By Monica Showalter

Joe Biden is hiding in his basement, but maybe that’s because the rabid-left looters, rioters, and protesters are carrying out his presidential campaign just fine for him.

What else can be concluded but that, given that President Obama has cynically admitted that the civil unrest covering the U.S. is “tailor-made” for electing Joe Biden?

Here’s a report from National Review:

Former President Barack Obama told aides this month that the nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd are “a tailor-made moment” to help his former vice president Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump in November.

According to a New York Times story based on interviews with more than 50 Obama confidants, the former president was made anxious after riots and looting rocked many American cities in the days following Floyd’s death and Trump began trumpeting “law and order” in response.

“Let’s not excuse violence, or rationalize it, or participate in it. If we want our criminal justice system, and American society at large, to operate on a higher ethical code, then we have to model that code ourselves,” Obama wrote in a Medium post earlier this month.

But Obama’s confidence has since grown as the protests have continued and Trump’s polling numbers have dipped. 

So in other words, more riots, more votes for Biden.  Perhaps the idea is to beat the public down to such an extent that it feels that only a Democrat can solve it.  Perhaps he sees in the polls that the public is blaming Trump.

The New York Times reported just a couple days ago that Obama is obsessed with ousting President Trump.  That being the case, it’s not unlikely that he will continue with his old Alinsky training, to oust Trump by any means necessary.

If riots will do it, Obama and his Democrats will be happy with more riots.  Even the New York Times admitted that the riots excited him:

That calculus, though, may be changing in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by the police in Minneapolis. As America’s first black president, now its first black ex-president, Mr. Obama sees the current social and racial awakening as an opportunity to elevate a 2020 election dictated by Mr. Trump’s mud-wrestling style into something more meaningful — to channel a new, youthful movement toward a political aim, as he did in 2008.

Opportunity?  Elevate?  That sounds a lot like “tailor-made.”

This ought to be a wake-up call to voters, who are the only ones who can stop this cynical, diabolical plan on property-owners.  Obama has a stake and interest in perpetrating riots and lootings, regardless of the cost to the little guy, because it advances his political aims.  That’s in characters, from the words of his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to “never let a crisis go to waste.”

It’s also amazingly cynical, given that nobody should be rooting for rioters as a means of benefiting politically.  Yet here we are, and Obama is being lionized.  It calls to mind that the Obama legacy can’t be hosed out soon enough by Trump in his second term. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/obama_admits_it_riots_and_protests_are_tailormade_for_electing_joe_biden.html#ixzz6QrXUogH8

Police officers who were on duty during the Stuttgart riots have voiced suspicion that left-wing extremists were also involved in the riots. “It reminded me of the G20 summit in Hamburg. My colleagues and I are pretty sure that Antifa was there.

Otherwise it would not have escalated so much,” an official told regional daily the Badischen Neuesten Nachrichten.

The police noticed shopping trolleys full of stones and other projectiles. “And there were bottles that were filled with paint. No normal party goer has something like this with them,” the paper quoted a police officer. In addition, hooded people with crowbars were noticed during the operation.

The deputy state chairman of the German Police Union, Jürgen Engel, shared this assessment. “According to what my colleagues have reported to me and what you can see on the videos, it can be assumed that the riots started within the so-called event scene, but were then supported and fueled by left-wing autonomists.”

The Stuttgart police leadership initially suspected the authors of being part of the Stuttgart “party and event scene” in order to hide the fact that mostly migrants were part of the urban violence.

They received criticism for this ridiculous assessment, and have now said that it could not be ruled out that “individuals from the left spectrum” also participated in the riots. However, those responsible did not want to confirm the officials’ observations.

The German domestic intelligence agency, known as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, had already warned of a growing willingness among leftists to use violence. However, there is no information yet about the “participation of violent left-wing extremists in the riots”, emphasized a government spokesman.

