This is a new low.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has had enough of Trump’s insults and the gloves are coming off.
watch Amanda explain the situation below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Can we say dangerous left-wing intelligence hack?
With Joe Biden and the Democrats demonizing conservatives, partisan, out-of-work former intelligence officers, without much of a ‘war on terror’ to fight anymore, and looking for new work, are now targeting Americans as their new terrorist bogeyman.
And following the bizarre ‘underwear hammer attack’ on Nancy Pelosi’s husband in San Francisco, the Democrats are on a tear blaming Republicans for violence.
This is despite the fact that the Pelosi attacker was a crazy, life-long pot-smoking hippie, left-wing nudist, and illegal alien from Canada who only started making ‘right-wing’ social media posts a few weeks ago.
But once you designate your domestic political opponents as ‘extremists’ and ‘enemies of democracy,’ you open the door to widespread abuse and repression by the state.
And targeting American citizens as if they were ISIS is the result.
As I noted earlier, we should expect to see a host of these former ‘counter-extremism’ hacks try to parlay their experiences against al-Qaeda to use against their fellow citizens.
This is the old Cold War ‘Red Scare’ in reverse.
And this is just the latest example. A partisan former CIA officer proposing we illegally use ‘counterterror’ measures against Americans.
As Fox News reports:
Former Senior Intelligence Service officer at the CIA, Marc Polymeropoulos published a Sunday piece declaring that technique once used to fight radical Islam should be turned against the right-wing in America.
Polymeropoulos’ piece for NBC News Think warned that propagandists, whether Islamic terrorists or Republicans, should be subject to counterterrorism and counter-radicalization techniques.
“I worked in counterterrorism operations for nearly my entire career at the CIA before retiring in 2019. The battle we engaged in with international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda wasn’t just with their legions of foot soldiers but with their highly effective propaganda arms as well,” he wrote.
“The U.S. and our allies considered those propagandists fundamental cogs in a terror group’s machinery, and just as culpable as any other terrorist. So we held them accountable when innocent civilians were killed.”
Polymeropoulos suggested that the attack of Paul Pelosi was evidence that the American government needs to take a firmer approach to its own citizenry.
This type of thinking is outrageous on so many levels. Simply un-American. Unconstitutional. And extremely dangerous.
Polymeropoulos, who sounds more like a left-wing extremist than an intelligence officer, is also either willfully ignorant or outright deceptive when he claims that the American right has some sort of monopoly on violent rhetoric.
He laughably states that there is “nothing equivalent being done on the other side of the aisle” as far as promoting violence against their political opposition.
“Democratic politicians and leaders may not like Trump, but they don’t call for violence against him, let alone his execution,” he outrageously claimed.
Of course, this is outright false.
As Fox Notes: “He neglected to mention multiple incidents of left-wing calls to arms and violence against Republicans…”
Fox added examples:
In 2017, a far-left former Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer named James T. Hodgkinson fired upon on a group of Republican lawmakers as they practiced for the annual Congressional Baseball Game, critically injuring House Republican Whip Steve Scalise.
Democrats didn’t equate their own hyper-aggressive anti-GOP rhetoric with his violent actions.
And let’s be clear Democrat politicians do incite violence against their GOP opponents.
Fox continues:
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., endorsed harassing political opposition in public in 2018. “They’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they’re not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store,” Waters proclaimed at the time. “The people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them.”
Polymeropoulos also ignores left-wing activists protesting in front of the houses of Supreme Court justices, firebombing crisis pregnancy centers, and doxing (posting the addresses of public figures online).
Not to mention the assassination attempt against Justice Brett Kavanaugh by a heavily armed man at his home.
Recall that in 2020, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh that they “will pay the price” for rulings against abortion and “You won’t know what hit you.”
Can we say “incitement to violence” against Justices?
This ex-CIA hack also overlooks a full year of left-wing politically motivated riots in cities, often encouraged and enabled by Democrat politicians and ‘community’ leaders.
But facts, consistency, and fairness aren’t needed when you are a political hack trying to get the all-powerful government to use your now unneeded skills to target your fellow Americans who disagree with you.
All you need is your own extremist leftist rhetoric.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
A top Democrat recruit for United States Senate has fallen behind his Republican opponent and is backing out of a Democrat debate after he used a racist slur in a congressional hearing.
A planned April 23 debate between two Maryland Democrat candidates, Congressman David Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, was canceled after Trone “refused to commit” in the wake of the incident.
