The rule of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa since 1994 has been marked by a widening chasm between poor black people, the majority and a tiny black elite, who get richer and richer. A quarter of our children are so badly malnourished that their brains are stunted for life. Amid this terrible hunger, President Cyril Ramaphosa lives in fabulous splendor. He is said to be worth 6 billion rand (around $350 million). He has mansions in the rich parts of South Africa. He has a fleet of luxury cars. He owns a game farm of 11,120 acres. Yet before the G20 meeting of international leaders in Johannesburg, he wrote in his newsletter, “Inequality is one of the most pressing global issues of our time.”
This G20, purported to promote international cooperation and economic growth, was rescued from being the usual instantly forgettable fest of posture and pontification by President Trump, who by snubbing it turned it into a resounding success. This gave Ramaphosa a huge boost within the mainstream media, who made it seem as if he had told Trump to go to hell – when all he actually said was that Trump’s absence was “regrettable.”
Trump has done good, bad and mad things; he acts on impulse, without thinking. He is profoundly ignorant about South Africa. He boycotted G20 because he says “bad things” are happening here, which is true but they are not the things he cites. There is no “white genocide” in South Africa. White farmers are murdered at a higher rate than the population at large, often horribly, and Ramaphosa did lie outright in 2018 when he told Bloomberg media, “There are no killings of farmers or white farmers in South Africa” – at the time, the South African police had reported 1,700 such murders. But this is not genocide.
No doubt Joseph Stiglitz, who attended G20, nodded his head in agreement with Ramaphosa’s condemnation of inequality. But Ramaphosa’s record and the state of South Africa under his presidency reveal that he is not as concerned with inequality as he proclaims, and has in fact expanded the gulf between the rich and the poor.
Ramaphosa has passed laws that have stifled the economy and caused massive inequality. Like the rest of the ANC, he hates the West and cheers its enemies but still expects its favors. Posing as a moderate, he has promoted the “National Democratic Revolution”: the foundation of ANC ideology, which wants to turn South Africa into a communist state. He passed the Expropriation Act, which allows the state to confiscate without compensation any property provided that it “is in the public interest.” He has presided over the country’s highest unemployment and lowest economic growth. But he is admired by many world leaders. He is charming and personable; he has a beaming smile, and speaks with soft reasonableness.
A central plank of ANC policy is BEE, which in name is “Black Economic Empowerment” but in practice is “Black Elite Enrichment.” BEE has done great harm to poor black people. Ramaphosa, himself enormously enriched by BEE, states, “BEE is here to stay!” The Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment plant, north of Pretoria, was failing, sending contaminated water to black residents. In the past, a competent contractor would have repaired the plant at the lowest cost. Instead, in 2019, a BEE contractor, Edwin Sodi, was appointed for 295 million rand. Sodi had no competence for this but was an “ANC benefactor.” He didn’t try to repair the plant. He donated some of the money to the ANC and spent the rest on luxuries for himself, Ferraris, mansion improvements, gifts for girlfriends and so on. Contamination worsened. Over 20 black people died of cholera.
The record of all ANC presidents except Mandela on international human rights is deplorable. They applaud African tyrants such as Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe who slaughter black people. Ramaphosa is the worst. After the atrocity in Israel on October 7, 2023, many in the ANC cheered loudly for Hamas. When Israel finally retaliated, the ANC charged her with “genocide” at the International Court of Justice, with Ramaphosa posing as a brave hero. Whatever you think of Israel’s action in Gaza, it is not genocide – no more than what Trump calls South Africa’s “white genocide.” But real genocide against black Africans is happening right now, in Sudan, with the full approval of Ramaphosa and the ANC.
In 2015, Omar al-Bashir, then Sudanese leader, visited South Africa. He had presided over the genocide of about 300,000 black Africans by Jihadist Arabs. It was the world’s worse humanitarian crisis – and still is. Bashir was warmly welcomed by the ANC. The International Criminal Court asked the ANC to arrest him. They declined. Bashir was later overthrown by other Jihadist Arabs, who broke out in civil war against each other, laying waste to the country, starving millions, continuing the genocide. The worst killer was Mohamed Dagalo, leader of the Rapid Support Forces. In January 2024, he visited President Ramaphosa at his official residence in Pretoria. Ramaphosa greeted him warmly, gave him his big smile, practically groveled before him and called him “Your Excellency,” even though he had not taken power. He posed for a happy picture with him, holding his hand.
The once great city of Johannesburg is disintegrating under ANC misrule. Water, sanitation, electricity and roads are crumbling away. Those parts that the G20 leaders would see were hastily spruced up. Now the leaders have departed, celebrating a marvelous G20 and saluting Cyril Ramaphosa as a great African hero who defied Donald Trump.
It’s an awkward time in the upper echelons of the Canadian cultural establishment. It’s come to light that influential indigenous author and former broadcaster Thomas King, isn’t actually indigenous at all.
It matters, because King has spent much of his 82 years claiming to speak on behalf of the indigenous peoples of North America, and his role in shaping Canadian perception of their First Nations has been enormous. His books have served as standard texts in Canadian schools and universities for over 20 years.
Born in the US, King came to Canada in 1980 to teach native studies at the University of Lethbridge. His claim to be indigenous was made in all good faith, he says, believing on his mother’s say-so (but little other evidence, it seems) that his father, who abandoned the family early on, was part Cherokee.
