U.S. Soccer Agrees to Pay Men and Women Equally. Americans Agree Not To Watch Either One.

(How John Kerry won Afghanistan)


	In groundbreaking news, Soccer players, a game usually played by toddlers and angry America-hating leftists with purple

U.S. Soccer Agrees to Pay Men and Women Equally. Americans Agree Not To Watch Either One.

The pro-crime party <a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/new-york-state-senate-passes-bill-limiting-use-of-song-lyrics-in-court/">keeps on pro-criming</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		New York’s State Senate approved a bill Tuesday (May 17) that would limit prosecutors’ use of song lyrics and other forms of “creative expression” as evidence in criminal cases.&nbsp;Senate Bill S7527&nbsp;would not ban prosecutors from presenting lyrics or other material to a jury, but would require them to show that the work is “literal, rather than figurative or fictional.”

	
		The bill, which was sponsored by Senators Jamaal Bailey and Brad Hoylman, received&nbsp;public support&nbsp;from Jay-Z, Meek Mill, Killer Mike, Fat Joe, and Robin Thicke, among others. Before the bill can become a law, it must pass the New York State Assembly; a&nbsp;companion bill&nbsp;sponsored by Assembly member Catalina Cruz is pending before a committee and awaiting a vote.

	
		The bill, while in the works for months, comes as Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Gunna&nbsp;face RICO charges&nbsp;in Georgia in a case where their lyrics and music videos make up the bulk of the state’s evidence of criminal conspiracy. In the 2013 case&nbsp;Dawson v. Delaware, the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to use protected speech as evidence, provided that speech is irrelevant to the case.

	
		The court&nbsp;declined&nbsp;to hear the case of Jamal Knox, a Pittsburgh rapper known as Mayhem Mal who was&nbsp;convicted&nbsp;on charges of terroristic threats and witness intimidation over lyrics in a 2012 song called “Fuck the Police.”&nbsp;
</blockquote>


	It is awkward when an entire genre based on violence whose members routinely engaged in violence toward each other and innocent people start pretending that they're engaging in fictional threats, not real ones.


	I usually err on the side of free speech, but a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/rap_song_that_threatened_police_officers_is_not_protected_speech_pennsylvan">recap&nbsp;the Mayhem Mal </a>case in a way that virtually no media outlet, which focuses on celeb rapper support, shows why it happened.

<blockquote>
	
		The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rejected a free speech claim by a rapper who threatened to kill two Pittsburgh police officers he identified by name in a video titled “F— the Police.”

	
		Using the name Mayhem Mal, Knox and another rapper threatened the officers who were scheduled to testify against them after arresting the pair on drug charges. The other rapper’s case was not before the court.

	
		One of the officers said the video was one of the reasons he left the force and relocated.

	
		Both officers are named, and Knox states in the song that the lyrics are for them. In one part of the rap song, Knox said, “I’ma jam this rusty knife all in his guts and chop his feet,” and, “Well your shift over at 3 and I’m gonna f— up where you sleep.” The song also suggests the rappers know the identity of a confidential informant and a have a plan to murder an informant with a Glock handgun.
</blockquote>


	This is what New York Senate Dems seem to driven to protect.


	Would such a law, clearly preferencing criminals of a certain culture, survive a Supreme Court test?

<blockquote>
	
		If the court found First Amendment protection for the video, Saylor said, “we would in effect be interpreting the Constitution to provide blanket protection for threats, however severe, so long as they are expressed within that musical style.”
</blockquote>


	It's a good question.


	If a criminal writes a death threat in words cut out from a newspaper, isn't that also an art project?


	The New York Senate Dem "F___ the Police" bill, "Establishes an assumption of the inadmissibility of evidence of a defendant's creative or artistic expression against such defendant in a criminal proceeding; requires the proffering party to affirmatively prove that the evidence is admissible by clear and convincing evidence."


	How are prosecutors going to prove that a criminal's communications aren't part of a creative project in an era where anything, from mutilated horses to a golden toilet to Banksy and rap can be considered art?


	There's no metric for art, which means anything is art.


	Drug dealers can freely send text messages brokering drug deals as long as they do it in rap form.


	I'm sure that this won't make New York an even worse hellhole.

NY Senate Dems Pass "F___ the Police" Bill Protecting Violent Rap Threats

The pro-crime party keeps on pro-criming.


	
		New York’s State Senate approved a bill Tuesday (May 17) that would limit prosecutors’ use of song lyrics

NY Senate Dems Pass "F___ the Police" Bill Protecting Violent Rap Threats

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio shouldn't have had a political career. Radicalism is not a problem in NYC, but even most radicals hate his guts. Bill de Blasio's combination of arrogance, incompetence, laziness and corruption contrived to make him widely hated across the spectrum.


	So of course he ran for president.


	After that fizzled, thought was given to running for governor and <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/17/bill-de-blasio-eyeing-run-at-newly-drawn-ny-seat-nadler-has-left-behind/">now the House</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		Ex-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told a state lawmaker he plans to run for New York’s&nbsp;newly drawn 10th Congressional district&nbsp;— the seat entrenched Rep. Jerrold Nadler is vacating to fight it out with former longtime ally Rep. Carolyn Maloney in the rejigged 12th.

