Tag Archives: trump

The Neo-Nazis and the Permit Raj

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Fatwas, migrant defense, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, princeton, War with Iran

Princeton Patch has now confirmed that a white supremacist rally did in fact take place in Princeton this past Saturday afternoon, August 29th. Don’t miss the neo-Nazi video embedded in the article, “Youth in Revolt.” Apparently, the spirit of Leni Riefenstahl never quite died.

Unfortunately, the rally is (like so many things) increasingly being seen as a law enforcement matter, and the police, fixated by definition on matters of law enforcement, are now pursuing the thought that the people participating in the rally lacked a permit to march down the street or through Monument Park, and should have had one. Law enforcement’s idea of a solution to the rise of neo-Nazism in Princeton is to set up a Permit Raj: demand that activists get permits to exercise the privilege of assembling, marching, chanting, or holding signs. And make sure to demote those activities to the status of privileges in the process.

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“Keep New Jersey White” (take 2)

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, migrant defense

I posted this yesterday but pulled it after I started to doubt the provenance of the photo. The photo seemed real enough, but I wasn’t sure exactly when the event had happened, and was worried that it was old footage recently unearthed but misleadingly described as recent.

I’ve now traced the source of the photo to my own satisfaction, and am convinced both that the photo is real and that the event it depicts really did take place this past weekend–on Saturday, August 29th. The original eyewitness source appears to be one Andrea Christo of East Windsor, New Jersey, who filmed the demonstration as she drove by, and then either took a still of the scene below or screenshotted her own video. Here’s a link to her Facebook post, and here’s a link to her video. I’m grateful to Ms Christo for documenting this event, and hope that it finds its way into the local press.

People have been telling me for fifteen years that my worries about the rise of fascism and neo-Nazi racism are overblown. Well, here’s a photo of the corner of Nassau and Stockton Streets, taken on August 29th in the supposedly woke college town of Princeton, New Jersey. “Keep New Jersey White.” Since New Jersey isn’t white, their point, obviously, is that it has to be made white at gunpoint. Any guesses how?

(ht: Zellie Imani and Rev Erich Kussman; photo credit: Andrea Christo)

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“Keep New Jersey White” Mystery Photo

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, migrant defense

UPDATE: See my August 31 update to this post.

I originally posted this with a critique of the message involved, but about an hour after I posted it, got skeptical that the photo was either real or genuinely depicted an event that took place on August 29th, as is being alleged online. So I’ve deleted the original post pending verification that the photo depicts a demonstration that took place at Nassau and Stockton in Princeton on the afternoon of August 29, 2026.

(ht: Zellie Imani and Rev Erich Kussman)

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DHS Is Systematically Lying to You

Posted on by under activism, Health Care Series, migrant defense, Neutrality and Complicity

People sometimes claim to be unable to decide between the claims of, say, DHS and migrant defense activists. Faced with conflicting stories, people sometimes retreat into a kind of Pyrrhonian skepticism: each side is incompatible with the other, they’ll say, but neither side’s claims can easily be rejected. So we’re left with an undecidable clash of equal and opposite positions.

What to do? The original Pyrrhonian skeptics believed that tranquility was to be sought in the undecidable clash of such equal and opposite claims.* So they lived their lives–or tried to–without having any settled beliefs at all. If belief leads to conflict (they thought), non-belief eliminates it, producing the calm equanimity of the perpetually uncommitted. I sometimes wonder whether this is the guiding ethos of our news media and its modal consumer. If “mental health” means tranquility, and tranquility demands perpetual agnosticism, maybe it’s safer (people seem to be reasoning) to give equal credence to every claim, even if the resulting tranquility is purchased at the price of cognitive paralysis.

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From Big Tech to Mass Grave

Posted on by under Human Shields, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

Here’s an item from Business Insider of the sort you see just about every day in that publication, at least if you read it every day, as I do. It’s so common that its implications seem to go in one ear and out the other. “More big tech execs are joining the Army Reserve as senior officers,” we’re told.

  • The Army has added three more tech executives to its special Detachment 201 reserve unit.
  • Det 201 members join as lieutenant colonels, advising the service on AI, cyber, and modernization.
  • The new troops come from places like Cloudflare, a major private equity firm, and Facebook AI Research.
  • A second crop of tech executives entered the Army Reserve last week, expanding the service’s ties with Big Tech as it continues a dramatic effort to modernize its equipment and systems and better prepare for modern warfare.

Those who recently joined include Dane Knecht, the chief technology officer of Cloudflare; Sam Pullara, managing director and CTO of Sutter Hill Ventures, a Palo Alto investment firm; and Serkan Piantino, a former Reddit executive and co-founder of Facebook AI Research.

The executives have joined a unit known as Detachment 201, a special unit “designed to bridge the gap between private-sector innovation and military modernization,” the Army said in a press release, reflecting the Pentagon’s push to leverage private-sector technical expertise to address complex national security and defense challenges.

Members are reservists, can work remotely, and must complete a minimum of 112 hours of service annually.

