freedom and reason

You’ve probably seen the thing by now. A walking billboard critical of gender affirming care is confronted by a passerby who takes issue with the claim that doctors are physiologically or surgically altering the bodies of teenage girls, such as the administration of puberty blockers or the amputation of healthy breasts, by denying that this is happening. Confronted with evidence that these things are, in fact, happening, the passerby says that it’s a good thing that they are. Yet their initial denial indicated that surgically altering teenage girls was an objectionable thing used by the walking billboard to cast gender affirming care in a bad light.

This is the “deny-then-justify” response or, more technically, dissonance-driven reversal with rationalization. I watch these videos and think, “Do the thing.” I think this, too, in conversations on social media. I want it to happen, in part for my own amusement. But also, so I can deploy the Arthur Schopenhauer screen and avoid wasting my time; fools do the thing. I’m rarely disappointed.

Generally, the thing unfolds in two stages. First, when confronted with an implication of a standpoint that is inconvenient or threatens one’s self-conception, the individual initially denies that the implication is occurring. Denial serves as a defense mechanism, shielding the person from cognitive dissonance—the psychological tension that arises when holding contradictory beliefs or facing evidence that undermines cherished convictions. When the evidence becomes undeniable, the response shifts. Rather than abandoning the original standpoint, the individual reframes the inconvenient consequence as desirable, thereby restoring internal consistency. This rationalization converts what was previously a threat into a seemingly beneficial outcome, allowing the person to maintain allegiance to the original belief without overt contradiction.

Seeing this, one knows he is dealing with a fool. Intellectually, however, the thing itself is worth exploring. Moreover, on a practical level, one has to believe some will benefit from understanding it. Not everybody wants to be a fool. Human reasoning, ideally, is the pursuit of truth; in practice, it is profoundly shaped by psychological pressures and the desire to maintain a coherent self-image. Tribalism is linked to genetic variation in our species; some individuals are more prone to the pull of its gravity. For some, there is no overcoming its force; for others, there is hope. At least I would like to think so.

This thing can be understood as a combination of cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, and post hoc rationalization. Cognitive dissonance explains the mental discomfort that triggers denial. Motivated reasoning describes the selective processing of evidence to defend prior commitments. Rationalization accounts for the reinterpretation of reality to align with existing beliefs. One observes this dynamic in domains ranging from ideology and politics to personal decision-making and moral reasoning.

To educate people about this, I have published several articles on the various psychological pressures that compromise rational thought (see When Thinking Becomes Unthinkable: Motivated Reasoning and the Memory Hole; Why People Resist Reason: Understanding Belief, Bias, and Self-Deception; Living with Difficult Truths is Hard; A Recent Revelation from the Epstein Files Confirms One Thing: The Power of Motivated Reasoning). This essay adds to the catalog the “deny-then-justify” response to inconvenient implications of one’s beliefs or commitments.

* * *

In this section, I illustrate the thing by leveraging a recent interaction with an individual whose demand for evidence appeared to deny that progressives want to shrink the proportion of white people in the world. For context, I had wondered in a social media post why progressives have a problem with a white majority in North America and Europe. To show that they do, I noted that, in 2015, then-Vice President Joe Biden, sitting next to Alejandro Mayorkas (later his DHS Secretary), said the following, verbatim:

“An unrelenting stream of immigration. Nonstop. Nonstop. Folks like me who are Caucasian, of European descent—for the first time in 2017—will be in an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority. Fewer than 50% of the people in America from then and on will be white, European stock. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength.”

If one searches Google for the clip, Gemini (Google’s native AI bot) will warn users that clips often omit Biden’s note about diversity. The warning is a prebunking tactic. It means to leave the user with the belief that diversity is an unalloyed good, and that those who clip the future president’s remarks intentionally omit this to mislead others. I include Biden’s full point because it’s the diversity piece that must be interrogated.

https://t.co/DnHsGcPZKF

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) April 9, 2026

To be clear, in my interaction with the individual on social media, I did not share the clip immediately, but simply noted that Biden had expressed the sentiment. I shared the clip after the individual expressed doubt that Biden had said this. Crucially, Biden wasn’t speaking abstractly about cultural enrichment. He explicitly tied the policy outcome—mass immigration creating a permanent white-European-stock minority—to America’s strength. I then noted that Chuck Schumer has made parallel arguments for putting millions of undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship, explicitly linking it to low native birth rates and the need to “have a great future in America.”

https://t.co/FaOLNu6Xm8

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) April 9, 2026

When one supplies the evidence, the response is typically either silence or a demand for context. A changed mind would be the ideal outcome, but it’s usually the case that minds don’t change. Perhaps silence would be preferable to the thing. That’s what happened in this case: the person didn’t do the thing. Context doesn’t erase the plain meaning of Biden’s words: progressive voices celebrate demographic change that shrinks the historic white-European-descended majority. They call this “diversity.” They call it “our strength.” Then they implement policies that produce exactly that outcome. They open the borders and thwart mass deportations.

Progressives don’t merely know this—they promote it. These are straightforward facts. When confronted with them, if not falling silent, they often do more than rationalize them; they accuse those concerned with mass immigration of conspiracism rooted in racism. A man concerned with the diminishment of white people has bought into the “Great Replacement theory” and the myth of “white genocide.” They transform objections to the diminishment of a demographic category into its opposite. This is a key element in denying the truth of mass immigration.

There is a test of consistency here: If the argument is truly “diversity is our strength” and “more non-white immigration is good because it reduces the proportion of the current majority,” then the same logic must apply everywhere. I made this argument in my September 2025 essay Immigration, Colonialization, and the Struggle to Save the West. I want to reiterate the basic argument in today’s essay because it exposes the racism inherent in the pro-immigration argument.

Ask progressives to apply the appeal to diversity to South Africa. There, blacks of African stock are roughly 80 percent of the population; whites are less than ten percent. Suppose someone proposed nonstop immigration of non-blacks specifically to make black South Africans an absolute minority, calling it “diversity” and a “source of strength.” Would progressives cheer that? Of course not. They would rightly see it as colonization and demographic engineering against an indigenous majority. It would be a manifestation of white supremacy.

Europeans are the indigenous peoples of Europe, who spread Western civilization to the Americas at a time when those continents were sparsely populated (around twenty million pre-contact). If the policy is good when it shrinks white majorities in Europe and the Americas, it cannot suddenly become bad when it would shrink a black majority in South Africa. Not if one is consistent. The only consistent position is that every people has a legitimate interest in preserving its own cultural, demographic, and political majority in its historic homeland—or that none do. The progressive position rejects one and embraces the other only when the majority in question is white. That’s the double standard. My question thus remains: why do progressives have a problem with a white majority?

It isn’t because diversity is magically good only in white countries. It flows from an ideological framework that views European/Western history through a lens of perpetual guilt and power dynamics (colonialism, slavery, etc.). Under that gaze, any reduction in white demographic weight is framed as a matter of historical or social justice. Non-white majorities are perpetual victims; for tribal thinkers, the number of generations between colonialism and slavery is irrelevant. The result is selective application: demographic change is “progress” when it disadvantages the historic Western majority, and a “threat” when it would disadvantage anyone else. That isn’t color-blind policy or universal humanism; it’s a racially asymmetric moral standard dressed up as “diversity.”

