Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

January 29, 2026

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN BATMAN ACTUALLY FOUGHT CRIME:

 

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 29th, 2026

AMELIA: the purple-haired goth girl who became a nationalist icon.

Does it mean anything important, or is it all just amusing internet froth? I believe it does have significance, even if Amelia disappears tomorrow. Amelia is final proof, in the age of the viral AI meme, that the government no longer has any chance of controlling the narrative, let alone establishing one in the first place.

This goes against every instinct and reflex of the British Establishment. Because, if the Establishment exists to do anything, it is to control us. This is why Starmer is so desperate to ban X for putting fake bikinis on women, while taking a year to announce a possible inquiry into nationwide grooming gangs.

Happily, this is one battle the Establishment simply cannot win. It has been said that the internet is the subconscious of humanity. And, as Freud observed, in the end the subconscious will always decide what we do. Dreams denote desires, and desires determine reality. In other words: go, Amelia.

As Glenn has written, “I’m so old, I remember when ‘culture jamming’ was a leftist thing,” and Amelia is engaging in multiple levels of it. Leftist American graphic designer Shepard Fairey, who created the iconic Obama “Hope” poster in 2007 can’t be happy about this:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 29th, 2026

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Did Stephen Colbert Really Just Downplay the Holocaust to Attack ICE?

The world observed International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, marking the day the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated and honoring the six million Jews and others who were killed at the hands of the Nazi regime. It appears late-night host Stephen Colbert missed that solemn occasion, and instead chose to use his monologue to make light of the Holocaust.

Such a comparison is not only meant to fan the flames of unrest and to encourage attacks against ICE and Border Patrol agents, but it’s also an insult to every person, Jewish and otherwise, who died at places like Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those were innocent men, women, and children targeted because of their religion. They broke no laws and were systematically murdered by the Third Reich.

Meanwhile, as Idiocracy becomes the law of the land, while Colbert is toying with Holocaust denial, Tim Walz forgets who was who in the Civil War. Or as VDH asks: Slouching Towards Fort Sumter?

For now, Walz, Frey, and Ellison are upping the rhetoric, fanning the violence, and talking openly about how best to nullify federal law and impede federal enforcement. They are convinced that they have galvanized national opposition to the hated Trump, smothered the Somali fraud scandal, and stopped ICE deportations of their constituents.

In all of those assumptions, they have little idea they are following the Confederate script to the letter. And like their spiritual forefathers of 1861, they grow ever more cocky, boastful, and defiant as they create martyrs, spread narratives of victimhood, and daily slouch toward another Fort Sumter.

“They have little idea they are following the Confederate script to the letter.” They really don’t:

UPDATE: Jim Treacher squares the circle:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 29th, 2026

GRIFT AND GROW RICH:

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 29th, 2026

70/30 NATION:

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 29th, 2026

AND AGAIN:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 29th, 2026

WHEN POLITICS BECOMES RELIGION:

As Tom Wolfe wrote in his epochal 1976 article, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening:” “It is entirely possible that in the long run historians will regard the entire New Left experience as not so much a political as a religious episode wrapped in semi military gear and guerrilla talk.” (That line was written with early ‘70s radical chic in mind, but reverberates quite nicely today, given Antifa’s current love of paramilitary cosplay.)

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 29th, 2026

January 28, 2026

DUCKWORTH V RUBIO AND IT WASN’T EVEN CLOSE:

There have been few times when I could ever say I’d learned something from a Senate hearing – most instances turn into a partisan grandstanding shriek-a-thon, like Duckworth’s did.

But today has been informative and has had some humor, too.

We are very lucky Marco Rubio told Trump he’d take the jobs…and the next one…and then that one…and that.

Oh.

And the other one.

JD Vance shouldn’t believe he has the 2028 nomination in the bag just yet.

Posted at 9:15 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 28th, 2026

RICK MORAN: Iran Has Entered a ‘Doom Loop’ Thanks to the Internet Shutdown.

The government claims about 3,100 dead protesters, including hundreds of security personnel. The UN claims 14,000-20,000 dead. Reports emerged in mid-January that the sheer number of casualties in Tehran and other major cities exhausted the supply of body bags, with authorities reportedly using semi-trailer trucks to transport the dead.

The protests have quieted, largely thanks to security personnel shooting or arresting anyone who dares protest. More than 40,000 people have been arrested. How many of those poor souls will emerge from captivity is unknown.

