'Furry' Democrat running for Congress celebrated Kirk assassination, wants to put MAGA voters in 'hard labor camps'



Graham Platner, the oyster farmer running for the U.S. Senate in Maine, was exposed last month for making a number of damning comments on social media — including posts where he apparently identified as a communist, branded rural white Americans as racists, suggested that service members worried about being raped should buy "Kevlar underwear," and smeared all police officers as "bastards."

Although he has since covered it up, Platner was also outed for having a tattoo of a skull image similar to that popularized by Adolf Hitler's SS elite Nazi guard.

It appears that Platner, who enjoys the continued support from lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), is far from the most radical candidate seeking election as a Democrat in 2026.

The homosexual socialist running as a Democrat to represent Michigan's 7th district in Congress has engaged in bloodthirsty and inflammatory rhetoric that makes Platner's remarks seem tame by comparison.

'Radical far-left lunatics like Samuel Smeltzer expose the liberal brain rot that is now the current state of the Democrat Party.'

Samuel Smeltzer, a 36-year-old IT contractor who calls himself Elyon Badger and dresses up in an anthropomorphic "furry" costume, has not only stated that "America deserved 9/11," called Jesus "a communist," recommended killing billionaires, labeled Israel as "an enemy of the United States," advocated the imprisonment of all U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and repeatedly celebrated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk's assassination, calling him a "massive loser."

Within an hour of Kirk's passing, Smeltzer wrote on the liberal X knockoff Bluesky, "Good things can happen." Days later, he shared an image of the murdered father of two with the caption, "How can we defeat evil, if evil is mourned when it's defeated?"

RELATED: The left isn’t collapsing — it’s consolidating power

Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

To ensure there was no mistaking his antipathy for the murder victim, the Democratic candidate smeared Kirk as a "white supremacist who preached stochastic terrorism" in an official campaign statement, blaming the shooting on "gun loving Conservative Christians."

The National Republican Congressional Committee called Smeltzer's remarks about Kirk both "dangerous and disgusting" but noted they were unsurprising when only 38% of Democrats think it's always unacceptable to feel joy about the death of a public figure they oppose.

Despite his website promising "compassionate leadership for a just future," Smeltzer vowed in a recent post to "round up EVER [sic] SINGLE red hat wearing MAGA and put them in hard labor camps for the rest of their lives."

While locking up those with whom he disagrees appears to be one of his key objectives, Smeltzer told the Washington Free Beacon that he is running a "health care and tax-the-rich campaign" and would use a role in Congress to advocate for his fellow "furry" fetishists.

"The furry community is the ultimate form of freedom in America, and that's why conservatives hate it and the queer community so much," he told the Beacon.

Smeltzer recently told the LGBT magazine Between the Lines, "The reason I'm leaning into the furry side of things is the Heritage Foundation has targeted the furry community."

"They're going after the queer spaces and organizations where we are allowed to express creative freedom," the self-identified Democratic socialist added.

Smeltzer claimed that other candidates in the Democratic primary like former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink "can only trudge along and drag this broken cart through the mud; they can't fix it."

Brink reportedly did not respond to the Beacon's request for comment.

NRCC spokesman Zach Bannon noted earlier this year, "Radical far-left lunatics like Samuel Smeltzer expose the liberal brain rot that is now the current state of the Democrat Party."

Blaze News has reached out to the Michigan Democratic Party as well as Rep. Tom Barrett, the Republican who presently represents Michigan's 7th congressional district and is running for a second term, for comment.

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European Trump derangement syndrome on full display in 'deviant' crucifixion spectacle



Liberals have made no secret of their desire to see harm come to President Donald Trump.

A survey conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University's Social Perception Lab revealed in April that 55% of respondents who identified as left of center said that assassinating Trump would be at least somewhat justified.

When asked by pollsters about the September 2024 attempt on the president's life at his golf course in Florida, 28% of Democrats said it would have been better for Trump to have been slaughtered on the green.

This murderous loathing for the president leached into popular culture long before Democrats rushed to mock Trump's brush with death last year in Butler, Pennsylvania. For instance, a theater production simulated his assassination in New York City and an aspiring D-list comedian posed with a fake decapitated head made to look like the president.