	
		De Blasio&nbsp;considered a run&nbsp;for the NY-11 district – before the&nbsp;state’s redistricting maps&nbsp;were thrown out the first time – but then&nbsp;dropped his bid in February before it started.&nbsp;
</blockquote>


	As the Post notes,&nbsp;Bill de&nbsp;Blasio&nbsp;blew a presidential and gubernatorial campaign. If he abandons a House run, what's left? City Council? Assemblyman? Dogcatcher?


	De Blasio's own Twitter feed is a mishmash of attacks and virtue signaling at the state and the federal level, barking about state gun laws and federal social media regulation as if his own online persona can't figure out which office he wants to run for and is just keeping all of his possible options open.


	It seems as if it might be kinder to take him off the street and give him some kind of job where a complete incompetent would be allowed to mismanage billion-dollar budgets and just misplace $800 million.


	Maybe Burger King or Starbucks?

Won't Someone Hire Bill de Blasio To Do Something?

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio shouldn't have had a political career. Radicalism is not a problem in NYC, but even most radicals hate his guts. Bill de Blasio's

Won't Someone Hire Bill de Blasio To Do Something?

Give Chesa Boudin some credit, the Soros DA is responsible for the deaths of a lot more Americans than his Weather Underground&nbsp;parents. This is why the counterculture lefties decided to <a href="https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/da-chesa-boudin-fentanyl-court-data-drug-dealing-immigration/">destroy the system from within</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		Despite a surging fentanyl crisis that&nbsp;killed nearly 500&nbsp;people last year in San Francisco, the office of District Attorney Chesa Boudin did not secure a single conviction for dealing the deadly opioid for cases filed during 2021, according to a review of court data.
</blockquote>


	No drug dealer is illegal apparently.

<blockquote>
	
		Another big factor is the DA’s attention to offenders’ immigration status, which by law they are required to consider. Prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys point out that drug dealing convictions are grounds for deportation, and a substantial number of drug dealers in the city are Honduran nationals who could face deadly consequences if deported. The accessory charge still gives them and their families a path toward eventual citizenship.
</blockquote>


	So Americans have to die so that Honduran drug dealers can become citizens.

<blockquote>
	
		The DA’s approach is not winning many fans in the most-affected neighborhoods. “I know the horrors of being undocumented and selling drugs, but we can’t let our people continue to die,” said Rene Colorado, executive director of the Tenderloin Merchants Association.&nbsp;

	
		“My best friend died of a heroin overdose here in San Francisco, because I couldn’t help him. There have to be limits,” he said. “If you’re undocumented and selling fentanyl, guess what, you have to face the consequences. You have to do your time here in the States and you’re probably going to be deported.”&nbsp;
</blockquote>


	Not on Chesa Boudin's watch. Or on any Soros DAs watch.

<blockquote>
	
		In one example of using the “accessory after the fact” conviction for fentanyl dealing, a defendant was arrested and charged five different times from July 2020 through December 2021 for dealing fentanyl, heroin, meth and crack cocaine. According to court documents, evidence included a backpack with cash and “numerous” colorful plastic baggies of drugs. All five cases were consolidated for a January 2022 sentencing where he received two “accessory after the fact” felonies and served several months in jail.

	
		Another example in San Francisco involved a man with four separate drug dealing arrests last year between June and December. He was charged with selling fentanyl, crack, more than an ounce of meth and over 14 grams of heroin. His ultimate conviction was for two misdemeanors for&nbsp; “accessory after the fact,” and his sentence was two days in county jail, which he had already served.
</blockquote>


	Remember when lefties complained about California's "draconian" drug laws. Then go look at the bodies on the street. That's what the alternative looks like.

Americans Die of Fentanyl Overdoses as Soros DA Protects Foreign Drug Dealers From Deportation

Give Chesa Boudin some credit, the Soros DA is responsible for the deaths of a lot more Americans than his Weather Underground&nbsp;parents. This is why the

Americans Die of Fentanyl Overdoses as Soros DA Protects Foreign Drug Dealers From Deportation

It's official. Women don't exist and neither does "<a href="https://www.mediaite.com/weird/democratic-pro-choice-caucus-releases-language-guide-saying-choice-is-harmful-language/">choice</a>".

<blockquote>
	
		The House Pro-Choice Caucus has released a language guide with suggestions about what to say and not to say on the issue of abortion, including an admonition on the harmfulness of the word “choice.”

	
		In addition to “choice,” words deemed “harmful language” include “reduce abortion,” “safe, legal and rare,” “unwanted pregnancy,” “conscience clause/protections” and “back-alley abortions/coat hangers.”

	
		“Helpful language,” on the other hand, includes words like “decision,” “safe, legal and accessible,” “unexpected pregnancy,” “refusal of care/denial of care laws” and “criminalizing healthcare.”
</blockquote>


	This reeks of a focus group being convened on how to best market abortion to millennials.&nbsp;


	Why is the&nbsp;House Pro-Choice Caucus dumping "choice"?


	Choice, a key element in pro-abortion branding, is 'freedom' language. It's likely been concluded that freedom language is out of sync with an illiberal Left. And thus "choice" has been replaced with the illiberal "decision" which was probably determined to be far more empowering.


