Republicans blame Iran, Democrats blame the United States, and men under 40 are the most likely to name Israel

Voters were asked who they blame most for the ongoing conflict involving Iran and how much it will matter when they vote in November.

A new national survey by The Honest Poll finds that 40% of Likely Voters blame the United States most, ahead of the 31% who blame Iran and 14% who blame Israel. Three percent (3%) name someone else and 12% are not sure. Registered Voters answered 39% the United States, 28% Iran, 14% Israel, 3% someone else and 15% not sure.

Party is the clearest dividing line. A majority of Republicans, 52%, blame Iran, while 18% blame the United States and 9% Israel. Democrats are close to the reverse: 58% blame the United States, 19% Israel and only 10% Iran. Independents fall in between at 36% the United States, 27% Iran and 16% Israel. The 2024 vote sorts the same way, with 52% of Trump voters naming Iran and 62% of Harris voters naming the United States. Ideology shows the same split: 50% of conservatives blame Iran and 5% of liberals do, while 63% of liberals blame the United States against 25% of conservatives.

Mark Mitchell, The Honest Poll

Things Have Changed “Most people are not the enemy. They are scared, proud, lonely, overworked, and trying to protect something they love with the only map they were handed.” —LHGrey

I remind you once again: history is a trickster. Sometimes things turn out, and sometimes they just turn, and these days they’re turning hard. Get this: Russia is not our mortal enemy anymore. This is not 1956 or even 1986. It is no longer the so-called Free World against the wicked Hammer and Sickle.

Russia is no longer a weird political science experiment acting in defiance of human nature — that is, of people striving to make good lives for their families. No more sacrificing everyone’s happiness to prove Karl Marx’s cockamamie theories. No more trying to foist all that on the rest of the world. Russia gave up on that project and opted to become a normal nation, with the full kit of normality: commerce, shopping, banks, enterprise. Things have changed.

Things have gotten strange, too. You see every indication that, for now, Europe has become something of adversary, if not exactly our enemy, yet. Europe has lost its mind. Now, it is Europe’s turn to destroy itself in pursuit of idiotic theories — such as: nations don’t matter. . . you can have a high standard of living without productive industry. . . carbon is destroying the world.

Europe is now tyrannized by the unelected EU commission, much as the old Soviet Union was tyrannized by its politburo. An Orwellian switcheroo has occurred. When history plays tricks, it plays doozies. So, now you’ve got the grandmotherly Ursula von der Leyen dictating what all the countries in Europe may do and not do with their farms and factories and the daily lives of their people, just like Joseph Stalin in 1937. And you have the grotesquely weak leaders of France, Germany, and the rest submitting to this.

And outside the EU — which it voted to exit in 2016 — you have our so-called “mother country,” Great Britain (the United Kingdom) committing suicide in the most extravagant way, turning over prime ministers like they were jacks in a game of whist, jailing their own people for impure thoughts, while allowing the wholesale rape of its womenfolk by foreign invaders. Most extraordinary, as Dr. Watson might have observed to old Sherlock. Meanwhile, they have the ragged remnant of their old empire to defend, and it’s not going so well.

That remnant is all that’s left of Britain’s economy: its banks, its Wall Street, which they call The City of London, a square mile of hideous skyscrapers by which Britain desperately seeks to maintain financial flows into an economy that increasingly produces nothing. Which is to say, all that’s left of Britain’s vast imperial power is a matrix of nefarious financial rackets — just as, in the USA, all that’s left of the old Democratic Party is its matrix of rackets.

These days, Britain’s political apparatus is working hard to scare-up a war with Russia as a last-ditch attempt to salvage its hopelessly wasted economy. Britain’s leadership apparently thinks it can summon a war economy and even draft an army of foot-soldiers as if this were 1914 or 1939. It’s an insane project, based on an age-old wish to capture the vast natural resources of Russia. They’ve been at it, like, forever. (France and Germany tried it, too. Didn’t work.)

Now we, here in the USA, in our own hemisphere of the globe, far across the salty seas from Europe, had been enlisted in this project to mess with Russia since 1991, and that’s not working so well anymore, either. First of all, there is the NATO problem. We’re still entangled in that anachronistic treaty, despite Russia having opted to be normal thirty-five years ago. So, you see, the way to get Russia was to stir up a war between it and Ukraine.

And they used us to do it — because the EU+ NATO lacked the mojo for the job. They got our Anglified State department and its NeoCon errand boys, along with our intel cowboys and their “Five-Eye” pardners, to stage the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Kiev, kick out the Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych and, after running through a couple of puppet presidents, installed the former comedian Zelenskyy in the job (who had played a buffoonish Ukrainian president on TV previously, another great prank by our friend, history).

The next gambit was to try to shoe-horn Ukraine into NATO, which everybody knew would provoke Russia to move against Ukraine, which it did in 2022. Russia did not want NATO military bases on its border. That, Mr. Putin declared, loudly enough to be heard in Berlin, Paris, London, and Brussels, was a “red line.” Voila, war! And the USA being the backbone and the bank account for NATO, got dragged into backing Ukraine by the feckless “Joe Biden” — years on Ukraine’s bribery payroll, and too out-of-it to not be punked into playing along. Yeah, he said, you can join NATO. The blue and yellow flags busted out all over our land. Slava Ukraini, the useful idiots shrieked.

President Donald Trump, having survived the Ukraine phone call impeachment gambit and many other attempts to put him out of business, was wise to the game, and one of the first things he did returning to power in 2025 was to confab with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Against all odds, Mr. Trump has maintained that working relationship despite having to pretend to support NATO. He apparently realizes that the tricks of history have placed the USA in greater alignment with Russia than with our former World War Two allies, most particularly a desire to avoid the World War Three that NATO is now pushing for.

The President has made it clear that he is done with the weaselly Zelenskyy and all his machinations — his visits to suck-up with King Charles, his nefarious dealings with NATO, his monstrous money-laundering. If Mr. Trump has not yet secretly withdrawn America’s remaining support for Ukraine via NATO, he will do so soon, explicitly, and in a way that is liable to be an end to NATO, which trickster-history has managed to turn into a warmonger. The EU and NATO do not have the money to keep that war going. It’s as simple as that.

