network QAnon, this man wore a horned fur helmet, and his bearded face was painted in a pastiche of the American flag. His torso, not unlike the one Brad Pitt achieved in Fight Club, covered in tattoos. Q Shaman’s mates took photos of him on the Senate floor, as they shouted, “Where’s Pence? Show yourself!”
This scene was broadcast across the globe — and I imagine many people looked upon it with a certain kind of awe, as I have looked upon footage of the botched Gullenist coup in Turkey in 2016, or the live-streamed terrorist attacks around Paris in 2015. This is history, live. A state is being challenged. But this time the world got to see it happening in the most important country in the world, the United States. The added frisson must have been delectable. Not only “this is history”, but perhaps, this is a symbol of a changing world order. Or, maybe, this is a fate richly deserved, comeuppance for a puffed-up hegemon who arrogantly elected an obnoxious oaf as the leader of the free world.
Every which way it was gripping to watch; the whole ragtag look enjoyably daft. And the world learned: this is what the world’s superpower looks like right now. The most powerful country on earth can see its Senate dispersed, its election results delayed, and its Vice President fleeing for protection from a relatively small rabble that was entirely unarmed, save for their memes.
One could say that Q Shaman and his friends had been sent to the Senate by Donald Trump himself, to hunt out the Vice President. In the day before these events, Trump had taken his White House pressure campaign public. Having failed to uncover evidence of voter fraud, the Trump campaign had tried to disqualify votes or whole states from the 2020 presidential election with bizarre legal theories. Maybe the election violated American civil rights, or wasn’t scrutinising mail-in ballots differently at least? American courts, many of them staffed with judges Trump appointed, rejected these theories.
The latest idea, one that had been circulating widely among conspiracy theory social media accounts associated with QAnon, focused on the Vice President. The Queueties held that Mike Pence had the power to keep Trump as president. The 12th Amendment specifies that the President of the Senate — the Vice President — counts the certified votes of the Electoral College. Pence, they believed, could simply refuse to count the votes from Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and so on. Technically, the sitting Vice President could annul all 50 states and disenfranchise 150 million or more voters. Couldn’t he? Trump warmed to the theory.
It’s not even clear whether Constitutional interpretation interests QAnon. For those who don’t know the conspiracy theory, Q holds that Donald Trump is confronting the malevolent people — many of them paedophiles — who want to politically enslave us, and that he is succeeding. Most of the news is just a shadow of the real events: the pandemic, the death of a GOP Congressman from Covid-19, and the harassment of Senator Josh Hawley were all planned volleys in this ongoing shadow war between good and evil. In this black and white moral battle, Mike Pence was the only character whose ultimate loyalties were unknown. One could tally the evidence up either way. Stay tuned!
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeTruth and freedom of speech matter. Nothing works as it should without them.
When the BBC describe a violent protest and vandalism as “peaceful” the silent majority can see they are lying. And when the establishment can be seen to be lying it causes an equal and opposite reaction from the other extreme. Because the people perceive that the instruments of communication are not there to communicate truth -their purpose has become part of a cause with which they disagree. The people become disenfranchised and this is fertile territory for extremists. And that is what happened yesterday. The “woke” are causing an equal and opposite reaction and it will not end well until the instruments of communication restore freedom of speech and unbiased reporting.
Which protest did you have in mind?
For example, the riotous protests in Portland, Oregon; in Chicago; in Los Angeles….
Surely not the ‘saintly” BLM they only burned,looted & 4 Murders!,,The Contempt of World’s Democracy IS Dangerous ”You don’t know what you voted for”!etc..for anything but boring Status quo..
You misunderstand the impact of the internet and social media. There will never again be any consensus on what the truth is. Neither will there ever be an absence of accusations regarding conspiracies. We need to operate in a framework that accepts this new reality.
And this new framework will need the very strict enforcement of law and order. You don’t get to protest violently or take another individual’s life, liberty or property, whatever your cause – BLM protestor or pro Trump protester.
We need to be very transparent in terms of information and data. Everything should be available, this will help mitigate accusations of conspiracies and cover ups. The standards for people in public life will need to be very high, with resignation required if there is even the slightest evidence of wrongdoing.
Elections will need to be aggressively policed to ensure even the accusation of fraud is not possible. Mailing ballots should be ended.
People need to get back to focusing on their own lives instead of constantly engaging in politics. That way we shall improve our own lives and that of wider society.
“Elections will need to be aggressively policed to ensure even the accusation of fraud is not possible” – that is thoroughly risible.
Why? You believe elections should not be policed to avoid accusations of fraud?
NO you can police the elections for fraud but not for accusation of fraud. The current president has lost 61 courts cases in state and federal level. When his lawyers (you can read the court transcripts) have gone to court they have claimed IRREGULARTIES but – and this is very important – NEVER FRAUD. And yet the President, his advisors and millions of his followers continue to claim Voter Fraud. He has lost 61 courts cases.
In 2020 there are people that believe the earth is flat.
“the very strict enforcement of law and order”. Don’t make me laugh. The problem is that this is not being done and will never be done in the USA (or any other Western country) when a certain political viewpoint is promulgated by the so-called “elite”.
I agree it’s not being done, which is why I said it should be. In terms of ‘elite’, it’s a completely meaningless and lazy intellectual term. It’s even worse than saying ‘the capitalists’.
I would call them the political and media class.
They don’t really work either. The media spans Fox news to the BBC. They have little in common.
Same with the ‘Political Class’. Not sure Trump and his Republican supporters have much in common with Corbyn and his Labour supporters. They are all part of the political class.
We need to start judging people based on their individual behaviour and not their social grouping.
What they virtually ALL have in common (Big Media) is that they are each reaching for a relatively specific segment in the general populace. It’s in the interest of ratings, clicks, etc. That’s what pays their bills and enables high compensation for themselves.
Are you arguing for a police state? It is not clear.
No, I am arguing for a liberal democracy. A liberal democracy does not spontaneously exist. The individuals rights to life, liberty and property needs to protected and enforced by the government. As do the government institutions which uphold and enforce these rights.
Err, no! What a bizarre non-sequitur. JJ has argued simply for better election procedures. I am not clear what is objectionable about that.
As should have become transparently obvious after the 2020 US election fallout, it doesn’t matter how aggressively you police the election or if you ban mailing ballots, there is no way you can stop people, including the head of state, making completely unfounded allegations of fraud. There is no evidence despite what people still insist on posting on Unherd and no legal cases relating to the election have succeeded. End of story really except people don’t want to accept that.
I find it quite amusing how many Unherd posters who vilified Remoaners for not accepting the validity of the Brexit vote, are more than happy to keep posting about a “stolen election”. Their lack of self-awareness is astonishing but then again welcome to the world of binary politics where facts are irrelevant in the face of strongly held opinions.
Flat earthers abound sadly!
I agree there is a lack of awareness by those who argue the US election is invalid. Not so much in relation to Brexit (I don’t think any remainers argued the actual counting of votes was fraudulent) but in relation to the prior Trump victory, which did not even achieve a majority of the popular vote. To suggest elections you win are legitimate and the ones you lose are illegitimate, is so dumb I am surprised people have the nerve to make it.
However I believe allowing voting by mail made it easy for Trump to make such claims. I suspect he did not even fight against the usage of mail votes as he knew it would allow him to exploit them later.
I agree some people will always claim there is fraud. However you can reduce the credibility of these claims by doing the things I suggested. From what I know, the USA voting system is a bit lose in terms of it’s oversight. There is no harm in having very robust procedures.
I have twice seen the internet censorship of Mr Gorbachev’s remarks. The first was on the EU – which he said was recreating the Soviet Union in Western Europe. This can no longer be found anywhere on the internet. The second was two days ago when Youtube cut a report of his comment on the the Capitol. He had said it was obvious who arranged the incursion but didn’t say who, and went on to say it was doubtful whether America was still a nation. You really would think he would be safe from the Californian Oligarchs at his advanced age.
No, it can be found still. For instance here. The quote you’re thinking of is:
In reality this is far too obscure a quote and person for tech firms to bother censoring. Mainly because their censorship is driven by young employees who have never existed outside of Ivy League universities and tech firms so rich they don’t have budgets: most of these people would be uncertain who Gorbachev was, have only the foggiest idea what the EU is and hardly care beyond “Brexit bad”.
Not the country’s prettiest day but the pearl clutching would be much easier to take seriously if we’d not been lectured that months of looting, arson, and assault were “peaceful protest.” The hyperventilating by the pols and pundits was as predictable as it was tedious.
I really expected you to say it was the BLM’s fault. I’m surprised at your restraint.
However close America comes to Fascism, some people think it’s always the fault of the liberals.
The double standards are amazing.
double standards describing arson, assault, and looting as “peaceful” but treating yesterday as a threat to the republic? Yes, those standards ARE amazing.
Yes, yesterday was a threat to the Republic. Is the product of a President that has sprouted conspiracy theories for the last 5/6 years – starting with birtherism of Obama!
good thing the Capitol Police were on hand to bag a prize then and quash the threat. No, yesterday was a protest by citizens who feel more like subjects. That does not excuse the people who got violent but when you sat quietly while multiple cities were being burned and terrorized, I’m not going to take your sudden outrage over this very seriously.
Indeed. And as far as I can see this event was not so very different from the massive invasion of the capitol and the occupation of the senate by protesters against Kavanagh’s appointment to the Supreme Court in, 2018. Except that I don’t think guns were used against the protestors THAT time
What conspiracy theories?
1) 3M illiegal immigrants voted against Trump in 2016 – that is why he lost the popular vote
2) The media lied about his inauguration crowd
3) President Obama had Team Seal 6 killed and faked the death of Bin Laden
4) Massive conspiracy explain the 2020 election
Obama “birtherism” pre-dates Trump.
Yes, Tea Party that becomes the Trump base….
Sure. But Trump’s presidency is still a symptom of a malaise, as well as a problem in itself.
Five years ago, many ordinary people on both left and right would have agreed that US politics is corrupt. Sure, you’ve got to be completely deluded to think Trump is the right man to change that, but his “drain the swamp” shtick was part of his appeal.
I’d say the Republic has done pretty well, though, and has proved resilient to all Trump’s attempts to overthrow the election: judges, many of them appointed by Trump, rejected his suits. Pence, among others, refused to follow Trump’s instructions.
Let’s not forget that Trump’s attempts to subvert democracy are utterly unprecedented: yet will soon leave office in disgrace and may well be facing investigation and prosecution.
People (assuming that the have a clue) have always claim that US politics is corrupt and it has historically been corrupt – especially at the state level. But it is far cleaner now than in 1920.
The key difference being that those protests were in public places, and the vast majority of people involved in those protests weren’t committing arson, assault, or looting.
On the other hand, breaking into the capital, regardless of what you do when you’re inside, isn’t peaceful protest.
The ‘vast majority’ didn’t break into the Capitol, either, but please; continue justifying the “protests” that destroyed numerous private businesses.
I can’t speak for the people you were quoting directly but I’m fairly certain it was the assault on the Capitol was the ‘threat to the republic.’
If a few people making noise is a threat, then Mr Franklin’s words about a republic have little value.
‘A bit of noise’ is an inaccurate way to describe a riot in which four people died and IEDs were found.
Interesting you bring that up. One of those people was shot to death. By cops. And no one protested against police afterwards or called them horrible names. Why is that? The other three were medical issues, I believe.
It’s awful. I think the protesters you’re referring to are concerned with what they see as unjust overreaching by the police and the way it happen more often to African Americans. she was part of a mob that was currently trying to overrun police, and most people would have sympathy towards the police officers who were trying to defend the building.
I’m pretty sure that if the tables were turned and this was BLM invading the building there also wouldn’t have been protests, but let’s be honest, the police probably wouldn’t have let them enter in the first place.
Except it does NOT happen more often to blacks. 75% of people killed by law enforcement are not black. And if you want to weight that against proportion of the population, you will find that the same 13% of Americans carry out more than 50% of the homicides, usually with the victims also being black.
BLM was given free reign in city after city, along with antifa. DAs joined in by refusing to prosecute anyone arrested. Tens of millions in property damage, about three dozen murders, and assorted other mayhem, most of it done with cops ordered to stand down.
And then there are the foolish statements/speculation about how terribly the police would likely have abused (as in gunned down I suppose), the Black community if they were the ones invading the Capitol building. Do I remember correctly that in the summer protests and urban violence cops were told to stand down by their superiors, AND that they showed truly amazing restraint, coast to cost for weeks. Right??
Of course there will be no protests against the shooting of a women veteran. There are no Lee Rigby t-shirts. No Samuel Paty t-shirts. No David Dorn t-shirts.
There are Lee Rigby Tshirts, do your homework
C-19 perhaps?
Not sure what happened. I hope we find out in time.
One policeman died too. This is very very sad. It does not ammter what colour, what side of the fence, it is sad people have died.
It was not a “threat to the republic”-how ridiculous. It was a riot, not organized to any real extant, and quickly ended. The real “threat to the republic” is the insidious overcontrol of “allowable” discourse in the new and evolving social media, with the overt complicity of “journalists”, and the willful enabling of politicians.
It wasn’t organised? How long does it take to build a pipe bomb and pack your bag with molotov cocktails?
I don’t know-you tell me. A couple of bad actors does not constitute an organized assault.
If these actors are organised, it does. They do not all have to be organised. actually, in such moments the organised ones hide among the chaotic ones, who give them cover.
Well, a great many of them did. We saw it.
Did you have your eyes shut to the Summer looting ?
LOL, The people’s house is a public place if there ever was one. And the swarming of the Capitol was a comparative small group of the couple of hundred people at the protest.
You are so far gone into the propaganda, you can’t even think clearly I think.
You know, since desinformation is rife, I am wondering if the looting and arsoning was as bad/widespread as reported?? Remember the government was bent on discrediting the BLM demonstrations. But I agree, we cannot be certain of how bad it really was. All we can say: the police were not prepared, the congressmen and journalists felt under threat, some offices were invaded. The vast majority could no break into the Capitol because of the lack of space and time, not through lack of intent.
Sure it is too if BLM and ANTIFA are liberals ?
Double standards are everywhere to be seen.
If one night of chaos by some sore losers and conspiracy theorists that was eventually broken up by law enforcement is an insurrection, what would you call the seizure and occupation for weeks on end of an entire urban district in Portland?
Yet how much swooning was there over that undemocratic usurpation of power? Not much – it was tolerated, made excuses for and even celebrated.
Second, it seems obvious that a move towards one political extreme will be met by a move towards the opposite political extreme. In Weimar Germany, the fascists weren’t fighting in the streets against middle-of-the-road liberals, but against communists, and vice versa.
