Bypass Big Tech Censors
(Daily Signal)—Following Hamas’ bloodthirsty Oct. 7 assault on Israel’s southern border communities, woke leftists and jihad enthusiasts on campuses and beyond formed a perplexing alliance.
The Left advocates social justice; celebrates diversity, equity, and inclusion; and professes special concern for historically oppressed minorities. Meanwhile, Gaza’s Iran-backed jihadists torture and kill based on race, ethnicity, and sexual preference; loathe and wage war against Israelis, Jews, Americans, and the West; and, by all available means, seek to establish Islamist theocracy.
What could unite two such seemingly mutually exclusive camps?
Not for the first time a common enemy makes allies out of adversaries. A shared disdain for the United States and Israel draws together woke leftists and jihad enthusiasts. Sustaining their cooperation is a common resentment of the principles that the United States and Israel embrace—individual freedom, democratic equality, free-market dynamism, toleration of a diversity of beliefs about faith and human flourishing—and an antipathy to Israel’s character as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
The shared disdain and common resentment and antipathy give rise to more puzzles.
Some of these concern students. How in the space of only a few years have numerous leftist students moved from trembling in fear and rage at opinions with which they disagree to donning masks and kaffiyehs, occupying prime campus real estate, and siding with terrorism and religious war? How have they gone from insisting that all women must be believed to serving as apologists for Hamas’ raping of Israeli women? How have they set aside the dogmas that speech and even silence are violence in favor of harassing fellow students by openly celebrating the perpetration of mass atrocities and publicly chanting slogans that call for Israel’s destruction?
Elite Universities as Ground Zero
Other puzzles concern America’s institutions of higher education and those who run them and teach there. How have our elite universities become ground zero of the alliance between leftism and jihad? Where are the responsible educators—administration officials and faculty—who will day in and day out soberly explain the difference between peaceful protests subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions, and disruptive demonstrations that impair the university’s mission, which is to acquire and transmit knowledge, enliven the moral imagination, and cultivate independent thought?
What steps should be taken to correct course so that instead of inculcating campus orthodoxies that condemn the United States as a uniquely awful regime and that deem dissent from institutionally approved narratives as proof of ignorance or bigotry, our universities foster civility, toleration, curiosity, and intellectual acuity, and teach a reasoned, historically informed understanding of constitutional government in America?
In “The Woke Jihad,” Commentary Magazine’s June cover story, Abe Greenwald brings these puzzles into sharper focus with essential background and incisive analysis. His rhetoric occasionally overheats. Then again, the provocation is severe—the routinization of antisemitism and anti-Americanism on campus. And the stakes—the future of our educational institutions and hence the nation’s future—could hardly be higher.
A “hybrid enemy of the West,” the alliance between woke leftists and jihad enthusiasts that burst out into the open following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacres, Greenwald reports, “won’t stop soon, as it is well-funded and impressively organized.”
Survival Beef on sale now. Freeze dried Ribeye, NY Strip, and Premium beef cubes. Promo code “jdr” at checkout for 25% off! FreedomFirstBeef.com
Moral impulses that higher education has long incubated, moreover, fuel the partnership. Even after colleges and universities remove the pro-Hamas encampments, the alliance will live on in the hearts and minds of many students, and in those of the professors and administrators who have accommodated or endorsed them.
Dear university students in the United States of America, you are standing on the right side of history.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) May 29, 2024
According to Greenwald, the allies “enjoy a valuable symbiotic relationship.” The woke Left needed a new cause. Three years had passed since protesters, prompted by the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, established encampments in many cities. Many were peaceful. Many, though, were not, leaving behind more than a billion dollars of damage.
And “with the liberal rank and file no longer interested in police defunding, the public turning against DEI schemes, whistleblowers revealing the horrors of ‘gender-affirming care’ for trans kids, and the term woke a source of liberal embarrassment,” the woke Left found a new calling in coming to Hamas’ defense.
