Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

May 5, 2026

THIS IS THE WAY:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 5th, 2026

T. BECKET ADAMS: Just How Badly Does the Left Hate the Right Anyway?

Nearly as great a problem as left-wing violence is the left’s refusal to admit it has a problem.

You’ve likely encountered this brand of ideological intransigence over the past decade. You’ve probably heard some variation of it from a co-worker, a friend, or even a family member.

When a Republican or conservative is shot, stabbed, or beaten by a left-wing assailant, the activist left adopts one of three standard responses:

The first: The violence is deserved. He had it coming! The second: It didn’t happen. It’s a hoax! The third, and by far the most common, is: Right-wing violence is still worse.

Of the three, the third is the most annoying, not just because it’s raw whataboutism, but because the counterexamples offered are often mischaracterizations or outright falsehoods.

Related: Voters Blame Media for Inspiring Assassination Attempt, Dividing Nation.

Six in ten voters think it’s likely that negative news media coverage of President Donald Trump inspired the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 25, a new national Rasmussen survey finds.

Of U.S. likely voters polled April 27-29 following the attack, 60% think it’s at least “somewhat likely” that hostile media inspired the armed shooter’s attack – including 41% who call it “very likely.” In contrast, just 13% consider it “not at all likely.”

“How likely is it that negative news media coverage of Trump inspired this assassination attempt?”

  • Very Likely: 41%
  • Somewhat Likely: 19%
  • Not Very Likely: 16%
  • Not at All Likely: 13%
  • Not Sure: 11%

Fully 55% of Democrat voters say it’s likely that hostile media inspired the attack, with far more saying it’s “very likely” (28%) than calling it “somewhat” (17%) so.

More than three-fourths (79%) of Republican voters say media instigated the assassination attempt, including 58% who think it’s very likely media are to blame. Meanwhile, 59% of “other” voters attribute the attack to the influence of the media.

The penultimate scene in Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film Network is (spoiler alert) television executives plotting the assassination of one of their on-air hosts in order to improve the channel’s ratings. When Chayefsky wrote the scene, I’m sure he envisioned some completely over-the-top Strangelove-esque satire. Today, a late night host can deliver a throwaway gag (that has very likely been approved by his network’s standards and practices division) envisioning the death of the president, and network execs pray that their cameras are in position when it happens.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 5th, 2026

A BRIEF COMPARISON OF NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM:

Flashback: The Nazi Party Platform.

Related: Hitler’s Handouts — Inside the Nazis’ welfare state.

And then there are the artists and architects of the 1930s: Philip Johnson. Walter Gropius. Mies van der Rohe. Le Corbusier. Ezra Pound. H.G. Wells. Salvador Dali. Why did so many pioneering modernists know all the lyrics to “Springtime for Hitler?”

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on May 5th, 2026

May 4, 2026

A PROUD DAD COMMENTS:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

QUEENS’ SYNAGOGUES, HOMES TAGGED WITH SWASTIKAS:

A group of teens are believed to be responsible for a bunch of swastikas and pro-Nazi graffiti that turned up in Queens overnight. Spots targeted included two synagogues.

According to police sources, the string of incidents that occurred in Forest Hills and Rego Park during the early hours of Monday is being investigated as a hate crime. The investigation remains ongoing, with the 112th Precinct and the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force involved.

Much of the extensive hate speech was scrawled outside of the Rego Park Jewish Center located at 97-30 Queens Blvd., at about 1:16 a.m. on May 4; the dastardly acts were caught on the building’s surveillance camera.

In the footage, the group of four teenagers wearing hoodies could be seen sidling up to the building before spraying the hateful Nazi symbol and the name “Hitler” beside it.

* * * * * * * * *

Sen. Gillibrand also posted a statement:

Related: With Mills out, Democrats line up behind Platner as he reiterates his vision for the party:

“Democrats are dedicated to fighting back against the chaos of the Trump administration by defeating the Republicans who enable his harmful agenda and that includes Susan Collins,” Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said in a joint statement. “After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her.”

As Mary Katharine Ham tweeted:

Liz Mair adds, “He either is a serious person and all this stuff deserves to be treated seriously or he’s just a dipshit too online Internet weirdo who shouldn’t be entrusted with legislating even the name of Post Offices. Seems pretty simple to me.”

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

HAPPY MAY THE FOURTH* FOR ALL WHO CELEBRATE: The Force adrift.

