Month: May 2025

By Andrea Widburg

Over 400 British actors and actresses signed an open letter attacking the UK Supreme Court’s very narrow ruling holding that the Equality Act 2010 could not be stretched to understand the word “woman” to mean “transwoman.” JK Rowling has pushed back hard in a long tweet that’s worth reading in full.

Last month, the Supreme Court concluded that, when Parliament passed the Equality Act 2010, it used the word “woman” in its biological sense. It’s important to note that the Court did not say that there is no such thing as a “trans” person trapped in the “wrongly sexed” body, nor did it say that Parliament was forever barred from bowing to perverse sexual delusions in a new or updated Equality Act. It said only that, as written, “woman” referred to biological women.

The narrow upshot of this narrow ruling was that a Scottish law about “Gender Representation on Public Boards” couldn’t be read to mean that so-called “trans women” got to shoehorn themselves into the act. And of course, the broader upshot was that, as to anything affected by the Equality Act 2010, “woman” means what it has always meant: A person whose genetic makeup means she belongs to a class of people biologically capable of naturally gestating a baby.

While it’s possible that Parliament will, in fact, update the Equality Act to redefine “woman” to include mentally ill people and sexual perverts, that may not be a popular move with the British people. For now, woman probably does mean woman in the UK, and that’s got the film crowd really, really upset.

To that end, around 400 people in the UK’s film community got together and published an open letter (which followed on the heels of an open letter in the UK’s writers’ community) to protest the Supreme Court’s dastardly decision interpreting a word according to the meaning it’s had since humankind mastered language.

You can read the letter here, but you already know what it says. “Lived reality and threatens the safety”…”exposes trans people to embarrassment and harassment”…”negative consequences for all women”…”harm that trans and gender nonconforming people face”…blah, blah, blah.

There are apparently some well-known names on the letter, but the only one I recognized was Eddie Redmayne (who played someone “trans” in a movie). According to the Daily Mail, Paapa Essiedu, who will play Severus Snape in a new Harry Potter series, signed on, but everyone else was unknown to me.

Speaking of Essiedu, one thing that stands out for someone who grew up watching Masterpiece Theater is how British entertainers’ names have changed. While the credits on a British product used to have names that had been common in the UK for centuries (sturdy English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish names), an inordinate number of names on this list have manifestly African, Indian, and Middle Eastern origins.

There are a couple of things to understand about the “we love ‘trans’ people” pile-on. First, the entertainment industry is disproportionately populated with non-heterosexuals. In other words, while most people know very few homosexuals and have never met someone claiming to be “trans,” the entertainment types really do believe that half or more of the world is “on the spectrum.” Listen to Cynthia Nixon, herself a lesbian.

Bei einer Protestkundgebung gegen Trumps Dekrete, die sich gegen die Verstümmelung sowie chemische Kastration von Minderjährigen richten, erklärte die Schauspielerin Cynthia Nixon:

– Ihre Tochter ist Transgender
– Ihre Nichte ist Transgender
– Das Kind ihrer besten Freundin… pic.twitter.com/z0gPzQCkWh

— Emrah Erken 🔥🎺 (@AtticusJazz) February 7, 2025

This is not normal for most of us, but it’s normal for them.

Second, unlike most jobs where productivity means creating something, in the entertainment industry, the metric of success is popularity. This is a world where “being in with the In Crowd” is the only thing that ultimately matters. Therefore, they are lemmings who are virtually incapable of independent thought.

JK Rowling is different. She’s a leftist, but she supports Israel, and she believes in biological reality. (I long ago suspected she was committed to Truth.) For that reason, Rowling took up the fight of defending women against so-called “trans women.”

I love it when a plan comes together.#SupremeCourt #WomensRights pic.twitter.com/agOkWmhPgb

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 16, 2025

For her principled rejection of misogynistic delusion, Rowling has been completely reviled, subject to violent threats, and seen those whom she made famous turn on her. The execrable Emma Watson (whose “resting b**ch face” is a window into her soul, and who is all in on Hamas) used her staggeringly pretentious, limousine-leftist Instagram page to deliver a singularly nasty message to JK Rowling:

Emma Watson is not ignoring fascism. pic.twitter.com/DbmmEzSWw5

— Wensley Garbell (@WesGarbell) May 1, 2025

Rowling, however, is unimpressed by this posturing. Instead, in response to all the open letters and hysteria from Britain’s leftist intelligentsia and wannabes, she delivered a point-by-point refutation of the whole “trans” lie as it affects culture and women. Her tweet opens with her calling the letters’ signatories “insane” and bullies, and closes by asking whether they’ll ever feel shame for the true harm they’re causing to actual women and children:

In light of recent open letters from academia and the arts criticising the UK's Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights, it's possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn't a material fact. These…

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 3, 2025

(I’ve embedded Rowling’s entire tweet at the end of this post.)

JK Rowling is one of the most popular writers in Western history. Her principled attack on the lemmings in the entertainment industry, many of whom she made famous, will last long after their infantile screams of “lived experience” and “fascism” have faded away.

***

JK Rowlings full tweet

In light of recent open letters from academia and the arts criticising the UK’s Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights, it’s possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn’t a material fact. These letters do nothing but remind us of what we know only too well: that pretending to believe these things has become an elitist badge of virtue.

I often wonder whether the signatories of such letters have to quieten their consciences before publicly boosting a movement intent on removing women’s and girls’ rights, which bullies gay people who admit openly they don’t want opposite sex partners, and campaigns for the continued sterilisation of vulnerable and troubled kids. Do they feel any qualms at all while chanting the foundational lie of their religion: Trans Women are Women, Trans Men are Men?

I have no idea. All I know for sure is that it’s a complete waste of time telling a gender activist that their favourite slogan is self-contradictory nonsense, because the lie is the whole point. They’re not repeating it because it’s true – they know full well it’s not true – but because they believe they can make it true, sort of, if they force everyone else to agree. The foundational lie functions as both catechism and crucifix: the set form of words that obviates the tedious necessity of coming up with your own explanation of why you’re one of the Godly, and an exorcist’s weapon which will defeat demonic facts and reason, and promote the advance of righteous pseudoscience and sophistry.

Some argue that signatories of these sorts of letters are motivated by fear: fear for their careers, of course, but also fear of their co-religionists, who include angry, narcissistic men who threaten and sometimes enact violence on non-believers; back-stabbing colleagues ever ready to report wrongthink; the online shamers and doxxers and rape threateners, and, of course, the influential zealots in the upper echelons of liberal professions (though we can quibble whether they’re actually liberal at all, given the draconian authoritarianism that seems to have engulfed so many). Gender ideology could give medieval Catholicism a run for its money when it comes to punishing heretics, so isn’t it common sense to keep your head down and recite your Hail Mulvaneys?

But before we start feeling too sorry for any cowed and fearful TWAWites who’re TERFy on the sly, let’s not forget what a high proportion of them have willingly snatched up pitchforks and torches to join the inquisitional purges. Call me lacking in proper womanly sympathy, but I find the harm they’ve enabled and in some cases directly championed or funded – the hounding and shaming of vulnerable women, the forced loss of livelihoods, the unregulated medical experiment on minors – tends to dry up my tears at source.

History is littered with the debris of irrational and harmful belief systems that once seemed unassailable. As Orwell said, ‘Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.’ Gender ideology may have embedded itself deeply into our institutions, where it’s been imposed, top-down, on the supposedly unenlightened, but it is not invulnerable.

Court losses are starting to stack up. The condescension, overreach, entitlement and aggression of gender activists is eroding public support daily. Women are fighting back and winning significant victories. Sporting bodies have miraculously awoken from their slumber and remembered that males tend to be larger, stronger and faster than females. Parts of the medical establishment are questioning cutting healthy breasts off teenaged girls is really the best way to fix their mental health problems.

One seemingly harmless little white lie – Trans Women are Women, Trans Men are Men – uttered in most cases without any real thought at all, and a few short years later, people who think of themselves as supremely virtuous are typing ‘yes, rapists’ pronouns are absolutely the hill I’ll die on,’ rubbing shoulders with those who call for women to be hanged and decapitated for wanting all-female rape crisis centres, and furiously denying clear and mounting evidence of the greatest medical scandal in a century.

I wonder if they ever ask themselves how they got here, and I wonder whether any of them will ever feel shame.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/05/british_actor_and_writers_pile_on_to_support_the_trans_crowd_and_jk_rowling_s_not_having_it.html

On April 24, 2025, a European citizens’ initiative concluded its collection of signatures. Under the name ‘My Voice, My Choice’, this group of European women is asking the EU institutions to fund “abortion tourism”, enabling women to undergo abortions in countries that are more permissive than their own. As a law professor, I reject this way of using European institutions to circumvent national law.  The European Union is based on the Treaties which provide that certain areas remain within the exclusive jurisdiction of the member states; since the EU remains an organization composed of sovereign states. Our personal freedoms as citizens, added together, make up the freedom of our countries to adopt the laws they feel are right. And the founders of Europe were careful to distinguish between what falls within the remit of the Union and what remains within the sovereignty of each nation 

