May 3, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE:

In 2014 Mark Steyn wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

REMINDER:

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BAFFLING TUCKER: The New York Times has a lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson that Richard Pollock dissects in his latest Substack piece as “disturbingly revealing.” The two-hour discussion that is the interview of Carlson by the Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro is extremely complicated in part because Carlson can be difficult to follow.

Here’s Pollock’s core takeaway:

“Put together, it is a searing indictment of a man who presumably is super-intelligent and who has gone down the rabbit hole of delusion and hate. And I take it personally, as he claims the land of Israel, the land of my ancestors, doesn’t have a right to exist.

“But there’s more. He now seems to be tilting toward a progressive critique of our economy, even praising Occupy Wall Street. He says that violent revolution could be just around the corner and he has many Leftwing friends who could lead it. He further calls for a new political party and says he would heartedly support it.

“Astonishingly, he also takes the side of the Iranian Mullahs. Not once does he acknowledge that the Mullahs murdered 45,000 men, women and children earlier this year as widespread civic demonstrations erupted. He further claims Iran isn’t a military power. Tell that to the Gulf States.”

Pollock, like so many on the Right, formerly thought he knew Carlson, observing that “As my readers know, I once was a die-hard Leftist, then turned to a life-long career in journalism, including as the Washington producer for ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.’

“Decades later I landed as the senior investigative reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation [DCNF]. The foundation was established and led by none other than Tucker Carlson. I spent a good deal of time with Tucker. So…I thought I knew him.

“But not now.”

Pollock came to the DCNF as a member of an investigative reporting team I had launched and managed at the Washington Examiner (WEX). He was unjustly let go by the WEX powers-that-be over my impassioned protests, which was a key reason for the subsequent move to DCNF.

I made sure he was able to join the rest of us at DCNF because I knew Pollock was (and is today) one of the finest investigative journalists in Right media. His assessment of Carlson is a hard but necessary read.

Posted at 5:53 pm by Mark Tapscott

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

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

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

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

 

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

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

BRING IT:

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

JAMES TARANTO: The SPLC Is A Journalism Scandal.

The SPLC raises money and sustains its relevance by stoking the perception that white supremacy is pervasive and influential. I have argued since 2008 that this aligns the center’s interests with those of supremacist groups. My point received insider validation from a 2019 New Yorker article by journalist Bob Moser, whom the SPLC hired as a writer in 2001. “Though the center claimed to be effective in fighting extremism, ‘hate’ always continued to be on the rise, more dangerous than ever, with each year’s report on hate groups,” Mr. Moser wrote. He and his colleagues came up with a mordant slogan: “The SPLC—making hate pay.”

If the indictment’s allegations are true, the SPLC’s fundraising efforts went beyond hyping hate groups to providing them material support.

They’re the Milo Minderbinder of nonprofits.

Posted at 12:33 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ROGER KIMBALL: The Last Days of the Iranian Regime.

That’s one part of the story. The other part involves ordinary citizens smashing into regime sympathizers with their cars, killing them, or members of the Iranian diaspora happily reporting on an explosion that eliminated 14 IRGC leaders. Biggest understatement of the moment: the Iranian regime is collapsing before our eyes. President Trump gave an update a few days ago:

We don’t even know who the hell we’re talking to. We call, and Mohammed picks up, the cousin of the brother-in-law of the barber . . . and I tell them: Are you the leader? We’re looking for a REAL LEADER, not a scared duck! . . .

Whoever grabs the job lasts less time than a kebab in my hand. They’re like a headless duck team: they quack, they flap . . . and in the end, one always ends up fried.

Tehran’s current line is that they will stop their attacks in the Strait of Hormuz—piddly little expostulations that they are—if the US ends the war, lifts the blockade, and postpones talk about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Trump’s answer? Forget it. And by the way, he noted, he doesn’t want Iran to abandon its nuclear program for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. Iran may never acquire nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, as the clock ticks and Iran’s economy slips into drain-swirling oblivion, CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper has just briefed President Trump on “final blow” strike options, including “Iran’s remaining military equipment and installations, regime/IRGC leadership, and other infrastructure.”

President Trump may very well choose to redeploy the kinetic option. We’ll see. Either way, the regime is finished.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Islamism, not the cost-of-living, is the root of this anti-Semitic violence.

On Thursday night, the day after the stabbing of two Jewish men in north London, Green Party deputy leader Rachel Millward was asked a simple question on the BBC’s Question Time. ‘You’ve stated you’ve seen racial hatred in this country’, said a member of the audience. ‘Could you please specify where that hatred is coming from?’

* * * * * * * * *

Basically, Millward’s response can be summarised as: supermarket prices and Nigel Farage are the reasons why Jews are being stabbed in London.

It isn’t hard to understand why Millward gave such a tortured and dishonest answer. Just hours before Question Time went to air, two Green Party candidates standing in next week’s council elections were arrested by Metropolitan Police officers on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred. It probably goes without saying that Saiqa Ali (a Muslim woman) and Sabine Mairey were not charged under Section 19 of the Public Order Act because they had posted inflammatory pictures of their latest receipt from Sainsbury’s. They were arrested for allegedly sharing anti-Semitic content.

Of course, Millward would have been in a bind even without these untimely arrests. Since the Green Party’s Islamo-leftist turn, there was never any chance that someone from the leadership would say anything critical of Islam, or even Islamic extremism.

Everyone with a pulse knows where the ‘racial hatred’ against Jews is coming from. A party awash with Islamist-inspired Jew hatred is never going to acknowledge this.

Meanwhile, back in the States, “You may recall the ‘Why Do They Hate Us’ campaign the left fired up immediately after the attacks to put blame on the US for the murder of 2,977 people on 9/11. That narrative was active by 9/12. And that was when the American left began its weird romance with Islam. Feminists seeing hijab and niqab, the suppression of women, as legitimate expressions of multiculturalism.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

And not by accident.

Related:

Posted at 9:23 am by Glenn Reynolds

IT’S LITERALLY ALL THEY’VE GOT:

They play the race card because they don’t have any others.

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds