Left Wing Terrorism | Coleman Hughes & Noah Rothman

Coleman Hughes talks to Noah Rothman about his latest book. Which I've read. 

“Blood & Progress. A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America”.

"Why only Left-wing violence and not Right-wing violence", the Left will say. “Isn't there more Right wing violence than Left-wing?”

Answer: No, and No. 

It's not "just" about Left-wing violence, if you read the book. It's on both sides. But Rothman focuses on the Left. Why? Because there have been plenty of books, articles and analyses of Right-wing violence while almost none on the Left. As Rothman explains in his book and in the above Conversation with Coleman.

The second "No” is about there being more violence on the Right than on the Left. The data show there is not. For the recent decades it's a statistical construct to claim more political violence on the Right than the Left. 

Eg from the Anti-defamation League:

Part of p32, on the misuse of ADL political crime stats

I leave it to Noah to explain why in the video above. In the book it's page 32 et.seq.

This vid comes just a few days after the preliminary trial of the Charlie Kirk killer, Tyler Robinson -- a far Left, furry-lover, living with a trans MtF lover -- which documents extensive evidence of his guilt. and of his increasingly Left-wing leanings. 

Despite which both the Left and the Right went loopy. 

Coleman says "there are two competing stupidities". On the Left that Robinson was actually a Republican, based solely on the fact that his parents are. On the Right, that it wasn't Robinson, but Egypt, its military or ... something, or... wait a minute! of course! it's the Jooz... ! 

Water, water, everywhere...

For weeks now... in Hong Kong. Non-stop rain. 

Which makes me think: "A bit of something is good. Too much of something is bad". 

As in: "Moderation in everything". 

Even water. 

You need water to live. Without water you die. But too much you drown. You can even die from just drinking too much water! 

Same with so much in life. Perhaps everything. Hence "moderation in everything". In Chinese: "The Great Mean". 

And so it is with immigration. Some is good. Even necessary. Too much, especially unvetted, is bad. At the extreme, it can destroy countries. 

As we see now in the Anglosphere. And in Europe. Too much; too unvetted; too unqualified; too unwilling to integrate; too unwilling to share values of the host country. 

People on the right, conservatives, who are against unrestricted mass immigration are NOT against immigration. Just against the scale and the lack of qualifying. 

Lionel Shriver talks to Toby Young. About the issue and her book about it, which I've read. "A Better Life". The title referring to the usual motivation of immigrants: to have a better life. 

Which is indeed true. That's what immigrants want. A better life. Fair enough. Who can blame them. 

But all too often that "better life" of the immigrants is at the expense of the lives of poor people in working class suburbs, who have no choice in the matter. For them, mass immigration is very often not at all better. More crime; higher prices, crowded schools, queues at hospitals. No respect, from guests, of their hosts. [*]

So the empathy here only works for the foreigner not the locals. Why?

Look at Bradford, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Tower Hamlets. Just in Shriver's adopted home of England. 

But, you know, BIGOT! If you dare raise this issue. If you've got concerns. Racist! Xenophobe! Even... the bigDaddy of them all: "Islamophobe!"

Sigh... 

=======================

[*] The epigraph of A Better Life: 

"Mankind is divisible into two great classes, hosts and guests."

~ Max Beerbohm

How the madness began | Paul Marshall

The 100 year history of Woke in 20 minutes.

Sir Paul Marshall starts with a quote: 

“My views are pretty much those of a Democrat circa 2010. But I have been demonised relentlessly”. [*]

Those are the words of Elon Musk. He didn’t leave the Democrat party. The Party left him. Other prominent ex-Democrats feel the same. Cable host Bill Maher, politician Tulsi Gabbard, Environmental campaigner Robert Kennedy. 

Most Dems today don’t consider Bill Clinton a Democrat! He’s grise without the eminence.

A good summary by Marshall of how we got here. The Woke Era.