As a former European Commissioner for Health, I’m well placed to know that health is precisely a matter for the Member States: indeed, the Union has always been keen to respect the profoundly sensitive ethical dimension associated with health issues. To stealthily delegate such delicate matters to EU institutions would be to leave room for an abuse of power: we should be vigilant against administrative machines that rob us of our freedom to think and act! In the case of ‘My Voice My Choice’, the Commission could not accede to this request without seriously infringing on the freedoms of EU citizens. Already, by registering an initiative that encourages it to “do everything in its power” to exceed its competences, the Commission has infringed on the subsidiarity principle. You can’t play with the fundamental principles of European law without setting a precedent with far-reaching consequences. But the disloyalty lies above all in the subterfuge proposed to the Commission: to set up a mechanism enabling citizens to circumvent their national legislation by obtaining in another country what is illegal in their own, and to financially support this “solidarity effort”. The ruse is clever and skillfully presented: with no concrete proposal for a financing mechanism, the Commission has been able to register this initiative without rejecting it on the grounds of illegality.

‘Our initiative does not aim to harmonize or interfere with the laws and regulations of the Member States but rather falls within the EU’s competence to support’, add the signatories of this initiative. Supporting what, and who? European citizens who wish to derogate from the laws legitimately established by their respective national representations? How could this be anything other than interference with Member States’ legislation? It would be unacceptable for the European Union to circumvent, undermine and thwart national political choices in this way. The Commission cannot contradict head-on the legitimate choices of each Member State in the highly sensitive area of protecting unborn human life.

While abortion falls within the exclusive remit of the Member States, the legal protection of the dignity, right to life, and integrity of every human being from conception falls within the EU’s remit. To be consistent in the exercise of its competences, the EU should put an end to European funding of activities that involve the destruction of human embryos, particularly in the fields of research, development aid and public health. This was the demand of 1.9 million European citizens united in 2014 by the One of Us citizens’ initiative. This initiative remains unrivalled, with a budget five times smaller than the ‘My Voice My Choice’ initiative. The Commission did not follow up… At a time when it is being presented with a diametrically opposed and manifestly illegal initiative, it would be a good idea for it to remember this request—and the choices made by all European citizens in defining its competences.

More than 50 leading personalities, including the chairmen of the NGOs who are members of One of Us all across Europe, politicians, and doctors who work day by day to support women dealing with difficulties in maternity, have signed our petition for life and freedom, opposing an initiative that is diametrically opposed to the EU Treaties. 

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/my-voice-my-choice-or-a-subterfuge-to-circumvent-national-legislation/

Mass immigration is the biggest threat women face today. Journalist Anna McGovern joins us to tell us about the Women’s Safety Initiative, of which she is Deputy Director. The WSI was set up to support victims and empower women to speak out about the daily abuse and harassment that they suffer. Support the WSI via Go Fund Me: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-womens… Visit the WSI website: https://womensafety.uk/

Ismaël Boudjekada, an opposition politician in Grand-Charmont (Doubs), who is on the Union citoyenne de gauche et écologistes (Left Citizens’ Union and Environmentalists) list, was arrested by border police at Basel-Mulhouse international airport at around 10am this morning, Europe 1 reports.

The councillor, who was taken into police custody for glorifying terrorism, will be presented to the national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office later today.
Boudjekada, a vehement supporter of the Palestinian movement, had already been sentenced to a fine of 20,000 euros and three years of ineligibility in 2024 for glorifying terrorism after calling Hamas a “resistance movement” two days after the attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023.
He had relapsed when, in October 2024, he hailed Yahya Sinouar, the Hamas leader considered to be the architect of the October 7 attacks, as a ‘hero’ shortly after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. These statements led to several manhunt warrants.

That same month, he posted a message on X aimed directly at the Minister of the Interior: “Whether the coward Bruno Retailleau likes it or not, there are many of us […] who do not condemn October 7 and stick by it. So build jails fast, because we risk many of us being fed, housed and pampered at the princess’s expense.”

Doubs : l’élu de gauche Ismaël Boudjekada interpellé pour apologie du terrorisme – Valeurs actuelles

A trans-identified male incarcerated in a women’s prison in the Netherlands set fire to his cell before brutally beating a female prison guard. The victim has been described as having sustained “serious” injuries and has been hospitalized. The incident, which took place at Ter Peel prison for women, was first reported by De Telegraaf, and the outlet confirmed the assault with the Dutch Prison and Probation Service (DJI).

“A fire broke out in the cell of a detainee in the Ter Peel penitentiary institution this morning,” a spokeswoman told the newspaper. “After the fire and while rendering aid, an employee was suddenly attacked by this violent inmate and seriously injured.”