None of this requires claiming diversity is always bad. Merit-based, voluntary, culturally compatible diversity can bring real benefits. But the empirical record on rapid, large-scale, low-assimilation demographic diversity is not the unalloyed good that progressives claim—far from it. Robert Putnam’s landmark research found that in the short-to-medium term, greater ethnic diversity correlates with people “hunkering down,” i.e., less volunteering, lower trust in neighbors (both in-group and out-group), reduced civic engagement, and weaker community bonds—even after controlling for education, income, and other factors. He called it the “constriction” effect.

Work on ethnic fractionalization by Alberto Alesina, William Easterly, and fellow researchers confirms Putnam’s thesis: higher diversity often correlates with higher transaction costs, lower public-goods provision, slower economic growth in some contexts, and greater risk of social fragmentation when assimilation lags or is ideologically condemned. These are measurable trade-offs, not bigotry. When policymakers treat demographic change as an unqualified moral imperative rather than a policy choice with costs, they are ignoring the data.

The question of whether any particular group is “better” is not an unimportant one. The West is a superior civilization; world history attests to this fact, not only because of its contributions to the advancement of science and technology, but also because it has spread equality, freedom, and democracy to those willing to embrace them. The call for restricting immigration is not about racism or xenophobia. Replacing whites with nonwhites is real. It is a core strategy of the globalization project. It displaces native workers, drives down wages, disorganizes culture, and weakens national integrity. There is racism, but it points in the opposite direction.

The question is a matter of consistency and realism. If progressives truly believe nonstop immigration that shrinks the white-European-stock majority is “a source of our strength,” they should be willing to defend the identical policy in South Africa, Japan, or any other nation. The fact that they don’t—and that the argument is applied asymmetrically—reveals ideology, not principle.

As for the realism piece, progressives can’t go there because it interferes with the managed decline of the West. This is what they must not admit to. Doing so gives away the game. This is why progressives dwell on supposed “white privilege,” “white supremacy,” and the “wages of whiteness.” White progressives prostrating themselves before black radicals during the Black Lives Matter riots was a physical manifestation of “white guilt.” For them, we must throw off the “unbearable whiteness of [fill in the blank].” We must “disrupt,” even “abolish” whiteness. The rhetoric is ubiquitous on the progressive left.

However, celebrating the decline of the “white, European stock” is strategic self-loathing. It advances the globalist project. A significant portion of the population has been conditioned to believe that the civilization that liberated people around the world from the racism of primitive tribalisms is itself racist. Justice requires opening the Western gate to the barbarian so that the perpetrators may atone for their sins. Woke progressivism had bred a generation of masochists eager to submit itself to cultural erasure. The appeal to diversity is designed to obscure that reality.

Whether those confronted with these facts do the thing is beside the point. Anticipating the counterpoint, progressives have already announced the second part of the “deny-then-justify” response: diversity is a good thing. The passersby confronting the walking billboard with the diversity argument will leave the interaction satisfied. But he will be just as satisfied by silence. The walking billboard is a racist (just as he is a transphobe when he objects to puberty blockers or genital mutilation). In the case of mass immigration, he won’t admit the guilt all white people share. It doesn’t matter to our passerby that diversity is a lie. And he cannot begin to entertain the argument that he’s the racist. The walking billboard’s pitch is prebunked by ideology. The passerby is a fool.

* * *

In essence, the thing sequence illustrates a broader truth about human cognition: our species does not passively follow evidence, but actively interprets it in ways that preserve the narratives and the values held. The phenomenon highlights the subtle mechanisms by which individuals reconcile conflicts between belief and reality. Recognizing this pattern is not only analytically useful but also crucial for understanding debates and persuasion, as well as the complexities of human behavior.

It’s also a quick way to determine whether investing time in conversations will yield benefits. As I noted in a recent essay (The Scourge of the Scold), German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer cautioned against arguing with fools. “Logic holds little power against stubborn ignorance. Such disputes waste valuable time,” I write there; “debating fools diminishes one’s own standing, as true intellectual victory is unattainable when faced with irrationality and pride.” Silence here is not because the wise man has no response; it is because he knows the fool cannot admit or comprehend it.

Schopenhauer’s advice is to avoid engaging altogether. I confess: I don’t always take the man’s advice. Others may confess to this, as well. Perhaps we suffer from too much optimism about our fellow man. We regard him as potentially reasonable. We are, after all, the same species. The fact that he can form a sentence is an indication that he is potentially rational, no? At any rate, my purpose here is to provide ammunition and awareness of the cognitive and emotional barriers to rational discourse. We don’t really argue in public because we know we can change our interlocutors’ minds in every instance. The real target is the audience.

A tentative ceasefire agreement has been reached between the United States and Iran. The details have yet to be finalized, and Iran has not ceased striking regional targets. However, a key demand—that Iran reopen the Straits of Hormuz—appears to have been secured. Oil prices have dropped as a result. Given global dependence on the free flow of oil, this development compels nations opposing the joint US–Israel intervention in Iran to take an interest in defending the principle of international waters. Baby steps.

More significantly, the results advance Trump’s project of restoring full US hegemony in world affairs (see Donald Trump’s Grand Vision: Make Western Civilization Great Again and embedded links). The project seeks to revitalize Western civilization, which, under the pressures of transnational corporate power and broader geopolitical shifts, has been diminished over recent decades. This explains why progressives are so disappointed that Trump did not act on what they framed as a genocidal threat involving nuclear weapons.

To be sure, they predictably rationalized their disappointment. Social media users flocked to the digital platforms to gloat about what they spun as Trump’s capitulation to the Islamic Republic. “There’s nothing to celebrate about reopening the Straits of Hormuz,” they argued, noting that the straits were open before the joint US–Israel intervention. This is true. However, as I pointed out in comments to several threads, Iran also possessed a navy, an air force, missile systems capable of threatening Europe, and an advanced nuclear program before the intervention.

The closure of the straits was an Iranian response to the joint US–Israel action that significantly degraded Iran’s military capacity. Today, its navy has been largely destroyed, its air force severely weakened, its missile capabilities curtailed, and its nuclear program set back by several years. These developments form a major part of the administration’s strategy to weaken not only Iran but also its regional alignment with China, Russia, and other actors antagonistic to the United States and its allies. This infuriates the globalists who pretend not to understand Trump’s strategy.

Now that a ceasefire has been reached—after Trump threatened the regime with annihilation, underscored by a demonstration of force at Kharg Island—social media commentary has shifted. Critics now portray the president as having backed away from his earlier threats. This rapid shift—from accusations of impending genocide to the refrain that “Trump always chickens out” (or “TACO”)—reflects a broader effort to diminish his political standing. The flip of the switch telegraphs the intensity of opposition to his approach to global reordering.

Meanwhile, Democrats, who in recent weeks have discussed invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, are now preparing potential articles of impeachment, which they will almost certainly pursue if they win the 2026 midterm elections. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say. It is not that Democrats don’t understand what Trump is doing. It is because they understand the Trump doctrine, and they don’t like it. It interferes with the managed decline of the West.