As a general rule, the more lunatic the left is, the more crazy the right will be, and vice versa. A plague on all extremists, I say.
yesterday was an exercise in human behavior. For months, violence was tolerated at best and implicitly encouraged at worst. Now, we’re supposed to be outraged. This is one more example of the response being guided by WHO was involved than by WHAT happened.
Riots happen – this was a riot started by the President. That’s the difference between the ‘who’ here and the ‘who’ elsewhere.
Did I miss your outraged when Kamala was championing bail money for anyone arrested in the Minneapolis riots? I almost feel bad for some of you who will have to find a new foil after Trump.
Bail money is not the same thing as starting a riot – as President of the USA.False equivalency.
Bail money for rioters sends a message that rioting is okay. The president, meanwhile, did not call for violence. I wonder if blaming Trump will have the same life expectancy as the habit of blaming Bush did.
You are, and have been, a veritable fount of “false equivalency”.
A half-baked attempted coup as much as a riot.
This was no attempted coup. To think so is as misplaced as thinking Biden is fit for purpose.
I’d have thought whether you think Trump or Biden really won the election, it was a deliberate and overt attempt to interrupt normal US electoral procedures with the aim of securing another Trump term. In other words, an attempted coup. Half-baked as befits a halfwit who didn’t have the military on his side.
As was clear when 10 former US Defence Secretaries told him so.
Trump is no halfwit, He would not support a military coup until all his legal efforts are exhausted.
No, it was a warning to the incoming administration that the people still have some power. Power that thanks to the Left is now legitimate to use in this manner.
It was a statement that after 4 years of the insult and spectacle of a pouting and butt hurt Left acting out over Trump’s win in 2016, they have set the new standard of how the losers are now allowed to behave.
Finally, it was a warning that there are tens of millions of people who will not just go away and quietly put up with a Socialist take-down of the US.
There is likely to be worse as the politicians and media still don’t get it.
The people voted Biden (by 7 million more votes) as President of USA.
Normal procedures? There was nothing normal about the preceding electoral procedures in some States.
Which isn’t to say the half-baked QOnanists didn’t think it was a pre-emptive coup.
Unless they appointed a Defence Secretary and tried to get the security services to obey him/her it cannot be dignified as any sort of coup.
I’ve lived long enough to have seen a number of coups evolve. This was not one such.
One commenter has suggested “it is quite possible antifa types infiltrated and initiated violence.”
Exactly. It annoys me how people on both the left and the right try to claim that the BLM “protests” and the coup attempt we saw yesterday are different. BLM violently disrupted American society and destroyed people’s businesses. The Trump supporters yesterday violently disrupted American democracy and put the lives of government workers in danger. Both are evil and therefore those involved in either of them should be locked up. It makes me worry about America when both sides are soft on – let’s call a spade a spade – terrorism.
No, that wasn’t terrorism except in the most trivial sense. I mean look at the man in the horned helmet surrounded by middle aged men filming on their phones FGS. Certainly not deserving of shooting a woman in the neck for climbing through a broken window.
“Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol and was injured while physically engaging with protesters. He returned to his division office and collapsed. He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries,”
Yes, it was a whole summer of “buildings don’t matter” and “riots are the language of the unheard.”
They are the language of those who, thanks to malignant social media, are heard far too damn much.
Those frequent comments about buildings and other material assets not mattering were/are about the most “blinders on” nonsense imaginable. Such statements miss the point that buildings and real property generally tie back to individuals’ lives (economic, security, aspirational, psychological/emotional). I suggest checking with Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity to see whether or not “buildings matter”. Let me introduce you to a man who built a family drycleaning, laundry, and tailoring business in an urban neighborhood. It was finally starting to show a profit before destruction by fire spreading from a “protest/riot target” building nearby. Son had gotten into small-time drug dealing to help with the family bills. Got arrested. For a short time HE became suspect in the arson investigation. Property Insurance settlement was being held up until Son was cleared of that weeks later. Meanwhile, distraught Mother killed herself. No big deal. Just another building.
The scale of anti-racist protests was enormous. Possibly one of the largest mass protest movements in American and world history. Given that scale, instances of deadly violence, arson and looting were not the norm. Far from it. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project have mapped the data of all protests, riots and deadly violence in relation to BLM. They found:
“Between 24 May and 22 August, ACLED records more than 10,600 demonstration events across the country. Over 10,100 of these ” or nearly 95% ” involve peaceful protesters. Fewer than 570 ” or approximately 5% ” involve demonstrators engaging in violence. Well over 80% of all demonstrations are connected to the Black Lives Matter movement or the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The media do report on violence at BLM protests. Type BLM violent riot into Google and literally hundreds of articles written by the worlds leading newspapers can be found. Most of the protests were peaceful. This a is factual claim backed up by data.
Far-right activists armed with pipe bombs, guns and blunt objects stormed government buildings with the express intention of disrupting a democratic process hoping to prevent the rightfully elected President assuming power. They did so after being encouraged by the current President. A policeman is now dead. These seditious acts are a grave. Their only intent was to subvert democracy.
Thank you, that was exactly the info we needed.
Imagine what this looks like to an unrepresented ex/Trump supporter who has seen his income fall relatively for the last 30 years and seen globalists ever widening the income and wealth gaps and seen what looks like a very suspicious election and a very corrupt establishment closing ranks to teach him and his fellow deplorables a lesson about voting in a populist anti globalist ever again.
Not sure where that leads exactly but I can’t for one second imagine there won’t be many many consequences from this.
Plenty of those people that have seen their income shrink didn’t vote for Trump.
And the people (by 7M votes) voted against Trump. Just like they vote against him in 2016 (3M votes) and in 2018 Mid-Term Elections.
Certainly those are the “Official” figures. Lets say you are right and all these people voted against Trump (Cos lets face it nobody positively voted for Biden) what if a less brash Trump comes along? do you think you can always rely on tribalism or will the old in mail votes have to make an appearance more and more.
Give us the Alternative Facts !
“do you think you can always rely on tribalism” – yes, SADLY, that is the current position of American politics.
AlterNaTIve FActs = ANTIFA.
Coincidence? Or conclusive proof of a conspiracy and cover up?
What do QOnanists make of this? Is Antifa part of The Plan, with secret behind the scenes direction from The Don himself?
You seem to have enough…
I don’t (unlike you) Q as a source.
Oh come on, it must be really difficult to say Mail in ballot without tapping your nose and going “Wink Wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean”
Just because mail in ballots are really, really, really easy to corrupt doesn’t mean that they are.
The big problem everywhere remains the issues of voter apathy, lack of knowledge from voters, extreme bias in the media and absolutely appalling candidates from both sides.
And yet Trump has lost 61 court cases (state and federal level) – his lawyers have NEVER (very important!!! ) claimed Fraud in court – they have always claimed irregularities.
Indeed, there are people who have watched what Trump did, and are thinking they could do it better and go a lot further. Trump is delusional and incompetent. Next one might not be.
I agree with you. Although I disagree with Trump supporters and loathe him, I hope with all my heart that the next administration will put all rancour aside and make sure Trump supporters’ wishes and needs are taken into account. They have legitimate grievances. but they too must remember that things like abortion or religious belief are personal matters. Even if one believes the others need to share the good news etc…let them find it for themselves, else we end up to the kind of horror perpetrated by the Spanish Conquistadores who converted American Indians using genocide instead of Christian love.
What I find interesting is that having scoured the various news channels and articles I found none of them asking any Trump supporters what this was about and why they were aggrieved. Compare that to the BLM riots that have been ongoing for months, there was no shortage of rioters explaining their motivation of oppression and articles sympathising with their problems. The media on the whole it seems is not interested in what half the population think or want to say. I agree with the article inasmuch as there would have been a major insurrection from the other side had Trump won if not necessarily in this form. This event is symptom of a decline of trust in American democracy which I would say exists throughout western liberalism. My view is that activist media has become too influential and lines between fact and propaganda are too blurred for most to make informed political choices with regard to wider common interests so everybody retreats to their own personal concerns and pulls up the drawbridge.
The Trumpians are enthralled to a despot and falsely believe that the world is controlled by a globalist cabal. We all know the subtext here. Just to clarify a man at the protest was wearing a hoodie with ‘Camp Aushwitz’ written on it. They claim the election was rigged but have no evidence of an organised plot. Their evidence amounts to hearsay and so has been repeatedly thrown out by the courts.Racism and a history of white supremacy is real. It’s not imagined and anti-racists are not attempting to destroy American democracy to get their way. Biden does not endorse fringe groups like Antifa and proclaim his love for them while they storm gov’t buildings armed.
Please explain what makes him a despot. It is not Trump enforcing a rigid orthodoxy on college campuses. It’s not Trump who came up with cancel culture. It’s not Trump telling Big Tech to silence inconvenient voices that deviate from leftist dogma.
Racism and a history of white supremacy is real.
Now you’re being hysterical. This country fought a war over slavery. No small number of white men were killed in that war, just as no small number of white people took part in the civil rights movement. If you want racism, start with critical race theory, then continue to white privilege.
White privilege (terrible name, I know) doesn’t mean that white people have no problems. It just means the colour of their skin isn’t one of them.
Sorry, but racism is real. Try driving a posh car in London and see how far you get if the driver is black. Try even walking down the street and see who gets stopped and searched. Try being George Floyd – how many white suspects were suffocated to death last year in the US?
White supremacy? Well, we’ve seen meetings with people giving Nazi salutes and cheering racist slogans. And some of the banners carried last night clearly had Nazi references on them. Not all, to be sure, but enough to show there’s a problem.
The civil war and civil rights movement occurred precisely because of racism and white supremacy. If the US fought a war over slavery when racism and white supremacy were not real, what were they fighting over, and why do you yourself assert it was a war over slavery?
The civil war was fought at a time when slavery was legal, and that was hardly exclusive to these shores. History shows black slave owners, too, to include the first recorded slave owner, so the ‘racism’ claim does not really hold water.
Africans sold other Africans into bondage; some nations there still engage in the trade. Is that evidence of either racism or white supremacy? The latter term seems to have become popular when the old habit of calling others racists started losing steam.
Slavery Was in Roman Empire & Arabian Empire over 2,000 years ago..Dont be So stupid,sanctomonius &selective..
Trying to subvert democracy to stay in office is the action of a wannabe despot. He failed, so he can’t elevate himself to full despot status, but he tried.
You’re right that there are a lot of despotic tendencies around, though.
Trying to subvert democracy to stay in office is the action of a wannabe despot
How did he do that? A few tweets are not exactly subversion.
“…man at the protest wearing a hoodie…”? A strong argument indeed! Does Biden revere the memory and legacy of Woodrow Wilson? The Democrat icon that re-segregated the armed forces, invited tens of thousands of the KKK to march, hosted racist film showings in the White House, and involved the US in a European tribal conflict? Do you?
Thank you. All too many like to portray the Democratic Party as a benevolent force free of the taint of racism. My US history is hazy, but wasn’t it Republicans that fought hard to end slavery in the USA?
Pretty much. Lincoln was a Repub. But he was also white, leading a San Francisco school to move toward changing its name. That supplants toppling the statues of abolitionists on the crazy scale, but I’m sure someone else will come along to better that.
Ignorant Fool, It Was Southern Democrats who opposed freeing Slaves see ”Lincoln” film by Spielberg
I was told by lefty acquaintances for ages that Democrats were inherently better than Republicans, and while I found it hard to see the difference, I admit I was led to assume Democrats had led the fight against slavery.
I still find it hard to see significant differences between the two parties today, but credit where credit is due, Lincoln was a Republican, and ending slavery was a great step forward, opposed in much more than mere words by the scumbag slaver Democrats.
I am genuinely curious how you inferred I did not know this? I do but not from watching a Hollywood film.
I’ve seen Trump supporters aplenty being interviewed. Not at the Capitol last night, but at all earlier demonstrations.
And I can find nothing on any media that unfavourably compares the more violent BLM protests to yesterday’s events. Not even a hint.
Good luck with that…
The BBC had vox pop interviews with plenty of the protesters yesterday. They are still on the website today. They had Fox News on their side for four years but even they gave up in the end. I am sure GB News will give them air time! If you want to find out what they think, go on The United Deplorables of America facebook page. At least the title shows a sense of humour.
The BBC known over here as the ‘British biased-Broadcasting Corporation’ has been peddling anti-Trump propaganda throughout his presidency……like much of the MSM in the US they are part of the problem…….
Trump himself is the purest and most effective anti-Trump propaganda I’ve seen. The fact that on some issues he’s marginally better than some of his predecessors, and probably his successors, doesn’t change that.
I have no truck with that view of the BBC news or ITV or Channel 4. The fact that the BBC is reviled equally by both left and right just solidifies my opinion of how good a job they do. Apart from that, they just produce brilliant drama, documentaries and light entertainment, not that the latter is my bag. I am happy to pay the licence fee, always have been, always will be. As for the MSM, I don’t see that either. It runs the gamut from the Guardian to the Telegraph and they don’ t have a lot in common, apart from journalists who everyone on here appears to hate. Not sure why as so many of the articles are written by journalists, even some ex hacks from good newspapers.
We will never know what would have happened if Trump had been elected, because he was not elected. I think we know what Wednesday’s rioters want: Trump. But you are right, Trump is not a programme, and his suporters do have legitimate grievances and need their voices to be heard too, and these grievances and needs need to be given space in the media…just like other people’s: Native Americans are also in a terrible predicament, and Covid has exacerbated their deprivation. Trump’s people are not the only ones left behind, they are the loudest.
.
Surely none of this trouble needed to happen if the courts had allowed the evidence of fraud to be heard. Here in the UK, this leaves a very bad taste in my mouth as none of the fraud evidence was properly examined by the courts and that MSM and Social Media continued to report in all their articles that there was ‘no evidence’ of fraud when there was evidence that hasn’t been properly examined. Full transparency and examination of the fraud submissions could have cleaerd this up one way or the other. So now this will fester on because many Americans will believe fraud was commited and that this evidence has been suppressed.
There was no evidence!
There is a difference between Twitter claims and court claims
Trump lost 60 court cases and won only 1!
There’s no evidence that the mainstream media are journalists, but that doesn’t stop some people accepting their bona fides.
It’s not that if you repeat a false claim enough times it becomes true.
That’s why most people believe in Manmade Global warming.
Nothing to do with the extreme weather they see with their own eyes, never mind what they read about or see via the media.
Back in the ’80s when the AGW idea first began to take off and as a young PhD student I looked up the relevant figures in dead tree books and did the dilution calculation which proved to me that humans were indeed putting out more CO2 than the sinks can absorb meaning it will accumulate in the atmosphere.
I then checked the physics of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. It is nailed on sound. Nowhere to turn. The data have not caused me to change my mind. Quite the opposite.
I wasn’t a PhD student, but I too checked out the science behind climate change, and it seemed sound to me. I even checked out some of the supposed flaws, such as ‘oh, look, they admit the CO2 absorption bands are saturated,’ and found them based on (possibly wilful) misunderstandings of the terms and ideas.