	The implication is that abortion is not a choice, that there aren't two sides or options, but an absolute decision. Abortion, the message goes, is not optional.


	But nothing under the Left is. Just ask China's One Child Policy.

The End of "Choice"

It's official. Women don't exist and neither does "choice".


	
		The House Pro-Choice Caucus has released a language guide with suggestions about what to

The End of "Choice"

Communism arose in a time of pandemic and war. In 1918, the Bolshevik party led by V. I. Lenin seized control of Russia amid a world numbed by the slaughter of a world war and the seemingly unstoppable spread of influenza. Promising a utopia of equality, the communist message proved seductive to many in Europe and America. In the summer of 1920, having defeated his most serious internal foes, Lenin decided to launch a full-scale invasion of Europe to spread communism all across the continent.


	Soviet communism proved anything but a utopian “worker’s paradise.” The Bolsheviks brutally eliminated their political opponents on both left and right, sparking a four-year civil war that killed several million people in Russia and neighboring lands. Tsarist autocracy had a justified reputation for cruelty and in the half century preceding the Revolution, it had executed almost 6000 people and exiled tens of thousands to Siberia. Yet in just four years, Lenin’s communist regime carried out at least thirty times as many death sentences, not counting hundreds of thousands murdered in extrajudicial killings. Despite this, support for the Soviets in the West grew as left-wing groups mobilized to help the Bolsheviks abroad and imitate their success at home.


	By early 1920, White armies were in full retreat and Western resolve to oppose communism faded. To Russia’s west, Germany’s defeat and Austria-Hungary’s collapse allowed the emergence of newly independent nations from Finland to Hungary. As long as White armies had posed a threat to the Bolshevik regime, Lenin had been content to let these new countries alone. Now, with a reorganized and victorious Red Army numbering over 5 million he turned his eyes West. His main objective was Germany. The birthplace of Karl Marx had been disrupted by revolts and unrest and had one of Europe’s strongest communist movements. Germany appeared ripe for revolution that could be easily achieved with the help of the Red Army. In the spring of 1920, the Soviets issued orders for a massive western offensive.


	To reach central Europe, however, the Red Army would first have to overrun newly independent Poland which recovered its independence in 1918 after 123 years of foreign subjugation. With its economy and infrastructure wrecked by four years of war and occupation, Poland was in rough shape and its situation was made even worse by widespread famine and epidemics of influenza and typhus. Its leader, socialist Józef Piłsudski, saw a resurgent Russia under Lenin as his country’s greatest threat and tried without success to create a confederation with the Baltic States and Ukraine to resist communist expansion. Despite this, the Poles were determined to resist Soviet invasion.


	As the Red Army began to transfer forces west for its push into Europe, Piłsudski decided on a pre-emptive attack, sending the Polish Army into Ukraine. His plan was to drive out the Red Army and create an independent Ukraine under Symon Petliura that would be a bulwark against the Reds. At first the attack seemed to succeed, and the Reds abandoned Kiev in early May. But the Poles failed to destroy a significant portion of the Red Army which simply withdrew eastward. The majority of Ukrainians, exhausted and terrorized by years of war, proved just as apathetic toward the Polish-supported Petliura government as they had toward the Reds or Whites. The Soviets turned the incident into a propaganda victory, claiming to be the victims of Polish aggression.


	In the summer of 1920, Lenin launched his offensive with two massive army groups. Gen. Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a violent nihilist but also the Red Army’s best general, led the Northern Front advancing from Belarus. The Southern Front, led by Alexander Yegorov, was spearheaded by a corps of 16,000 Red Cossacks commanded by Semyon Budyonny and his political commissar Josef Stalin. The Polish armies despite being outnumbered and ill-equipped had some key advantages. They were often more disciplined and had a better air force. Polish fliers were joined by a group of American volunteers, led by Cedric Fauntelroy and Merian Cooper. In addition, Polish cryptologists had broken Red Army radio codes.


	In July, Tukhachevsky’s army broke through Polish lines and began its drive westward. In the south, Budyonny’s Cossacks forced the Poles back. Unlike most fighting in World War I, the Polish-Soviet war would be a war of rapid maneuver often using cavalry, but also armored trains and small units of motorized vehicles.


	By the beginning of August 1920, hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers bore down on the gates of Warsaw while in the south Red Cossacks, swarmed toward the city of Lwow. The Soviet advance was accompanied by murder, rape, and destruction. The communists killed landowners, clergy, prisoners of war, business people, and anyone suspected of being a capitalist. Towns and villages were systematically wrecked. According to author Adam Zamoyski “the universal calling card of a visit by Red soldiers was shit—on furniture, on paintings, on beds, on carpets, in books, in drawers, on plates.”


	Poland seemed doomed and with the fall of her capital the gates of Europe would be opened. In the West, communist sympathizers blocked both military and humanitarian aid for Poland, stopping trains and refusing to unload ships. The French sent a small group of military advisors who provided no useful advice. Unrest and exhaustion at home and communist agitation at home paralyzed most of Europe’s leaders.