There is no greater testament to how misbegotten the entire endeavor was than the fact that not once in the sequels do the heroes from the original trilogy appear in the same movie, let alone on screen together. The whole point of the sequels, and the justification for much of the anticipation for them, was seeing the old gang back in action. Yet it seems never to have occurred to anyone at Disney — not CEO Bob Iger, not Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, no one — that this might be a problem. Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, and Lando share zero seconds of screen time. How could that happen? It’s the plot equivalent of leaving an exposed thermal exhaust port in the Death Star design: something which makes much more sense as the result of carelessness, incompetence, and bureaucratic inertia than as the purposeful act of sabotage it was retconned into in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016).

The original trilogy is a classic saga of a hero’s journey set against the backdrop of a fight between good and evil, dressed up in futuristic, science-fiction garb. The prequels are an allegory for the unraveling of the postwar American political order, a tale of institutional decadence and collapse. Can anyone say what the sequels are about? There’s no overarching storyline because it was never planned out; the switch of writers and directors produced dramatic, often contradictory narrative shifts. Say what you will about Lucas’s vision, he had one. There is no vision to the sequels. It is questionable whether a corporate writer’s room can even have a vision, though it did give us the hopelessly dated presence of Lin-Manuel Miranda. And Space Monaco. Seriously, what the hell? That Mickey and Co. have managed to release just five movies, and none since 2019, is indicative of its struggles. A sixth, based on the Disney+ series The Mandalorian, is scheduled for May. We’ll see how that goes.

John Nolte has some thoughts on that: ‘May the Fourth Be With You’ Fans Rip Kathleen Kennedy.

The problem always was Kathleen Kennedy, who despised the mammoth Star Wars fanbase and decided to alienate and insult them with her stupid and narcissistic “The Force Is Female” campaign.

Why?

Why did Star Wars need to be feminized?

To what end?

No one does this to female-driven franchises. If they did, The Devil Wears Prada 2 would have gunfights and car chases.

Kennedy feminized Star Wars, she queered Star Wars, and when the fans complained, she and her acolytes (if you’ll pardon the expression) attacked those fans as sexist and racist — even though fans loved the female-led Rogue One, which is populated with non-white supporting characters.

If The Mandalorian and Grogu disappoints at the box office, there will be no blaming streaming or COVID or whatever other excuses the sycophants in the media come up with. So far, 2026 has proven again and again that if you make appealing movies (Prada 2, Michael, Project Hail Mary, Super Mario Galaxy Movie) people will come.

The box office problems post-COVID have been entirely due to woketard movies and nothing else. If The Mandalorian and Grogu flops, especially during a year when people again feel good about going to the movies, that will all be on Disney and Kathleen Kennedy for destroying their golden goose.

I’m holding out for next year: The original 1977 Star Wars returns to theaters for a “once-in-a-generation event” to remind everyone who shot first.

* And for those who don’t:

Posted at 6:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

SPRINGTIME FOR PLATNER: Democrats Go Into Their Dance.

“Don’t be stupid, be a smarty – come and join the Platner party!” is the collective refrain from Democrats (with rare exceptions) as they close ranks around the guy with the Nazi tattoo.

Now that Governor Janet Mills has dropped out of the primary race, the opportunity for Graham Platner to be the Democrat candidate for United States Senate in Maine is all but assured, and Democrats are willingly spinning this news as “happy and gay.”

Yes, yes, Graham Platner covered up his Totenkopf tattoo with a really shitty wolf-ish thing, but let’s all remember two things. First, he knew what that tattoo was (his own former campaign manager attests to that, as do other people who heard him talk about it), and second, he was totally fine with keeping that tattoo UNTIL he was running for office. So no, the Nazi apologetics coming from Democrats are pathetically disingenuous. Example A of this apologia comes from “Pod Save America” Obama bro Jon Favreau, who tried giving Hasan Piker an out (and Piker made a fool of him by affirming his fanboy love for Hamas), who is desperately singing a tune that he would rightfully rip Republicans for, if there was a Republican who had a Nazi tattoo running for office. As he himself says, he’s doubling down because of loyalty to the Party. Ahem. 

In 2014, Daniel Hannan wrote, “The greatest cultural victory of the Left has been to disregard the Nazi-Soviet Pact:”

To the modern reader, George Orwell’s depiction of how enmity alternates between Eurasia and Eastasia seems far-fetched; but when he published his great novel in 1948, such things were a recent memory. It suited Western Leftists, during and after the War, to argue that Hitler had been uniquely evil, certainly wickeder than Stalin. It was thus necessary to forget the enthusiasm with which the two tyrants had collaborated.