I’m frankly amazed that anyone can continue doubting the main thrust of climate science, though of course various minor aspects get updated or modified. Thirty years ago the warnings may indeed have seemed to some like scare stories based on little more than computer simulations. But today, with so many of these predictions coming so awfully true, I’m flummoxed to imagine how anyone can continue to doubt climate science and its warnings.
Probably not when you consider that extreme weather has happened before. Phrases like “since records began” sound really impressive until you realize how short a time it actually covers, and how much historical accounts can tell us about how things are actually changing.
I’d really love to see a fact check on MMCC predictions and how accurate they’ve been. Lets start in (I think it was) 1783 and keep going until we hit crystal ball territory.
I read some of the main predictions about climate change in the early 1990s, perhaps the late 1980s. As I recall, they included not only rising average temperatures, but basically worse droughts, floods, hurricanes and heatwaves, all of which appear to be evident today.
And we’re not just seeing extreme weather, we’re seeing various forms of extreme weather worldwide with increasing frequency. Each new year sees multiple records being broken, often more than once in the same year.
Garbage, They tried to Fix data at Anglia University in 2008 40/50 US states Record temperatures were in 1930s ,the Globalists tried to alter 1913 Death Valley Record ….Lies &stupidity is NOT science,Fixed Models have failed on SARS2, HSN1,SARS1 and Weather..
Ah yes, manmade global warming. I remember when it was global warming, period, that was a liberal conspiracy. But hey, let no one say that conservatives can’t change their minds in the face of new facts! As soon as they saw for themselves that the climate was noticably getting warmer, they admitted that global warming was real… but it was totally not their fault and nothing they could do anything about and anyone who said otherwise was just trying to take their gas-guzzling cars away out of sheer malice!
You’re all pathetic.
But hey, whatever. Like a sane person, I have never intended to reproduce, so as long as civilisation and the eco system can keep from collapsing for another forty years, I don’t care if your grandchildren end up living in Mad Max style wasteland. But I’m actually a little surprised that you don’t care, since you all seem to be so dead set on spreading your seed far and wide to outbreed the scary brown people.
Since 1880, the avg global surface temp has increased by a bit less than two degrees. The hyperbole of “noticeably warmer” is just that, hyperbole, and it ignores periods since the Industrial Revolution when avg temps did not rise.
It’s one thing to point to patterns but it is quite another to assume that govt agencies can regulate climate through policy and that the policy will have no second order effects.
Carbon dioxide is necessary for Crops,Forests, Grasslands etc…The Facts EVEN from met office records from 1659 ..various little ice Ages 1730-1790 have occurred Slight Warming in 1980s has finished.Antarctic Shelf is expanding .Solar Winds ,Volcanoes Affect climate …
Water is necessary for life. Doesn’t stop people drowning.
Most/many people are more fed up with the hypocrites, hysteria and control freaks around AGW.
Consider the fact that the UK now uses far less energy than it did in the 1970s, and with far less pollution – and has a larger population with a better quality of life.
To listen to the AGW and environmental hysterics you’d think that we had gotten far worse.
To listen to some in the anti AGW brigade you’d presume our living standards must have dropped hugely.
Now some of our CO2 emissions have been outsourced to more polluting countries, which really falls into the law of unintended consequences. Like much regulation we often make ourselves poorer, whilst making the situation worse.
Oh for God’s sake…this will surely throw the discussion off the rails!
The evidence was heard in multiple cases. It was lacking, it was inconsistent and it was heresay. Some of the cases were thrown out not just on lack of evidence, but on lack of concrete allegations.
This meme that the courts didn’t even look is just more disinformation. Multiple articles doing in-depth analysis have been published and the court records are public. The line that “they didn’t even look!” is pure ignorant fantasy.
Any evidence right or wrong has been downplayed by the majority MSM same as they always have been anti-Trump for years.
Dave H has pointed you to the court documents. Which are online, go read them for yourself.
Trumps suits were rejected in some cases by judges he had appointed!
That would seem to be the point, and is why the evidence has not been examined by the courts.
I stopped reading at “this was a state being challenged”. The state has been under challenge for the last year. It was challenged by Chaz in Oregon and it backed down. It’s been challenged constantly by BLM in every street in America and it backed down. It was challenged by Antifa looting and arson constantly for the last twelve months and it backed down. It’s been challenged by its media caste standing in front of blazing cities and proclaiming “mostly peaceful” protests and it backed down. America is a lost country, like all left controlled nations. It’s gone, and all the smug latte leftists proclaiming how great it is that that horrible Trump person is gone and (sotto voce) now we can get back to business as usual bombing all the brown people around the world is not going to change that.
You think TRUMP inflicted disgrace on America? Wait until “Dr” Jill is spoon feeding Biden his mush and the Democrat crime syndicate is pumping billions of your tax dollars back into the military-industrial complex while casting around looking for wars to start to justify it. What’s just happened is like that movie, the Sixth Sense. In twenty years time — if your country still exists — you’re going to look back like Bruce Willis in the final scene and realize everything you think you saw you didn’t see at all, and Trump, for all his vulgarity and crassness, was not the Hitler figure the “respectable” media presented him as.
You think TRUMP inflicted disgrace on America?
Yes he did
The Birtherism, the alternative facts about his inauguration crowd…remember that?
The Birther scam started by Hillary Clinton’s first campaign?
One of the most ignored facts in recent memory-it does not fit the narrative.
-and also all large National Mall event attendance figures have been exaggerated by the organizers and usually the attendees.
I hadn’t heard that Clinton started the birther thing, but googling “Birther scam started by Hillary Clinton” brings up a whole series of claims that she did not, and furthermore never endorsed the idea that Obama was born outside the USA.
Who says she or her campaign did start the idea, and where, please?
All of the US’s foreign military adventures for the last 20 years and more have been started by Republican presidents. Or are they part of the left too now?
Obama came to office with two wars, and left with seven. That’s according to people on the left like Jimmy Dore. Obama did Libya and Yemen, to name just two. And Clinton initiated a number of military adventures in the Balkans and elsewhere. On one occasion this was to detract people from the thing with the intern. The Dems are just as bad as the Reps, and Biden/Harris will soon get it all going again.
You forget Obama’s delightful little airborne jaunt into Libya.
This makes rather a meal of looking the realities squarely in the face.
The violent conclusion of the march on Washington DC was a tragic and unnecessary outcome. Altogether lamentable and to be deprecated. The Trump supporters have done their cause real harm.
But the much more significant fact is that the presidential part of the 2020 General Election in the USA WAS stolen; that there are mounds and heaps of proofs to that effect; and that in the ongoing conspiracy against ordinary people across the western world, this latest suffocation of public opinion – by the media almost more than the political class – has multitudes very understandably exasperated.
Ten months of horrific rioting occur in U.S. cities all over the country. It was endorsed and enabled by the Democratic Party – not least with far-left Democratic district attorneys refusing to prosecute violent criminals who have looted, committed arson, attacked people at random in the streets – and the Occidental media have made very little of that.
2,500 election official and observers swear affidavits – with the prison-punishment of their perjury hanging over them if they have lied – to the effect that they have witnessed at first hand egregious electoral wrongdoing; and the media chant parrot-fashion morning and night ‘Nothing to see here. Baseless allegations. No proofs’.
It is indeed the case that the courts have refused to look at the mounds of evidence offered them; and that is because the judges are scared.
They are afraid – very reasonably and understandably – of themselves being the sole arbiters of the election outcome (I am not sure they had the power to void the whole thing and command a re-run of the poll). But also they are physically frightened about what happens to them and their families if they annoy the rampant Left (BLM, Antifa etc.)
For instance, most dubiously, the Supreme Court refused to hear the state of Texas’s case against the states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on the spurious ground that it had no standing for turning to the Supreme Court. According to the Constitution, it has.
More dubiously still, one judge threw out a plaint on the ground that he disliked the font of the typescript in which it was presented!
Unless the media ceases to be a pretty full-time brainwashing propaganda machine for the current ruling oligarchy in the Occident, violence and insurrectioni is simply going to increase.
Think about that, O ‘meritocrats’!
The election WAS NOT stolen you nutjob!
How do you know? There are hundreds of signed affidavits speaking to fraud, there are numerous videos that look odd, and there are multiple statistical irregularities. It may be that everything was on the up and up, but ignoring the red flags is not an answer. All people asked for was an honest audit, along with states following their own election rules.
Exactly.
All that people asked for was an honest audit.
I myself am not rooting for President Trump; but I am deeply shocked when a major election in the USA is massively suspect.
“All that people asked for was an honest audit.”
NO THEY DID NOT
trump claim on Twitter fraud but when his lawyers went to court they claimed irregularities. HUGE DIFFERENCE!
Read the Court cases
Watch recording on YouTube of court cases
Youtube known as ‘Screwyou’ which stops ANY criticism of UK Lockdowns or ‘climate change”.
Not in court!
Trump lost 60 cases. Claiming in Twitter and Unherd fraud is not the same thing as going to court and claiming fraud.
READ THE COURT CASES! public info.
What case was actually heard in court? Zero. Ironically, John Roberts argued against hearing the Texas case over fears of violence, and he was not alluding to violence from the right. Dismissing cases over procedural matters and technicalities is not losing a trial.
Affidavits signed by whom and alleging what? In what way did the videos look odd? Please help us to understand what you believe and what evidence is available.
Stuart
Affidavits signed by multiple alleging the same ballots being recounted, Repub election watchers being denied access, and statistical anomalies that fly in the face of decades of history.
The Internet is a big place. There are numerous accountings of red flags and things that don’t look right. For four years, we were told how Russians impacted the vote in 2016, but those same people now insist that everything is perfect, no matter the things that look odd.
I don’t believe Trump won this election, but it is interesting that many Dems were recently telling us he only won in 2016 because of Russian interference. The BS comes back to bite?
Indeed it does and kudos for being honest enough to remember it. I’d settle for an honest look into the allegations. If they show Biden winning in clean fashion, then so be it and we move on.
Well, indeed. If the Democrats had been less pointlessly antagonistic right from the start – Russia collusion claims, the Kavanaugh fiasco – perhaps some Trump supporters would be less likely to believe in a stolen-election conspiracy.
It was concluded that Russia interfered – just couldn’t be proved Trump or his team colluded in the interference.
You obviously haven’t seen the videos or heard the evidence or the lists of those long dead that submitted their ballot papers or all those late ballots that were counted. Election fraud must be addressed wherever it arises but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to matter to you and many others as long as you are on the winning side.
Hmm. I have debated this with people of your view, but they have not been able to come up with more than (essentially) “It must be true, ’cause I saw it on the Internet”. We KNOW that at least some of the evidence was fabricated (eg, those “dumped” ballot papers that turned out to be blank). We also know that Republicans have been very heated about elections where the Democrats won, but have resisted investigation into those where Republicans won. Not a strong case, really. But I agree that, if evidence can be found, it should be investigated by the proper authorities, and any culprits prosecuted. The trouble now is that, if they aren’t found, the diehards will just carry on screaming about conspiracy.
Conspiracy theorists are very insecure people, and there may be good reasons for this. It causes them to embrace several conspiracy theories, usually. In the long run, their concerns should be addressed, so that they feel more confident in civil institutions again. In the short run, law and order should be maintained, whoever is responsible.
How many irregularities must there be before you consider that perhaps the situation is worth a look? Dismissing me as a conspiracy kook says more about you than me. There are hundreds of signed affidavits of people alleging things under penalty of perjury. There are videos of things that require explanation. There are statistical anomalies no one wants to explain. Why not? What are you scared of finding?
Seems if Camp Biden were so convinced of his winning, they would champion a hearing, audit, or whatever else in hopes of the result being confirmed so they could rub Trump’s nose in it. Instead, they dismiss any question out of hand. People have seen inexplicable vote dumps. They know of the issues with Dominion. They are aware of the historical irregularities. Are those all coincidence? No one knows. Because there is an avid resistance to taking an honest look.
It’s not too much to ask that an allegedly free society have some faith in its electoral system. I can take losing. It’s happened before. But a Chief Justice who turns away a lawsuit over fears that violence might follow is not how a first-world nation behaves. Hear the case. If there is merit, so be it. If not, then be that. But all we’ve had is decisions based on procedure and technicalities, not on merit.
So you have looked at the evidence, structural and in individual particulars, have you BEFORE making this choric assertion?
See https://townhall.com/column…
Said Jeremy shouting from his cot.
Yes & Bill Clinton Never Met Monica Lewinsky, The Clintons never fiddled whitewater investments, kennedy Supporters never tipped thousands of ballots into Lake Michigan in November 1960, Nixon never ordered the burglary of Watergate in June v1972, ,but you ”aren’t’ a nutjob yourself..
Peter, you will have to explain about the “mounds and heaps of proofs” to people on the other side of the Atlantic who are not privy to the evidence you believe. Where does it come from? In what way is the truth being suppressed in UK and European media of all political persuasions? Who is suppressing it and why?
Stuart
Normally I am, or have been, dismissive of conspiracy theories. For one thing they imply remarkable competence among the people supposed to working the scam; for another, they transgress the good rule-of-thumb of Occam’s Razor.
But the way in which nearly the whole of the Occidental media went berserk – hysterical – frantic with rage when Donald Trump was elected President in 2016; and then continued to invent imaginary cases against him (Russia, Ukraine, 25th Amendment) in a desperate (and evidentially exploded) effort to unhorse him, roused real suspicions in me.
It was all so over the top. Trump did some big good things, just by being a candidate, and then in office. He in other regards fell far short of being virtuous or competent (I mean politically, let alone in his private life or discourse). But clearly he was not another far-right demagogue seeking to undermine the Constitution and instigate military rule (as regularly alleged by some broadcasters); just an average US president.
When people go screaming mad about something, it means that something they have is at stake. You don’t go raving up and down the street screaming about your next door neighbour’s daughter marrying a ‘wrong-un’ if you don’t have an acute personal interest in the daughter yourself.
I don’t myself care for Donald Trump. He is nepotistic, a panderer, he is – in point of his homework as a president – hopelessly lazy. He has failed to keep his key election promises. I am not sorry if we have seen the last of him.
What scares me is the idea that our biggest ally and the country leading the Free World has been taken over in a coup d’etat (spearheaded by the short- and middle-term alliance of Big Money and the ‘Liberal’ Left “meritocracy”).
If one major election can be drastically subverted and falsified then that country is permanently up for grabs to anyone who has the means and the megaphones so to do.
I suspect that most journalists throughout the western world now are either wittingly complicit, or unwittingly being played, to propagandize merely for the aforesaid alliance; and have little to do with finding out facts about stories, events, phenomena.
