Free Speech

Naval Academy Junks 381 ‘Woke’ Library Books

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 19:05:42 -0500

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On April 4, the US Naval Academy released a list of the 381 books it took out of circulation from its Nimitz Library, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a clampdown on DEI and gender nonsense.

I don’t like “book burning.” With only a few exceptions, books are as much symptom as cause. Did Robin DiAngelo’s awful White Fragility, which sold millions of copies and was a New York Times best seller for more than two years, change many minds? Or did it sell only because years of anti-white propaganda and George Floyd madness had prepared the ground?

In either case, I’m opposed to taking it out of libraries. Likewise, if the United States ever comes to its senses, I don’t want to take down the absurd Martin Luther King monument in DC or rename all the streets that now tell us where black people live. I want them left as reminders of how far self-hatred can go.

When the Naval Academy announced it was pruning the collection, the New York Times — probably tipped off by a leaker — warned that even benign titles could get the ax: The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., Einstein on Race and Racism, and a biography of Jackie Robinson. Other publications parroted this, but when the Times reported on the final cut, it of course failed to mention that all three of those titles were spared.

The final list has a lot of anti-white rubbish and glorification of what we used to call sexual craziness, but there are some surprises. Here are the first dozen entries.

Click here for the full-size image.

Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist is number one, but the titles aren’t in any particular order. I had never heard of most of the 381 books, but was not surprised to see the standard anti-white canon: books by Tim Wise, Joe Feagin, Robin DiAngelo, Michael Eric Dyson, Noel Ignatiev, and Mari J. Matsuda. I’d never heard of America, Amerikkka or Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? or Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil, but I have probably heard every argument in them a hundred times.

There is no end to the ways people try to rub our noses in “racism,” but I wonder how many midshipmen ever checked out titles such as Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature; or Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race; or Haunted Bodies: Gender and Southern Texts.

There isn’t much racially oriented fiction on the list, but it includes The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid. He is one of those subcontinentals who swan their way through elite Western institutions — in his case, Princeton, Harvard Law, McKinsey & Company — and hate us all the more for it. In this extermination-fantasy novel, white people start turning brown, and the happy ending is when the last white man makes that wonderful transition, and newly-brown people start having brown babies.

I don’t know much about gender/queer/trans literature but, again, who at the academy ever read The Modern Androgyne Imagination: A Failed Sublime or The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism? I don’t think many aspiring soldiers want to read Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul.

Some of the choices make no sense. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl is the infuriating story of David Reimer, whose penis was mutilated in a botched circumcision in 1967. An early “gender-fluid” proponent named John Money persuaded his parents to rear the boy as a girl, because sexual behavior is not inherent but taught. Neither dresses nor hormones could make Reimer feel female, and he killed himself at age 38. This is a recognition of the power of genes, and a poignant anti-gender/queer book.

I was surprised by some of the race books on the list. Intelligence, Race, and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen is an excellent book of discussions with the greatest race-realist scientist who ever lived. It’s the opposite of “woke.”

The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration is a book of long interviews with “white nationalists,” including Michael Levin, Samuel Francis, Wayne Lutton, David Duke, Don Black, and your servant. It is by no means a smear or a caricature, but a laudable attempt — by a black woman — to understand white racial consciousness.

I have never read The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition. It’s probably sensationalized, but it seems to be a serious study of the 1920 Klan revival — which really was far more widespread than most people realize.

Finally, this book got the chop: The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. It is often touted as proof that “diversity” is wonderful, but the author is promoting cognitive diversity or different mental approaches and backgrounds — not racial diversity — and warns that people must have basic commonalities in order to work well together.

So it’s a queer list, to be sure, and you might enjoy browsing it. The other service academies are reportedly going through their collections, too. I have not heard of any orders to acquire antidotes to DEI, CRT, and gender/queer stuff, so I suspect officers-in-training will not start finding my books in their libraries.

The post Naval Academy Junks 381 ‘Woke’ Library Books appeared first on American Renaissance.

Soviet Union Style Justice in America: The Political Prosecution of Robert Rundo

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 13:23:22 -0500

By Glen Allen, Esq.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of articles about the prosecution – “persecution” may be a better word — of Robert Rundo. To those not acquainted with him, Mr. Rundo has been one of the foremost victims in recent decades of the political weaponization of the American justice system against the Dissident Right. This ignominious process has antecedents reaching back many years. In numerous cases in the last decade, however, this departure from impartial justice accelerated to an almost Soviet Union style disregard for the rule of law. Mr. Rundo’s case exemplifies this.

Mr. Rundo, to be sure, is not the only victim of this weaponization. The list of victims is long, including most of the January 6 defendants, about whom I hope also to write a series of articles. Here are my reasons for writing first about Robert Rundo:

I understand the legal issues in the Rundo prosecution well, especially those regarding the unconstitutionality of the federal Anti-Riot Act under which he was prosecuted and convicted. The Free Expression Foundation filed several amicus briefs in support of Mr. Rondo on that topic.
I have extensively interviewed Mr. Rundo. I intend in my series of articles to quote directly from these interviews, allowing him to speak in his own voice as much as possible.
Rundo’s story has the twists and turns, victories and defeats, loyalties and betrayals, dramas and comic moments of a gripping Hollywood movie. Someday, one hopes, such a movie will be made.
Rundo’s case lays bare Police State conduct by our governments many Americans suspect but few encounter. It is disheartening to confront this reality, as Rundo’s story forces us to do. We cannot, however, take corrective action unless we confront these uncomfortable facts.
Rundo’s case illustrates the power of media to fashion an alternate reality that effectively serves their political agendas. In Rundo’s case, a partisan article by an organization called Pro Publica led directly to his indictment and prosecution and the brutal treatment he received from law enforcement around the world. Rundo should never have been prosecuted, and would not have been prosecuted but for the Pro Publica article.

As a preview that hopefully will whet the appetites of potential readers, here are a few excerpts from my interviews of Mr. Rundo.

RUNDO’S EARLY LIFE

Where did you grow up?

Rundo: Queens. Yeah, New York. I didn’t fit in, school didn’t fit me. Not that it mattered. School was just a factory—overcrowded, chaotic, no one gave a damn about you. They said it was built for 3,000 students, but we had double that. So I learned to disappear. I didn’t need the classrooms. I had the streets. Back then, New York wasn’t full of artisanal coffee shops and overpriced apartments. It was real. It was a war zone, except the guns were invisible. Three blocks, you find your crew. No one calls themselves a gang. It’s just the guys, the crew, a bunch of people trying to exist. We gave ourselves names, wrote them everywhere—tags on walls, on trains, on anything that wouldn’t scream back. I would end up getting charged for that at 15 years old, and they sent me to a juvenile program for a few months. One other white kid in the whole place, 300 of us. The other youths there referred to the program as gladiator school. It was a hardening experience, a wake-up call. I went in naïve and came out red-pilled.

What happened after that?

Rundo: After that, things got complicated. You know, we were just kids trying to survive, but then MS-13 shows up in our neighborhood, and suddenly it’s not just about hanging out and doing stupid stuff. It’s about territory, power, and violence. MS-13 weren’t just some neighborhood crew. These guys were running on a whole other level. A lot of people thought it was a joke until they realized it wasn’t. I had two close friends stabbed by them. No warning, no real reason other than the wrong place at the wrong time. It was ugly. It was real.

By the time I turned 18, I had my own run-in with them. A knife fight—stupid, I know. But when you’re in it, you don’t think about the stupid. You think about survival. I came out on top, but it wasn’t a victory. The guy I got into it with? He had a long rap sheet—he wasn’t exactly some Boy Scout. He didn’t die, which saved me life in prison. I was young at the time and got “street struck” as they say, meaning caught up living.

What was it like in prison?

Rundo: It’s rough for a young white going through the NYC prison system. It’s not like what you see in the movies, with a bunch of skinheads sitting at a table in shades waiting to welcome you. That happens more on the West Coast, but in New York, it’s different. Whites are few and far between and even when there are some they tend to stick to themselves. Most of them are addicts or weirdos. There were very few I encountered I actually respected and would allow to work out with me. For the rest of it, the other inmates are like hyenas. They go for the low hanging fruit most of the time but I grew up a little rough around the edges, so I was able to handle it. Besides that it is a nightmare of boredom that repeats itself everyday. In total it was lots of working out and reading and in the end it actually disciplined me and broke me out of that street mentality I had going in. I came out much sharper, healthier, harder.