For many progressives, opposition to US–Israel action is less of a defense of the Islamic Republic itself and more of a concern over the broader implications of Trump’s geopolitical vision. Secretly, escalation, especially the use of nuclear weapons, would strengthen the case for his removal, thereby restoring prior US foreign policy approaches that emphasized global integration and enabling China. Hence, the shift from hyperbole of genocidal belligerence to the belittling charge of cowardice.

Globalist ambition explains why the authoritarian nature of the Islamic Republic is downplayed (there was no outrage over the Islamic Republic’s slaughter of civilians demanding liberation from tyranny). But the regime’s authoritarian nature is hardly in question from a rational standpoint, nor is the moral necessity to confront it. As discussed in a previous essay (No, Trump Did Not Signal Genocide. He’s Signaling the Destruction of the Islamic Republic), eliminating the Islamic Republic as a strategic threat can be likened to the Allied effort to defeat Nazi Germany. Critics deny this comparison by conflating a political regime with an entire people, which was the purpose of misrepresenting Trump’s post on TruthSocial.

However, the Islamic Republic does not represent the full breadth of Persian civilization. It is a Shi’a Islamic project for regional domination, analogous to the National Socialist ambition of a Greater German Reich, pursuing regional proxy conflicts—particularly against Israel—while advancing capabilities that could contribute to a broader global conflict. The Islamic Republic’s ambitions to establish a wider Islamic order are analogous to expansionist ideologies of the twentieth century. Allowing such a regime to develop unchecked, especially given its ideological orientation, is a failure of responsible nations to defend democratic principles. This failure is strategic, ultimately serving the interests of a transnational corporate order.

As noted in prior essays (e.g., War, Sacrifice, and the Abandonment of Principled Discernment; Trump Never Promised to Eschew Military Power to Confront Tyranny), I am generally opposed to regime-change wars. I opposed US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq that sought regime change, for example. However, in the case of Iran, I view the situation differently due to the unique ideological and strategic threat the Islamic Republic poses. This view is informed by historical experience with totalitarian expansionism—an experience progressives obscure.

I hold similar concerns about China’s global ambitions, though I recognize that military regime change there would likely trigger a world war. In China’s case, a more viable strategy would involve addressing the dynamics of state-driven economic power within the global system. In this context, intervention in Iran marginalizes China and restores the West’s strategic dominance. It forces Iran to the negotiating table under terms distinct from those pursued by previous administrations. The issue of the Straits of Hormuz underscores the importance of maintaining international waterways and highlights the need for long-term strategic thinking, particularly in light of China’s ambitions.

The rise of China is linked to decades of economic globalization and the expansion of transnational corporate influence. The normalization of US–China relations in the 1970s—initiated under President Richard Nixon—was intended to exploit the Sino-Soviet split and rebalance Cold War geopolitics. However, it also created space for China to transition from rigid central planning to a hybrid economic model combining state control with market mechanisms.

Over time, this model has enabled China to integrate into the global economy while maintaining political control, leveraging foreign investment, export-led growth, and industrial policy. Initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative and participation in multilateral groupings such as BRICS reflect China’s growing influence and its efforts to reshape aspects of the global order.

From this perspective, intervention in Iran is not only a response to a regional threat but also as part of a broader effort to counterbalance these global dynamics. So, while I would like to have seen regime change in Iran, the present situation, if it holds, carries much promise in the project to reassert Western influence in the world, which depends on populist-nationalist reclamation of Western nations. Military intervention in Iran has significantly advanced Trump’s project.

* * *

I also noted in yesterday’s essay the emergence of right-wing voices critical of Trump who argue that the US–Israel intervention was driven by a Zionist agenda. I pointed out that such claims often draw on conspiratorial frameworks with antisemitic roots, and that some who adopt these views are influenced by particular strands of ideological or religious thought.

Historically, elements within Christian theology—especially in parts of the Catholic tradition—advanced the “deicide charge,” i.e., the claim that Jews collectively bear responsibility for the death of Jesus. While not universal across all places and times, this idea contributed to discrimination and violence against Jewish communities in medieval Europe. But antisemitism did not disappear with the rise of capitalism. Indeed, as we saw in the case of National Socialism in Germany, and as we see today with the Red-Green Alliance, the specter of antisemitism continues to cast its shadow over the West. The Red-Green Alliance is a leftist development, and reflects the antisemitism that inheres in Islamic thought. However, antisemitic attitudes persist on the Christian right. There, religious identity becomes intertwined with ultranationalist or conspiratorial ideologies, manifesting as hostility toward Jews or toward Israel. In this view, Trump is a marionette whose mouth and limbs are operated by the Zionist puppetmaster.

This explains why a right-wing faction, whose interpretation of America First is distinctly isolationist, has broken with Trump (contrast their isolationism with my position articulated in America First is Freedom First). Indeed, this faction, like the progressive left, has taken up a defense of Islam. Forty-seven years of the Islamic Republic are not enough for this crowd. The irony is that their opposition to the Trump Doctrine, by fracturing the MAGA movement, enables the transnational corporate project to usher in the new world order they have historically decried. One might even suspect a grand conspiracy is at work here, one that seeks to turn conservatives against themselves to return America to the path of managed decline.

Leaving to one side the ignoramuses of the left, more knowledgeable progressives pretend not to get things because they’re committed to globalization and the managed decline of the West, which they view as an illegitimate civilization. They have transnational corporate power behind them, which one can understand, given that Trump is antithetical to globalist ambitions.

On the other side, however much they wrap their commitments in Christian paper, the alt-right—Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candice Owens, and their ilk, mostly Catholic—pretend not to get things because they despise Israel. They despise Israel because they loathe the Jews. Antisemitism is still a problem on the right, and these voices make that abundantly clear. They believe Trump is a puppet worked by the hand of Zionism. Indeed, all American politicians will be puppets of the Jews until the ties between Israel and the West are broken.

This explains the hysteria on social media about Donald Trump’s post on TruthSocial threatening the Islamic Republic with annihilation.

I've taught European history for 30 years. Americans have always asked me how the Holocaust was possible, how Germans could have enabled a madman reveling in mass murder to carry out his plans. Now we can see in real time how this is enabled; now we have front-row seats. pic.twitter.com/tAZNoqnsrb

— Marci Shore (@marci_shore) April 7, 2026

When President Trump writes that a “whole civilization will die tonight,” what is he talking about? He ends the post with “47 years of extortion, corruption, and death will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!” This tells us what he means. It does not mean wiping out Iranians. It means ending the clerical fascist regime known as the Islamic Republic in the same way that the United States ended National Socialism in Europe—only this time before a species of fascism can visit mass death and destruction on those around it.

In Marci Shore’s reaction to Trump’s post, which I have shared above, she claims that Americans ask her how the Holocaust was possible. How, they wonder, could Germans have “enabled a madman reveling in mass murder to carry out his plans.” One is supposed to believe that what has unfolded over the last several weeks confirms her fantastical beliefs about Trump. “Now we can see in real time how this is enabled,” She continues, “now we have front-row seats.