The Daily Telegraph which rather fancies itself as a ‘newspaper of record’ has today published a large array of hysterical articles about the DC protests, not one of which has the usual Comments section and not one of which has the measured tone of Mr Dougherty’s article. As an outsider, albeit one who has extensively visited the United States, my ‘take-home’ feeling is one of amazement that the protesters were peacefully trying to get what they understand to be the correct democratic result. Given the never-ending goading of the ordinary American by the media, politicians and ‘the Swamp’ I’m surprised (although relieved) that there wasn’t a single assault rifle on display. All the daft comments about this being a ‘coup’ are wide of the mark and the media response has been a wiful distortion which can only increase scepticism about democracy among those already feeling pretty alienated.
I actually know how this all ends. This all ends when both the left and the right agree to let bygones be bygones. It’s the time in between now and that point where I have no clue what happens. But I can garauntee you this: the sooner that happens the less serious those bygones will be, and the easier it will be to let them be bygones.
Agreed, but it won’t happen any time soon. Cue Brexit/Remainer
Good luck with that. At this point, we’re a nation of exes. We can be civil if necessary, we can even be cooperative in matters of the kids, but otherwise, we no longer have a shared reality. Half the country gives every impression of hating the place and the other half has the opposite view. I don’t see how that is reconcilable.
Human beings don’t work like that.
They do in the right circumstances. See for eg the transfer from White minority to Black majority rule in South Africa.
I knew plenty of Saffers, Rhodesians and their cheerleaders they all fully expected it to end in blood. Human behaviour was mentioned then.
What about the massive corruption? ANC ministers lining their pockets while huge swathes of the population stay as poor as they were under apartheid.
What about the black on black violence? Economic migrants from Nigeria and Zimbabwe beaten and murdered by mobs.
So far as I can see SA swapped one self serving elite for another.
I agree with you there. I fully expected the new government to ignore or fail to implement the Freedom Charter, but I was surprised when they simply tore it up.
Rather different situation in the Rep of SA at the height of apartheid Muscleguy. It’s a sad tale as I learnt working in the country at that time. Afrikaners arrived and developed, blacks came in and got work. Conditions bad – but far better than where they came from. Changes were taking place despite what Western MSM churned out. Underlying the agitation and trouble promoted by the CIA was the real cause of Western interest. South Africa had gold and heavy involvement in diamonds in South West Africa. America and Russia (industrial diamonds) saw a chance to alter the status quo.
A crude potted history and I apologise for that. However, the up-shot was so predictable I could weep even now hence my response.
Stay safe, stay well, Happy New Year.
They do, once they’ve faced enough horror. My challenge to humans is to save a step and do this before we face a greater level of horror.
Such ideological conflicts do have a sad history of being multigenerational, thus supporting your claim. But that’s how it has to end regardless. And it’s just going to get worse and worse the longer we remain stubborn.
Let’s be a historical exception. We can choose that. And it will be far easier to choose that today than tomorrow.
I found yesterday’s events to be very inspiring, although of course I regret the deaths. Everybody knows the election was stolen due to the Democrats changing the electoral laws in four key battleground states, in contravention of the constitution.
Whatever, it’s over for the US and the West. Contrary to the claim in the article, the US is no longer the most important country in the world, China is. The oligarchic US governing class bows to China because that’s what makes them rich, while the jobs of working class Americans are shipped abroad, and their lives destroyed. Just look at the way in which the NYSE has refused to de-list Chinese companies, despite an executive order.
The US governing class is destroying the US, just as the EU is destroying Europe.
How can you say the election was stolen?
Any which way you look at it Biden got millions more votes than Trump.
There has been no proof of any significant fraud, in fact that which has been found has been by the Republicans.
My guess would be that any fraud committed on both sides probably cancel each other out.
Postal votes are legal, and this year there were bound to be more than usual.
Trump lost, by a large margin.
Because he only consumes media that exclusively states that it was. Echo chamber mentality. That’s why we’re in this mess. It’s no coincidence that a movement that started with disavowing mainstream media has ended with QAnon.
Amazing. First this guy states, that Fraser “only consumes media…”, with no real knowledge, or offered proof, Kathryn states: “no proof of…fraud…”, then “guesses” that any fraud is on both sides. Outrage is not rebuttal, and “disavowing mainstream media…’ is put forth as a problem? C’mon man! -as our new president would say.
Pretty much every mainstream media organisation on the planet has stated that Trump’s fraud allegations are baseless. How could you assume that *everybody* knows these allegations are correct when you’re mainly consuming media that tells you you’re wrong?
TBH I am beginning to wonder if the guy (F) is just a troll. Always seems to be one of the first to comment on anything. Most of them seem to either include “the US election was stolen”, or “I threw my TV out 20 years ago”, the latter usually being part of a rant about the current BBC output! Then there is the endless abuse of the teaching profession e.g yesterday “Quite plainly the majority of teachers simply do not want to teach. This is not necessarily a bad thing as most of them seem to know nothing and exist largely to fill the heads of children with progressive lies and nonsense.”
Pretty much every mainstream media organisation on the planet has stated exactly the same things as Pretty much every mainstream media organisation on the planet.
Much of what the mainstream media publish is indeed false or misleading, and is certainly unreliable, as you can find out by investigating for yourself (if it doesn’t come out publicly, like the lying to get the invasion of Iraq in 2003 started), but this doesn’t prove anything positive. That is, that the media say Biden won doesn’t prove Trump won. And there are so many ways of checking electoral results that that kind of news is likely to be true; it’s when you can’t check things that you get grotesque fables like Russiagate, and the prevalence of fable in supposedly straight media leads directly to the proliferation of conspiracy theories among the people.
Those Iraqi WMD and Iraqi links to al-Qaeda, and the media hacks who reported them as fact, have a lot to answer for. The war on Iraq first and foremost, but also a widespread and entirely justified scepticism regarding anything they’ve said since.
Knowledge is power. People who have power — leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, cops — want to keep their power, so it is not in their interest to dilute their power by letting other people have the knowledge they possess and control. The behavior of ruling class, government, and mass media with regard to truth and falsehood follow. Iraq 2003 is but one case among many.
Iraq was a particularly blatant and egregious case, with devastating consequences. But yes.
Actually over 50% of the US electorate when surveyed agreed with the statement that the ‘election was rigged’, including 68% of republicans, 31% of independents and even 17% of democrats.
Way to demonstrate the herd mentality right here on unherd.com. The truth is we don’t really know if Trump is correct or not. No unbiased arbiter has seriously examined the election results. Courts have thrown out the cases based on either being untimely, lacking standing or not individually involving enough votes to change the outcome of any particular state (even though if all cases were combined some would). The Georgia recount was worthless as it did not take the necessary step of verifying signatures, no one has been allowed to examine the paper ballots where they exist, there are still many questions about the Dominion machines…and on and on. It seems like the Democrats and even some Republicans are afraid of what might be found instead of being eager to confirm Biden’s win and put to rest every concern. Instead, the Democrat strategy during the entire election and post-election has been to run out the clock and discredit without proof anything and anyone that could prevent a Biden win.
Number of overall votes do not matter, only electoral college votes matter. Trump lost by small margins in enough states that the electoral college votes were quite closely contested. Interestingly, some of these states ignored their own constitutions and illegally changed rules for voting and monitoring the counting that may have changed the outcome. And some courts were either too biased or too spineless to fully examine the arguments, instead finding technicalities to throw out most of the cases.
Trump lost 62 court cases and won 1.
Release the Kraken!
‘Everybody knows the election was stolen due to the Democrats changing
the electoral laws in four key battleground states, in contravention of
the constitution.’
No, everyone does not ‘know’ this. Stop peddling false information.
It’s only partially false. Everyone who’s looked into it knows the Dems fiddled the ballot. It was largely constitutional and legal as far as I can tell. I personally object to postal voting, Trump may have won if postals were restricted as in the election he won, It’s legal but worth noting there’s no democratic mandate for postals i.e. this change to the ballot was never put to the people. If it were put to the people I believe they’d back postals, It’s wrong to have not done that. Trump is too stupid to realise he should’ve done that while in power, or maybe he’s clever enough to realise he’d lose if he did. If I was a Dem I’d’ve fiddled the ballot exactly the way they did it; it’s sharp and clever.
There’s no democratic mandate for postals?
I thought they’d been an integral part of the electoral process in many states for ages.
They have existed in some states, but not on a nationwide basis. And there is a stark difference between absentee ballots and pure mail-in voting. This 11th hour change was a recipe for confusion and it worked out fairly well.
There may be some difference between absentee ballots and mail-in voting, but according to Wikipedia:
In 1998, voters in Oregon passed an initiative requiring that all elections be conducted by mail.
In 2011, the Washington legislature passed a law requiring all counties to conduct vote-by-mail elections.
In 2013, Colorado began holding all elections by mail.
Recipes for confusion, which enabled the election of D J Trump?
WA and OR are reliably blue, and CO leans that way, so no, none would help Trump. Still, you’re making my point – this practice exists in some states and has been around for a while to allow for ironing out wrinkles. The most recent case is seven years old. The Postal Service struggles to satisfy its mission as it is; adding complications was not an answer.
There is no nationwide change regarding mail-in voting.
States did it their own way.
It was started without democratic approval. That’s commonplace. The politicians like to make decisions on our behalf without consulting us. When those decisions skew the outcomes of elections, or line their own pockets, or change the fundamental status of our national identity, my view is that we should get a vote. As it is , we have short=term elected dictatorships. As George Orwell pointed out, many of us know that democracy is largely a scam; however , it’s better than any alternative thats been tried and it does give us ordinary mortals the best protection we’ve managed to devise, I just think that fiddling with the system could be more rigourously defended by actual democratic votes when appropriate.
It was started without democratic approval?
According to Wikipedia, “The U.S. state of Oregon established vote-by-mail as the standard mechanism for voting with Ballot Measure 60, a citizen’s initiative, in 1998. The measure made Oregon the first state in the United States to conduct its elections exclusively by mail. The measure passed on November 3, 1998, by a margin of 69.4% to 30.6%.”
In what way is that lacking democratic approval? Or has Wikipedia got its facts wrong?
Trump uses postal voting himself.
We all know Trump’s a t**t. Such was the relentless animus from the media and establishment toward him, I couldn’t see how he had a hope of reelection; and yet. in the middle of the greatest crisis since vietnam, he’s garnered more votes than anyone ever (save biden, of course); Next fime, someone half decent who can corral Trumps base must have a great chance;
Your knowledge of the constitution is obviously vastly superior to that of all the judges, many of whom were Trump appointees, who have rejected every lawsuit that has been brought by Republicans claiming the election was stolen. This sort of dangerous nonsense is exactly what has caused this outrage. Contrary to what you say, we all know the election was won fairly by a healthy majority and to claim otherwise is as bad as believing in QAnon!
I can’t help thinking if that had been a BLM invasion of the Capitol Building, the security forces would have taken a more forceful approach, resulting in a lot more casualties.
Having listened to Jonathan Haidt’s interview with Freddy yesterday, his warnings about the extremist takeover of both the Left and the Right in US politics were prescient indeed. His interview was inspiring, what happened yesterday was an abomination.
‘I can’t help thinking if that had been a BLM invasion of the Capitol Building, the security forces would have taken’
THE KNEE
you can be certain no one would have been shot.
Huh?
Morons think that the election was stolen – led by the Moron in Chief Donald Trump.
I would point to the Reuters/Ipsos poll that revealed that 68% of republicans, 31% of independents and even 17% of democrats said the election was rigged
https://uk.reuters.com/arti….
If the disconnect between the establishment, who wanted to push the election through with no serious scrutiny, and the people, half of whom no longer have belief in election integrity, cannot be resolved then the situation will get worse and worse.
Amen to that. Incidentally, after the farce with the Congressional prayers, I looked up the origins of Amen. Linguistically, it has absolutely nothing to do with Gender. Derived from Hebrew to Greek to Latin and hence into English. Originally Amin. Meaning verily, truly, it is true and let it be so. Also used to express strong agreement, which is how it is used above.
UnHerd interview with Q Shaman please, want to know what this guy has to say.
That’s the ticket!
According to The Telegraph, “Jake Angeli: The ‘QAnon shaman’ from Arizona at the heart of the Capitol riots,” ‘there are videos on Youtube of him rambling through the baseless Qanon theories,’ not that I’ve tried finding them. Still, I’d love a full length interview here with such a prominent QOnanist!
No doubt it will be some conspiracy-theory shite about devil worshippers and paedophiles operating out of Congress.
The more I think about it this may be another kind of Reichstad moment for modern liberalism. It does have more than a passing similarity to what happened in Charlottesville, VA, during the Unite the Right demonstration in 2017. Richard Spencer and the rest were completely set up by a combination of government officials (from the state level to city and police). They didn’t have a chance. Really, the explicitly white-rights or Trump people haven’t a clue about these things and end up getting utterly destroyed every time. Their naive and inept tactics with public images and gestures combined with their enemy’s uncanny subversive intelligence, control of government and media dooms them from the start.
I thought it looked a ‘largely peaceful’ protest, by today’s standards.
As shameful as this has been for the US, the lesson must still be learned. Let’s revisit why Trump became popular. We are distrustful of China and want to curtail its influence (reasonable), we want to control our respective borders (reasonable). – Prime minister Howard from Australia said it right, ‘WE choose who comes here’. As a linguist (retired) we cannot compromise our valuable culture with immigrants who do not respect our way of life and seek to devalue and diminish it. I deplore Trump, however he was elected for a reason. Let’s not ignore the voice of the populace or it will be at our peril. This has been a quiet revolution-next time it won’t be. Just ask the French.
Let’s try a thought experiment, shall we? Assume Trump has won narrowly. Antifa and BLM invade the Capitol building, a Black woman is shot. Now imagine the outrage- the outpourings of grief at the oppressed not having their voice heard and being shot in cold blood in a peaceful protest.
Q Anon are dickheads, and Trump a moron in his handling of this. He should have acted for once gracefully and conceded defeat. Let Biden and Harris take charge. Let them bring in reparations for slavery and affirmative action for Blacks. 5% of White citizens of USA have an ancestor associated with slavery. Non-white non-Black minorities like Asians are not going to pay for reparations, and no on in America will point to the role of the Arabs. So only the White groups will have to pay. Cue people trying not to be called White.
But someone has to be oppressed, otherwise the banshee howls and blood lust of BLM will not be satiated. Some white will have to suffer under the politics Biden and Harris.
Trump should have allowed this to unfold and stand for elections in 4-8 years 9May be too old though)
Whatever the contempt that Guardian reading White folks have for their own kin, and no matter how much they despise their own ethnic group, eventually the White will have to strike back.