More detail? “America’s Cultural Revolution” by Christopher Rufo. “Made in America” by China’s Cultural Revolution escapee Xi Van Fleet is also a good read on this. 

[*]  Musk posted this in X on 16 February 2016:

“The left calls people on the right “nazis” or “fascists” when they have not even physically harmed another human being, let alone advocated genocide or war.

My actual views are pretty much those of a Democrat circa 2010, but I’ve been demonised relentlessly with the above slurs.”

The Overton Window shifts Left. Thanks, Colin Wright

Below the fold. What the most neutral (but still obsequious) AI says about this:

Two Dogs

Mr Byron, Mr Beard, Ms Batya, Her Books...

Books by Batya Ungar-Sargon.

“Pure joy in the air” | Coleman Hughes

	Coleman Hughes ⁦‪@coldxman‬⁩ "Pure joy in the air" is how an Israeli journalist describes the mood in Israel right now. But how could that be? If the Israelis want, above all, genocide and ethnic cleansing, then why would they celebrate a deal that ends the war with no ethnic cleansing and 97% of the   10/10/2025, 5:45 pm

Good one, Coleman! 

That's Coleman Hughes a young philosopher, of no fixed abode politically, a rising star, public intellectual. Whose latest book I've just read: "The End of Race Politics". 

Full post from above: 

“Pure joy in the air” is how an Israeli journalist describes the mood in Israel right now.

But how could that be?

If the Israelis want, above all, genocide and ethnic cleansing, then why would they celebrate a deal that ends the war with no ethnic cleansing and 97% of the Gazans alive?

“Pure joy” is not what you feel when your deepest ambitions have just been thwarted.

It’s almost as if the goal of the war really was to get the hostages back and oust Hamas.

It’s almost as if Israelis are motivated by a deep, dark desire to…live in peace with their neighbors.

Two Death Cults: Jihadist and Jacobin

One Death Cult is Islamic Jihadism. 

They say it themselves: "We love death more than you love life".

This they mock and taunt at Jews. Jews; you know, those horrid people who love their children and who want them to prosper, study hard and succeed in life …rather than commit themselves to murdering their neighbours if they happen to be different. 

Islamic Jihadism is the Hamas Death Cult that invaded Israel two years ago yesterday. Who murdered, beheaded, raped, stole thousands of young, Palestine-supporting peace-nick youths. The Death Cult which two years ago today saw vast crowds of its supporters across the west, march and cheer and exult and gloat at this latest gory glory of the Islamic Death Cult they worship.

The other Death Cult is American Jacobin. 

They say it themselves: “We’ll keep killing you until you agree with us”.

This Jacobin Death Cult differs from the Islamic in one way only: that it wishes exclusively to kill its political enemies rather than to suicide itself. These are the modern Jacobins. Members of the Hard Left, the Far Left. Though I guess they'd rather be called "progressive". 

We had a very woke old friend stay with us recently here in Hong Kong. He proclaimed at one stage, and rather proudly: "I'm very progressive". I wasn't quick enough to retort: "I'd save that admission for your therapist, mate, not for this table". Heh…

That was before the murder of Charlie Kirk. I wonder how our "progressive" friend would react to that. I fear he'd be part of the "But Brigade". You know, "Of course he shouldn't have been killed, but…" variety. Which is only a slightly more polite — if more devious and deceitful — way of excusing random political assassinations in our erstwhile Enlightened West. 

Douglas Murray has just published "On Democraciies and Death Cults" which I've just started reading. I'm wondering if and how he handles the American Jacobins Death Cult, aka the Assassination Cult. 

And so to this essay on the latest news of Democrat Assassination Porn, fresh from the American Jacobin Death Cult:

"Virginia Election: Jay Jones Texts a Peek into a Bleak Moral Worldview" | National Review

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Dems forget Micawber's wisdom: prefer the magic of David Copperfield

I remember first reading David Copperfield, Charles Dickens' wonderful novel of 1850. I loved it. Unputdownable. I well remember the inveterate optimist, the inimitable Mr Micawber and his famous maxim:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."