Shore is a professor of intellectual history at the University of Toronto, where she specializes in the history of literary and political engagement with Marxism. An interest in Marxism does not necessarily disqualify an opinion, but her project, combined with her actions, does. Shore used to be on the faculty of Yale, but left, along with her husband and a colleague, for Canada after Trump was reelected president. She explained her reasoning in a New York Times op-ed, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US.” The title alone telegraphs the op-ed’s content. Its authors see the world through a hysterical lens.

I share Shore’s post because it’s paradigmatic of present-day academic thought. Consumed by loathing of Western civilization, academics like Shore forget their own studies in history. My response was to help Shore recall those studies. “You should know, then, that many lives would have been saved had we intervened earlier in Germany,” I wrote. But she appears to draw no lessons from history—or, more accurately, draws the wrong ones. One gets the impression from reading her words, and those of other social media commenters, that the world should have left in place Nazi civilization, or at least waited until the casualties numbered in tens of millions of humans before doing something about it. America did, in fact, wait, permitting the atrocities to continue for years. When people say, “Never again,” do they mean it?

Surely Shore knows that the Nazis framed their ambitions as the creation of a civilization, one built upon a deeply destructive and exclusionary vision. The Nazis equated civilization with the dominance of the “Aryan” race, portraying Jews and others as threats to the social order. Their ambition for a new civilization justified territorial expansion under the guise of bringing German culture to the world, all the while committing mass murder and stamping out freedom everywhere they found it.

At home, the Nazis sought to engineer society through architecture, art, education, literature, and science, contriving and promoting works that reflected order, strength, and tribal purity while condemning “degenerate” modernist movements. Mythic and historical narratives of ancient Germanic greatness were used to legitimize their ideology. The Nazi notion of civilization radically diverged from traditional European concepts of cultural and moral advancement. The Nazis were profoundly illiberal. They were paradigmatically authoritarian.

Shi’a revolutionaries likewise frame their ambitions as the creation of a civilization—one also built upon a deeply destructive and exclusionary vision. They equate true civilization with the dominance of Shi’a Islamic governance, portraying Sunnis, Jews, Christians, secular Muslims, and liberal societies as existential threats to the divine order. Their concept of civilization justifies territorial expansion and influence under the guise of exporting the Islamic Revolution and liberating “oppressed” Muslim lands, all the while supporting proxy wars, terrorism, and systematic persecution of minorities.

At home, they seek to engineer society through architecture, art, education, literature, science, and especially religious seminaries and state media, promoting works that reflect strict Shi’a piety, clerical purity, revolutionary zeal, and martyrdom culture, while condemning secularism and “Western degeneracy.” Mythic and historical narratives of ancient Islamic greatness, the suffering of the Imams (like the suffering of Hitler), and the anticipated return of the Hidden Mahdi are used to legitimize their ideology.

The Shi’a revolutionary notion of civilization radically diverges from both traditional Sunni Islamic concepts of governance and from modern notions of cultural and moral advancement through pluralism and individual rights. Like the Nazis, the Shi’a theocratic regime is authoritarian and profoundly illiberal.

The “civilization” Trump is referring to in his post is Shi’a Islam. This is how Shi’a Islam sees itself. Persia and the Islamic Republic are different things. The Persian civilization was one of the first great empires of the ancient world, stretching from the Indus Valley to the eastern Mediterranean. It was known for its sophisticated administrative system and an extensive network of roads that facilitated trade and communication. Persian rulers promoted cultural and religious tolerance, allowing conquered peoples to maintain their traditions. The civilization made advances in architecture, art, and science, leaving a lasting legacy on governance and cultural exchange in the ancient world.

The 1979 revolution that brought the Shi’a Muslims to power is antithetical to that legacy. The largest group within Shi’a Islam is the Twelvers, who believe in a line of twelve divinely appointed Imams. Twelver Shi‘ism obsesses over Islamic doctrine, spiritual authority, and devotion to Imams. The Twelvers seek to impose Islamic rule on the world (not to be confused with the Sunni Muslim concept of the caliphate). The Twelver vision of the future era is one in which all humanity will be united under righteous rule guided by the will of Allah. If permitted, Shi’a Islam would shroud the world in darkness. The world has tolerated for too long the gathering of power by these clerical fascists.

I wrote in a recent essay (Donald Trump’s Grand Vision: Make Western Civilization Great Again) that the President’s strategy involves a redeemed Europe—redeemed by populist-nationalist movements across the continent—allied with the Western Hemisphere (Canada and parts of South America also need redeeming) and Eastern regions around the world, including Sunni Muslim countries, forming a global alliance committed to marginalizing China and halting the spread of Islam—the twin toltarianisms of our age. The core of the strategy requires marginalizing the most apocalyptic movement in Islam’s history, which uses Iran as its base of operations. Far from destroying the Iranian people, the goal is to liberate them from the civilization that Shi’ia Islam is building.

At first, I thought “civilization” was not the best word for Trump to use. “Barbarians” strikes me as the appropriate way to characterize Shi’a Islam. But upon further reflection, I understand that the President is talking about the Islamic Republic as it sees itself. The message is directed at the Twelvers. If a US president had, in the 1930s, told Adolf Hitler that his civilization “will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” what lover of humanity would regard that as a genocidal threat?

Trump also says in that post that, as a consequence of joint US-Israeli military action, “different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen.” The hope is that a revolution will overthrow the Twelvers and make Iran great again. Without US intervention, the likelihood of such a thing is remote. We saw what the Islamic Republic did to Iranians who rose up against the regime.

Research consistently shows that religiosity has a substantial genetic basis and, moreover, that the relative influence of genes versus environment shifts over the course of a person’s life.

In childhood and adolescence, religious belief and practice are shaped primarily by culture, family, and the shared social environment, with genetic factors playing a modest role—typically estimated at around 10–15 percent. During these years, children largely adopt the beliefs and behaviors of their parents and the surrounding community.

As individuals reach adulthood and gain independence, however, the influence of the shared environment declines sharply, while genetic predispositions become more pronounced. By adulthood, studies indicate that genetic factors account for roughly 40–45 percent of the variation in religiosity. In short, people tend to grow into their innate dispositions once they are free to choose their own beliefs and practices.

This pattern holds cross-culturally, though the balance between genetics and environment varies with the religiosity of the surrounding culture. Genetic influences appear stronger in more secular or pluralistic societies, where traditional religious norms exert less uniform pressure. For those societies with a high degree of religiosity, because individuals are less free to deviate from the societal standard, they are more likely to express the religious belief associated with that standard.

These findings help explain why secular societies often see quasi-religious ideologies—such as gender identity doctrine or the critical race standpoint—emerge to fill the void left by declining traditional religion. They also account for the persistent attraction to collectivism and statism among many secular individuals, who appear to seek a theocratic analogue.

