You can’t make this Trump-sounding tinpot dictator stuff up. The second big new North Korean destroyer, designed by Russian spies stealing American ideas, was launched sideways and damaged, capsized, and has been taking on water.
KCNA reported that there were no holes on the ship’s bottom – contrary to initial reports.
“The hull starboard was scratched and a certain amount of seawater flowed into the stern section,” the agency said.
Seawater entered the hull but there was no hole? It’s like a ship taking on seawater through a… not hole. Nobody is allowed to say there’s a hole, when water flows into the stern, so that means ’tis but a scratch.
The Black Knight sketch was supposed to be fictional humor.
Arthur delivers a mighty blow which completely severs the Black Knight’s left arm at the shoulder. Arthur steps back triumphantly.
Arthur: “Now stand aside worthy adversary.”
Black Knight (Glancing at his shoulder): “Tis but a scratch.”
Arthur: “A scratch? Your arm’s off.”
Black Knight: “No, it isn’t.”
Arthur (Pointing to the arm on ground): “Well, what’s that then?”
Black Knight: “I’ve had worse.”
Arthur: “You’re a liar.”
Black Knight: “Come on you pansy!”
“‘Tis but a scratch…. Just a flesh wound.” Source: Black Knight, Monty Python
In time the Soviets came to understand that they had been stealing bogus technology, but now what were they to do? By implication, every cell of the Soviet leviathan might be infected. They had no way of knowing which equipment was sound, which was bogus. All was suspect, which was the intended endgame for the entire operation.
I suspect North Korea now will send even more of their boys to die in a ditch in Ukraine, until Russia gives them a new bogus stolen ship design. “This time with launch instructions” someone must be screaming in Russian right about now.
Wilson’s “America First”: KKK Ideology in the White House
In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson screened the white supremacist propaganda “Birth of a Nation” at the White House, becoming the first president to show a film there. This went far beyond entertainment—it was endorsement. Screen capture from “Birth of a Nation”, which President Wilson used to restart the KKK and incite violence across America
The film portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroes and white Southerners as victims because they lost the Civil War, while depicting newly freed American Blacks as threats to white safety and prosperity.
No classic Hollywood film tells the story of plantation life from the point of view of the enslaved—that would have dispelled the [American white nationalist] myth entirely.
Wilson’s administration didn’t just intentionally screen violent propaganda across America to expand racist suffering; it implemented it as policy. Federal workplaces were rapidly resegregated at his demand, a process that later defined South African apartheid policies. The president himself praised sensationalized fictional racist propaganda in the film as “historical accuracy,” lending his presidential authority to a narrative that painted white Americans as victims when Blacks dared to gain equality or racial progress.
Sound familiar?
“America First” and MAGA are KKK Rhetoric of Victimhood
Then, as now, the “America First” formula was simple but deadly effective:
Present white communities as innocent victims
Ignore historical context and systemic oppression
Use selective anecdotes to suggest widespread threat
Frame any discussion of historical injustice as reverse discrimination
Wilson’s rhetoric about protecting white Americans from supposed threats helped create the ideological foundation for what came next, both in America and South Africa.
Wilson’s definition of “self-determination” meant only racist apartheid – supporting white supremacist South Africa while blocking any and all actual independence movements by people of color.
The “America First” Racist Attack Plan: Wilson’s Bloody Hands
Spoiler Alert: Pre-WWI America Pioneered the Disinformation that South Africa, Germany and Russia learned about and from.
The years following Wilson’s embrace of KKK ideology witnessed an explosion of racial violence unprecedented since the Civil War:
The Red Summer of 1919 saw coordinated racial massacres across dozens of American cities. In Chicago alone, 38 people died and over 500 were injured as white mobs, emboldened by rhetoric about protecting white neighborhoods, attacked Black communities.
The Elaine Massacre of 1919 in Arkansas began when Black farmers tried to organize fair market wages and prices. White authorities, primed by losing the Civil War and years of rhetoric about white economic interests being zero sum, responded with systematic slaughter of Blacks. Federal troops were sent by President Wilson to shoot civilians, and estimates are up to 240 American Blacks were systematically killed (Wilson suppressed and polluted investigations), while only five white deaths were recorded.
