May 6: Astroturfing MAGA
Israelis strike Yemen; U.S.-Houthi ceasefire, sans Israel; Admin to Harvard: No more GRANTS
The Big Story
In their 2006 book The Shadow Party, David Horowitz and Richard Poe penned the following insight on the structure of astroturfed revolutions:
In a 1957 tract, Czech Communist Party theoretician Jan Kozák explained how a small number of communists managed to gain power in Czechoslovakia through parliamentary maneuvers. The trick was to exert pressure for radical change from two directions simultaneously—from the upper levels of government and from provocateurs in the streets. Kozák called this tactic “pressure from above and below.”
One way to exert “pressure from below,” as Kozák explained, was to fill the streets with rioters, strikers and protesters, thus creating the illusion of a widespread clamor for change from the grassroots. Radicals in the government would then exert “pressure from above,” enacting new laws on the pretext of appeasing the protesters in the street—even though the protesters (or at least their leaders) were themselves part of the plot. The majority of the people would have no idea what was going on. Squeezed from “above” and “below,” most would sink into apathy and despair, believing they were hopelessly outnumbered by the radicals—even though they were not. Thus could a radical minority impose its will on a moderate majority, even under a democratic, parliamentary system.
The purpose of that book was to expose the close relationship between Democratic financier George Soros—and his army of lavishly funded radicals—and the camp of Hillary Clinton, whom the authors expected to win the presidency in 2008. Barack Obama won instead, but he went on to inscribe the program described by Horowitz and Poe into the Democratic Party’s political DNA.
Countless times over the past decade, from the initial Black Lives Matter protests of 2015 to the “racial reckoning” of 2020 to the Gaza protests of last spring and summer, we’ve seen a version of this pincer tactic, in which activists posing as representatives of an illusory mass movement demanded changes from “below” that would then be granted from “above” by ideologically sympathetic politicians and other authority figures. Often, if you scratched the surface, it turned out that the activists and politicians were funded by the same people.
The analogy to the contemporary right is inexact; 2016 fever dreams of Matthew Yglesias aside, there are no MAGA mobs roaming the streets hunting for minorities and demanding that Donald Trump implement new Nuremberg Laws. But let’s accept, as a thought experiment, the idea that social media is the “new public square.” If that is true, then who are the “rioters, strikers and protesters” who might be deployed to create “the illusion of a widespread clamor for change from the grassroots,” with the implicit backing of figures at the top?
Rhetorical question. Entirely unrelated, here’s a collage of screenshots from Saturday morning, following the publication of a strange story in The Washington Post—famous for its trustworthy and disinterested reporting on Trumpworld palace intrigue—alleging that former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was ousted for “operating hand in glove with the Israelis,” engaging in “intense coordination” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Iran, and working to “subvert” Trump’s foreign policy on behalf of “another country,” per a handful of unnamed administration officials:
Now, one could note that the Post story doesn’t make much sense. One of the paper’s own sources dismissed the idea that Waltz was given the boot for Iran-related policy reasons, echoing reporting from Axios’ Marc Caputo that this was a “vibes”-based personnel decision—a claim strengthened by the fact that Waltz’s replacement as NSA, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is another Iran hawk. In our one unvarnished look into the Trump administration’s internal communications about foreign policy, the leaked Signal chat from March, it was Waltz, along with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who was on Trump’s side in wanting to strike the Houthis, while Vice President J.D. Vance and a staffer for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard argued that the president was making a “mistake.” Netanyahu’s office, for its part, has issued a public denial that it had “intensive contact” with Waltz.
Instead, we’ll simply observe that there is nothing suspicious at all about the real-time convergence of messaging about the Post story from two blue-check MAGA influencers, a left-wing antizionist news outlet with a mysterious Rolodex of White House “sources” that just published a friendly interview with a member of the Hamas Politburo, and Trita Parsi, the Iran lobbyist who now serves as executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, part of the Koch foreign policy network that has supplied a number of high-profile “restrainers” to Trump’s Pentagon and ODNI.
