Paul Brancato

And you interpret that through the lens of a deep state operation to cheat Trump out of an election victory? (Where were you guys in 2016?) If there were Ukrainian fascists leading the charge it was with Trump supporters, almost all white males, who arrived at the Capitol after a Trump rally, urged to do so by Trump himself. Paul - Please enlighten me - how is it that you know that these Ukrainians were there as part of a deep state pro Biden operation? Am I mis-stating your position? That’s what Matthew believes apparently.

I tried to read this. Jeez. Right up front it claims that during the Obama years with help from his CIA director Brennan thousands of Ukrainian fascists emigrated here. Then the article goes on to talk about the years this was occurring - late 2016-2020. Later in the article it links Antifa to Communists in Germany before the rise of the National Socialists. Really? Were there anti fascist Communists trying to prevent a fascist takeover of Germany at that time? Yes, most certainly. They lost however. There is no evidence that I am aware of that shows a link from then to now, other than ideologically. So - no there there. Boy, for someone who likes to warn people against confirmation bias you sure are prone to it. 1/6 is now a Democratic deep state operation, using Azov battalion Ukrainian fascists and American Antifa aimed at discrediting Trump and Republicans. This is simply ridiculous.

Matthew - I asked you where you stand on issues of race. Would you mind sharing?

Agree

It’s a great and eye opening book, most especially about Joe Kennedy. And it was Rose who had the same speech impediment.

Does ring true, though I never thought of inflation as a hidden tax. The boom and bust cycle of capitalism is consistent for hundreds of years, ever since the practice of what used to be called usury became the norm. Everyone these days is a fed watcher. There is almost no financial news underlying stock market action other than what is this or that fed Governor saying. And it’s comical that they are worried about too much employment, as if inflation is being caused by the employed masses. Can’t have labor unions popping up, can’t give workers any power, lest they make more money and force their bosses to raise prices. To me that’s backwards. Bosses raise prices to increase their profits, and surely cheap money enables them to do so until the chickens come home to roost, at which point we have a crash. Nowadays it’s all done out in the open, and we are told it’s good for us.

I truly don’t have any idea whether Antifa, black bloc, or just people dressed in black creaating mayhem, are funded by Soros or anyone else. Do you?

Ben - it’s not acceptable. But you persist in conflating 11/22 and 1/6. I’ve been having discussions on my home front with someone whose views vary widely from mine on several issues. It’s come to my attention that these divisions are stoked primarily by MSM. The countrymen and women in America can be divided on issues and still function as friends who respect each other. Not so FOX and MSNBC. Strongly recommend the newish movie Vengeance, for its unique take on how nonsensical this divide is. The portrayal of a NYC podcaster and a West Texas family is sensitively done. I have enormous respect for the zeitgeist of Texans, as well as the New Yorker, being one myself. I have much family in Texas. I can gather with them and have a good time, as can they with me, here or there. It’s the media, representing the political class, that fans the flames of division in their contest for market share. And let’s not forget who owns practically all the Media. The enemy here are the sociopathic rulers who write tax law and own nearly everything. I would redefine the word ‘WOKE’ and ask that we all wake up to this. We are being played. I will repeat my request - racists please self identify, or deny. Up to you.

Ok, let’s suppose for the sake of argument that he whole thing was a deep state fed set-up to discredit the Right, that proud boys etc were instigated by provocateurs. in the interest of an honest debate, I think it is necessary to ask where you, Matthew, John, Paul R and others here are coming from. And for me and others too. If confirmation bias is real and I am unaware of its effect on me, let me say that I supported the old Jew from Brooklyn Bernie Sanders, as the best of the candidates in both primaries in which he ran. I was brought up by parents who took me and some of my friends to the 1963 March on Washington, to the Rosenbergs vigil at Madison Square Garden the night they were executed, to hear Pete Seeger many times. They named me after Paul Robeson. I am unashamed of my background. I am as far removed from white supremacy as one could get. My dear mother wouldn’t buy Aunt Jemimah pancake mix or spic-n-span. She was an anti nuke activist who was called to testify to HUAC because she had once belonged to the Communist Party. This thread has several posters defending White Nationalists. They have not stated their personal beliefs, only that the Jan 6th crowd were peaceful. I’ll talk with racists any time, but only if they come right out and unashamedly own it, like my recently departed father-in-law, who was a really decent human being in all other respects. I’ll talk with folks who agree with overturning Roe, even the ones who think women should be punished if they transgress laws against abortions, which is surely coming in some states. I’ll talk to neocons. I’ll talk to anyone. But I will NOT take part in an online trolling session. Either you all say what you believe in your hearts or I will delete your posts from my feed.