Flashforward to 2026, and Oceania has never wanted to punch Nazis: 

Tweet concludes, “It’s a story about how years and years of moral indignation from the Very Serious People™ class proved to be a paper-thin veneer over your team jerseys.”

UPDATE: Heh, indeed:

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

TO BOLDLY GO WHERE GEORGE C. SCOTT HAS GONE BEFORE: Flipper Around, Find Out: Iran Weaponizing Dolphins for a New Porpoise.

The United States Navy’s dolphin doctrine began in 1960, when a study was conducted on a Pacific White-Sided dolphin to see if its shape or features allowed for less drag in the water. And if so, could that be applied to torpedoes to make them faster and longer-range?

Two years later in Point Magu, California, dolphin radar was studied to see if they could be used to detect mines. A year later, the Marine Mammal Program was underway, training descendants of Flipper to help out our Navy in their own unique way. The program was classified, but was still in limited use even as late as 2003 in the Gulf War.

Animal rights activists naturally hated the program from the outset. You thought environmentalists were bad, just imagine the vapors the PETA people got at the concept of dolphins being sent into harm’s way as an expendable asset.

According to open source information, most of the alleged porpoise purposes were defensive in nature – mine detection. Three weeks into the President’s naval blockade of traffic in and out of Iranian ports, the regime is resorting to using Flipper to carry and deploy mines, not to identify and defuse them.

In accordance with the prophecy:

Related: Iran Fires on Ships and US Navy Responds by Sinking Six of their “Fast Assault Boats.”

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH BOY GEORGE IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Boy George Is a Mensch.

Ireland has a serious problem with antisemitism. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the Irish political class has cultivated an environment of extreme hostility toward Israel and Jews. Irish social media is a sewer.

Ireland is one of a handful of countries refusing to participate in the upcoming Eurovision song contest because Israeli artists will perform. Boy George has himself faced pressure to boycott the contest, at which he is slated to sing. “Are people asking me as a principled human being to turn my back on my Jewish friends?” he asked recently. “It’s not going to happen, it’s never going to happen.”

On Friday, Boy George demonstrated his courage by addressing the antisemitism in the room: “If you don’t know any Jewish people, maybe that’s the problem.” He turned to the Irish audience and challenged them. “Do you know any Jewish people?” Silence answered his question. “Look at the quiet. So weird.”

Boy George is a good man. He has integrity and guts. Let’s hope others in his industry see the value in challenging the antisemitism that is sadly taking root in Ireland and elsewhere. Courage tends to be contagious.

Read the whole thing.

Exit quote:

 

 

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

MAJOR ARSON SUSPECT OBSESSED OVER LUIGI MANGIONE AND WANTED TO KILL THE RICH, PROSECUTORS SAY:

The suspect accused of starting one of the largest wildfires in Los Angeles history, fixated on Luigi Mangione weeks before starting the blaze out of resentment for the rich, according to federal prosecutors.

Federal prosecutors said in a trial memorandum that 30-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht demonstrated an obsession with Mangione in the days before he started the Lachman and Palisades Fires on January 1, 2025. Mangione has developed a cult following among the Left after he was arrested for gunning down Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

“On January 24, 2025, when investigators asked defendant why someone might commit arson in the Pacific Palisades, he responded that it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them’ and compared such an act of ‘desperation’ to the murder for which Mangione was charged,” the memo said.

The memo added that Uber passengers who rode with Rinderknecht on December 31 and January 1 recounted him being “angry, intense, driving erratically, and ranting about being ‘pissed off at the world’ and Luigi Mangione, capitalism, and vigilantism.”

Related: At the Wall Street Journal’s Substack, former Popular Mechanics editor James Meigs writes: Political Violence Is Cool Now.
Why do so many elites support violent extremism?

We used to have a stereotype that political violence typically emerges from the uneducated mob. Today, the opposite is true. Some of today’s most bloodthirsty rhetoric can be heard on college campuses or from influencers embraced by political elites. “Kill those motherf——,” Mr. Piker once said, speaking of landlords. “Let the streets soak in their f— red capitalist blood!” In a New York Times column originally headlined, “Hasan Piker is Not the Enemy,” liberal centrist Ezra Klein argued that Democrats should not write firebrands like Mr. Piker “out of acceptable political discourse.” The celebration of violence isn’t some depravity found only in America’s political swamps. It’s a viewpoint widely tolerated, even encouraged, among denizens of our cultural high ground. Yes, the right has its share of scary extremists, too. But their ideas get far less prominence in our mainstream culture. And, unlike some leftist icons, they’re not teaching at Ivy League universities.