The prison guard was reportedly taken away from the scene via ambulance, and prison officials confirmed that her “teeth were knocked out of her mouth.”

The Dutch Prison and Probation Service refused to provide additional information about the trans-identified male inmate, and told the press: “We do not make any statements about individual prisoners. In the prison system, placement is in principle based on the gender stated in the passport. If there is reason to do so, this can be deviated from. This is always done on a customized basis, and is adjusted when necessary.”

A formal report has been lodged, with both law enforcement and prison officials investigating the circumstances leading up to the violent attack. Meanwhile, the trans-identified male has been transferred to another prison which, while unnamed, is said to have facilities that are more appropriate for aggressive inmates. Because the prisoner has not been identified, it is unclear whether the criminal has been relocated to another women’s prison or transferred into a men’s prison.

Authorities in the Netherlands have been secretive about the transfer of trans-identified male convicts into women’s prisons, often protecting their identities.

Last month Reduxx became aware that a sadistic pedophile who was discovered to be hoarding over 8 million child sexual abuse files had declared a transgender status. The man, whose name was not released to the public, had gathered a collection of sickening abuse images so expansive and heinous that investigators stopped cataloguing the files at about the 2 million mark – less than halfway through the total.

NL: A sadistic pedophile who was found in possession of over 8 MILLION child abuse images has abruptly declared he identifies as a "woman" following his conviction.

The man, who also owned a child rape manual, has now been moved to a mixed-sex prison.https://t.co/GDbcepBbw4

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) March 31, 2025

According to prosecutors, Jan had gained a notoriety amongst the pedophile community for sharing his extensive collection with others  online, which led to him receiving “prestige” from fellow predators. He also had a “manual” in his possession instructing men on how to have “safe and harmless sex” with a child.

“I have seen a lot of child pornography in my profession, but this is the most disgusting child and animal pornography that exists,” the prosecutor said during the trial.

Press declined to name the man, who Reduxx has referred to as ‘Jan.’ During the hearing on February 20, the court heard that Jan “is in transition and wants to be addressed as a woman.”

Following his conviction, the disturbed predator was transferred to one of three prisons for women in the nation: Ter Peel in Limburg, Nieuwersluis (Utrecht) and Zwolle. ‘Jan’ was sent to Zwolle, the only mixed-sex facility out of the three.

Once again, a spokesperson for the Dutch Prison and Probation Service (DJI) stated that the authoritative body will “never comment on the situation of individual prisoners.” Representative Charlotte Hees told the press: “Placement in the prison system takes place on the basis of the gender stated in the passport,” Hees explained. “Deviation is possible if there is reason to do so, for example for the safety of detainees. This is always custom work and is determined on the basis of a careful assessment and adjusted when necessary.”

A trans-identified male in the Netherlands is being housed in a women's prison while awaiting a verdict on murder charges.

"Daniela," an illegal migrant from Chile, reportedly stabbed his victim 214 times, including in the eyes and genitals.https://t.co/4wSL7ZPIz3

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) December 4, 2023

In 2023, news reports surfaced which described how a Chilean national convicted of committing a brutal murder was placed in a women’s prison even in advance of his final hearings. “Daniela D” had stabbed a man 214 times, targeting his eyes, ears, and genitals.

Daniela D. had been residing illegally in the Netherlands since February 2022, where he was involved in the sex industry. The court heard that he came from a broken home and that he had been “bullied” as a youth by peers who did not accept his gender identity.

Despite having not undergone any form of genital surgery, Daniela was detained in Ter Peel women’s prison.

https://reduxx.info/netherlands-trans-identified-male-inmate-in-womens-prison-brutally-assaults-female-employee/

An executive order from Donald Trump requires transparency into foreign funding in American academic institutions to stop Chinese and Islamic influence. But for liberals and woke people, it is Trump who threatens the independence of American universities.

How much money are we talking about?

The Free Press reveals it.

According to a report from the Network Contagion Research Institute, shared exclusively with the Free Press, foreign donors have given U.S. universities the same amount in the last four years as they had in the previous 40. The study shows an explosion in foreign funding for American schools between 2021 and 2024, with $29 billion during that period.

Qatar and China are among the main sources of funding.

That $29 billion is more than double the total for the previous four years and represents half of the estimated $57.97 billion in all foreign funding since 1986, when the U.S. government began tracking it.

“The floodgates have opened during the Biden era,” said Joel Finkelstein, founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute. “This is not just a financial issue, it’s a national security crisis. Hostile powers are gaining influence on American campuses on an industrial scale.”