A masked London-born agitpropist who calls himself Mason Storm recently contributed to this unhinged anti-Trump genre with a hyper-realistic, life-size sculpture of the president dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and set on a cross-shaped gurney in a cruciform pose. The sculpture, which is titled "The Saint or the Sinner," depicts Trump as incapacitated with the implication — made explicit elsewhere — that he is dead as the result of a lethal injection.

According to a statement shared online by Storm, "In a world increasingly driven by polarized narratives, this work offers a moment of reflection, urging us to take responsibility — and to realize that every decision tells a story."

RELATED: Evil unchecked always spreads — and Democrats are proof

Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP via Getty Images

While the title of the sculpture and the corresponding statement from Storm suggest there's an ambiguity about the work's meaning, Storm made clear online his antipathy toward Trump, writing, for instance, "He's not the messiah he's a very naughty boy!"

'Simply deviant.'

The sculpture, which was shown earlier this year in Vienna, was also going to be shown at the central train station in Basel, Switzerland; however, Gleis 4, the gallery responsible for the planned pop-up, called it off, citing "expected large crowds and feared disturbances."

On Saturday, Gleis 4 reportedly installed the sculpture in a showcase window on Kunstmeile, an indoor pedestrian walkway in downtown Basel.

According to France24, the sculpture has been purchased by an "internationally renowned figure living in Europe" whose identity will remain confidential.

Bishop Hermann Glettler of the Diocese of Innsbruck has called the sculpture "simply deviant."

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Justice Jackson Is The Supreme Court’s Mean Girl

Jackson has completely forgone the Kagan approach of building bridges instead of burning them.

The left isn’t collapsing — it’s consolidating power



Since last November, I’ve warned Republican voters not to believe the happy talk coming from friendly media. Nothing suggests the Democratic Party is collapsing — or that Donald Trump has “killed wokeness,” as Eric Trump claimed recently. The fight against the woke left and its Democratic Party embodiment continues, and the results remain mixed.

Trump has made real progress in removing DEI programs from the federal government and institutions that take federal funds. Yet schools, corporations, and other major organizations continue to find new ways to keep the ideology alive.

The Democratic Party is not collapsing. Its radicals are thriving. Black voters are not abandoning it. Conservatives need to stop pretending otherwise.

In blue and purple states, even the most extreme woke policies — like letting biological males compete in women’s sports or enter girls’ locker rooms — barely move voters. More than half the electorate in places like Virginia, New York, Illinois, California, and Oregon appear comfortable with positions that conservatives describe as “80-20 moral issues.” The electoral evidence for such optimism doesn’t exist.

Polls show Democrats holding barely a 30% approval rating — but Republicans don’t fare much better. A recent Gallup survey found the GOP only three points higher in popularity, while Democrats lead by 20 points on “acceptable philosophical positions.”

Democrats also hold a massive financial advantage and dominate the institutions that shape culture and opinion: public-sector unions, schools, universities, corporate media, and Hollywood. Their radical wing isn’t dragging them down; it’s defining them. Just ask Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, or the other progressive Democrats who keep winning elections.

As Ben Domenech recently noted, Democrats’ “bloodthirsty rage” keeps them united — even behind candidates like Jay Jones, the Virginia attorney general hopeful who once texted that he wanted to shoot a Republican lawmaker in the head and hoped the man’s children would die. Strategically, the Democrats may be right to stand by him. On the eve of Election Day, Jones was running neck-and-neck with incumbent Republican Jason Miyares, a capable and articulate attorney general trying to survive in an increasingly blue state.

Jones, who is black, will likely dominate the black vote — a reality Republicans must face. Black voters have come to view hostility toward the mostly white GOP as an expression of group identity. The small gains Trump made with black voters in 2020 haven’t changed that dynamic in a meaningful way.

Republicans should stop pretending they can transform black voting habits and instead focus on persuadable groups: white Christian men, Orthodox Jews, and Hispanics. Some subgroups, such as African immigrants and West Indian evangelicals, remain open to outreach — but the broader trend is clear.

The left’s cultural dominance was driven home for me recently when I learned that local elementary school students came home singing about “Daddy’s new boyfriend.” Teachers in our district overwhelmingly belong to the hard-left American Federation of Teachers and have no hesitation promoting its ideology. Even when warned against it, they keep injecting political dogma into the classroom.