Once, I would have argued that education is the best antidote to violent extremism. People need to learn tolerance for other viewpoints and the value of fair-minded debate. Again, the opposite appears to be true today. A recent survey by the Skeptic Research Center found that people with advanced academic degrees “were about twice as likely to support political violence than those with less formal education.” And the people committing violence aren’t anonymous losers. Both Luigi Mangione and Cole Allen, the latest would-be presidential assassin, were graduates of elite universities.

Miegs concludes, “To get out of this spiral of violence, our country will need to reset its moral compass. I’m not hopeful that such reform will come from the top down. It may have to come from the bottom up.”

But leftists with a love of Radical Chic will do everything they can to prevent that change from happening:

“Exploiting the grief of the people in the Palisades:”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

YOU BOYS COULD USE A LITTLE CHURCHIN’ UP:

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record suggests:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

UNDER A BLOOD RED STATE SKY:

Related:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

DID MR. KISS KISS FANG FANG EXPOSE HIS WANG WANG? Eric Swalwell Sent Women ‘Videos of Him Masturbating’ and Other Perverted Messages After Joining Snapchat to Restore ‘Faith’ in ‘Democracy’: Report.

One young woman claimed Swalwell would send her Snapchat messages about her future, before asking inappropriate questions such as, “What are you wearing?”

Two other women told CNN that Swalwell sent them “sexually explicit messages and unsolicited nude photos and videos of himself” in 2021, while a third woman also claimed to have received “sexually tinged messages and videos.”

One former congressional staffer allegedly developed a consensual sexual relationship with Swalwell after he began flirting with her on Snapchat in 2021.

During the relationship, Swalwell reportedly sent “nude photos of himself and videos of him masturbating,” which showed the congressman’s “face and naked body.”

The videos, which were saved by the woman, were shown to CNN.

“His stories would be his, like, congressional content, but then he would be sending me dick pics,” she alleged, adding that Swalwell sent her another “explicit video” late last year, just weeks before he announced his 2026 California gubernatorial campaign.

No wonder Swalwell was taken out so quickly last month by his own party.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

HOW IT STARTED: What’s really behind Trump’s clash with the Pope?

Donald Trump’s latest clash with the Catholic Church stunned even the most hardened veterans of culture-war X. According to the President of the United States, the Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV, the conspicuously holy spiritual leader of 1.3 billion people, is “WEAK on crime and terrible on foreign policy.” He also claimed that, “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

For commentators accustomed to the fog of modern diplomatic platitudes, such trash talk was the equivalent of a Holy Roman Emperor hurling insults at a medieval pontiff. In the year 963, for example, the Emperor Otto I accused Pope John XII of fornicating with his own niece, “making the sacred palace a whorehouse” while he drunkenly murdered his enemies and consecrated a ten-year-old bishop.

Trump’s rhetoric may have been mild in comparison, but the fact remains that not once in the 250-year history of the United States has a Commander-in-Chief launched a personal attack on the Supreme Pontiff.

—The Spectator, April 27th.

How it’s going:

 

Deace’s tweet concludes, “Barely 2% of West Virginia is Hispanic. Barely 1% of the state speaks Spanish. This is a purely political appointment by a woke pope trying to shoehorn his open borders agenda into a state Trump has won by 40 points three times. There’s nothing prophetic here, but it’s all shamefully political. An open borders agenda the pope himself isn’t forced to abide by, because Vatican City has strict enforcement policies and walls. This is like if MSNBC picked offices in the church, all the while never allowing the illegals in Martha’s Vineyard where their primetime hosts spend their summers.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

HMMM:

Related:

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

HOW’S THAT WELCOME WAGON PROGRAM COMING ALONG?

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

SCHRODINGER’S TOTENKOPF:

Related:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on May 4th, 2026

May 3, 2026

GOODER AND HARDER, LA: Who Is Nithya Raman, Dubbed The ‘Next Mamdani,’ Gaining Ground In LA Mayor Race?

Why Is She Being Called The ‘Next Mamdani?’

Her rise has also drawn comparisons to progressive figures in American politics, particularly New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Like Mamdani, Raman is associated with the Democratic Socialists of America and has built her political base through grassroots organising rather than traditional party networks. Both leaders have emerged through volunteer-driven campaigns centred on housing, inequality and urban governance.