Among progressive Christians, the ideology of gender identity aligns naturally with a hyper-emphasis on empathy and kindness, which also underlies support for expansive welfarism and open immigration. Progressive Christians are more likely than Christians of other persuasions to embrace the perpetrator-victim model that inheres in wokism. By contrast, both conservative and traditional liberal forms of Christianity tend to inoculate adherents against belief in such doctrinal absurdities, as well as against excessive statism. Conservatives are much more concerned with traditionalism and literal interpretations of Christianity. Traditional liberals are committed to the principle of individualism and Christian ethics, while less devoted to the theistic piece (a standpoint reflected in the thinking of many of America’s founders).

The quasi-religious character of gender identity becomes clearer when viewed as a modern analogue to the soul: an unfalsifiable, faith-based assertion whose validity rests entirely on doctrine. For those oriented towards the secular with a more atheistic worldview, this ideology satisfies an innate need for transcendental belief while simultaneously justifying a powerful role for the state and other authorities—so long as those authorities align with their ideological preferences.

This underlying need for religiosity or spirituality helps explain the alignment between woke progressivism and more overtly theocratic orientations, such as Islam—commonly known as the Red-Green alliance. Progressives see in radical Islam a model of theocratic control they wish to emulate, even if they reject its specific doctrines, such as the subordinate role of women in society and its stance regarding homosexuality. Both ideologies seek to order society according to their sacred beliefs. Both express an antipathy to freedoms of conscience and speech. In this sense, the Muslim extremist and the authoritarian progressive are birds of a feather.

Grasping innate religiosity helps one understand why it often feels impossible to engage in rational discussion with woke progressives and why they become so hostile when their views are challenged. Their views do not withstand fact and reason, so the typical response is to shut down while accusing those who challenge their beliefs of bigotry or, at the very least, intolerance. Gender identity, as a species of primitive belief, lies beyond the reach of empirical adjudication.

Like Islam, woke progressivism resists rational critique because its adherents embrace it not through evidence or logic, but through a deep-seated genetic predisposition toward religious belief, spiritual experience, and tribal loyalty under conditions of pluralism and secularism. Viewed from this primitive standpoint, the disbeliever becomes a heretic or an infidel. So, while pluralism and secularism are the desirable features of a free society, they have no bearing on the variability in the species’ susceptibility to religiosity. One suspects this is why, ignorant of the modern science of genetics, but having sufficient experience with the variable proclivities of mammals, the framers of America’s founding documents systematically codified the freedoms of conscience and speech.

Progressives are panicking over Christian Nationalism as if public schools were festooned with its flags, classrooms packed with its propaganda, teachers declaring their allegiance to doctrine and instructing students in it, crosswalks painted in its colors, and its representatives reading its books to children in public libraries.

Where is the month dedicated to Christian Nationalism? I haven’t seen its flag flying over City Hall. I haven’t seen professional sports teams wearing movement patches or end zones painted with Christian Nationalist slogans.

Supposing all of this were the case, you’d be no bigot for objecting. Sure, proponents of the ideology would condemn you for your “Christophobia.” But we all know that would simply be a tactic to shut you up so they could force their doctrine down your throat—and the throats of your children. It wouldn’t be enough for them to have the right to be Christian Nationalists; it wouldn’t be enough that we tolerated them; they would insist we hear about it 24/7. And not just that—they would demand that we affirm the truth of the doctrine.

I would object because these spaces are public and the First Amendment requires them to be ideologically neutral. You know, the principle of liberty in conscience and all the rest of it. Progressives would object for a different reason: it precludes government endorsement of Pride Progress (or Black Lives Matter, and so on).

The Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, said at a Christian gathering, “Our rights here in this great country come from a loving and benevolent God, not government.” Progressives are melting down over the Secretary’s remarks. For them, rights are bestowed upon citizens by the state (Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said so). If the state bestows rights, it can take them away and replace them with others. The American citizen is free only until the next government assumes power.

But Hegseth’s observation merely echoes words found in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” With the words, Virginian Thomas Jefferson affirms that every person is inherently equal and has rights that cannot be taken away by a government. These rights come from a power beyond man; they are not bestowed upon him by governments or rulers.

Liberty and the pursuit of happiness do not hinge on whether men may enter women’s exclusive spaces, or whether trans activists can festoon public school classrooms with Pride Progress paraphernalia. They hinge on whether women have an exclusive right to those spaces, and whether citizens are free from compelled participation in movement politics.

For the Pride Progress crowd, it’s not enough that society tolerates those who believe they are a different gender from what they are. Queer doctrine is a proselytizing religion; it seeks to convert all of society into adherents of the faith. And it enjoys the backing of public institutions. Queer doctrine is being pressed into society, and one is now a bigot for objecting. That it was assumed there’d be no problem with violating public spaces in this manner shows us how far down the road America had already travelled in compelling belief.

The demand that society affirm the gender identity doctrine is no different from the demand that it submit to Christian Nationalism. Both demands are tyrannical. The American Republic was founded on the principle that individuals are free to believe as they wish, or to disbelieve. Our public institutions are governed by the principle of free thought. Conscience is the prerogative of the citizen. This principle is set down in foundational law. The first article of the Bill of Rights establishes the rule. The rule requires ideologically-neutral public spaces to be manifested in practice.

The defense of liberty is not bigotry. After all, what is bigotry if not intolerance or an unfair attitude or behavior toward people who are different from oneself? Bigotry involves prejudice, hatred, or discrimination, and a refusal to tolerate differing identities, lifestyles, or opinions. Objecting to state endorsement of Christian Nationalism or Pride Progress on principle has nothing to do with any of these things. On the contrary, it has everything to do with keeping public spaces free of those things.

Jasmine Crockett is defending the reputation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Jackson Brown after others criticized her for an astonishingly dumb line of questioning concerning birthright citizenship and for her recent dissent in a straightforward free speech case. In that dissent (she was the lone dissenter), Brown sought to affirm the power of states to compel therapists and other healthcare professionals to restrict options for gender-confused patients to so-called “gender-affirming care.” The dumb line of question? Jackson linked birthright citizenship to stealing a wallet in Japan.

Crockett commented that, because Brown is black and a woman (can Crockett tell us what a woman is?), she has to work “ten times harder” than those who are not black women. The reality is that Brown’s status as a black woman has made her life easier, and her nomination and confirmation to the Court prove that. She does not deserve to be on the Court. Her race and gender matter to those who count beans. Joe Biden explicitly selected her because she is a black woman. He did not select her based on accomplishment or talent. He sought a token, which is the progressive way.

Under questioning during her confirmation hearing, Brown couldn’t even answer the simple question, “What is a woman?” All she had to say was that a woman is an adult female human. Instead, she said she could not answer the question because she is not a biologist. If she cannot answer questions outside her field of expertise, then how could she have dissented in the Colorado case? Yet she wrote in her dissent that helping patients come to terms with their gender is an inappropriate treatment for gender dysphoria. Is Brown a medical professional? No. Following her logic, she should have no role in deciding cases that bear on medical questions.

We all know why progressives won’t answer the question Senator Marsha Blackburn put to Brown. If they answer the question truthfully, then men who say they are women are not women, since they are plainly not adult female humans. Answering the question honestly destroys the foundational premise upon which gender-identity doctrine rests. But truth and honesty are not important to progressives. What they value is movement politics and the electoral success that accrues to it. They need the votes of those who identify as transgender and their allies. If denying there is such a thing as a woman advances their power, then denying that truth is in order.