Now, Iran. Americans are badly exercised by this operation, which has so far claimed around twenty lives. Well, there’s an election on, and you can be sure that a lot of this discontent is being generated by 1) the desperate Democratic Party and 2) the various characters in what’s being called “Woke MAGA.” The peeved apostates, such as Tucker, Candace, MTG, and company, might be acting under, shall we say, foreign influence, but they also seem plumb crazy. In the case of Tucker and Candace, of course, the ideas they’ve been retailing seem garishly insane. Tucker babbles about literal infestations of Satan-sent demons, and sneers Goebbels-like against the Jews, while Candace follows her cuckoo Charlie Kirk vengeance project.

Get this: Iran has lost this war, and badly. And for a good reason: being that they were determined to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to deliver them, and President Trump made the reasonable decision that it better not happen. Iran, being run by a lunatic Jihad faction, the IRGC, refuses to come to reasonable terms. The few weeks left before the US midterm election make this an especially delicate period. The Iranians well know this, and are playing it for all it’s worth in hopes that a flip of the US Congress will improve their position. It’s a bad bet.

The president has made it pretty clear, and consistently so for months. The Iranians can either agree to become a normal nation, even prosperous, happy one, but with no nukes and no more jihad, or we are going to put them out of business — whichever way the midterm election goes. In other words, what you’re seeing now in that corner of the globe is not the final disposition of things.

The Europeans apparently have an incentive to do whatever they can do keep feeding the flames in Ukraine and Iran, though they are not advertising it overtly. Our interests have diverged. The Europeans are maneuvering in such a way as to make themselves an adversary to the USA, a very unwise move. It also happens that their countries are going up in flames at the moment. Their citizens are not happy, and they are further belabored by a large force of invading savages. The leaders in charge of those countries might not be in charge a whole lot longer. Think about recalibrating your expectations about where all this is going. And don’t be so glum. The odds are in our country’s favor, and these wars can be resolved favorably.

James Howard Kunstler

All Commentary

Wednesday, October 14, 2026Image Credit: Custom image by FEE

Stop Calling It Capitalism When It’s Government Favoritism

• Ninos P. Malek

How the free market gets blamed for cronyism.

Words have specific meanings. Unfortunately, capitalism is frequently misused by supporters and critics alike. Too often, what people defend or condemn is not free-market capitalism at all.

Although distinctions exist among capitalism, free enterprise, and free market, for the purposes of this essay, I use capitalism to mean free-market capitalism: an economic system based on private property, voluntary exchange, competition, freedom of entry and association, and freedom of contract—including wages negotiated without government-imposed minimums. Government’s role is that of a referee: protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and preventing force and fraud, not granting subsidies, bailouts, or special privileges.

Consider Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) and Robert Reich’s Saving Capitalism (2017). Both criticize corporate power, political influence, and government favors for large businesses. On corporate welfare, I agree with their criticisms on economic and moral grounds. Why should taxpayers subsidize businesses they might never voluntarily support? Why should politically connected corporations receive special privileges? And why should businesses making poor decisions be rescued at taxpayers’ expense?

These are legitimate complaints. But why blame free-market capitalism for government interference with the competitive market process?

In a free market, businesses must satisfy customers to earn profits. Persistent losses can signal that resources would be better used elsewhere. Rather than rescuing failing firms with taxpayer money, the free-market perspective is to allow the market process to work. As I sometimes jokingly tell my students when explaining this principle, it’s time to say, “Bye-bye, die-die!” to businesses that fail to satisfy consumer needs. (Figuratively speaking, of course.)

Some call government favoritism crony capitalism. I dislike that expression because it still associates the problem with capitalism. Calling someone a “nice jerk” doesn’t change the fact that you’re calling that person a jerk. Likewise, attaching crony to capitalism leaves the impression that capitalism itself is the problem. Why not simply call it cronyism, corporate welfare, or government favoritism? The defining feature is political privilege, not voluntary exchange.

Another misconception is that defending capitalism means defending big business. Being pro-market is not the same as being pro-business. Free-market advocates defend competition and voluntary exchange, not every corporation or business decision.

Consider manufacturers demanding protective tariffs, corporations seeking exclusive tax incentives, or industries lobbying for regulations that discourage competitors. Rather than competing for customers, these businesses seek political favors. Economists call this rent-seeking. The greater the potential rewards from government favoritism, the stronger the incentive to pursue politicians rather than customers.

Interestingly, critics from opposing ideological perspectives sometimes agree about corporate welfare. Consider my former professor, the late free-market economist Walter E. Williams, and Robert Reich, a progressive political commentator and former US secretary of labor. In his PragerU video “Is Capitalism Moral?” Williams explained that voluntary market transactions are positive-sum games because both parties expect to benefit. By contrast, he described government programs such as farm subsidies, business bailouts, and food stamps as zero-sum games in which some benefit at the expense of others. Reich has similarly criticized corporate welfare for benefiting politically connected businesses at taxpayers’ expense. Although their economic philosophies differ considerably, both recognized problems associated with government favoritism.

Consider Amazon’s proposed second headquarters in New York City. In 2018, state and local officials offered Amazon an incentive package potentially worth approximately $3 billion, primarily through tax credits and other benefits tied to investment and job creation. Progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez opposed the deal, questioning why a wealthy corporation should receive preferential treatment while communities faced pressing public needs.

A free-market advocate would oppose the deal on different grounds: no business, large or small, should receive taxpayer-funded subsidies or special privileges. The objection is not merely that Amazon received benefits unavailable to other businesses; it’s that government should not grant such favors in the first place. Businesses should compete for customers’ dollars, not taxpayers’ dollars. Government should enforce the rules, not pick winners and losers.

Amazon abandoned its New York plans in February 2019, but the controversy illustrates how different economic philosophies can identify the same problem. One emphasizes inequality and public priorities; the other emphasizes competition and market discipline.

The disagreement extends beyond subsidies to the question of monopoly power. In one of his videos, John Stossel shows a clip of Robert Reich describing Amazon as a monopoly. Stossel then challenges that characterization, pointing out that consumers have alternatives, including Walmart, Target, and Alibaba. This raises an important question: Should government determine when a company has become “too big,” or should consumers determine which businesses succeed through their voluntary purchasing decisions?

A company’s size alone does not establish monopoly power, and size itself is never a justification for government intervention. From a free-market perspective, the relevant distinction is between a business that grows by satisfying customers and one that benefits from government-created barriers to competition. Likewise, voluntary mergers should not require government approval merely because officials believe the resulting company would be “too large.”

