Category: Update

“Antifa does not exist”; “it’s just a made-up organization”; “Antifa is just an idea.”

That is the official position of the center-left governing classes. But the unofficial position is that Antifa should exist.

A more realistic view is that it exists in a decentralized (or distributed) manner, existing as an organizational tradition because what it indisputably is, in fact, should be clear to anyone: a blueprint for activists to commit crimes in public while avoiding prosecution.

Paul Jacob discussed the ontic status of Antifa in 2025.

Jonathan Turley covers the reality of Antifa in an October 22nd piece on his website. Antifa obviously exists where adherents to its goals, branding and methods enact it, as if channeling a demon: “Before Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert, 26, implanted an IED device outside of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office in downtown Montgomery, he put up stickers reading ‘support your local Antifa.’

Numerous Antifa members have been arrested, including some who claimed to be journalists.

Many protesters belong to Antifa groups that have names like “Rose City Antifa” and offshoots like Love and Rage and Mexico’s Amor Y Rabia. Antifa members have been elected to the French and European parliaments.

Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” called by some the “Antifa bible,” explains that the group is united in its opposition to free speech. “Most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists,” he writes. “From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

Free speech is of course quite palpable and real, where it exists; it remains coherent as a concept, when it doesn’t. 

And it is bourgeois, in a sense. Remember that philosopher Tibor Machan wrote a book called Marxism: A Bourgeois Critique (1988)? And, before him, Frank Parkin wrote Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique (1979). Originating from within the bourgeoisie doesn’t make a theory, or institution, wrong, or even, reductively, “just in service to the entrepreneurial and management classes.” After all, the origin of a thing does not determine its value — neither truth-value nor utility.

Even those who accept a postmodern “power theory” epistemic should understand: were it the case that all ideological ideas are “nothing more than mere power grabs” — as students are taught in taxpayer-funded colleges — it remains the case that we who must take sides somewhat outside the fray can do so against masked criminals and for open dialogue.

This is not merely “theoretical.” Note a sort of boots-on-the-ground reality to the discussion . . . in Europe.

“Violent unrest across France has prompted a new intelligence assessment that reportedly identifies Antifa and other far-left extremist organizations as key instigators of the riots,” reports Geoff Harris at ABCNews4.com.

Over the weekend, massive demonstrations involving roughly 550,000 people turned violent. Rioters set fire to a 19th-century city hall and a tourism office in Lyon, while also looting shops in Paris. The violence led to more than 2,400 arrests. France’s Interior Ministry reported that roughly 1,000 police officers and hundreds of demonstrators have been injured. A demonstrator in Paris suffered a fatal cardiac arrest.

The State Department is also now warning that antifascist groups are planning to participate in a potentially more confrontational protest this weekend, as the far-right National Rally prepares to hold its political convention.

There will be plenty of time between conflagrations to argue the ontology of Antifa. Unless the “antifascists” go all the way and set the whole world aflame.

Is cows’ milk white supremacist?

Absurd, on the face of it, but the point sometimes made isn’t that milk is itself racist, promoting milk is.

The current controversy hails from early in the year, from Oregon’s Third Representative District, Maxine Dexter representing. “Please ask for the science-based regimens,” she urged her constituency in Hood River last February. “Not whatever RFK Jr is getting kickbacks on or, you know, whatever whole milk, white supremacy dog-whistling that’s happening right now.” 

As seen from outside of Democratic circles, this is just Trump Derangement Syndrome and RFK anti-anti-vaxxer paranoia. That’s how it is still being shared about on social media.

From within these circles, however, it’s an echo of actual tradition, exemplified by Carmen Stănescu in her paper “‘White Power Milk’: Milk, Dietary Racism, and the ‘Alt-Right.’” She argues against the “alt-right’s current use of claims about milk, lactose tolerance, race, and masculinity can be connected to similar arguments originally made during the19th century against colonialized populations and immigration groups.”

“I’m getting a little too political,” Rep. Dexter went on to say, as a means of drawing back a bit. She meant, however, too impolitic.