During riots last weekend, rioters in downtown Stuttgart attacked police officers and ransacked shops. 19 officers were injured.

freewestmedia.com/2020/06/30/stuttgart-riot-antifa-was-there/

If someone in the 1990s, when we had a difficult time dealing with our communist past and becoming part of the West, would have told me that young people in Central Europe would later spray derogatory inscriptions on Winston Churchill’s statues while a statue of the mass murderer Vladimir Ilyich Lenin would be ceremoniously erected in Germany, I would not have believed him. And yet, it is our reality today.

According to current thinking, Churchill was a racist, imperialist and war criminal and, therefore, supporters of the radical left demand the removal of statues honoring him. At the same time, in Germany, specifically in Gelsenkirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia, a two-meter-tall statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin has been recently erected.

So up goes a statue of a mass murderer and the creator of the Soviet Union – the “evil empire” that history tells us inflicted such incredible suffering on so many people and left tens of millions dead. To top it all off, the statue was cast in 1957 in former communist Czechoslovakia.

Behind the initiative aiming to install the statue in Gelsenkirchen is the far-left Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD), founded in 1982 by members of the Communist Workers Union of Germany (KABD). This political party openly advocates for the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the creation of a “classless society.” In addition to honoring the founding fathers of communism, i. e., Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, it also proudly upholds the legacy of two of the three greatest criminals in modern history, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and Mao Zedong.

Although the Gelsenkirchen City Hall tried to prevent the installation of the statue, pointing out that “Lenin is the embodiment of the violence, oppression, terror and immense human suffering that engulfed the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917,” the court did not accept its objections.

Gabi Fechtner is the fanatical head of the MLPD: a freelance publicist and, among other things, the author of a 60-page pamphlet entitled “The Most Beautiful Thing in the World: Fighting for the Liberation of Humanity” (“Das Schönste auf der Welt: Der Kampf um die Befreiung der Menschheit”). Fechtner said that installing the statue of Lenin is appropriate, as he was “a world-famous progressive thinker and fighter for freedom and democracy for the masses.”

Does it sound unbelievable? The mass murderer Lenin, a “progressive thinker and freedom fighter”? It seems that even the general knowledge of his crimes does not prevent some from celebrating and glorifying him. They also do not mind that in the name of Marxism-Leninism, tens of millions of people were murdered, not only during Lenin’s and Stalin’s era, but also during the rule of Mao Zedong in China, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Pol Pot in Cambodia and Castro in Cuba.

However, not only historians have tried to warn people of the dangers behind this ideology. Numerous authors, including prose writers such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon), George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm) and Artur London (The Confession), could still be writing today, and it would not change a thing for certain people.

Some might say that the German “Leninists” are really a negligibly small group that is not even worth commenting on. But that would be inaccurate. Although members of the radical left are not numerous, they are increasing – not only in Germany but also in other mainly European countries – by luring in the younger generation. Leftists often appeal to youth via popular initiatives such as climate protection in order to legitimize their school of thought.

Defaming Churchill and other significant historical figures and installing a statue of Lenin – this is just the beginning. As soon as we shrug it off, there will be statues of Stalin for “defeating fascism.” There might also be attempts to fundamentally reinterpret our modern history. Indeed, it is easier for the leftists to appeal to the younger generation, as its knowledge of history is not that great.

So what should we do about this? First of all, we must be precise and consistent in how we name figures and ideologies. We must say that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his comrades belong to the same category as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. We must be clear that communism is an evil completely comparable to Nazism and Fascism and that if the latter two cannot be tolerated, we cannot tolerate the former.