	Yet all was not lost. In Warsaw and throughout the country tens of thousands of civilians joined volunteer units. Groups of workers and Orthodox Jews mobilized to build a ring of defenses around the city. In the south, Polish and American pilots, flying mission after mission, harassed and disrupted advancing Red Forces. The Americans were singled out for their courage, one Polish report stating “The American aviators, although exhausted, fought like madmen.” The Americans were singled out the Soviets as well who put a price on their heads and a death sentence for their officers if captured alive. Meanwhile, Piłsudski conceived of a daring plan to save his country. As the Reds advanced on Warsaw, he placed one force to blunt the Soviet advance while he secretly shifted a strike force of his best divisions to the south of the city toward the exposed flank of Tukhachevsky’s onrushing army.


	On August 12, the Red Army began its assault. Tukhachevsky declared “Over the corpse of White Poland lies the path to worldwide revolution!” Masses of Bolsheviks broke through the first line of Warsaw’s defense. Volunteer units made up of workers, peasants, boy scouts, and women joined the defense. Priests armed only with crucifixes led counterattacks. The town of Radzymin, just 20 km from Warsaw, changed hands five times in hand to hand fighting. For three days, the defenses barely held on, pinning down the bulk of Tukhachevsky’s men.


	On August 16, with the Red Army just miles from Warsaw, Piłsudski ordered his strike force into action, hitting the lightly defended Soviet left flank. The surprise was complete. Polish forces advanced almost 30 miles in the first day, cutting off the Bolshevik spearheads. It took Tukhachevsky almost two days to realize what had happened as his army began to collapse. Some units surrendered enmasse, others fled across the border into Prussia, others turned into a panicked mob. In the south, the Poles counterattacked Budyonny and Stalin’s Red Cossacks and nearly annihilated them. (Stalin would never forget this loss to the Poles and would later take his revenge by ordering the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Poles.) By October, any hope of a communist advance into central Europe had vanished and Lenin agreed to a ceasefire.


	During the fighting, the American pilot Merian Cooper was shot down and captured by Red Cossacks. Despite the price on his head, he concealed his identity from his captors and survived a mock execution. With two Polish comrades, he escaped a POW camp and made his way through hundreds of miles of hostile territory to free Latvia. Awarded Poland’s highest military decoration, Cooper returned to the United States where he became a noted movie director, most famously directing King Kong. His experiences in the war made him one of Hollywood’s staunchest anti-communists.


	As a result of the Battle of Warsaw, the communist “utopia” would be locked inside Russia for almost two decades, its leaders becoming ever more extreme, paranoid, and violent. A brief, wary interlude of peace settled over Europe, lasting until rise of Nazism in Germany which would once again set the world ablaze and allow the Soviets to revive their dream of worldwide conflagration. Temporary though it was, the Polish victory a century ago proved that the march of communism is not inevitable and that with determination and courage, free people can prevail even when the odds seem overwhelming and all hope seems lost.


	The author is professor of history at the University of Alaska.

Communism’s First Defeat

Communism arose in a time of pandemic and war. In 1918, the Bolshevik party led by V. I. Lenin seized control of Russia amid a world numbed by the slaughter of

Violent mobs across America and Western Europe now destroy and vandalize statues, monuments, war memorials, churches, and public buildings on an almost daily basis. Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of rogue Minneapolis police officers a wave of protests and riots broke out across the country. Looting of stores and restaurants soon gave way to more purposeful attacks on statues and other public structures organized by Black Lives Matters (BLM) and Antifa. Ostensibly treated as a response to “institutionalized racism” it has been explained in much of our official media as merely a way to remove images related to racism that are now deemed offensive to African Americans and other minorities. How can one object, the argument goes, to removing statues of Confederates who fought against the United States?


	Yet from the beginning, it was never about the Confederacy or racism. Attacks commenced on all statues and all types of public buildings and monuments. This included statues of abolitionists, Abraham Lincoln, Union soldiers, and even the memorial to the famous all-black 54th Massachusetts Regiment, perhaps the best known example of African American heroism during the Civil War. A monument to Gandhi, the icon of non-violent opposition to colonialism, was attacked, as was a statue of Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the Polish American Revolutionary War hero, who dedicated his entire American estate to freeing and educating slaves. World War II memorials were not spared. A monument to the Armenian genocide was vandalized. In Los Angeles, synagogues and Jewish community institutions were vandalized and spray painted with anti-Semitic slogans. Statues and monuments to founding fathers such as Washington and Jefferson have been a particular target.


	Supporters of BLM and Antifa dismiss opposition to these attacks as a distraction from the topic of “institutional racism” or as an example of racism itself. Yet, it is precisely these groups that have made it a point to target public monuments. Others, including many on the center and the right have deplored such acts as examples of ignorance by protesters, or perhaps some failure of the educational system, or as merely irrational or illogical actions of angry mobs. Such discussions miss the point entirely. Yet the attackers aren’t interested in the history behind the statues at all and appeals to logic make no difference. The attacks are not irrational or the result of bad history or civics education but something far more dangerous.


