Screenshot of the video showing the assault on the Italian police officer in Turin on January 31, 2026 X, January 31, 2026
Turin, Italy saw scenes of extreme violence on Saturday during a demonstration agains the eviction of the illegally occupied Askatasuna anarchist ’social centre’ last December. The centre was shut down and the property seized at the end of last year by DIGOS, the General Investigations and Special Operations Division (DIGOS) of the Italian Police, after the centre’s activists took part in an attack against the headquarters of Italian newspaper La Stampa.
The Saturday protest quickly escalated and for about an hour, between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., it turned into what the authorities describe as urban guerrilla warfare. Reportedly, at one point a large group of demonstrators pulled out homemade shields, and initiating a clash with the riot police. The violent mob burned garbage cans, and threw stones, fireworks and smoke bombs at the police.
A video shared on social media by Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto and former Democratic Party senator Stefano Esposito shows the moment a group of demonstrators surround and brutally attack a police officer, ten against one, kicking and beating him with a hammer. (Viewer discretion advised.)
Quanto accaduto oggi a Torino, durante il corteo degli antagonisti contro lo sgombero dello stabile Askatasuna, è grave e inaccettabile.
Uno sgombero legittimo di un immobile occupato illegalmente è stato usato come pretesto per scatenare violenze, incendi, lanci di bombe carta… pic.twitter.com/AtVLzMVxfD
The unjustifiable violence was immediately condemned by politicians across the political spectrum. Even Democratic Party (PD) General Secretary Elly Schlein, who normally tends to condone the agressive behaviour of leftist radicals, said what happened is “unacceptable.” PM Meloni strongly condemned the violence against law enforcement officers, declaring that the state will not back down in the face of extremist groups. She said
What happened today in Turin is serious and unacceptable. These are neither dissent nor protest: they are violent aggressions aimed at attacking the state and those who represent it. And for this reason they must be treated for what they are, without deductions and without justifications.
Meloni added that what the protesters committed should be considered “attempted murder.”
The Italian PM on Sunday paid a visit at the hospital to the 29 policemen recovering from the injuries they sustained during the attack by the violent mob, posting a picture of her shaking hands with the two most seriously wounded officers.
Questa mattina sono stata all’ospedale Le Molinette di Torino per portare, a nome dell’Italia, la solidarietà a due degli agenti rimasti feriti negli scontri di ieri e, attraverso loro, a tutti i militari e gli appartenenti alle Forze dell’ordine coinvolti.
In her post on X, she said she has convoked a government meeting for Monday, to discuss new threats to public security and the new norms to be included in the Security Decree. She concluded by stating:
We will do what it takes to restore the law in this nation.
According to reports, the extremists also assaulted the crew of Italian state television Rai, who were beaten, threatened, and their equipment destroyed.
On today’s #NCFTrimble, host Emma Trimble speaks with Lord (Toby) Young, Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Britain’s leading free speech organisation.
The Encyclopedia Britannica has removed a controversial map from its Britannica Kids section that labeled the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as “Palestine,” with no mention of Israel. The change followed complaints from the pro-Israel group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) and an inquiry by The Telegraph, which highlighted concerns that the depiction erased Israel’s existence and echoed the politically charged slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The original map, accompanied by a caption describing “Palestine” as the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, drew criticism for aligning with rhetoric used by pro-Palestinian activists and groups like Hamas. UKLFI argued in a letter to Britannica’s publishers that this framing promoted a modern political agenda and effectively denied the State of Israel’s presence in the same geographic area.
The controversy first gained attention in November 2024 when London-based Jewish children’s book author Shari Black flagged the issue directly to Britannica. She expressed surprise at what she called historical inaccuracies in content aimed at children, saying it appeared to push an agenda of delegitimizing Israel-despite the country’s establishment through international consensus.
UKLFI further criticized Britannica Kids’ broader historical references to “Palestine” as a term extending thousands of years back, noting that historians trace its use to Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 CE, who applied it to the region (formerly Judea) after the Bar Kokhba revolt to diminish Jewish identity.
Britannica’s editor-in-chief, Theodore Pappas, responded to the concerns by saying the company would review the claims from UKLFI and make adjustments if necessary.
UKLFI Director Caroline Turner emphasized that retroactively applying the “Palestine” label across the region’s history distorts historical developments and creates a misleading sense of continuity.
After The Telegraph’s inquiry, Britannica removed the map and revised the entry to state: “Today the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip are located within this area.”