The internet in Iran is still down, and authorities are terrified of reinitializing it. Their vast internal intelligence networks are telling them that the people are not going back to blind obedience to the regime.That’s because with the internet down, commerce in Iran has come to a screeching halt. Store shelves are empty. People aren’t working. In a nation sitting on an ocean of oil, most gas stations are closed.

This has led Iran into a “doom loop.” Commerce has slowed to a crawl, meaning the conditions that led to the economic protests in the first place have only worsened. It’s inevitable that this will lead to more protests and another crackdown.

How much longer the regime can last is an open question.

Related: How Trump could use his ‘beautiful armada’ to crush Iran.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 28th, 2026

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Starfleet Academy Sucks — And We’re To Blame.

After joking, “Wait, do they still exist?” the Drinker quotes from an article last week at the Mary Sue which claims: Those Dudebros Mad at ‘Starfleet Academy’ Aren’t Actually ‘Star Trek’ Fans.

Time and time again we’re confronted with “fans” of something who continue to miss the lessons within the media they’re consuming. We’ve seen it with Star Wars, our superhero stories, and it has become an increasing problem with Star Trek “fans.”

More recently, men like The Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic, known for hating anything that seems to be left leaning, have been dogging on the Paramount+ slate of Trek shows. The issue with these Right Wing figure heads talking about Trek is that they miss one important detail about Star Trek: It was never for them.

From the start of Star Trek way back when (60 years ago, to be exact), the series set out to do one thing: Change the world. And that it did. It made history for its inclusivity, including being the first interracial kiss on television in “Plato’s Stepchildren.” The kiss was between William Shatner’s James T. Kirk and Nichelle Nichols’ Lt. Uhura.

It really wasn’t: Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nancy Sinatra got there first, a year earlier, in 1967. Similarly, Star Trek was envisioned right from the start as a show for a mass audience, which by its nature means people from all sides of the aisle. The words “mass audience” were used explicitly in the writer’s guide of the original series, which aired on NBC from 1966-1969:

YES, THE STAR TREK FORMAT IS ACTUALLY THAT SIMPLE. IF YOU’RE A TV PROFESSIONAL, YOU ALREADY KNOW THE FOLLOWING SEVEN RULES:

I. Build your episode on an action-adventure framework. We must reach out, hold and entertain a mass audience of some 20,000,000 people or we simply don’t stay on the air.

II. Tell your story about people, not about science and gadgetry. Joe Friday doesn’t stop to explain the mechanics of his .38 before he uses it; Kildare never did a monologue about the theory of anesthetics; Matt Dillon never identifies and discusses the breed of his horse before he rides off on it.

III. Keep in mind that science fiction is not a separate field of literature with rules of its own, but, indeed, needs the same ingredients as any story — including a jeopardy of some type to someone we learn to care about, climactic build, sound motivation, you know the list.

IV. Then, with that firm foundation established, interweave in it any statement to be made about man, society and so on. Yes, we want you to have something to say, but say it entertainingly as you do on any other show. We don’t need essays, however brilliant.

If anything, Star Trek: The Next Generation, performed even better when compared to other syndicated TV series, as the L.A. Times reported in 1988:

It has taken no time at all for an audience apparently made up of hard-core Trekkies and more recently won devotees to embrace the new “Star Trek” family. In first-run syndication, which means it airs on different days at different times on each of its 210 stations (locally on KCOP-TV Channel 13 Sundays at 5 p.m., repeating Saturdays at 6 p.m.), the new show has earned a national 10.6 Nielsen rating, which translates into an average weekly audience of about 9.4 million households.

While that total audience is about half what Top-10 network shows, such as “Growing Pains” or “60 Minutes,” produce each week in prime time, it is about equal to such network prime-time staples as “Spencer: For Hire” and “The Disney Sunday Night Movie.”

Playing mostly out of prime time, those numbers, Harris said, exceed Paramount’s initial expectations.

And demographically, the raw data that is used to set advertising rates, the show’s numbers are even more impressive. During the February sweeps, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” was the most watched show in its time period among Los Angeles-area men 18-54, according to Don Searle, KCOP’s research director, even beating the Winter Olympics.

The demographics were so good that Paramount’s share of the advertising revenue generated from the series each week is reportedly close to $1 million–greater than the approximately $800,000 license fees the networks generally pay for a one-hour prime-time program.