	Nihilism emerged as an essential handmaiden to radical left-wing politics in Russia in the 19th century. Its effects were not confined to the Left but were also adopted by extremists on the right. Nihilism seeks to “clear the ground” of all that came before, to sweep away the all old “structures” the radicals saw as impediments to progress and the realization of a utopia free of injustice, oppression, and inequality. Those “structures” included political systems, religion, economic arrangements, institutions of civil society, the family, individual conscience, and even language itself. The forms the structures took—be they good or bad, progressive or reactionary—made no difference. All had to be extirpated, root and branch. Reform efforts were too slow and the Ancien Régime and the bourgeoise resisted and obstructed attempts to realize the beautiful utopia. For those truly dedicated to a utopia of social justice, violence was the only the alternative and the more extreme the better. Anything that stood in the way or slowed down the march to utopia was complicit in murder and oppression. Destruction, anarchist Mikhail Bakunin noted, is the prelude to new creation. Hatred was a “holy” thing and fully justified in pursuit of a better world.


	Nihilism became a creed for large segments of the educated classes in Europe before the First World War and after, including groups like the Futurists and other proto-fascists. F. T. Marinetti wrote in the 1909 Futurist Manifesto, “Let the good incendiaries come with their carbonized fingers!... Here they are! Here they are!... Set the library stacks on fire! Turn the canals in their course to flood the museum vaults!... There go the glorious canvases, floating adrift! Take up the picks and the hammers! Undermine the foundations of the venerable cities!”


	Nihilism, however, turned out not to be a prelude to a better and freer world but to new forms of diabolical cruelty, terror, and genocide. All forms of 20th century totalitarianism grew from nihilism. Breaking eggs proved far more enjoyable and seductive than the complexity of making omelets. The power to destroy without limits proved irresistible. Each new “structure of oppression” that was destroyed revealed new structures to be targeted; and along with the structures the people associated with them. Eliminating the Church was not enough if the clergy remained. The Russian aristocracy and bourgeoisie were destroyed only to reveal the kulaks as the new enemy of the Bolsheviks. As better off peasants disappeared into the gulags, “kulak” was redefined to mean almost any peasant whatsoever. Eliminating the kulaks revealed other structures and other enemies hindering the realization of the communist utopia: wreckers, spies, foreign agents. Under communist dictatorships in China, North Korea, and Cambodia, centuries of culture disappeared in flames along with tens of millions of people.


	Attacks on people are invariably preceded by attacks on their symbols. The Nazis sought to create a racial utopia, beginning with the elimination of the Jews, remaking the German race and even remaking nature itself into a primordial state fit for the Master Race. Long before mass extermination, the Germany’s National Socialists attacked symbols of Judaism—synagogues and other religious and community buildings and Jewish-owned businesses. Books and artwork “tainted” by Jewish or other “decadent” influences were burned. Jews were publicly humiliated, forced to bow in public before Germans, and acquiesce to their own humiliation. Personal signs of Jewish religious commitment were erased as Orthodox Jews had their beards forcibly shaved in public. But the Nihilism of the Nazis could never be content with only the Jews, for other enemies of the Herrenvolk awaited their turns including Roma or Poles and other Slavs. The scope of the Nihilist’s destructive vision is without limit.


	The Nihilist seeks not only the destruction of physical enemies but more importantly their spiritual destruction as well. Jozef Rozanski was a leading official of the secret police in Soviet-controlled Poland in the late 1940s and early 1950s, infamous for his cruel tortures of non-Communist anti-Nazi resistance fighters. Rozanski’s preferred methodology was seat a victim on the leg of an upturned stool and have his men beat the victim over the head and shoulders until the leg of stool perforated the victim’s anus. Rozanski tortured his victims not for information but merely to break them mentally. One survivor recalled Rozanski saying “Our task is not merely to destroy you physically but to smash you morally in the eyes of society.”


	Nihilists annihilated language too. Words change meanings constantly. The Soviets devoted endless resources to editing and rewriting dictionaries and encyclopedias. Who was an ally one day could be an enemy the next. Words like Jew, kulak, class enemy, bourgeois, leftist or rightist mutated as needed, eliminating the differences between true and false. Anti-communist poet Zbigniew Herbert commented “A good Marxist, like a good sophist, successfully argued for Helen's virginity, and then equally successfully demonstrated that she was a whore…. This amounts to a betrayal of language, a denial of the unequivocal meaning of certain ideas. Those of whom I speak are extremely subtle, they understand the concept of relativism.”


	The turn toward Nihilism today shares all these features. Old structures of “institutional racism” must be eliminated and the ground cleared for a new utopia, “undo racism” and “decolonize” everything. The ground must be cleared and the world returned to some primordial state of grace before the trans-Atlantic slave trade or Columbus’ voyage in 1492. All things are tainted and thus need to be destroyed: institutions, religions, organizations, politics, education, everything from children’s TV shows to hair styles to the food we eat. Words mutate in their spelling, meaning, and acceptability. Destruction of physical symbols and monuments proceeds apace accompanied by rituals of public humiliation on street corners or social media. Those subject to such rituals must participate in their own abasement.


	Failure to accept one is a racist is proof of racism, turning logic on its head. With each potential target destroyed, new targets emerge in a never-ending orgy of vandalism. Resistance to the Nihilist mob is proof of guilt and justifies any and all abuse in response, verbal or physical, to those who do not knuckle under and accept obliteration. Anger—or “outrage” as it is fashionably termed—is once again holy and puts one above all criticism. The more outraged you are and the more extreme the manifestations of that outrage, the greater your righteous is taken to be. Those who are not outraged are deemed morally deficient. Calls for physical violence grow more strident on social media. Popular tweets urge fellow Nihilists to do more than throw statues into rivers but to drown “racists” there as well.