For those thinking "huh?" on seeing something like "twenty pounds nought and six", here it is, modernised: 

Annual income: $20. Annual expenditure: $19. Result: happiness.

Annual income: $20. Annual expenditure: $21. Result: misery. 

In business, we call this "Cash Flow Management". AKA: "Cash is King". AKA: "a dollar is much harder to earn than it is to spend".  [*]

Below are two very recent instances of Dems not understanding -- or refusing to understand, or ignoring -- this rule of life. A rule Mr Micawber understood nearly two centuries ago:

1. The Stephen Colbert firing by CBS. 

The Dems say Colbert had the "highest rating show on Late Night TV". That the show was bringing in "piles of ad revenue". So: "why cancel??" Their answer to themselves is: the only reason CBS is cancelling Colbert is because he's a Trump critic and CBS need the approval from the Trump administration for merger they have planned with a company called Skydance. 

They forget, or ignore: that Late Night has crumbled, and crumbled everywhere, to barely 20% of where it was under the likes of Johnny Carson. Being at the top of a pile of duds is just being at the top of other losers, like Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers. 

Ad revenue has dropped along with the ratings. A show like Colbert's that made $400 million a year in advertising revenue under David Letterman, now rakes in just $60 million from ads. I heard Peter Dominick on CNN's Abby Philip show saying this is a "bunch of money" and of course it is. But the expenses of the show are $100 million! This was pointed out to him by the token conservative on the show, but Dominck just plowed on regardless. (Mind you, he's labelled a "comedian", so there's that... ). 

But, as Micawber would say: "Annual income $60 million; Annual expenditure: $100 million. Result: misery. Result: $40 million loss, per year, and getting bigger every year. 

Which is why CBS is cancelling the show as of May 2026. We're expecting Colbert's other Late Night buddies, Kimmel, Fallon and Myers, will soon drop off  their perches as well. (Which tends to discount the Dems' theory that the CBS cancellation of Colbert is only to curry favour from the Trump administration for the CBS-Skydance merger).

2. The players of the Women's National Basketball Association

The WNBA are demanding more money. They wore T-shirts on court the other day saying "Pay us what you owe us". By which they mean that they ought to get more of the annual revenues. Currently they get to share about 10% of the revenues. They want 50%. 

Which is a bit rich. Because... 

I've seen a lot of them making their cases on TV. They sternly ignore, or don't know, or refuse to know, the reality. Which is that their league, the WNBA has always lost money and continues to lose money. Lately at rate of around $40 million per year. But they look only at the revenue (which Micawber called "income" [*]). They ignore, or don't know about, the costs, the expenditures. Which means they lose money every year. Which money is funded out of the net income that the MEN make. Yikes!

 

You see why their demands are a bit rich.

As wits have pointed out on X, the ladies of the WNBA actually owe the league money. Each of the 250 WNBA players owes the League $160,000 just for this year. Heh!

Other wags have suggested improvements that might make the WNBA more popular: lower the basket to make dunking easier, shorten the court; and...if that doesn't work... replace the women with men! Heh!

Maybe all these reality-denying folks who don't admit the importance of professional media and sports actually making money, not losing it, are mistaking their David Copperfields. 

Instead of the wisdom of a Dickensian Micawber, in David Copperfield, they prefer magic numbers that can be conjured up by the famous Noo Joisey illusionist David Copperfield. Some day, some way, we'll make money... by magick!

===============

[*] Micawber's use of the word "income"  can be confusing, as it's sometimes used to mean "net income", which is after expenses. Clearer would be to use "Revenue"

The iron law of Oligarchy

That's the lesson of history for political systems. It's always, everywhere, about oligarchies and elites. 

Get over it! 

It's always, everywhere, about oligarchies and elites. 

So says the author, my clip above. 