Being quiet and just letting it be is the worst thing we can do.

rmx.news/article/commentary/churchill-down-lenin-up-the-loss-of-historical-memory-is-the-loss-of-the-instinct-for-self-preservation-opinion

After the riots in Vienna district of Favoriten during demonstrations, the atmosphere between Austria and Turkey remains anything but relaxed. While Vienna and Ankara had summoned the ambassador of the respective other country to the Foreign Ministry, Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz ( Austrian People’s Party, ÖVP) now found sharp words directed at the Bosporus. On Tuesday, Kurz accused Turkey of “sowing discord” and of ” stirring things up” in Austria for its own interests. From the Chancellor’s point of view this is an ” misuse of the people with Turkish roots living in Europe”. Furthermore, Kurz once again identified shortcomings in integration policy and announced his intention to prevent “uncontrolled immigration” in future.The Turkish ambassador had had to report to the Vienna Foreign Ministry on Monday. The ambassador had been summoned to make it clear “that Turkey must stop trying to influence the people here in Austria and instrumentalising them for their own interests”, Kurz explained to journalists on Tuesday. Kurz finds it “unbearable” that Turkey talks about police violence against Austro-Turks, he could only “reject this in the strongest terms”.Kurz does not expect deescalating statements from Turkey: “I do not expect a great deal of support from Turkey,” he said in response to a question. “Because I know exactly what Turkey is trying to do here: Namely, using Turks in Europe to sow discord and here and there to create a mood mainly for Turkey’s own interests. In his view this is an “abuse of people with Turkish roots living in Europe”.Kurz emphasized that he was outraged by what had happened here in the middle of Vienna.”People who live in the Favoriten district are being deprived of their homeland”, the Chancellor used drastic words. “These conflicts, they are imported from Turkey,” criticised Kurz. “Those who have a need for street fighting should do it in Turkey, but there is no place for it in Austria.”He had asked the Minister of the Interior to pursue a “policy of zero tolerance”, Kurz said. There were 11 arrests, including one suspected ringleader. Now it was time to check “which contacts and strands of contacts exist here with Turkey and with various Turkish associations in Austria – and these relations must be broken off”.In short, the incidents were the result of not only a lack of integration, but also of unrestricted immigration. In this respect, he also sees his strategy in migration policy vindicated.

https://www.krone.at/2182317

Three prominent German-Iranians who have gone to great lengths to oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel urged Green Party MP Omid Nouripour on Monday to resign from a BDS group due its antisemitism and racism.Nouripour is on the advisory board of the German-Palestinian Society (DPG), a hardcore BDS group.

“Mr. Nouripour should immediately resign from the DPG for two reasons. First, because of the moral obligation toward Jews and for political reasons because the Bundestag defined BDS in 2019 as antisemitic,” Nasrin Amirsedghi, a publicist who fled the Islamic Republic of Iran due to persecution, told The Jerusalem Post.She added that “if he does not do this, he is violating the basic democratic order of the Bundestag and thus legitimizing the Iranian regime’s antisemitic stance, which Hezbollah supports.”The US and German designated terrorist entity Hezbollah supports BDS, along with its chief proxy, the Iranian regime.In 2015, Nouripour co-authored a pro-BDS Green Party initiative that mirrored a neo-Nazi party resolution to sanction Jewish products from the disputed West Bank territory.Saba Farzan, a publicist and Executive Director at Foreign Policy Circle, a strategy think tank in Berlin,  told the Post: “As a member of the German Bundestag, Mr. Nouripour must immediately resign from his post in the DPG. He also has to do this against the background of his Iranian identity: there is only one dictatorship in this world that has an antisemitic state doctrine, namely the Islamic Republic.”