None of this means that free markets require the complete absence of government or that all corporate misconduct results from intervention. The crucial distinction is between government enforcing general rules that protect property rights, contracts, and voluntary exchange, versus government granting special privileges or interfering with voluntary business decisions, including mergers and acquisitions.

There is nothing inconsistent about criticizing corporate misconduct while defending free-market capitalism. Any politician claiming to support free markets should, to be philosophically consistent, oppose government intervention beyond protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and preventing force and fraud. That includes subsidies, bailouts, special privileges, and antitrust laws that interfere with voluntary market competition. Government should act as a referee, not determine which companies are “too big” or which businesses should be permitted to merge. Consumers—not politicians or bureaucrats—should determine which businesses succeed and how large they become. Unfortunately, politicians in both major parties routinely claim to support free markets while advocating policies that undermine them.

So the next time someone points to a corporate bailout, subsidy, or protectionist tariff as evidence that capitalism has failed, ask: Is this business succeeding because customers voluntarily support it, or because government granted it a special advantage?

If the problem is government favoritism, stop blaming capitalism. Call it what it is: cronyism.

Ninos P. Malek

Ninos P. Malek is an Economics professor at De Anza College in Cupertino, California and a Lecturer at San Jose State 
University in San Jose, California. He teaches principles of macroeconomics, principles of microeconomics, economics of social issues, and intermediate microeconomics. His previous experience also includes teaching introductory economics at George Mason University.

Iran’s oil industry has been brought to a standstill, and the economic consequences are becoming impossible to ignore. Iran’s seaborne crude oil exports collapsed from a 14-day average of 230,000 barrels per day at the beginning of September to ZERO, remaining there into October. This is an extraordinary development for a country that depends upon petroleum revenues to finance its government, support its currency, and obtain the foreign exchange necessary to purchase imports. Washington has spent decades attempting to cripple Iran’s economy through sanctions, but the naval blockade has accomplished something far more devastating in a matter of weeks.

Claire Jungman, Vortexa’s director of maritime risk and intelligence, stated, “The blockade is doing what years of sanctions never managed.” There are now an estimated 83 million barrels of Iranian crude sitting aboard tankers, including 43 million barrels trapped west of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has the oil, it has potential buyers, and it has enormous financial obligations, but it cannot freely deliver its product and collect the revenue. Liquefied petroleum gas exports have also collapsed by 48% from the previous month, reaching their lowest level since at least January 2023. The government is being deprived of its principal source of hard currency while the costs of maintaining the state and its military continue.

This is precisely what I have explained regarding the sovereign debt crisis throughout the Middle East. These governments built their budgets around petroleum revenues, and when that income disappears, the financial structure begins to unravel. They cannot simply replace billions in lost export earnings by increasing taxes on a population that is already struggling. Government employees still expect to be paid, military expenditures continue, imports must be financed, and outstanding obligations do not disappear because the oil tankers cannot leave port. The longer this blockade continues, the more difficult it becomes for Tehran to maintain the financial machinery upon which the government depends.

Iran’s currency has already been devastated. The rial has lost approximately 35% of its value against the dollar since July, while annual inflation reached 73.6% in September. Imagine living under a government where the purchasing power of your savings is being destroyed at that pace while the country loses access to its most important source of foreign exchange. Imported goods become more expensive, businesses struggle to obtain necessary supplies, and the average family pays the price for decisions made by politicians who never seem to suffer the same consequences as the people they govern.

The economic contraction is equally alarming. The International Monetary Fund now projects Iran’s economy will shrink 7.6% in 2026, while Iranian government figures show GDP contracted approximately 10% during the spring compared with a year earlier. Industrial production, trade, and household consumption are all suffering. A country cannot lose its export revenue, experience a currency collapse, and maintain normal economic activity simply because its leaders insist they remain financially secure. The government may be able to survive politically for some time, but the private economy is being systematically deprived of the capital necessary to function.

China’s position is particularly important because Beijing has been one of the principal destinations for Iranian petroleum. Vortexa reports that China’s demand for Iranian crude has weakened as Russian oil has filled part of the gap. This illustrates how international capital and trade flows adjust regardless of the political arrangements governments believe they have established. Russia benefits from replacing Iranian supplies, while Tehran loses both revenue and bargaining power. Russia now accounts for 80% of the high-risk petroleum exports tracked by Vortexa among Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. Moscow may be politically aligned with Tehran, but that does not mean Russian producers will voluntarily surrender their own market share to rescue Iran’s finances.

Washington may believe that eliminating Iran’s oil revenue will force Tehran to negotiate, but economic warfare carries consequences well beyond the intended target. Iran still possesses the ability to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategically important energy corridors in the world. The more desperate its financial position becomes, the greater the incentive for its leadership to use whatever leverage remains. A blockade intended to weaken one country can therefore create disruptions throughout the region, raising transportation costs, insurance premiums, and energy prices for nations that have nothing to do with the original dispute.

We are already witnessing the inflationary consequences of this conflict. American gasoline prices surged 9.1% in September, and the energy component of the Consumer Price Index increased 5.2% in a single month. The same government attempting to deprive Iran of petroleum revenue must now confront the consequences of higher energy costs at home. Energy enters virtually every stage of production and distribution, so the disruption does not end at the gasoline pump. It works its way into transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, and ultimately the cost of living for ordinary households.

The global economy is interconnected, whether politicians wish to acknowledge it or not. Iran loses its oil revenue, Russia captures additional market share, China adjusts its purchases, and Western consumers confront higher energy costs. Every government involved believes it can manipulate the outcome through sanctions, blockades, or military pressure. But international commerce does not operate according to political wishes, and the economic damage rarely remains confined to the country originally targeted.

Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics

Bigger agencies, higher spending, and expanded workforces don’t always make government more effective.

My recent trip to Malibu from Los Angeles was my first post-wildfire drive through the Pacific Palisades and, my goodness, there’s nothing like seeing something with one’s own eyes to grasp the enormity of the devastation. The obliterated hulks along Pacific Coast Highway 21 months after the tragedy raise multiple issues, including ones related to the excruciatingly slow rebuilding process.