CREATION OF THE RISE ABOVE MOVEMENT

What did you do after you left prison?

Rundo: I left that life behind, simple as that. I had a girlfriend who stuck by me through all of it, which, honestly, I didn’t expect. I started working as a steamfitter in the union—nothing glamorous, but it was honest work. Just the typical grind, you know? But all the while, I kept looking for something more. I had these nationalist feelings.

At one point, I reached out to the only online group I could find. Thought I’d give it a shot, see what it was about. Guy shows up in boots, camo, looking like he’s ready for a combat zone instead of a conversation. And I’m just thinking, this isn’t it. I made an excuse, told him I’d be right back, and just walked away.

A few years later the group Identity Europa started. It was cool, lots of solid people I met, but it was a little too clean cut. It was not what I was looking for, it was better than the guys dressed up in army uniforms and such but at the same time it was very white collar, I guess you would say very suburban but with all the memes and Pepe the frog I didn’t take it too seriously. I was really looking for guys who have an activist culture and were physically fit and didn’t spend countless hours online posting frog pictures.

That’s when I came across a couple of friends that were Eastern European. They showed me some videos, videos showing Roman statues, showing guys boxing, guys at the pub with their girlfriends, something very normal. That got me actually training heavy into boxing, as I ended up taking it really serious because I was emulating all that Eastern European stuff. So we [formed the Rise Above Movement] and did a banner drop off the L.A. freeway and stickers and boxing and working out. I don’t think anything existed close to that in America or even in the Anglosphere in general. The podcasts that were out there were super vulgar but we wanted to be the opposite, to be clean cut, so if you watch our videos there are no words in the videos and none of us did any podcast interviews that would step against the rules except one guy before joining RAM had posted some over the top stuff and that’s what Pro Publica was able to use against us.

We were well liked. I would say we were the only group that when we showed up at those Trump rallies people came up to us and shook our hand and said God Bless you guys for being here. It was different from what you see today. Guys today show up in masks, they don’t interact, if anything they’re confrontational. We were the opposite; we brought flyers, we would speak to normal people, we never came with any flags or anything edgy or arm bands stuff. We were just some All-American guys.

[With RAM] I just wanted to create a vehicle for something positive for young guys like myself . . . I think of myself when I was 16, how different I could have been if I would have been exposed to something more positive. Every project I do whether its working out with guys, music, videos, clothing, I think of myself when I was 16, would this change me away from the ghetto rap culture I was into that was very dangerous and got me a lot of trouble.

SWAT TEAMS AND THE FBI RANSACK RUNDO’S APPARTMENT AND ASSAULT HIM, OSTENSIBLY TO SERVE A SEARCH WARRANT

Glen Allen Comment: Mr. Rundo and other RAM Members participated in two Pro-Trump rallies in California in early 2017, i.e., Huntington Beach (March 25, 2017) and Berkeley (April 15, 2017). At both rallies Rundo was involved in physical altercations with individuals associated with Antifa. Shortly after that, an organization called Pro Publica published an article and then a video that included photographs from those incidents. By omitting key facts such as the violence perpetrated by Antifa, the weapons they had on them, and their role in instigating the altercations, Pro Publica falsely portrayed Rundo and other RAM members as violent domestic terrorists.

FEF’s future articles will describe the Huntington Beach and Berkeley rallies and the Pro Publica article and video in some depth, but this introduction will skip over these topics for now and describe the massive show-of-force service of a search warrant by a SWAT team and FBI agents on Rundo that followed these incidents:

Rundo: Yeah, it was like something straight out of a movie. Crazy—that’s the only way to put it. There were probably ten of them, maybe more. I lived on the first floor, had a big window right over my bed. They didn’t even bother with the door—they came right through the window, right on top of me, while I was lying there.

They blew out the window first, then tossed in two flashbangs. I’m still half-asleep, trying to process what’s happening when they storm in with assault rifles, stepping over me, on my bed. I got dragged out by my feet, a gun pressed to the back of my head. It was terrifying.

At one point, one of the officers pressed the barrel of his gun into my head, forcing my face into the floor. On top of that, they just wrecked the whole apartment—smashed every single window, ripped open bags of coffee, scattered everything. My clothes, my books—everything was taken. I didn’t even have anything radical in my collection, mostly romance books and some books on Roman history. They took those anyway.

So there I am, lying in my boxers, gun to my head, and they drag me out into the living room. The FBI hadn’t shown up yet. First, it was this SWAT team, all dressed up in elbow pads, helmets. They’ve got my hands behind my back, forcing me to crouch down so my head’s almost touching the floor. I look up, and I see them rifling through my cabinets, tossing cereal and coffee on the floor, just destroying everything.

Do you think this 3 a.m. massive force execution of the search warrant was politically motivated?

Rundo: This is how I knew it was political. They take me out front and basically march me around my apartment complex in my boxers for all the neighbors to see. Then the actual FBI guys come in with their jackets with the lettering on their shirts and all this stuff . . . and they’re like “listen can we speak to you about something?” At the time what I thought happened was we had this problem with these journalists from Pro Publica that were really out to harm us and I thought they had done like a swatting on me and said we had guns or something. So I thought [the FBI] were like looking for something that didn’t exist, you know, because I never owned any firearms. I’m from New York. Guns weren’t something I really got into, so I thought they were just coming on some bad tip that we had weapons or something. . . . so I’m like “yeah, what do you have to say?” and he’s like “were you at Huntington Beach?” Now obviously I was at Huntington Beach; my face was front page on the New York Times for being at Huntington Beach. So I say of course I was there and I’m thinking maybe the guy I got into a fight with died or was injured. So he’s like “you got into a fight at Huntington Beach, right?” and I was like “yeah, did the guy die or something?” and he says “no no the guy’s fine, actually we don’t really know who he is.” Basically he let’s me know they were there in connection with the Charlottesville RAM guys cases but because I wasn’t at Charlottesville all they had was a search warrant. It was an intimidation tactic; they were saying we got your boys and we’re doing this to you even though you weren’t there, to send a message to you. At the time of this raid there was only the first indictment for the RAM guys at Charlottesville; the second indictment for the California RAM guys was three or four weeks later.

So they end up letting me go. After they finally told me you’re free to go I was like you’re kidding me. I’m in my boxers so I asked the guy can I get some clothes back or something and they had to go into the truck and pull out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt because they took every piece of clothing I owned.

What did you do next?

Rundo: That spooked me pretty hard. I mean, it was a hell of an experience, and I didn’t want to stick around for round two. I had some friends in Eastern Europe—they had a solid nationalist scene going on. I went to a boxing event there once, and I met this guy, a mentor of sorts. He told me, “Come out here. We’ll help you get settled. We’ll find you a job, figure things out.” So I said, “Alright, I’ll make it happen.” I had some savings from working with the union, so I wasn’t totally broke. I bought a flight, but instead of going direct, I took one with a layover—happened to be in the UK.

So I get to Gatwick just a day after they raided my place. I’ve got nothing with me but a few shirts, a book bag, a new phone, and a one-way ticket. Pulled all my cash out of the bank—I was going to figure the rest out once I was gone.

I board the plane to Gatwick and the minute I step off, it’s like I’ve walked into a setup. There’s this formation of airport security, some kind of Intel team. Right away they stop me and ask for my passport. They signal to each other I’m “the guy” and form a phalanx around me. They march me through the airport in the middle of this phalanx with at least fifteen guys forming a box around me. No one gets near me. No one’s even allowed to look at me.

Glen Allen Comment: Mr. Rundo’s saga is fascinating and important on so many levels that I aspire eventually to compile and expand FEF’s articles about him into a full length book, complete with an appendix that would include, e.g., photographs, Judge Cormac Carney’s opinions (there are two important Judge Carney opinions, one striking down the Anti-Riot Act as unconstitutional and a later one dismissing the Rundo prosecution on selective prosecution grounds; both opinions were overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals), and other interesting and relevant documents.

If you deem this book project a worthy endeavor, all donations to defray its costs will be greatly appreciated.

By Glen Allen Esq.

23andMe is potentially selling more than just genetic data – the personal survey info it collected is just as much a privacy problem

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 07:48:23 -0500

For companies like 23andMe, consumers are as much the product as the DNA test kits. Veronika Oliinyk/iStock via Getty Images Plus

As soon as the genetic testing company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy on March 23, 2025, concerns about what would happen to the personal information contained in its massive genetic and health information database were swift and widespread. A few days after, a U.S. judge ruled that the company could sell its consumer data as part of the bankruptcy.