Ione Belarra. Pool Moncloa/Fernando Calvo, Wikimedia Commons,Ministry of the Presidency. Government of Spain,
The leaders of the far-left Spanish Podemos party celebrated on Saturday the “victory” of the mass amnesty for around half a million illegals and hailed the achievement as a step toward the “replacement” of right-wing Spaniards.
Appearing at a campaign event in Zaragoza, Podemos Secretary General Ione Belarra and the party’s leading Member of the European Parliament, Irene Montero, openly embraced the project of demographic displacement as an electoral strategy.
They explained that this week’s deal brokered with the Socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to grant amnesty to over 500,000 illegals was merely the first step and that the ultimate goal was to either grant them citizenship or to change the law to allow for migrants to vote in national elections, El Mundoreported.
Party leader Belarra compared the battle to allow migrants to vote to the women’s suffrage movement, saying that Spain has a “racist, property-based” voting system and that her party will “fight for migrants’ right to vote. If you live here, you have to have the right to vote here.”
While conservative and populist opponents of the amnesty have criticised the left for seeking to manipulate the polity to their own aims, Podemos MEP Irene Montero openly admitted as much, but claimed that it was righteous to replace her fellow countrymen.
“I wish for replacement theory, I wish we could sweep this country of fascists and racists with migrants, with working people,” she said.
“Of course, I want there to be replacement: replacement of fascists, replacement of racists, replacement of freeloaders, and that we can do it with working people, whatever their skin colour may be.”
Montero, who is widely expected to represent Podemos as a prime ministerial candidate in the 2027 general election, also admitted that the amnesty of the illegal migrants is ultimately intended to see them become voters.
“Of course, we want them to vote. We’ve obtained papers, regularisation now, and now we’re going for citizenship or to change the law so they can vote, of course,” the far leftist MEP said.
While the ‘Great Replacement’ has long been downplayed as a conspiracy theory by the legacy media, it has increasingly become a rallying cry for far-left politicians in Europe. Indeed, last month, French former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon also openly embraced the term, while boasting that around one in four French citizens has at least one foreign-born grandparent.
Responding to Montero, the leader of the anti-mass migration VOX party, Santiago Abascal said: “This is [Prime Minister] Sánchez’s plan. He disguises it more. But this is the plan of Sánchez and of Brussels. And it is being carried out there with the support of the European PP [People’s Party]. WE ARE NOT GOING TO ALLOW IT.”
Meanwhile, the leader of the centre-right People’s Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has called on Brussels to intervene to stop Madrid’s amnesty programme, arguing that due to the internal open borders of the Schengen zone, the mass regularisation of illegals would directly impact the other 26 member states. However, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her European People’s Party allies have reportedly said that the decision will be left up to the Spanish government.
Critics have also warned that the amnesty could result in potentially millions more arrivals in Spain, through the familial chain migration process and by incentivising more illegals to enter on the hope of another future amnesty.
The mooted amnesty may prove to be a critical issue in the upcoming 2027 general election. According to a survey this week from Sigma Dos, VOX is projected to win 17.8 per cent of the vote, up from 12.3 per cent in 2023. The centre-right PP would win 32.4 per cent, slightly down from the 33.1 per cent they won three years ago. The combined strength of the two right-wing parties would be enough to control parliament and form a coalition government.
It remains to be seen if the PP will commit to overturning the amnesty if elected next year. However, party leader Feijóo said on Saturday: “The massive regularisation by the Government will put pressure on public services, strain the housing market, and create coexistence problems. Solidarity without control is an intolerable political negligence.”
The Islamic Centre of England faces fresh scrutiny from the Charity Commission after it was found merchandise glorifying Hezbollah and the Iranian regime was sold at a public event on its premises | Islamic Centre of England – Google Maps
The Islamic Centre of England faces fresh scrutiny from the Charity Commission after it was found to be selling merchandise glorifying Hezbollah and the Iranian regime at a public event on its premises.
The registered charity, situated in the prosperous north-west London neighbourhood of Maida Vale, hosted what it called a “community bazaar” on December 14 last year.
The centre promoted the gathering as a “vibrant space for cultural interaction, the exchange of knowledge and experiences, and the strengthening of national and religious identity”.
However, a dossier of photographs obtained by The Telegraph has exposed that stallholders were offering phone cases bearing images of Hassan Nasrallah, the late Hezbollah leader killed by Israel in 2024, alongside key rings expressing devotion to Iran’s supreme leader.