RELATED: Pity equals power for the progressive class

Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Our borough’s school board still has a Christian majority, but it faces relentless pressure from activist feminists determined to take control of local education. The county newspaper, once a reliable conservative voice, now reads like an MSNBC transcript. And for the first time, our state representative is a progressive Democrat.

These are not isolated anecdotes. I live in a community that once voted Republican by habit — a borough in Pennsylvania’s traditionally red 11th Congressional District. Yet the signs of political drift are unmistakable. The left controls the institutions that shape belief, and that control gives it momentum. As a result, this place is turning purple.

Conservatives need to stop pretending otherwise. We are the weaker side in a long struggle against a relentless opponent. The Democratic Party is not collapsing. Its radicals are thriving. Black voters are not abandoning it. And wokeness, far from being “dead,” continues to define American life — from boardrooms to classrooms to city hall.

The first step toward winning any war is admitting you’re losing one.

Radicals decry demise of Teen Vogue — the propaganda rag that pushed anal sex and Marx on minors



Teen Vogue was originally launched in 2003 as a teenage girl-targeting print counterpart to publisher Condé Nast's fashion magazine Vogue. Since its quarterly print run was brought to an end in 2017, the leftist propaganda mill continued independently online — until now.

Radicals are clutching pearls as it is clear that the publication will survive in name but not in spirit.

'19 Best Anal Lubes for Slick and Pain-Free Insertion.'

Teen Vogue's leftist editor in chief Versha Sharma is leaving the company, and Teen Vogue is being absorbed into Vogue.com.

According to Vogue, "the title will remain a distinct editorial property, with its own identity and mission"; however, it will now "focus its content on career development, cultural leadership, and other issues that matter most to young people."

The union representing the propagandists at Teen Vogue condemned the decision to park the blog under the broader Vogue.com umbrella, complaining that the shake-up was "disproportionately impacting marginalized employees," as the majority of those now allegedly facing termination are "BIPOC women or trans."

Lex McMenamin, the plural-pronoun-providing radical who served as the blog's news and politics editor since 2021, confirmed that she was laid off along with multiple other staffers on Monday, noting, "To my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue."

Condé United, the union representing writers at the blog, suggested that the move was "clearly designed to blunt the award-winning magazine's insightful journalism at a time when it is needed the most."

Some of the usual suspects have echoed this suggestion that the content published on the blog under Sharma's leadership was of journalistic value.

Alejandra Caraballo, a transvestite activist and Harvard Law School clinical instructor, for instance, wrote, "They just gutted Teen Vogue which had top notch political journalism. The media is continuing to purge any sort of political dissent to Trump and the oligarchs."

Caraballo added, "It's resegregation in real time."

Cross-dressing Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) stated, "The loss of the politics staff at Teen Vogue is an absolute travesty. In a media marketplace that has been decimated by billionaires, tepid takes, and AI slop, Teen Vogue often stood out as a bastion of principled, purposeful journalism."

Here are a few examples of the supposed "principled, purposeful journalism" Teen Vogue has been churning out in recent years:

  • "How to Finger Someone (Including Yourself), According to Sexperts" — Oct. 31, 2025;
  • "Anal Sex: Safety, How tos, Tips, and More" — Nov. 12, 2019;
  • "The Polyamory Workbook: How I Discovered Nonmonogamy" — Nov. 15, 2022;
  • "6 Intersex People on Why Gender-Affirming Care Bans Are Bad for Everyone" — June 13, 2025; and
  • "19 Best Anal Lubes for Slick and Pain-Free Insertion" — June 3, 2023.

The publication has, in fairness, not limited itself to giving minors advice on sodomy and the latest in sex-toy technology.

It has also often promoted gender ideology and abortion — see the Jan. 23, 2025, piece titled "The Sex Lives of College Girls Needs an Abortion Storyline" — and pushed a significant amount of leftist agitprop.

RELATED: Assata Shakur and 6 more: A rogues' gallery of leftist America's heroes

Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images

For instance, in a piece published last month titled "Trump and Republicans Want to 'Un-Cancel' Columbus Day, Erasing Indigenous Peoples Day," the blog suggested that Christopher Columbus was little more than an Italian "who brought disease, colonization, and enslavement" to the Americas.

Amid the deadly Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, Teen Vogue published a list of bail funds to which readers could contribute in order to spring rioters from jail.