Apparently no cognitive dissonance going on there. Well, there never is. Chris- I know some here are antagonistic towards you, and vice versa too. I watched all minutes of Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson, and I have a few questions and comments. First and foremost - what LIE are they constantly referring to without actually defining it? Second - who is selectively choosing what pics to show? Tucker Carlson was given lots of footage, and he has picked a very strange one depicting the Horned Norseman being gently shown around, without saying when the footage was taken. It is out of context. We know nothing, except what Tucker shows us and tells us. And when he shows it his preface is all about the danger of pictures in the hands of propagandists (how true) while asking ‘what are they hiding?’ So when he curates the video it’s as a counterbalance to ‘They’, the House committee, who showed us hours of other footage that was very different. What is he intimating? What’s the LIE? That there was no violence on Jan 6th? Carlson makes a point that is different from yours when you say that this LIE was targeted at the right wing, with the intent of labeling any right wing protest as ‘terrorist’. (Did we forget ‘Jews will not replace us’, or vehicles ramming into civil rights protestors in Charlottesville, you know, good people on both sides?) IHe specifically mentions Bernie Sanders and his supporters, who would find themselves similarly labeled for any demonstration they engaged in. What is completely lacking from your analysis, and it pains me to say it, is that for my entire lifetime it’s been the LEFT that has been demonized, infiltrated with federal provocateurs. They have always been deemed ‘terrorist’. Think Civil Rights marches met with water cannons. I didn’t see any of that on Jan 6th. Black DC demonstrations against Trump were shut down by the authorities, unlike Jan 6, an almost completely white persons action. When the Proud Boys are met with the same deadly force as the Black Panthers were I’ll take notice. The progressive perspective has always been left out of mainstream narratives. Their experts have consistently been denied media coverage. It’s ‘leftist’ journalists that have been forced onto substack and other marginal media outlets, it’s that movement that has never had the backing of billionaires. And please, don’t throw George Soros into the mix - that’s just a right wing anti-Semitic trope. There is a deep difference between the corporate media, and the Left. Yes, I’ll give you this - and Carlson is for that brief moment correct - labeling protest as terrorist is something we should all be up in arms about. And - please ignore Antifa. It’s clear what that is, at least to me. I investigated them years ago. Ain’t nothing to do with anarchism, and everything to do with exactly the point you were trying to make. Anything to divide and conquer is ok by ruling elites, and they ain’t Democrats or Republicans, they are both and neither.

Exactly. Thank for that.

I gather the US government doesn’t agree with Hersh on his claims of who blew up the pipelines.

Agree. Not anarchists, provocateurs being funded by unknown entities.

Anyone can wear black and destroy property. That alone should make one suspicious when the word Antifa is bandied about as if it proves that the government is out to get you. If I say anarchism you say Antifa as if that nullifies the concept. So you make my point - anarchism gets a bad rap. It wasn’t anarchists that marched on the Capitol on Jan 6th, it was supporters of Trump. Anarchism is meant to be an antidote to authority and rulership.

It’s completely insane to argue from the position that we could have won that war. I’ll only ask at what price? How many people needed to die? And what would that aftermath look like? Democracy? The details don’t matter. It was immoral.

We made a similar point, though yours was succinct.

I shudder to think what anarcho-capitalist means. Your points are well reasoned within the context of more recent human history. I strongly suggest you read a bit of the newish book The Dawn of Everything, which I’m pretty sure I mentioned a while back, to put my next observation in context. Collectivism is an essential part of human nature. Without it we would have collectively met a far different fate on planet earth. The problem isn’t, in my view, the natural human desire to achieve the common good. The problem begins when individuals are able to amass enormous power, and then manipulate the ‘people’ in service of maintaining that power. (It may seem to be so when we root for someone to get us out of this mess, such as so-called JFK fanboys like myself). When the ‘people’ are told that they will be rewarded for their faith not in this life but in the next, that’s a similar appeal to the goodness of human nature, cynically created by religious elites to amass and maintain power and prestige. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (British Lord Acton apparently) The question I ask, as do the authors of the book, is what happened in human societal evolution that made leadership so pervasive? Some scholars would say that the agricultural revolution set the stage for inordinate amassing of power. But city states predate this revolution. So maybe that’s only a part of it. Is the desire to accumulate power natural for all of us, or just for the sociopaths? I’d say the latter. According to the recent research by the authors of that book, many ancient societies in the New World and elsewhere created specific tribal mechanisms to prevent the privileged few from becoming a dominant force. But it seems obvious to me that the concept of private property, combined with modern banking, has tipped the scales completely. Anarchism has gotten a bad rap. The word is used in a way to make it indistinguishable from Communism. I giggled at the term ‘anarchy-capitalist because it so completely turns the concept on its head.

Never saw this, thank you. I think this is why I now self identify as an anarchist.

Exactly. I hope you watch the entire movie. It’s available somewhere. I know Criterion has it. I’ll bet YouTube does. The film prepares you for this moment. Classic scenes, like Hitler’s ballet with the globe, or his meeting with Mussolini, are priceless. He confronts the Jewish question directly, unlike the governments of the US and GB. By 1952 he is considered an enemy of the state, Hoover and McCarthy going after him. Apparently Modern Times was enough to label him a Communist. Such crap. Such a great artist. He’d be cancelled these days though, not for politics but for marrying a 16 yr old. Ah well …

I was unaware that there remains a mystery as to where he was born and whether or not he was part Jewish or part gypsy. The fact remains he was considered by J Edgar Hoover to be a Communist and enemy of the state, though no proof of that exists. One thing that puzzles me though is why so few of my friends, and possibly so few of the members of this forum, have ever seen this incredible movie. It’s so funny, so poignant.

I was wrong about the banning of the film. He had great success with it. 10 years or so later he refused to cooperate with McCarthy’s HUAC and left the US for good.

One of the greatest moments of movie history. Yet this film was practically banned in the US.

Everyone sat idly by and watched Germany invade Poland. Didn’t England have a defense treaty with Poland? Maybe I’ve got that wrong. Have you or anyone reading this watched the PBS show America and the Holocaust? Very revealing series. Everyone sat idly by while Hitler and Co. tried to destroy the Jewish people, and Poland was the worst - I believe something like 4 million Polish Jews were killed. But essentially the US took the side of Germany until Japan attacked us. Everyone should watch Chaplin’s masterpiece The Great Dictator. And we took the side of Germany after the war. Yeah, Stalin was horrible. Putin is horrible. Bush was horrible.