Nor does principle matter to Democrats. At the same time they deny knowing what a woman is, they advance candidates like Brown because she is a woman. They do the same with race. Race is only a social construction, but progressives promote selected blacks based on their race. I say “selected,” because when they are black conservatives, as Biden put it, they aren’t really black. In the hands of Democrats, gender and race are political tools. They are a façade standing in front of progressive policies.

If they actually cared about the interests of black people, progressives would recognize that in pushing DEI, they harm the populations they claim to champion. It’s in the interests of black men and women to rise to the top based on their accomplishments and talents. But progressives select and advance them on the grounds of identitarian politics.

Victor Glover, the NASA astronaut serving as pilot on the Artemis II mission to the moon, had to clarify during the press conference that, while he recognized that he was making history as the first black astronaut to travel to the moon, he looks forward to the day when not his race but his accomplishments and talents matter. Remember when Martin Luther King, Jr., told America of his dream that one day people would be judged based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin? Progressives are determined that King’s dream will never be anything more than that.

You could see that the question irked Glover because it suggested that he was selected to “make history,” not because he was the most qualified man for the job. This is the consequence of choosing people not because they are the most qualified, but because they represent demographic and supposed victim categories. In this sense, Glover does have extra work cut out for him: he has to push back against the perception that he is a token for a brand of politics that essentializes race.

Glover is not a concrete manifestation of an abstract demographic category. He is an individual. Glover’s ascent to his present status debunks the claim that a black man cannot be an astronaut because of systemic racism. Glover is not only an astronaut but also the mission’s pilot—a role no rational agency would assign based on race. The lives of his crew members and the success of the mission were put in his hands because he is accomplished and talented, not because he is a black man.

What happens if the mission fails? Some will suspect that he was a DEI hire. Progressives have set up Glover for such suspicion.

The same cannot be said of Ketanji Jackson Brown, who was appointed not to safeguard the Constitution of the United States but as part of a strategy to recruit collaborators for a political-ideological project. One does not have to suspect that she is a DEI hire. Joe Biden told us that she was.

Democrats appear unable to pull their collective head out of the ass of the racialized world they played a principal role in constructing. The problems of black Americans—ghettoization, welfare dependency, joblessness, crime, and family disintegration—are the consequence of the progressive policies of Democrats. The party’s racial paternalism is as front and center today as it was during the days of the slavocracy and Jim Crow.

One might think their desire for reparations is misplaced guilt over the fact that they are largely responsible for the situation of blacks in America. But that’s not it (even if it were, reparations are not rationally justifiable). The fact is that racial politics are embedded in the party’s DNA. From slavery through DEI, identity politics is a party reflex. It’s why they create dependent categories who vote rather than work for a living—not just blacks, but non-white immigrants. It’s why they pursue open borders and oppose deporting those who are illegally in America.

The Democratic Party engine runs on the fuel of racial politics. They are out of step with history. And that is why they’re obsessed with revising it, substituting propaganda that portrays Democrats as the white savior party. Their particular style of white saviorism goes hand-in-hand with manufactured racial self-loathing. They believe it ingratiates their party with those groups they exploit in pursuit of power.

It’s high time we reject identity politics and embrace the Enlightenment principle of individualism. To do this, we must reject the Democratic Party.

For decades, I’ve heard that America, as the world’s hegemon, is an imperial power projecting influence globally and, in the view of critics here and abroad, exploiting the planet’s resources and oppressing its peoples worldwide. But what is this argument really saying? What do America’s critics hope to achieve by diminishing the United States as a superpower? Why should the world hegemon, having achieved its status by delivering the world from the scourges of communism and fascism, and standing as a beacon of liberty and republicanism for 250 years, thereby legitimizing its power as the global authority, diminish itself?

The United States has rivals: totalitarian states, such as China, and totalitarian ideologies, such as Islam. These totalitarianisms pose a threat not only to the United States but to all of those who cherish or desire freedom. If the United States—or the West more broadly—were weak, these rival powers would dominate the global system in its stead, and Americans could lose everything they hold dear: the freedoms of conscience and speech, of assembly and association, and the rights to publishing and privacy. And Americans would not be the only ones to lose these precious things. People around the world would lose them, too, or those currently living under oppressive rule would find it more difficult to build for themselves a world where those things were possible.

The only way to safeguard these rights and keep the promise of freedom alive for others is for the United States to remain a superpower capable of protecting and advancing them. Because freedom is the birthright of all humans, we must hope to see people around the world enjoy it, as well. The United States cannot influence global movements toward greater freedom and human rights if it is a second-rate power. We cannot extend the promise of America to the world if we cannot keep the promise for ourselves.

But do all Americans wish to keep the promise? Unsurprisingly, those who seek totalitarianism want to weaken American power, as this creates more opportunities for them to shape the world order according to their interests. They leverage international organizations, like the United Nations, to advance this aim. Yet, in effect, if unintentionally, some actors within America and other Western countries—progressives and social democrats—align with those forces. Some of them want a totalitarian world because they have come to despise their country and the freedoms it affords. Others align with totalitarian states and movements under the naïve belief that they, too, will wield totalitarian power. They seek this power to impose on everybody an ideological system that denies reason and truth. They envision a global world order built on values other than the Enlightenment principles that made the West free and prosperous. We see this ideological system in atavistic beliefs about gender, race, and knowledge.

This is why “America First” is mischaracterized as a call for isolationism. Some who identify with the label may indeed favor America’s withdrawal from the world, but America First and isolationism are fundamentally incompatible. Ensuring the long-term prosperity and security of the United States requires active engagement in the world, not retreat. In a global system shaped by competing powers with vastly different political values and visions, American strength abroad is inseparable from American freedom at home. A retreat from global leadership invites other powers to shape the international order in ways contrary to American principles. While some in the West may wish for this, they must not succeed.

In a world where such rising and rival powers set the rules, Americans will inevitably feel the consequences—through economic coercion, geopolitical pressure, or technological imperative. Indeed, the West already sees these effects of global reordering and the influence of totalitarian ideologies. The world order has been substantially altered by powerful actors seeking a less free world. They have colonized the West’s sensemaking and policymaking institutions and are recruiting soldiers and twisting law and policy to advance their agenda. We see their soldiers on the streets of America. We see those who bear the culture of totalitarianism colonizing the West. Transnational financial and corporate power lies behind these movements.

In my last essay, Donald Trump’s Grand Vision: Make Western Civilization Great Again, I argued that, in reconfiguring the world order to thwart Chinese ambition, halting the spread of Islam, and reversing the transnational corporate project, President Trump is not only making America great again, but advancing the promise of liberty and republicanism, keeping alive and thus making possible a free life for all of humanity. Maintaining a strong global presence is thus not about abstract ideals of dominance or empire, but about safeguarding the conditions that allow American society, and potentially the world, to flourish. Economic prosperity, sovereign nations, secure trade routes, strategic alliances, and technological leadership all depend on continued engagement and leadership. The United States is the paradigm of a free society; its engagement must be forceful and its leadership hegemonic. A diminished United States would face a world less aligned with its interests and values—and more susceptible to coercion or instability.