The attorneys general of several states warned their citizens to delete their genetic data. California urged its citizens to request that 23andMe delete their data and destroy their spit samples. Michigan’s attorney general released a statement warning that “23andMe collects and stores some of the most sensitive personal information, our genetic code.”

When customers originally signed up for 23andMe, they agreed to terms and conditions and a privacy notice that allows the company to use their information for research and development as well as share their data, in aggregate, with third parties. If consumers consented to additional research, which the vast majority did, the company can additionally share their individual information with third parties. 23andMe has also been clear that if it is involved in a bankruptcy or sale of assets, consumer information might be sold or transferred.

While 23andMe has warned customers all along about everything that is currently happening, many are still surprised and concerned.

I’m a lawyer and bioethicist who has been studying direct-to-consumer genetic testing for almost a decade. Understanding what information 23andMe has been collecting, and how it might be used if sold or shared, can help clarify concerns for consumers.

What is 23andMe?

In 2007, 23andMe, named after the 23 pairs of chromosomes found in a human cell, was one of the first direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies to open in the United States. It was backed by a large investment by Google, which quickly attracted the interest of other investors, allowing 23andMe to thrive when many other direct-to-consumer genetic companies went quickly out of business.

The direct-to-consumer business model is fairly straightforward: A consumer orders a genetic test kit online, spits into a tube that comes in the mail, returns it to the company and accesses their results in an online portal. Over 15 million consumers bought 23andMe, and the vast majority consented to its research. At its peak, the company was valued at US$6 billion.

The fate of the trove of personal information 23andMe has gathered over the years has wide-ranging implications for consumers.

While the market initially believed in the value of 23andMe’s business model, its stock has been in decline for years, and the company owes hundreds of millions of dollars to creditors.

Reasons for this rapid decline include a decrease in the sale of test kits after a 2023 hack of almost 7 million people’s data, as well as a failure to profit enough from providing data access to other private sector companies. Lack of private interest in 23andMe data may be related to the fact that much of the information the company collects is self-reported, which is often considered less reliable than information written down by a doctor in a medical record.

What kind of data does 23andMe collect?

While the saying goes “If you’re not paying, you’re the product,” 23andMe managed to convince its consumers to both pay for AND be the product. It did this by selling genetic testing kits to consumers as well as collecting a massive amount of their valuable data.

And 23andMe collected more than just genetic data generated from consumers’ spit. Eighty-five percent of customers consented to 23andMe research, allowing their individual-level data to be used for studies. The company then collected information from survey questions about their personal health and beyond, such as drinking habits and risk tolerance.

This means that not only does 23andMe possess the genetic data of 15 million people, but it also possesses almost a billion additional data points associated with this genetic information. This makes the 23andMe dataset potentially very private – and very valuable.

At first, drug companies seemed to agree. For example, in 2018, 23andMe granted pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline an exclusive license to use consented customer data to develop new drugs. GlaxoSmithKline also made a $300 million equity investment in 23andMe. When 23andMe went public in 2021, its $6 billion valuation reflected the promise of this business model.

But for over a decade, scholars, including me, have been warning that allowing 23andMe to collect and use personal data was not one that customers fully understood, or were actually comfortable with.

What should 23andMe customers worry about?

In response to current public concern about data privacy, 23andMe has stated that there will be no changes to how it stores and protects data during its bankruptcy proceedings. But once that stage is through, what exactly should customers worry about?

First, law enforcement could use genetic information in civil or criminal cases. This happened in 2018, when police used the genetic testing company GEDmatch to help identify the Golden State Killer. Police pretended they were customers looking for genealogy data and sent in an old crime scene blood spot. This allowed them to connect to known suspects with blood relatives who had given their genetic information to the company as consumers. While this was in violation of GEDmatch’s own policies, the evidence was successfully used in court.

Second, genetic information could be used to discriminate against customers if it shows that they have or are at high risk of developing a genetic disease or disorder. The federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act prohibits health insurers and employers from asking about genetic information or using it to discriminate in work or health insurance decisions. It does not, however, protect against discrimination in long-term care or life insurance.

Giving someone your genetic, medical and personal information gives them opportunities to exploit you. Westend61/Getty Images

Many of the warnings from the media and attorneys general are focused on genetic information because it is unique to only one person. But direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies also retain a massive amount of personal information from the surveys consumers are asked to complete. Much of this information could be embarrassing if it were inadvertently or intentionally revealed, such as a person’s intelligence.

In the 2025 book “Careless People,” former Meta executive Sarah Wynn-Williams reported that Facebook would use indications of self-consciousness about personal appearance, such as deleting a selfie, to promote beauty products. If companies know such intimate details about a person, they could not only be used to sell products, but also potentially manipulate them over social media or the internet in ways they do not even realize. It could be used for targeted advertising or to build algorithms that exploit a person’s vulnerabilities.

I believe consumers are right to be worried about how their genetic data could be misused. But the survey data containing all sorts of other personal information are at least as much, if not more, of a privacy problem. This is particularly concerning if the data is pooled together with other information available on the internet, like a dating profile, to create a more detailed – and personal – picture of an individual.

I am deleting my own 23andMe data. In the future, I would also warn consumers against freely gifting the private sector with information about their fears, hopes, limitations and successes.

That information is valuable to more people than just you.

Kayte Spector-Bagdady receives funding from the National Center for Advancing Transnational Sciences and the Greenwall Foundation.

David French And The Never-Trump Faction Don’t Care About Free Speech At All

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 06:20:25 -0500

If you think America is just an idea, then you’ll gladly sacrifice the rights of Americans for the ‘rights’ of foreigners.

New German Government Wants to Ban ‘Lies’

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 11:01:50 -0500

The new German government coalition, which is likely to be the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) is looking to ban “lies,” according to a working paper that emerged from the group “culture and media” between the two parties.

Bild newspaper received a copy of the working paper, which outlines the goal of combating “fake” news on social media, including restrictions on it.

The paper from the CDU and SPD indicates that “disinformation and fake news” threaten democracy.

In fact, the paper argues that freedom of expression does not apply in such circumstances.

Bild contacted a number of constitutional lawyers, and they are highly skeptical of the law.

“Lies are only prohibited if they are punishable, for example in the case of sedition. Otherwise, you can lie,” said Volker Boehme-Neßler, a professor at the University of Oldenburg.

Even determining a lie is a legal complexity.

“It is not an easy question of what a factual claim and what an expression of opinion is. Most courts interpret freedom of expression very broadly,” he added.

He also took aim at a specific part of the working paper, which addresses “hate and agitation.”

He said, “‘hate and agitation’ — these are ‘no legal terms.” He added, “Basically, the spread of hatred in Germany is protected by freedom of expression. An assertion like ‘I hate all politicians,’ does not yet constitute a criminal offense.”

Another law professor from the University of Augsburg, Josef Franz Lindner, said that the “deliberate spreading of false facts is not punishable, not illegal.”

He said that if the new government moves forward with a law against “fake news,” it would represent a grave threat to freedom of speech.

He said he can only warn against a “fake news” offense being created, saying “Ultimately, it would expose any controversial statement to the risk of criminal prosecution.”

It is also worth noting that Friedrich Merz himself, who is likely to be Germany’s next chancellor, openly lied when he said that his party would support an end to the debt brake. Almost immediately after the election, he said the debt brake would be lifted, and that Germany would take on historic amounts of debt.

Lawyer Joachim Steinhöfel, who has a broad range of clients related to internet censorship, says the CDU and SPD’s goal with the new paper is to “intimidate the unpopular social media” content producers. He said that such censorship already lacks a “constitutional basis.”

The post New German Government Wants to Ban ‘Lies’ appeared first on American Renaissance.

What users need to know about privacy and data after 23andMe’s bankruptcy filing

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 13:59:58 -0500

News of 23andMe's bankruptcy has reignited concerns about data privacy, particularly what happens to customers’ personal and genetic information. (Shutterstock)

23andMe, one of the first companies to provide direct-to-consumer genetic testing kits, has filed for bankruptcy. Since its founding in 2006, it has sold over 12 million DNA kits, with high-profile users including Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffett.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 23 under the United States Bankruptcy Code. This means 23andMe — now considered a debtor-in-possession — will start restructuring its finances and operations under court supervision.

Despite the bankruptcy filing, 23andMe said it’s not shutting down. Having secured US$35 million in financing for the restructure, 23andMe has stated in an open letter that it will continue operating. Customers still have full access to their accounts, reports and data.