“This Islamic Republic is financially and politically closely linked to the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as well as Islamic Jihad. Mr. Nouripour has two responsibilities to implement here: Those who are politically committed as German-Iranians have a historical responsibility and an up-to-date approach to tackle raging antisemitism. You don’t do that by continuing to be a member of a questionable organization that legitimizes antisemitism. It would be nice and valuable for a change to watch some political civil courage from Mr. Nouripour,” she concluded.Dr. Kazem Mousavi, the spokesman for the Green Party of Iran in exile, told the Post that “a member of the democratic Bundestag must not promote and support the worst racist campaign of our time, BDS. The membership of the Iranian-born member of the Bundestag Nouripour on the advisory board of the anti-Israeli DGP, which poses a security threat to Germany, not only harms German politics, but supports, first of all, the Holocaust-denying regime in Iran.”Mousavi, who has campaigned for years for a ban of the pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iranian regime rally al-Quds Day in Berlin, added that “the policy of the DGP, which practically supports the BDS call, is in line with the Iranian annihilation doctrine, which systematically pursues the deforestation, isolation and extinction of the Jewish state of Israel. The mullah regime also bans Israeli products in Iran by law.”He said that “for Nouripour, it should not be unknown that the regime was actually the original initiator of the racist BDS campaign. In 2000, the current Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, chaired the Asian preparatory meeting in Tehran for the so-called UN World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, which was marked by antisemitic incidents. The goal was to promote the boycott of Israeli products worldwide.In this sense, there are also well-known Iranian and non-Iranian regime lobbyists who, under the guise of supporting the Palestinians, are directly or indirectly involved in anti-Israel BDS institutions in the West and  in Germany.”“As an Iranian  dissident, I urge Nouripour to distance himself immediately from the DGP,” Mousavi noted. “He is also – whether he likes it or not – keenly opposed by the Iranian regime opponents because of his longstanding efforts to promote Germany’s ‘good’ friendship with Iran’s clerical fascism and his apparent position with which he argues against US sanctions and regime change in Iran.”Nouripour did not immediately respond to numerous Post queries about his alleged BDS activity and role within the DPG. In an interview last week with the Franfurter Rundschau paper, Nouripur said “we must be louder than the racists” when fighting right-wing extremism. All of Germany’s right-wing extremist parties support BDS.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/germaniranian-dissidents-urge-mp-to-resign-from-antisemitic-bds-ngo-633243

According to an Ipsos survey commissioned by Dagens Nyheter News, six out of ten Swedes are in favor of reducing immigration and two-thirds want a fixed ceiling for the number of immigrants admitted every year.

The survey provides a snapshot of the current situation following a decades-long multicultural project, in which most Swedes were against mass immigration that consisted mainly of economic migrants and a small minority of real refugees.

On Thursday, the ruling parties of the so-called Migration Committee will meet again to try to agree on a new immigration policy. One of the points that they still disagree on is whether Sweden should have a ceiling on how many migrants can be admitted each year.

While Moderates and Christian Democrats want Sweden to cut the migrant influx to the same level as other Scandinavian countries, which would mean a reduction by 80 percent, the Swedish Democrats want a total immigration moratorium.

In a survey, six out of ten people say that Sweden should accept fewer migrants, and almost two out of three, 65 percent, also want to have an annual ceiling for the number of migrants admitted to the country.

People were also asked how they perceive immigration in general, with 41 percent of respondents say that immigration was very or quite good for Sweden. However, the share of people who stated that immigration has a “very good” influence on Sweden has fallen sharply compared to 2015.

Another question was about how well the integration of migrants is considered to work in Sweden. As many as 72 percent in the country think it is working poorly.

Experiences from 2015 shows that there is a limit to what Sweden is practically capable of in terms of migration policy without causing substantial pushback from the Swedish population.

Reports of migrant crime and lack of integration have played a major role in how Swedes perceive migrants, such as an increase in sexual assaults on teen girls, which in many cases involve migrants an refugees. Once quiet Sweden has been rocked by hundreds of bomb attacks, many linked to gang warfare tied to second or third-generation migrants.

Nicklas Källebring from the Ipsos agency pointed out that they specifically asked about “refugees”, even though they make up only a small part of the total number of people arriving in Sweden every year.

According to experts interviewed by DN, a cap on immigrants would not be compatible with the asylum law and the conventions that Sweden has signed.

rmx.news/article/article/majority-of-swedes-want-to-reduce-immigration-survey

Our corporate thought police have been working overtime, and from the look of it, they are only beginning.