During a March 21 House Budget Committee hearing, Trone asked about tax policy with Shalanda Young, who is both White House Director of the Office of Budget and Management, and black, “So this Republican j-gaboo that, it’s the tax rate that’s stopping business investment, it’s just completely faulty by people who have never run a business.”
Trone says he meant to say “bugaboo,” but instead used a racial slur for black people when speaking to the black official.
The incident could derail Trone, who is leading Alsobrooks in polls ahead of the May 21 primary to see who will succeed retiring three-term Democrat Senator Ben Cardin as the Democrat nominee. Not only is Trone white and Alsobrooks black, in a state whose Democrat primary sees large black turnout.
Trone, a millionaire businessman, has flooded TV with ads featuring black women supporting him.
Trone is still considered the favorite to win the Democrat nomination in the heavily Democrat state.
But Trone’s expected easy win to claim the seat in November was upended when popular Republican former governor Larry Hogan jumped into the race.
Hogan leads Trone by an average of 4.4% in polls of a hypothetical November matchup.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk. Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News.
ANALYSIS – The Elon Musk ‘Twitter Files’ exposé, much-ignored and maligned by the establishment media, has shown a consistent effort by various U.S. government agencies, and several prominent Democrat lawmakers, to censor or cancel dissenting, mostly conservative views.
Under the guise of combating ‘misinformation,’ a wholly concocted concept to justify censorship, Big Tech slowly at first, but increasingly later, got cozily into bed with Uncle Sam… and Adam Schiff.
Fox News reports that journalist Matt Taibbi joined Joe Rogan’s podcast to break down how the federal government, including the office of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the hyper-partisan former chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, frequently contacted Twitter to have the content removed from the social media platform.
It is important to note that Taibbi is not a right-wing conspiracy theorist. On the contrary, he is a left-leaning former contributing editor for Rolling Stone, and the author of several books, including ‘Insane Clown President,’ an unflattering portrayal of Donald Trump.
According to Taibbi, the relationship between our security agencies like the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and tech companies like Twitter and Facebook was a “little bit less formal” than he originally thought.
Rather than playing an advisory role, the feds and Twitter created a “really intense structure” cultivated over several years.
This structure included regular meetings and a system where the DHS handled censorship requests from the states while the FBI fielded international requests.
Taibbi said he was “especially shocked” by an email from a Schiff staffer who called for the suspension of journalists on Twitter who tweeted critically on the House Intelligence Committee.
Rogan replied that it was “bizarre” for someone in the government to openly call for censorship in unsecured, unclassified emails that could be disseminated publicly.
Taibbi said it represents a Big Government and Big Tech mentality of being “impregnable” without fear of oversight.
It’s not surprising, he added, because, “They’re so comfortable with the idea that the government should be involved in this censorship…”
But that’s not all. Fox News reports:
In a January installment of “The Twitter Files”, Taibbi indicated Schiff’s staff asked Twitter “quite often” to take down certain tweets. A separate batch of Twitter Files that same month revealed similar requests by Schiff’s office.
An example he shared was one sent in November 2020 by Schiff’s office, which contacted Twitter hoping the tech giant would take action regarding “alleged harassment from QAnon conspiracists” against Schiff’s staff, including aide Sean Misko. The latest batch indicates Schiff’s office even fought to have unflattering pictures removed.
“This important use of taxpayer resources involved an ask about a ‘Peter Douche’ parody photo of Joe Biden. The DNC made the same request,” Taibbi wrote, proving visual evidence.
“To its credit, Twitter refused to remove it, with Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth saying it had obvious ‘humorous intent’ and ‘any reasonable observer’ – apparently, not a Schiff staffer – could see it was doctored,” he added.
Meanwhile, as the New York Post reports, things only appear to be getting worse, with left-leaning Big Tech billionaires like Bill Gates promoting even more frightening ideas to control conservatives.
In a recent chilling interview, Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates called for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to combat not just “digital misinformation” but “political polarization,” as well.
Gates wants to fight this feared “political polarization” by checking “confirmation bias,” the tendency of people to search for information in a way that confirms their own embedded beliefs.
While this can be applied to anyone, left, right, or center, including COVID-19 fear mongers, climate change extremists, or Trump-Russia-collusion fanatics, it is now being used exclusively by our self-appointed tech overlords to dismiss all those who oppose and accepted, established liberal mantras.