Meanwhile, “the jihadists needed the American left for tactical purposes: to propagandize for their cause and fit antisemitic terrorists—alongside gays, the transgendered, and African Americans—into the intersectional Left’s pantheon of victims.”
Strange Bedfellows
The allies’ feelings toward one another do not match. Woke leftists, Greenwald writes, “love the jihadists … for their ferocity and exoticism, as much as for their bottomless self-pity.” In contrast, fidelity to core beliefs impels the jihadist to experience “disgust for the unchecked females, sexual libertines, heathens, and even Jews he’s been forced to instrumentalize in the cause of Islamist domination.”
At the same time, woke leftists—“Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ groups, intersectional feminist organizations, and others”—converge politically with jihad enthusiasts to “salute October 7 as righteous resistance and condemn the Israeli response as genocide.”
Both revel in violence and victimhood, maintains Greenwald, and both denounce the West as essentially exploitative, Jews as quintessential exploiters, and Israel as the epitome of Jewish exploitation.
The woke Left cloaks its revolutionary aims under appeals to justice that resonate with decent people. If Black Lives Matter focused on saving black lives, asks Greenwald, why would it “have seized on a statistically tiny number of police killings as justification to rid black neighborhoods of police?”
If the trans movement was principally concerned with equality, why would it lavish energy on “denying solid biological reality, throwing kids into emotional disarray, scaring the hell out of parents, endorsing ruinous medical procedures for minors, and trolling everyone who’s not convinced?”
Rhetoric Doesn’t Match Reality
And if diversity, equity, and inclusion aimed to overcome differences and bring people together, why do DEI programs intensify animosity, not least by classifying all white people and all Jewish people as oppressors? Rather than pursuing equality under law, the woke Left endeavors to replace American principles and remake the nation’s norms and institutions.
Similarly, the pro-Palestinian campaign on campus does not serve Palestinians’ reasonable interests. If it did, it would not support Hamas, whose theocratic dictatorship deliberately uses noncombatant Palestinians as human shields; employs Palestinian homes, schools, and mosques as military facilities; and steals humanitarian supplies meant for noncombatants.
All this the jihad enthusiasts overlook. Instead, they concentrate on turning worldwide public opinion against, and spurring the imposition of economic and legal sanctions on, the Jewish state. By damaging Israel, which they regard as an outpost of Western imperialism in the Middle East, they strive to weaken and fundamentally transform the United States.
Several revenue streams fund the anti-Israel and anti-American lawlessness besetting American campuses. One stream, according to Greenwald, flows from pro-Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) groups like American Muslims for Palestine, the principal backer of Students for Justice in Palestine. Another, he reports, comes from left-wing philanthropies, including the Tides Foundation, the Gates Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Susan and Nick Pritzker.
Hamas patron Qatar provides a third major source of financial backing, giving “$4.7 billion to multiple American colleges and universities between 2001 and 2021.”
The money is effective not only because of its quantity. In addition, elite universities have for decades tilled the intellectual soil out of which the woke jihad has arisen.
Observes Greenwald:
Dominant academic trends such as intersectionality, critical race theory, anti-racism, and anti-colonialism have turned millions of young minds into a moral funhouse mirror in which racists are reflected back as angels, colorblindness as racism, one sex as the other, democracy as tyranny, tyranny as paradise, freedom as bondage, refugees as colonialists, Jews as white oppressors, and terrorists as saints.
Joining Forces, Blending Pathologies
Greenwald, nevertheless, finds hope amid the bleakness. “In joining forces, the woke and the Islamists may have compounded their resources, but they’ve also compounded the disgust that the public already harbored for each group individually,” he writes. “The spectacle of their blended pathologies will be, and already is, their discrediting and their undoing. Not ours.”
Woke jihad’s self-discrediting and undoing, however, are not enough. The university culture that has fostered woke-leftism and jihad enthusiasm has staying power.