The Tulsa KKK Massacre of 1921 destroyed the prosperous Greenwood district—known as “Black Wall Street”—killing an estimated 300 people and dumping the bodies into unmarked mass graves. The violence began with false white supremacist grievances (a white woman was looked at by a Black boy) fueled by years of resentment toward Black economic success, resentment that had been validated and encouraged by the highest levels of government.
American Pattern Recognition
These weren’t isolated incidents. They were the predictable result of presidential rhetoric of “America First”:
Legitimized white grievance narratives
Portrayed racial progress as a threat to white safety
Used the authority of the presidency to validate discriminatory ideologies
Created an atmosphere where violence against minority communities seemed justified
“America First” Today is the Same as Ever
The recent White House article about South Africa follows this same dangerous template.
Fraudulently presenting white South African farmers as victims, by willfully ignoring the historical context of deadly racist apartheid and its ongoing effects, it employs the same false victimhood narrative that Wilson used to devastate American Black lives, murdering hundreds if not thousands.
Just as Wilson ignored Jim Crow segregation, let alone slavery, while portraying whites as the only victims in America, today’s rhetoric ignores apartheid while presenting whites as the primary victims of their own racial injustices.
Trump is Promoting Domestic Terrorism
History doesn’t repeat exactly, but it rhymes with frightening precision. The 1919-1921 period shows us where presidential validation of white nationalist violence narratives leads: to organized murders, destroyed communities, and “America First” crosses burning in lawns.
We cannot afford to ignore these parallels. When the White House legitimizes narratives that present victims of oppression as the threat, and white supremacist oppressors as the only real victims, we recreate the ideological conditions for violence that serves “America First” yet again.
The question isn’t whether such rhetoric will have consequences—history tells us it will. The question is whether we’ll recognize the pattern in time to prevent another Red Summer, another Elaine, another Tulsa.
Learning the Law, and Restoring Order
Recognizing the “America First” patterns isn’t about political partisanship—it’s about preventing tragedy. MAGA is literally a call to return the world to Wilson’s follies; a time when the highest office in the land validates dangerous racial narratives, to oppress non-whites with intent to transfer all power and privilege to a small select group of whites protected by propaganda and secret police.
The victims of 1919-1921 deserve to be remembered not just as casualties of racists in their time, but as warnings for ours. Their deaths remind us that presidential words have consequences, and that the “America First” front to the KKK returned because voters failed to learn from them.
We’ve been here before. We know how this story ends. The only question is whether we’re willing to write a different ending this time.
Debunking an “America First” President Like Shooting Racist Fish in a Barrel
Looking at the official statement, we’re not dealing with new or innovative racism in 2025, but literally the same century-old playbook being recycled by the current White House. The following logical fallacy analysis of overtly racist American government propaganda may as well be from 1915.
Key Pattern: Nearly every White House argument commits the same dumb logical error of presenting anecdotal evidence as systematic proof while strategically ignoring the far more important historical context, comparative data, and complex socioeconomic factors caused by white nationalist oppressive regimes.
Source
Type of Fallacy
Why It’s Misleading
Personal anecdote: “You can’t stay on a farm as a white person”
Hasty Generalization
Single testimony presented as universal truth; ignores broader crime statistics affecting all racial groups
New York Post: “White South African couple say they’re victims”
Cherry Picking
Highlights isolated cases while ignoring systematic data on crime rates across all demographics
Daily Mail: “Why white South Africans are fleeing”
False Cause
Assumes racial targeting without establishing causation; ignores economic factors in migration
BBC: “Afrikaner defends refugee status”
Appeal to Emotion
Uses individual hardship stories to suggest systematic persecution without statistical evidence
Breitbart: “Trump Vindicated as South Africa considers land redistribution”
Circular Reasoning
Uses partisan source to “vindicate” Trump’s own claims; ignores historical context of land ownership
BBC: “Land seizure law”
False Equivalence
Equates legal land reform (with compensation provisions) to violent seizure
BBC: “70,000 South Africans expressed interest in moving”
Bandwagon Fallacy
Uses interest in immigration as proof of persecution; ignores economic motivations
NY Times: “Kill the Boer song”
Composition Fallacy
Takes extremist political rhetoric and applies it to entire government/population
NY Times: “Killing of White Farmer becomes flash point”
Availability Heuristic
Emphasizes memorable violent incidents while ignoring broader crime context
Sky News Australia: “Anti-white racism”
Confirmation Bias
Partisan source that confirms predetermined narrative without balanced analysis
News.com.au: “Racial violence escalates”
Loaded Language
Uses inflammatory terms without providing comparative crime data
The Independent: “Taking farms from whites is justified”
Strawman Argument
Presents extremist political position as mainstream government policy
Multiple sources on “farm attacks”
Statistical Manipulation
Focuses on one crime category without context of overall crime rates or rural vs urban statistics
The Trump white supremacist “America First” regime is as wrong as the day is long.