And like all Leftist agendas, fear of the end fuels their need for control.
First, it was the fear of the end of the planet due to climate change, now it’s the fear of the end of democracy due to conservative ideas.
To these technocratic leftists, robust, free-wheeling debate in a democracy is now considered “political polarization,” and must be quashed to save us from death.
If we don’t use Gate’s enlightened, benevolent AI to supply the solutions, Gates suggested, we could all die: “Political polarization may bring it all to an end, we’re going to have a hung election and a civil war.”
And many leading left-wing Democrats, including Joe Biden, agree.
As the New York Post explains, the Orwellian Leftist censorship landscape may only get worse, even as they use a book by Aldous Huxley for their metaphor:
Others have suggested a Brave New World where citizens will be carefully guided in what they read and see. Democratic leaders have called for a type of “enlightened algorithm” to frame what citizens access on the internet. In 2021, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) objected that people were not listening to the informed views of herself and leading experts. Instead, they were reading views of skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books by “prominent spreaders of misinformation.”
Warren blamed Amazon for failing to limit searches or choices: “This pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products.” In her letter, Warren gave the company 14 days to change its algorithms to throttle and obstruct efforts to read opposing views.
Social media responded to such calls and engaged in widespread censorship of those who held opposing views of mask mandates, vaccine safety, school mandates, and the origin of COVID-19. Many of those criticisms and views are now acknowledged as plausible and legitimate, but scientists were banned and censored. There was no “polarization” allowed. The public never was allowed to have that full debate on social media because such views were declared disinformation.
President Biden joined in these calls for censorship, often sounding like a censor-in-chief, denouncing social media companies for “killing people” by not blocking enough. Recently, he expressed doubt that the public can “know the truth” without such censorship by “editors” in Big Tech.
Well, in this case the fear is justified.
But it’s not fear that far-left Democrats and Big Tech billionaires espouse; it’s the fear of losing our constitutional right to free speech, and the platforms to express them.
Not to mention your right to order any book you want from Amazon.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Things at the FBI just seem to get worse. A new House report shows that FBI special agents, and other key employees, who exposed the “politicized rot” within the bureau were suspended or had their security clearances revoked.
The interim staff report from the House Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government describes that ‘rot’ as the deep partisan politicization of the FBI’s leadership and the concerted weaponization of the law enforcement agency against conservatives.
The report, released Thursday morning, also described the FBI’s alleged “retaliatory conduct” against the whistleblowers “after making protected disclosures about what they believed in good faith to be wrong conduct.”
The committee’s report likened the bureau’s actions to “engaging in a ‘purge’ of agents who hold conservative beliefs.”
The FBI has responded to the accusations in a letter discussed below.
The Bureau’s politicized rot spiked after the Capitol Riot in 2021, and the subsequent Democrat effort to highlight the alleged threat of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE), also known as MAGA Republicans, pro-life Christians, and other traditional conservatives.
Among the whistleblower’s key accusations is that the bureau opened improper investigations into a large group of individuals who simply attended the pro-Trump political rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021.
They claimed that the Bureau had “no specific indication” that 138 of the people “were involved in any way in criminal activity.”
“The only basis for investigating these people was that they shared buses to Washington with two individuals who entered restricted areas of the Capitol that day,” they explained in the report.
But it’s more than that.
The committees’ report reveals new whistleblower testimony from several current and former FBI employees that exposes other “abuses and misconduct in the FBI.”
The report states that:
Some of these employees—Special Agents Garret O’Boyle and Stephen Friend, Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill, and Staff Operations Specialist Marcus Allen—have chosen to speak on the record about their experiences. The disclosures from these FBI employees highlight egregious abuse, misallocation of law-enforcement resources, and misconduct with the leadership ranks of the FBI.
It added that, in order to bolster the Democrat narrative that DVE was “organically rising around the country,” the FBI pressured staff to “reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism, and even manufactured DVE cases where they may not otherwise exist.”
Friend specified that the FBI’s handling of Jan. 6-related investigations “deviated from standard practice and created a false impression with respect to the threat of DVE nationwide.”
This is something I have argued and written about repeatedly.
The deliberate mishandling of these cases greatly inflated the number of alleged DVE cases in the country and has been used as an excuse to divert massive amounts of federal law enforcement funds and resources to this grossly exaggerated threat.
One of the whistleblowers called the bureau “cancerous” because it has “let itself become enveloped in this politicization and weaponization.”