In a politics article explaining how teens can "learn the legacy of Marx's ideas and how they're relevant to the current political climate," the author emphasized to teens that they should think like pinkos even if they aren't card-carrying communists: "While you may not necessarily identify as a Marxist, socialist, or communist, you can still use Karl Marx’s ideas to use history and class struggles to better understand how the current sociopolitical climate in America came to be."

Teen Vogue made clear that thinking like Marx was acceptable but that conservative thought and lifestyles were beyond the pale.

A December Teen Vogue op-ed warned about the threat posed to America's "progressive new future" by those young women who would dare embrace traditional gender roles and stay home to tend children.

"With clearly defined gender roles and responsibilities, trad wife and traditional masculine content in the manopshere works to convince a new generation of would-be population breeders and workers to embrace fundamentalist values," said the piece. "This is not a new trend but an old belief system with worn methods that perform until people who know better, choose better.'

While happy to characterize conservatives as extremists, Teen Vogue routinely painted leftist radicals and thugs as saints, printing, for instance, a hagiography for convicted cop-killer and Marxist fugitive Assata Shakur.

Shakur was a member of a terrorist militant group, the Black Liberation Army. She was convicted in 1977 of the first-degree murder of New Jersey Trooper Werner Foerster. Although she was supposed to spend her life in prison, she escaped in 1979 to communist Cuba.

Teen Vogue's obituary for the cop-killer, titled "Assata Shakur Was a Black Revolutionary Who Fought for Freedom Even in Exile," cast doubt on her guilt and concluded, "To many, including those posting in honor of her after her death, Shakur will be remembered as a revolutionary who fought for her freedom and won."

Chloe Malle, Vogue's head of editorial content, said in a statement, "I remember when Teen Vogue launched. I read every page on the bus home from cross-country practice. I loved it then, and I love and respect it now and am committed to continuing and supporting its point of view and sensibility."

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The triumph — for now — of New York’s Muslim socialist mayor



If the polls are right, New York City is about to elect Zohran Mamdani as its next mayor. An avowed socialist, he’s riding a wave of “free stuff” politics to victory. Mamdani also describes himself as a proud Muslim who says his faith will no longer “hide in the shadows” of American life.

It’s hard to know what he means. Mosques exist in every major city. Muslims worship freely under the same First Amendment protections as everyone else. What Mamdani seems to want isn’t tolerance but cultural submission — not coexistence, but acceptance. To dissent from his worldview, he insists, is “Islamophobia.”

The choice remains what it has always been: guilt or grace, grievance or truth.

That accusation follows the left’s familiar playbook: disagreement equals bigotry. Americans, however, don’t need to fear Islam to reject its false claims about reality.

The politics of pity

Recently, Mamdani told a story — sometimes about an aunt, sometimes about a cousin — who supposedly stopped riding the subway after 9/11 out of fear. The details change, but the purpose doesn’t: to draw sympathy and votes through emotional appeal.

We’re meant to respond, “How cruel Americans are!” The fact that this narrative works says something profound about the collapse of moral imagination among American voters.

“Never forget,” New York once vowed. Now the city seems to say, “We forgot — remind us again, and where’s our free handout?”

After a terrorist attack that killed more than 3,000 people — planned and carried out by Islamic extremists targeting symbols of American capitalism — one might expect some soul-searching. Shame could have led to repentance, reflection, or even conversion. Instead, Mamdani invites Americans to feel guilty for making a Muslim feel uncomfortable after 9/11. The villain becomes America itself.

This is textbook DARVO — deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender. It’s the same intersectional ideology that now dominates universities and city halls. Mamdani’s campaign is its political expression: Islam as the newest “oppressed” identity, ready to claim power in the name of liberation from “whiteness.”

Selective shame

Christians, by contrast, are told to feel shame constantly. From kindergarten to college, they are lectured about crusades, inquisitions, and colonialism — most of them centuries past, all of them endlessly exaggerated. Professors call it “deconstruction.” The goal is to make young Christians feel guilty enough to abandon their faith.

So shame is permitted and even celebrated — but only when it weakens Christianity. The moment it might challenge Islam, it becomes taboo.

Why? Because the modern left keeps a hierarchy of sacred victims. In that moral pecking order, Islam isn’t a religion but a protected identity, immune from criticism. That’s why progressives can champion Islam while rejecting Christianity, even though no Islamic society on earth practices the liberal values the left claims to cherish.