“Their primary role is to serve as senior advisors to help drive the Army Transformation Initiative, concentrated on high-level technological strategies in areas such as cyber, AI and machine learning applications, and other data-driven capabilities,” Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Orlando Howard said in an email to Business Insider.

They join four other tech leaders who entered the Army Reserve one year ago: Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, former chief product officer at OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer at OpenAI.

All entered the Army as lieutenant colonels, a rank that takes most officers over a decade to reach. The senior entry, known as a “direct commission,” is not unheard of, though. Most military medical providers, chaplains, and veterinarians join at slightly more senior ranks, though they undergo their own version of boot camp, while Det 201 does not.

“The program selects applicants who are highly skilled civilian technology professionals at the executive or C-suite level to serve as part-time strategic advisers,” Howard said. “These officers use their advanced expertise in commercial tech and private industry to offer a different perspective and advise senior Army leaders on solving military problems.”

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A Cato Institute Delegation to Delaney Hall?

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, libertarianism, liberty and the left, migrant defense, slices of life

Scenes from Delaney Hall (6)
Here’s a first: I was at Delaney Hall last night for The Peoples’ Vigil, a quasi-religious event held each Monday at 7:30 pm. During the vigil, Shane Claiborne, a self-described Anabaptist and founder of the New Monastic Movement, made admiring reference to the Cato Institute, of all things. “Even the Cato Institute,” he said, “is against this building…” He was alluding to the research of David J. Bier, Cato’s Director of Immigration Studies and Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration Policy, and in particular, to Bier’s paper, “Immigrants Cut Victimization Rates, Boost Crime Reporting” (Policy Analysis 1003, August 2025), which argues that contrary to popular belief, comparatively few immigrants are violent criminals. You’re more likely to be killed by a falling vending machine or hit by lightning than killed by an “illegal immigrant.”

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The Fire This Time

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, cancel culture, migrant defense

Scenes from Delaney Hall (5)
It’s a serious mistake to rely exclusively on the mainstream media for news of what’s happening at Delaney Hall. If you’re doing this, you’re being misled by omission: you’re systematically depriving yourself of information that’s relevant to getting a balanced picture of what’s happening there, or for passing a verdict on it.

To illustrate this, I want to work through a representative example of mainstream journalism, a June 4 article on Delaney Hall in The New York Times. My aim here is not to find fault with the author, or to condemn the article, but simply to point out as a matter of objective fact that whether fault is involved or not, the article systematically misleads the reader to the detriment of the protesters. It fails to supply necessary background context, fails to ask the right questions, fails to answer them, and misses salient points of detail. Again, my point is not primarily that the author should have included this or that, but simply that given what he excludes, he misleads, full stop. Why this is the case is a separate question. How it’s to be remedied, or whether it can be remedied within mainstream media at all, is also a separate question.

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Mapp to Nowhere

Posted on by under Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

I get home, look at my mail, and find a solicitation to vote for Adrian O. Mapp, Democratic candidate for Congress in the 12th Congressional District. Mapp is “proudly endorsed” by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a person I respect. What does Mapp stand for? He tells us:

  1. Housing: he’ll expand affordable housing and protect working families from rising housing costs. 
  2. Healthcare: he’ll protect access to affordable, quality healthcare for families, seniors, and those most in need.
  3. Education: he’ll open doors to opportunity through education, job training, and relief from crushing debt.
  4. Immigration: he’ll support fair, humane, immigration reform rooted in dignity, security, and common sense.
  5. Taxes: he’ll fight for tax fairness and relief for New Jersey homeowners and middle-class families.

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The Time to Bail Out Is Now

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Fatwas, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, War with Iran

If you’re in the United States Armed Forces, the time to seek Conscientious Objector status to the “Iran War” is now. Don’t delay. Don’t overthink. Don’t give in to excuses. Don’t engage in wishful thinking. Don’t succumb to pressure. Get out now. If ever you’ve sought to show valor on the battlefield, here is your chance. You’re on the battlefield. It’s called life. You have only one weapon at your disposal. It’s called integrity. Use either one to preserve the other, and flee this war as fast as you fucking can. Continue reading →

No Kings and the Anti-War Movement

Posted on by under activism, migrant defense, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Trump 2, War with Iran

We’re about a month into the Iran War at this point. The war is, as predicted, a disaster getting worse by the day. As I’ve argued here before, we desperately need a large-scale anti-war movement, but the movement is, alas, in a low-energy state right now. Not that it’s entirely dead: there are direct actions taking place, some very brave ones, along with some ordinary demonstrations. And there’s no shortage of astute commentary out there as well.

But the movement has a problem in need of solution, and while No Kings seems at first to provide the solution, that appearance quickly evaporates on contact with it. The anti-war movement has a clear goal, ending the war, but lacks the means or numbers to accomplish it. No Kings has the numbers, but seems uninterested in ending the war (or any war), and uninterested even in broaching the topic. So it’s worth discussing the relationship, or anti-relationship, between these things. Continue reading →