News of the bankruptcy has reignited concerns about data privacy, particularly what happens to customers’ personal and genetic information. Considering 23andMe’s past challenges and controversies, these concerns are understandable.

In 2023, hackers exploited old passwords to gain access to the personal information of 6.9 million people. While 23andMe said no genetic data was compromised, information like family trees, birth years and geographic locations were. Some of the stolen data was later put up for sale on a hacking forum.

In addition to the breach and resulting legal suits, the company has been in financial trouble since 2021. In 2024, 23andMe laid off 40 per cent of its workforce and saw all its independent directors resign unanimously in response to CEO Anne Wojcicki’s decision to take the company private. Wojcicki has since stepped down.

Data as assets

A key concern now is what will happen to customer data during the bankruptcy process. The possibility of new ownership has some customers concerned about how their sensitive genetic information will be handled in the future.

23andMe’s privacy policies say the following:

“If we are involved in a bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of assets, your Personal Information may be accessed, sold or transferred as part of that transaction and this Privacy Statement will apply to your Personal Information as transferred to the new entity.”

This means 23andMe could technically sell customer information as part and parcel of the company to ensure competitive bids. This information includes both individual-level data, such as genotypes, diseases and traits, as well as de-identified data that doesn’t include names or addresses.

23andMe is one of the first companies to provide direct-to-consumer genetic testing kits. (Shutterstock)

The company could also expand licensing agreements with pharmaceutical companies, which would allow them to use customer information for research. For instance, 23andMe’s “discovery collaboration” with GlaxoSmithKline allows consumer data to be used for research on novel drugs.

23andMe has stated customer data will remain protected during the bankruptcy process, since any buyer “will be required to comply with applicable law with respect to treatment of customer data.”

It is also important to note, however, that 23andMe may emerge successful from its restructuring. Filing for bankruptcy doesn’t mean a company will necessarily cease to operate. Many companies, including rental car company Hertz, General Motors and Red Lobster, all filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy but eventually recovered and continued business operations. 23andMe could follow a similar path.

How privacy laws affect consumer data

In commercial spheres, an individual’s genetic information is treated the same as their personal information under privacy laws. The extent to which customers should be concerned also depends on where they are located.

For instance, the European Union and United Kingdom’s General Data Protection Regulation will provide additional protections to customers.

Customers in Canada have some protection under the Personal Information and Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), as they are legally permitted to withdraw consent to the use of their personal information so long as they provide reasonable notice. However, this may still be limited by legal or contractual agreements.

A 23andMe user’s ancestry results are displayed beside a saliva collection kit in Wilmington, Del. in 2018. (Shutterstock)

In the U.S., however, the situation is much more complicated as there continues to be a lack of a harmonized legal approach to consumer privacy. Some U.S. states have enacted laws to better protect consumer privacy, like California’s Consumer Privacy Act and the Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act.

However, U.S. federal legislation like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA, doesn’t apply because 23andMe isn’t classified as a health-care agency or an associate of a health-care organization.

What should consumers do?

There are numerous uncertainties surrounding the situation, like whether or not 23andMe will eventually cease to operate and who it might sell to. Additionally, regardless of whether or not 23andMe is sold, its privacy policies can change anytime.

In light of these uncertainties, concerned customers should err on the side of caution and delete their accounts. It is, however, important to note that 23andMe and its laboratory partners may still retain some consumers’ personal and genetic information, even after accounts are deleted.

Concerned customers should make sure to withdraw their consent and request the deletion of both their individual-level and de-identifed data from the database. California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta and Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim have also given this advice.

The anxiety and concern surrounding 23andMe’s future is an indicator that a harmonized and effective framework is needed to regulate consumer privacy.

As legal scholars Sara Gerke, Melissa B. Jacoby and I. Glenn Cohen aptly stated in their recent research article, “a legal system that relies heavily on privacy statements to protect customer data leaves customers vulnerable to unexpected uses of their data, with limited remedies.”

Without clear regulations, consumers are forced to rely on the word of companies. With genetic data at stake, it’s imperative that policymakers take action to protect consumer privacy in the face of uncertainty.

Aileen Editha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

‘Adolescence’ and the Invented Racial Enemy

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 12:10:23 -0500

Credit: It’s All Made Up Productions / Plan B Entertainment / Warp Films / Album

Everything is political under mass democracy. In a large, diverse democracy, perhaps everything becomes anti-white. This seems especially true in the media, and perhaps no country’s press is quite as hysterical as the United Kingdom’s. Currently, what right-wingers despairingly call the “Yookay” is undergoing a full-scale media, cultural, and political panic over a story they invented for the TV series Adolescence. At the same time, the political class ignores the actual problems they have imported.

British “soft power” was once supported by its unparalleled cultural legacy, but much like the government’s public policy, it seems that even “apolitical” British culture has become openly anti-white. For example, Doctor Who is one of the most famous exports of British popular culture. Today, the show has a political mission. In 2016, white actor Steven Moffat said the show needed more diversity, not just for outreach, but as a kind of social duty. This included putting black characters in historic settings where none existed.

The actor argued that this was a Noble Lie. “We’ve kind of got to tell a lie,” he said. “We’ll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn’t have been, and we won’t dwell on that. We’ll say, ‘To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we’ll summon it forth.’”

The modern UK does not seem “better” than what existed before, unless one has a truly powerful imagination. Yet this Tinkerbell version of public policy, where racial harmony is achieved if one just claps hard enough, has a powerful appeal in a mass democracy, especially one with a media-dominated culture like that of the United Kingdom.

Unlike young people in many European countries (and even in the United States), British youth are not turning to the Right. It is more comforting to believe social problems can be solved by properly managing the media, rather than admitting some conflicts are existential and ineradicable. Even moderate liberals cannot admit racial realities without calling into question the entire postwar Western order.

It is therefore not surprising that enforcing narrative control is an important purpose of many “entertainment” programs today. The central premise of progressivism is that man is perfectible; it is just a matter of finding the right management techniques. In the information age, this has led to liberal democracies embracing censorship, deplatforming, and prosecutions to prevent “hate.” If the virtual world can be managed effectively, real-world problems will not occur.

For example, if blacks do not perform well in school, the explanation is not genetic differences but “stereotyping.” Therefore, if blacks get more positive portrayals in media, they will perform better. In the real world, such thinking is fanciful.

However, those in power have not changed their minds. In a liberal democracy, the ultimate power is media power, because media shape public opinion. Social media and the internet have made it harder for elites to push a unified message on the masses. Naturally, elites want to stop this. Nothing can ever be truly “apolitical” in a democracy.

The German philosopher Carl Schmitt wrote in The Concept of the Political (1932):

The equation state = politics becomes erroneous and deceptive at exactly the moment when state and society penetrate each other. What had been up to that point affairs of state become thereby social matters, and, vice versa, what had been purely social matters become affairs of state — as must necessarily occur in a democratically organized unit. Heretofore ostensibly neutral domains — religion, culture, education, the economy — then cease to be neutral in the sense that they do not pertain to state and to politics. As a polemical concept against such neutralizations and depoliticalizations of important domains appears the total state, which potentially embraces every domain. This results in the identity of state and society. In such a state, therefore, everything is at least potentially political, and in referring to the state it is no longer possible to assert for it a specifically political characteristic.

In his excellent book The Total State (2024), political columnist Auron MacIntyre argues that this is precisely what is happening to the United States. However, it is not just a structural flaw of democracy. The racial diversity that those who rule the West have imported means that citizens have less in common. Most Western countries today do not even have a common culture. Our rulers implicitly admit this when, instead of using phrases such as “my fellow citizens,” they appeal to “our communities” — mutually exclusive tribes that must be carefully managed in a multicultural powder keg.

Google chart showing rise of instances of the “our communities” phrase in US (January 2004 – February 2025)

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns recently admitted as much. “We live in the best country in the world, but people come to Australia from all different races and religions, different countries, different cultures, because they want to live together in peace and harmony,” he said at a March 18 news conference. “You have to take steps to protect that. There can’t just be a willy-nilly, race to the bottom where civic society turns a blind eye and says ‘freedom of speech, people can say what they want.’ That’s not the case in New South Wales. We don’t have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the United States, and the reason is that we love the country that we’ve got here and we’re going to take steps to protect what’s been built up over decades.”

