We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Then there is one other thought. If you are getting praise from the Kremlin, you aren’t on the right side of the argument. Much of what I’ve heard from people with whom I usually align politically has been Kremlin propaganda without a hint of nuance or consideration that invading another country is morally repugnant and indefensible. An internal conflict is not a justification. The popular uprising that overthrew Yanukovych, which some attribute to the CIA—as if they have that level of power (they don’t)—does not justify an invasion. There was never a justification.
The deal on the table is a shitty one for Ukraine and a good one for Russia. I always felt that the least bad outcome would be the one that would have to happen, but sucking up to Putin and pretty much rewarding him for his invasion is going to backfire. The accusations of NATO expanding eastwards begs the question, why do those countries want to join if Russia is such a peaceful neighbour? Zelensky’s point, clumsily and inappropriately made, is that diplomacy hasn’t worked so far and he is right. Moldova, Estonia, Finland and Sweden are getting twitchy and with good reason, they know how this is likely to pan out, hence the point Zelensky was making about security. Without that, no deal is worth signing, for the bloodshed will merely be delayed.
– Longrider
There is a legit argument over what support we should give Ukraine. But I don’t understand how so many conservatives convinced themselves that Ukraine committed an unforgivable offense by getting themselves invaded.
– Megan McArdle
This is the news that Gary Lineker, Juliet Stevenson, Miriam Margolyes and others, a real Who’s Who of tossers, have written to the BBC telling it to reinstate its controversial documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. The hour-long doc tells the stories of children and teenagers in Gaza. It was broadcast on BBC Two last week. But it swiftly got mired in scandal after it was revealed that the 14-year-old narrator is the son of a minister in the Hamas government. Yes, our public broadcaster put out a film about Gaza featuring the kid of an official linked to the Islamo-fascists that carried out the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. Reith will be turning in his grave.
In their letter to BBC bosses, the doc’s defenders describe it as an ‘essential piece of journalism’. The criticism of the film is based on ‘racist’ assumptions about Palestinians, they say. The brass neck of these moral preeners is astounding. Imagine the ethical contortionism it must require, the outright doublethink, to damn as ‘racist’ those who are concerned that the BBC gave a platform to people with links to one of the most murderously racist movements on Earth. They sent their letter yesterday, as the Bibas family was being buried. Any comment on that? On the neo-fascist scum who dragged a mum and her two kids from their home for the ‘crime’ of being Jews? No? Fine, but kindly fuck off with the lectures about racism.
– Brendan O’Neill is in very fine form.
‘Let’s be clear, we don’t have blasphemy laws in the UK.’ So said Jonathan Reynolds, the UK’s business secretary and premier solicitor impersonator, to the BBC earlier this week. Reynolds was pushing back against US vice-president JD Vance, who gave European leaders a very public dressing down at the Munich Security Conference last week for censoring their voters, and Britain for criminalising its Christians. Of course, Reynolds’s denial was about as trustworthy as his CV.
You needn’t alight, as Vance did, on the vexed issue of ‘buffer zones’ outside abortion clinics, which have led to Christians being arrested for staging silent protests / prayers, to see that blasphemy laws have made a horrifying comeback in Britain. Easily a more vivid example is that, a day before Vance addressed the global great and good in Munich, a man was arrested for burning a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in central London. Another man, who slashed at the Koran-burner with a knife, was also arrested. Welcome to 21st-century Britain, where we ‘don’t have blasphemy laws’ but you can be arrested – and stabbed – for desecrating a holy book. Maybe Reynolds could finally put that legal training to good use and explain the difference to us.
– Tom Slater
I will forever remember that it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that made me realise the political right is as retarded as the political left.
– Tim Newman
We can no longer afford luxury beliefs. It’s not sustainable to have investment funds which shun arms companies on ESG grounds. It’s no good saying you want to save the planet if you can’t stop China and Russia controlling more and more of it. It’s self-harming to apply DEI policies to the military. The services are there to intimidate and, if that fails, kill our enemies, not impress them with how kind we are to people struggling with their gender identity. Laws policed by foreign courts which prevent our security and intelligence services doing what is necessary to keep us safe are weapons we have fashioned to arm the terrorists who wish to harm us. If our agents can’t do their job because of the ECHR, it must be changed until they can. Or junked.
– Michael Gove (£), who for once is kind of making sense
However sympathetic you are to the populist cause, however “realist” on Ukraine, it is impossible to defend the head of the world’s most powerful nation putting out reckless semi-literate screeds like this.
– Freddie Sayers
I say “ourselves” because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values; we must live them. Within living memory of many in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. Consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that cancelled elections—were they the good guys? Certainly not. And thank God they lost. They lost because they neither valued nor respected the extraordinary blessings of liberty: the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, to invent, to build. As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe.
Unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners. I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be “hateful content.” Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of “combating misogyny on the internet,” a so-called Day of Action.
I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. As the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant (and I’m quoting) “a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.”
Perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes—not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply that it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
The officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new “buffer zones” law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
– J.D. Vance speaking at the Munich Security Conference 2025
At the request of US president Donald Trump, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been through USAID’s books. There they claim to have found an organisation funding myriad dubious campaigns and groups around the world. Among many other activities, it’s been backing drag shows in Ecuador and transgender operas in Colombia. It’s dished out $84million to Chelsea Clinton through the Clinton Foundation. It also gave $54million to the controversial NGO, the EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated with the notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology in ‘gain of function’ experiments that are alleged to have made Covid-19 more transmissible.
– James Woudhuysen
It is notable that the inquiry’s concentration on the work of the Government’s dis- and mis- information operation assumes that anyone questioning the safety and effectiveness of vaccines is spreading such information. In reality the main source of dis- and mis- information is the Government: the manifest failings of the MHRA have been concealed; the safe and effective narrative is a sham.
I have yet to see any news report of the meeting but hope one will appear somewhere. I also hope that transcripts of the speakers’ presentations will become available. I note that the Perseus Group has made several witness statements to the Hallett Inquiry; whether these have been put on the inquiry website is a little difficult to determine, as the ‘statements’ tab leads to a list which is 809 pages long. I got through the first five without finding anything sensible buried among the trivia. Maybe the submissions are there somewhere. Somehow I doubt it.
– Dr. Andrew Bamji
Naturally, the press has echoed the Deep State. “This is a hostile takeover of the federal government by a private citizen of unlimited means with no restrictions and no transparency,” said Kara Swisher of a man presently working for the democratically-elected president of our country, following his orders directly, and who at any moment can be (and ultimately almost certainly will be, let’s be honest) fired. “It’s a coup,” said Lindsay Owens of Groundwork (some kind of tedious, commie, dark money think tank), which was echoed throughout the press. “…what’s going on right now really is a genuine crisis,” said Jesse Singal, “and it should be recognized as such.”
But a crisis for who? I don’t share politics with the Deep State, and am not a huge fan of permanent, unelected, unaccountable power in general, so maybe this is hitting me different. In any case, I’ve been wondering: where is this level of “crisis” reporting on the president’s flurry of trans orders? His dismantling of DEI? The trade war (already mostly over, by the way) or Panama (also basically handled now, but I digress). With the exception of Selena Gomez, I haven’t seen many tears for deported violent criminals, something we heard a lot about back before the election. No, panic is almost entirely focused on saving federal bureaucrats. Why?
– Mike Solana
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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