	The result of a turn toward Nihilism is certain, particularly absent is any force with the will to resist the impulse to destroy. Such forces are rare in societies that have convinced themselves they are guilty of an endless rap sheet of historical crimes. The very concept of law enforcement is under assault. Some may stand aside in the belief that the mob will destroy itself. Although utopian revolutions do eat their own, they do so only after they have devoured all else within reach. Destruction will not and cannot stop with a few statues of Columbus. There are museums full of paintings and libraries full of books that are equally if not more “racist” than any statue. A few may attempt to reason with the mob to save this painting or that book, but it will come to naught. The guardians of the institutions will kneel in the hope they themselves will be spared, indeed they have already done so. What form totalitarianism may take in this case cannot be foreseen, for each manifestation is unique in its cruelty, degradation, and horror. Without forceful and just resistance to Nihilism and the Nihilists, generations hence will look back on our time as the beginning of a new dark age.


	John Radzilowski is professor of history at the University of Alaska.

Nihilism and Attacks on Monuments

Violent mobs across America and Western Europe now destroy and vandalize statues, monuments, war memorials, churches, and public buildings on an almost daily

The article below is the continuation of a dialogue/debate Frontpage is hosting on the question of <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272953/polish-culpability-holocaust-joseph-puder">Polish Culpability in the Holocaust?</a> -- the title of Joseph Puder's Frontpage article that sparked this exchange. We have also run Danusha Goska's, <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269267/polands-new-law-criminalizing-speech-about-danusha-v-goska">Poland's New Law Criminalizing Speech about the Holocaust.</a> Below, John Radzilowski counters <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273226/polands-holocaust-complicity-responding-prof-joseph-puder">Joseph Puder's recent critique</a> of his viewpoint. Frontpage continues to welcome contributions to this dialogue and debate.&nbsp; 


	If you prick us, do we not bleed? 
	—Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice


	I thank Joseph Puder for <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273226/polands-holocaust-complicity-responding-prof-joseph-puder">his commentary</a> on the tortured history of Poles and Jews and the spirit in which it was offered.


	Every family that experienced the war, Polish and Jewish, has harrowing tales of loss, betrayal, and survival. Mr. Puder’s story of his cousin’s betrayal and death at the hands of a Polish neighbor remains one of many open wounds from that time. Yet for each tale of perfidy and murder, one can find a countervailing tale of heroism in the face of evil.


	Polish-Jewish discussions often end up as exchanges of such anecdotes with interlocutors seeking to cancel out a story of evil with a story of good and vice versa. Such individual stories are a vital part of the historical record—I myself use them to teach the Holocaust—but for all their undeniable emotional power, they fail to explain the aggregate experiences of Poles or Jews during that hellish time. Remembered stories often record what is extraordinary rather than what is typical.


	There is no evidence to demonstrate that the majority or even an appreciable percentage of Poles collaborated with the Nazis. Few collaborated. A somewhat larger (though still small) number of Poles resisted. Most people did neither and could do neither. Yet, as noted before, a single collaborator could do immense damage, proving only that it is easier to destroy than to build. An act of a single moment could condemn a Jew in hiding to death, while hiding a Jew took the daily actions of dozens of people over 4 or 5 years. Any action that aided the Nazis increased the “barbarity and inhumanity of the Holocaust,” yet why does the single act of evil seem more apt to find a place in our memory than many acts of good?


	Collaboration deserves serious study, but restricting it to only one set of interactions—Poles betraying Jews—distorts the historical record. Polish collaborators betrayed fellow Poles, causing huge losses to the resistance. Jewish collaborators betrayed fellow Jews. The Gestapo often used Jewish agents to track down Jews in hiding. Under the Soviet occupations, when Catholic Poles faced greater peril than did Jewish Poles, some Jews did indeed betray their neighbors to the NKVD. There is no limit to human perfidy and while no act of evil should be excused nor any act of good forgotten, such actions were hardly normative for either Poles or Jews.


	Anti-Semitism was as normal in pre-war Poland as it was throughout Europe. Yet, Polish Jews had a rich cultural life with hundreds of periodicals, music, theater and even a Yiddish film industry. Around half of Poland’s doctors and lawyers were Jewish. Poland was one of Europe’s poorest countries with much of its population living at subsistence level, and the relative success of Jews - especially during the hard years of the 1930s - fed the resentment of anti-Semites. One result, restrictions on Jews in universities - an early form of affirmative action with all its malign implications - was resisted by Jews but also opposed by many Poles. As Mr. Puder notes, Menachem Begin experienced the lash of such discrimination. Yet, like many young Betar leaders, Begin also received secret military training from the Polish Army designed to create leaders for the army of a future Israel. A clear-eyed view of this period defies easy categories.