If the White Australia policy had been kept in place to protect what had been built up over a century, Australians would still have what was once considered the most essential freedom of all. The same is true of the United Kingdom and Europe, where free speech has long since died. Vice President JD Vance pointed this out. Yet even this understates the threat. Multiracial societies must be united by something, and the best way of uniting a group is through a common enemy, and it is the white man who finds himself Public Enemy Number One in his own country, with racism blamed for any conceivable social problems Non-whites, regardless of their shameful behavior, remain victims.

Sam Francis memorably coined “anarcho-tyranny” to describe the increasing state repression of the (mostly white) law-abiding citizens and indulgence of non-white criminals. Lawrence Auster on his View from the Right blog defined what he called the First Law of Majority-Minority Relations: “The worse any designated minority or alien group behaves in a liberal society, the bigger become the lies of Political Correctness in covering up for that group.” Auster also framed the “first corollary” of the First Law. “The more egregiously any non-Western or non-white group behaves, the more evil whites are made to appear for noticing and drawing rational conclusions about that group’s bad behavior.”

By ignoring actual social dysfunction and cracking down on the law-abiding, the political class increases its own power, creating more problems for intrusive government to manage. It also establishes its moral claim to leadership. Politicians pose as defenders of democracy against racists, extremists, and fascists.

September 1, 2022: Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech on the battle for the Soul of the Nation, mentioning Donald Trump, ”MAGA Republicans,” and democracy. (Credit Image: © Kyle Mazza/TheNEWS2 via ZUMA Press Wire)

The problem is that this denies reality and can be taken only so far. Even many non-whites do not want to live in crime-ridden squalor. Leftists in America are still reeling from the non-white shift toward Republicans in 2024. Yet white advocates should not assume that reality always wins in the end. Mass media allow elites to invent an alternate reality that is more emotionally compelling than the real thing. Even when people know at some level they are watching a television show or movie, the emotional responses are real, and can sometimes be even more engrossing than what they experience in real life.

If a show or film is of sufficient quality, and plays upon long-established assumptions of the audience (such as the perceived moral superiority of anti-racism), it can feel “real” to the audience. Films such as Roots, Schindler’s List, and Glory have shifted public debate about race in the United States toward the political Left. In an earlier era, Birth of a Nation had such a big impact that some credit it with fueling the growth of the second-era Ku Klux Klan.

Yet these and other films at least covered events that were based in history, even if details are exaggerated for dramatic effect or skewed for political purposes. One cannot deny that black slavery was real, even if no slave was whipped for not calling himself “Toby.” However, could a regime invent a case and use it as “proof” to push repressive legislation? Could it even reverse who is considered the stereotypical victim and oppressor in the public mind? If democracies could do such a thing, it would mean they could essentially dictate policy outcomes from the top down, regardless of the facts.

Such an experiment seems to be underway in the United Kingdom with the television series Adolescence. It focuses on a 13-year-old white boy from an intact family who kills a female classmate because he has been “radicalized” by the internet. The reaction from the British press and government is extraordinary, with reporters and politicians arguing quite seriously that the show must be integrated into school curricula and that social media must be even more heavily regulated to prevent “radicalization.” Such figures seem especially to hate Andrew Tate, who is attacked by name in the show.

Progressives have long mocked religious conservatives who, in a moral panic, supposedly tell parents to prevent their children from indulging in entertainment such as Dungeons & Dragons or violent rap. Yet the message of Adolescence is clear: Parents can never let their guard down, even for a moment. Though the protagonist has a loving family, pro-masculinity influencers corrupt him while he is in his room with the door closed. The same people who would laugh at conservative Christians demanding parents throw out their children’s rap albums seem deeply concerned their teenage boy could be watching the wrong clips on TikTok.

The reaction from the press is nothing short of rapturous. State media BBC said it is being hailed as “flawless” TV. Tom Peck at The Times said it was “perfect.” Lucy Mangan at The Guardian was more restrained, calling it merely “close” to perfection. Jake Kanter at Deadline calls it “flawless.” Even Jeremy Clarkson, who has sometimes been put forward as a potential British populist champion because of his opposition to the Labour government’s agricultural policies, called it “masterful.”

One might dismiss this as marketing, except government officials seem to be taking it as a kind of documentary and a call to action. Parliament reportedly invited the writers to discuss the themes of the show with MPs. Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants it shown in schools. A female member of parliament said it shows the danger of “online male radicalization” and asks for more government control over social media. Schools should seek to teach young men about “healthy relationships,” supposedly to counter Andrew Tate’s influence. One wonders whether schools with non-white or Islamic student bodies will bother, or whether this will apply only to British children.

Adolescence—the new @Netflix show by Knowsley’s own Stephen Graham & Christine Tremarco—sheds light on online male radicalisation & violence against girls.

I’m pleased that the PM has backed calls by the creators to screen the show in Parliament & schools to help counter toxic… pic.twitter.com/iwpEuh5W39

— Anneliese Midgley MP (@anneliese_midge) March 19, 2025

However, an objective analysis shows that more young women are being “radicalized” by social media than young men. This shift to extremist feminism and progressivism serves the interests of media, academia, and most governments. Therefore, it is not a threat.

The extra layer of irony here of course being that it’s girls mostly being poisoned by social media not men https://t.co/cBsK20f7Tb pic.twitter.com/nUQ3XNnftH

— Adam Wren (@G0ADM) March 23, 2025

In fact, the moral panic over Adolescence suggests that critics are right that social media can brainwash people, but they are worried about the wrong people. It is the liberal elites and the Great and the Good who are having a hard time distinguishing fantasy from reality.

Can you highlight how something happens when it hasn’t really happened? Or does she mean “could, theoretically”, rather than “can”? pic.twitter.com/ufeas7liWC

— MrHobbes (@VintageMrHobbes) March 23, 2025

#Adolescence has brought attention to the manosphere and radicalised teen boys. What should be done about it though? There are two schools of thought and IMO one of them gets it wrong

— Martha Gill (@Martha_Gill) March 23, 2025

South Africa President Says Persecution of Whites a ‘False Narrative’ as Musk Repeats Genocide Claim appeared first on American Renaissance.

Éric Zemmour Fined €9,000 for Inciting Racial Hatred Following Anti-White Crépol Stabbing

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 20:01:54 -0500

French nationalist and former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour was sentenced on Wednesday by the Paris Criminal Court to a fine of €9,000 for inciting racial hatred, following inflammatory comments made in the aftermath of the racially aggravated Crepol stabbing, where he portrayed France as divided between “two peoples.”

The sentence, amounting to 60 daily fines of €150, may result in incarceration if unpaid.

The court found that Zemmour’s remarks — made during a televised appearance on RMC and BFMTV on Nov. 30, 2023 — constituted serious racial insults and hate speech delivered at a highly sensitive moment of national tension.

Zemmour, president of the right-wing Reconquest party, had referred to the fatal stabbing of Thomas, a 16-year-old White high school student, by a group of Black youths as symbolic of a broader conflict in French society.

“We have, today, a situation where we have two peoples, two Frances, two youths — that of Thomas, that of Chahid,” he said. He further described Arab-Muslim individuals as “scum” responsible for “dozens of deaths,” while dismissing concerns about protests from nationalist groups in the aftermath of the attack as a “media smokescreen.”

His comments were reported by self-proclaimed anti-racism groups, including SOS Racisme, the Interministerial Delegate for the Fight against Racism, Anti-Semitism and Anti-LGBT Hatred (Dilcrah), two MPs from the leftist France Insoumise (LFI), and a private citizen.

Zemmour defended his statements as an exercise of free speech and denied any racist intent.

The court, however, strongly condemned his language, noting that Zemmour “designates as murderers” individuals of Arab and Muslim origin “based solely on their names” and perpetuates a narrative that pits one part of France against another.

“Such discourse further aggravates dissension and sharpens resentment,” the judges wrote, especially at a time when tensions were high and fears of violence were mounting.

In its ruling, the court stated that Zemmour engaged in “gross generalization,” contrasting the idealized image of White French youth with a caricatured portrayal of minority groups as predatory and violent.

Taking to social media following the verdict, Zemmour wrote, “The justice system has decided to condemn me because I said, ‘It’s always the Thomases who fall, and it’s always the Chahids who kill them.’

“Of course, I will appeal because it is unacceptable that the truth is so muzzled in our country. This judgment is highly symbolic, especially the week we learned that Thomas died because his killers considered him a “dirty gwer,” a dirty “White” in Arabic.

“Anti-white racism kills, but in France, it is those who fight it who are punished by justice,” he added.