Whether it was in good faith or not, when King came to Canada, he was able not only to dine out on his purported indigeneity, but to make it the central facet of a lucrative career. He taught indigenous studies, but also wrote books about being indigenous. They were acclaimed and assigned to curriculums across the country, partly, perhaps, for their quality of writing, but chiefly for their subject matter and authorship. Shakespeare was crowded out of the classroom, but there was still room for Thomas King.
Awards and literary prizes were heaped upon him, including some earmarked for First Nations writers; this is Canada after all, where every government form invites you to check the First Nations box for preferential treatment. His work made it to radio and screen, and he became a darling of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, hosting The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour and appearing as the first indigenous speaker at the prestigious Massey Lecture series. His promotion to Companion of the Order of Canada in 2020 recognized him for “enduring contributions to the preservation and recognition of Indigenous culture, as one of North America’s most acclaimed literary figures.”
King was about to break into the world of opera with an adaptation of his Indians on Vacation novel when news broke that he was, after all, just an ordinary writer like everyone else – and the Edmonton Opera decided to cancel.
It seems there had been rumors for years that King wasn’t really indigenous. In the end, it was the genealogists at the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds who got to him, an indigenous organization dedicated to outing “Pretendians,” though King says he doesn’t deserve to be classed with that group, because his was an honest mistake. He accepts the Tribal Alliance findings, he announced in an op-ed published in Canada’s Globe and Mail – a masterpiece of damage control that seemed to leave most readers feeling not outraged but sorry for him, if the comment section is any indication.
When you look at the cultural impact of his work, however, it’s hard to be sorry that he has now been discredited. The work of Thomas King is not calculated to spread peace among the nations.
Take this bit from The Inconvenient Indian, which was for a time one of the most widely read books in Canada: “Whites want Indians to disappear, and they want Indians to assimilate, and they want Indians to understand that everything that Whites have done was for their own good because Native people, left to their own devices, couldn’t make good decisions for themselves.” Er, all white people want this? How does he know?
Or this tendentious passage, about the attitude of Europeans to natives: “By the late 19th century, the Indian Problem was still a problem… Yes, most of the tribes had been safely locked up on reservations and reserves. Yes, Indians were dying off in satisfying numbers from disease and starvation. Yes, all of this was encouraging…”
Far more egregious is King’s treatment of residential schools. He alleges, without a source, that “up to 50 percent” of the estimated 150,000 children who attended residential schools in Canada “died from disease, malnutrition, neglect and abuse.” But this now appears to be wildly inaccurate. According to subsequent research presented by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, of which King would certainly have since seen, the proportion of children who died of any cause while attending residential schools was between 2 and 4 percent. That’s an enormous difference. A journalist in 2017 called him out – but this writer was unable to find any acknowledgement of the error.
This is propaganda, not history. Yet The Inconvenient Indian was read and reviewed favorably everywhere. And consider the consequences: how quickly Canadians believed the unsubstantiated mass grave narrative that swept through the media in 2021, and how easily the Canadian government shrugged off anti-Christian attacks and said the anger which led to the burning of over 100 churches was “understandable.” Even today, a Canadian MP wants to make “downplaying” the residential schools deaths a criminal offense.
King says he’s not going to apologize for sincerely presenting himself as indigenous. All right, but what about an apology for saturating Canada with ahistorical propaganda? That would be far more to the point.
The killing of Lebanese Hezbollah military chief Haytham Ali Tababtabai by Israel this week reflects how much the balance of power between Jerusalem and the Iran-backed Shia Islamist group has shifted since the year-long war between the two in 2023 and 2024. Yet, paradoxically, Tabatabai’s killing also shows that nothing has been finally settled between the two enemies.
While Hezbollah has now been shown to be much weaker than Israel, it nevertheless remains stronger than any internal faction in Lebanon, including the official Lebanese government. The practical consequence of this is escalation: Hezbollah is seeking to repair and rebuild its capacities, no force in Lebanon is willing or able to stop this, and Israel, aware of Hezbollah’s intentions towards it, is determined to keep the organization weak and possesses the capacity to do so.
This dynamic reflects how much has changed in the Middle East over the last two years. Prior to last year, Lebanese Hezbollah was often referred to as the world’s most powerful non-state military actor. Pundits on sundry television channels would gravely intone that the organization’s capacities outweighed those of many states. This is true: before 2024, Iran’s first and still primary proxy political-military group had enjoyed a three-decade run of near-constant forward motion.
Hezbollah in its first iteration struck telling blows against US, French and Israeli forces in central Lebanon in the early 1980s. It then fought a successful 15-year insurgency against Israel, which resulted in the unilateral withdrawal of Jerusalem’s forces from southern Lebanon in 2000. In 2006, having declined to end its war following the withdrawal six years earlier, Hezbollah again fought an inconclusive but bloody three-week conflict against Israel. This followed a murderous cross-border incursion by the organization.
In 2008, Hezbollah brushed aside efforts by its domestic opponents to curtail its authority within Lebanon. The precipitating factor was the official government’s efforts to assert itself regarding security arrangements at Rafik Hariri International Airport, but the matter soon escalated to a test as to whose word was final in the country.
Supporters of Hezbollah and their allies, the Amal movement, quickly occupied west Beirut. The supporters of the rival, pro-western March 14 movement were brushed aside. The matter was settled in Hezbollah’s favor. It still remains settled: witness the frightened official government’s determination to avoid any confrontation with the movement.