The phone cases displayed silhouette photographs of Nasrallah, the former secretary-general of the terrorist organisation proscribed by the British government.
Stickers featuring what appeared to be silhouettes of other militant commanders were also available, including Qassem Soleimani, the IRGC Quds Force chief killed in an American air strike in January 2020.
Key rings on sale carried inscriptions declaring loyalty to Ali Khamenei, with one reading “With the kindness of God, Seyyed Ali is our leader”.
Another carried the phrase “Ba Velayet ta Shahadat”, an expression rooted in Shia Islamic and Iranian revolutionary ideology that signifies absolute allegiance to the supreme leader.
Portraits of Khamenei and his predecessor Ruhollah Khomeini adorned the walls prominently.
Lord Walney, a former government adviser on political violence, described the findings in stark terms: “This dossier suggests that the Islamic Centre of England’s bazaar was an Aladdin’s cave of extremist content.”
“Some of the material for sale may contravene terrorism laws, it is certainly deeply inappropriate for an organisation that remains a registered charity despite controversy after controversy,” he warned.
He added that failure to act would expose “a deep weakness in Britain’s oversight of charities which can too easily be exploited by extremists”.
Shadow Home Office minister Alicia Kearns MP demanded the centre’s closure, stating: “These latest revelations of terrorist tat being sold by the Islamic Centre of England are yet more evidence of why the centre must be closed and those responsible for propagating terrorist propaganda face the law.”
The centre has faced repeated controversy since January 2020, when it organised a candlelit vigil for Soleimani, describing him as a “dedicated soldier of Islam” and a “great martyr”.
That event, along with another gathering that eulogised the slain general, prompted an official warning from the charity watchdog.
In October 2022, the centre’s director Seyed Hashem Moosavi delivered a speech branding Iranian protesters “enemies” and “soldiers of Satan”, while accusing women who declined to wear hijabs of spreading “poison”.
The Charity Commission subsequently launched a full statutory inquiry the following month, which could ultimately result in the organisation losing its charitable status.
A spokesman for the centre stated: “The trustees take all concerns about the centre very seriously. We are currently reviewing matters pertaining to the Dec 14 event and, in light of this, are unable to comment further at this time.”
A British TikToker who claims to be a transgender woman has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for violent and sexual offenses, including “at least” ten instances of rape. Jordan O’Brien, 34, who also goes by Jennifer Nieve on social media, was found guilty at Manchester Crown Court last October of rape, assault by penetration, threatening with an offensive weapon, and other violent offenses.
During sentencing yesterday, Judge Tim Harrington said the rape conviction involved no fewer than 10 instances of violent sexual abuse, saying, “I have to sentence you for at least 10 occasions that you raped her. This was repeated offending.”
O’Brien was referred to as “Jennifer” throughout the sentencing hearing.
Last fall, a former friend of O’Brien’s shared images of court documents on social media after learning about the five-day trial and conviction. O’Brien had been charged with six counts of sexual abuse, including rape, assault by penetration, strangulation, coercive control, and threatening to assault the victim with a weapon. According to the court records, the offenses took place between June and December of 2022.
O’Brien is described as having exerted terrifying control over his victim, monitoring her cellular device, destroying her possessions, and being verbally abusive towards her. Among the more serious convictions, O’Brien was found to have raped his victim with a dildo, strangled her, and threatened her with a knife.
A victim statement read aloud in court on her behalf described the psychological impact of the abuse she had endured.
“I don’t sleep for very long, and I’m up at all hours of the night,” the statement read. “If I am in a group of more than five people I suffer from anxiety. The impact has been long term and deeply damaging. I have lived for years with fear and anxiety.”
UK: A transgender TikToker has been found guilty of FOUR counts of sexual abuse, including rape, strangulation, and threatening his victim with a knife.
Jordan "Jennifer" O'Brien, a father of four, has been remanded to custody ahead of sentencing. https://t.co/m4IkVWvIp5
O’Brien had amassed over 60,000 followers on social media for videos he made about identifying as transgender, and, judging by comments made on TikTok, had been receiving gifts and financial donations from his fans. One respondent stated that they had come to regret spending over £100 on O’Brien after learning about the charges against him.
After his conviction in October, multiple former associates of O’Brien came forward to express their outrage at the situation and reveal more details about O’Brien’s history.
