Listen to Victor Davis Hanson on the Trevor Carey Radio Show here
Author: victorhanson
Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.
Navalny proves too hot for ‘poisoner Putin’
An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill
On Feb. 2, the Moscow City Court sentenced Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny to two years and eight months in jail. Noted for its “telephone justice” (verdict dictated by the Kremlin), the Moscow court’s sentence revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has concluded that Navalny is too dangerous to remain free. By returning to Moscow after being poisoned and flown to Germany for treatment, Navalny declared he would continue his campaign for a democratic and clean Russia, irrespective of the consequences for him personally. In his statement to the court, Navalny declared that, however much Putin “pretends to be a great geo-politician, he’ll go down in history as a poisoner.”
Navalny has long been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side with his disclosures of high-level corruption by Putin’s inner circle. The Kremlin’s non-stop anti-Navalny media campaign has described him as corrupt, a foreign agent, a bombastic Russia-hating poseur. Sham court proceedings disqualified him from political office. Putin carefully avoided speaking Navalny’s name, referring to him instead as “the blogger” or more recently the “Berlin patient.” As a result of this drum beat, Navalny scarcely registered on Russian approval and trust polls in the past, but no longer.
Four recent events elevated Navalny from a pesky irritation to a formidable opponent of the Kremlin, who must now be isolated.
The first is the attempted poisoning of Navalny on Aug. 20, widely covered by international press and Russian social media. This was followed by Navalny’s telephone-scamming of one of his poisoners into a confession, the recording of which went viral on social media. The Russian people now know that the Kremlin routinely uses political murder to get its way.
Victor Davis Hanson on The Dan Proft Show
The Progressive Left Doesn’t Think It’s Censorship
Our Animal Farm
George Orwell published Animal Farm in August 1945, in the closing weeks of the Pacific War. Even then, most naïve supporters of the wartime Soviet-British-American alliance were no longer in denial about the contours of Moscow’s impending postwar communist aggression.
The short, allegorical novel’s human-like farm animals replay the transition of supposedly 1917 revolutionary Bolsheviks into cynical 1930s Stalinists. Thereby, they remind us that leftist totalitarianism inevitably becomes far worse than the supposed parasitical capitalists they once toppled.
Orwell saw that the desire for power stamps out all ideological pretenses. It creates an untouchable ruling clique central to all totalitarian movements. Beware, he warns, of the powerful who claim to help the helpless.
for more: https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/07/our-animal-farm/
Will a Hard-Left Turn Lead to Pushback?
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review
The corruption of the Renaissance Church prompted the Reformation, which in turn sparked a Counter-Reformation of reformist, and more zealous, Catholics.
The cultural excesses and economic recklessness of the Roaring ’20s were followed by the bleak, dour, and impoverished years of the Great Depression.
The 1960s counterculture led to Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972, as “carefree hippies” turned into careerist “yuppies.”
So social, cultural, economic, and political extremism prompt reactions — and sometimes counter-reactions.
Victor Davis Hanson: Biden feeling ‘liberated’ by following leftist agenda
Why Are Progressives So Illiberal?
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
One common theme in the abject madness and tragedies of the past 12 months is that progressive ideology now permeates almost all of our major institutions—even as the majority of Americans resist the leftist agenda. Its reach resembles the manner in which the pre-Renaissance church had absorbed the economic, cultural, social, artistic, and political life of Europe, or perhaps how Islamic doctrine was the foundation for all public and private life under the Ottoman Sultanate—or even how all Russian institutions of the 1930s exuded tenets of Soviet Marxism.
Pan-progressivism
To be a Silicon Valley executive, a prominent Wall Street player, the head of a prestigious publishing house, a university president, a network or PBS anchor, a major Hollywood actress, a retired general or admiral on a corporate board, or a NBA superstar requires either progressive fides or careful suppression of all political affinities.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 98 percent of Big Tech political donations went to Democrats in 2020. Censorship and deplatforming on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies is decidedly one-way. When Mark Zuckerberg and others in Silicon Valley donate $500 million to help officials “get out the vote” in particular precincts, it is not to help candidates of both parties.
‘New McCarthyism will prove an Orwellian mistake,’ says US historian
Pavlos Papadopoulos // Ekathimerini.com
A friend of Greece and regular visitor to the country, Victor Davis Hanson is a rare breed of American intellectual: The professor of classics and military history at the California State University and senior fellow in classics and military history at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute has supported Donald Trump in a number of books and articles.
In an email interview with Kathimerini, Hanson offered his opinion on recent developments in Washington, shedding light from a conservative angle on a number of issues that define modern America.
Do you think that Trump went too far in inciting violence, ignoring the fact that in the previous two months all legislatures in disputed states and all judges had already decided that the claims of a “stolen election” were baseless, proving that there was no election fraud?
How to Deprogram Us
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
Anew buzzword on social media, cable news, and among leftist activists is “deprogramming.”
Along with terms like “reprogramming,” “de-Baathification,” and “deplatforming,” deprogramming refers to cleansing the incorrect mentalities of former Trump Administration officials—and even those who voted for Trump.
Note that deprogramming does not refer to elites who peddled the “Russian collusion” hoax for years, despite the abject absence of evidence.
Not long ago, two Washington Post columnists offered some solutions to the Trumpist threat. One, Max Boot, wished to ban Fox News and other conservative stations from cable subscriptions.
The other, Eugene Robinson, suggested that there was a need to focus on mostly “white” Republicans to “deprogram” their thoughts.