Beijing and Doha saw a huge opportunity during Black Lives Matter riots and the rise of the woke.

Qatar has been the largest source of foreign donations to U.S. universities since research began in 1986, with $6.3 billion coming from the Gulf country. Qatari donations have increased significantly over the past four years. Nearly a third of Qatar’s donations, more than $2 billion, were given between 2021 and 2024.

The second-largest source of foreign funding is China. Chinese funding amounts to $5.6 billion and, like Qatar, Chinese donations have increased significantly over the past four years, with $2.3 billion from 2021 to 2024. China is the largest source of foreign donations to some of America’s most prestigious universities, including Harvard, Columbia and Stanford.

Harvard received the most funding from foreign donors ($3.2 billion), followed by Cornell and Carnegie Mellon (each receiving $2.8 billion). “If ignorance is an epidemic, Harvard is Wuhan.” The lapidary sentence was made by the great comedian Bill Maher, after the support of the students of the famous Boston university for Hamas and the refusal of the university’s leaders to condemn the pogrom of October 7.

$13 billion from Arab regimes to American universities. Being surprised by the explosion of anti-Semitism and Islamism in the classrooms is at the very least ridiculous.

The other surprise is the $120 million that China and Qatar have given to Julliard, the world-renowned performing arts conservatory. For a school that trains Broadway actors and pianists, that’s an absolute stunner. And it raises a fundamental question: Why Juilliard?

Funding universities is one of the most effective ways for foreign governments to shape Western discourse. According to the 2025 Global Soft Power Index, China just overtook the United Kingdom to take second place globally in measuring global influence in culture and heritage, arts, and entertainment.

If China can establish its influence in a major laboratory for future Hollywood stars, directors and playwrights, it can shape the industry well before the projects reach the script stage. By funding programs, faculty, and scholarships, China ensures that tomorrow’s most influential artists are nurtured in an ideological framework favorable to Beijing.

Prevention, as they say, is better than cure.

China is not the only foreign power to gain influence over Western culture. Qatar has also made significant progress. The emir has long understood that culture and power go hand in hand. His investments are deliberate instruments of influence. Let us recall the case of Edwy Plenel, the former editor-in-chief of Le Monde who founded the super news site Mediapart, a militant intellectual in favor of political Islam. His book, “For Muslims,” was distributed in Arabic by the Qatari Ministry of Culture. Paid for and distributed.

Ruth Wisse writes in the Wall Street Journal that Harvard has become an “Islamist outpost”.

So how can we not think of Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and John Cairncross, the “Cambridge Five”, the network of English spies at the service of the Soviet Union? Kim Philby will die in exile in the Soviet Union, without ever regretting his betrayal: “I spent two years studying communism. It was only at the end of my stay at Cambridge that I made the final decision to dedicate my life to communism”.

Western universities, in the opposition between the democratic West and the totalitarian East, have always sided with the latter. Oxford and Cambridge were full of Moscow spies with long British coats, among the professors obviously, while in Paris the professors sympathized with the communists. And this well before 1968, when the universities became the breeding ground for Maoism (as they are today for Hamas).

The Englishman Anthony Glees has revealed the “grey area” of the German terrorist group Baader-Meinhof: “In 1977, the Federal Criminal Police Office of West Germany had a list of terrorists with the names of 4.7 million sympathizers, many of whom were university students”.

In France, Gallimard has just published “Stalin’s Conscience”, a great book of six hundred pages on Alexandre Kojève, the Russian philosopher who shaped the French intelligentsia, naturalized French in 1937, a cult professor of the philosophical and literary generation that dominated the post-war period: Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, Raymond Queneau, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eric Weil, Pierre Klossowski, André Breton, Jacques Lacan and others gathered in a small room at the Sorbonne every Monday at 5:30 PM to hear from Kojève, who was not only an agent of the Kremlin in Paris, but also an architect of the EU.

Kojève, grandson of Wassily Kandinsky, was also a high-ranking “homme d’influence” who chose the governance of the economy and the trade sector as his field of action. One of the fathers of the European Union, Kojève had entered the French Ministry of Finance in 1948, was secretary of the OECD (Organization for European Economic Cooperation), advisor to the French government in the creation of the ECSC, the first embryo of the EEC, and negotiator of world trade agreements such as the GATT (General Agreement for Tariffs and Trade). With his ideas and his dialectic methods he shaped the minds and strategies of the French high administration.

But there is a big difference: during Kojève’s Cold War, neither Moscow nor Beijing had the means and the ability to finance our universities, they had to recruit sympathizers from among students and professors, while today from Doha to Beijing there is a river of money pouring into our universities and public administration. It will always be easier to pay them than to convince them.