While Dexter and Stănescu may be right to notice that certain far-right larping and posting may seriously identify milk drinking with the denigration of non-white people, none of this makes the case against white milk as nutritious.

And as for the science as it pertains to ethnic populations and ability to process milk, we learn that lactase persistence developed only after using dairy. Recent work on the Yamnaya steppe people — progenitors of white Europeans — shows this (foundational papers: 2020–2022). Besides, dairy is widely used in India and parts of Africa despite widespread lactose intolerance, and there are pockets of lactase persistence in Africa itself.

The muddle makes you wonder: maybe the reason to link white milk with “white supremacy” is indeed because of that word “white.” 

File this under “Good Guy with Gun”:

BEND, Oregon — A hero dad was driving home for his lunch break when he heard gunshots and ran into an Oregon elementary school special-education room to stop a crazed teen’s deadly mass shooting, according to a report.

Kaylub Giamanco, a 36-year-old carpenter and father of two girls who attend Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, was heading home from his break Thursday around 1 p.m. when he heard gunfire coming from the area around the school, said his brother, Kyle Giamanco, to NBC News.

Giamanco, who owns a concealed weapon, bravely pursued teen gunman Griffin J. John into the school building’s special-education room and fatally shot him, his brother said.

Jared Downing and Zoe Hussain, “New details revealed about hero girl dad who stopped Oregon school shooter Griffin J. John during his lunch break,” New York Post (October 16, 2026).

Much has been made that, to stop the malefactor, Mr. Giamanco had to disobey the “gun-free” policy of the school:

Paul Jacob has covered many “good guy with gun stops mad killer on the loose” stories. It is important to acknowledge these stories, though the hero in this case wants no recognition.

The shooter, a 16-year-old, shot and killed three students along with a teacher. The gunman had stolen his mother’s shotgun, using the firearm to get into the Silver Rail Elementary School on Thursday. Details on the two survivors, a student and a teacher, have not yet been released, though both are reported alive but still in hospital care.

People often complain about money in politics. In Maine, a campaign managed to take politics out of money in politics. The Oregonian explains: “You might have recently seen a political advertisement about Maine’s Senate race.

That’s because the advertisement mistakenly played in Portland, Oregon, instead of Portland, Maine.
The advertisement, paid for by Republican PAC Defending Main Street, decries “Taxin’ Troy Jackson,” the Democratic candidate facing off against Susan Collins.

Meanwhile, north of the Columbia, political advertising goes on as usual. A “statistical dead heat” race between incumbent Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Trump-backed Republican challenger John Braun shows both candidates walking a fine line, trying to ply partisanship in their favor, but still trying to distance themselves from perceived craziness within their respective parties (or so says public radio).

But if you want old-fashioned negative campaigning, a Perez attack ad against Braun is pure perfection:

A very simple pitch. Effective? Seemingly.

Yet challenger Braun says the ad is misleading. The ad’s charge is he didn’t call the son of a worker who died on the job — of a company Braun runs; but this is the result, says Braun, of the fact that he talked to the son in person more than once at the job site.

This is an ad that could backfire. Unlike the Maine ad running in Oregon, which just fizzled into nothing but laughter.

The case of U.S. v. Kyle, heard in the Northern District Court of Oklahoma, is a complicated one. But it has been decided. And the result is especially interesting: “ALPR technology comes with remarkable benefits that the Court cannot ignore. But the Fourth Amendment requires courts to draw a line when the cost is too great.”

Paul Jacob has written about the underlying issue before — most recently in August. “ALPR” tech stands for “Automatic License Plate Recognition” instrumentation, which translates, in the common tongue, to “Flock cameras” . . . and their linked a.i. systems. And U.S. v. Kyle has been decided for Ms. Kyle and against Flock:

[Officer] Alaniz’s search in just the ALPR system provided him with more than 50 individual records of [defendant Melisa Susan] Kyle’s whereabouts across the country for an entire month. The Court finds that because the ALPR systems Alaniz used to search Kyle’s historical location information intruded on her reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of her physical movements, it was a search under the Fourth Amendment.