I watch CNN and see them get all hot under the collar that the government is being run by oligarchs. That's true. And was true of the Dems as well. For 'tis forever and everywhere true. For Dems and Reps and third parties. 

There is no such thing as a true democracy, never has been. When we've tried direct democracy, like at times in Greece, and at times via "Propositions" in California, the results have been disastrous. (Think of the two California Propositions: one demanding more government spending on such-and-such and the other refusing to raise taxes...). 

This from the book recommended to us by Marc Andreessen, early Silicon Valley investor, friend and fan of Elon Musk, all-round super-smart dude. He who knows whereof he speaks. 

The book is "The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom", by James Burnham. I find it a bit dense, so I have to go over it several times. But I'm finding it repays careful study and remains relevnt to today. Once you accept that it's all about oligarchies, either side, the Reps or the Dems, many things going on are clarified. 

Tik Tok Refugees

Click above for the vid

With the (maybe) imminent closure of China's hit App Tik Tok in the US, because of worries about Chinese influence, many young'uns have moved to a Chinese Instagram equivalent -- a copy, in fact -- called "Little Red Book" (小红书). Where they meet up with actual, real, Chinese people. Most as young, loutish, foolish and naive as they are. 

Some folks, as in those in the vid above, see it as a good thing that Chinese youth and American yoot are having interactions. Me too. 

Thing it, Chinese government doesn't in fact think so. And is in the process of shutting them out. Which means that if they Amerian yoot are bereft of Tik Tok and Little Red Book, they're going to have to find -- gasp! -- something else to do. 

Meantime, young Americans are finding that they're censored for all sorts of things that are just fine in the US. Like saying they're lesbian, or non-binary or any one of the alphabet soup in LGBTW2Sp+ "community", not to mention anything that says anything nasty about the Great Leader. 

There's a rather more tart take on the whole issue, by a guy that spent 14 years in China, married to a Chinese lady, travelled all over China, and often said very nice things about China -- as have I. But he's not naive, and speaks his mind about it all here. 

"The JFK Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Kennedy―and Why It Failed" | Brad Meltzer

 Adam Carolla talks to Brad Meltzer about his latest book. About a different, little-known, conspiracy against the life of Jack Kennedy. 

Which reminds me of when I first arrived in New York, as a young kid, in September 1960, just before the first Kennedy-Nixon debate on the 26th September. Dad was Australian representative at the United Nations. We were in a hotel on East 22nd Street, just before we decamped to suburban New Rochelle. 

We watched the debate on a little black and white box, in our hotel room. For us it was the first time we'd even seen television, which at the time hadn't arrived in Australia. So it was kind of magic. 

And to see these two men, battle it out on television. Magic. 

This was just before Kruschev banged his shoe, at the United Nations, declaring, angrily that "we will bury you". As in communism, the Soviet Union would bury us, the West and US. 

Then we went to Germany where we were, Dad in the Australian Embassy in the then capital Bonn, when the Communists started building the Berlin Wall, in August 1961. 

Then not long after, I sailed, by ship, to Canberra for my high school years. Which was where I heard about the Kennedy assassination on 22 November 1963. I was at the Canberra Grammar School. Supposed to board, but the boarding section was full, so I was put up by a kind family, whose son, Mick Gee, was in the same year as me. 

We'd been out on a school excursion. I returned to find a newspaper on my bed, with the screaming black-faced 100-point headline, in awful alliteration: "Kennedy Killed!". 

For most of my life, and even unto now, I believed the official story that it was a lone killer, Lee Harvey Oswald. Everything else, I thought, was Conspiracy Theory. But now, late in life, I'm not so sure. Does not some grander, wider, more sinister plot make more sense? That he was hated for his Catholicism? For his attacks on the "military industrial complex"? For his brother's attacks on the Mafia? 

And now we have Brad Meltzer. And his wholly new story of yet another conspiracy. 

Meltzer reveals an earlier attempt on Kennedy in his new book. I don't know about it at all. Meltzer says we don't know about it because news was overshadowed by the Cuban Missile Crisis.