The contradiction is glaring, but ideology blinds them. The left despises both Christianity and capitalism, so a Muslim socialist like Mamdani suits prgressive purposes perfectly.

Rival gods, rival visions

Religion isn’t like ice cream. You can enjoy multiple flavors of dessert, but not multiple visions of truth or multiple gods. Religions offer rival accounts of reality: who God is, what man is, and what the good life requires.

Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God whose atoning sacrifice restores sinners to communion with their Creator. Islam denies that. It teaches that Jesus was only a prophet and that salvation comes through works — keeping the Five Pillars — without assurance of grace.

In the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Islam’s Quran insists that Jesus was merely a messenger. Yet Islam also claims that the Quran itself is eternal and uncreated — the word of God manifested in a book, not a person. Christians believe the Word became flesh. Muslims revere a text instead.

Even the Quran, in 5:68, tells Muslims to uphold the Torah and the gospel. But those very texts affirm Christ’s divinity and the atonement — the truths Islam rejects. This “Islamic dilemma” reveals the irreconcilable divide between the two faiths.

A society built on Islam will not resemble one shaped by Christianity. The two produce fundamentally different understandings of law, grace, family, and freedom — and therefore of government itself. Mamdani has already made clear that his Islamic convictions will shape how he governs.

RELATED:Evil never announces itself — it seduces the hearts of the blind

Photo by Omar Qattaa / Contributor via Getty Images

The only cure for confusion

In “Healing the Open Wounds of Islam,” Vishal Mangalwadi reminds readers that it was Christianity — not secular philosophy — that transformed Europe from barbarism to liberty. Only the Bible’s message of redemption through Christ can do the same today.

This is a moment for American Christians to recover moral clarity and preach the gospel boldly to Muslim neighbors. Only biblical truth, not multicultural sentimentality, can sustain freedom.

So let’s return to Mamdani’s changing subway story — the aunt, or cousin, or whoever she was supposed to be. Shame can serve a noble purpose when it leads to repentance. After 9/11, the right response to evil wasn’t self-pity but the words of Christ:

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

The choice remains what it has always been: guilt or grace, grievance or truth.

Never forget which one leads to freedom.

Report: Foreign Charities Have Pumped $2 Billion Into U.S.-Based Leftist Groups

'Congress needs to address these serious shortfalls in our laws to protect American interests and keep foreign influence out of our politics.'

2 more staffers ditch Graham Platner's troubled Senate campaign amid Nazi, communism scandals



Graham Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer and Marine veteran, announced on Aug. 19 that he was running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Maine. His stated objective was to challenge the "oligarchy," meaning both the Democrat establishment and the Republican incumbent, Sen. Susan Collins.

At the outset, Platner's campaign appeared to have incredible momentum. The leftist candidate raised several million dollars in a matter of weeks, managed to land endorsements from current lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M), and struck a chord with locals, as reflected in early polls indicating that he had a sizeable lead over Democrat Gov. Janet Mills.

Platner's campaign has, however, encountered a massive and potentially insurmountable obstacle: his radical past.

'Platner is not a victim of opposition research. ... Accountability does not exist in playing the victim of your own behavior.'

In the wake of damning revelations about the leftist candidate's social media posts and his newly concealed tattoo of a skull image similar to that popularized by Adolf Hitler's SS elite Nazi guard, at least four key staffers have jumped ship.

The latest individuals to call it quits are the campaign's national finance director, Ronald Holmes, and its treasurer, Victoria Perrone.

Holmes, a Democrat operative who previously served as finance director on New York Democrat Rep. Josh Riley's congressional campaign, resigned on Friday, suggesting that Platner's campaign no longer met his "standards."

RELATED: Here are the 4 Republicans who betrayed Trump AGAIN, joining Democrats to undermine the MAGA agenda

Graham Platner. Photo by Sophie Park/Getty Images

"I joined this campaign because I believed in building something different — a campaign of fresh energy, integrity, and reform-minded thinking in a political system that often resists exactly those things," Holmes wrote in a post on LinkedIn. "Somewhere along the way, I began to feel that my professional standards as a campaign professional no longer fully aligned with those of the campaign."

A campaign spokesperson told Politico, "Ron helped the campaign reach out to big-dollar donors, and we appreciated his efforts. But the reality is our campaign’s fundraising success has come largely from small-dollar donors."