This being California, the state has yet to grapple sufficiently with the reasons the wildfires started—and the failed response to them. But late is better than never, so I applaud a new report that Gov. Gavin Newsom commissioned from the nonprofit Fire Safety Research Institute. Released this month, it looked at the nitty-gritty of how the fires started and how multiple agencies reacted. The results aren’t pretty.

The New York Times provided the best summary: “The comprehensive analysis found that while several state and local agencies fell fatally short in their preparation and response, the clearest lesson from the disaster was the extent to which climate-driven fires are outstripping modern firefighting.” The report found LA officials failed to take the fires seriously enough at the outset. County officials handled the Altadena evacuations in a “chaotic” manner. They were unprepared for the intensity of the fire storms.

We’ve all read about some of the inexplicable stupidity. The Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty during the fires because of a repair to its protective cover, yet it’s empty again (although it’s in the process of being refilled). The California Coastal Commission allegedly delayed new permits for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to install fire-resistant utility poles because of concerns about an endangered weed. The commission disputes that report—and there’s still heated debate involving multiple agencies.

If we can’t get multiple agencies on the same page on one minor question about milkvetch, I’m skeptical California can deal with the basics. The report said the tragedy involved “multiple interlinked systems rather than any single factor or failure.” In one example by Patch, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department remained at normal staffing levels. The Los Angeles Fire Department was reportedly so concerned about overtime costs that it reportedly responded slowly.

This epitomizes California’s approach to everything: Bigger agencies, higher spending, and expanded workforces. The left hand never knows what the right hand is doing. Other priorities outside of public protection—budgeting, meeting union demands, turf battles—take precedence. This isn’t malicious, but reflects the fundamental nature of government.

Even after the state suspended rebuilding regulations, the rebuilding process is still in a quagmire because of the number of involved agencies. How could California realistically streamline a wildfire-fighting process that involves an alphabet soup of local, county, regional, and state bureaucracies? Even the feds are involved because around 45 percent of the state’s land area is owned by them. The wildfire issue is a statewide problem, so the conclusions should resonate beyond LA.

Furthermore, the report argues that California needs to change its overall approach toward wildfire resilience. Back to the Times analysis, which noted that climate-driven fires are becoming more intense and that’s challenging the traditional ways that the state has battled wildfires. But how often have you seen governments respond efficiently to external economic or environmental changes? All governments are slow-moving freight trains.

Everything government does is mired in the past. As an unrelated example, the nation’s education system isn’t much different than the one created in the 1800s—despite all the technological changes that should have sparked a revolution. When COVID hit, private schools adapted and provided successful at-home learning, whereas the public schools watched students fall behind and truancy rates soar. It’s not any different with any public service, including firefighting.

My fear: California policymakers will read that summary about “climate-driven” fire risks and do what they always do: blame the problem on climate change and double down on the state’s counterproductive climate policies. They are designed to change the entire Earth’s weather patterns (even though California is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s greenhouse emissions), rather than adjust our regulatory system to make us more resilient in the face of warming trends.

California’s union-controlled state and local governments aren’t about to adjust firefighting budgets so they can further stretch their dollars. State firefighters generally earn more than $250,000 in annual total compensation, with some Los Angeles firefighting officials earning pay levels that boggle the mind. Instead of trimming costs, California has been ratcheting up pay levels.

California state officials haven’t even been forthright about their approach toward brush clearance. For instance, four years ago Newsom touted an important wildfire-prevention program that at the time hadn’t completed a single project. We hear promises, but little action.

That’s government for you. It doesn’t do anything well and is incapable of learning the right lessons even from the best reports. Driving along PCH was just my latest reminder of this sad truth.

Steven Greenhut, Reason

This is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.  

Our on-and-off relationship with our European allies and friends is in another low spot. There’s a lot of developments that have been going on that I don’t think they quite appreciate have created a loss of confidence in the United States about the reliability of our NATO allies. 

And this transcends the earlier existential problem that all of our NATO allies, 32, had over 20 years promised but reified that and ratified it the last 15 years, they would spend 2% of GDP on defense. And as you remember, in 2016, after the election, and Donald Trump, remarked as he was going to enter office in 2017 that all but six of them had not met their requirements. 

And after all this bullying, all this acrimony, now almost all of them, I think with one exception, have made the 2%. But now we’re into another series of crises.  

The former head of German intelligence was just found out in his retirement, I think he’s 80, that he was a traitor, and that he had been selling or trafficking in secrets that involved German and NATO security to existential enemies like China and maybe Russia. 

That creates a lack of confidence in the security that we have with the Germans.

And Britain, remember, we have a dual-use base, an RAF and a U.S. Air Force base in the United Kingdom, and the idea, of course, is forward deployment. So if we would get into a crisis with China, with Russia, over Ukraine, almost anywhere in the world, we would have maybe 11 of our $320 million B-1 bombers that have capability to carry nuclear weapons and huge payloads, but they would be based and safe in this air base that was patrolled by our allies, the British. 

Now we learn that some terrorists had a dry run where they got very close to this base and were in the process of filming it and doing reconnaissance work.  

And we learned two things from the British government, Prime Minister [Andy] Burnham. Number one, they were trained by or in the service to Iran, the greatest terrorist threat in the world. 

And number two, they were let out on bail.  

How can you say that—the most dangerous terrorists that we’ve seen in the U.K. that are actually scouting out ways to destroy an American bomber fleet is from Iran, or at least influenced by Iran or hired by Iran, but then let them out on bail?  

And then we get to the recent argument from our allies that they want nothing to do with the Iran war. 

They understand that the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s oil and the oil of the Gulf are  critical to their oil needs, and they understand that the wealth of the Gulf States is essential for them to export commodities. And they understand the principle that Iran is a dangerous country.  

And for 50 years, they have said in a course with us that it should not and will not be nuclear, although neither they nor the American presidents, seven of them, have done anything about it. 

So we go and try to stop that threat. France then immediately says that this was not an approved U.N. war, and they cannot use French airspace to use American assets, not NATO assets, American assets, in, over their airspace. The U.K. says you cannot use the Diego Garcia base, which is critical in the Indian Ocean, for operations in the Middle East, long-distance operation. 

Italy says you cannot use your dual-use base with us in Sicily to land aircraft to go after Iran. Spain says you’re not gonna use our base. You’re not even getting near our airspace.  