The Trump regime is CLEARY WRONG and has adopted extreme-right Kahanism propaganda tactics to demand people believe racist genocidal lies.
Those who announce they’re right, more probably are wrong
Truth doesn’t need “golden proclamation showers” because it stands on evidence
Emotional anecdotes emphasized over rational analysis belies the lies (Meir Kahane’s strategy of presenting Jews as perpetual victims while simultaneously advocating for Jewish supremacy and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians)
The pleading, weak defensive posture, reveals they know their position fails basic tests
Classic authoritarianism to prevent real power: assert truths with sock puppet popularity contests and repetition rather than proofs
President Wilson used these exact same tactics. He declared the fictional KKK propaganda film Birth of a Nation “historically accurate”, not because any historians agreed, but because he wanted his ill-gotten authority to override all factual analysis. The defensive posture admits they know that their position can’t survive scrutiny. What’s surprising is how the KKK rebranding as “America First” has normalized a racist domestic terrorism agenda that fails basic natsec scrutiny.
As a simple example, white nationalists known as the South African AWB used to ride through Black neighborhoods admittedly trying to kill Black women and children as “game”. After the end of apartheid, Black police officers were trained and stationed to defend innocent people from terrorism. Suddenly the usual white supremacist privilege ended, and AWB were stopped and killed when they drove a car into a Black neighborhood trying to shoot randomly into homes. Trump literally is trying to call these long-standing foreign terrorist groups the only victims, after law and order was established to stop their white supremacist terror tactics.A single police officer in 1994 killed Nazi domestic terrorists (AWB) who had been driving around shooting at Black people. It was headline news at the time, because AWB promised civil war to forcibly remove all Blacks from government and instead ended up dead on the side of a road.
This pattern recognition isn’t academic for security professionals—it’s practical preparation for everyone countering the next wave of “America First” propaganda that will inevitably follow. Every time someone tries to present these white supremacist oppressors as victims while ignoring their victims, we now have the historical context and analytical tools to expose the lie immediately.
Police are releasing few details into yet another fatal 2am Tesla crash. Even the minimal information has the hallmarks of a driverless flaw.
The crash happened shortly before 2 a.m. just north of Exit 33 to Cypress Creek Road, near Pompano Beach, in Broward County.
Video from the scene showed a Mercedes Sprinter van flipped on its side in the right lane and a severely damaged black Tesla with deployed airbags several feet away.
In any serious analysis of threats to democratic stability, one principle remains constant: when seditionists and those connected to political assassinations gain mainstream platforms instead of facing accountability, the system itself is failing. Imagine if John Wilkes Booth became a pundit or even ran for office after assassinating Lincoln. What we’re witnessing in Israel today represents a textbook case of institutional capture that should alarm anyone concerned with national security and democratic resilience.
The Threat Modeling Nightmare
Moshe Feiglin is a name that should not appear on news broadcasts. He is not just another controversial talking head, or politician. This man was convicted of sedition by Israel’s Supreme Court for organizing coordinated attacks on state infrastructure designed to paralyze the democratically elected government in order to destroy it.
In effect, [the Feiglin terror group] asserts that liberal democracy is un-Jewish…. The motivation behind all of this, one regrets to say, is quite obvious: a profound racial and sexual paranoia. A fear, in effect, of miscegenation, of racial pollution.