O’Brien’s former roommate, a drag queen who uses the moniker Charli Angel, also took to TikTok to condemn O’Brien for his crimes. Angel, who attended the trial at Manchester Crown Court, said he had been misled about the serious nature of the charges against him, while referring to O’Brien with feminine pronouns.
In a follow-up video, Angel described how O’Brien appeared to lack remorse during sentencing.
“I’ve just got back from Manchester Crown Court where Jennifer Nieve has been sentenced. She [sic] was found guilty of rape, sexual assault by penetration, coercive control, and threatening with a weapon – which was knives… She had a stern face, with no remorse on her face.”
He continued: “The judge said she will have a restraining order against her which will protect the victim and her child, and that will be indefinitely. Jennifer will also have to notify the police of where she lives for the rest of her life.”
Reporting on the sentencing this week, multiple British news outlets prompted criticism on social media for referring to O’Brien with feminine pronouns or burying his male sex in their reporting.
@CatalanDream@ABardsleyMEN@DailyMirror whose idea was it to ensure that if you only read the first part of this story (as many people do), you would assume the rapist was a woman?
While it has not been publicly stated where O’Brien will be serving his sentence, it is believed he will be held in a men’s institution due to a 2023 policy change that put restrictions on allowing trans-identified males to be placed in the women’s estate.
The change was prompted by an eruption of public outrage over the case of Isla Bryson, a trans-identified male convicted of raping two women. Bryson’s initial placement in a female prison in Scotland ignited fierce international debate over whether self-identified gender should determine prison placement.
The backlash, fueled by concerns for female inmates’ safety, quickly became a flashpoint and prompted urgent reviews across the United Kingdom. In response, the UK Ministry of Justice for England and Wales tightened its rules, barring transgender women with male genitalia or convictions for violent or sexual offenses from the women’s prison estate except in what they claimed were “the most exceptional cases.”
The centrist Danish government has announced that migrants will be immediately if convicted of a crime and sentenced to at least one year in prison.
In a press conference in Copenhagen on Friday, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen hinted that her government may be willing to directly take on the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated court in Strasbourg, which has actively been stymieing deportation efforts by multiple governments across the continent.
The Danish PM said that legislation will be introduced to ensure that any migrant convicted of a crime and sentenced to at least one year in prison will face automatic removal from the country. Furthermore, those criminal aliens who fail to comply with the government will be fitted with a GPS anklet.
To spearhead the removal efforts, a dedicated deportation czar will be appointed by the government, public broadcaster DR reported.
“Some experts might think that we are breaking the Convention with this. We see it the other way around,” Freiderickson said.
Minister for Immigration and Integration, Rasmus Stoklund, added: “If it does happen that the courts reject Denmark, then we must respect that… Then we must take stock of the specific judgment and see whether it changes anything in general for our legislation, or whether it is the specific case where something special must be done by a Danish court.”
Denmark, along with Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy, has been at the forefront of the move to reform the ECHR. In December, 27 ECHR nations, including the United Kingdom, which remains bound by the Convention despite Brexit as it is technically a separate institution, signed a joint letter calling for the curtailment of excuses to prevent deportation of foreign criminals.
Under the ECHR, migrant criminals, and even some terrorists, can appeal their deportation over the prospect of facing “torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, irrespective of the victim’s conduct” in their homelands.
There have been reports that have alleged that migrants facing removal will fake being homosexual to claim that they may suffer discrimination in their native country.
Meanwhile, Article 8 of the ECHR, which guarantees a “right to private and family life”, is also often used in appeals against deportations. For example, in 2024 an Indian man was jailed for distributing child pornography, but was not removed from Britain after his lawyers successfully argued it would harm the pedophile’s children if separated from their father.
In addition to ramping up deportations, Denmark has said that it will look to re-open its embassy in Syria in a bid to force Damascus into finally accepting the return of its asylum seekers. Other EU nations such as Germany are also attempting to begin large-scale deportations to Syria now that the civil war is over.
Randy Andy creeping over a woman laying down on the floor – Epstein files/DOJ
How low can Andrew go?
The three and a half million documents from the latest – and apparently last – release from the DOJ following the approval of the House Resolution 4405, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, are out.
Around the world, journalists are digging into the mother lode, but we can already say that disgraced former British Prince Andrew is the elite figure most featured in the damaging files.