We also feel confident that this totally organic messaging campaign has nothing whatsoever to do with this upcoming panel at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha later this month:
For those of our readers inclined to paranoia, it is completely unremarkable that Don Jr. is preparing to give a talk in Qatar on “monetizing MAGA” with his “partner” Omeed Malik, the “lifelong Democrat” who is the main financial backer of Don Jr.’s good friend Tucker Carlson, who recently interviewed the Emir of Qatar to the effect that the Zionists are attempting to engineer a regime-change war with Iran. Nor does it seem at all strange to us that Malik’s former “representative” Garrett Ventry is getting paid $1 million per year for PR services by the International Media Office of the State of Qatar. Come to think of it, it’s also perfectly normal that Malik somehow amassed enough money to start his own “merchant bank,” buy into The Daily Caller, float Tulsi Gabbard’s 2020 presidential campaign, launch a venture capital firm with the president’s son, and become Carlson’s sugar daddy, despite reportedly making less than $500,000 per year at the time he was fired from Bank of America in 2018, which is coincidentally right around the time that the Qataris made a major play to buy into Trumpworld. Speaking of which, here’s the website for Malik’s bank, Farvahar Partners (i.e. Malik and two other guys):
Again, this is all just normal, conservative, MAGA stuff here—and exactly what Americans voted for last November. In fact, it’s all so normal that we forget what we were talking about at the beginning of this newsletter.
Oh well. If it’s important, it’ll probably come back to us at some point.
—Park MacDougald
The Rest
→Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday “completely disabled” Sanaa International Airport in Yemen, one day after a Houthi ballistic missile struck Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. According to IDF sources quoted in The Times of Israel, Israeli jets targeted the runways, aircraft, and infrastructure of the airport, which they said were used to ferry in weapons and advisory personnel from Iran, and rendered it “effectively inoperable,” per Ynet. Israel also targeted several power stations and a concrete factory in Sanaa, and on Monday night, it carried out significant airstrikes against infrastructure at the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah.
→At a Tuesday press conference, Trump announced that the Houthis “have announced to us that they don’t want to fight anymore” and that the United States will “stop the bombings.” “They have capitulated,” Trump added, “and they say they won’t be blowing up ships anymore.” CNN reports that the cease-fire was negotiated by U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff through Oman and is “aimed at building momentum for Iran nuclear deal talks”; a U.S. defense official confirmed to the outlet that the U.S. Air Force and Navy had received stand-down orders on Monday night. The Omani Foreign Ministry also confirmed in a statement that “neither side will target the other, including U.S. vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait.” What remains unclear is whether the United States will allow the Houthis to continue attacking Israel and Israeli vessels. Though Trump said the Houthis “won’t be blowing up ships anymore,” both the CNN report and the Omani statement said only that the United States and the Houthis would not attack each other. And roughly an hour after Trump’s announcement, a member of the Houthi Politburo told Al-Mayadeen TV that Trump was “lying” and that “no Israeli ship will reach any port until the siege is lifted and the aggression on Gaza ends.” For the pessimistic view, here’s Israeli journalist Amit Segal:
→In the same press conference, Trump teased a “big as it gets” announcement in the coming days ahead of his planned visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. “Before we leave we’re going to have a very, very big announcement to make—like, as big as it gets—and I won’t tell you on what,” the president said. He went on, “It’s very positive. I’d tell you if it was negative. It is really, really positive. An announcement will be made either Thursday or Friday or Monday before we leave, but it’ll be one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject.” Speaking last night at the Israeli embassy in Washington, U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said the administration hoped to have an announcement soon about the “expansion of the Abraham Accords,” so, gun to head, that’s our bet as to what this could be about.
→Quote of the Day:
Given these and other concerning allegations, this letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided. Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni. You have an approximately $53 Billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact that you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise.
That’s from a letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon to Harvard President Alan Garber, which the secretary posted to her X account on Monday evening. The “concerning allegations” include that Harvard has admitted foreign students who “engage in violent behavior,” continued to engage in racial discrimination in admissions in violation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, mismanaged its finances, and hired “failed Mayors Bill De Blasio [sic] and Lori Lightfoot” to teach leadership, which is “like hiring the captain of the Titanic to teach navigation to future captains of the sea.” McMahon’s Trumpian stylistic quirks aside, we find it hard to muster much sympathy for Harvard, though we suspect some court somewhere might. Last month, Harvard sued the Trump administration for violating its constitutional rights and due process.
→What is the “woke right”? A discussion between James Lindsay and Jordan Peterson:
→And why does the phrase “woke right” invite such mockery and contempt?
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