He hates democracy so much, for reasons of “racial pollution”, anyone giving him a voice violates the Popper intolerance doctrine.
His recent statements calling for the removal of “every child, every baby in Gaza” and declaring Palestinian children “the enemy” represent exactly why his right to speech needs to be removed again. Such extremist ideology can not be allowed into mainstream political discourse, any more than Hitler salutes can be seen on streets of Germany.
Assassination Connection: A Direct Threat Vector
The security implications can not leave out the well documented relationship between Feiglin and Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. Yigal Amir, the law student who murdered Israel’s Prime Minister in 1995, was directly connected to the Zo Artzeinu movement that Feiglin founded and led.
This wasn’t some distant or passive ideological influence—Amir actively participated in the same extremist networks that Feiglin organized to spread extremist violence, leading to assassination.
In any competent national security framework, individuals with such documented connections to political assassination plots would be subject to ongoing monitoring and necessarily restricted from positions of public influence.
Somehow Feiglin has been instead allowed to serve in the Knesset and continues to be platformed as a legitimate political voice. Do you know any banks that have staff who are convicted fraudsters?
The Call Comes From Inside: Kahanist Infiltration
Feiglin’s rhetoric directly echoes the eliminationist ideology of Meir Kahane, whose followers were responsible for multiple terrorist attacks including the 1994 Hebron massacre. I remember vividly when Kahane’s Kach movement was banned as a terrorist organization, and even more clearly when and where I was the moment Kahane died.
Despite his demise, the disgusting ideology—ethnic cleansing of Palestinians—lived on being laundered into mainstream political discourse through the dangerous seditionist named Feiglin.
Where Feiglin got his ideas is no mystery. He is usually cagey about it in public, but in a 2013 interview with The Jewish Press, he acknowledged his kinship with and admiration for Meir Kahane, who also advocated a halachic state, annexation of the disputed territories, banning of non-Jews and mixed marriages, and transfer of the Arab population. “You can find places where we say the same things,” Feiglin said. …I can definitely say that the slogan ‘Kahane tzadak — Kahane was right’ has proven itself many times.”
The May 21, 2025 White House website displays obvious propaganda, similar to extremist “Kahane tzadak” tactics, demanding racist lies be swallowed without thought.
Make no mistake, this is ideological warfare going back to the 1990s. Rather than operating through underground cells, Kahanist ideology has captured legitimate political institutions and media platforms through radical propaganda.
Global Pattern: Democratic Backsliding Through Institutional Capture
This normalization of eliminationist rhetoric represents a systematic failure occurring across multiple democratic societies. The parallels are unmistakable and coordinated:
United States: A presidential candidate who openly mocked disabled individuals, praised authoritarian leaders, and incited an insurrection is returned to power and proceeds to nominate individuals with white supremacist symbols tattooed on their bodies to run the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth’s Jerusalem Cross and “Deus Vult” tattoos—historically associated with far-right extremist movements—would have disqualified someone from security clearance in any functional system. Instead, he’s being confirmed to oversee the world’s most powerful military.
Germany: The Alternative for Germany (AfD) openly employs Nazi rhetoric, with leaders like Björn Höcke using language directly lifted from SS propaganda and calling for “well-tempered cruelty” against immigrants. Multiple regional intelligence services have classified AfD branches as extremist organizations with terrorist potential. Yet instead of prosecution, they’re winning regional elections and holding significant parliamentary representation. A party that invokes 1930s eliminationist ideology now shapes policy in the country that wrote the post-war playbook for preventing fascist resurgence.
Israel: Individuals with sedition convictions and direct connections to political assassination are not only rehabilitated but allowed to drive policy discourse calling for ethnic cleansing. Kahanist ideology—once designated as terrorism—is now treated as legitimate political opinion.
The security question is stark: How do democratic institutions simultaneously declare certain ideologies as terrorist threats while platforming and empowering their adherents?
Germany’s domestic intelligence services literally classify AfD branches as extremist organizations, yet the same state apparatus allows them to now take parliamentary seats away from actual politicians to undermine policy. It’s as if the FBI designated the KKK a terrorist organization while simultaneously allowing the Speaker of the House to wear a… well, you know.