We already reported about a 2010 email exchange in which Jeffrey Epstein, fresh out of Florida prison, sets ‘Randy Andy’ with a 26-year-old Russian woman, once again shattering the former duke’s lies that he severed ties with the late pedophile after his conviction.
He is also featured inviting Epstein and women friends for a dinner at Buckingham Palace – ‘with lots of privacy’.
The new revelations are even worse.
In a disturbing series of declassified photos, Andrew is ‘hovering over a woman lying on the floor’.
Randy Andy touching a woman laying down on the floor – Epstein files/DOJ
“In one disturbing photo, Queen Elizabeth II’s third child, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, is seen crouched on all fours over a woman — whose face is redacted — sprawled on her back with her arms spread on the white striped carpet, as the ousted royal stares into the camera.
Two other snaps show the barefoot 65-year-old, sporting a white polo and jeans, touching the unknown woman’s stomach. The woman appeared to be awake in the photos, with her arm held up in one picture.”
A series of emails between Andrew and convicted sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell reinforce the multiple earlier reports that they were, at one point, romantically involved.
“Affectionate exchanges in which they refer to each other by names including ‘darling’ and ‘sweet pea’, while stating they ‘long for’ one another are reigniting claims from friends and even a former royal protection officer that they were in fact lovers.
[…] Emails between Andrew, 65, – who went by the moniker The Invisible Man – and Maxwell in 2002 tell how he sought Maxwell’s ‘permission’ to spend time with his ex-wife and children instead of travelling to the US.”
from Andrew to Maxwell – Epstein files/DOJ
from Andrew to Maxwell – Epstein files/DOJ
And to prove that shady deals come hand in hand with their debauched lifestyle, Andrew is also featured in the documents sharing confidential Afghanistan documents with Epstein.
The Telegraph reported:
“Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor appeared to ask Jeffrey Epstein for his advice over a confidential document about investment opportunities Afghanistan.
He told his former friend that he would be ‘very interested’ in his comments, views or ideas and who else he could show it to in order to ‘attract some interest’.
The Gates Foundation, he added, ‘sadly’ doesn’t do anything in Afghanistan.”
“On Christmas Eve, 2010, after Andrew, a UK trade ambassador at the time, was seen with Epstein in New York — a meeting he later told Newsnight had been to break off the friendship — he appears to have written to Epstein outlining a business opportunity in Afghanistan and shared a “confidential brief” about “Afghanistan International business opportunities”.”
🔺UPDATE: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor appeared to ask Jeffrey Epstein for his advice on a confidential document about investment opportunities in Helmand, Afghanistanhttps://t.co/lqvkjPyKhb
Nail down those cafeteria dishes, students now steal them all: ‘ It is precisely these small, daily manifestations of institutional decay that pose the greatest long-term threat to our societies—far greater, in fact, than the dramatic events that dominate cable news cycles.AI Photo Generator
At first glance, a headline about the University of Mainz removing french fries from its cafeteria menu seems trivial. The sort of minor administrative decision that might belong on a local announcement board rather than commanding the attention of serious observers. Yet I would argue that this small story reveals something profound about the state of social cohesion in contemporary Europe, and perhaps even serves as a canary in the coal mine for the future of our civilisation.
Here are the facts: The Mainz University student services organisation (Studierenden Werk Mainz) had procured 500 cake plates and 1,590 serving dishes for French fries to supply the university cafeteria. Within four weeks, 450 of the cake plates had disappeared. Of the serving dishes, only 100 remained in use, meaning roughly 1,490 had vanished. Faced with this massive attrition, the cafeteria made a decision: remove French fries from the menu entirely.
On the surface, one might ask what this has to do with geopolitical upheaval, energy security, or the great challenges facing the West. With American interest in Greenland and turmoil in major American cities dominating headlines, who has time to concern themselves with missing crockery in a German university? Yet I would submit that it is precisely these small, daily manifestations of institutional decay that pose the greatest long-term threat to our societies—far greater, in fact, than the dramatic events that dominate cable news cycles.
The Invisible Infrastructure of Civilisation
To understand why, we must examine a concept that has become central to understanding how societies function: Social capital. This term, popularised by American sociologist Robert Putnam in the late 1980s and early 1990s, describes the advantages that arise from social networks, norms, and mutual trust. Think of it as an invisible web of social relationships that enables people to cooperate, share resources, and achieve common goals.