Its ascendancy in Lebanon assured, and its enemy to the south apparently locked into a pattern of mutual deterrence, Hezbollah was free to engage in campaigns further afield. Between 2013 and 2018 period, its fighters played a central role in defending the Assad regime in Syria.
It’s worth noting that by this time, Hezbollah had, at least among many western observers, acquired the mythical status alluded to at the beginning. I remember a European diplomat at a conference in 2015 asking me how it was that the Syrian rebels had until then managed to avoid comprehensive defeat, given that Hezbollah was engaged against them.
This long run of success has now been broken. The persons who Hezbollah supporters should hold accountable for this are no longer available for reprimand. They are, firstly, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who chose to launch an assault on Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023 without informing his various allies in the Iran-led regional axis. In so doing, he obligated them to come to his assistance at a time when they neither desired nor were ready for all-out war against Israel. And secondly, Hezbollah’s historic leader Hassan Nasrallah, who chose on October 8 to open a support front against Israel on Hamas’s behalf.
Nasrallah, it appeared, had not understood that the rules had changed. He believed his own propaganda regarding Israel’s hesitancy and its fears of losses. He assumed that this would mean that Jerusalem would avoid an all out confrontation with his movement. He was wrong.
Both Sinwar and Nasrallah died at Israel’s hands in the subsequent war. Israel focused on Hamas and responded only defensively against Hezbollah until the late summer of 2024, then moved on to the offensive. The extent to which intelligence was used to penetrate the organization was revealed in the weaponization of Hezbollah’s electronic devices, which decimated the movement’s mid-level leadership cadre, and in the targeted killings of its top leadership, including Nasrallah. An air campaign destroyed Hezbollah’s long-range missile capacity. A ground maneuver drove it away from the border. Battered, Hezbollah reversed the late Nasrallah’s expressed decision and agreed to a separate ceasefire with Israel in November last year.
Since the ceasefire, a three-way stand-off has been under way. Hezbollah, like the rest of the Iran-led regional axis is, with the exception of the late Assad regime in Syria, down but not out. Massively weakened by the war, the organization is trying to get back on its feet. There are cash injections from Iran and efforts to replace anti-tank weaponry and missile capacity.
Hezbollah’s new leader is Sheikh Naim Qassem. Qassem was in the past the lead intellectual and theorist of the movement. He used to be the man tasked with meeting western delegations and explaining the inevitability of Hezbollah’s victory to them. As leader, he is, until now at least, judged to have put in only a lackluster performance. Much of the Iranian monies are going toward compensating the families of dead Hezbollah fighters. Around 5,000 men from the organization are reckoned to have died in these two years of war. Still, the movement’s intention is clear, and it is to rebuild its lost strength.
Israel is determined to prevent this by all available means. A central lesson of October 7 for the Jewish state is that seeking to achieve quiet through mutual deterrence with the armed Islamist militias on its borders is a fool’s errand. These organizations adhere to a religious and ideological outlook which trumps self-interest and pragmatism. They must therefore be kept physically weak. Since its achievements in the last months of 2024, Israel has been engaged in an active campaign to disrupt Hezbollah’s ability to rebuild its capacities. Around 350 of the organization’s men have been killed in this process. Ali Haytham Tabatabai was the latest of them.
The final and least consequential side of the triangle is the Lebanese government of President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. Since August of this year, the government of Lebanon has been committed to disarming Hezbollah. Some progress has been made south of the Litani river. Hezbollah has made clear that it will not allow itself to be disarmed north of the river. No one seriously expects the government in Beirut to confront the organization. Which means that as of now, the largely two-way contest between Israel and Iran’s proxy in Lebanon is set to continue.
The ball is currently in Hezbollah’s court. But the movement faces a dilemma. Respond forcefully, and it runs the risk of bringing down a further heavy Israeli retribution before it has had time to prepare adequately. Fail to respond, and it faces the further loss of its prestige, both in the eyes of its own Shia constituency and beyond it. As of now, it looks likely that Hezbollah will bide its time and seek to continue to rebuild. But the contest between Israel and Hezbollah is far from over. Another round of high-intensity combat at some stage remains a probability.
Yesterday’s release of immigration figures by Britain’s Office of National Statistics didn’t make for particularly pleasant reading. While net migration had fallen to around 200,000 in the 12 months to June, much of this was down to an unusually high exodus of people, with 693,000 leaving the country over the same period. Many of those leaving were under the age of 30.
That news, however, seemed to prompt something approaching gloating over at the New York Times, which published a piece yesterday headlined: “The British Public Thinks Immigration Is Up. It’s Actually Down, Sharply.” To labor the point, the piece was accompanied by a picture of anti-migration protestors in Scotland. The not-so-subtle subtext being: what a bunch of gammon thickos the anti-migration lot are in the UK.
The piece went on to chastise Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, saying her “fiery rhetoric does not entirely match the reality” of migration, as well as Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and the British public at large:
Britain’s political elites are focusing the public’s attention on migration in ways that are not always accurate, especially when it comes to describing the scale of the flow of people into the country, experts say. That is helping to create a gap between how people perceive immigration in Britain and the facts.
Hmmm, what are the facts though? And do they actually match the NYT’s version of reality?
When you strip away the net migration figures – which are influenced by people leaving the country – and look at immigration alone, you perhaps get a clearer picture of the situation.
The NYT rightfully mention that immigration was down last year from 1.3 million to around 898,000. But it rather neglects to mention the fact that this is still stupendously high in the history of the British Isles. It only looks like a sharp fall if you compare it to the peaks of 1.4 million in 2023.
