VDH ON POST-WEIMAR AMERICA:
Something eerie, something creepy, is happening in the world—and now in America as well. The dark mood is brought on by elite universities, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry, and massive immigration from illiberal nations and anti-Enlightenment societies.
At Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, hundreds of students rioted on news that a single teacher in her private social media account had expressed support for Israel. Waving Palestinian flags, and screaming violent threats, the student mob rioted, destroyed school property, sought the teacher out and tried to crash into her classroom—before she was saved from violence by other teachers and an eventual police arrival.
The subtext was that the overwhelmingly minority students (whose school is ranked academically near the bottom among New York City schools) were acculturated to the racist reality that as the “oppressed” they were exempt from any punishment for hunting down their own teacher. As a Jewish (and thus white) “oppressive” supporter of Israel, she was reduced to, in the words an enthusiastic commenter on a Tik Tok video of the riot, a “cracker ass bitch.” And so the student pack tracked her down as if they were hunting an animal. The old Nazi youth gangs tried to kill Jews because they were not considered “white;” our new Nazis hunt them down because they allege that they are. The common denominator between the 1930s and 2023 is an unhinged hatred of Jews.
Hundreds of such incidents are now occurring on a daily basis—as the country is leaving its Weimar phase and heading at warp speed into normalizing Jew-hatred and worse. Instructors singled out Jewish students in classes at UC Davis and Stanford. Pro-Hamas students ripped down posters, swarmed public buildings, and disrupted traffic.
Meanwhile, the lamps are going out all over Europe as well: London on the brink: a 1970s New York-style fate is just a step away.
Benjamin Disraeli observed that London was “a nation, not a city”. Today, 150 years later, many people in Britain feel more disconnected from their own capital than they ever have. Meanwhile, Londoners live in fear that theirs is a condemned city spiralling out of control.
The marches for Palestine that have taken place every Saturday since the Hamas pogrom on October 7 have turned central London into a no-go area at weekends, especially for Jewish families but also for many others.
These marches are accompanied by anti-Semitic chants and placards, war cries, intimidation and violence. To millions of Londoners, they feel more like a bid to take over the streets than a genuine protest.
From the desecration of great works of art by Van Gogh and Velazquez in the National Gallery to shutting customers out of their local banks or impeding emergency services by stopping traffic, the likes of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion exult in wreaking havoc on everyday life in the capital.
Residential areas are increasingly unaffordable even for the middle classes, while the office districts are being hollowed out by working from home. Up to half of private sector employees are still only coming into the office part time, if at all. Comparable figures are higher in the public sector.
The passive tone, the implication that “these things eventually happen; hey, whattaya going to do?” regarding the collapse of London is also highly reminiscent of tone of most articles on New York going to the dogs in the 1970s and ’80s, until others found a way to stem the tide — at least for a couple of decades.