Switzerland and Austria are neutral, but they’re pro-U.S., and if their push came to shove, they wouldn’t be able to avoid a European continental war, and they would seek protection from whom? Probably us. They said nobody gets near our airspace.  

None of these European countries said we will help the U.S. Navy patrol the Strait of Hormuz to ensure that it’s open and global commerce is uninterrupted. Okay. 

And of course, we have our Canadian friends who said last year we may or may not have met our 2%, but for the last 15 years, we won’t spend 2%. 

But of course, we expect to be, under the nuclear umbrella of, as we have been, of the United States, and we expect if there was ever an existential threat to the North American continent, you would not distinguish Canadian from American interest, even though we’re not armed and not capable with 79 45-year-old jets, given your 4,000 or 5,000. 

So I could go on, but you get the impression that it’s again a reminder that it’s a one-way street. Remember the argument that our European friends are using to us. They are saying, “You’re a NATO power, and you’re pledged to protect the North American, space.” Of course, we’ve never… Only once after 9/11, and that was sort of symbolic. 

Some NATO planes helped us after 9/11 to make sure there were not terrorists in our skies. But generally, the threats that face Europe are not going to threaten the United States, and the threats that face the United States, we don’t count on NATO partners, volunteering to go to Taiwan or to protect us from a Chinese missile. 

None of that. All we ask is, “Can we use our NATO assets, the use of our bases, and your airspace to cut the travel time, the distance, from our bases, to Iran, and we don’t have to come all the way from the United States?”  

And they said, “No. You cannot do that.” And so we are saying, “Well, Ukraine  is threatened by Russia, but Russia’s army does not threaten us.” 

There’s no way in the world that the Russian army is ever going to run the United States. It is going to overrun Ukraine maybe, maybe the Baltic states, maybe some of the Scandinavian states, maybe the European states. But it’s not gonna ever endanger us.  

We have a strategic problem with Russia, and we handle that on our own with our nuclear deterrent: submarines, land base, and bombers. 

So let’s get this straight, Europe. You are saying to us that when we have a shared threat and it’s in your neighborhood, and it’s of interest to us that you will not help, but you’re not gonna go beyond that, but you will not even lend your airspace to help us.  

And at the same time, you’re saying, as the NATO big guy in the alliance, that you expect us to guarantee your safety and to arm the Ukrainians to the teeth and to deter the Russians from invading further and closer into Europe, even though we know, according to your logic, they’re not threatening us at all. 

Now, the truth of the matter is, if Ukraine is overrun and Russia goes into the Baltic states or Europe, we will probably come, as is our obligations under NATO. But the Europeans are making that harder and harder to sell to the American people because it’s a one-way street. When we need you to protect Europe, you better be there. 

When you need us not to protect us from a nuclear weapon from Iran, not to join us in battle, just to let us use your airspace, you can’t even do that. And we had to be uncouth and crude and scream and yell to make you protect yourself with a meager 2% investment of GDP in defense. I know what you’re gonna say to us. 

So it’s a one-way street. And so we have made the argument that in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, which are the backyards of Europe, it’s essential that Iran not get a nuclear weapon for their protection and ours, and we are willing to handle that problem. We’re not asking NATO, we’re not asking individual countries to bomb, Iran or to send weapons. 

We have open borders. We’re overrun with immigrants. We made bad decisions about our green energy. We warred on fossil fuels. We have certain culture that has a 1.3 continental-wide fertility rate that’s unsustainable.  

We have immigrant populations that do not want to assimilate. And we have a socialist paradigm that is not sustainable, so we can’t help you. You can’t help. 

At least you could say, “This is not working. This is not working, and we want to make reforms in our economy, our energy, our immigration, so we can free up capital to fulfill our partnership, and we want it 50/50. When you need us, we’re there, and when we need you, you’re there.” And if it doesn’t happen that way, then the NATO paradigm is not sustainable. 

It will not work for the Europeans to deny us just the use of the airspace to deal with a common threat and then expect us to risk our key cities in any potential nuclear standoff with Russia, because that’s what would happen. To protect the integrity of Europe, if we couldn’t do it with traditional forces, it would ultimately be a standoff to use American deterrence to protect Europe, and that would entail our danger to protect your continent. 

And so, yes, we can be crude. Yes, we can yell and scream, but ultimately, this remains an asymmetrical and thus unsustainable relationship.  

Victor Davis Hanson is a Daily Signal senior contributor, hosting a podcast, producing video commentaries, and writing a weekly column. He is the author of “The Counterrevolution The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement.”

In August, Jessica Bowie was arrested in connection with a plot to blow up New York State legislators at the capitol building while pretending to be delivering DoorDash and then in Oct, Benny Caldera Jr. was arrested in a plot to shoot up the Texas State Capitol.

The two terror plots targeting state capitols and legislators in two different states took place less than three months apart and while these are the sorts of terror plots that might have been expected of Islamic terrorists, Bowie and Caldera were Americans, and yet their plots were Islam-inspired.

The Bowie and Caldera terror plots were not the first Islam-inspired attacks in America.

Last year, Elias Rodriguez, a Chicago radical leftist, murdered an engaged couple at the Capital Jewish Museum, while shouting, “Free Palestine”. A spectrum of Islamist and leftist groups ranging from the DSA Liberation Caucus to the Bronx Anti-War Coalition, to Unity of Fields, linked to Iran, endorsed the Islam-inspired terrorist attack in Washington D.C.

The Bowie and Caldera attacks show that the situation has only escalated from there.

Jessica Bowie’s terrorist attack was more directly inspired by Islamic terrorism. Bowie, a white woman living in Albany, New York, the location of the state capital, appeared to have converted to Islam at some point and posted messages such as “Praise be to Allah for September 11th” and denounced the legislators as “enemies” of Allah.

Benny Caldera Jr. had allegedly told a friend, “I am going to the Capitol and I am going to shoot it up. These people have to be exterminated.” He had supposedly said goodbye to his parents.

Like many Muslims and radical leftists, Caldera appeared to be obsessed with AIPAC, a pro-Israel group that has a limited presence in Texas, while Bowie did not specifically mention Israel, but focused on the opportunity of bringing “harm to the enemies of Allah.”

Bowie’s attack appeared to be better thought out than Caldera’s. Bowie lived near the New York State Capitol and had been conducting site surveillance, having made “it a point to have picnics by the capital to observe and [have] coffee in the observation hall” and had planned her attack for a time when state senators were holding meetings. Her plan was to detonate a nail bomb and harm as many officials as she could while pretending to be doing a food delivery run.