Those shows succeeded because the story came first, before the messaging, as the 1966-era Trek writer’s guide demanded. All of the modern-era streaming Trek are woke messaging first, story second (or third). Why, it’s as if:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 28th, 2026

MEDIAITE: BBC Confirms Authenticity of Viral Video Appearing to Show Alex Pretti Kicking Agents’ Car 11 Days Before Shooting. “The BBC confirmed the authenticity of the video in their 10 p.m. GMT news broadcast. Reporter Ros Atkins said the man in the video ‘has the same coat, facial hair and gait as Alex Pretti and a facial recognition tool suggests a 97% match. We see him shouting abuse at the agents.’ Separately, a spokesperson for the BBC confirmed to Mediaite that they reviewed the footage and verified its team did use facial recognition technology on the video.”

UPDATE: This is CNN:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 28th, 2026

BOMBSHELL: Video Shows a Man Who Looks Like Alex Pretti Spitting at, Confronting Federal Agents. Not to mention “kicking the tail light of their vehicle on January 13:”

“If this video is verified as accurate, and more information comes forth, then it further cements the veracity of recent reporting that Alex Pretti was no peaceful protestor or innocent bystander. Pretti was an anti-ICE activist who sought confrontation and did what MN Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan encouraged: he put his body on the line.”

Posted at 4:39 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 28th, 2026

THIS IS CNN: CNN’s Report From Tehran Echoes Regime Propaganda While Glossing Over Massacres.

A CNN correspondent gave a report from Tehran that effectively served as a puff piece for the despotic Iranian regime, omitting the fact that the murderous government had killed thousands of protesters while warning of the Iranian regime’s defiant message to the Trump administration.

“Iran’s leadership is sending a strong and very defiant message to the United States, and specifically, of course, to the Trump administration,” CNN International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen said.  “You could see it here on this gigantic poster on Revolution Square in central Tehran. The message on this massive poster is, ‘If you sow the wind you will reap the whirlwind,’ obviously meaning if the United States attacks Iran, Iran will retaliate in a massive way, which could, of course, lead to a major military confrontation between the United States and Iran.”

* * * * * * * * *

CNN International fluffing America’s enemies? Roger Ailes, call your office!

You too, Eason Jordan: CNN Admits Honest Reporting Was Impossible, So Why Go To Baghdad?

Related: Trump warns Iran: Our massive armada is ready for violence.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 28th, 2026

January 27, 2026

NFL WORLD COMPLETELY TAKEN ABACK BY BILL BELICHICK FAILING TO MAKE HALL OF FAME: ‘WTF?’

The NFL world was baffled by the news reported by ESPN on Tuesday evening that Belichick, the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach, was not elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, on his first appearance on the ballot.

Belichick fell short of the requisite 40 votes of 50 votes from the voting committee — made up of at least one media representative from each football city and other at-large members — needed to gain entry.

ESPN reported that the two major scandals Belichick was beleaguered by in New England — Spygate in 2007 and Deflategate in 2015 — were part of the discussions. Ex-Colts general manager Bill Polian, an at-large member of the voting committee, reportedly told some voters that Belichick should “wait a year” before getting inducted. Polian denied he voted against Belichick to Sports Illustrated.

Whatever the reason, Belichick — who also won two Super Bowls as a defensive coordinator with the Giants — will not be enshrined in 2026, and the football world was largely stunned.

It’s only Tuesday, but it’s been quite a week for the NFL and its awards for merit: Giants’ Jermaine Eluemunor calls Pro Bowl a ‘joke’ after Shedeur Sanders inclusion.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

AMELIA VICTORIOUS: How to Lose the Culture War With a Video Game.

There’s something genuinely funny going on in the United Kingdom right now.

The British government’s Prevent office, housed under the Home Office (think Department of the Interior, but allergic to dissent), partnered with a media nonprofit called Shout Out UK (like a PBS focused on preventing “radicalism”) to come up with a clever new way to re-educate British youth.

The concern, as always, was “radicalization.” They thought the solution was inspired: a choice-based video game. Kids like games. Games involve decisions. Decisions shape values. What could possibly go wrong?

Thus Pathways was born, a government-funded interactive morality play designed to gently shepherd British children toward being properly antiracist, properly accepting, and properly enthusiastic about the ever-increasing number of migrants reshaping their country. Civics class, but fun. And digital. And corrective.

As part of this effort, the designers introduced a character named Amelia, a cute, purple-haired, vaguely goth girl who carries a Union Jack and talks about Britain being for the British. She was meant to function as a warning, a living illustration of how nationalism can look attractive, even charming, and yet be dangerous to the impressionable youths of Britain who may not have fully internalized the idea that Brexit is bad and they are to obey their elitist overlords.

What they did not anticipate was that the public would take one look at adorable, charming Amelia and decide she was the good guy.

British lefties are incandescent with rage over Amelia going viral:

 

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

WORST. HITLER. EVER: 

Posted at 5:43 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why did Philip Glass cancel Kennedy Center performance?