Last week, Marie-Hélène Thoraval, the mayor of Romans-sur-Isère from where the attackers resided, strongly criticized a newly published book on the attack, accusing its authors of distorting the truth and downplaying the racial and social tensions at the heart of the tragedy.

The book, written by investigative journalists Jean-Michel Décugis, Pauline Guéna, and Marc Leplongeon, claimed the attack was “seized upon” by “fascists” and questioned the racial undertones that many — including the victims’ families — believe were central to the crime.

“Denying the existence of anti-White racism is absurd. Racism cannot only go one way,” she told Valeurs Actuelles. “Imagine if the situation were reversed, if youths from Crépol had attacked a party in La Monnaie. Anti-racist organizations would have immediately taken up the case, and this tragedy would never have been dismissed as a simple fight.”

The post Éric Zemmour Fined €9,000 for Inciting Racial Hatred Following Anti-White Crépol Stabbing appeared first on American Renaissance.

Americans more likely to support than oppose continuing federal funding for NPR and PBS

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 11:20:56 -0500

Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to support ending federal funding for public media.

The post Americans more likely to support than oppose continuing federal funding for NPR and PBS appeared first on Pew Research Center.

67,000 White South Africans Express Interest in Trump’s Plan to Give Them Refugee Status

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 16:44:27 -0500

The United States Embassy in South Africa said Thursday it received a list of more than 67,000 people interested in refugee status in the U.S. under President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate members of a white minority group he claims are victims of racial discrimination by their Black-led government.

The list was given to the embassy by the South African Chamber of Commerce in the U.S., which said it became a point of contact for white South Africans asking about the program announced by the Trump administration last month. {snip}

{snip}

Trump’s executive order specifically referred to Afrikaners, a white minority group who are descendants of mainly Dutch and French colonial settlers who first came to South Africa in the 17th century. The order directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to prioritize humanitarian relief to Afrikaners who are victims of “unjust racial discrimination” and resettle them in the U.S. under the refugee program.

There are approximately 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa, which has a population of 62 million. {snip}

{snip}

Neil Diamond, the president of the chamber, said the list contains 67,042 names. Most were people between 25 and 45 years old and have children.

He told the Newzroom Afrika television channel that his organization had been inundated with requests for more information since Trump’s order {snip}

{snip}

The post 67,000 White South Africans Express Interest in Trump’s Plan to Give Them Refugee Status appeared first on American Renaissance.

Local French Mayor Slams New Book ‘Distorting Reality’ of Anti-White Crépol Murder

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 11:00:05 -0500

The mayor of Romans-sur-Isère, Marie-Hélène Thoraval, has strongly criticized a newly published book on the Crépol attack, accusing its authors of distorting the truth and downplaying the racial and social tensions at the heart of the tragedy.

The book, written by investigative journalists Jean-Michel Décugis, Pauline Guéna, and Marc Leplongeon, seeks to reframe the Nov. 18, 2023, attack in Crépol as a politically exploited “news item” rather than a racially-motivated crime.

The attack, which resulted in the death of a White teenager named Thomas and serious injuries to three others, was carried out by a group of Black youths outside a village dance. Witnesses reported that one of the attackers declared, “We are here to stab White people.” However, the book claims the incident was “seized upon” by “fascists” and questions the racial undertones that many — including the victims’ families — believe were central to the crime.

Speaking to Valeurs Actuelles, Mayor Thoraval accused the authors of rewriting history and ignoring the stark reality of the social divide in France.

“They are trying to downplay the Crépol attack by presenting a watered-down, even distorted, version of reality. It is a dramatic provocation aimed at the families,” she said.

She further warned of “religious communitarianism” eroding the country, pointing to the neighborhood of La Monnaie in Romans-sur-Isère, where the attackers were from.

“Forty years ago, it was a working-class neighborhood. Today, it has become a community enclave, welcoming an uninterrupted flow of immigration. In these neighborhoods, the rules and customs in place are no longer those of the Republic. Lawless zones are being established, where the law of religion and drug trafficking prevails.”

One of the controversies reignited by the book is the absence of a police report mentioning anti-White racism as a possible motive for the attack. The mayor recalled a meeting between then-Minister Olivier Véran and the victims’ families, during which they unanimously testified that the attackers had shouted openly racist and anti-French insults.

“Denying the existence of anti-White racism is absurd. Racism cannot only go one way. Imagine if the situation were reversed, if youths from Crépol had attacked a party in La Monnaie. Anti-racist organizations would have immediately taken up the case, and this tragedy would never have been dismissed as a simple fight.”

Thoraval firmly rejected the notion that the attack was a random act of violence, calling it a premeditated assault.

“Crépol wasn’t a brawl or a fight. It was an attack and a punitive expedition. The youths at La Monnaie weren’t ‘equipped’ with knives, as I’ve read or heard. They were armed with knives. To claim otherwise is to perpetuate an unbearable culture of excuses.”

Over a year after the attack, Thomas’s family and the residents of Crépol remain deeply affected. Many are still struggling with legal fees and are frustrated by the slow pace of justice.

“They come across videos showing one of the arrested attackers partying in prison. No one talks about it, and they suffer in silence. Their lives have been turned upside down. An entire village will remain traumatized,” she said.

“Their anger is disturbing [for the elites] because it forces political leaders to acknowledge that their migration and integration policies have failed utterly. The families of Crépol still carry the energy of anger within them. But they are bruised, wounded. They have been given life sentences.”

Thoraval revealed she is still in regular contact with Thomas’ family who remain determined to fight for justice.

The post Local French Mayor Slams New Book ‘Distorting Reality’ of Anti-White Crépol Murder appeared first on American Renaissance.

Jailed for Telling the Truth

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 15:52:20 -0500

Jared Taylor and Paul Kersey are surprised to learn that in Sweden, the truth is no defense. They also discuss Severus Snape, CPB Home, British insanity, and the Montgomery bus station.

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Polish Sejm Passes Censorship Law

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 11:34:31 -0500

• On March 6, the Polish Sejm passed a new law that criminalizes so-called hate speech.

• The adoption of this law could significantly limit freedom of speech in Poland and grant special privileges to arbitrarily selected social groups—similar to measures in some Western European countries, such as the United Kingdom.

• The Ordo Iuris Institute opposed the bill from the outset, publishing analyses and submitting an opinion to the government urging its rejection.

• Now, Ordo Iuris will appeal to the President of Poland to veto the law.

Ordo Iuris argues that this new law, passed as an amendment to the Penal Code, threatens the right to express opinions, as guaranteed by Article 54(1) of the Polish Constitution. Furthermore, expanding the list of “protected characteristics” to include “sexual orientation” and gender (“gender identity”) could—based on the experience of Western countries—lead to an increasing number of restrictions over time on expressing opposition to LGBT demands and the imposition of their views on gender issues.

The Ordo Iuris Institute emphasizes that the selection of these protected characteristics is arbitrary and unjustified, and it excludes many other traits that could also be grounds for unfavorable (“hateful”) treatment. Poland’s Supreme Court already noted in 2014 that adding a few significant discrimination grounds to the existing provisions does not cover all possible discriminatory criteria, ignoring equally important ones such as mental illness, AIDS, addiction to alcohol or drugs, obesity, and homelessness.

Ordo Iuris’ concerns are shared by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a leading organization that defends fundamental freedoms and human dignity before national and international institutions. ADF has submitted its own opinion on the bill.

It highlights that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has repeatedly stated that freedom of expression holds “particular importance” and that states have a positive obligation to create conditions that allow citizens to participate in public debate and express their opinions without fear. Consequently, international and European law protects not only inoffensive speech but also speech that may disturb, shock, provoke, offend, or cause dissatisfaction.

However, as ADF points out, freedom of expression is not absolute: it can be justifiably restricted in certain situations. Yet, such restrictions must remain an exception, be narrowly interpreted, strictly defined, proportionate, and lawful, and they must pursue a clear objective and be implemented only when the intended goal cannot be achieved through less restrictive means.

In ADF’s assessment, the Polish government’s bill on hate speech did not meet these criteria and should not have been voted into law. ADF also notes that the UN General Comment No. 34 states that restrictions on freedom of expression should be interpreted narrowly rather than broadly. Additionally, the UN Rabat Plan of Action specifies that there must be a “direct causal link” between speech and actual harm. In contrast, the proposed law allows for imprisonment without the need to prove that a protected characteristic (e.g., “sexual orientation”) was the reason for the alleged crime.