In fact, if you don’t count the Boriswave surge in immigration post-2020, last year would have been the highest recorded immigration since records began.
In other words, it looks like the British public are far more in tune with the realities of immigration than the so-called experts advising the US paper of record.
Andriy Yermak, the cryptic aide who shadowed Volodymyr Zelensky through every phase of the war, resigned Friday after anti-corruption investigators searched his office and house. Yermak was the center of Zelensky’s wartime team – and the consequences of his resignation could be far reaching.
In an evening address, Zelensky thanked Yermak for representing Ukraine’s negotiating position in recent tense talks with the United States, “as it should be” and stressed that it had “always been patriotic,” while urging Ukrainians to ignore rumors around the resignation. He said he would begin consultations on a new chief of staff immediately. With more talks looming, he underlined that, in wartime, every institution must stay focused on defending the state. Meetings with the American side, he added, are expected in the coming days.
But Yermak rarely acted on his own; he was, in many ways, an extension of Zelensky. He handled the tough, unappealing tasks for the wartime president. He appeared to control the President’s decisions, because the President wanted it so. “Firing him feels like prosecuting his own actions,” an official said. “On a personal level, it feels like a betrayal because half of Yermak’s actions come from the President,” he added.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, Yermak followed Zelensky from bunker meetings to front-line inspections and wielded enormous influence behind closed doors. Over the years, his controlling nature earned him disdain across the board. “He’s a control freak with a psychopathic nature, a maniac for power,” said a senior Ukrainian official. “Letting him go gives a second chance for the President to reset everything.”
For years, both Washington and Brussels have pressed Zelensky to move Yermak aside, convinced that the presidential chief of staff exercised an outsize, often questionable influence over the country’s wartime decision-making. The drive to push out Yermak peaked last week as a major corruption scandal blew open in Kyiv. The probe alleges a $100 million kick-back scheme inside state-run energy company Energoatom, involving senior officials and Zelensky’s close allies. Yermak, though not then directly implicated, became the focal point of the backlash.
Even Zelensky’s party, dormant up to now, rebelled against him last Thursday, urging the President to remove Yermak. Zelensky pushed back – only to reverse his decision a week later, when anti-corruption agencies came to Yermak himself and searched his home on Friday.
In July tensions flared when the government abruptly moved against the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), a step widely read as an attempt to stop investigators who had begun circling too close to Bankova, the presidential administration. This was followed by largest public protests since the war, diplomatic pushback and a very clear signal that the move had gone too far. Within days, the administration reversed course. Officials have now confirmed that the government’s summer attempt to bring NABU under control was connected to an effort to contain the same investigations that have now broken into the open.
Within Zelensky’s team, some have suggested that the pressure to remove Yermak is coming from the United States, where the FBI has been quietly coordinating with NABU on the corruption investigations. They say the Energoatom case was only the first of four probes expected to surface. “Everybody around Zelensky understands that the President cannot survive the next episodes without giving a sacrifice,” one official said. That sacrifice, allies told the President, must have been Yermak. By that point, Yermak had isolated himself so much that he was left with no real supporters besides Zelensky himself.
“Mr. Yermak’s resignation as Chief of Staff allows for a much-needed political reset at a critical time in the negotiations over Ukraine’s future,” Michael Carpenter, former NSC senior director for Europe under the Biden administration, told The Spectator. He praised the investigation for looking into allegations about Zelensky’s ”core team.”
To his detriment, Yermak united people who otherwise would not work together. People really hate him. Even those who owe him everything say he’s impossible to deal with”, the source noted.
The way Yermak ran things looked very familiar to anyone who knows post-Soviet politics. It was all about loyalty, personal ties and small clans competing for influence. But this isn’t just a Yermak problem. These old habits never really disappeared in Ukraine, even as a war raged.
Ukrainians perceive Zelensky as different from much of his team. They do not view him as corrupt – and many believe he genuinely wants to do the right thing. But after so many years of being let down by the state and system, there’s a real sense of resignation that not even a total war can fully change how politics work. And if things stay as they are, it’s only a matter of time before the blame stops with Yermak and lands on Zelensky.
Thanksgiving weekend ends on Sunday, and still there’s no peace in Ukraine. Donald Trump’s latest attempt to end the war – his 28-point plan – began to fall apart from the moment it mysteriously leaked to various international news outfits last week.
As that story landed, Reuters broke some other news: Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, would stand down in January. Kellogg, who represents the more ardently pro-Ukrainian faction of the administration, had clashed repeatedly with Trump’s peace envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been engaging in friendly dialogue with Moscow for most of the year. His departure seemed linked to the fact that Dan Driscoll, the Secretary of the US Army and an ally of J.D. Vance, had been despatched to Geneva to tell the Ukrainians to accept the latest deal or forget about America’s continued support.
All that triggered an all-too-predictable chorus of Trump denunciation. In his desperation to strike a deal and declare peace, countless pundits said, the President was selling Ukraine out and blindsiding his European allies. Trump was, once again, accused of being a Kremlin stooge. The Independent claimed that the his plan had been “entirely dictated by [Vladimir] Putin.”
Witkoff, for his part, was roundly criticized for “coaching” Russian officials in emails which leaked (again) to Bloomberg. “It would probably be surprising if he cursed us with obscenities in his conversations with Ushakov,” came the caustic response from Putin.