If this quote is true (and if it isn’t, it will be damning for Pratt’s campaign), perhaps this has something to do with the comparison as well:

Posted at 7:03 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 3rd, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE:

In 2014 Mark Steyn wrote:

ISIS are fast-track Nazis. No messing about with a few property restrictions and intermarriage laws as a little light warm-up: They’re only in the business of “final solutions”, and they start on Day One and don’t quit until the last Christian and Yazidi is dead or fled. As I’ve often remarked about today’s exhaustively cleansed Maghreb, Levant and Araby, Islam is king on a field of corpses. But pikers like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Baathists, the House of Saud take their time. ISIS are shooting for the Guinness Book of Records.

However, unlike the original Nazis, who sought to keep their atrocities as hidden as possible, ISIS loved social media. A 2023 post by consulting firm Booz Allen noted that “It’s no secret that the Islamic State’s skillful use of social media has played a central role in its rise and continuing success:” 

The terrorist group can reportedly generate as many as 200,000 tweets and disseminate an average of 38 unique propaganda events each day.

Still, it’s not the volume of ISIS messages but their rapid spread and powerful impact that makes ISIS such a dangerous force. In the hands of ISIS propagandists, social media has dramatically increased the group’s reach and influence.

Gruesome videos of ISIS atrocities spread fear and intimidate its enemies into submission, while news and events are quickly promulgated with ISIS’s own interpretation and message. Through its adept use of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and other social media, ISIS not only draws a continuous stream of new recruits to its regional strongholds, but it now inspires followers to commit terrorist acts in the Western nations where they live.

Clearly, social media is pushing the boundaries of information operations and the concept of the traditional battlespace. While ISIS and other U.S. adversaries are exploiting social media as a reliable force multiplier, the United States and its allies are actively exploring new and innovative ways to use new media as an effective tool of influence.

In contrast though, as John Cleese responded to Hamk’s tweet, “There is a tendency for some media to describe reports of divisive behaviour as themselves divisive No. They are pointing out divisiveness that ALREADY exists The original divisiveness can only be addressed when it is acknowledged NOT by hushing it up.”

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 3rd, 2026

WELL, SURE. BUT DOESN’T EVERYONE EVALUATE ELECTRIC GUITAR PLAYERS BASED ON THEIR COVID STANCES IN 2020?

Ironically, Clapton has swung far to the left in recent years in his newfound post-October 7th loathing of Israel. But that’s not enough to salvage his reputation at Rolling Stone. 

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 3rd, 2026

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH BARNEY FRANK IS (ALMOST) A VOICE OF SANITY: Dying ex-Rep. Barney Frank delivers stark warning from hospice about Dems swinging too far left.

Frank is set to release a scathing book rebuking the left flank of the Democratic Party later this year. His main message to lefties is to be more strategic about how far to push on social issues.

“We didn’t get to marriage until after these other things had been resolved,” Frank argued.

“And that’s what I’m suggesting that we do today. The analogy is males and female transsexuals playing sports that are for women.”

“I understand there’s a lot of anger about that,” he continued. “And I think, in the interest of the transgender community, as well as others, it would be better to go at that in a more granular way, and not simply announce that, if you don’t support it, you’re a homophobe.”

During a recent interview with Politico, the architect of the Dodd-Frank banking regulations also cited the defund the police and open borders push as examples of lefties going too far.

“It’s one thing to advocate something knowing that you’re going beyond the current viewpoints, and another to make it a litmus test,” Frank told Politico.

He used Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner as an example of Dems moving too far too the left — after he became the presumptive nominee when Gov. Janet Mills dropped out. 

“I think Platner actually shares with Trump this capacity toward making the most out of the anger that people feel,” the former congressman reflected.

“What I’m afraid of is that he won’t be able to translate that into enough votes.”

Does that mean that Frank would be okay with the man with the totenkopf tattoo if he does win in November? Communists were famously called “liberals in a hurry.” It sounds like Frank wants all or most of 2020-style wokeness to happen, just not at the pedal-to-the-floor speed that America’s leftists are pushing those ideas.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 3rd, 2026

NO, THEY’RE BEING ASSESSED EXCLUSIVELY ON THEIR ABILITIES:

 

Trump and Hegseth seeking a non-DEI military is fascism; to FDR in 1944, the laissez faire economy of Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s was fascism.; last year Sydney Sweeney’s bazoombas were fascism. As George Orwell famously wrote, the F-word now has “no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’”

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 3rd, 2026
« Previous Entries
Next Entries »