Social capital is fundamentally different from other forms of capital precisely because it is invisible and self-enforcing. When you lend a tool to a trusted neighbour, you do not need to hire a lawyer or draw up a contract. Trust between you and your neighbour is sufficient. But this simplicity masks something crucial: The entire transactional cost structure of a society depends on the density of this trust. Where trust exists, transaction costs plummet. Where it erodes, costs spiral, as formal enforcement mechanisms must replace informal understanding.
Consider a practical example. If you cannot trust your neighbour to return what you lend, you face a choice: Either forgo the transaction entirely, or incur the legal expenses of contracts and potential enforcement. Yet both outcomes impose costs—not merely financial, but in terms of forgone cooperation and mutual benefit. Your neighbour might have improved his garden with the borrowed equipment, benefiting both of you. But without trust, that mutual gain never occurs.
This seemingly minor dynamic plays out across entire economies. When social capital is high, businesses can operate with handshake agreements and unwritten understandings. Supply chains function efficiently because parties can rely on each other’s commitment to fair dealing. Innovation accelerates because cooperation becomes frictionless. When social capital declines, the state must substitute formal rules, surveillance, and enforcement for what once came naturally.
The Paradox of Declining Participation
Putnam’s most famous work, “Bowling Alone” (2000), documents a profound shift in American civic life. In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans belonged to bowling leagues, service clubs, religious organisations, and civic associations at remarkable rates. These groups did more than organise leisure activities—they cultivated the social connections and shared norms that held society together. Yet over subsequent decades, participation in these institutions collapsed. Voting declined by 25 per cent. Attendance at public meetings fell by 40 to 50 per cent. Membership in civic organizations plummeted.
In Europe, we observe similar patterns. In rural areas, the situation has been slightly better—participation in volunteer fire brigades, local football clubs, and traditional organisations has remained more resilient. But in urban centres, particularly in Central and Western Europe, we see the same erosion of civic participation that Putnam documented in America. Fewer people attend church services. Union membership has declined. The dense networks of civic engagement that characterised the post war period are visibly fraying.
Putnam himself—no right-winger, and someone whose political sympathies generally align with the centre-left—made a sobering admission in a later essay titled “E Pluribus Unum.” He acknowledged that the increasing diversity of Western societies has contributed significantly to this decline in social capital. This is not to blame minorities or immigrants per se, but rather to observe that the transition from relatively homogeneous societies to genuinely plural ones has been accompanied by a breakdown in the implicit norms that previously held societies together. When communities consist of people with shared histories, similar reference points, and common expectations about how one behaves, the enforcement of social norms becomes largely self-sustaining. When that homogeneity fragments, however, the informal mechanisms that once bound society together begin to fray.
The Broken Windows Principle
Understanding the Mainz cafeteria story requires an examination of what criminologists call the “broken windows theory.” Introduced by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in 1982, the theory posits a simple but powerful observation: Visible signs of disorder and norm violation encourage further disorder and norm violation. A broken window that goes unrepaired signals that no one cares, and consequently, breaking more windows costs little—morally or socially. The disorder escalates.
The most compelling illustration of this principle comes from a 1969 experiment conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo. He placed two identical, unlocked automobiles on the streets of New York City—one in the Bronx, a poor and chaotic neighbourhood, and another in Palo Alto, California, a wealthy suburb. In the Bronx, residents demolished the car within ten minutes, stealing parts and destroying the interior. In Palo Alto, by contrast, the car sat untouched for two weeks.
But here is where the experiment became truly revealing. When Zimbardo approached the Palo Alto car and smashed a window with a sledgehammer, creating a visible sign of damage, the behaviour changed dramatically. Within two hours, residents of that affluent neighbourhood began systematically dismantling the vehicle. The broken window—the visible violation of norms—had signalled something crucial: That no one was maintaining order, and therefore anything was permitted.
Returning to the Mainz cafeteria, the broken windows principle illuminates what has transpired. A few students began taking dishes and serving ware. Perhaps initially this was exceptional behaviour, the kind of petty theft that occurs in any large institution. But as students observed that others were doing so with impunity—that no one was enforcing the norm—the behaviour cascaded. Within weeks, 90 per cent of one category of dish had vanished and 95 per cent of serving dishes were missing.
The critical insight is that this is not primarily a story about poverty or desperation. These are university students in a wealthy European country. What transpired was not driven by necessity but by the erosion of the implicit understanding that one does not take public property—that there exists a norm against such behaviour, and that norm is collectively enforced.