Allen reportedly had his security clearance suspended for performing case-related research using open-source news articles and videos about the Capitol riot and sending his results to his task force colleagues for “situational awareness.”
Meanwhile, the FBI argued in a letter to the Committee Chairman, that the clearance suspensions and other disciplinary actions were taken purely out of security concerns or violations by the FBI employees.
However, among the counter allegations in its letter, the FBI said:
Specifically, the Security Division found Mr. Allen espoused alternative theories to coworkers verbally and in emails and instant messages sent on the FBI systems, in apparent attempts to hinder investigative activity.
The letter noted that despite multiple directives from his supervisor to “stop circulating these materials,” Allen “continued.”
The report states that: “Because these open-source articles questioned the FBI’s handling of the violence at the Capitol, the FBI suspended Allen for ‘conspiratorial views in regard to the events of January 6th.”
To come to your own conclusions, I recommend reading the House report and the FBI’s letter linked above.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Nobody expected Southwest Airlines to be the biggest grinch of all this Christmas.
As a winter storm rolled through much of the United States grounding thousands of airline passengers over the Christmas holidays. While nearly every airline was forced to announce delays and cancellations Southwest airlines was by and far the worst culprit, even drawing ire from the Dept. of Transportation.
Watch Amanda break down the controversy below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Former Trump National Security Advisor and retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster is on a tear with the media, warning the nation of the biggest threats America faces in 2023.
Earlier, I wrote about the growing risk that Israel’s new nationalist government led by prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may strike Iran before the end of this year to prevent the Islamist regime from finally getting a nuke.
In that piece I quoted McMaster as saying: “the chances are quite high of a significant conflict in the Middle East, maybe entailing an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program.”
An Israeli-Iranian conflict would certainly spread across the Middle East as Iran retaliates directly and asymmetrically, including targeting U.S. bases and interests.
And now McMaster warns about something most of us already know, but he brings new urgency to the threat – that China is preparing its military for war with the United States war over Taiwan.
On CBS Face The Nation, McMaster said: “Xi Jinping has made it quite clear, in his statements, that he is going to make, from his perspective, China whole again by subsuming Taiwan.”
“And preparations are underway,” he added.
Earlier, I reported here that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) had just deployed one of its three aircraft carriers within miles of the U.S. territory of Guam, America’s small but strategic outpost in the Western Pacific.
This is the closest the Chinese navy has ever sailed a warship of this size to any American territory.
And it is sending a message – Chinese naval forces can get close to U.S. bases as well.
But there is more. Newsweek also reported on McMaster’s CBS appearance:
“China has become increasingly aggressive, not only from an economic and financial perspective and a wolf warrior diplomacy perspective, but physically, with its military,” McMaster said. “And what’s really disturbing is, I think, Xi Jinping is preparing the Chinese people for war.”
He pointed to some of Xi’s speeches, which have taken on a hardline tone in recent months, as evidence that the U.S. should take the threat of war more seriously and “extend our power.” Doing so would also compel allies to invest more in their national defense, which would further serve as a deterrent, he added.
Newsweek continued:
McMaster’s warning follows other indications that China may be considering a war over Taiwan. In November, The Guardian reported that Xi told his military to “focus all its energy on fighting” to prepare for a potential war.
“Focus all [your] energy on fighting, work hard on fighting and improve [your] capability to win,” he reportedly said.
Welcome to 2023, the year America should be concerned not only with Russia’s war in Ukraine escalating and spreading into NATO Europe and possibly triggering some sort of nuclear incident, but also a war between Israel and Iran that could engulf the entire Middle East.
And to top it off, this could also be the year we see a major catastrophic war with China over Taiwan.
Or even worse – we may face all three regional military conflicts at once. Happy New Year!
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse with Joe Biden, he goes and has a chummy sideline meeting with China’s communist leader-for-life, Xi Jinping, at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.
While his partisan spinmeisters in the media dutifully reported the White House line that Biden was firm with Xi, the three-and-a-half-hour private meeting was muddled, absurdly naïve and dangerous.
At the summit, Biden stated that the U.S. aims to manage competition with China “responsibly” and that there is no need for a new Cold War.
Biden also strongly and foolishly reaffirmed China’s ‘One China’ policy regarding Taiwan, adding (against warnings from NATO and his own national security officials) that he didn’t foresee any Chinese military action against Taiwan any time soon.