Mats Skogkär, a journalist and editorial writer at one of Sweden’s largest regional newspapers, Sydsvenskan, was recently demoted from editorial writer to a non-writing position for tweeting the following:

“When you see the Left’s almost sexual excitement over the riots in the United States, over the looting, fires and violence, it also becomes easier to understand its desire to create similar conditions here with a large… segregated underclass of migrants”.

“A tweet way over the line,” wrote Jonas Kanje, editor in chief at Sydsvenskan, after receiving backlash on Twitter. “A way to express yourself that Sydsvenskan can never support. I dissociate myself from it.”

According to the Swedish publishing house Bonnier, which owns Sydsvenskan, “Bonnier defends freedom of expression… a diversity of voices and perspectives should be heard in our media”.

Less than a week later, Sören Åkeby, who had an advisory role on the board of the Swedish football team, ÖFK, was let go by the board for sharing a Facebook postthat “directly violate[s] ÖFK’s values”. The post that Åkeby shared contained the following:

“Another Swede murdered by a racial stranger!… [The boy] was stabbed when he helped a Swedish girl who was being raped by a Somali… Don’t stand by and watch your own people get murdered, raped and humiliated. Organize and resist this alien invasion. We are at war!”

“I read it too quickly and just [shared it],” Åkeby apologized.

“I certainly don’t have those (thoughts)… I have trained foreign players for more or less all my life… For me, this became so surreal… I’m definitely not a racist. I’ll take it back. I will delete the posts immediately if it is interpreted this way. I didn’t mean to.”

Alexander Bard, a Swedish artist and author was fired from Swedish TV Channel 4, after tweeting:

“If black lives want to matter, then black lives get their fucking shit together, study hard, go to work, make their own money instead of depend on welfare, stop lying, get out of prison, and become heroes instead of self-appointed victims for the world to laugh at. That matters!”

Bard’s tweet was also reported to the Swedish authorities for “inciting hatred”.

Sweden has been steeped in political correctness for decades. The country’s failed immigration policies, which have had multiple negative consequences, as reported by Gatestone Institute here, here, here, here and here, have long been taboo and those who criticized the policies were, in the words of Ulf Kristersson, leader of the Moderate Party, reviled and frozen out. In addition, Sweden’s hate speech laws have seen people who have criticized Swedish migration policies and their consequences on social media sentenced and fined for “inciting hatred”.

The idea that freedom of speech is not a fundamental liberty that must be defended at all costs runs deep in Sweden. So deep, in fact, that in 2018, Tomas Åberg, founder of the private organization, “Näthatsgranskaren” (“The Web Hate Investigator”) was nominated for a prestigious prize, the “Swedish Hero” award, by one of Sweden’s largest national newspapers, Aftonbladet. The nomination came after Åberg’s organization reported no fewer than 750 Swedish citizens in 2017 to the authorities for “web hate”. Åberg’s organization has been generously funded by government grants, another telltale sign of the scant value placed on free speech.

In the United States, people used to stand up for freedom of speech as an inviolable liberty — until recently. While free speech has been highly unappreciated on US campuses for years, it still appeared to be a liberty that most Americans appreciate. This appreciation no longer seems to be generally the case, at least not in corporate America.

The riots in the US since the killing of George Floyd, or more specifically the debate about the riots, have exposed the stunning extent to which corporate America is willing and able effectively to shut down speech that does not conform to the orthodoxy of the moment.

In the past two weeks alone, corporate America got rid of the following people for their “thought crimes”:

Radio personality and NBA announcer Grant Napear was fired from his radio show at KHTK radio and resigned as the Sacramento Kings play-by-play TV announcer after tweeting on June 1, “All Lives Matter… every single one!”, in reference to protests by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

KHTK’s parent company, Bonneville International Corporation, said in a statement that Napear’s comments “do not reflect the views or values” of the company, and the timing of his tweet was “particularly insensitive.”