Trump’s plan was gravely flawed, of course. The idea that he could be anointed as a “peace czar” who would ensure that America shared the “profits” of any postwar reconstruction seems classic MAGA unrealpolitik. Even if such an arrangement could be struck, neither Volodymyr Zelensky nor Putin were ever likely to accept the proposed land partitions or the compromise of a “buffer” zone. And Britain and the European Union dismissed the plan out of hand. “We have not heard of any concessions from Russia,” said the EU’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas. “If Russia really wanted peace, it could have agreed to an unconditional ceasefire a long time ago.’’ And so the tragedy goes on.
But the latest imbroglio did reveal some interesting tensions with the Trump administration’s approach. Vance, representing the anti-war paleoconservative faction, appears to be angry with his fellow Republicans for, as he sees it, scuppering the White House’s ceasefire efforts. On Monday, the Vice President posted a furious message on social media. It’s worth quoting in full:
After four years of house prices doubling (and in some areas, tripling) many young people feel priced out of the American Dream of homeownership. A welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota reveals that large numbers of new arrivals aren’t assimilating and are funneling our tax dollars to literal terrorist groups. An innocent woman was set on fire in Chicago as the mayor resists federal law enforcement resources to bring peace to one of our great cities. The Obamacare insurance system is buckling under its own weight. And the country is $38 trillion in debt. Our administration is working hard on addressing all of these problems. But you know what really fires up the beltway GOP? Not any of the above. Instead, the political class is really angry that the Trump administration may finally bring a four-year conflict in Eastern Europe to a close. I’m not even talking about the substance of their views. Much of what these people have said about the Ukraine war has been proven wrong, but whatever. We can agree to disagree. But the level of passion over this one issue when your own country has serious problems is bonkers. It disgusts me. Show some passion for your own country.
In attacking “the beltway GOP,” Vance aimed his ire chiefly at Senator Mitch McConnell, who had said that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. Vance branded his comments “a ridiculous attack on the President’s team, which has worked tirelessly to clean up the mess.”
But some of Vance’s allies, if not necessarily the Vice President himself, also feel some bitterness towards Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Despite his apparent conversion to the America First agenda, Rubio remains on the more hawkish end of the Trump foreign-policy spectrum. It was Rubio who flew to Geneva last week and appeared to soften up Trump’s hard deadline with the Europeans and Ukrainians. “We believe that Marco Rubio’s engagement in the continuation of talks is important,” an official from a Nato country told Politico. Rubio’s changed the pace of negotiations, he added: “After yesterday, it has slowed down, and that’s good.”
The White House insists, of course, that the entire cabinet is “working in lockstep” towards the shared goal of ending the war: Witkoff, Rubio, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, put on at least the appearance of a united front in Switzerland. Rubio remains on friendly terms with Vance, despite their seemingly inevitable rivalry for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.
But it is also evident that Rubio and Vance have very different approaches when it comes to dealing with Europe and Ukraine. That could set them on course towards a more public clash in the coming months, as Team Trump becomes increasingly frustrated with its failure to end the most difficult war of our time.
Tucker Carlson has a favorite stage persona: the last sane man in the world, now at the end of his tether. His typical format for interviews starts with a folksy, Mr Smith Goes to Washington line of questioning, which then collapses into bitter, hysterical laughter. Episodes end up feeling like the famous police station dialogue with Heath Ledger’s Joker, with guests reduced to a discomfited Commissioner Gordon trying to maintain their poise. In yesterday’s episode of the Tucker Carlson Show the Carlson technique was used on Piers Morgan – the British former tabloid journalist and host of another popular online show, Piers Morgan Uncensored.
The interview was an interesting clash of ideologies. Everyone knows about Carlson’s feud with the neoconservative and pro-Israel faction of the American conservative movement. But in this interview with the Fleet Street veteran Carlson decided to open up another front: against those sections of the English-speaking right for whom politics seems to be chiefly about cultural issues like transgenderism, transgender bathrooms, and the cancellations of celebrities like J.K. Rowling. Morgan set out this view of the world in a – slightly complacent – recent book, Woke is Dead.
In an episode framed around the decline of Britain, Piers Morgan rolled out the old favorites – like when the comedian Graham Linehan was briefly arrested by the police at London’s Heathrow Airport earlier this year for a slightly bolshy X post about transgender men. Tucker wasn’t interested. These kinds of laws were obviously crazy, Tucker said, but do they really matter when London is now only 36% White British?
Piers demurred, and that’s when the hysterical laughter started. There was an unedifying segment in which Tucker tried to get Piers to say “faggot” out loud, which was then followed by an extended discourse on whether homosexuality was something you were born with. For his part Piers was reduced to various Keir Starmer-isms about how London was more or less fine because “top pubs” were still serving up “over 20,000 Guinnesses” to paying customers. Tucker Carlson’s new ability to set the terms of debate in the American right is certainly a major achievement; yet managing to turn an incorrigible shock-jock and outrage merchant like Piers Morgan into a bemused moderate is surely another.
Whatever happened to Britain, or the UK, or England, or whatever they’re calling it? We can’t even agree on what it’s called. But what happened to England, the England that, if you’re over 50, you grew up learning about, the England that controlled the world, the England that ran the largest empire in human history at the end of World War One?