Let’s give Democrats a chance to unleash genuine civil war in America. Guardian and left wingers are desperate for a race conflict. They will not rest till there is one. Let Democrats be in charge when that happens. Thats the only way out.
Numerous cities were boarding up windows before the election. Not out of fear of Trump losing. Chief Justice John Roberts pleaded with colleague against hearing the Texas lawsuit out of concern there might be violence. Again, not from fear that the decision would go against Trump.
This is yet more conspiracy nonsense. The supreme court did not turn away the Texas case due to fear.
yes, it did. It did not turn away the case for its lack of merit. The Court would have had to actually look at the filings to make that determination.
The supreme court turned the case away due to lack of standing, not fear.
Your assertion was they turned it down because of fear. This is another regurgitated lie.
Lack of standing; again with the procedural stuff. And the part about Roberts’ fear is out there. You claiming it’s a lie does not make the claim a reality.
Yes, it was dismissed as Texas has no standing to dispute voting methods in other states. I’m not arguing with that. I agree.
But Judge Roberts “fear” was invented out of whole cloth by Hal Turner and amplified by misinformation peddlers. The report about shouting behind closed doors is easily refuted – the court did not even meet in person, nor has it done so for months. It is another lie you are regurgitating.
Yes, it was dismissed as Texas has no standing to dispute voting methods in other states.
when those methods stand to impact Texas, and when those methods are imposed outside of the legislative process, then Texas does have standing. If PA wants to say state elections require a 60% threshold, Texas has no say, but this wasn’t about that. “No standing” is legalese for saying “we don’t want to hear about something that may not right.”
Well, the supreme court disagreed with you. “No Standing” is legalese for no standing. The plaintiff was not in a position to legally demonstrate harm.
Note even the minority opinion was that no remedy should be granted, no stay in the election process or overturning of votes. The two justices that dissented considered that the court had no power to turn the case away, not that the case was meritorious.
refusing to hear a case is quite a leap from claiming that everything was above board. I can’t imagine why people would find such a ruling unsatisfying.
The supreme court did not claim everything was above board. They declined to hear the specific case based on lack of standing. I am not claiming that the supreme court case makes everything above board.
I’m merely pointing out that your assertion that “Chief Justice John Roberts pleaded with colleague against hearing the Texas lawsuit out of concern there might be violence” is false. The report by “a clerk” of raised voices in the chamber was factually incorrect, as the justices were not in the chamber, and have not convened for months.
Now you know, you can strike that red flag off your list.
That leaves a host of other red flags, from statistical anomalies to deviations from historical trends to the affidavits and so forth. Apparently, it’s too much to consider that any of those smoke columns might have a fire beneath it.
Happy to consider them all, but so far they’ve all turned out to be illusions. From “experts” that dropped out of training courses, to people using data from counties in the wrong state, to drunks who had no access to machine source code as they claimed, and were merely hired to wipe down the glass. It’s been a catalogue of lies and errors everywhere so far.
Since none have been considered, how do you dismiss them all? When Joe magically outperforms past Dems in the few places where that was necessary, but does not do so in other blue strongholds, that’s interesting. When a host of so-called bellwether counties that EVERY winner has taken go for Biden’s opponent, that’s also interesting.
Those are just two examples. Maybe they’re coincidence. But you can’t know if you don’t even bother to look.
Alex, we’ve been through your lists before, they’re all wrong. All of them. The numbers people use to show these “statistical anomalies” are generally drawn from the wrong places, either deliberately or in error.
There’s nothing left here, it’s really time to give up on the conspiracy. You’ll be happier.
the bellwether counties are the same ones cited time and again. The places where Joe out-performed other Dems just so happened to be the places necessary for him to win. The screen shots of Repubs losing votes in real time were all fabrications. The vote dumps in the wee hours are probably imaginary, too. Your suspension of disbelief is remarkable.
The ‘vote dumps in the wee hours’ tended to be batches of votes from larger centres of population, which take longer to count (because there’s more of them). Population centres also tend to swing democrat. There’s not really a mystery there.
You can look all this stuff up yourself, rather than continuing to labour in ignorance.
that leaves the other items for which you have no explanation. None. And the dumps occurred in those places where Trump was ahead when the counting supposedly stopped. You can dislike people’s skepticism all you like, dismissing it won’t convince them that you’re right.
It’s not scepticism when you’re not interested in facts, and you’re not or you wouldn’t be repeating now the stuff that’s been shown false before.
Remember this next time you tell someone the supreme court ruling was done out of fear of violence. You’ve been fed a lot of tall tales, and you’re sticking to them because they fit with your worldview.
Wise words – as the left can no longer win in free elections and only scraped home in an election marred by fraud on both sides race and class war are their only options. In countries like UK/US there are simply insufficient racists and genuinely desperate poor folks to make this happen. Electoral malpractice in USA goes back to 1790s and is probably best illustrated by ( democrat ) Mayor Daley post war rallying call in Chicago: “Vote early and vote often”
Here in the UK, students get to vote twice once at home, once at college. Postal voting you gotta love it!
Love it and laught at it! Whilst at Uni the vote is lost in the red rosette pile of dog poo, and back at home its a wasted vote in the leafy shires. The funniest outcome is a student who votes labour in say Sheffield at uni and Brighton at home, so neither vote has meaningful influence.
“Let’s give Democrats a chance to unleash genuine civil war in America.”
I’m far more concerned with the wars the USA wages abroad under Republican or Democratic presidencies. Will Biden reverse many decades of belligerent US foreign policy, any more than Trump has? I doubt it.
You do realize that Trump engaged in no new wars abroad, right? He opened the door toward Middle East peace or least co-existence. Seems these things have already gone down the memory hole.
“Trump engaged in no wars abroad.”
Utter nonsense. He may have started no new wars abroad (and I’d have held my nose and voted for him both times for exactly that reason), but the wars he inherited have not stopped.
He talked repeatedly about bringing troops home, did he not? Yes, he did. And I said “no new wars abroad,” so why leave that part out of the quote?
We were besieged with dire warnings that WWIII would dawn on his watch but that didn’t happen.
“We were besieged with dire warnings that WWIII would dawn on his watch but that didn’t happen.”
Ummm…well, he’s still in power for a couple more weeks yet so…!
You said “no new wars abroad?”
Thank you for revealing yourself to be an outright liar and fabricator. You could have said you intended to write ‘no new wars abroad’, but chose instead to state that was what you wrote, when we can all see it was not.
Trump did indeed talk about ending wars, which is why I would have voted for him despite everything else he stood for, but he did not end any wars, and the US remains engaged in the ones he inherited.
Here is Alex Lekas’ previous comment for readers to peruse. Please let me know if you can see the word ‘new’ in it, or the phrase ‘no new wars abroad.’ Maybe it’s been stolen by Hugo Chavez with Dominion software?
“You do realize that Trump engaged in no wars abroad, right? He opened the door toward Middle East peace or least co-existence. Seems these things have already gone down the memory hole.”
You said “no new wars abroad?”
Yes. In plain English. I started with just no wars and added new for clarification since he did engage in some anti-ISIS activity. You remember ISIS, don’t you? That was the “jayvee” squad the previous guy talked about. And good luck refuting the Middle East part.
And what happened to the word new?
Searching for ‘no new wars abroad’ reveals that I first used the phrase, in response to your own ‘engaged in no wars abroad.’ But by all means continue making an utter fool of yourself for all to see.
This is exactly the kind of fact-free nonsense to be expected from those who still believe millions of illegal votes and stolen ballots are the only reason the US will soon have a new president.
the word new is right there, a few posts up, right after your response to Vikram. Can you not see it?
No, I can’t. Can anyone else? I’ll happily give Alex Lekas an abject and grovelling apology if anyone can. In the meantime, I repeat, Lekas is a fool and an outright liar, and for good measure, an idiot who imagines Unherd readers are illiterate or unable to locate the comments in question.
Alex Lekas Ian Perkins “¢ an hour ago “¢ edited
You do realize that Trump engaged in no new wars abroad, right? He opened the door toward Middle East peace or least co-existence. Seems these things have already gone down the memory hole.
there it is. And I already said that ‘new’ was added right after the original to account for the ISIS stuff that Trump engaged in. If you can track when editing occurred, that should verify the claim.
I repeat, Lekas is a fool and an outright liar, and for good measure, an idiot who imagines Unherd readers are illiterate or unable to locate the comments in question.
in the case of Ian Perkins, the part regarding inability to locate has some merit. The rest is you being you, childish name-calling that’s supposed to be significant of something.
Sorry, I didn’t realise you added the word new after posting the comment – ‘I started with just no wars and added new for clarification‘ didn’t make that clear.
Nor did I know that comments don’t get updated as and when they are edited. I’d assumed they would be. The word new is still not there on this version of this page, but it is on another version that I’ve opened in my browser.
Again, Alex, my apologies.
it’s all good. I will delete the previous post as a show of good faith.
I find the issue rather alarming. If comments can be posted and then edited, with the original comment remaining until the page is reloaded, this feature can be gamed. I’m not suggesting for one moment that is what you did, but the possibility seems to be there for anyone with less honourable intentions. And reloading the page is not such a straightforward matter, involving multiple clickings on ‘Load more comments’ to return to where you were. Still, I might start doing just that in future.
It appears I owe you an abject and grovelling apology.
I reloaded the page, and there, just as you say, is your “You do realize that Trump engaged in no new wars abroad,” right after my response to Vikram, exactly as you say.
The same comment on this version (I’ve two instances open in my browser now) still states “You do realize that Trump engaged in no wars abroad,” (copied and pasted, not read and typed).
Alex, I hope you will accept my apology, and my sincere retraction of the epithets I used. And I agree entirely, he started no new wars, something indeed unusual for recent US presidents.
Things happen. We drive on. No need to grovel.
Didn’t Trump cut US troop numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan?
I agree with some of what you write, but I can’t see how Biden and Harris can come up with a form of reparations this is practicable. Lots of white people now living in the States moved to the country after slavery was ended, for example. Lots of Americans have mixed heritage. As you said, Asian and Latino Americans will refuse to foot the bill.
But if reparations are imposed in the form of some one-off payment (from the federal or state treasuries, presumably), it might even be welcomed by some white people: they will be able to say: “Okay, you’ve been compensated for things that didn’t happen to you and I’ve been made to pay for things I didn’t do, now you can shut up.”
If they’d burned down the Capitol would CNN have described the protests as “mostly peaceful”?
If it was Democrats, yes?
CNN is not the President of USA.
And since Trump crowd watches Fox (not CNN) why care?
CNN and the BBC.
The media including UNHERD are controlled by their Paymasters. Any alternate views are cancelled and people de-platformed. The Davos crowd now control the world and the rest do as we are told.
The fraud in the US Election was so huge right in front of everyone’s face.
And why was not one judge brave enough to stand to stand up to it. All bought out by the Deep State, who so badly wanted rid of Trump.
An investigation into the election claims would have assuaged everyone’s concerns. But they couldn’t do that because the claims were so obviously true.
Christ on a bike. One day we are going to have a full blown war over these type of delusions. How pointless.
Does it strike you as helpful to dismiss people’s concerns as delusion?
Dishonesty must be called out. Too often we hear that everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, you are not entitled to lie. They’re not concerns. They’re dishonest and must be called out.
How do you know they’re dishonest. Since there has yet to be a hearing that considered the evidence, you do not know. Tossing out suits over procedural technicalities is not the same as adjudicating cases.
“Russian collusion” was a lie, yet much of the left believes it to this day. The idea of cops targeting minorities is a lie but it, too, animates Dems. You seem a bit selective over who merits calling out.
You are also a dishonest person quite intent on stoking the flames of division.
And you say that without the slightest hint of self-awareness. Impressive. Ad hominem is not an argument; it just highlights your lack of one.
What’s dishonest? Not the part about cops; the stats bear that out. Not the part about collusion, either. Even Robert Mueller said no American conspired with any Russian.
Everything you say is correct. I am a convert to the cause. Biden is a molester. International finance man. Drain the god damn swamp.
Except I said none of those things. Tell me again about being dishonest.
Biden is a molester. Have you not seen the evidence? Do you think it’s wise to just dismiss a known child molester?
if you think he’s a molester, you shouldn’t support a molester. I remember Kamala saying that Joe’s adult accusers should be believed. She must have changed her mind after that view was no longer beneficial to her career.
I support Trump. MAGA! The election was rigged by the corrupt liberal globalist funded by Soros. The white family is under threat. Soon it will be illegal to be straight. The end is nigh.
I support your right to say silly things, but not your attempt to ascribe those things to me. This is not very good trolling. I’m disappointed.
I think the likes of Facebook say you are entitled to lie.
Oh, I know this one: The absence of evidence to support the conspiracy theory is just proof of how effective the conspiracy is at covering it’s tracks, right?
Look, scores of judges – many of them Trump appointees – looked at Guiliani’s submissions and said: “Nope, there’s nothing here.”
not a single judge said “there’s nothing there.” Several have kicked out lawsuits on procedural matters but that’s not the same thing.
This is just not true. The rulings are public. Many complained of no evidence, some even complained there were no concrete allegations.
The rulings are public. There is no excuse for your ignorance.
You’ve been lied to, and are just regurgitating those lies.
The rulings were based on procedure and technicalities, not on merit.
Again, this information is public, in the court record. You don’t need to remain in your state of ignorance.
Some cases were dismissed for lack of standing, others were dismissed for lack of evidence or lack of concrete allegations.
You are regurgitating lies.
Lack of standing = a procedural decision, not one based on the merits of the allegation. When a court refuses to hear any evidence, saying there is a lack of it requires some magical thinking. Perhaps you can explain the numerous anomalies that occurred, or you can repeat what you’ve been told, that anyone not accepting the result is crazy.
SOME of the cases were dismissed on lack of standing.
Please learn to read.
Yes, like I said, some cases were dismissed for lack of standing, other were not.
We’ve been here before Alex, all of your ‘anomalies’ are phantoms. What it comes down to is that you believe in the fraud simply because a lot of mud was thrown.
I feel sorry for you, to have been taken in so much.
I didn’t say there was fraud. I said there were numerous red flags, too many to conveniently dismiss as conspiracy talk. I am sorry that you have abandoned all skepticism and freely accept what you’re told, especially when it confirms your biases.
Your red flags are phantoms. All of them. Sorry you don’t see that you’ve been bamboozled.
And I don’t freely accept what I’m told. I look for evidence rather than hearsay. The person repeating serially debunked lies might want to first remove the beam from their own eye.
Debunked by whom? Refusing to consider the flags is not debunking them. Just stop. There has been zero serious effort to see if there is anything to them.
There have been over 60 court cases, the records are out there for you to read, not all were thrown out for procedural reasons. There has been adequate opportunity to present evidence, none has held up.
Alex, you’ve been lied to. Even Trump’s long-time political allies are starting to wake up. Time for you to wake up too.