ADF concludes that the bill is inconsistent with international human rights standards on freedom of expression and constitutes an unjustified restriction on this right, as it does not meet the conditions for a proportionate limitation of free speech.

{snip}

However, in the event of a presidential veto, Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition does not have the necessary three-fifths majority in the Sejm to override it.

The post Polish Sejm Passes Censorship Law appeared first on American Renaissance.

Trump Invites South African Farmers to US

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 15:03:49 -0600

President Donald Trump swiped at “terrible” South Africa, said he was stopping all federal funding for the country, and invited its farmers to seek citizenship in the U.S. in a post on his Truth Social platform Friday morning.

“South Africa is being terrible, plus, to long time Farmers in the country. They are confiscating their LAND and FARMS, and MUCH WORSE THAN THAT,” Trump wrote.

“A bad place to be right now, and we are stopping all Federal Funding. To go a step further, any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship. This process will begin immediately!”

Newsweek has emailed the South African embassy in the U.S. for comment.

{snip}

Trump’s remarks come amid ongoing tensions over South Africa’s Expropriation Act, signed into law in January by President Cyril Ramaphosa of the ruling ANC party.

The legislation aims to address land ownership disparities rooted in the country’s apartheid past by allowing land expropriation in the public interest.

While the law permits expropriation without compensation under specific circumstances, the South African government insists that private property rights remain protected.

Trump’s stance aligns with concerns raised by some conservative groups in the U.S. and South Africa’s white minority, particularly Afrikaaner farmers, who argue that the law unfairly targets them.

They have also highlighted incidents of violence, sometimes deadly, against farmers in South Africa.

{snip}

Trump’s promise to cut all federal funding to South Africa follows an executive order he signed in February freezing assistance to the country in response to the Expropriation Act. He views the law as a rights violation against a white minority, the Afrikaaners.

{snip}

Ramaphosa slammed a visit to the White House in late February by a lobby group for the country’s Afrikaaner community. A small delegation of leaders from AfriForum and its affiliates visited Washington to meet with White House officials after Trump’s order.

{snip}

The post Trump Invites South African Farmers to US appeared first on American Renaissance.

Mandatory Year in the Pokey for a Stiff-Armed Salute

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 19:00:17 -0600

Jared Taylor and Paul Kersey are amazed by Australia’s new “hate-crime” laws. They also discuss Wilfred Riley, Karla Gascón, Twerkus Africanus, and Vivek Ramaswamy.

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The post Mandatory Year in the Pokey for a Stiff-Armed Salute appeared first on American Renaissance.

How the risk of AI weapons could spiral out of control

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 08:23:18 -0600

marina.rodrigues/Shutterstock

Sometimes AI isn’t as clever as we think it is. Researchers training an algorithm to identify skin cancer thought they had succeeded until they discovered that it was using the presence of a ruler to help it make predictions. Specifically, their data set consisted of images where a pathologist had put in a ruler to measure the size of malignant lesions.

It extended this logic for predicting malignancies to all images beyond the data set, consequently identifying benign tissue as malignant if a ruler was in the image.

The problem here is not that the AI algorithm made a mistake. Rather, the concern stems from how the AI “thinks”. No human pathologist would arrive at this conclusion.

These cases of flawed “reasoning” abound – from HR algorithms that prefer to hire men because the data set is skewed in their favour to propagating racial disparities in medical treatment. Now that they know about these problems, researchers are scrambling to address them.

Recently, Google decided to end its longstanding ban on developing AI weapons. This potentially encompasses the use of AI to develop arms, as well as AI in surveillance and weapons that could be deployed autonomously on the battlefield. The decision came days after parent company Alphabet experienced a 6% drop in its share price.

This is not Google’s first foray into murky waters. It worked with the US Department of Defense on the use of its AI technology for Project Maven, which involved object recognition for drones.

When news of this contract became public in 2018, it sparked backlash from employees who did not want the technology they developed to be used in wars. Ultimately, Google did not renew its contract, which was picked up by rival Palantir instead.

The speed with which Google’s contract was renewed by a competitor led some to note the inevitability of these developments, and that it was perhaps better to be on the inside to shape the future.

Such arguments, of course, presume that firms and researchers will be able to shape the future as they want to. But previous research has shown that this assumption is flawed for at least three reasons.

The confidence trap

First, human beings are susceptible to falling into what is known as a “confidence trap”. I have researched this phenomenon, whereby people assume that since previous risk-taking paid off, taking more risks in the future is warranted.

In the context of AI, this may mean incrementally extending the use of an algorithm beyond its training data set. For example, a driverless car may be used on a route has not been covered in its training.

This can throw up problems. There is now an abundance of data that driverless car AI can draw on, and yet mistakes still occur. Accidents like the Tesla car that drove into a £2.75 million jet when summoned by its owner in an unfamiliar setting, can still happen. For AI weapons, there isn’t even much data to begin with.

Second, AI can reason in ways that are alien to human understanding. This has led to the paperclip thought experiment, where AI is asked to produce as many paper clips as possible. It does so while consuming all resources – including those necessary for human survival.

Of course, this seems trivial. After all, humans can lay out ethical guidelines. But the problem lies in being unable to anticipate how an AI algorithm might achieve what humans have asked of it and thus losing control. This might even include “cheating.” In a recent experiment, AI cheated to win chess games by modifying system files denoting positions of chess pieces, in effect enabling it to make illegal moves.

But society may be willing to accept mistakes, as with civilian casualties caused by drone strikes directed by humans. This tendency is something known as the “banality of extremes” – humans normalise even the more extreme instances of evil as a cognitive mechanism to cope. The “alienness” of AI reasoning may simply provide more cover for doing so.

Third, firms like Google that are associated with developing these weapons might be too big to fail. As a consequence, even when there are clear instances of AI going wrong, they are unlikely to be held responsible. This lack of accountability creates a hazard as it disincentivises learning and corrective actions.

The “cosying up” of tech executives with US president Donald Trump only exacerbates the problem as it further dilutes accountability.

Tech moguls like Elon Musk cosying up to the US president dilutes accountability. Joshua Sukoff/Shutterstock

Rather than joining the race towards the development of AI weaponry, an alternative approach would be to work on a comprehensive ban on it’s development and use.

Although this might seem unachievable, consider the threat of the hole in the ozone layer. This brought rapid unified action in the form of banning the CFCs that caused it. In fact, it took only two years for governments to agree on a global ban on the chemicals. This stands as a testament to what can be achieved in the face of a clear, immediate and well-recognised threat.

Unlike climate change – which despite overwhelming evidence continues to have detractors – recognition of the threat of AI weapons is nearly universal and includes leading technology entrepreneurs and scientists.

In fact, banning the use and development of certain types of weapons has precedent – countries have after all done the same for biological weapons. The problem lies in no country wanting another to have it before they do, and no business wanting to lose out in the process.

In this sense, choosing to weaponise AI or disallowing it will mirror the wishes of humanity. The hope is that the better side of human nature will prevail.

Akhil Bhardwaj does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Joy Reid Is Gone

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 15:07:07 -0600

If “journalism” lived up to the lofty image journalists have of themselves, Joy Reid would have been unemployed long ago. On her old blog, the Reid Report, she mocked homosexuals, called for Ann Coulter to kill herself, and compared John McCain to the Virginia Tech shooter. None of this is sending me to the fainting couch, but much of it, especially the “homophobia,” is grounds for termination in the chattering classes. In 2018, when these posts came to light, Joy Reid claimed her blog was hacked and somehow, she never noticed. She even said the FBI was investigating.

It would be a strange hacker who posts comments not dissimilar to some of her others, but none of this matters. She kept her job and lectured America nightly on racism, Russia, and fascism. Her implausible claims were forgotten, aside from the occasional opinion column, and ignored by her superiors at MSNBC.

This might be justified if Joy Reid had something to say, but you already know everything she believes. She is a non-white who demands (and gets) tribal political loyalty from her fellow blacks. She is a regular on Verified Hate/The X Files and in American Renaissance news headlines. She routinely accuses President Donald Trump and his supporters of racism and claims he is in league with Russia. She is a “daughter of immigrants,” barely American herself.