Britain, which is an island in a pretty inhospitable climate, controlled literally a quarter of the Earth’s surface – and not controlled in the way the United States controls the rest of the world with an implied threat or with economic ties through trade, but with administrators and people sitting at desks with eyeshades, counting things. Way more than Rome, way more than the Mongols, way more than anybody, ever, or maybe in the future, ever.
Britain was the most powerful country in the history of the world. And then 25 years later, it was this kind of sad, soggy welfare state, which is, to some extent, what it still is, except maybe even a little bit worse. What happened?
There are a couple of levels on which to think about this. First is just geopolitical, and I guess they spent a lot of money in these wars and the ruling class, half the class at Eton in 1910 was killed in the trenches. You can think of a lot of different ways to explain what happened to Britain. The fact remains, however, the British won the two biggest wars in human history. They won and yet they’re still greatly diminished and to some extent humiliated. What is that?
So again, the first explanation can be described in economic terms. The United States took over. The British Empire just moved west to its child, the US. They just transferred the power and a lot of the gold to this new country, which had its systems and some of its customs.
But there’s something deeper. If that were the whole story, then Britain would still be recognizably Britain. The English people would still be recognizably English. They would just be not in charge anymore. They would have less money and less power. But the country would be, by any conventional measurement, thriving, just not running the Bahamas and Hong Kong and Pakistan.
But that’s not what’s happened. After winning the two biggest wars in human history, Britain has shrunken not just physically, but in some way that’s hard to describe. Its culture has changed, some might say has been destroyed, and it’s become something completely different. And what is that? And why does it matter what it is?
Well, it matters because what’s happened to Britain, to England, is also happening to many countries in the West, certainly its heirs, the Anglosphere: Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Ireland. It’s happening to those countries. It’s also happening to the rest of western Europe all at the same time.
A bunch of different profound, never seen before phenomena are happening to all of those countries, and again, including ours here in the United States. So it’s worth understanding what has happened to Britain. So maybe the best image that describes it is the one that we’re about to show you.
In case there’s no context in the tape, what you’re watching is a woman being arrested outside an abortion clinic. And keep in mind, as you watch this, she’s not being arrested for throwing a firebomb, a petrol bomb, through the window of this abortion clinic in the UK, or even for obstructing access to this abortion clinic. No – she is being arrested and taken to jail for praying outside the abortion clinic.
Watch this.
So what is that? It’s hard to argue that if your government is arresting people for praying that you’re watching a political phenomenon. Because, of course, praying is not simply a non-violent act. It’s not even a physical act. It can’t possibly, at least in secular terms, affect outcomes or harm anyone. Praying for people can never be a crime. But it is a crime in Great Britain, literally a crime. And the woman you saw is not the only person who’s been arrested for doing it. So clearly we’re watching a spiritual phenomenon here. There’s sort of no arguing it once you see things like that.
But what is that spiritual phenomenon and what are its effects on the people of this country? Before we go further, we should just say that if you visit the “Yookay” as it’s now called, or London, its capital and completely dominant city, the first thing you’ll notice is it’s actually pretty nice. The nice parts of London are as nice or maybe even nicer than any city in the United States. Certainly nicer than any city in Canada or Australia. It’s a great city, filled with lots of happy people.
But broadly speaking, this country has changed dramatically, and it’s changed in ways that are recognizable. Here’s what you recognize. The people of Great Britain are going through a series of crises, and they’re all internal. Drug use, alcohol use. Their appearance has changed. People are no longer as well kept, the streets, the landscape is not tidy anymore. It’s got lots of litter and graffiti in some places. To technocrats, these are not meaningful measures of anything. Who cares if you’ve got graffiti? Does that affect GDP? Well, maybe. Maybe not, but it’s definitely a reflection of how people feel about themselves.
People with self-respect do not tolerate public displays of disorder or filth or graffiti or litter because they care about themselves and their family and they understand intuitively, as every human being does, that once you allow chaos and filth in your immediate environment, you are diminished. So you just don’t allow that. No healthy society does.
But all through the West, these are not just features, they’re defining features. All western cities are filled with litter and graffiti, and people who look like they didn’t bother to get dressed this morning, but are instead wearing their pajamas in Walmart. It’s not just in your town, it’s everywhere in what we refer to as the West.
The point that underlies all of this is a really obvious one, that too few people say. This is the behavior of a defeated people. This is what it looks like when you lose. This is what it looks like when you’re on your way out to be replaced by somebody else. This is what it looks like to be an American Indian.
Now, one thing nobody in the United States ever says about the American Indians, except in a kind of pro-forma white guilt way, is these weren’t just impressive people – and no, they didn’t write the Constitution before we did – these were some of the most impressive people, most self-reliant, most dignified. Read any account of early American settlers, people who were pushing west, who came into contact with Indians and yes, were often scalped and forced to eat their own genitals and roasted over open fires. I mean, these were cruel people. But even the people who were in danger of being murdered by them respected them. Because the Indigenous Americans had a great deal of self-respect. They had what we call dignity. And now, hundreds of years later, the opposite is true. The poorest people in the United States are American Indians. Why? Because the federal government hasn’t given them enough. The federal government is completely in charge of the indigenous economy in the United States, and has been for over a hundred years, and it hasn’t worked. American Indians are still the poorest.
Why? Because the Iroquois and the Navajo weren’t impressive? No, they were the most impressive. Again, read the account of anyone who dealt with them. Even people who were dodging their arrows thought they were amazing people, because they were. And now they are by many measures, the saddest people in the United States. Why is that? Some inherent genetic predisposition to patheticness? They couldn’t deal with modernity? Well, they probably could. They were defeated. They were defeated. And in some deep, the deepest way, they wound up destroying themselves, and it’s not unique to them. That’s the point.