Irony at its very best.
More than anything, the invasion of the Capitol indicates what a sham this election has been and the disgrace the Dems and their media friends have delivered in response to Trump.
The sum total of the opposition of the “good the great” to the “fascist” Trump, is a sclerotic grifter and an assistant(VP) who redefines political opportunism.
America, in particular, should be careful about what it has wished for and worked so tirelessly, if not feloniously, to achieve.
The world without Trump will make his seem one where the sun never sets, which is a a very graphic, if not profoundly depressing, measure of how low American political culture and its enablers internationally, has descended over the last 40 years or so, in particular..
In what way does the “invasion of capital hill indicates” that the election has been a sham?
So, if you repeat something often enough it becomes true?
The author builds a case on what some group or other would (allegedly) have done, IF things had happened differently (which they didn’t).
What might or might not have happened isn’t, um, actually, well, evidence. It’s just another fantasy, of which we have too many already in the political sphere.
That thin line between chaos and what passes for civilization is rapidly blurring in the Excited States.
The debacle at the US Capital on 1/6 is the logical outcome for people who have been manipulated by an unrestrained administrative state. While there is a lot of blame to go around, Republican lawmakers afraid of loosing their tenuous hold on power, will be the big losers. I vehemently disagree with the argument that there was no evidence of voter fraud. The simply finding of more votes than registered voters is one of many proofs of this fraud, but the Republicans who had the power to sequester the evidence were cowards and the Democrat machine had ample time for their spoliation, hiding and destroying evidence. Sadly, the only recourse left, apart from violent protests as we saw on 1/6, will be litigation. I speak for many when I say that Biden / Harris is not my president / vice president, much as the leftists said of Trump. Loosing the White House and effectively control of the Senate, will give those like me who were defrauded, reason to do everything in their power to thwart the new Democrat power structure and ultimately bring it down. This also means harsh payback for the Republican cowards, including the vice president to whom I say, “goodbye Mike”.
“The simply finding of more votes than registered voters”
Is another thing that didn’t actually happen.
Hope that helps!
On the day voter registration makes the truth of this difficult to ascertain, as with many of the fraud allegations.
At first sight there seems to be a lot of fraud, but that may just be spin from partisan Trump supporters.
Without fully investigating this, there will be many who will continue to disbelieve the result.
All of the reports of “more votes than voters” have been wrong. Usually they’ve started with wrong numbers (looking at primary ballots rather than election ballots was one error).
There will be those who will continue to disbelieve the result anyway,
because (to paraphrase the old aphorism) it’s not a position they
reasoned themselves into. I suspect that many of them already know that their position is unsupportable and don’t really care.
MBD —
Please cool it with the fetishization of QAnon and other such fringe nonsense.
I was at the U.S. Capitol yesterday. I flipped on C-SPAN Radio when I was driving home. The reports coming in sounded like reports from a different planet. I did learn from the reports that some number (20? 200?) managed to break in to the Capitol and that our elected officials suspended their proceedings. This was beyond the knowledge of the 200,000 people on the outside. The energy outside was good. Not ebullient, but good. But, here we are impugning the 200,000 for the actions of the few.
That is a bad business, and it is part of the problem. By the standards of the summer, the protests at the Capitol were more than “mostly peaceful”. Meanwhile, the Capitol police did manage to shoot and kill someone. But no one will fetishize that fatality.
I read and listen this morning, and that passage from Susan Sontag on her observations right after 9/11 come to mind:
“Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy”which entails disagreement, which promotes candor”has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen.”
Bad things happened. But, to everyone I would suggest that we cool it with the cheap and easy incantations of “sedition”, “treason”, “terrorism”, etc. Where are the adults to offer dispassionate perspective?
So … breaking into the Capitol with the intent of disrupting lawful democratic process, then proceeding to actually disrupt that lawful democratic process, doesn’t sound like it fits the definition of “sedition”?
“To oppose by force the authority of the United States government; to
prevent, hinder, or delay by force the execution of any law of the
United States;”
Being one definition. I mean, it seems like it might apply to those few hundred, to me. The elected officials didn’t just suspend their proceedings, the building went into lockdown as it was forcefully breached, and people invaded the chambers.
(Any source for 200k figure? I see the rally permit was amended from 5k to 30k, but any sort of official figure on attendance seems to be hard to come by)
(I’ll also happily agree that given what actually happened, the lack of violence is not just remarkable but commendable. I don’t agree with what you’re protesting over, but the levels of violence appear to have been very low. 4 deaths too many, of course.)
Sure, a handful of knuckleheads managed to get into the both chambers of Congress. They got their 15 minutes of fame.
Let’s not credit these people with “insurrection”. It’s sophomoric cosplay.
Meanwhile, we burn cities and police stations around the country, and muchof the media and political leadership encourages it.
Let’s impose some badly needed perspective. Hyping everything to 11 every day is not helping.
Yes, it seems we have redefined peaceful protest to include property damage, fire setting, looting and breaking and entering over the last year or so. Probably too late to redefine it back to its actual meaning.
Looked like a fun day out and the Washington police are even fatter and less able
to break into anything more than a waddle than the Met.
Actually they are not the Washington police, they are the US Capitol police, its different, they protect federal property not state. It must be galling for them to have to protect a bunch of people constantly asking for them to be defunded.
The so called insurrection, was as organised as a dog chasing a car. Once they had seized the Capitol, they did not know what to do except take selfies and wait to be arrested. Like the author, I agree the US should be grateful that it was not the forces of darkness like Antifa. They act with much more deliberation. They would have torched it. Given the rabble that occupy Capitol Hill at present, that would have been a good result.
Some persist in saying there was no evidence of fraud for the election. There is plenty of evidence, it is simply difficult to get it into a Court to prove. 2000 plus affidavits for each swing State is a lot of evidence. Each person signing one, if they have perjured themselves, they will go to Jail. Something they are very strict on in the US.
The difficulty is the Courts. Most cases were dismissed without looking at the evidence, on unappealable procedural grounds. As far as I could tell, the Courts were either biased with Democrat Judges as was the case in Pennsylvania Appeals Court, or they were intimidated. One Judge who was brave enough to put her head up and directed the Audit of Dominion Vote Counting machines in a county in a northern Swing State, was immediately doxx and her family terrorised. The Audit found that the machines records had been wiped, but records of previous elections were still present. Nothing ever came of it, because the earlier doxxing, intimidated.
Reports indicated that even the SCOTUS were nervous on this count and was a contributory reason provided as to why the Texas Lawsuit was turned down through lack of standing. The message is, violence works. Look out the next four years.
The US should be grateful it was not Antifa, who would have torched it, which would have been a good result?
Facetiously speaking!
“Most cases were dismissed without looking at the evidence, on unappealable procedural grounds.” Factually untrue. Please review all 60 cases that Trump lost, and you’ll find that nearly all were denied on the merits, or lack thereof in this case, of the evidence presented. Full stop. Look. Read. Inform yourself and please don’t post lies. It’s bad enough already.
I think you should observe your own invocations!
The chaps in the photo who seem to have led the charge are the most unlikely looking Trump supporters I’ve ever seen, maybe excluding Morrissey. I very much hope arrests are made and we can learn more about them.
One of them is wearing a mask, if that’s what you mean. Otherwise they look to me like typical Trumpists.
Science Alert has an interesting piece today, “Researchers Developed AI That Tells Apart True Conspiracies From Conspiracy Theories.”
It’s well worth reading, not just for the AI aspect, but for how nonsense like QOnan develops and spreads, and what distinguishes imaginary conspiracies like Pizzagate from real conspiracies like Bridgegate. In essence, remove a few pieces from Pizzagate and the entire narrative falls apart, unlike Bridgegate, but do have a look – it’s only a short article, written in plain, accessible, non-technical language.
And nonsense like stolen elections.
We’re to trust AI now? I’m a bit skeptical of that god, as well as several others.
“in the most important country in the world, the United States” – on what scale of importance? get over yourself mate.
On many scales of importance. For example, it has the largest military in the world, the highest military spending, the most overseas military bases, and the largest economy. You don’t have to admire it to find it important.
. . . but not necessarily the most important.
So which one is the most important? Or do you not recognise any scale as being able to measure importance? Ian was making a pretty simple, factual point. You can accept the US is the most important country in the world without liking its form of government or current president, or thinking its importance gives it any special moral rights.
40 % of global military spending is the US alone. Most of the remainder is the US allies in NATO et al
China is the most important country in the world. It can inflict a global pandemic up the world, along with incalculable economic damage. And still the EU politburo and the US oligarchy bows to it. That is power.
AIDS is thought to have originated in Africa, which by that logic would make an African nation the most important in the world.
So, illustrate the “scale”.
Pick any measure
Size of the economy. One quarter of global GDP.
The Kraken was released!
IF the allegations of electoral fraud in the U.S. 2020 election are baseless, as the media claim, then why are the newspapers and broadcasters throughout the Occident unwilling to look at them and show them to be void, trivial and irrelevant – show that forensically, I mean, argumentatively, rather than simply pooh-poohing them?
In five battleground states which decided the contest, at more or less the same hour something incredible happened. The count was stopped, the tellers told to go home, and that it would be resumed the next morning. They went and so did the observers.
The count, after some hours delay, was resumed (still in the hours of darkness, not morning) after vans and trucks had delivered large numbers of new additional postal votes; and this after a handful of poll-workers had remained on the premises organising things.
Perhaps all this was legitimate; but who stops a poll half-way through a count for any reason less than an earthquake or a roof-ripping tornado?
Republican Party observers were kept very far away from the counting-tables (against the rules) and when they protested they were pushed out, and then the windows papered over so that they could not see inside even from THAT distance.
Enormous numbers of dead and out-of-state people voted in these contests, including a lot of centenarians 118-170 years old in Detroit.
Vast numbers of ballots were filled in only as to the choice of presidential candidate; all the other ticks needed to express voter preference down-ticket were missing (as would be the case if they were hurriedly filled in on the night in order to void a Trump majority).
Many ballots looked pristine because never mailed; seemingly rushed from printing-press straight to counting-rooms.
Whole districts voted by mail for Joe Biden with not one single vote for Donald Trump; a statistical impossibility.
Normally, in the past, when serious publications employed ethical journalists, they would race after a big story and search it through and through to find out what had happened.
If, for instance, Boris Johnson went missing suddenly and no-one knew where he was, surely the newspaper reporters would be after all traces of evidence of his whereabouts and why he had disappeared like bloodhounds.
But with this – nothing. Silence. ‘Baseless allegations. No proofs….’ is the constant clamour from the journos; and that is all.
The only thing I found funny yesterday was how shambolic they were when they got inside. They siezed the chambers of power and did … nothing.
Instead of searching computer systems for dirt, or confirmation of their theories, they took selfies and gurned for the camera.
Still, incompetent or no, forcefully invading the capitol and disrupting democratic process does meet the definition of some pretty serious criminal acts (think treason, sedition) so it’s going to be interesting to watch the fallout.
I wish the writer of this article had spent less time admiring the physique of this grotesque figure from the political sewers and more about the leadership role Antifa had in this farce. There is some evidence it had a hand in the actual violence–“mostly peaceful protest,” as the media would call it when Antifa blends together with BLM to burn and pillage– and that Cow Head Man is a member and leader in that gleeful anarchistic organization.
The “Cow Head Man” is also known as the QAnon shaman, public supporter of Trump and QAnon afficionado. He’s all over the web. He even puts up videos about Trump and Q.
Trying to pin this on your usual boogie-men is pretty shameful.
Trump called for a rally, he fired his people up with rhetoric about fighting, and then he asked them to march to the capitol. (I’m not claiming he asked them to storm it, that’s not what he said). What happened is a logical result of his supporters doing just that, and getting carried away.
(I’m not claiming he asked them to storm it, that’s not what he said).
please share this with some of your fellow travelers who are insisting otherwise.
Happy to, the truth is important.
That doesn’t mean I think that what he did was above board, or that the events that followed couldn’t have been predicted. But I do believe he stopped *just* short of incitement. And he certainly made it clear afterwards he didn’t disapprove.
America has more than enough problems that need urgent attention, adding the inability to accept an election result is unacceptable- Poverty, Homelessness, Racism, Police brutality, a failing Legal system that protects wealthy citizens whilst punishing the poor, a Healthcare that the Third world would be ashamed off, an Education system producing students with no knowledge or experience, a Financial system corrupted and out of control, a Housing market about to break again, Armed forces that think that Might is Right with no exit planning, in short – regardless of who is president or which party runs Congress and the Senate, America has problems that can only be solved by working together, yes, disagree but the end goal must be to unite, solve and restore the Nation, then maybe look to advise others, but get your house in order and that will never happen until both sides agree that regardless of party, the Nation’s problems are only solved by unity.
Literally, the greatest nation on earth, 25 % of global GDP. and yet useless in every respect according to you. I think the rational among us will allow the facts to do the talking.
And when China’s GDP overtakes the USA’s, as seems inevitable, you will see a new greatest nation on earth, despite its faults?
Do you consider GDP to be the sole factor in making a nation great?
This is an interesting comment. When do you consider the US to have ever been united in how to solve problems? Seems to me the answer is never. What’s more, I can’t think of any country that has ever been united in how to solve problems. Certainly the UK is not, there is at least part of the UK that wants to secede and seeks yet another referendum to do that and go join the EU.
It’s a bit much to expect things to be different in the US than in any other country. Besides this isn’t the first US election that half the country could not accept, is it?
Of course you are right about the implied close elections. But what you are not recognising is the perception that this election was stolen. In politics, perception is reality. This needs to be resolved in a way that most people accept. They will no longer accept a person word as they once might have, they want some object level of transparency, Who can blame them.
The same perception existed after the 2016 election. This is not new. And it won’t be resolved because any review or investigation will simply be shut down.
Let the gaslighting begin again, only with a blowtorch now.
IOW don’t throw the baby out with the bong water.
If you can’t distinguish between election fraud and political violence, you are incompetent to the discussion.
If it wasn’t a false flag promoted by agent provocateurs, yes somebody got played big time. The right descended to the left’s level aka antifa/Black Lies Matter and the powers that be, having succeeded in provoking them to it, are now rejoicing with glee.
But hubris is as hubris does. Let not the progressive socialists overplay their hand as did DJT’s supporters here. It will only boomerang on them.
That is because, if nothing else, all DJT really is, is a stick in the eye of political correctness, which is nothing more than the speech code for socialism. You know, equal results/outcome as forced by law, instead of equal opportunity before the law. But Kurt Vonnegut scotched that fraud in Harrison Bergeron.
When pigs can fly, not just first class in Southwest or United is when socialism will work. The woke liberal progressive globalist agenda is only all about pushing a string all the time. It has to and will ultimately fail. The problem is in the meantime when the inmates have captured political and media control of the asylum.
