[Adapted from Jason Kessler’s forthcoming book, Charlottesville and the Death of Free Speech]

Nineteen years ago, the late Sam Francis published a column presciently titled The War On Christmas Is A War On The West. Since then, the link between the ongoing suppression of Christmas symbols in the Public Square and the more recent suppression of the Historic American Nation’s symbols, from the Confederate Battle Flag to statues of abolitionists, blatantly part of the Great Replacement, has become undeniable—most visible most recently in pro-Palestinian attacks on Christmas Tree lightings.

But the destruction of monuments of white heroes isn’t just symbolic. Like a Russian doll, it has inner layer upon inner layer of deep psychological, strategic and spiritual consequences. On the very surface, we perceive simple sloganeering about “racial justice,” “change,” and “White Supremacy” used by the most mindless, emotional and brainwashed masses. Beneath those platitudes, however, are primitive cultural and ethnic hatreds dating to mankind’s primordial origins. Understanding these phenomena will help us understand the full significance of the Woke movement’s racial and political revolution.

That revolution, which began with the race riots of the 1960s, culminated in the “anti-racist” 2020 Floyd Hoax riots that seemed focused on unfinished grievances with the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally—I was the permit holder—and its defense of Confederate monuments. But it wasn’t just Confederate monuments that were torn down. As many prophesied, including Donald Trump and myself —and Sam Francis, many years ago—they attacked American Founders like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

Monuments of kings like Leopold II in Antwerp, Belgium, or Louis The Ninth of France in St. Louis, explorers such as Christopher Columbus, and authors like Thomas Carlyle in Glasgow, Scotland, were toppled or vandalized across the West [Kelvingrove statue of Thomas Carlyle vandalised with anti-police graffiti, by Hamish Morrison, Glasgow Times, June 8, 2020]. Even monuments of Leftists, Abolitionists, and anti-racists were torn down [Photos of defaced statue of Philly abolitionist Matthias Baldwin go viral, by Rob Tornoe, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 12, 2020]. All are (or were) monuments to white men, which speaks to the defining primordial element of such Leftist iconoclasm.

The roots of iconoclasm

Earlier: The Kochtopus Moves Left. And It’s Coming For The Historic American Nation

The powerful Koch donor network has officially endorsed its GOP candidate for president. It wasn’t Donald Trump, and it wasn’t Ron DeSantis. It was Nikki Haley. An odd pick for Koch World, she’s not anyone’s idea of a libertarian. She’s the most hawkish candidate in the field, for instance, although Koch World is, supposedly, non-interventionist. Yet it endorsed her for one main reason: More than anything, it wants to stop Trump and boost immigration. All other concerns pale next to these objectives, and Haley is Koch World’s best bet in the primary field. GOP donors still don’t get it, and so once more will receive a harsh lesson from the voters with whom they claim to share a party.

Americans For Prosperity Action, the main campaign subsidiary of what Murray Rothbard used to call the Kochtopus, promised to intervene in the Republican primary back in February, pledging it would support the most viable Republican not named Donald Trump. In its endorsement memo, AFP claimed it was weighing in on a presidential race for the very first time because the country desperately needs “to turn the page on the past. Donald Trump and Joe Biden will only further perpetuate the country’s downward spiral in politics.” The group claimed that Republicans and Democrats both field bad candidates who promote “extreme” policies that go against America’s core principles.

AFP’s memo says Haley—real name Nimrata Randhawa—is the best positioned to win based on polling, her “experience,” and her policy preferences. The Koch group claims that polls show the Punjabi Indian is the strongest candidate the GOP can run against Joe Biden, while also moving into second in key primary states in the Republican primary. AFP insists that a President Haley will champion Koch World’s core interests as president:

Nikki Haley has a long track record

[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]

Earlier, May 30, 2020: Even Right Abandoning Accused Minneapolis Cop—But They Shouldn't and  March 31, 2021: Ann Coulter: Derek Chauvin, Human Sacrifice

Last week,  I mentioned in passing the U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of an appeal by Derek Chauvin, the cop who was restraining George Floyd when Floyd died back in 2020. The rejection of the appeal was not in itself very noteworthy: the Supremes reject the great majority of appeals.

My podcast was wrapped up before the news came out that Chauvin had been stabbed by a fellow inmate at the federal prison in Arizona where he is serving his 20-plus-year sentences, state and federal.