And just to be completely clear, all of this is observed with a great deal of sympathy, not scorn. No one’s mocking the American Indians. Everyone should feel bad about it. For real. Again, not in a silly white girl guilty way, but in a real way. These are amazing people. Greatly diminished. And the reason it’s worth remembering is the same thing is happening to the West.
And it makes you realize, especially if you travel a lot, that the problem is not necessarily the immigrants. The problem is what mass migration does to the people who already live there. They’re the victims of it in a way that, again, is hard to measure and sometimes hard to notice, but totally real.
So you walk through this city, London, and it’s been completely transformed by immigration. Completely. And the numbers are really, really clear. One hundred years ago it was 100 percent European white. Now it’s less than 40 percent. OK, that’s massive, unprecedented demographic change. The immigrant areas are absolutely poorer than the traditionally white English areas. There’s just no question about it. But wealth as measured by the government is not the only measurement. Actually, and this is true in the United States, too, lots of immigrants who have a lot less money than the native population seem a lot more balanced and happy, both because this is a huge upgrade for them just in terms of annual income and standard of living. But it’s more than that. They’re not defeated. They don’t hate themselves.
And if you have traditional nationalist opinions in the United States, I can confirm this personally, you’re never going to be stopped on the street and screamed at by some Guatemalan who’s like, you are racist for having your views on immigration. No, they’ll probably agree with you. The only people who ever get mad at you are the people who already hate themselves, and it’s always, famously, some private equity wife or somebody who should be happy about how things are going because they’re in the portion of the population that’s benefiting from it. But they’re not happy. They’re angry.
What is that? That exact same thing is going on in this country. Exact. And it’s part of a very recognizable syndrome, and it’s the most destructive of all. History is just filled with examples of people who get invaded and clubbed to death and have their women stolen from them, and they’re fine. They’re fine. It’s the people who feel defeated inside who no longer exist. And that is happening to the West. And it’s measurable.
What other society hates its own national symbols? It’s only happening in the West, only in Great Britain. This is coming to be true in the United States. It’s already true in Canada and Australia. What other country finds it embarrassing to fly their national flag? What are you saying if that embarrasses you? You don’t hate the flag. You hate yourself.
And it’s obvious because people who have dignity, self-respect, who believe in their own civilization want to continue it. How do you do that? By talking about it a lot? No. By continuing it through reproduction. No one is preventing the West from reproducing. And people who come up with these conspiracy theories, like, oh, they’re doing it. No, we’re doing it to ourselves. What else is abortion? It’s not empowering for women. Of course not. That’s absurd. Anyone who believes that is an idiot. Abortion is the way to stop people from reproducing. So is birth control, by the way, of course. So is convincing people that their dumb job is more important than having kids. It’s not. It never will be. Any person who can get clarity for a second will recognize that. It’s only about stopping you from having more of you.
And is there anything that’s a clearer representation of how you feel about yourself than how you feel about having kids? And by the way, it’s not just because these people are selfish and they want to go on vacation and don’t want to pay for children, or they’re worried about how much it might cost. Notice that none of these impoverished immigrants living on Snap and housing subsidies, they don’t seem worried about it at all because they know it’ll be fine. Most of the time it will be fine. They’re having kids when much more affluent natives are not, because they believe in themselves and their culture, their civilization. They’d like to see it continue. It’s the most basic of all human desires.
So here in Great Britain, which has about a 30 percent abortion rate, 30 percent of all conceived children are killed. Who’s doing that? It’s not the immigrants because they don’t hate themselves. They’re not defeated. They’re ascendant. And so they can see the future. They know that they may not live to experience it, but they’re still fully human. And they know you plant the tree not because you can bask in its shade, but because your grandchildren will. This is the most obvious of all human instincts and the most basic.
But the native population in Britain is not debating abortion because it’s not even a debate here. Everyone agrees it’s just an affirmative good, of course, to eliminate your own people. Absolutely. But again, no one’s making them do this. They’ve decided to do it themselves. But now their most enthusiastic campaign is for state sponsored suicide. They’ve already done this in Canada. It’ll come to the United States. What is that? That’s an entire people saying we should exit the stage. Our time is done. It’s over. Let’s go. Someone else will take our place. Not the first time that’s ever happened.
This is what defeated people do. This is what happens when you break people inside. And maybe it’ll just reach its terminus. Maybe there’s no way to stop it.
So in Great Britain, if you were to say, wait, what the hell is this? This looks nothing like the country I grew up in – guess who’s going to arrest you? Your fellow Britons. The ones whose great-grandparents lived here. The whites. They’re the ones enforcing this. They’re the ones determined to eliminate themselves.
Standing at the podium in the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was, instead of answering questions about the Trump administration, answering questions about her own family.
The mother of Leavitt’s nephew was detained by ICE this week. Bruna Caroline Ferreira, “a criminal illegal alien from Brazil,” allegedly overstayed a tourist visa that expired in 1999 according to the Department of Homeland Security. No doubt an embarrassing moment for the usually forthright Leavitt, it also crystallized how the shockwaves of Trump’s immigration are being felt across America.