Which is where we are at now.
cheers
Many socialists have little time for political correctness. The World Socialist Web Site, or WSWS, frequently lambasts woke/ID politics as a scam by which the ruling class diverts attention from the revolutionary struggle. You might not agree entirely with that phrasing, but it doesn’t seem too dissimilar to your ‘The woke liberal progressive globalist agenda is only all about pushing a string all the time.’
This was seriously not good, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
People all too often look at ultimate outcomes rather than the longstanding reasons that led to those arguably unsavoury outcomes.
It appears America has learnt nothing and will learn nothing under a forthcoming Biden presidency.
Trump was/is a divisive, polarising figure who learnt precisely where he could cleave the electoral divide enough to deliver him the presidency in 2016 and that divide and the reasons that fuelled it, by and large, still exist.
Five years of constant, invariably dodgy Democrat moves to remove him as the elected President have, unsurprisingly, stuck in natural Trump supporters’ minds, so the precedent for what now constitutes ‘democracy’ in America has been set by ‘the others’ and reaping what they themselves have sown shouldn’t really come as that much of a surprise to be honest.
In fairness, the political divide was in place long before DJT, with half the country believing that the whole system was run for the benefit of the elite. He didn’t create this divide it was already there and it seems common elsewhere. Today the same divide infects the UK as well. But you’re right that four years of moves to un-do the election of 2016 will inevitably lead to four years of moves to un-do the election of 2020. The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.
Oh believe me, I don’t think he created the divide, it was indeed decades in the making, he was just sharp enough to exploit it and that was really my point.
Maybe it was the word exploit. The reason DJT resonated with so many voters is that he said what they felt. That’s not exploitation, that’s empathy.
Exploit as in, ‘take advantage of’, but that doesn’t in anyway diminish the underlying truth or sincerity of the reasons so many people voted for him.
Trump is not someone who I would readily ever associate with the word ’empathy’ however.
The most successful politicians are sociopaths and Trump is the ‘sociopaths’ sociopath’. His personal motivation and ambition is irrelevant in relation to what he genuinely achieved in office for those who voted for him.
“His personal motivation and ambition is irrelevant in relation to what he genuinely achieved in office for those who voted for him.”
Which was what, exactly? Lower taxes? Better health care? More jobs? Inshoring of manufacturing? Successful covid policies? Mexico paying for the wall? Holding the Senate and the House and the Presidency in Republican hands? Really, I’m curious what his ‘genuine achievements’ were.
Well, aside from the fact that he rather unhelpfully delivered the GOP one of its biggest ever votes and, effectively flying in the face of the media narrative being peddled over the last five years of him being a white supremacist, he actually increased the party’s vote amongst Black and Hispanic voters whilst his vote amongst white male voters was at best static.
Go figure?
Further to that, his policies spared the American people the all too regular sight of the coffins of young men in their prime dead before their time draped with the Stars and Stripes, victims of the ‘next’ US foreign policy misadventure, being flown into your airbases with such regularity that the media had completely lost interest in the story, as perhaps you had too, rather preferring instead to focus on ‘atrocitities’ like the recent storming of your Capitol building.
Also, perhaps equally unhelpfully, prior to Covid, which I’m sure Mr Biden will kick into touch with immediate effect as soon as he assumes the reins of power, apparently pursuing what he novelly calls ‘a science based approach’, the US economy had been doing none too shabbily under Trump with average wages rising steadily.
Finally, anyone who knows anything about America’s Wall with Mexico knows full well that it didn’t somehow just appear when Trump assumed office, and those that claim it did are being disingenuous.
You’re confusing exploitation with empathy. They are not the same. If you actually believe that most Trump voters didn’t take a flier on him because he campaigned on issues important to them, you’re naive.
I might be many things, but being naive isn’t one of them.
From your comments that is not apparent. Do you honestly believe that many people did not see Trump as being empathetic to their problems? At least more so than Hilary Clinton? Try looking at this from the voter angle.
This is just another of the many instants where the great and the good can say – “see, we were right all along”, as opposed to the many more instants where, if they say anything , it is “nothing to see here, just move along”.
I have no interest in what pundits and politicians say any more. I am just going to observe events.
This was a disorganized, inexperienced rabble, and that’s why the ‘riot’ was so ineffectual despite the minimal security in the Capitol.
You may recall that the antifa/BLM rioters were/are organized like a finely oiled military machine with secret planning meetings each day, defensive equipment (gas masks, shields, etc), controlled ‘press’ coverage, and coordinated action. You bet a Trump victory would have incited a much, much more serious riot that would really have earned the term ‘insurrection.’
Having said that, if the rightwing ever really gets angry the wipeout would be horrific – they have all the guns!
Disagreed with this article whole heartedly. Trump maybe a lot of things, but an Oaf is not one of them. His legacy maybe the last President that could see the danger of the CCP, & an encroaching Technocracy that will attempt to enslave Democracy. QAnon certainly appears to have some quarters in Washington worried, its the forces mounting against Trump that are the clue. Epstein’s Suicide (cough). The shrill call for Trump to be impeached by the ugly & undesirable within the ‘Great & the Good’. The citizens of the USA that voted for the return to power of the ‘little Guy’ will not take this lying down, & I fail to see how Harris (Biden was just the stooge entrant) will keep a grip with those that will answer her rebukes or plea’s with ‘not my President’. It might have been better had Trump won.
Interesting.
The comprehensive membership of the Epstein fraternity is indeed rather like a latter day Skull & Bones. And since ’91 the evil wrought by the Exceptional Nation under each separate POTUS far exceeds that of Trump, even given his attachment to BB, MBS & Co.. So Q correctly turns W’s famous “Axis of Evil” back on its calumniator. But I’m still not convinced DJT isn’t an Oaf; and, very much doubt he (like this author) understands the theatre being performed by the forces of resistance. …nor even that “Q” is short for the German Quelle, whereby scholars denote the ur-synoptics.
Thing about Epstein is no one seems to be able to explain where his money came from.
We know a critical few of those who godfathered him: Wm Barr. Sr., Les Wexner, Leon Black, ….
Seems that Trump’s excellent conduct of foreign policy has been forgotten already.
Israeli – Arab peace? No?
Standing up to China? No?
Dropping out of the Iran treaty? They now have 8 times as much nuclear doodads as the treaty allowed them? I guess all that money Obama sent them allowed them to finish it, same as Clinton’s aid to North Korea, sent on promise of no nukes (what a MORON) paid for their nukes.
Meanwhile, Obama destroyed Libya and Syria, and is weirdly, seen as the light of the Western World.
RIP USA. The only way is down. Look at what the Dems have to to all their big cities. Look at what they have done to CA. Now they can do it to ALL of America.
Yippee!
you are a nutjob
I’ve been saying for weeks now, and ridiculed for saying, that BLM, XR Antifa etc are change agents, created by the intelligence agencies in America, Britain and Europe. They employ out of work actors to be their screeching loony lefties. You can tell they are actors when you listen to them, your unconscious brain can spot a phoney, even if your conscious one wants to believe and engage with a piece of theatre as reality.
Well the chap in your photo with the antlers is an actor and a BLM nutter. His page at his agents has mysteriously been taken down, but today’s UK Column News captured it in time.
https://youtu.be/P6UAGpRGcQM
If you move your mouse to about 1/3 of the way across the screen you will see the relevant section.
The conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory. Q the shamans.
You will believe absolutely anything, won’t you. Not only do you think that there was a conspiracy involving thousands of people from federal court judges appointed by Trump himself, republican governors, legislatures and secretaries of State, voting machine companies, all involved together to deny Trump the presidency, you now want to believe that the people who stormed the capital building were… BLM and Anntifa???!!!
You’re not worth the time to discuss things with because you simply don’t even take yourself seriously. Paul is dead, the moon landing was faked, the earth is flat and trump won the election. Go, girl!
And of course there’s this, from the “Unintended Consequences and Bitter Ironies” file, Trump’s tweet from June 2020 regarding his signing of the Monuments Act:
“I have authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the US with up to 10 years in prison. This action is taken effective immediately, but may also be used retroactively for destruction or vandalism already caused. There will be no exceptions!”, and this, from July:
“Anarchists, Agitators or Protestors who vandalize or damage our Federal Courthouse in Portland, or any Federal Buildings in any of our Cities or States, will be prosecuted under our recently re-enacted Statues & Monuments Act. MINIMUM TEN YEARS IN PRISON. Don’t do it! @DHSgov
” Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2020″
That aged well.
“Had Trump narrowly prevailed in the Electoral College, I believe hundreds of thousands of the resistance would have gathered in Washington DC and a reprise of the summer’s unrest would have flamed out across the country.”
Odd that you do not state that this has not happened with the Biden win? And is what happened worse than the Portland eternal riot, deaths, billions of dollars damage, and the VPOTUS elect of the USA encouraging the rioters? And the Kavanaugh protests? https://www.cbsnews.com/new…
Some balance please.
Q shaman is going to look much more ordinary in an orange overall. So is the Donald.
If these people adopt their dead member as a martyr, they will be doing what the Nazis did with Horst Wessel (of the notorious song).
I keep reading about four deaths, one shot, three due to ‘medical complications,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Covid?
Don’t you mean the left and George Floyd or even Che Guevara
Che Guevara, yes. George Floyd was an American who was murdered by the police.
Che Guevara was American. The USA likes to portray itself as America when that suits its purposes, but was NAFTA an internal US trade agreement? Is the OAS an organisation of states within the USA?
I lived in South America for a while, many years ago, and was robustly informed by many there that they consider themselves thoroughly and indisputably American.
Guevara was an American working, however mistakenly, for liberation in America.
We can all agree it was a homicide. We’re waiting for due legal process on the charge of murder.
‘Our pattern-making minds work on this constant stimulus, leading us to ever-more adamantine convictions, unshakable suspicions and disquieting fears.
Perhaps my own belief that a liberal insurrection would have been worse than this is one of these confected convictions, imprinted on me by the collision of my biases with the overstimulation of internet media. I can’t discount that possibility.’
Something we should all bear in mind.
I rather hope Q Sahman spends a few years reflecting alongside his cell mate Trump.
Thinking about eugenics, and can’t help wondering if Trump and his zombie hoard are supporters of this supposedly classic Nazi notion.
The laughable irony of Nazi eugenic ideas is of course that Hitler quite consciously relied on a hefty percentage of the population being sufficiently gullible and malleable to believe his many calculated lies.
Yet the goal of eugenics was supposedly to produce a super-race of supremely intelligent and capable beings, who would never fall for such crude manipulation.
The last several years have reinforced the question for supporters of democracy: how can we ensure that human populations are not so burdened with stupid, misinformed and gullible voters, that regimes like those of Trump & Johnson become so probable?
Well, he did lose narrowly in a handful of key states (and he won narrowly in a handful of others).
However, the big loss was this weekend, when he managed to make Georgia lose 2 senators. That can’t be overlooked.
“Perhaps my own belief that a liberal insurrection would have been worse than this is one of these confected convictions, imprinted on me by the collision of my biases with the overstimulation of internet media. I can’t discount that possibility.”
You do write for National Review!
And people like you (most of the conservative establishment) are responsible for Trump.
What happened yesterday in the Capitol is wrong and nothing justifies that behavior. We can spend the next month placing blame on Trump, Q’s, Nazi, racists etc… it would be unfortunate if our political class did not evaluate How We Got Here.
For three years every major network told 50% of the country that the only reason your candidate won was due to Russia. Millions of dollars was spent on a long investigation and many lives thrown into a legal battle only to find out later that not only was there no collusion but that actual criminal behavior occurred on the other side. Using a known informant and the dossier to spy on another campaign. We then went through an impeachment process from a Ukraine collusion phone call despite actual quid pro behavior being bragged about from Biden being ignored.
Lockdown 2020 happend next and we lived in a country that MSM will paint Americans protesting lockdown rules as being unsafe and dangerous to their fellow citizens but ignoring cities being burned down, public buildings being destroyed, statutes being torn down and store after storm looted. These were needed and healthy protests that despite the damage and violence were valid and mostly peaceful.
Lastly, we have the rule changes in major swing states to how we vote, receive ballots etc. If you argue against this behavior you are a conspiracy nut case according to the elite. 100’s of US citizens in swing states testified under oath about fraud but the MSM says that there was no fraud.
All of these events are taking place while Big Tech continues to follow the 1984 playbook and shut down accounts that the “fact checkers” declare false information and tweets are sent into the memory hole. It just seems like this censorship is focused heavily to one side.
So, here we are……the elites are in full control and our wonderful, free USA is in turmoil. The elites will not try to understand but will instead use this event at the Capitol as a way to solidify their power because self reflection is too hard and mature to do. The solution is always the foundational documents…..Constitution and the Bill of Rights…..but will anyone move to that direction
Is Unherd censoring content re Biden?
Compared to most outlets, I’ve found Unherd to be one of the most fair and open forums.
Until today I would have agreed with you.
Seconded.
thirded
Yes!
If you’re suggesting Unherd is censoring Biden-related content, could you give us a hint as to what about Biden is being suppressed? As a test case, involving a claim that I believe is being censored elsewhere, how about Hunter Biden’s laptop implicates Joe Biden in corruption and hidden links to China?
(See various articles by Glenn Greenwald for details.)
Have watched over the last few years as American citizens have reawakened their heritage of the cut and thrust of European politics, the constitution was always more than an ephemeral receipt from Walmart.
Like the buddhist monk self immolating in Saigon and the flag waver in Tiannaman in front of the tank the films of the sacks of votes brought in by democrat activists, the passing of USBs feeding votes into the counting machines and the expulsion of official observers by left wing acitvists willl not go away. Google can censor all they like, these vids are on my SCSI drives and thousands of other folks too. Everytime poor old Biden takes a wrong turn or gets bad luck they will grow in significance and exposure. The likes of Putin and Xi will gleefully spin the cyber wheels to help them spread. I actually feel sorry for Biden – pro fracking, pro incarceration of crims, pro Wall Street. He’s been let down by his foot soldiers (or is that souljahs?) who are a bunch of spoilt 99% white kids playing at politics at the expense of ordinary working Americans. Pity Trump is such a clown, he should’ve sat back and handed Biden the rope, the chair and instructions on how to make a Jack Ketch knot.
What’s an SCSI drive?
SCSI (pronounced SKUH-zee and sometimes colloquially known as “scuzzy”), the Small Computer System Interface, is a set of American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard electronic interfaces that allow personal computers (PCs) to communicate with peripheral hardware such as disk drives, tape drives, CD-ROM …
I suspect that many of the more aggressive protesters are actually agitators from the left, including the guy with horns.
Except he’s a vocal Trump supporter and Qanon booster, with a pretty big online presence and who has shown up at multiple Q rallies and gatherings.