The upshot? “IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that the Defendant’s Opposed Motion to Suppress [ECF No. 47] is GRANTED. . . .”

The Flock surveillance advance has received major pushback at last.

It may be that President Donald Trump is most loved (to the extent he is loved at all — his approval ratings are way down) for they edgy things he says:

• “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. . . . They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
• “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”
• “Because you’d be in jail.”

That last was directed towards Hillary Clinton in the Second Presidential Debate of 2016. But, once winning the presidency, Trump did nothing against her. In this, his second administration, he is doing something against her, sort of, for the the administration “asked the Supreme Court on Oct. 9 to revive his dismissed civil lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and others.” This is from The Epoch Times:

The president alleges they conspired to create and spread a false story that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.

Lower courts rejected the case and ordered Trump and one of his attorneys, Alina Habba, to pay almost $1 million in sanctions. The trial judge and the appeals court called the lawsuit “frivolous,” saying it had no legal merit and appeared aimed at political grievance rather than a valid claim.

Trump is now asking the nation’s highest court to review the appeals court’s decision upholding both the dismissal and the sanctions.

While he was out of office after losing the 2020 election, Trump initiated the lawsuit in federal court in Florida in March 2022, under a federal racketeering law known as civil RICO. That law allows private individuals to seek damages when they claim someone engaged in a pattern of illegal activities, such as fraud or conspiracy.

Arguably, President Trump is aiming to salve an itch first scratched in that debate, and which his supporters have been feeling all jittery about since, if saying nothing.

The Epoch Times article does not discuss the political element so much as the legal one:

In September 2022, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks threw out Trump’s lawsuit against Clinton on multiple grounds, including that Trump waited too long to pursue some of the claims. Middlebrooks compared Trump’s lawsuit to a “two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him.” The judge later imposed sanctions on Trump and Habba for filing a case he said was calculated “to ‌dishonestly advance a political narrative,” and for misusing the courts.

In 2025, the 11th Circuit affirmed Middlebrooks, including the sanctions, saying that many of Trump’s and Habba’s legal arguments “were indeed frivolous.”

In the new filing, the attorneys said the time limit for launching the suit should have been extended because Trump opted to delay filing during his first term of office so he could focus on executing his constitutional responsibilities as the nation’s chief executive.

The full article is worth reading.

Readers of Le Monde got what most readers got, this week, about Argentinian President Javier Milei: “In Paris, Argentinian President Javier Milei seeks investors to support his country’s struggling economy.” But is that it? Is that all there is?

No.

The big story a week or so ago was Milei’s statements about the United Nations. Breitbart’s headline is worth clicking on: “Javier Milei Blasts U.N. as ‘Useless,’ ‘Arrogant Parasites’ at General Assembly.”

Milei organized his new condemnation of the United Nations into three separate categories: what the U.N. “should have done but did not,” what “should not have done, but did anyway,” and comments on the United Nations’ stance on the advance of artificial intelligence. President Milei also condemned the Islamic regime of Iran over its attacks against Israel, emphasizing that Argentina is still demanding justice over the two terrorists attacks the country suffered in the 1990s from Iran through its proxy terror group, Hezbollah.

The New York Times has something to say, and it may have been written by a human: “As A.I. Fears Grow, President Milei Pitches Argentina as a Rules-Free Haven.”

“On artificial intelligence, Argentina will stand at the forefront of freedom,” Mr. Milei told the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week, while asserting the country’s “commitment to not preemptively regulate A.I.”

Mr. Milei, who has proposed creating “nonhuman corporations” run by A.I. agents, is seeking to lure foreign investments to build data centers in Patagonia. He also relentlessly posts A.I.-generated content on social media.

Reuters takes a step back and looks at the larger economic picture: “Argentina announces citizenship-by-investment program.”

Argentina will launch South America’s first citizenship-by-investment program, Economy Minister Luis Caputo said ‌on X on Friday.