Responsible remedies to the debasement of liberal education are not likely to originate with or receive vigorous endorsement from members of the faculty and administration. A large majority of them have either encouraged—or stood by in silence during—higher education’s long descent into obscurantism and sectarianism.
Finally taking notice of the pathologies plaguing higher education, some wealthy donors have begun to suspend donations. But universities will not implement reforms of lasting significance until trustees and governing boards hire, and back fully, university presidents who understand, and realign their universities with, liberal education’s structure, content, and purpose.
Subscribe for free to the America First Report newsletter.
Reform-minded presidents by themselves can’t fix universities. They must find fellow reformers, few and far between though they may be, among today’s professors and administrators. These colleagues will be throwbacks, eccentrics, and dissenters. Some will be brash, others soft-spoken.
To accomplish the task, they must, while respecting partisan political differences, join forces to defend the equal liberty for all on which the American constitutional order rests and to rebuild the liberal education that secures freedom and democracy.
Five Things New “Preppers” Forget When Getting Ready for Bad Times Ahead
The preparedness community is growing faster than it has in decades. Even during peak times such as Y2K, the economic downturn of 2008, and Covid, the vast majority of Americans made sure they had plenty of toilet paper but didn’t really stockpile anything else.
Things have changed. There’s a growing anxiety in this presidential election year that has prompted more Americans to get prepared for crazy events in the future. Some of it is being driven by fearmongers, but there are valid concerns with the economy, food supply, pharmaceuticals, the energy grid, and mass rioting that have pushed average Americans into “prepper” mode.
There are degrees of preparedness. One does not have to be a full-blown “doomsday prepper” living off-grid in a secure Montana bunker in order to be ahead of the curve. In many ways, preparedness isn’t about being able to perfectly handle every conceivable situation. It’s about being less dependent on government for as long as possible. Those who have proper “preps” will not be waiting for FEMA to distribute emergency supplies to the desperate masses.
Below are five things people new to preparedness (and sometimes even those with experience) often forget as they get ready. All five are common sense notions that do not rely on doomsday in order to be useful. It may be nice to own a tank during the apocalypse but there’s not much you can do with it until things get really crazy. The recommendations below can have places in the lives of average Americans whether doomsday comes or not.
Note: The information provided by this publication or any related communications is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice. We do not provide personalized investment, financial, or legal advice.
Secured Wealth
Whether in the bank or held in a retirement account, most Americans feel that their life’s savings is relatively secure. At least they did until the last couple of years when de-banking, geopolitical turmoil, and the threat of Central Bank Digital Currencies reared their ugly heads.
It behooves Americans to diversify their holdings. If there’s a triggering event or series of events that cripple the financial systems or devalue the U.S. Dollar, wealth can evaporate quickly. To hedge against potential turmoil, many Americans are looking in two directions: Crypto and physical precious metals.
There are huge advantages to cryptocurrencies, but there are also inherent risks because “virtual” money can become challenging to spend. Add in the push by central banks and governments to regulate or even replace cryptocurrencies with their own versions they control and the risks amplify. There’s nothing wrong with cryptocurrencies today but things can change rapidly.
As for physical precious metals, many Americans pay cash to keep plenty on hand in their safe. Rolling over or transferring retirement accounts into self-directed IRAs is also a popular option, but there are caveats. It can often take weeks or even months to get the gold and silver shipped if the owner chooses to close their account. This is why Genesis Gold Group stands out. Their relationship with the depositories allows for rapid closure and shipping, often in less than 10 days from the time the account holder makes their move. This can come in handy if things appear to be heading south.
Lots of Potable Water
One of the biggest shocks that hit new preppers is understanding how much potable water they need in order to survive. Experts claim one gallon of water per person per day is necessary. Even the most conservative estimates put it at over half-a-gallon. That means that for a family of four, they’ll need around 120 gallons of water to survive for a month if the taps turn off and the stores empty out.