American influence has historically played a critical role in expanding and defending individual liberties beyond its borders. While imperfect, the broader international system shaped by US leadership has fostered political pluralism and insisted on basic human rights. If Americans believe these freedoms are worth preserving at home and making available globally, it follows that they have a compelling interest in supporting a world where such principles can endure and spread. This requires the United States to remain the world hegemon and to shape the world order in a way that preserves the West. This means marginalizing those forces inside the West who steer their nations in the wrong direction. Progressives and social democrats are the enemies within.

“America First” cannot mean America alone. American liberty, prosperity, and security are inextricably tied to the fate of the world. America First is Freedom First. Sustaining that role through economic dominance, political influence, and strategic military prowess is not a contradiction of national interest but a necessary expression of it. The projection of power is not inherently unjust. That determination depends on whether the power that’s projected is righteous. If America is morally right and virtuous, which its history affirms, then America’s actions are just. America can remain free only if the enemies of freedom are subordinate to American authority. And a freer world depends on their subordination.

President Donald Trump went easy on NATO last night. Several commentators on the America First network noted the omission during post-address analysis. However, the President’s decision to avoid criticisms of Europe should help those skeptical of his commitment to “America First” better understand the broader strategy at work. Making America great again requires making the West great again.

“America First” cannot be conceived in narrow or purely isolationist terms. America’s long-term prosperity and security depend on halting the transnational corporate project, restoring the economic nationalism at the heart of the American System, and reestablishing the full scope of US hegemony in the world. In other words, “America First” must be embedded within a larger framework: West First.

Trump has articulated elements of this approach before, most notably in his National Security Strategy (see Trump’s National Security Strategy and the Case for Democratic Nationalism). That document marked a clear departure from the post–Cold War bipartisan consensus, which assumed that increasing economic interdependence and the diffusion of political authority beyond nation-states—in a word, globalization—would naturally produce peace and prosperity. 

The Trump strategy rejects those premises, which essentially constitute a plan to denationalize the world (see Will They Break the Peace of Westphalia or Will We Save National Sovereignty for the Sake of the People?). Instead, the Trump doctrine grounds US national security in four core commitments: (1) protecting the American homeland; (2) promoting American prosperity; (3) projecting peace through strength; (4) advancing US influence in a world of sovereign nations.

The fourth commitment is key, beginning with the Western Hemisphere. Trump signaled this early through rhetoric surrounding Greenland and the Panama Canal (see Monroe Doctrine 2.0). Beneath that rhetoric lies a recognition of the need to confront China’s growing influence in the West, an effort facilitated by economic and political actors in North America and Europe (see Countering China’s Influence).

His posture toward Venezuela reflects this logic. Trump’s spectacular intervention in Venezuela and the removal of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro are designed to push South America in a liberal direction (see The New World Order as Given). Trump’s focus on Central and South America—culturally tied to the Western tradition—represents an opportunity to unify the Hemisphere around Western ideals. If the United States can help foster governments aligned with Western political and economic norms, a more unified Western Hemisphere becomes possible. This goal is also reflected in the administration’s stance towards Cuba.

Yet consolidating the Americas alone is insufficient. Reasserting Western influence globally—and countering China, freedom’s principal strategic competitor—requires a broader coalition that includes Europe and parts of the Middle East. The intervention in Iran, the Shi’a Muslim stronghold in the region, governed by the most extreme form of Islam, the apocalyptic Twelvers, not only degrades the capacity of an existential threat to Central and Western Asia, but also checks the rise of China. By neutralizing the threat of Iran, the United States strengthens its relationship with states in the MENA space, as well as India and Pakistan, and closes avenues for China’s ambitions.

Europe is central to the strategy. Trump has told European leaders what he thinks of them, but at the same time, he wants Europe to be part of the global alliance marginalizing China and halting the spread of Islam. What is required here, as in Central and South America, is cultivating more liberal, conservative, and populist-nationalist political movements. What Trump seeks is to strengthen the Western civilizational bloc, not only to prevent totalitarian state monopoly capitalism (of which China is the paradigm), thus weakening the transnational corporate push for a new world order, but also to confront the threat of Islam to the Christian West.

In reconfiguring the world order to thwart Chinese ambition, halting the spread of Islam, and reversing the transnational corporate project, Trump needs Europe. He must avoid alienating member states while promoting nationalist political movements that will reclaim Europe’s greatness. Trump’s actions are not random or disconnected moves. It’s a strategy: consolidate a Western-aligned bloc across the Americas, Europe, and key parts of the Middle East, and use that to simultaneously counter China’s expansion and halt Islam in its tracks.

One of the things that baffles me is when people take criticism of their choices or opinions personally. Associated with this is word policing. A person uses the word “retarded” and somebody may respond, “I find that word highly offensive.” Some feel justified in using violence over words they don’t like. Even if a word is used in a nonderogatory way, when, for example, reading aloud passages from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, or in accurately conveying something somebody said, some people take offense.

People criticize my choices, opinions, and use of words all the time. It would never occur to me to seek them out and declare having taken offense at their utterances. I can’t imagine hearing a criticism of liberalism and saying to the critic, “I am offended by what you said about liberals.” What am I supposed to say when this happens? Duly noted? I find it difficult to take offense at being called a “cracker” or “whitey.” As Frank Zappa noted, they’re words.

Frankly, I don’t care if you’re offended by the things I say. I’m proud of the fact that the things that people say don’t offend me. Taking pride in being a reasonable and tolerant man, I would think less of myself if I were to feel offended. One less thing to get my back up about. I have always believed the appropriate thing for a person to do when confronted with a disagreeable opinion is to make an argument. Either that, or just ignore it. The same is true for the words people use. I would never scold people over the words they use. Reasonable people don’t like busybodies. Why would I be a busybody?

I also don’t argue with people when I know I cannot persuade them (although I may mock and ridicule them). German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer cautioned against arguing with fools. Logic holds little power against stubborn ignorance. Such disputes waste valuable time. Moreover, debating fools diminishes one’s own standing, as true intellectual victory is unattainable when faced with irrationality and pride. His central advice was simple: avoid engaging altogether. Offense-taking is the terrain of the fool.

When I say I’m baffled by offense-taking, I don’t actually mean that. I understand why people do this. They’re emotionally immature, small-minded, or trying to shame people for their choices and opinions. Taking offense or word policing are often signs of an authoritarian personality. In such cases, offense-taking is strategic.

The standout example of strategic offense-taking is the response one elicits by refusing to affirm the slogan “Transwomen are women.” By definition, transwomen are men. If they were women, they wouldn’t need a prefix. The offense-taker has no argument in favor of the slogan. It’s neither factual nor logical. It is an attempt to assert as given that which is impossible. It is self-evidently untrue, and so offense is taken to substitute for reason.

If not deploying offense-taking strategically, people should free themselves from authoritarian tendencies by recognizing that they don’t have to be offended. It does wonders for a man’s emotional and psychological well-being to let things go. When somebody says something disagreeable, and a reasoned argument is undesirable, move along. Whether the product of small-mindedness or authoritarianism, being offended is a choice.