What a crazy few years. Kennedy-Nixon, assassinations -- JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Oswald, Ruby -- the brink of nuclear war over Cuba, the Berlin wall. Kruschev's shoe. 

Watch Adam Carolla’s segment with Brad Meltzer. . 

Meltzer's book:. The JFK Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Kennedy―and Why It Failed

Lies about Israel #5: “Israel is Guilty of Genocide and War Crimes”. And the Reality

 

Lies about Israel #4 "Israel is an apartheid state". And the Reality

From "The 10 Big Anti-Israel Lies" by Alan Dershowitz

Lies about Israel #3: "Israel caused the refugee problem of the Palestinians". And the Reality

From "The 10 Big Anti-Israel Lies" by Alan Dershowitz

lies§§§

Lies about Israel #2: “Israel Denied Statehood to the Palestinian People”. And the Reality

 

From “The 10 big anti-Israel lies and how to refute
them with truth” by Alan Dershowitz 

lies§§§

Lies about Israel # 1: "Israel is a Colonial, Imperial State". And the Reality

From “The 10 big anti-Israel lies and how to refute
them with truth” by Alan Dershowitz 
lies§§§

"The Ten Big Anti-Israel Lies and how to refute them". Alan Dershowitz  lies§§§

History: How important is it for Israel to win “public opinion”?

From Benjamin Netanyahu’s book “Bibi: My Story”. 

“My conversations with Father [Benzion Netanyahu] were eye-opening. He put forward a stark proposition: in today’s world, you can’t defend a military victory without a political victory; you can’t defend a political victory without a victory in public opinion; and you can’t win public opinion without an appeal to justice. (My underlining).

"If your adversaries succeed in portraying your cause as unjust, they will gradually erode your position. It didn’t matter if your cause was a genuinely moral one if you didn’t present it as such. Some of the greatest aggressors in history portrayed themselves as just and their victims as unjust. 

"This happened to Israel time and again. Israel kept winning on military battlefields and losing on political ones. Israel’s clearly just war of self-defense in 1967 was portrayed by Arab propaganda as an aggressive war of conquest. They conveniently hid the fact that they laid a siege of death on the tiny Jewish state, choked its trade route to Asia and formed a tristate military pact that openly called for Israel’s annihilation. 

“Arab propaganda systematically covered up the true root cause of the Israeli-Arab conflict—the persistent Arab refusal to recognize a Jewish state, whatever its borders.”

-- p. 103 of 724 in Kindle version, Chapter 13. 

Some thoughts on the nice formulation above by Benzion Netanyahu, Bibi's dad, back in the 1970s. 

1. Israel lost the public opinion war in those days of the 1970s and it’s still losing that battle today in the war in Gaza.

2. Hamas has been much more effective in winning over hearts and minds in the west. Especially, but not only, amongst the youth. 

3. This is all the more incredible given the brutality of the October 7th attacks on Israel. 

4. Hamas has done so on the asymmetric warfare tactic of the “Dead Babies strategy". They make the most out of all civilian deaths on their side. Especially dead babies and children. Of which there are many because of deliberate “Human Shield” tactics. And which they then give to western media, which replays them on the nightly news every day in every way and with no question. (“a photograph is not an argument”. Except, well... it kind of is). 

5. The western media is also complicit, in accepting every word and every picture from Hamas, as if true. And if it turns out not to be true, there’s never a retraction. 

6. Given all this, I wonder if the above advice by Bibi’s father to his son -- from Benzion to Benjamin -- is relevant any more. 

7. I suspect that Bibi is still working on that advice. He does seem to care about the public opinion to the extent of putting off war aims that he should have carried out. For example, he held off attacking Rafah during Ramadan because of “public opinion”. Many are saying that that lost the momentum of the war, and perhaps even lost the war itself, given that the Biden Administration is now pushing a “Comprehensive Ceasefire deal” that amounts to Israel surrender. 