Among her greatest hits:

It was “wonderfully poetic” that the first person to criminally prosecute Donald Trump was black and that a black woman was doing the same in Georgia. Donald Trump, she claimed, was being held to account by the “very multicultural, multiracial democracy that he’s trying to dismantle.”
Blacks “literally, physically, built this country.”
The NRA wants bands of “warlords” who “kill at will” dominating America. rural voters are the main threat to American democracy, so the Electoral College must go.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal came from the criminal justice system’s links to the “slave catchers” that were part of the “foundational creation of the United States.” The people who tried to kill Mr. Rittenhouse were “defending black lives.”
”Selfish” “white so-called Christian conservatives” mistakenly think the country “was built by them for them.” (If they think that, they’re right.)
Nikki Haley finished third in the Iowa caucuses because “she’s still a brown lady that’s got to try to win in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant.”
“The majority of white people are not the majority of this country. You do not negotiate with these people, you destroy them.”
“If Wayne LaPierre doesn’t understand that the next generation and the next will be unavailable to him and his vile philosophy, he needs a quick lesson in demographic math. . . .One way or another, the NRA and its extremist ideology are on a path to extinction.”
“[I]t has to be a humbling day for Donald Trump to finally face justice, particularly there in Washington DC. . . . The magistrate judge is Moxila Upadhaya. A woman of color. The judge he will be facing in the trial, a Jamaican-born woman of color. He seems to be facing sort of demographic reality.”
Media reports on missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito were just “missing white woman syndrome.”
Republican voters would trade tax cuts for the right openly to call blacks ni**ers.

This made Joy Reid a “heroine of the Resistance,” allowing her to don the mantle of American patriotism and call MAGA the party of traitors. She is a lightweight, but she had the legitimacy and credibility that came with a prestigious post.

Now that’s gone, a casualty of President Trump’s victory, which has “normalized” MAGA. Joy Reid’s declarations now look unhinged and politically obtuse. Her confident predictions of a Kamala victory or the legal doom awaiting Donald Trump were fanciful, and MSNBC’s audience may feel betrayed. In the critical 25-54 age bloc, MSNBC has lost about half its viewers since last year. For daytime shows, the network drew just 45,000 viewers; internet streamers easily beat that. Last month was the worst January in the network’s history, a sign that leftists are demoralized, not rallying to “The Resistance.” Meanwhile, Fox News has seen a strong ratings increase, with “Fox & Friends” increasing viewership by 29 percent since last year.

In February, the black woman who was president of MSNBC, Rashida Jones, announced she was leaving—voluntarily, we are told. She was the first black woman to head a cable news network. Rebecca Kutler, who mostly worked at CNN during her career, is her replacement. The documentaries and television programs she has produced (including on the U.S. Holocaust Museum and homosexuals in the military) reflect her views, but she is not obsessed with black issues.

One reason for the shakeup is that Comcast is trying to spin off MSNBC into a separate company and needs a short-term ratings increase to make such a company attractive. President Trump has attacked Comcast as “an illegal arm of the Democrat Party” that should be “forced to pay vast sums of money.” Joy Reid was an obvious candidate for a pink slip because of her low ratings and crazed views. Her show has lost almost 30 percent of its audience in the last year. People are tuning out takes such as:

Black women are no longer interested in “saving America” after President Trump’s election victory and will focus on “black spaces.”
Florida has a “right-wing, fascist type government.”
“Black voters came through for [Kamala] Harris, white women voters did not. This will be the second opportunity that white women in this country have to change the way they interact with the patriarchy.”

Joy Reid has been there since the beginning, on the panel when Ann Coulter famously predicted that Donald Trump could win the 2016 election, to the laughter and incredulity of Bill Maher’s studio audience.

Now that Joy Reid is looking for a new job, I should hire her to follow me around every moment, night and day, to react with open-mouthed, saucer-eyed astonishment at every prediction I make,which of course will then come true. pic.twitter.com/JY60KJIpAh

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) February 25, 2025

Since the election, progressives have been looking for a message. Many seem to be settling on the idea that the second Trump Administration is a government of “oligarchs.” Elon Musk is a convenient foil. If the President cannot bring down prices on staples quickly, the Democrats may retake Congress in the midterms with a message of economic populism. Tax increases on the wealthy, an increase in the minimum wage, and more government regulations might win over some working-class people of all races who broke for Mr. Trump in 2024.

Republicans in Congress are already pushing the same tax cuts that disproportionately help the rich, as they did in 2017 — the one major legislative accomplishment of President Trump’s first term. Speaker Mike Johnson says it would violate conservatives’ “core principles” to give taxpayers a rebate with the money saved by Elon Musk’s DOGE, thus robbing spending cuts of popular appeal.

Still, progressives will have to show restraint: not yell about every Republican voter being a racist or President Donald Trump being a fascist. Joy Reid is the perfect example of what not to do. On her final broadcast, she even said that fascism is not just coming; it’s already here.

Therefore, for conservatives who do not want progressives to learn anything, it is good that many of them see Joy Reid as a martyr. There are signs of rebellion within MSNBC. Nicole Wallace compared her departure to “losing a limb.” Lawrence O’ Donnell said working with her had been an “honor.” Rachel Maddow said that it was a “bad mistake” to fire her and went further:

It is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two — count them — two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not defend it.

How many non-white hosts does it take to be “defensible”? Perhaps Miss Maddow can give up her own slot.

Others on social media saw “racism.”

Cancelling Joy Reid means the door she held open for the next generation of Black voices will slam shut. Without her, the next her, won’t get platformed by white media. That, of course, is why white media pushed her out.
My latest in @thenation https://t.co/oUpnUSJwLP

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) February 25, 2025

They didn’t even try to hide the racism by firing an unnecessary white anchor like Tur or Ruhle as cover

I discussed what this is, in today’s podcast. For half an hour at about 27:00 in https://t.co/wSJAEviyPx

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 24, 2025

We’ve got your back, Joy. pic.twitter.com/U4WO4Sez9e

— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) February 24, 2025

In fact, MSBNC is starting a new show with a panel of three. Two are black: Symone Sanders and former RNC chair Michael Steele. The former has politics not much different from Joy Reid’s, while Michael Steele has followed the traditional black Republican route of moving on from his unjustified high positions in the party to bashing it for being racist. The third host is reportedly Alicia Menendez, daughter of convicted Hispanic Democratic ex-senator Bob Menendez. Black journalist Eugene Daniels is also reportedly getting a show. MSNBC is not backing away from wokeness. It’s changing the faces in hope of better ratings.

It’s best if MSNBC stays the course. Unfortunately, white identity tends to be reactive. Most of us don’t become aware of our “whiteness” until it is attacked by non-whites pushing their own racial interests. And it’s easy to appease whites with even a symbolic retreat from “identity politics.” Joy Reid may be gone — for now — but the firestorm around that mediocrity and MSNBC’s continued diversity show that wokeness is far from dead. If ratings continue to fall, it will be interesting to see if MSNBC can trim its sails or if it is captive to extremists. We need people like Joy Reid. Let’s hope she gets a huge megaphone somewhere else.

Joy Reid, who ridiculed white people for their tears, breaks down in tears over her show getting canceled. Karmic perfection here: pic.twitter.com/yEdjpt4nOJ

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) February 24, 2025

The post Joy Reid Is Gone appeared first on American Renaissance.

Propaganda Press Upset Trump Could Shut Down CISA’s Election Censorship

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 14:30:38 -0600

The Trump administration has launched a review of every Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) role related to election security and so-called mis- and disinformation after CISA began censoring speech. CISA, originally established in 2018 to address cybersecurity threats, quickly transformed into a government-run censorship operation, particularly during the 2020 election. In response, the propaganda press […]

Wake School Board Member Apologizes for ‘Mediocre White Men’ Comment

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 11:19:12 -0600

Wake School Board Member Sam Hershey has apologized for comments he made about “mediocre white men.”

Hershey said Tuesday night he didn’t mean to imply that all white men are mediocre when he suggested earlier this month that many white men have ended up in power who didn’t deserve it.

Hershey criticized opponents of diversity, equity and inclusion during the board’s Feb. 4 meeting.

He said this country has been run by “mediocre white men for 250 years.”

Hershey is white. {snip}

{snip}

Erik Shephard, a district alumnus who is white, said he thought Hershey was criticizing thousands of Wake County parents who are white men. Shepard rejected the notion that all white men are “mediocre” and said he fought for the United States in the military. He noted families have lost loved ones, “and it wasn’t for mediocrity.”

{snip}

During the Feb. 4 meeting, Hershey said people who call Black people “diversity, equity and inclusion hires” are just circumventing using the N-word {snip}

{snip}

The post Wake School Board Member Apologizes for ‘Mediocre White Men’ Comment appeared first on American Renaissance.