Fox News reported Biden said during a press conference ahead of the G20 summit in Bali:
“[Xi] was clear and I was clear that we’ll defend American interests and values, promote universal human rights and stand up for the international order and work in lockstep with our allies and partners…”
“We’re going to compete vigorously but I’m not looking for conflict. I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” Biden said. “And I want to make sure that every country abides by the international rules of the road. We discussed that.”
Biden’s messaging was clear in one area though.
He believes climate change is more of a threat than a revisionist, expansionist, power-hungry, communist dictatorship with an economy almost the size of the U.S.
And Biden is willing to risk America’s sovereignty, independence, security and freedom to get China’s faux help with his extreme climate agenda.
GOP Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was rightfully livid over Biden’s meeting and statements.
Rubio said in a statement:
President Biden’s claim that ‘there need not be a new Cold War’ between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party proves that this administration dangerously misunderstands the CCP, which openly pushes for conflict with the United States and its allies…
Last week, while Xi appeared in a military uniform and called on the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] to prepare for war, Biden’s Department of Defense pulled an entire squadron of American fighter jets out of the Indo-Pacific. Not only is the United States unprepared to defend Taiwan against a PLA invasion, President Biden is now downplaying its likelihood.
This meeting should have held the CCP accountable for its rampant human rights abuses, ongoing theft of American intellectual property, and its refusal to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
Rubio added: “Instead, President Biden demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice everything — including our national security and the security of our allies — for the sake of pursuing ill-fated climate talks with our nation’s greatest adversary.”
Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen told Fox News on Monday that Biden’s diplomacy with China is “strategic insanity” that may only help the autocratic communist state accumulate power and global influence.
Fox News adds that “Biden reportedly has been pressuring China to essentially join him in his Green New Deal-style vision of non-petroleum power sources, which Thiessen said is one of the key areas the United States can apply pressure to Beijing if they invade their peaceable neighbor Taiwan.”
“The last thing we want China to do, quite frankly, is to start weaning itself off of oil,” Thiessen said.
“If they follow Biden’s advice and wean themselves off of oil and start embracing clean energy, we lose that leverage,” Thiessen said.
“So, you know, it’s not only a sign of weakness, it’s strategic insanity.”
As I recently reported, Xi has been increasingly adamant that so-called ‘reunification’ with Taiwan can no longer wait and China will use force if necessary to control the independent democratic nation.
Top U.S. commanders and senior intelligence officials have warned that China could take forceful action against Taiwan as early as next year, and increasingly likely by 2025 or 2027, at the latest.
Meanwhile, Biden is playing footsies with Xi, hoping China will join his radical green global agenda.
Because that is all he, and his leftist puppeteers, care about. GAND
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Another summer of rage erupts in Paris, this time sparked by the police shooting several days ago of a 17-year-old Muslim man of North African origin. Many liken the fiery French riots to our own Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots of 2020.
And in many ways, they are similar.
They both used the police killing of a man of color to justify violence, arson, looting, and spreading chaos. Their initial stated agenda was to highlight police brutality and police racism, then just racism.
Then a bunch of other stuff.
In the United States, a lot of the BLM rioting was targeted at President Donald Trump. In France, some of the rage is directed at Jews.
Meanwhile, both violent rampages were quickly co-opted, if not initially instigated, by extremist ideologies and agendas. In the U.S., BLM was run by the far left and often became dominated by issues totally unrelated to the police or even racism.
In Paris, the riots are as much about a growing unassimilated Arab/North African Muslim minority bringing radical Islam to France, as it is about the police or race.
It’s also about being anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, and anti-French.
Just as BLM often disparaged all of white America as being racist while targeting cops, many French Muslims see the entire French system as evil.
And part of that ruling system includes French Jews.
The Times of Israel reported that “perpetrators did vandalize a monument for Holocaust victims in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the 17-year-old, identified in the French media only as Nahel M., was killed. The perpetrators spray-painted the words ‘Police scum’ on the monument.”
Antisemitic chants have also been heard during the riots, “part of a well-documented sentiment among some Muslims who see Jews as part of an oppressive power structure.”
While Jews haven’t been attacked directly yet, these riots remind many French Jews of 2014, when Muslim rioters singled out Jewish-owned shops in a Paris suburb nicknamed “little Jerusalem” due to its large Jewish population.