How come he's serving his state sentence, as well as his federal sentence, in a federal prison? Because of a plea deal he made with federal prosecutors. On his side of the deal, he'd plead guilty. On their side, he'd be allowed to serve his state sentence in a federal prison along with the federal sentence. The motive there was that federal prisons are generally considered safer than state prisons. Whoops …

I thought for this week's podcast I'd bring you up to date with any new information about Chauvin getting stabbed. Well, there isn't any. Not even Chauvin's family, nor even his attorneys, have been told anything more than that Chauvin survived the stabbing and is in stable condition[ Derek Chauvin’s family unaware of his condition following prison knife attack: lawyer , by Marjorie Hernandez, NY POST, November 29, 2023]. We—and the family, and the attorneys—don't even know whether he's conscious or not.

And who done it? We have no clue. Or rather, we have an indirect clue. We know it must have been a black guy because, as folk wisdom has taught us for decades, "if it was a white guy they would have told us." They haven't, so it was a black guy.

[BREAKING: After Radio Derb was recorded,

A little-noted centenary.     This month, November 2023, marks [sic] a hundred years since the peak of the hyperinflation that afflicted Germany after World War One.

When the 1,000-billion Mark note came out, few bothered to collect the change when they spent it. By November 1923, with one dollar equal to one trillion Marks, the breakdown was complete. The currency had lost meaning [Paper Money, by ”Adam Smith,” 1981].

In my English adolescence I knew an elderly couple of Silesian Jews, the ”Kellermans,” who had themselves been adolescents in Germany when hyperinflation hit. They had lurid tales about it: kitchen cabinets stuffed full of banknotes to pay for the family’s bread and cheese, cigarettes in widespread use as an alternative currency, and so on.

How fortunate we are to live in this time and place, under governments far too wise, responsible, and incorruptible to let such misfortunes fall upon us!

[Permalink]

The Musk biography.     My book of the month—actually my Audible download of the month—has been Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk. What a story!

Isaacson makes clear what I had always supposed: that Musk is an Aspergery low-empathy geek. The geekiness comes, however, with massive strength of will: unshakable faith in his own vision, relentless drive, defiance—often angry defiance—of all risk and negativity.

Listening to Isaacson’s very detailed account of Musk’s work schedule I found myself alternately wondering: (a) When does the guy ever sleep? and (b) How on earth do his employees put up with him?

By way of illustration: Fall of 2008 was a low point for Musk. The first three attempts by his company SpaceX to launch their first rocket, the Falcon 1, had all failed. Both SpaceX and also Musk’s electric-car company Tesla were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Most of us would have quit at that point, but Musk was determined on a fourth launch attempt, in the teeth of skepticism not only from investors but also from his own engineers.

That fourth attempt, at the end of September 2008, was a success. Fifteen years later, in my November 25th edition of The Economist [SpaceX tests Starship, and prepares to face down Amazon] I read this:

In the 21 years since it was founded, SpaceX, a rocketry firm set up by Elon Musk, has become the world’s space superpower. Its cheap, reusable Falcon 9 rocket dominates the launch industry. Thanks mostly to its Starlink satellite-internet business, the firm sends more mass into orbit each year than every other company and country on Earth combined.

It has bigger ambitions still. November 18th saw the second test flight of its Starship rocket, the biggest ever built. The first test, in April, ended with a damaged launchpad and a rocket that self-destructed after trouble with several of the first stage’s 33 engines and the failure of its second stage to separate properly.

Earlier by Peter Brimelow: Trump’s Indictment—Like I Said, This Is A Communist Coup

Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Trump Administration and its aftermath has been to reveal to Americans how completely formerly revered institutions, like the FBI, the Judiciary, and often the police are in fact controlled by the totalitarian Hard Left—essentially, Communists. Not least, as in Britain, they also appear to be controlling immigration policy.

This did not come as a surprise to Diana West, to my mind the best conceptual thinker about as well as one of the best-informed observers of this frightful disaster.

In April 2020—in other words more than six months before the Democrats stole the 2020 election—VDARE carried Social Distancing With Peter Brimelow and Diana West.

Presciently, they discussed in penetrating detail the mechanisms of the Left conquest. In view of the atrocities surfacing subsequently, this podcast, like a fine wine, has become hugely more impactful in the three and a half years since. I strongly commend it to those wondering what on earth is going on.

Fending off a suggestion by Peter Brimelow that with her background and early career she could have been Jennifer Rubin, West says (2:30):

Here’s the difference. I was never a Marxist. I was never even a liberal.  

and goes on the define Neoconservatism as:

…endless war, and open immigration. 

From 2:39 on, West and Brimelow discuss the Cold War amnesia which has seemingly been inculcated into anyone under 50, causing total ignorance about how dangerous this period was—and therefore, of course, systematic underestimation of similar forces. West says-

This is what happens when the education system is