"Nearly 90% of what we’ve raised has come from small-dollar donations and online donors, which has been and [continues] to be run by our digital fundraising director," added the spokesperson.

Timothy Facciola of the Judge Street Journal on Substack revealed on Sunday that Holmes wasn't the only Platner staffer to pack it in last week.

Citing a Federal Election Commission form that was filed on Friday as well as an unnamed source said to be familiar with the matter, Facciola reported that Perrone, the president and founder of the consulting firm Spruce Street Compliance, resigned as treasurer on Tuesday.

Ben Martello — a political strategist who served as an adviser to former Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.) — appears to have stepped into the role.

Blaze News has reached out to Perrone and the Platner campaign for comment.

Perrone, who has been closely involved with Zohran Mamdani's New York City mayoral campaign, was apparently hired last month to help Platner's campaign deal with its various scandals.

According to Politico, Perrone was the individual who pressed members of Platner's campaign team to sign non-disclosure agreements after his Reddit posts came to light — including posts in which he apparently identified as a communist, branded rural white Americans as racists, suggested service members worried about being raped should buy "Kevlar underwear," and smeared all police officers as "bastards."

Former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald (D) resigned as political director of Platner's campaign last month over the posts, noting, "These statements were not known to me when I agreed to join the campaign, and they are not words or values I can stand behind in a candidate for the United States Senate."

Within days of McDonald's resignation, footage went viral revealing that Platner had an apparent "totenkopf" tattoo on his chest — the symbol of the SS-Totenkopfverbande, the branch that guarded the Nazi concentration camps.

Amid the fallout over the apparent Nazi tattoo, the Democrat candidate's longtime friend Kevin Brown similarly jumped ship.

Brown, who took over as Platner's campaign manager on Oct. 21, announced days later that he was leaving, suggesting that the move was the result of new familial demands on his time.

Brown said in a statement obtained by WGME-TV, "Graham is a dear friend. I started this campaign Tuesday but found out Friday we have a baby on the way."

"Graham deserves someone who is 100% in on his race, and we want to lean into this new experience as a family, so it was best we step back sooner than later so Graham can get the manager he deserves," Brown added.

Platner reportedly suggested during a town hall last week that the Democratic Party was the cause of his recent run of bad luck, stating, "I'm running as a Democrat still, despite the fact my party is destroying my life."

"Platner is not a victim of opposition research. This is what happens when you run for federal office," Genevieve McDonald said in a recent statement. "People scrutinize everything you've ever done. Every word and every action. Accountability does not exist in playing the victim of your own behavior."

McDonald added, "We should not be having a debate about Nazi symbolism tattooed on the potentially top-ticket Democrat in Maine. The fact we are even willing to entertain it shows desperation within the party, not dedication, and how far we have fallen from rational thought."

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Riot, repeat: How America’s unrest became a bad rerun



History doesn’t just move forward — it echoes. Karl Marx once said history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, second as farce.” He meant it as a jab at 19th-century France, where Napoleon’s nephew attempted to replicate his uncle’s revolutionary drama not on the battlefield but rather through bureaucratic spectacle. Nevertheless, Marx’s insight fits modern America. Our cycles of unrest and outrage have become predictable theater — each act beginning with moral panic and ending in absurdity.

The summer of 2020 was a national trauma. The killing of George Floyd was a tragedy that radicals turned into revolution. Riots swept through more than 2,000 cities, torching businesses, destroying neighborhoods, and leaving dozens dead. Egged on by the race-baiting activists at Black Lives Matter, mobs looted stores, assaulted police, and terrorized communities.

The line between tragedy and farce is thinner than ever — and this time, we can’t afford to play the fool.

Media outlets downplayed the carnage as “fiery but mostly peaceful.” Political leaders joined the chorus, afraid to confront the mob. Corporate America rushed to signal its virtue by taking the knee, pouring billions into “racial equity” schemes that enriched activists but divided the country.

The real tragedy wasn’t just the damage — it was the betrayal. Spineless mayors and governors surrendered their cities. Police were handcuffed, budgets gutted, and criminals emboldened. The riots hollowed out public trust, replacing civic order with cultural resentment. America’s guardians became scapegoats, and justice itself became negotiable.

From riot to parody

Five years on, the rebellion has devolved into a pathetic sideshow. Antifa’s latest “resistance” — a handful of masked agitators harassing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as they carry out long-overdue deportations — feels less like revolution and more like performance art.