Apparently, as one Twitter user told Napear, “All lives matter” is the “go-to response from racist individuals, when they’re asked about BLM”. Napear apologized. “I’m not as educated on BLM as I thought I was,” Napear told the Sacramento Bee. “I had no idea that when I said ‘All Lives Matter’ that it was counter to what BLM was trying to get across”.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago terminated its contract with University of Chicago economics professor Harald Uhlig, after a tweet he wrote criticizing Black Lives Matter’s desire to defund US police departments:

“Too bad, but #blacklivesmatter per its core organization @Blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice : ‘We call for a national defunding of police.’ Suuuure. They knew this is non-starter…”

The termination of Uhlig “reflects our determination that his views are not compatible with the Chicago Fed’s values and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion” said the bank. The termination came even as Uhlig apologized for his tweet. Uhlig was also suspended from his position as editor at the Journal of Political Economy at the University of Chicago at the urging of several professors who said that Uhlig was “trivializing the Black Lives Matter movement.”

New York Times opinion page editor James Bennett was forced to resign from his position, after he ran an op-ed piece by Senator Tom Cotton, titled, “Send in the troops”. The article argued that the U.S. military should be called in as a backup if police failed to get the recent riots under control. Bennett’s resignation came after more than 800 Times staff members signed a letter protesting the publication of Cotton’s op-ed, and many claimed it “puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger”. Bennett apologized for the op-ed, saying that it should not have been published. The New York Times said it would make changes to its opinion section.

A young Democrat data scientist, David Shor, was fired by the research firm for which he was working, Civis Analytics, after tweeting about the electoral effectiveness of peaceful protest as opposed to violent protest. He referenced the work of a Princeton assistant professor, Omar Wasow, that violent protests turn voters away from the Democrat Party.

Shor experienced a backlash on Twitter, where he was accused of racism and “anti-blackness”. In addition, “at least some employees and clients on Civis Analytics complained that Shor’s tweet threatened their safety”, according to New Yorkmagazine.

“I regret starting this conversation and will be much more careful moving forward” Shor apologized — to no avail. One Twitter user, Trujillo Wesler tagged Dan Wagner, the CEO of Civis Analytics, telling him to “go get your boy”. That was all it took. Shor was fired.

Serbian soccer player Aleksandar Katai was also fired from the Los Angeles Galaxy team. Not because of anything he said or wrote, but because of his wife’s social media posts. The Instagram posts made by Tea Katai, according to The Guardian, “showed a police SUV attempting to drive through protesters in New York. A caption in Serbian read, ‘Kill the shits!’ while a second showed a picture of an individual carrying boxes of Nikes with the caption ‘Black Nikes Matter'”.

Galaxy fans immediately called for Katai’s dismissal. He posted a message on Instagram in which he apologized “for the pain these posts have caused the LA Galaxy family and all allies in the fight against racism”. He added, “This was a mistake from my family and I take full responsibility. I will ensure that my family and I… learn, understand, listen and support the black community”.

The vice-president and executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Stan Wischnowski, resigned after being hit with a backlash for running an article with the title, “Buildings Matter, too.” Although the newspaper apologized almost immediately for running the headline, the staff and the public demanded still more. According to the newspaper’s publisher, Lisa Hughes:

“We will use this moment to evaluate the organizational structure and processes of the newsroom, assess what we need, and look both internally and externally for a seasoned leader who embodies our values, embraces our shared strategy, and understands the diversity of the communities we serve,”

The United States nominally enshrines the most far-reaching freedom of speech, thanks to the First Amendment of the Constitution:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.

Corporate America has circumvented the first Amendment by appointing itself the thought police over employees and associates who do not adhere strictly to the “rules” of the current orthodoxy. It administers its ruthless justice — Cultural Revolution style — through the destruction of employee livelihoods and careers.

The new corporate thought police are merciless; they do not accept apologies, however groveling. Perhaps, in the future, corporations will have “reeducation” departments, as in China or the former Soviet Union, for those who still have the courage to open their minds and their mouths.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16128/corporate-thought-police