The consequences of this norm collapse are not trivial. The university now has no option but to remove French fries from the menu, thereby degrading the quality and variety of the cafeteria offering. This is a loss of institutional service that did not result from fiscal constraints or supply chain disruptions, but from the failure of social trust. Alternatively, the university must implement surveillance mechanisms—barcodes on dishes, restricted access, cameras—all of which impose costs that could have been directed toward educational purposes.
This dynamic replicates across Western societies. In some cities, newspapers once sat in honour boxes on the street, with readers expected to deposit coins. Many of these systems have been dismantled because they could no longer function without complete breakdown of the honour system. Farmers’ markets that operated on trust—where customers could take products and leave payment—have largely disappeared, replaced by conventional retail with checkout points and cashiers. In supermarkets, items once freely accessible are now locked behind security displays. Razor blades and other commonly stolen items must be retrieved by staff.
Diversity, Social Trust, and the State
None of this is to deny that demographic change has played a role. When a significant portion of a community consists of individuals who did not grow up within the cultural context in which certain norms developed, the implicit understanding erodes. More significantly, if institutional authorities fail to enforce norms against new groups when they violate them, the incentive structure shifts for the rest of the population. If one observes that certain people can steal with impunity while others are expected to follow rules, the logical conclusion is: “If they are exempt from these norms, why should I conform?”
This dynamic has been documented repeatedly across Europe. In some neighbourhoods, the failure of authorities to enforce basic behavioural norms against certain newcomer populations has led to a phenomenon where native residents gradually abandon their own internal enforcement of those norms. The implicit standard shifts from “this is how we behave” to “apparently, rules do not apply anymore, so I might as well behave accordingly”.
The long-term consequence is inexorable: As informal social control—the invisible mechanisms by which people police their own behaviour based on shared understandings—erodes, the formal apparatus of state enforcement must expand. Knife bans. Alcohol-free zones. Increased surveillance. Random searches. All of these represent state substitutes for what once came naturally through dense networks of social cohesion.
The Stakes
Here lies the great paradox of modern liberal democracy. Genuine freedom—not merely the legal right to do as one wishes, but the lived experience of living safely in a community where one need not fear predation—depends entirely on widespread norm-following that occurs without explicit state coercion. A society where everyone “technically has the right” to attack their neighbours but is prevented only by omnipresent surveillance and overwhelming police force is not free. It is a surveillance state masquerading as freedom.
The exceptional success of Western European and East Asian societies over the past 75 years has rested on a particular achievement: the construction of societies where most citizens, most of the time, voluntarily conform to behavioural norms without requiring constant oversight. This allowed the state to remain relatively unobtrusive. Citizens could walk streets safely. Institutions could operate efficiently. Economic life could flourish because transaction costs remained low.
This achievement rested on historical foundations. In Northern Italy and Central Europe, civic traditions extending back to medieval free cities created deep reservoirs of social capital. In Japan, a particular constellation of cultural factors produced similarly high levels of trust and norm-adherence. In Germany, the post-war reconstruction—which rebuilt civil society deliberately—reinforced civic participation and mutual obligation.
But these were not inevitable achievements. As Putnam’s research on Southern Italy demonstrates, even within the same nation, regions with different historical trajectories of civic engagement developed radically different capacities for functional governance. Regions with long traditions of civic republicanism developed efficient administrations and robust economic performance. Regions with histories of feudalism and centralised authority—where the state was understood as the instrument of rulers, not of citizens—developed clientelist networks and endemic corruption.
The Warning Sign
I am acutely aware that dwelling on missing cafeteria dishes may seem like a peculiar preoccupation when major geopolitical crises demand attention. The headlines do matter. Yet I would contend that historians looking back on the early 21st century Western decline will not point primarily to these dramatic events. Rather, they will point to the small moments—the everyday erosion of the unwritten rules that held society together. Each broken norm, each small theft met with indifference, each moment when citizens observe others violating accepted rules without consequence, represents a micro-fracture in the social infrastructure.
Every great collapse begins with a crack. The Mainz cafeteria story is a crack—not the collapse itself, but a warning that the invisible foundations are weakening. The question is whether Western societies can recognize this signal and respond, or whether we will continue our slow march toward societies where formal enforcement replaces informal trust, where surveillance replaces civic participation, and where the state—increasingly intrusive and increasingly necessary—comes to regulate behaviour that once regulated itself.
That outcome would represent not a triumph of order, but a profound loss of what once made liberal democracies worth defending.