8. Therefore, there is now a case that Israel should simply ignore “public opinion”. The opinion of the world, the opinions of the United Nations, of the ICC, of the ICJ, of the protesters on elite campuses around the world. There is nothing that Israel could do, no care and concern for Gazan civilians enough for them to think that Israel has done enough. No matter what Israel does it’s never enough. Ergo don’t worry about trying to do enough. Just worry about the war aims. 

9. The “appeal to justice”, that Bibi’s Father mentions above, hasn’t worked. Israel has done that, all its supporters have done that. And yet, the justice of Israel’s actions is dismissed, ignored, mocked. This, despite that it can be clearly stated, is convincing and is soundly based. It's as nothing to the haters of Israel. 

10. Any time that Israel does try to put its position, its justified position, to give facts and history, it is dismissed as “Zionist propaganda”. All that’s believed comes from Hamas. A clearly bad actor, a serial liar, a terrorist organisation, committed to genocide of Jews. And yet they’re the ones believed. “You can’t rationalise someone out of a view that they’ve reached irrationally”. 

That’s my own feelings about it. It’s just me being an "extreme, a horrid right-wing radical” (as I’ve been called by some OR’s). Well, yeah, I guess. I do plead guilty to wanting Israel to win this war. I can’t see any good coming out of capitulation. The capitulation that the Biden Administration wants and many in the west want. 

Winning means winning. It means demolishing Hamas. The only thing that’s standing in the way of Israel winning is that Israel, and perhaps Bibi too, are perhaps overly concerned about the “public opinion” that Bibi’s father drilled into him fifty years ago. 

Winning does not mean some BS "ceasefire agreement" foisted on Israel by a man -- Joseph Biden --  of whom Barack Obama famously said: “never underestimate Joe’s capacity to fuck things up."

ADDED: “Why Hamas supporters are winning the debate”

“The End of Race Politics”| Coleman Hughes

Arrived yesterday, “The End of Race Politics”, the first book from the young philosopher, multi-talented Coleman Hughes, writer, blogger, musician, author. His instrument is the trombone,at which he’s national-level good. 

He was on The View, with Whoopie Goldberg  last week and destroyed Sonny Hostin in a clip that went viral. It's here. (Note how Joy Behar doesn’t know who Robin DeAngelo or Ibram X Kendi are. Which is amazing to me, as they are two of the key “anti-racists”… race grifters some would say. Even I, here in Hong Kong, have known about them for years). 

[UPDATE. 12 Aug, 2025): the vid clip above is not available any more, so watch the Joe Rogan one below, for the gist. Or a different clip, with Dave Rubin, here, with Nate the Lawyer, here, with Megyn Kelly here].

And then Coleman was on Joe Rogan clip here. Full pod here.  Jimmy Dore here.

I've also written about Coleman’s Ted Talk, on the end of race politics, which also went viral. Here. Also click the “Ted” label below.

I've followed Coleman for years. From as far back as 2018. He's really a talented young man. (Search “Coleman Hughes” in the search box at the right. I’ve posted more about him than even I remember. It’s kinda surprising to me that, sitting here in Hong Kong, I know about this clearly consequential young man long before current affairs analysts, the likes of Jimmy Dore, Joe Rogan, the ladies of a The View. Weird, right?).

I've started his book. He writes clearly, crisply, elegantly. And has clear views about how the race situation in America can be improved. 

Coleman says: "Colourblind" does not mean "I don't see colour". 

It means trying to treat everyone the same, irrespective of their colour. 

It's a return to Martin Luther King Jnr's famous dictum: "don't judge people by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character". 

Sent from my iPad

“Irish writer Paul Lynch wins 2023 Booker Prize with dystopian novel Prophet Song” | About Ireland descending into tyranny

When I saw the headline I thought: "hmmm… I wonder, would that be a Right-wing tyranny or a Left-wing tyranny?"