The common denominator between Bowie and Caldera however appeared to be that they had both accepted Islamic propaganda about America and it eventually turned them into terrorists and a threat to the centers of government in two very different parts of the country.

Despite ongoing efforts by the FBI, Islamic terrorist narratives circulate on social media like never before and have been adopted by fringe and not so fringe domestic political movements. Islamic terrorists and terror states find a range of social media defenders from the DSA to Tucker Carlson. Even Al Qaeda propaganda, like ‘Osama’s Letter to America’, actually written by Adam Gadahn, a California hippie turned Al Qaeda spokesman, has made its way across social media, boosted by enemy platforms from TikTok to Tucker.

The fundamental message that America is bad and that Muslim terrorists are righteously resisting us has even been embraced by DSA Democrats and their growing number of allies who have mainstreamed Hasan Piker, a Turkish Muslim influencer, who argued that Al Qaeda is better than America and that, “America deserved 9/11”.

Who needs ISIS beheading videos or Osama bin Laden video dumps to Al Jazeera when the New York Times and politicians like Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed are boosting this kind of rhetoric that was once considered Al Qaeda propaganda?

In the years after the September 11 attacks, there was a focus on preventing Al Qaeda and other Jihadist groups from recruiting Muslims in America. Not only did those strategies fail, but Americans are increasingly being directly and indirectly recruited to commit terror acts for Islam.

The threat of Americans converting to Islam and turning to terrorism, including unlikely people like teens from Maine and Tennessee, is being accompanied by more Islamic-adjacent or Islamic-inspired attacks in which the perpetrators may not be aware that they are engaging in second degree Islamic terrorism.

The perpetrators don’t necessarily formally convert. For example there have been multiple ‘Free Palestine’ stabbings of innocent people, both Jewish and non-Jewish in New York City in which the perpetrators shouted the terrorist catchphrase. The most recent such attack took place over the summer when Raul Morales stabbed an Asian man and a Jewish man while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and “Justice for Palestine.” It’s not clear that Morales had ever formally converted, but investigators found copies of both Das Kapital and the Koran in his apartment.

Some of this may be due to unstable people being barraged by second-degree Islamic terrorist propaganda on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok which does not directly promote Islam, but instead promotes fake Gaza atrocities, and may not even be coming from Islamic sources, but from Chinese and Russian bot armies which use them as a way to undermine America.

That’s how the relatively crude crowdsourced solicitations by Al Qaeda, after the Bush administration destroyed its strongholds in Afghanistan, have evolved into a much more sophisticated multipoint crowdsourced network with buy-in from not only much of the Muslim world, but also non-Muslim enemy nations, as well as plenty of propagandists in America.

The combination of foreign social media bot armies, the influencer economy and the growing radicalization of what used to be mainstream Democrats has made ‘second degree’ Islamic terrorism into the wave of the future. Americans are joining Al Qaeda’s mission of infiltrating the country, attacking its every vulnerability and weak point and ultimately bringing it down.

And sometimes the perpetrators themselves don’t even know it.

Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine

For all of our technological marvels, a No. 2 pencil and sheets of paper filled with oval boxes remain a key determinant of success.

Sure, plenty of high achievers didn’t ace the SAT, ACT, MCAT, LSAT, and GMAT. But the vast majority of wealthy and influential Americans notched high scores in the alphabet soup of standardized tests, which are key gateways to the American dream.

And yet, even as we invest these measures with tremendous power, we feel uneasy about them. Sifting and sorting, differentiating people by their abilities, may be crucial to a well-run society, but it also runs counter to our bedrock commitment to equality. Hence the common narrative that these tests simply reflect privilege; scores are not earned so much as bought by people who game a rigged system for unfair advantages. As the Black Lives Matter riots arose in 2020, this thinking led top universities to stop requiring test scores for admission – a policy many have now reversed after finding it difficult to assess applicants without them.

While the intelligentsia seeks to have it both ways on standardized testing, depending on and demonizing them at once, they remain committed to casting another effective measure of ability as beyond the pale: Intelligence Quotient tests. IQ may be scientifically sound and powerfully predictive of outcomes, but it is political dynamite because of the profound challenge it poses to the equality thesis. This concept holds that, by and large, we are all born to the same. Differences emerge almost immediately as the environment, especially family life and access to quality education, starts writing on the blank slates of our minds.

IQ challenges this narrative because it measures innate capacity. You can’t study for the test or hire tutors to boost your score, which remains stable throughout your lifetime. The prince and the pauper can swap their positions of wealth and status, but not their ability to solve problems.

A person’s IQ, of course, does not reflect one’s human worth, dignity, or goodness – lots of rotten people have high IQs. But those with high IQs are better able to master complex ideas and processes, to perform the tasks that often lead to material success. A successful society identifies and empowers these people so their gifts can benefit the rest of us.

We may bow to the importance of IQ by acknowledging the genetic advantages of those at the tippy-top of their fields – hard as we try, you and I were never going to be another Albert Einstein or Marilyn Vos Savant. But we also pretend that the rest of us are pretty much the same.

This is nonsense – and everybody knows it. Intelligence isn’t distributed along a sideways hockey stick but along a bell curve. Human beings evince a range of intellect. But our commitment to equality is so strong that in society – though not in private conversation – we deny it.

Unlike the similar critiques of standardized tests, this equality argument is more often implied than voiced when it comes to IQ because the science leads to the opposite conclusion. Basically, we try to wish and censor it away.

IQ is doubly taboo because on the rare occasions when it is discussed, it is usually in the context of race. Charles Murray, for example, was pilloried two decades ago for exploring these connections with co-author Richard J. Herrnstein in “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.” Today, another American academic, Nathan Cofnas, is facing criminal charges for violating Belgium’s antiracism laws regarding his work exploring the persistent IQ gap between African Americans and other groups.

While our free speech laws protect Cofnas – who discussed his research in a recent episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast – from prosecution in America, his work remains verboten. Two black scholars, Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, expressed a prevailing view about this issue in their recent interview with Cofnas when they acknowledged that the data about race and IQ – which has found African Americans, as a group, score about 15 points lower than whites and Asians – was accurate but questioned the point of discussing it. “Why do we need to talk about that?” McWhorter asked. “What is the point in how we are organizing society … [in] show[ing] us that black people have the lowest IQs?”