Being near a fresh water source, whether it’s a river, lake, or well, is a best practice among experienced preppers. It’s necessary to have a water filter as well, even if the taps are still working. Many refuse to drink tap water even when there is no emergency. Berkey was our previous favorite but they’re under attack from regulators so the Alexapure systems are solid replacements.
For those in the city or away from fresh water sources, storage is the best option. This can be challenging because proper water storage containers take up a lot of room and are difficult to move if the need arises. For “bug in” situations, having a larger container that stores hundreds or even thousands of gallons is better than stacking 1-5 gallon containers. Unfortunately, they won’t be easily transportable and they can cost a lot to install.
Water is critical. If chaos erupts and water infrastructure is compromised, having a large backup supply can be lifesaving.
Pharmaceuticals and Medical Supplies
There are multiple threats specific to the medical supply chain. With Chinese and Indian imports accounting for over 90% of pharmaceutical ingredients in the United States, deteriorating relations could make it impossible to get the medicines and antibiotics many of us need.
Stocking up many prescription medications can be hard. Doctors generally do not like to prescribe large batches of drugs even if they are shelf-stable for extended periods of time. It is a best practice to ask your doctor if they can prescribe a larger amount. Today, some are sympathetic to concerns about pharmacies running out or becoming inaccessible. Tell them your concerns. It’s worth a shot. The worst they can do is say no.
If your doctor is unwilling to help you stock up on medicines, then Jase Medical is a good alternative. Through telehealth, they can prescribe daily meds or antibiotics that are shipped to your door. As proponents of medical freedom, they empathize with those who want to have enough medical supplies on hand in case things go wrong.
Energy Sources
The vast majority of Americans are locked into the grid. This has proven to be a massive liability when the grid goes down. Unfortunately, there are no inexpensive remedies.
Those living off-grid had to either spend a lot of money or effort (or both) to get their alternative energy sources like solar set up. For those who do not want to go so far, it’s still a best practice to have backup power sources. Diesel generators and portable solar panels are the two most popular, and while they’re not inexpensive they are not out of reach of most Americans who are concerned about being without power for extended periods of time.
Natural gas is another necessity for many, but that’s far more challenging to replace. Having alternatives for heating and cooking that can be powered if gas and electric grids go down is important. Have a backup for items that require power such as manual can openers. If you’re stuck eating canned foods for a while and all you have is an electric opener, you’ll have problems.
Don’t Forget the Protein
When most think about “prepping,” they think about their food supply. More Americans are turning to gardening and homesteading as ways to produce their own food. Others are working with local farmers and ranchers to purchase directly from the sources. This is a good idea whether doomsday comes or not, but it’s particularly important if the food supply chain is broken.
Most grocery stores have about one to two weeks worth of food, as do most American households. Grocers rely heavily on truckers to receive their ongoing shipments. In a crisis, the current process can fail. It behooves Americans for multiple reasons to localize their food purchases as much as possible.
Long-term storage is another popular option. Canned foods, MREs, and freeze dried meals are selling out quickly even as prices rise. But one component that is conspicuously absent in shelf-stable food is high-quality protein. Most survival food companies offer low quality “protein buckets” or cans of meat, but they are often barely edible.
Prepper All-Naturals offers premium cuts of steak that have been cooked sous vide and freeze dried to give them a 25-year shelf life. They offer Ribeye, NY Strip, and Tenderloin among others.
Having buckets of beans and rice is a good start, but keeping a solid supply of high-quality protein isn’t just healthier. It can help a family maintain normalcy through crises.
Prepare Without Fear
With all the challenges we face as Americans today, it can be emotionally draining. Citizens are scared and there’s nothing irrational about their concerns. Being prepared and making lifestyle changes to secure necessities can go a long way toward overcoming the fears that plague us. We should hope and pray for the best but prepare for the worst. And if the worst does come, then knowing we did what we could to be ready for it will help us face those challenges with confidence.
Coffee the Christian way: Promised Grounds