London to a brick, I thought, it's going to be about a Right-wing tyranny. And sure enough: of course it's about a Right-wing tyranny descending on Ireland!

But look at history of the last century. On the Right we have the German Nazis; the Italian, Spanish and Greek fascists; Argentina; Chile. But much more on the Left, we have the Stalinist Soviet Union, the Maoist China, the Kim Il-sungian North Korea. Right-wing tyrannies still pop up here and there, but the largest and most enduring tyrannies, the ones that have done the most damage to mankind, are the far-Left ones. You want to see a real dystopia in  action today? Go to North Korea, as I've done. It's right there right now and has endured for three-quarters of a century. It's horrid, it's a tyranny and it's a dystopia.

But Paul Lynch can't "imagine" a far-Left dystopia, because that would never bag a Booker! 

He claims he was taking a risk writing the book. Shucks, Paul! You're never at risk with the mainstream if you hammer the Right! Sounds like the claim you were "speaking truth to power" when you criticised Trump in office. You did it to the cheers of the media. Like Robert De Nero saying "fuck Trump" at the Oscars to wild cheers, then being called "brave"! What self-regarding nonsense.

Give me a break Paul. You knew that writing about a Right-wing dystopia was catnip for the pussies.

The irony is that the current Left-wing Irish government is debating a "Hate crime bill" that would silence dissent and crush freedom of speech. A genuine step to tyranny. Whither the Left-wing dystopia in Ireland? Don't go to Lynch for any thoughts, for like the good people at Booker and The Guardian, they all firmly believe the only baddies are on the Right!

Reflecting on Covid lockdowns

Reading Jennifer Sey's "Levi's Unbuttoned". Subtitle: "The Woke Mob Took My Job But Gave Me My Voice".

Sey was next in line as CEO of the storied brand: a job worth tens of millions. Until she started talking of the clear unfairness of closing public schools in California while private schools stayed open (this was early 2020). All her Levi's colleagues were sending their kids to private schools. Which stayed open, so they were just fine, thank you. While the oleaginous California Governor Gavin Newsome shut the public schools for two years….

Jennifer called out the hypocrisy. For that she was eventually eased out of her senior job. By a company proud of its "social justice values". She describes all this and more, so well in the book. How there was a narrative. And you had to follow it slavishly. Or be cast out, heretic!

In the page above she talks more broadly about a trend that we here in Hong Kong and on this blog also noticed early on: how the "salaried class" as called them then — academics, the media, civil servants — nowadays more often called "the laptop class", were just fine working from home, thank you. While the working class was either expected to actually go in to work (eg as delivery drivers and checkout girls) or were stopped from working and making a wage.

We remember. But these hypocrites, who were also wrong, but admitted no wrong. Or, if admitting any wrong say "we were doing our best with what we knew at the time". But we did know better at the time. As did Jay Bhattarachaya. But whose "Great Barrington Declaration" was brutally shut down. Jay was labelled "a fringe epidemiologist" by Anthony Fauci. "We have to shut this down" he emailed his colleagues. But of whom no bad can be said, even today.

Sent from my iPad

The so-called “subsidies” to Tesla | “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson

 

From the very readable “Elon Musk”, by Walter Isaacson

I’ve seen this claim made against Elon Musk countless times, on X and elsewhere -- that Tesla was given “subsidies”, an unfair leg up over others. Not true. At all. As in the above explanation from a wonderful new bio of Musk. 

People just love hate on Elon. Now more than ever because he bought Twitter, renamed it “X” and has made it more of a heterodox platform. They hate outside-the-narrative views! 

Note here: Tesla only took a loan. It was less than the other car companies took, and repaid it early and in full, which other car companies have not. Meantime, the likes of GM and Chrysler have had huge injections of interest free “bailouts”, which they have done little with. 

It’s no longer the case that “success has many fathers, failure is an orphan”. 

The case now is “success has many critics and failure is fine, as long as you agree with the Blob”.