It is hard to argue with Cofnas’ response that, given the predictive value of IQ, intellectual honesty demands that we consider it when interpreting outcomes and devising public policy. The code of silence McWhorter advocates would only remove a key data point from our understanding of the obstacles people face. Cofnas’ focus on race, however, also clouds the issue.

If anything, the IQ gap provides a strong argument for a colorblind society. It is absurd to categorize people according to race and ethnicity. No group has a pure lineage. Asian, black, and white Americans came from far-flung corners of the globe, with different cultural and genetic histories.

Dumping these disparate peoples into concocted entities erases these significant differences. It engenders racist thinking by prompting us to see people as members of groups rather than unique individuals. By assigning them to artificially created entities – and then expecting those constructs to have equal outcomes – we falsely advance a form of biological determinism sharply at odds with the equality thesis by casting race and ethnicity as overriding determinants of success rather than ability. Your race is your destiny. This makes it hard for us to identify the consequential factors shared by many individuals across these groups that may make it hard for them to reach their potential.

Now a reality check: A truly colorblind society is not going to emerge any time soon because race and ethnicity serve as sources of identity and belonging. They may be arbitrary social constructs, but they also serve a powerful purpose. In addition, the equality thesis is so attractive from a moral and a political perspective that we are unlikely to abandon it. Believing that anyone can rise to the top is, after all, the essence of the American dream.

Since we seem destined to continue embracing the equality thesis, the persistent gaps in IQ and other test scores behoove us to acknowledge that our efforts – robust anti-discrimination laws and massive social spending – have not worked. In some sense, DEI efforts are an admission of that failure, as they seek to reapportion society’s spoils based on race rather than merit. This brute-force approach, however, also leads to division and discrimination while doing nothing to help people become more qualified. 

Greater minds than mine will have to figure out the path forward. But expecting a different result from the same action is stupid.

J. Peder Zane is an editor for RealClearInvestigations and a columnist for RealClearPolitics. Follow him on X @jpederzane.

By: Hans Mahncke

On Oct. 14, MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian reported that FBI Director Kash Patel had secretly traveled to Russia for meetings with the Russian security service, the FSB. The sensational story was attributed to two anonymous sources and immediately suggested that the FBI director was involved in some sinister dealings with Moscow.

There was just one problem. Patel was in Virginia, attending an event at Liberty University. Within hours, Dilanian was forced to retract his report.

What makes this episode particularly revealing is Dilanian’s history. In 2014, The Intercept exposed emails showing that Dilanian, then at the Los Angeles Times, had routinely submitted drafts of his articles to CIA officials for review before publication, even making changes based on their feedback. In one exchange, he sent a revised draft to his CIA contacts asking, “Does this look better?”

At what point does it become absurd to keep treating people like this as journalists?

There is an entire world operating behind the headlines that most Americans know almost nothing about. A world in which political operatives, intelligence officials, and the media work together in an interconnected system that manufactures scandals, destroys reputations, and unleashes the power of government against political opponents.

Russiagate exposed this world, yet 10 years later, conservatives still talk about media bias, as though the problem were simply journalists who dislike Donald Trump.

The real problem is media lawfare. The media are embedded in the machinery itself, performing functions every bit as important as those carried out by political operatives and intelligence officials. And that machinery will never be understood or taken down so long as its media participants continue to be treated as journalists.

Russiagate remains the prime example of how this machinery operates. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manufactured the Trump-Russia collusion narrative and used its contractors, Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, to disguise its allegations as independent intelligence. That much is now widely understood, at least among conservatives. What remains far less understood is that major media organizations were themselves integral to the operation.

The Washington Post helped launch the Russia narrative in June 2016 with a breathless article declaring that Russian hackers had stolen files from the Democratic National Committee. Years later, CrowdStrike Services’ own president admitted under oath that his firm had no evidence that the data had ever left the DNC’s computers. Meanwhile, Fusion GPS worked directly with New York Times editors and reporters, supplying material for the paper’s false August 2016 story about Paul Manafort that directly led to his removal as Trump’s campaign chairman.

But perhaps the most revealing example involved ABC News and an innocent American businessman named Sergei Millian.

In the summer of 2016, ABC’s Matthew Mosk arranged for Millian, who was traveling in Asia, to return to New York for a July interview with Brian Ross. According to Fusion GPS’s own account, its founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, told ABC to get Millian on camera.

The arrangement served two purposes. First, to obtain footage of Millian that could be weaponized against Trump. Second, it would bring Millian to New York at a specific time, allowing Steele’s operative Igor Danchenko to meet him and subsequently attribute fabricated allegations of Trump-Russia collusion to him.

Danchenko traveled to New York but failed to meet Millian. That failure was instrumental in exposing the fraud underlying Steele’s central collusion allegation. The supposed source of the dossier’s most explosive claims had never even spoken to the man who supposedly obtained them from him. The entire sourcing chain for the central conspiracy allegation was nonexistent.

Mosk and Ross, meanwhile, got their interview. But ABC never broadcast it.

Instead, two months later, on Sept. 22, Good Morning America suddenly aired a few carefully selected clips portraying ordinary real estate transactions involving Russian buyers as suspicious.

That very same day, Hillary Clinton’s campaign released an attack advertisement featuring the ABC footage.

The only inference that can be drawn is that ABC had supplied the footage to Clinton’s operation in advance, with the Good Morning America broadcast providing a convenient alibi for how the campaign obtained it. After sitting on the interview for two months, ABC released precisely the material Clinton needed, on precisely the day she needed it.

Millian understood that he had been set up. He accused Mosk of manipulating his statements, conducting the interview under false pretenses, and destroying his reputation. “You m[a]liciously lied to me,” he told Mosk.

And these same so-called journalists reappeared in another Russiagate episode. On Dec. 1, 2017, Ross falsely reported that Trump had “instructed” Michael Flynn “to contact Russian officials during the [presidential] campaign.” ABC was forced to retract the claim and suspend Ross. Mosk was also credited on the report.