Now, I’m an upstanding citizen, thank you very much. I can’t say I personally know anyone who’s been caught up in an ICE raid. But as the administration expands its efforts at mass deportations over the next three years, I very well could run into a personal case like Leavitt’s. So could you – along with your friends, family, and neighbors.
This begs the question: how will Americans respond when the idea of “mass deportations” ceases to be an abstraction, and instead comes knocking on the door?
Leavitt is the public face of the administration caught up, through no fault of her own, in a very personal scandal. While other administration officials pursue their given policies, her job is to communicate and if need be spin, those policies to the media. Smoothing over stories unpalatable to the general public – such as a beautiful young mother without a serious criminal record nabbed by ICE just before Thanksgiving – is the most important part of the job. A DHS statement on upholding the rule of law won’t change hearts and minds.
Still, Leavitt rightly declined to comment on the incident from either a personal or professional capacity. But she must certainly have some conflicted feelings. On the one hand, Leavitt has long proven herself an ally to the president and his America First agenda. No one can doubt that she supports the overall goal of deporting criminal illegal aliens. Who knows: maybe she tipped off Tom Homan in the first place after Ferreira spurned her brother? If only we could all do that to our annoying family members.
As deportation stories shift from abstract and absurd to the sympathetic and personal, the American taste for strict immigration enforcement could start to fall away
On the other hand, Ferreira might not quite be her family, but the situation surely has a direct impact on her family. Her nephew may lose access to his mother, leaving her brother to pick up the pieces. It’s only human to feel compassion as someone close to you struggles with hardship, but it would be unprincipled (to say nothing of career suicide) to plead for special favor. It’s easy to see how an average voter could be similarly conflicted.
After four years of an effectively open border under the Biden administration, “mass deportations” were actually quite popular. An Ipsos poll from September 2024 showed 54% Americans supported a mass deportation plan, including even 58% of Independents. A year into Trump’s presidency, and that figure still holds. An October Harvard/Harris poll showed 56% of Americans in favor of deporting all illegal aliens, while 78% supported deporting criminal illegal aliens.
While that effectively puts Republicans on the winning side of an 80/20 issue, it hasn’t yet led Democrats to alter course. In just the last week, The New York Times sympathetically profiled an illegal migrant caught with the stolen identity of an American while The New Yorkerlamented a murderer “disappeared to a foreign prison.”
It’s hard to feel any sympathy reading stories like these, but it’s equally hard to read a story like Leavitt’s and not have it pull on the heartstrings. So far, however, the media has had little opportunity to show the public the latter case. But that will surely change if and when mass deportations truly begin.
As deportation stories shift from abstract and absurd to the sympathetic and personal, the American taste for strict immigration enforcement could start to fall away. Notably, the figures have been constant over the last year; the administration isn’t convincing anyone who isn’t already convinced. This peak anti-immigration sentiment in a country generally amenable to a diverse melting pot could easily settle back down to the pre-Biden average.
It’s easy to say we must all harden our hearts to the reality of illegal immigration, but the human heart just doesn’t work that way. We’re all more sympathetic to something that touches us personally. The left has learned this the hard way, attempting to demagogue abstract issues that don’t often hit home for the average voter. In the last few years, their propaganda has seen diminishing returns.
The Trump administration must also learn this lesson before it’s too late. Move silent and swift on the deportations that must occur, but don’t let the public see how the sausage gets made. Just because Americans currently support mass deportations doesn’t mean they always will.
In response to the attack on Thanksgiving eve by a suspected Afghan national upon two West Virginia National Guardsmen, President Trump demanded a renewed effort to expel illegal immigrants. During a brief and uncompromising address from West Palm Beach that bore the rhetorical fingerprints of White House advisor Stephen Miller, Trump ripped into illegal immigration and former president Joe Biden.
The President deemed the influx of refugees from Afghanistan and elsewhere the “single greatest national-security threats” facing America. Biden was a “disastrous president.” Trump reserved special scorn for his detractors who he said purport to protect constitutional liberties but are leaving America exposed to rampant criminality. One big problem for Trump, however, is that although the suspected shooter was “mass paroled” into the country and immigrated here in 2021, he was apparently approved for asylum in April 2025 – by the Trump administration.
It was Biden, Trump implied, who, more than anyone else, was culpable for the descent of American cities into criminality. To listen to Trump it might have seemed as though Biden had flown in Afghans expressly for the purpose of targeting innocent Americans. Indeed, Trump averred that not only Afghans but also Somalis are pillaging America. He declared, “We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here, or add benefit to our country.” Trump has already called for the termination of special status for Somalis living in Minnesota, a stance that he is likely to double down on.
Throughout his speech, Trump’s rhetoric was sweeping. But Trump’s actual response – an additional 500 National Guardsmen to be deployed to the nation’s capital – was not. Trump, for example, could have declared that he intends to terminate Washington’s Home Rule and return to the days of yore when the federal government ran the district. Perhaps he envisions such a prospect.
Trump’s critics are arguing that the same measures he took to impose law and order are creating the very havoc he decries. New Yorker writer Jane Mayer stated that the Guardsmen should “never have been” in Washington in the first place. The White House responded by calling her a “disgusting ghoul.” But others are voicing their disquiet with the stationing of federal troops in Washington as well.
Their cautions will surely be portrayed by Trump and his advisers as an exercise in pusillanimity. The shooting took place near Farragut Square. In the center of the square is a prominent statue dedicated to the legendary Admiral David Farragut. Inscribed on the plinth of the statue is his credo, “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” Will Trump follow suit?