Applications will open in the fourth quarter of 2026 and will offer citizenship through a non-refundable contribution of $350,000 or the purchase of an $800,000 public bond, the Economy Ministry said in a statement.

Maybe it is time to move to Patagonia? Make it a Giant move.

In “The AfD’s Rise Is Angela Merkel’s Legacy,” a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Mark Brolin, we witness one of many new think-pieces about the rise of what the Journal calls a “populist right-wing party” and most other journals call a “far-right party.”

Something strange is happening in Germany. On closer inspection, it isn’t so strange.

In two state elections on Sept. 20, Germany’s political center took another beating. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won a 38.3% plurality, while the center-right Christian Democratic Union managed a mere 4.9%, its worst postwar result in any state election since 1949. In Berlin, the CDU lost first place to Die Linke, successor to the East German communists, while the AfD took more than 16%. Two weeks earlier, the AfD won Saxony-Anhalt. Nationally, it now leads several polls with support approaching 30%.”

This update is an update to a previous update. A lot has happened since early September. But the Journal editorial is looking for explanations. Why is the eastern part of Germany turning “far right”? (I know, groan; what is happening is a turn against the policies of Angela Merkel, her party, and all other parties. And the AfD is not exactly “far right,” though populist is a good word.) Because the center and center-left have gone crazy, perhaps?

All in all, Germany was simultaneously weakening its domestic energy resilience, deepening its dependence on Moscow, and underfunding the military alliance designed to deter Moscow. You hardly needed a doctorate in geopolitics to spot the problem. If anything, a doctorate made it easier to obfuscate the truth. Much of respectable academic and policy opinion was firmly behind Team Merkel.

Read the article online at https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-afds-rise-is-angela-merkels-legacy-15d277b0, or through some service, like Apple News. A key line from the final paragraph should entice you: “Admitting that the center itself has become unbalanced isn’t an attack on moderation.”

The title of the press release possesses a certain élan. “President Trump Takes Historic Action to Eliminate Wasteful and Harmful Spending,” which, if true, would be welcome news.

But how is the president doing this? That is, if he is indeed doing it.

“Last year, President Trump took the historic step of utilizing long-neglected Presidential authorities provided to him under the Impoundment Control Act to deploy the first ‘pocket rescission’ in 50 years,” the White House press release states. “This year, he is continuing his commitment to the American taxpayer by utilizing a pocket rescission for another nearly $1 billion of the most harmful government spending.”

Use of the pocket rescission technique in 2025 targeted “woke, weaponized, and wasteful spending.” This year the president’s red pen strikes out at quite a number of aid packages to non-citizens living in the United States, and other programs as well, including

• An HHS Office that Provides Funding Based on Race and Sex ($5 million)
• HUD Counseling Support for NGOs that Peddle DEI and Discriminate Based on Race ($56 million)
• Overfunded and Unaligned HHS Research Programs ($28 million)
• Minority Business Development Agency ($10 million)
• Debt Relief to Foreign Countries that Fund Climate Change Policies ($9 million)

You may be wondering how legal all this is. It sounds like impoundment, and wasn’t that prohibited in 1974 by and act of Congress?

Well, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 disallows the president from simply canceling appropriated funds on his own. He can only propose a rescission by sending a special message to Congress, which has 45 days of continuous session to respond. During that month-and-a-half window, Section 1012(b) lets the president temporarily withhold the funds from obligation while Congress decides.

Under President Trump, this rescission is carefully timed to the fiscal year and congressional adjournment. If the president sends his rescission request less than 45 days before the funds’ expiration date (typically the end of the fiscal year on September 30), then the administration simply withholds the money until the clock runs out. The funds expire unspent while Congress still has days remaining in its consideration window. That’s how a rescission request becomes a “pocket rescission.”

You can imagine the objections. And the howls of rage.

This is a tricksy maneuver, for the House is adjourned right now, recommencing at noon on September 28. Not much time to reassert previously passed spending.