	Mr. Puder’s affirmation that the German Nazi regime was the sole author and executor of the Holocaust is most welcome. Alas, in the past two decades an entire school of postmodern history based in “cultural Marxism” has emerged, seeking to re-write the Holocaust with Poles as perpetrators. Led by Princeton professor Jan Gross - the Howard Zinn of Polish history - this school has sought to ruthlessly suppress dissent and blacklist any who question their conclusions or methodology. This school dismisses all Polish resistance as irrelevant and belittles Polish losses. One scholar even stated that while Jewish deaths were an existential tragedy, the deaths of Poles were a merely a cessation of biological functions - implying Poles are little different than farm animals. This postmodern approach dominates the discourse in North America and has many adherents in Europe including Poland and especially Germany. Frustration over such efforts to re-write history led the Polish Sejm to pass a law last year that sought to ban blaming Poles for the Holocaust. The disastrous law not only gave more publicity to the neo-Stalinist school, it initiated a chain of events that led to the insults hurled by the Israeli foreign minister Katz in February and the current rupture in Polish-Israeli relations. (Let it never be said the academy’s postmodern dreck has no real world consequences.)


	Mr. Puder calls for greater efforts at education to help overcome the divide between Poles and Jews. This noble idea, however, is likely to be counterproductive in the current academic and political environment where education more often resembles indoctrination. Past efforts at Polish-Jewish rapprochement failed because neither side could honestly face the past and—most important—could not treat the other with respect as an equal partner. After 1989, there was real interest among Poles in learning about the history and culture of Polish Jewry and a modest but hopeful revival of Judaism. Yet there was little reciprocation. The Polish Left’s use of identity politics and the work of Prof. Gross and his followers, have set back the cause of Polish-Jewish relations so far as to cause even the most patient and good-hearted people to despair. So while education is important, it begins with stepping back from the torrent of insults in the press and social media. Education must also be a two way street. Even many well-meaning Jews in Israel and the U.S. appear often oblivious to the basic facts of Polish history, and, just as significantly, to the centuries of Jewish history in Poland.


	The immensity of Jewish losses during the Holocaust dwarfs that of all other victims of the Nazis, even the deaths of Poles. Yet, our humanity cannot be so cramped and narrow that we forget that Poles experienced more than just some “suffering.” During the war Polish gentile losses were comparable to Cambodian losses under the Khmer Rouge. It is unreasonable to expect Poles to consign the deaths of their loved ones to a historical footnote or serve as modern stand-ins for Amalek.


	As a frightened teenager my great uncle hid in the woods near his home and watched two German officers and their Ukrainian auxiliaries shoot thousands of his Jewish neighbors in a pit. The two Germans drank beer and ate sandwiches in between bouts of murder. Along with his sisters, he survived the Nazi occupation, two Soviet occupations, ethnic cleansing by Ukrainian nationalists, and post-war deportation to western Poland to testify at the trial of one of the German officers he saw that afternoon, but the memory of those hours in the forest haunted him until his last day. He would have been amazed at the current conflicts and at the failure of political leaders and intellectuals to speak truthfully to each other as humans, and disheartened that the poisonous evil he witnessed that day continues to divide two nations who should be allies rather than foes.


	John Radzilowski is associate professor at University of Alaska Southeast and the author of numerous works on the history of the United States and east-central Europe.

The Polish-Jewish Impasse: Responding to Joseph Puder

The article below is the continuation of a dialogue/debate Frontpage is hosting on the question of Polish Culpability in the Holocaust? -- the title of Joseph

The article below is the continuation of a dialogue/debate Frontpage is hosting on the question of <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272953/polish-culpability-holocaust-joseph-puder">"Polish Culpability in the Holocaust</a>?" -- the title of a recent Frontpage article by Joseph Puder. We have also run Danusha Goska's <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269267/polands-new-law-criminalizing-speech-about-danusha-v-goska">"Poland's New Law Criminalizing Speech about the Holocaust"</a> in our pages. The article below was written by John Radzilowski as a counter to Joseph Puder's viewpoint. Frontpage continues to welcome contributions to this dialogue and debate.&nbsp; 


	The recent blow-up between Israel and Poland over the history of the Holocaust and World War II illustrates why politicians often need to use caution when speaking of the past.


	A conflict recently started at a conference in Warsaw -- which was initially designed to cement the alliance between Israel and the Visegrad 4 (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Czech Republic). The conference sought to build a stronger front against radical Islam and strengthen enforcement of sanctions on Iran. Despite oppositional pressure from the EU and threats from Iran, the Poles hosted the conference, which included U.S. and Israeli leaders (EU countries declined to send anyone of significance.)


	The conference took a turn when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an off-the-cuff remark that “the Poles collaborated with the Nazis,” which was trumpeted by Haaretz, a paper hostile to the prime minister. Netanyahu’s aides later clarified that he meant some Poles, not all. Then, Foreign Minister Yisroel Katz doubled down, calling Poles Nazi collaborators who “suck in anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk.” Compounding the comments, MSNBC’s historian-in-residence Andrea Mitchell claimed that the Ghetto Uprising was fought against the “Polish and Nazi regime.” Then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo highlighted a Polish-American “success story” and chose Frank Blaichman, an ex-communist partisan-turned-Stalinist secret policeman who came to the U.S. after a career of torturing and killing members of the non-communist resistance. The conference fell apart with Poles demanding apologies and Israelis refusing. Follow-up meetings of Israel’s central European allies slated to be held in Israel were canceled. The Russians and Iranians celebrated and Brussels quietly gloated about the troublesome Poles getting their comeuppance.