That anti-Jewish violence, which also targeted several synagogues, was partly spurred by Muslim anger toward Jews amid the 2014 Gaza war between Israel and Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Today we have Israel engaged in a major military operation in the West Bank against Palestinian terrorists using the Jenin refugee camp as a base for attacks against Israelis. This operation began Monday, and we have yet to see its impact on the riots in France.
If the conflict extends in the West Bank, expect things to heat up more in Paris.
But as The Times of Israel also noted, this violent uprising in Paris is far more widespread than ever before. And might be a turning point for how the French view their suicidally insane immigration policies.
“In 2014, I was afraid as a Jew. This time, I’m afraid as a Frenchman,” said Jonathan C., noting that he does not have a Middle Eastern appearance.
The Times added:
Police and firefighters are common targets of violence by rioters whom many believe are acting out of resentment of French society, where the anti-immigration far right is the second-largest political force.
Other incidents are seen by some as reflecting a religious dimension of the riots, which are occurring in heavily Muslim areas.
On Thursday, two unidentified individuals beat up and robbed a priest in Saint-Etienne near Lyon. Disagreements exist on whether the assault, the second attack of a priest in the region in three weeks, was part of the riots.
Hate attacks against Christians are multiplying in France, where in 2021 the interior ministry recorded 1,052 anti-Christian hate crimes, nearly double the assaults on Jews. It meant that Christians were, in absolute numbers at least, the religious group that was most targeted that year.
This worries many in France. They see the huge number of antisemitic and anti-Christian attacks, as well as attacks against police, as part of a resurgence of radical Islam in unassimilated migrant communities.
Even if these riots subside, the bigger danger remains. And that should be a concern for not just Paris, but other major European cities as well.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Be afraid, Be very afraid. 1984 is almost here. A recent poll by the Libertarian CATO Institute showed that a big chunk of our latest and brightest Generation Z (Gen Z or Zoomers) actually favors having the government watch them 24/7.
Including surveillance in their homes and bedrooms.
Zoomers are officially those under the age of 26. And come right after Millennials.
After the horrors of World War Two showcased the brutal dangers of modern totalitarian dictatorships such as Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union, George Orwell penned his classic dystopian tale titled ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (1984).
In the novel, written in 1949, the pervasive government of the fictional nation Oceania was known as ‘Big Brother,’ and it watched its citizens incessantly via two-way video devices called ‘telescreens.’
This was of course before the advent of television or modern surveillance.
Government agents known as the ‘Thought Police’ were able to monitor everyone at home, at work, on public streets, in shops, even in bathrooms. It was a terrifying existence.
The book and term ‘Big Brother’ have since been widely referenced when warning about government overreach and expanding state control.
Sadly, it seems that almost 30 percent of Gen Z (and some Millennials) haven’t read the book or understand the danger.
CATO’s Blog notes that:
In a newly released Cato Institute 2023 Central Bank Digital Currency National Survey of 2,000 Americans, we asked respondents whether they “favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.”
Fortunately, the poll shows that 75 percent of Americans oppose or are strongly opposed to this insane idea.
However, CATO also notes that the younger you get, the less concerned Americans are about state surveillance and control:
…Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984‐style in‐home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor “the government installing surveillance cameras in every household” in order to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.” Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44-year-olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45.
Support for 24/7 surveillance was especially high among those younger than 30. Almost a third of those born after 1993 said they would welcome round-the-clock monitoring by the government.
Those respondents in their 40s, 50s, and 60s were almost totally opposed. That is a terribly disturbing trend that bodes ill for liberty in America in the next decades.
In his Boston Globe Email Newsletter, Jeff Jacoby provides his explanation for this sad state among Zoomers:
…perhaps, [it] is that Generation Z has been indoctrinated to regard safety, not freedom, as the highest good — so much so that many would rather be under the nonstop watch of the state than face the possibility of being abused or endangered.”
If so, they are in for a fearful awakening. What little protection they might gain from being under the authorities’ constant watch is nothing compared with the peril they would face. Benjamin Franklin’s famous admonition is as relevant as ever: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Inviting Big Brother into your home will not keep Gen Z-ers safe. And by the time they realize what they have given up, it will be too late to get it back.
Jacoby adds that the protagonist of Orwell’s novel, Winston Smith, is a weak man who resents the regime — and is ultimately broken for it. And the must-read book’s final words are haunting: “He loved Big Brother.”
Yet, after all we have seen and know about tyranny, almost a third of Generation Z is still prepared to love Big Brother too. Yes, we must be afraid. Very afraid.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