But good luck seeding your “false flag” narrative.
Didn’t you know, anyone and everyone is left nowadays, just that some, like Biden, are hard left?
I agree a lot of the article, but this stuck out like a sore thumb. Why would the events last night have any relevance to the EU deal with China?
Indirectly, the author’s belief that US is the most important nation in the world.
25% of global GDP says they are
There are pictures of Buffalo Bill at an Antifa event in Tempe Arizona. He is an actor.
I am not sure he is who the author thinks he is but, you know, whatever advances the narrative.
His name is Jake Angeli, he’s a Q Anon conspiracist and pro-Trumper.
The picture I’ve seen being passed around online where he was “sighted at a BLM rally” is from a Q event. He’s even holding a sign saying “Q sent me”, which the editor cut off in attempt to disavow him and sow misinformantion.
These lies really are desperate. Also disloyal – a guy who lead the charge for what you believe in, and you’re disowning him?
Liberal insurrection. Isn’t that an oxymoron?
e.g. Women’s suffrage movement?
I move that TDS henceforth be shortened to just generally DS.
UDS, U for universal.
I thought I remembered something like this. From today’s MIT Technology Review email:
Quote of the day
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
“A tweet posted by President Trump on December 19, surfaced by the New York Times.
What’s wrong with a constitutionally protected protest? You are projecting your hate.
“Perhaps my own belief that a liberal insurrection would have been worse than this is one of these confected convictions, imprinted on me by the collision of my biases with the overstimulation of internet media.”
Yes, with all due respect, yes, I think so.
Yesterday the USA saw a taste of ts own medicine, with the exception that this time there was not a violent change of democratically elected govt. This was exactly what the USA under a democrat party president, did in the Ukraine. They organised a mob (armed) to storm their parliament building and forcefully removed a democratically elected government.
The ever reliable Bellingcat has an interesting new piece on QOnan, ‘The Making of QAnon: A Crowdsourced Conspiracy.’
Amongst all of the internet fantasy and grandiose fiction on both sides, four people who had no actual objectives charged into Government in the belief that Evil people were inside and died and it was all insanely stupid. No analogies, no conspiracies and no hyperbolic taking of sides, history will see Trump as a measurably stupid man who exploited a numerous but relatively small group who believe in violence and believe that half of the country is malevolently evil. The GOP invited and exploited it, and the Democrats don’t have the gumption to actually craft a response, and corners of the Wild West have become wilder.
I think this is the most stupid contribution that I have read.
https://halturnerradioshow….
Voltaire on Trump and Trumpanzees: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”.
Some truths never die.
Hardly an atrocity. The Mid-East, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, etc., those are atrocities. Donald wanted nothing to do with them (except Palestine). They’re rather the handiwork of the sainted Obama, and the wise elder statesmen like Blair, Bush, and the Clintons. Trump is a pusillanimous, hyper-venal thug, and demagogue; but, his murders are not wholesale.
Why does the author take refuge in a fiction? That if Trump had won the election the liberals’ reaction would have been worse than what these idiots did on Wednesday? It’s pure speculation, barely a grade up from lies of the sort Trump spews by his natural-born instinct.
Look at what happened. There are the facts.
Here are some more facts. Trump started spewing lies about the fundamental corruption of the American electoral system long before the actual vote. This was a deliberate strategy because he wasn’t sure he could win a free and fair election. So the only way he could cling on to power was to sow doubts about the system itself, a move straight out of Putin’s playbook.
Actually, out of the playbook of Joseph Goebbels, who said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Sensing their own vulnerability, and drunk on the power of the big lie, Republicans eagerly played along in their bid to cling on to power.
The naive Democrats continued to believe in democracy and truth. In Georgia, they didn’t resort to spewing lies, as morally bankrupt Loeffler and Perdue did. Instead, they worked tirelessly to get out the vote.
I think the author should reflect on his motivations.
The Goebbels statement really reflects the four years of Russia Russia and the straight out lies that the “fake news media” (great noun to come out of all this) have been projecting.
On the Georgia election, we still have to see if in fact the vote is true. As one US friend sent to me, they stop Football games to measure yards made with a chain, but for some unknown reason are not prepared to audit their elections when there is a controversy about them. Trump may well have lost, but what are they hiding. Third world nation approach to elections it seems.
No it doesn’t. It reflects the Great Big Lie Trump spewed about the election being a fraud, with zero evidence.
Then you would welcome a forensic audit of all the ballots ?
But of course that is not possible now. Where a vote is ‘adjudicated’, as in one county of 135000 votes mysteriously 106000 had to be, the original ballot is lost, so there is no way to correctly discern the voters intention.
If you’ve got evidence, show it to a judge. Oh, wait …
Dougherty is defending a Bad Thing done by his side by pointing to a hypothetical Worse Thing that would have been done by the other side had events unfolded differently. This is the Devil’s own logic and he’s smart enough to recognize that.
Fuhgedaboudit.
Trump’s people are putting together a revised 2024 insurrection strategy, combined with systematic invasive manipulation of state legislatures, which will be far more organized than the improvised Jan6 circus act.
And probably much more lethal, with guns; it may manifest as the shootout at the DC corral.
Q Shaman ???
You need to do better research. Both of the individuals pictured in your headline photo are known Antifa operatives. Please be more careful.
Obviously there were Q people in DC, but they did not break the glass to illegally enter the building. Antifa operatives were bussed in with state trooper escorts for the purpose of inciting violence, and they were successful. Sadly a few Trump supporters entered the building after Antifa broke in, and a woman who illegally entered the building was killed.
Many of the people at the rally were regular, normal Americans who are sick and tired of being ruled over by the elites. We are sick of the outright stealing of our elections by well funded, well trained big city Democrats who have been perfecting the fraud for decades.
Most of the people in DC yesterday were NOT Q. For the record – I am not Q. I believe they are an extremist group with a cult like following. However, they have no history of violence of this sort. If you cannot find pictures that prove the two individuals are Antifa, because FB,Google and Twitter have removed them, I’d be happy to provide them to you.
There are so few media sources that can be trusted- you have a duty to do better than the hacks at CNN if you expect us to trust UNHerd .
Like the Q Anon shaman, Jake Angeli, who posts Q vids on youtube, has been photographed at multiple Q/Trump events and is vocally pro-Trump?
He’s a known antifa operative?
Come on now, you’re better than this. These are outright lies.
The pictures you refer to, if they are the same ones I have seen, link several bearded gentlement to an image hosted on an antifa website. What the meme doesn’t tell you is the picture is of “known white supremacists” that antifa are calling out. Likewise the “Hammer and Sickle tattoo” is actually a design from the “Dishonored” video game.
He may be wrong about that particular individual but he’s right about the media. And it is quite possible antifa types infiltrated and initiated violence. These people are very good at subversive tactics and are given cover by elected Democrat leaders and media.
Sure, the media aren’t great, but if you discard the mainstream in favour of a stream of conspiracy-rubbish, you’re doing worse, not better.
Who’s to say there weren’t agent-provocateurs among them? Who’s to say that someone who’s been pro-Trump since forever and vocally espouses QAnon theories and goes to QAnon rallies and takes a leading role in a pro-Trump crowd entering congress wasn’t an antifa plant all along?
But without evidence it’s just more (conspiracy) theorising, and so far the evidence (The cow dude was a plant!) is looking pretty flakey.
It’s quite possible too, I guess, that Vladimir Putin. Xi Jin Ping and Ayatollah Khamenei personally infiltrated the mob and incited them. Perhaps they are the three who mysteriously died from medical complications, and the communist controlled Republicans and media are concealing the fact.
The author of the above is a “senior writer” at National Review.
That lost any claim to attention when it sacked John Derbyshire.
A pointless attack. This is a good and necessary dialogue-witness the+300 contributions. Has Disqus now “lost any claim…”?
If such-and-such an article were by a “senior writer” at, say, The Grauniad, I wouldn’t waste time on it.
Once incited, a mob is uncontrollable and highly disposed to act on their grievances …. the GOP generally and Trump specifically have been grooming the members of hate groups and conspiracy groups for at least four years. Yesterday’s events were not a surprise. They were set in motion by the GOP years ago. The mob has been pushed back but it will return, uglier, more violent, and more difficult to quell. We must be prepared to stop them.
Really? I guess you were on holiday most of 2020.
These two are Philadelphia Antifa. Facial recognition software matched them up.
All is NOT what i seems.
God Bless America and God Bless President Trump.
Which branch of Antifa is Trump with?
Every face in that photo are known, (and identified) members of Antifa, posing as Trump supporters.
Like the Q Anon shaman, who posts Q vids on youtube, has been photographed at multiple Q/Trump events and is vocally pro-Trump?
Yeah, sounds totally antifa to me.
If you’re getting your info from memes, just FYI the guy with the “Hammer and Sickle” tattoo on his hand actually has a hand tattoo of a design from a video game, “Dishonored”. Several of them were on a some sort of antifa web page because they were being called out by anti-fascist people for being white supremacists.
I think you’ll find they are lizards.
Your “Q Shaman” goes by many names ” don’t know who named him this time ” but he shows up regularly at Antifa events. A few seconds after your photo was taken, the black-garbed individual shown to his left and another very hirsute guy pose alongside him and display their tattoos. Hirsute dude has a large hammer and sickle on his forearms that he prominently displays, and has also been photographed at many Antifa events. Obviously not MAGA-types.
He’s an out and out trump and Q supporter, not antifa. His videos and posts are out there to see on the internet. Pictures of him at “antifa” and BLM events are not from such events at all. Most have been poorly cropped to hide his “Q sent me!” signs.
The tattoo is from a game, dishonored, not a hammer and sickle. Look it up. The bearded guys are from white supremacist orgs. There were pictures of them on an antifa website because they were being outed as white supremacists.
What you’re doing here is propagating lies and trying to seed disinformation.
Why aren’t you proud of them for doing what you’ve all been fantasising about for weeks? Why disown them now?
Um, not my crowd.
Angeli’s marched at many BLM events and I think he’s more enamored of being a protest groupie than anything serious. He antagonizes everybody everywhere he goes.
I stand corrected on the tattoo, should’ve recognized it.
Has he marched with BLM, or been present at their events in opposition?
Good question, don’t know, but the photo I recall shows him standing with an African American and his mouth wide open.
I just tried Google images for “Q shaman,” and for “Angeli Q BLM,” but it doesn’t seem to let me search before a certain date, and it’s chock a block with this Capitol thing. I’d never heard of him before, so I don’t know about previous pictures, but no doubt they’ll start surfacing soon.
It would be perfectly consistent and expected for him to show up at BLM events, or be present at events opposed by BLM/Antifa etc, rather more surprising for him to march with them.
Yet his public presence online is all pro trump and Q related.
Seriously, this is nonsense, you’re believing memes over facts.
Don’t you get memes and facts from the same sources? How does anyone know what’s true in this post-truth society?
I broadly supported many of Trump’s policies. I thought his presentational / leadership style was absurd and put it down to a ‘clever’ way of trolling the Left. The Left largely deserved it.
However I have been completely baffled by his behaviour since the election. It seems he was not a troll, but a dangerous, non democratic right wing tyrant. No one in their right mind believes that voter fraud delivered 7 million additional votes to Biden or somehow rigged 70 odd electoral colleges.
What does Trump hope to gain by trying to throw all of the USA into political turmoil and civil war? I can only imagine he is a psychotic egomaniac or he is so scared of being arrested that he has nothing to lose.
What does he have to lose? really?
The condemnation of half of the world? Possible arrest and spending the rest of his life in prison?
The same half of the world that has condemned him since he was elected in 2016? Don’t forget that the world doesn’t have the best interests of the US uppermost in mind.
Most of the developed world does. If the USA falls into chaos, it only leaves the EU and the Anglo Saxon countries.
No, but that’s a nice fantasy. Countries have their own interests that supersede those of the US. It’s a weird American notion that those criticizing the US always have the US’ best interests in mind.
And you only realized he was a psychotic egomaniac when he lost the election?
I knew he was an egomaniac, not a psychopath or sociopath.
The Civil War is already there. Get use to it. On the issue of 7m votes to Biden, can you believe it? I can not. Hillary got 3m more than Trump and lost because of large blocks in States that were not in play such as NY and Cal. But to put Biden in the same category as Hillary is ludicrous. Something is wrong and many people (39% Reuters Ipsos Poll) know it.
‘something is wrong’ does not cut it. If you want to overthrow a democratically elected government you need evidence of vote tampering. Every court in the land has ruled there is no credible evidence.
Every independent poll conducted prior to the election predicted a Biden win. There would of been more grounds to believe there was ‘something wrong’ if Biden had not won.
There clearly is no civil war. I can assure you there would be more than ‘one death’ if we had a civil war. There was far more civil disturbance during the civil rights movements in the 60s or vietnam protests.
And now Trump has conceded, there is likely to be even less chance of a ‘civil war’. The point however civil war is no answer. No side will ever win it. So you need to start thinking about different solutions.
Trump is a uniquely American version of Hitler, Stalin etc etc. He encouraged yesterday’s events and attempts to undermine the American voting system. It is up to Americans to decide whether they want to preserve their democracy or, with Trump as beloved leader, head off who knows where. It would be funny if it were not so spine chilling. Pay attention to the heart of the matter.
Trump is a uniquely American version of Hitler, Stalin etc etc
yes, you can tell by the millions of deaths that Trump has ordered. And we don’t have a democracy; we have a republic.
Trump was the first president since Carter not to start a new war, or exacerbate an existing conflict. He deported vastly fewer people than Obama. (Obama broke all records in this respect). He engineered historic peace deals in the Middle East. He released from jail people who were locked up for decades – for minor offences – by the Clinton/Biden 1994 Crime Bill. Trump created full employment – 5.1 million families lost their homes under Obama.
Whatever, it will be a return to normal now. A few new wars and a lot of new unemployed.
WTF. Dwelling on the physique of an utter nutcase…the writer convoluted his way through the rest of the article as if on LSD..
There is mass psychosis in USA right now..
QAnon and Proudboy mob should have been rounded up and interned right at the start..the platforms that allowed their madness to germinate just shut down..no ifs or buts.
The Donald needs to be in jail..
USA needs to re-establish.
QAnon and Proudboy mob should have been rounded up and interned right at the start on what legal grounds under the Constitution?
Mass psychosis? Please elucidate, Dr. Dunn.
Written by a true and proud anti-democrat. How terrible to view anyone’s conflicting views with such disdain.
QAnon and Proudboy mob should have been rounded up and interned right at the start..the platforms that allowed their madness to germinate just shut down..no ifs or buts.
Your inner totalitarian is showing. Should those parties also be tattooed, or would markers sewn onto their clothing suffice? Good thing you’re not engaging in any of the psychosis that has you vexxed.