The Economist/The New Yorker
The Normalization Process: From Extremism to Policy
The transformation of genocidal ideology into mainstream policy follows a predictable intelligence pattern:
False Equivalency Creation
Genocidal movements reframed as “just another form of populism”
Democratic resistance equated with eliminationist advocacy
“Both sides” narratives obscure fundamental ideological differences
Legitimacy Laundering
Eliminationist rhetoric sanitized through euphemism (“Remigration,” “Transfer,” “Deportation”)
Historical genocide connections minimized as “inflammatory comparisons”
Media treats ethnic cleansing proposals as “controversial policy positions”
Institutional Capture
Genocidal advocates gain legitimate political platforms
Democratic safeguards redefined as “partisan overreach”
Opposition to elimination reframed as extremist resistance to “reasonable” policy
Complete Normalization
Ethnic cleansing becomes acceptable political discourse
Resistance to genocide labeled as threat to democratic order
Feiglin’s statements about Palestinian children being “enemies” who must be completely removed from Gaza would have been recognized as a clear and obvious incitement to genocide in any other context. Illegal, morally reprehensible, proof that his seditionist conviction was justified. Yet he seems to be treated as legitimate policy voice, worthy of airing instead of sending straight back into jail.
Critical Distinction: Not All Extremism is Genocidal
The critical error in current democratic discourse is treating “extremism” as the problem, rather than the details of the platform. There’s a fundamental difference between political movements that challenge existing power structures and those that are hate filled (xenophobic, racist, misogynist) let alone advocate for the elimination of entire populations.
The genocidal backdrop used by German AfD leaders to call for “Remigration,” the Feiglin demands for complete Palestinian removal, and the American MAGA rhetoric about “vermin” that must be “rooted out” all represent something categorically aligned as hate-based extremism—eliminationist ideologies that deny the right of target populations to exist within the political community.
The distinction isn’t about violence or radicalism—it’s about the fundamental premise of whether political opponents are viewed as humans with rights or as existential threats to be eliminated, even assassinated.
Institutional Immune System Failure
From a systems analysis perspective, this represents complete institutional immune system breakdown. Healthy democracies can accommodate radical political movements that seek change within human rights frameworks. They cannot survive movements that seek to target and eliminate entire populations.
The need to recognize and respond to this pattern is obvious, such that any failure represents a significant intelligence breakdown. The same individuals and ideological networks that contributed to political assassination in the 1990s are now driving policy discourse in the 2020s. This should have triggered systematic monitoring and intervention, with serious prevention, not political rehabilitation.
Never again doesn’t mean why not see what happens this time around.
From a threat modeling perspective, the parallels to other democratic backsliding scenarios are unmistakable. Just as January 6th rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol to end American democracy were shamelessly pardoned and celebrated rather than prosecuted, Israel is entertaining the world with individuals whose actions directly contribute to severe political violence and democratic breakdown.
Existential Threat Assessment
The current situation represents a clear and present danger to democratic stability globally. The simultaneous normalization of extremism in multiple democratic societies indicates coordinated institutional capture rather than isolated political developments.
We’re witness to systematic replacement of democratic institutions with extremist alternatives. The process uses democratic legitimacy as cover while pursuing fundamentally anti-democratic objectives.
When democratic societies that do not resist are being captured by genocidal forces using democratic processes, the institutional tolerance that allows forms of legitimate political extremism becomes the vector for eliminationist ideology that seeks to destroy democracy itself.
When Kahanist ethnic cleansing becomes Israeli policy, when AfD “Remigration” wins German elections, when MAGA “vermin” rhetoric captures American institutions, democratic societies are voluntarily dismantling the human rights frameworks that make democracy possible.
The rehabilitation of seditionists, terrorists, and white supremacists into positions of power represents more than political polarization—it’s institutional suicide.
The Kahanists aren’t just in the news rooms and policy chambers—they’ve convinced the Israelis to let them speak in the open. And that represents an existential threat to democratic survival worldwide.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