Their vandalism is designed for TikTok, not for change: laser pointers at officers, graffiti on walls, choreographed scuffles for social media. It’s a boutique insurgency — staged in deep-blue enclaves, broadcast for dopamine hits, and forgotten the next day.

The chaos of 2020 burned cities. The tantrums of 2025 barely dent a precinct wall. The tragedy has become farce.

Still, both movements spring from the same poisoned root: a left-wing ideology that despises America’s foundations. BLM targeted police as enforcers of “white supremacy.” Antifa brands border agents as fascists for upholding immigration law.

Both rely on the same tactics — decentralized mobs, anonymous online organizing, and emotional manipulation amplified by social media. Both seek power through grievance, not through persuasion. And both reveal how progressive rage, unmoored from reality, becomes self-parody.

In 2020, rioters burned precincts and seized city blocks. They demanded “defund the police” and got it — along with record crime rates and broken neighborhoods. In 2025, their heirs spray-paint slogans and livestream tantrums. Their only victory is visibility.

The digital theater of rage

Social media turned riots into content. In 2020, doctored clips of “police brutality” fueled nationwide hysteria, empowered anti-cop lunatics, and enriched grifters. Today, the same algorithms push Antifa’s posturing, turning vandalism into viral spectacle.

These platforms profit from outrage. They amplify emotion, suppress context, and reward hysteria. The result is a feedback loop of performative politics — activism as cosplay.

After years of indulgence, government crackdowns have finally returned. ICE operates under firm executive backing. Local police departments no longer hesitate to enforce the law. The radicals, once protected, now find themselves exposed and outmatched.

But even as law enforcement regains its footing, the left’s playbook remains unchanged. The grievances are repackaged, the slogans recycled, the media coverage predictable. It’s cultural Marxism with a TikTok filter — ideology as entertainment.

Farce doesn’t mean harmless. Every protest turned stunt still corrodes civic life. Each viral act of defiance feeds distrust in law, borders, and the rule of order itself.

The radicals thrive on illusion: fake oppression, fake urgency, fake rebellion. Meanwhile, real Americans bear the cost — higher crime, divided communities, and institutions too timid to defend themselves.

RELATED: The left’s costume party: Virtue signaling as performance art

Photo by serazetdinov via Getty Images

The lesson we refuse to learn

The tragedy of 2020 proved that surrendering to the mob invites ruin. The farce of 2025 shows that ridicule alone isn’t enough to defeat it. Both demand resolve — the courage to confront lies, restore order, and defend the institutions that safeguard freedom.

History doesn’t stop repeating itself; it stops being repeated. Whether America ends this cycle depends on whether its citizens choose firmness over fear, enforcement over appeasement, and truth over spectacle.

Enough with the doctored outrage porn. The burning question is whether we’ll tolerate this clown show recycling into catastrophe or crush it with resolve that honors real American values.

The line between tragedy and farce is thinner than ever — and this time, we can’t afford to play the fool.

The left’s new religion has no logic — and AOC is its perfect preacher



As New York City heads into its next mayoral election, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is doing few favors for the campaign of Zohran Mamdani — at least not for those who value coherence. Her remarks at a recent rally could serve as a Logic 101 case study in contradiction.

The problem isn’t limited to her message. The Democratic platform itself, and Mamdani’s campaign in particular, now rests on foundations so incoherent that one almost blushes to analyze them.

The modern left doesn’t appeal to reason. Instead, it appeals to envy, resentment, lust, and the eternal promise of something for nothing.

Behind AOC, a man waved a sign that read: “Free Buses.” A perfect summary. She may imagine the crowds came to hear her and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) thunder against injustice, but the truth is simpler: Promise free things to people indifferent to truth, and you can fill any arena.

As a logic professor, allow me to walk through the highlights of her address. Think of it as a guided tour through the labyrinth of leftist reasoning — or rather, unreasoning.

The new party of contradiction

AOC’s positions directly contradict what Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi said 30 years ago about immigration and public safety. The irony? In attacking Donald Trump, she’s also attacking them.

Her first contradiction concerns ownership. AOC claimed that New York City “belongs to the people of this country” but moments later insisted it “belongs to immigrants.” Well, which is it? Either she contradicted herself within two sentences, or she truly believes the city belongs to citizens of other nations. That would make sense only if you’re an international socialist calling on the “workers of the world” to unite.