Another revealing episode occurred in September 2016, when Clinton’s contractors at Fusion GPS arranged for Steele to brief supposed journalists from ABC, Yahoo News, The New York Times, and The New Yorker at Washington’s Tabard Inn. The Washington Post received a separate briefing. Clinton’s own operatives were personally introducing reporters to the man her campaign was paying to manufacture allegations against Trump. Yet none of those reporters disclosed the arrangement to their audiences. It took Devin Nunes’ congressional investigation, more than a year later, to begin exposing the connections that the media themselves had never seen fit to reveal.

Two days later, Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff published Steele’s allegations against Carter Page, which the FBI subsequently cited in its surveillance application against Page. Clinton’s political allegations had been turned into media stories and then used by federal investigators as apparent independent corroboration.

After Trump’s election, the process became even more brazen. FBI Director James Comey briefed Trump on salacious allegations from Steele’s dossier, creating the official event CNN needed to report the story. Internal FBI correspondence shows that Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe were aware of how the briefing would provide CNN with its news hook.

These were interconnected operations involving campaign contractors, intelligence officials, and media personnel, each playing a different role within the same machinery.

And Russiagate was only the beginning. The Ukraine impeachment operation, CNN’s presence at the pre-dawn FBI raid on Roger Stone, the Trump indictments, and the Covid origins cover-up, including the “Proximal Origin” paper, all involve deeply entangled working relationships between political operatives, government officials, intelligence agencies, and media organizations.

There is an entire lawfare ecosystem whose participants, relationships, and methods remain largely hidden from public view. And nothing protects that ecosystem more effectively than the continuing fiction that its media participants are merely journalists.

Which brings the story back to Ken Dilanian of MS NOW. On Oct. 13, just one day before his latest Russia story collapsed, federal Judge Timothy Kelly extended an order preserving White House access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, finding that the administration had likely violated their constitutional rights by excluding them over unfavorable coverage.

The ruling illustrates how conservatives remain trapped in a fundamentally mistaken paradigm.

Trump complains about fake news, DOJ argues about White House access, journalists invoke press freedom, and judges apply the same old precedents about viewpoint discrimination. The entire debate revolves around the supposed rights and privileges of journalists, when the fundamental question should be whether the individuals claiming those privileges are actually performing the functions of independent journalists.

Take Marc Elias and Norm Eisen, two prominent figures in the political lawfare onslaught of the past decade. No one would seriously argue that either man has a constitutional right to access the West Wing to pursue his political objectives. Yet when media personnel perform essentially the same functions, participating in the same operations, pursuing the same objectives, and working toward the same outcomes, we are suddenly told that denying them access is an assault on the Constitution. The fact that one operates under a law firm’s letterhead while another operates under the CNN or ABC logo changes absolutely nothing about the function being performed.

And this is the point which conservatives have failed to grasp.

The entire approach must change. DOJ must begin examining media personnel as participants in the lawfare machinery rather than framing cases around journalistic bias. The FCC must bring far greater scrutiny to the conduct of broadcast licensees implicated in these operations. Above all, the public must understand how this hidden ecosystem functions.

For 10 years, conservatives have been fighting the wrong fight because they have fundamentally misunderstood the machinery they are up against.

Hans Mahncke is the founder of the Counterlawfare Institute. He holds LL.B., LL.M. and Ph.D. degrees in law. He is the author of “Swiftboating America: Exposing the Russiagate Fraud, from the Steele Dossier to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.”

Nearly half of all Muslims in France say they would think about going into exile if sovereigntist candidate Marine Le Pen is elected President next year, with a massive one in five followers of Islam saying they would definitely leave the country.

French news magazine Marianne has published the findings of large sample polling conducted for them by Ifop that suggests a large proportion of the country would simply refuse to keep living peacefully in France if their preferred candidates don’t prevail in the April 2027 Presidential Elections. Some 46 per cent of Muslims in the 9,600 respondent poll — a large sample for European polls — said they would consider “leaving France to settle in another country”.

Because the French government is officially secular its collection of data on matters like faith and ethnicity among the population can be patchy, but according to recent estimates adherents of the Muslim faith make up around ten per cent of all people in France. With around 70 million permanent residents, this could mean three-and-a-half million people responding to the election by considering going abroad.

While claims of voluntary deportation around election time are not unknown and often prove to be hyperbole, there is a hardcore within that group at 20 per cent of Muslims in France who say they have already made their minds up and will “certainly” go abroad if Le Pen is sworn in as President, approaching one-and-a-half million people.

This desire to leave may be down to concern about what Le Pen’s France may be like. Some 80 per cent of Muslims said they fear “increase in attacks and discrimination”, and 27 per cent said they would try to hide their religious choices in daily life. Even 18 per cent of hijab-wearing women said they would consider stop veiling if Le Pen won the election, the pollster claimed.

Muslims living in France are not the only group who told the pollster they’d consider going abroad. Almost as welling to sit out a Le Pen Presidency were supporters of hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who seems a credible candidate to make it to the Presidential run-offs against Le Pen, and whose party has been accused of stoking recent riots in France for their own political ends. According to Marianne, 43 per cent of Melenchon voters say they’d consider leaving France.

With his polling hovering around 17 per cent nationally, the results imply five and a half million leftists in France who would consider reacting to losing an election by moving abroad.

Voluntary expatriation isn’t the only option on the table that opponents of Marine Le Pen perceive. The prospect of the left attempting to bring the country grinding to a halt in revenge against a democratic election looms large, with the Marianne / Ifop polling finding that three-quarters of leftist Melenchon voters would simple ignore new laws they consider “unjust” and join in a general strike against the government, a level of resistance raising the fear of “gridlock” in the country.

Left-wing resistance movements or not, any such attempts to bring down the government would be up against a democratic mandate and some policies which, this polling suggests, are popular. Part of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party platform is banning the burka in public — a traditional Arab modesty garment that provides near-total coverage of a woman now associated with fundamentalist interpretations of Islam — and possibly gaining a re-enforced mandate for it by hosting a national referendum on the matter.

Per Ifop, 53 per cent of French people are “opposed to Muslim women wearing the veil in public, even if they choose to do so”, and 60 per cent want a ban referendum, suggesting the measure could possibly become law.

A majority of French also support banning organisations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood with an overwhelming 80 per cent in favour. Presse Agence states support for banning these groups is even held among a majority of left-wing voters, and even if it just misses out on an outright majority, a huge 48 per cent of Muslims were also polled to agree with the measure.

Breitbart