The worm has always been in the fruit: the idea, enclosed in high culture, that the West deserves to be swept away.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/407708

In a fortnight, elections will be held for the presidency of the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) party. The stakes are high. At a time when French politics resembles a field of ruins, the man who manages to take the reins of what was once the leading party of the French Right can dream of winning the next presidential election, taking advantage of the collapse of Macronism and the legal setbacks of the Rassemblement National (RN). However, the challenge is daunting: how to convince an electorate jaded by decades of political inefficiency and compromises with the establishment?

With two weeks to go before the vote, the party claims just over 115,000 members—a solid base for the elected president to enjoy a minimum of legitimacy. Two men—with different strengths and backgrounds—are vying for the position.

Bruno Retailleau has the prestige of having been the leader of Les Républicains senators. Now Minister of the Interior, he is working tirelessly to try to reverse the lax migration policy that has prevailed in France for decades and is not afraid to adopt positions previously held exclusively by the RN.

Laurent Wauquiez is a well-established local figure but has never really managed to break through at the national level. He has already served in several right-wing governments in the past, but has not left a lasting impression. As head of the Rhône-Alpes region, he enjoys considerable esteem, but this does not extend beyond the borders of his stronghold. His far-fetched proposal a few weeks ago to send OQTF (people with an obligation to leave French territory) to the island of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon was met with criticism and sarcasm, first and foremost from Retailleau. Internally, however, Wauquiez says he is very confident of his chances of success: he is playing the independence card because, unlike his rival, he is not part of a government alongside Macronists. 

According to the Odoxa polling institute, “in the opinion polls, the match is completely over, in favour of the interior minister.” Among party members, the balance is more complex to analyse. 

Bruno Retailleau is also the favourite of the moderate right-wing media, such as Valeurs Actuelles, which recently ran the headline “What if it were him?” and Le Figaro. But this popularity is deceptive: he has a personality that inspires real enthusiasm only among a handful of notables attached to the respectability of a party that is the heir to Gaullism but which for decades has been drifting gently from the right towards a soft and chewy centre with no real energy.

In 2007, Sarkozy succeeded in hijacking the national right-wing electorate with a firm speech to come to power. This electorate was then betrayed by the policy of opening up to the left.

Today, caution is the order of the day: Retailleau and Wauquiez are the symbolic heirs of Sarkozy. Even if times have changed and the state of the country has deteriorated, calling for ever more powerful remedies, their methods remain the same, and right-wing voters are now wary of superficial firmness. Neither is sending a clear signal about their willingness to finally break the cordon sanitaire that is preventing any political implementation of a common programme for the right—as is happening in Austria and Germany.

At the national level, the outlook is far from bright: the minister of the interior seems unable at this stage to qualify for the second round of the presidential election, as he would only garner 9.5% to 10% of the vote.

The minister’s bombastic statements and his attempts to flex his muscles on sensitive issues that we have reported on—state medical aid, the Franco-Algerian diplomatic conflict—have so far failed to produce any truly convincing results. By what miracle could he manage to expand the party’s base of 7 to 9% of die-hard supporters, who remain loyal from election to election, without ever convincing other French people that, in the current crisis, there is any point in trying to entrust him with power once again?

The reality of the presidential election to be held in spring 2027 is cruel: even if Retailleau’s and Wauquiez’s party manages to make a spectacular comeback, it seems totally illusory that it will qualify for the second round.

And yet, in politics, anything is possible, because the current configuration of French political life could hold many surprises. The RN is entering the race with the serious handicap of Marine Le Pen’s conviction. The road ahead is still long and fraught with obstacles. The appeal process launched by Le Pen must be completed and ruled in her favour: nothing is certain. And even under these conditions, the presidential campaign will have begun without her. As for Jordan Bardella, he has a certain appeal, but it is far from sufficient to hope to win the presidential election, which will be difficult and filled with challenges. In this battle, LR’s experience in government remains an asset among a significant portion of the electorate who, fed on media warnings about the risks to democracy, are hesitant to take the plunge and elect an RN president.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/analysis/in-pursuit-of-the-lost-right-winger/

The Trump administration has accused Berlin of acting in a tyrannical manner after a top intelligence agency officially branded the populist AfD party as an “extremist” group over its stance against mass migration, paving the way for more government spying against the right-wing party.

The supposedly independent Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) — which reports directly to the Interior Ministry of the elected civilian government — ruled on Friday that the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is a “right-wing extremist” organisation. The classification will allow for increased state surveillance of the anti-mass migration party, including observing its meetings with informants and wiretapping of party communications.