“[I]f you want to understand the way any society works, ours or any other, the first place to look is who is in a position to make the decisions that determine the way the society functions. Societies differ, but in ours, the major decisions over what happens in the society – decisions over investment and production and distribution and so on – are in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of major corporations and conglomerates and investment firms. They are also the ones who staff the major executive positions in the government. They’re the ones who own the media and they’re the ones who have to be in a position to make the decisions. They have an overwhelmingly dominant role in the way life happens. You know, what’s done in the society. Within the economic system, by law and in principle, they dominate. The control over resources and the need to satisfy their interests imposes very sharp constraints on the political system and on the ideological system.” —Noam Chomsky

As a sociologist who studies power and social psychology, last Saturday was yet another opportunity to observe the intersections of moral panic (mass psychogenic illness, mass formation hypnosis/psychosis), Hoffer’s “true believer,” and the machinations of capitalist elites in shaping public consciousness—power, psyche, and propaganda on display without having to go to any trouble to see it.

As a citizen, it’s concerning that many of those watching and participating in the “No Kings!” protests don’t recognize that it’s organized and amplified by networks of NGOs funded by transnational corporate and financial interests. The scope of the scheme is truly enormous: some 500 groups with an estimated $3 billion in annual revenue, backing including communist and socialist organizations, calling for “revolution.” Among those bankrolling the simulation is Neville Roy Singham, a billionaire living in China.

As I noted on X yesterday, those who manufacture mass protests have moved to the normalization phase. The focus is on the right to free speech, as if that were in question. Nobody is suggesting that individuals are violating the Constitution by working for protest mills that manufacture illusion and manipulate minds. That’s a red herring. What’s at issue is who is manipulating the public, why they are manipulating them, and why the scheme is so effective.

We are now in the normalization phase of manufacturing protest. https://t.co/MoD50fj7rz

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) March 30, 2026

Whether they understand what they are protesting, many protesters appear to genuinely believe they are pushing back against elite power by condemning Trump. In reality, their attention is being redirected away from the broader systems they claim to oppose and onto a single figure they have been conditioned to hate. They’ve been manipulated into seeing Trump and his supporters as the central problem, rather than examining the larger structures of globalization and transnational influence.

One sign of this dynamic—obvious to those existing beyond the subjectivity that precludes it—is that many of the same NGOs and financial backers involved in these movements are openly aligned against Trump. In effect, protesters are advancing the agenda of the very forces they believe they are resisting—operating within a framework that limits how they interpret power and dissent.

We can know that they’re being manipulated because the NGOs and their financial backers oppose Trump. If he was among the elite, they would treat him as a star. Operating in the fog of false consciousness, the protesters are doing the work of the very elites they say are undermining their future.

It’s a brilliant tactic: brainwash a portion of the masses and send them out into the streets to publicly oppose their own interests and thus serve as living propaganda to sway the masses watching at home. In carrying out this function, they’re grunts for the very power that oppresses them. The depth of the indoctrination is spectacular. They know not what they do.

The subaltern—those who are economically, politically, and socially marginalized, existing outside the dominant power structure and with little to no voice in decision-making—do not operate from a coherent theory of the world. Without a clear understanding of how power operates, they struggle to articulate the underlying causes of their discontent. Yet they are absolutely convinced they’re right.

Attempts to explain these dynamics are often unsuccessful, as such arguments are filtered through preexisting assumptions. Many have also been conditioned to distrust certain lines of critique, quickly categorizing them as bigoted, nativist, racist, reactionary, or xenophobic. Those with whom they disagree are not merely wrong but the enemy. They’re convinced they occupy the moral high ground. And it has made them obnoxious and self-righteous. If you try to provoke a protester to examine his beliefs, he resists, sometimes violently.

Within the subaltern are individuals—the underclass—who have become dependent on government support. Food assistance, housing programs, Medicare, public assistance, and other forms of welfare rob them of the capacity to assess the situation from the standpoint of the independent rational observer. Their primary political role is reduced to voting, and they paradoxically vote for the party that ghettoizes them. A portion of this group includes migrants, whose continued presence in America depends on the very forces that induce them to come here.

Above the subaltern are the cultural managers—educators, journalists, professionals, and public officials—who depend on administrative institutions for employment and advancement. While they have the capacity to understand broader economic and social dynamics, they’re deeply invested in maintaining the system from which they benefit. Professionals such as lawyers, managers, and physicians derive substantial advantages from this structure. Most of them are college-educated, which means spending years being indoctrinated in administrative logic and instrumental rationality.

At the top of the pyramid is the class that owns the means of production and makes the financial decisions that shape how society functions. They select the politicians and the policies that govern the lives of the subaltern and managerial classes.

The subaltern stratum is not monolithic. A large portion of working people are either disengaged from politics or are only partially engaged. Meeting the needs of their families consumes their time. Others, despite being relatively marginalized, do develop an awareness of power structures—such as small business owners competing against large corporations. Through competition, they gain a clearer understanding of underlying power dynamics.

Unlike those closely aligned with institutional structures or dependent on the government—who are more likely to support the Democratic Party—many working-class individuals and small business owners are more inclined to support Republicans. They desire autonomy, individual freedom, and limited government. They work hard and take pride in working hard. They know the Democrats support the global power structures that make their lives difficult and their fortunes precarious.

Such individuals are drawn to Trump because they view him as outside the traditional elite class that exploits and oppresses them. Although he is wealthy, they can see that Trump is an outsider and a maverick. They see this in how the managerial classes and their corporate directors regard Trump. When the elite attack Trump for his straightforwardness, conservatives feel that attack coming their way. When the elites mock and ridicule him, call him a vulgarian, etc., they sense they, too, are being mocked and ridiculed. They are not wrong.

These are the normal people who come home after a hard day of working, turn on the TV, and know that what the culture and media are feeding them is swill. They live in the real world, and not having been indoctrinated or experiencing enough of it to know it for what it is, they keep their common sense wits about them. This is why the elites loathe them and rig the system to keep them from power.

I hear progressives talk about how they’re “for the working man.” It is absolute rubbish. Listen to the way they talk down to ordinary people. Serving the elites, the elitism of those who presume they’re the working man’s betters rubs off on them. They think they have it all figured out. They know it all. And that makes the attempt to reach them with facts and logic futile. The best weapon at the conservatives’ disposal in dealing with such fools is to mock and ridicule them back.

Watching all this, I am struck by how patient and reserved conservatives are. Sure, many are too busy working and raising families to take to the streets in protest. Moreover, they know they could suffer consequences for protesting against the conditions. The vast majority are peaceful and rational and don’t want to cause trouble. Those who oppose collectivism and embrace individualism are less likely to move in masses. They don’t have a network of NGOs to organize them or rich donors to bankroll the NGOs. They’re churchgoers and make their contributions to society through charitable giving. They aren’t attention seekers. They’d rather just be left alone.

But sooner or later, their patience must run out. The common man cannot from the sidelines watch his beloved republic being dismantled by elites and their managers and their obnoxious and self-righteous subalterns.