She also called herself “a fascist’s worst nightmare” because she defends immigrants. Yet the fascists of the 1940s didn’t allow people to leave their countries. Republicans are merely asking migrants to follow the law. No fascist ever demanded less government power. Conservatives do. Fascists didn’t defend free speech; yet Elon Musk — whom AOC routinely attacks — is now a hero of speech and open debate.

Lessons for the willfully ignorant

Next came her invocation of the Confederacy and Jim Crow. Someone should tell her: The Confederates were Democrats. The segregationists were Democrats. The architects of slavery, redlining, and resistance to civil rights — all Democrats. Why should anyone believe the same party now represents moral progress? The left ruins the cities it governs and then blames everyone else. It’s the political version of DARVO: deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.

Then came her favorite populist line — that her opponents are “funded by billionaires.” Public records tell a different story. Plenty of billionaires bankroll her and her fellow radicals. How does she say it with a straight face? Remember our friend with the “Free Buses” sign: He’s not there for philosophy — he’s there for freebies.

The left’s new theology

AOC then delivered a sermon on intersectionality, the academic creed of Kimberlé Crenshaw: all “oppressed” groups united by one great villain — the white, Christian, heterosexual male.

Picture a wheel: The hub is the white Protestant man, the spokes are every “marginalized” group on earth. AOC’s list was textbook: “This city was built by the Irish escaping famine, Italians fleeing fascism, Jews escaping the Holocaust, black Americans fleeing Jim Crow, Latinos seeking a better life, Native people standing for themselves, Asian Americans coming together.”

For AOC and the radical left, grievance is the very air they breathe. Humanity divides neatly into identity blocs, locked in eternal conflict — and at the center of every injustice stands the Christian West. She closed the circle by declaring that American history is defined by “class struggle,” the dialectic Marx demanded.

AOC contradicts herself, defines ‘the American people’ as everyone but American citizens, and divides humanity into tribes of grievance.

Her introduction of Bernie Sanders confirmed it. “Senator Sanders,” she said, “is the foremost leader and advocate for labor and class struggle in the United States.” At least she’s honest. Sanders is an international socialist — otherwise known as a communist — and AOC’s crowd now wears that label proudly.

But a 1990s-era Hillary Clinton would instantly see the contradiction: You can’t be both pro-American worker and pro-open borders. Clinton was a national socialist (minus the genocidal agenda); Sanders and AOC are international socialists. The alternative to both isn’t fascism — which is also a species of national socialism — but the American republic: constitutional rule, checks and balances, a Bill of Rights, and a government that protects its citizens from threats foreign and domestic.

‘Acceptance’ without love

For those wondering whether any theology slipped into AOC’s secular revival meeting — it did, but only in parody.

In older times, an evil spirit could be tested by whether it could quote scripture correctly. By that standard, AOC’s spirit fails. She told the crowd we must “accept our neighbor as ourselves.” Not love — accept. The difference is enormous.

To love your neighbor is to will his good. To “accept” your neighbor, in AOC’s lexicon, is to affirm whatever destructive path he chooses. When a neighbor wants to mutilate his body for a sexual fetish, love warns him against harm. AOC’s “acceptance” cheers him on. Her mercy kills.

The Christian calls sinners to repentance and faith in Christ. The radical left calls that “hate speech.”

RELATED: Why Gen Z is rebelling against leftist lies — and turning to Jesus

Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images

The logic of the new faith

By now, any logic student would have learned the lesson: AOC contradicts herself, defines “the American people” as everyone but American citizens, and divides humanity into tribes of grievance. Her creed depends on intersectionality — a doctrine that scapegoats not just white men, but all Christians who refuse to bow before the new secular orthodoxy.

If that student left disappointed by the quality of public rhetoric, he’d still leave wiser. Over the gates of hell, Dante wrote: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Over the platform of the radical left, one might inscribe a similar warning: Let none who expect coherence enter here.

The modern left doesn’t appeal to reason. It despises reason as a tool of “European colonialism.” Instead, it appeals to envy, resentment, lust, and the eternal promise of something for nothing — free buses for all.

The American republic will not survive if its citizens trade reason for rage. To preserve it, we must expose the incoherence at the heart of the left’s new religion. Free buses to a ruined city are no substitute for freedom itself.