In a statement justifying the move, the BfV specifically cited the AfD’s stance towards immigration, specifically from Muslim countries, as being “not compatible with the free democratic basic order” of Germany.

“This can be seen in the large number of statements made on an ongoing basis by leading officials of the party that are hostile to foreigners, minorities, Islam and Muslims. In particular, the ongoing agitation against refugees and migrants promotes the spread and deepening of prejudices, resentments and fears towards this group of people.

“The devaluation of the aforementioned groups of people is also reflected in the generalised use of terms such as ‘knife migrants’ or in the general attribution of an ethnoculturally determined tendency to violence by leading members of the AfD.”

The agency also claimed: “German citizens with a migration history from Muslim countries are not considered equal members of the German people ethnically defined by the party.”

The move came as the AfD has risen to the top of the polls and after it won the most seats in its history at the February federal elections, making the populist party the largest opposition force in the Bundestag parliament.

The surging support for the party has come in the wake of growing public anger over the mass migration policies of successive governments in Berlin and a string of high-profile terror attacks at the hands of supposed asylum seekers from predominantly Muslim nations.

Top officials from the Trump administration, such as Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have accused Berlin of attempting to sideline the party for political reasons.

“The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it,” Vance wrote on X, adding: “The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt—not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.”

Secretary of State Rubio commented: “Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise.

“What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course.”

Germany’s Foreign Office shot back, claiming that the decision to approve wider surveillance on the AfD — which was already being spied upon after previously being classified as a “suspected” extremist organisation — did indeed represent “democracy”, while claiming that the BfV conducted a “thorough [and] independent investigation to protect our Constitution [and] the rule of law.”

“We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped,” the government ministry added.

Outgoing far-left Interior Minister Nancy Faeser — whose office oversees the intelligence agency — claimed that there was “no political influence on the new report” and that the BfV had acted “independently”.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, who is in a lesbian relationship with a woman from Sri Lanka, rejected this, saying: “The spy agency works for the ruling government, which is responsible for illegal mass migration, skyrocketing criminal rates, highest taxes, and highest energy prices. Since the AfD is the strongest party in polls now, they want to suppress the opposition [and] freedom of speech.”

The decision to classify the AfD as an “extremist” party does not necessarily mean that it will face an outright ban, which can only be imposed by either the Bundestag or Bundesrat legislative houses or the Federal Constitutional Court. However, the ruling may encourage such a move.

Other populist figures in Europe have faced bans in recent months, including the decision to prohibit frontrunner Călin Georgescu from running in the upcoming Romanian election and the five-year ban imposed on French National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, who is also the leading candidate in the next presidential election.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/05/03/tyranny-in-disguise-rubio-vance-blast-berlin-over-move-to-classify-afd-as-right-wing-extremist-party

By Monica Showalter

What kind of a government tries to shut down its political opponents?

A night-haunted dictatorship, which is what Germany is descending into, the outcome of its COVID lockdowns, its migrant surge, its self-induced energy dependence, its enfeebled green economy, and its social wokery.

According to a German expat paper, the Munich Eye:

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as confirmed right-wing extremist. This decision has prompted reactions from various political factions, with opposition parties such as the SPD, Greens, and Left Party welcoming the classification. In response, AfD leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla announced plans to take legal action against what they describe as damaging and politically motivated claims that threaten democracy.

Weidel and Chrupalla argue that the classification is an unjust attack on their party, asserting that it seeks to discredit them ahead of a potential governmental transition. They emphasize that the ruling represents a targeted effort to intervene in the democratic process and is fundamentally political in nature.

The classification was made public in Cologne, where the Office for the Protection of the Constitution cited the party’s extreme positions as undermining human dignity and fostering an overall hostile attitude towards migrants and Muslims. This assessment reflects an ongoing concern regarding the party’s ideological direction and its implications for German democracy.

In light of the new classification, Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister President Daniel Günther (CDU) has voiced support for initiating a ban on the AfD, stating that their anti-constitutional stance has long been evident, especially as they are already recognized as right-wing extremist in three German states. He called for swift action by the federal government to protect democracy.

Former East Commissioner Marco Wanderwitz (CDU) echoed this sentiment, urging for a ban process to be initiated urgently. He stressed that the recent classification should serve as a clear indication of the AfD’s threat to democratic values.

German after good German came out in favor of repressing the country’s second-largest political party, whose map distribution can be seen here — almost all of economically dreary East Germany went for AfD except for Leipzig and a part of Berlin that went for a party identified as “Left.” Two pockets of western Germany — Duisberg and Kaiserslautern, described in several reports as economically depressed rust-belt regions, also went for AfD.