Because he’s 88 years old, and he needs to have the proper footnotes in the twilight of his career, so that leftist music critics will remember his last days fondly and write favorable eulogies.

Related:

Heh, indeed.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

FIRED NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST DISHES ON HER COWARDLY, CENSORIOUS NYT EDITORS:

While [Pamela Paul’s]  opinion pieces trended liberal, she voiced skepticism on issues like cancel culture, cultural appropriation, and especially transgenderism. Such iconoclasm made her a reviled figure on the left and in the Times newsroom (but I repeat myself).

The fate of former Times opinion editor James Bennet may have affected how badly Paul was treated by Kingsbury. Bennet was forced out by the paper’s internal left-wing “child mob” for platforming a piece by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas who argued federal forces should be sent to (deja vu) Minneapolis during the George Floyd riots of 2020.

Pamela Paul: The crime that James had committed was not writing the column or the op-ed. It was platforming it. And so, if I was writing things that were upsetting the, you know, the, the Little Red Guards or whatever, then that person in charge of the section would be guilty of platforming me….

Paul also got into the under-covered issue of online reader comments and what makes conservative posts mysteriously disappear: The paper’s leftist comment editors would do the bidding of leftist readers, who would accuse other commenters of being offensive or using the wrong pronouns, and the editors would dutifully delete those “offensive” comments – a practice that will sound familiar to conservatives.

She explained that her columns on gender issues received “overwhelmingly positive response” from readers but not from “magazines and newspapers that I felt like once would never have bothered to write stories that were essentially regurgitations and summations of a few angry tweets from activists and sort of invested parties.” The New Republic even called her a fascist.

Her February 2023 column defending author J.K. Rowling from vicious attacks by trans activists was the beginning of the end for Paul at the paper.

The Gray Lady needs to keep its hard left subscribers happy to keep the lights on, and that means avoiding any stories that might upset them. Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported way back in 2019:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

MINNESOTA’S SIGNALGATE: The Anatomy of a Domestic Insurgency.

A puzzled reader might object that activists have long monitored police activity, that legal observers carry cameras, that communities organize to protect their neighbors. All true, in isolation. The question is not whether any single act is novel. The question is whether the aggregate pattern exhibits features that distinguish protest from organized obstruction. Research from counterinsurgency studies provides a useful vocabulary. Early stage insurgencies rarely announce themselves with bombs. They begin with infrastructure. They build command structures. They specialize roles. They develop intelligence capabilities. They seek to deny the state freedom of movement while remaining sub kinetic.

By that standard, Minnesota displays a striking resemblance to the organizational phase of an insurgency. Recruitment and cadre formation occur through ICE Watch training sessions organized at local schools, NGO facilities, and even HUD provided meeting spaces, converting civic infrastructure into intake and indoctrination nodes. Encrypted Signal networks, colloquially dubbed SignalGate, are divided by geography and capped at roughly 1,000 participants per zone. Membership is vetted through the use of voter rolls, with applicants screened to exclude anyone listed on Republican voter rolls. Chats are deleted on a daily rotation. Roles are assigned. Some participants act as spotters, scanning neighborhoods for federal vehicles. Others are plate checkers, logging make, model, color, location, and timestamp into a shared database known as MN ICE Plates. Dispatchers monitor the feed and direct mobile chasers to intercept targets. The reporting format mirrors SALUTE, size, activity, location, unit, time, equipment, a method taught in military intelligence.

This matters because intelligence collection is not expressive conduct. It is operational. When information is persistently gathered, verified, stored, and acted upon, it becomes a parallel intelligence system. In multiple instances, vehicles later confirmed not to belong to ICE were nonetheless tailed for hours after being flagged. That persistence reveals intent. The goal is not merely to warn neighbors. It is to degrade federal operations by denying surprise and freedom of movement.

The involvement of political officials further sharpens the picture. Leaked chats show participation or coordination by elected figures and senior staff. Minnesota Lt Gov Peggy Flanagan appears under aliases such as Flan Southside. City Council Member Aurin Chowdhury is linked to administrative roles. Former Walz adviser Amanda Koehler is identified as an organizer. Journalists affiliated with MPR and NPR appear in groups where federal locations and movements are discussed in real time. The line between observation and participation blurs when presence inside an operational channel confers access to intelligence and legitimacy to the network.

Read the whole thing. What happens next? Kurt Schlichter has some thoughts:

Related: Alex Pretti Committed Previous Felony on Officers Before Deadly Attack.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026
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