A rally against U.S. President Donald Trump in front of the National Assembly in Paris on January 28, 2026. Screengrab youtube
Progressives will be progressives, regardless of which continent they happen to live on. And they always seem to be on the side of those who despise law and order and never on the side of the ‘normies’ who bear the consequences of the normalization of lawlessness.
European liberal media are acting as the cohorts of the U.S. leftist press when it comes to covering the shameful incitement by progressive actors and the deranged attacks by protesters against ICE officials in Minnesota. Those responsible for the chaos are glorified, while those working to enforce the law and make the United States safer are regularly demonized.
Take the example of Alex Pretti, the man shot dead by an ICE agent after he showed up to a ‘protest’ armed and engaged in repeated physical altercations with law enforcement officials. Liberal Italian newspaper La Repubblicasaw fit to dedicate a whole article to the response of ‘solidarity’ of Italian nursing associations to the statement by the American Nurses Association, issued following the death of Pretti. According to La Repubblica, “The wave of indignation has now crossed the ocean and has arrived in Italy, too, concerning the murder (sic) of Alex Pretti … by ICE agents sent to Minnesota by Trump … Their Italian colleagues, shocked by the violence in the United States, have responded to the call … by the American Nursing Association for a full and transparent inquiry … They are also worried about the presence of ICE agents in Italy during the Olympic Games.” What on earth?
There is no point in looking for reporting in such media about the condition of the ICE agent who suffered internal bleeding after being rammed by Renée Good, the woman shot dead in an earlier incident in Minnesota. (Good is regularly referred to in the liberal media as “a mother of three.” No mention, meanwhile, of the family of the ICE agent, who are now apparently in hiding after they were doxed by leftist agitators.) There was (and still is) no trace of the same liberal media reporting on signallings of solidarity or “indignation” when Laken Riley, an Augusta nursing student, died at the hands of a Venezuelan illegal immigrant in 2024. On the contrary: the most important thing British leftist outlet The Guardian had to say about her murder was that “The killing of the 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the campus of the University of Georgia on 22 February has drawn national media interest and political activity in ways that other homicide cases do not, in part because it provides an easy target for rightwing election sloganeering.” (italicized for emphasis)
No words of sympathy for the innocent victim whose life was taken by a person who should not have been in the United States to begin with.
Similarly shocking is the way the liberal media in Europe reported on the disruption of a church service in Minneapolis. No words of compassion for the churchgoers who were left in terror after the illegal occupation of their place of worship. No opinion, in fact, about whether it is normal and acceptable to march into a house of God and intimidate the worshippers. No: reporting on activist-posing-as-reporter Don Lemon, risen from irrelevance after taking part in the infamous storming of St. Paul United Methodist Church, finally being charged (arrested but then released) in the case for his participation in the shameful incident, French Liberation explains that the reason for the protest was that one of the pastors is an ICE agent—as if that is something that warrants violence! The same Liberation that earlier dedicated an entire article to describing ICE as an “opaque” institution that acts as “the armed arm of the Trump regime.”
As if this were not enough, most recently, the American and Western European progressive media have gotten themselves an unlikely competitor in the who-can-demonize-law-enforcement-better game. Telex.hu, a Hungarian liberal outlet posing as ‘independent’ but heavily financed by foreign foundations propped up by the European Commission, and earlier by the Biden administration, published an article the other day about Greg Bovino with the following headline: ”Downfall of the little Napoleon in a Nazi coat, the face of Trump’s deportations“
It is hard to decide whether this can be regarded as an exceptional low even by liberal journalism standards or hailed as a rare moment of sincerity that reveals the almost insane hatred of Trump and what he stands for. As MEP András László (Fidesz / Patriots) highlighted in his tweet, deportations in the U.S. are ”an issue that hardly concerns Hungarians and the majority is against illegal immigration and Hungary has no issues removing illegals because we don’t allow them in.”
This is what "independent media" in Hungary looks like.
‼️🇺🇸 Funded by US taxpayer money.
Article title reads: "Failed little Napoleon in his Nazi coat, the face of Trump's deportations". (Mind you, this is an issue that hardly concerns Hungarians and the majority is against… pic.twitter.com/C9WUfWnKen
Luckily, the Trump administration is having none of the liberal gaslighting and is determined to enforce immigration laws—which is what the American people elected the 47th president to do and what most Europeans would like to see happen on the Old Continent, too.