What it looks like is an overbearing majority party — the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, operating in tandem, are working to stomp out any embers of resistance to their longtime decadent rule, with significant failures to its record — lost energy independence, the release of hordes of unvetted migrants from stone-age societies such as Afghanistan into their country, a failure to enforce crime laws, greenie regulations creating a lousy economy, capital flight and even the loss of old growth forests for wind farms, grotesque social trends favoring sexual perversions, and the COVID lockdown record which did so much damage to the quality of life.

Wokesterism has absolutely permeatede the society under their rule, extending to well beyond the state — note that the German Catholic Church is financed through taxes on Catholics, making it a state organ, and now its outcome is the same as Lenin smashing churches and Hitler smashing synagogues, except that now, the nullification is from within:

“German” and “Catholic” no longer belong in the same sentence for this German sect. This must be opposed and denounced y the Cardinals gathered in Rome and every bishop around the world. https://t.co/IGphChUZ0j— Bishop J. Strickland (@BishStrickland) May 2, 2025

AfD is a relatively new party, has been making steady gains in election after election, particularly among the youth, and now stands on the cusp of being entitled to some kind of coalition-level power as the next vote in the runoff beckons.

As the Munich Eye piece noted above:

Weidel and Chrupalla argue that the classification is an unjust attack on their party, asserting that it seeks to discredit them ahead of a potential governmental transition. They emphasize that the ruling represents a targeted effort to intervene in the democratic process and is fundamentally political in nature.

So it’s obvious the German rulers want to join the tyranny trend in Western Europe, with France banning its leading candidate for office from running for president, and the U.K. jailing internet critics. They seem to want to outdo them all, because neither France nor the U.K. have sought to ban entire political parties, though they may be just upstream of it, heading for the falls, too.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with customary courage, called them out for their anti-democratic activity:

Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise.

What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies…— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) May 2, 2025

He got this grotesque backtalk from some anonymous bureaucrat speaking mendaciously from behind the German government transom:

WOW! Look at the German Foreign Office’s direct response to Secretary Marco Rubio’s post 😲

It seems to me that the people who more align with “extremism” are the ones who are siccing their spies on their political opponents…🤷🏼‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/fSAFh53IVm— MAGA Kitty (@SaveUSAKitty) May 3, 2025

Yes, either they are lying about German history or they really believe the National Socialist Party of Germany during the time of Hitler, with its fingers in every corporate pie and its murder of millions of Jews, was somehow right-wing. That would be the same German ruling parties that support Hamas and import millions of stone-age antisemitic migrants into their country — the rulers of a country whose Jewish citizens are leaving. Who again, are the million little Hitlers?

Meanwhile, a corporate-state type (fascism, again, anyone?) from Germany stated this, which reflects a lot of the thinking of the German rulers:

Compare the statements by Dmitry #Medvedev and Marco #Rubio: What kind of a reality is this, when in parallel assaults against Germany’s defence of democracy vis-à-vis AfD #extremism Putin’s violent attack dog Medvedev sounds moderate as compared to Trump’s Secretary of State? https://t.co/T5OVjqJqQj pic.twitter.com/jBTudHV1dk— Reinhard Bütikofer (@bueti) May 2, 2025

Maybe it would help if Germany’s rulers didn’t act like Nazis to start with, give Putin ammunition, you fool

It’s a terrible slide downhill for this once most admired and efficient of nations, the touchstone of prosperity and the example for all. Now it’s moving hard towards dictatorship, a really ugly one directed at the powerless young people and the economically run down parts of the country.

When President Trump questions the value and money-pit expense of NATO, it’s very likely the fact that these countries are rapidly slipping into tyrannies that makes them so unworthy of America’s defense. Should we be defending countries with these values, countries that can no longer change course because they have banned their opponents? That have stomped out the aspirations of their young and turned foreign rapists loose on them? Or should we tell them they’re on their own, we don’t expend billions to defend satrapies and tyrannies against, what, other tyrannies? It makes no sense to defend countries that have decided to become tyrannies.

We are not the same.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/05/fresh_after_a_first_round_of_elections_germany_s_ruling_parties_seek_to_ban_their_rising_afd_conservative_rivals.html

Professor Lawrence Goldman is an Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter’s College, Oxford. He is a former director of both the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Institute of Historical Research. He is a director and editorial advisor for History Reclaimed. This lecture was delivered at the New Culture Forum’s first #NCFLocals regional conference “A Celebration of England: Magna Carta and the Making of the English”, which was held in Salisbury in March 2025.