	A short article cannot fully explain the complicated history that bitterly divides and yet binds Poles and Jews, but the implications that Poles were pro-Nazi, supported Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, or were the perpetrators of the Holocaust are wrong and offensive. Yet, such sentiments are now common among many academics in North America and Europe, for whom disdain for Poland is matched only by dislike for the USA.


	Yes, there were Poles who collaborated with the Germans, some of whom betrayed their Jewish neighbors. Such collaboration occurred all across Europe. Yet, to claim that Poles in the main were collaborators radically falsifies the past. Between 1939 and 1945 Poland was invaded by the most powerful and violent totalitarian regimes the world has ever known. The Nazis’ occupation of Poland exceeded in brutality their treatment of any other country. The Nazis and Soviets deployed every ounce of their power to make the Poles submit and collaborate. And so it is no surprise that some collaborated.


	What should surprise us is not how many knuckled under to such overwhelming force, but how many resisted. Poland fielded the largest resistance movement in Europe, tying down hundreds of thousands of German troops. Poles fought in every major campaign against Germany, making huge contributions to Allied victory. Poles also rescued Jews in large numbers. According to one scholar, even after the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, nearly 30,000 Jews were hiding in Warsaw alone. While it took a single collaborator to betray a Jew, it took about 25 Poles to hide a Jew. Anyone caught helping any Jew faced instant death along with their family and neighbors. Yet Poles constitute the largest number of The Righteous commemorated at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.


	While <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272953/polish-culpability-holocaust-joseph-puder">Joseph Puder’s recent Frontpage article</a> highlights resistance fighter Jan Karski, Puder implies that Karski was singular. He was not. Countless members of the resistance not only tried to aid Jews, but sought to document German crimes and the unfolding of the Shoah. Witold Pilecki deliberately got himself arrested by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz. There, he organized resistance inside the camp, facilitated escapes, and compiled detailed documentation on the extermination of Jews. Karski presented his information to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to get Allied leaders to pay attention to the slaughter of the Jews, information Roosevelt ignored.


	For this, the Poles paid a terrible price. Though Germans focused their murderous plans on Jews above all others, they did not spare Polish gentiles. Two million Polish Christians were murdered by Nazis alone, not to mention hundreds of thousands more by the Soviets and German-armed Ukrainian nationalists. Every family lost loved ones. And the killing did not end with the defeat of Germany. Poland’s new communist masters killed as many as 50,000 more, including many members of the resistance movement. Those who had aided Jews during the war were special targets, including Witold Pilecki, who was arrested, tortured for weeks, and executed. The Soviets claimed that non-communist resistance members were “collaborators,” publicized this as justification for their repression, and as final insult dressed many of their victims in German uniforms before putting them on show trials and executing them. Many Western academics are now reviving this Stalinist trope.


	History and memory are vital to both Poles and Jews. They may never agree on the past. Nor should they be compelled to do so. There should never be competition among victims of the Nazis. For many Jews, cases of Polish collaboration understandably evoke deep bitterness. Yet to see only this and not the other side is a serious distortion of history. For Poles, it is yet another reminder of Soviet propaganda and of their betrayal by the West - a betrayal that resulted in 45 years of communist repression. Acknowledging what the Poles endured in no way diminishes the absolute horror of the Shoah or the losses Jews suffered.


	What insults Poles isn’t discussion of collaboration as much as that Polish resistance and losses are ignored in the West and in Israel. To lose so many family members to the Nazis and then to be accused of being a Nazi is deeply offensive. This is why last year, the Poles in a fit of ill-advised pique passed a law that attempted to criminalize blaming Poles for the Holocaust as a form of Holocaust Denial.


	The recent statements by Katz and Netanyahu are, therefore, somewhat problematic. No Israeli leader goes to Washington and lectures Americans about FDR’s failure to help Europe’s Jews before or during the war. No Israeli leader goes to France—where Jews today are under real threat—to lecture the French about the Vichy regime, which collaborated completely and willingly in rounding up Jews for the death camps. Netanyahu is smart enough to know that whatever the Americans or French did or not do in World War II, it shouldn’t interfere with Israel’s interests. Yet with Poland, that filter seems absent. Israel has real enemies who want to destroy the Jewish state and are building weapons of mass destruction to do so. And so one can argue that to insult an ally who goes out of his way to help is an unforced error Israel does not need.


	There is now deep bitterness between Poland and Israel and it will require leaders in both countries to show higher degree of statesmanship to repair the breech. The past cannot and should not be be forgotten, but leaders should know when and how to speak of it. Jews and Poles suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazi regime, but allowing a conflict over that past to wreck relations in the face of a dangerous world not only weakens our security but also perpetuates the poison of Nazism -- and dishonors the memory of the dead. 
	 
	John Radzilowski is associate professor at University of Alaska Southeast and the author of numerous works on the history of the United States and east-central Europe.

Were the Poles Really "Culpable" in the Holocaust?

The article below is the continuation of a dialogue/debate Frontpage is hosting on the question of "Polish Culpability in the Holocaust?" -- the title of a

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