V. O'Hara

Authored by Lars Møller via American Thinker,

History is replete with revolutionary figures who transformed society through “vision”, “vanity”, and “violence” - a vicious triad covering the strategy of being ideologically uncompromising, outmaneuvering rivals, and eliminating political opposition, respectively.

Maximilien Robespierre and Vladimir Lenin stand out as architects of radical political transformation. Bridging the cultural divide, their leadership styles and psychological profiles show striking similarities. Both men were pedantic ideologues driven by an unshakable belief in their own moral and intellectual superiority.

A comprehensive personality profiling of Robespierre and Lenin requires an analytical framework that transcends ideological taxonomy and historical contingency. While both men operated under conditions of revolutionary crisis, their responses to this strain were neither inevitable nor merely situational. Rather, the extremes of savagery that they authorized, rationalized, and sustained reflect enduring psychological structures that shaped their political conduct. Revolutionary atrocity, in this sense, is best understood, not as an accidental excess of upheaval but as an expressive manifestation of personality under pressure.

At the center of both profiles lies a distinctive form of narcissism, albeit one that diverges from popular caricature. Neither Robespierre nor Lenin cultivated flamboyance or sensual excess. Instead, they embodied a restrained and severe narcissism, grounded in ascetic discipline and intellectual or moral exclusivity. This “austere narcissism” is particularly insidious, as it disguises grandiosity beneath the rhetoric of sacrifice and historical necessity. Both men perceived themselves as uniquely attuned to the demands of history, endowed with a clarity unavailable to others. This conviction constituted the psychological foundation of their authority and simultaneously foreclosed the possibility of self-doubt.

Robespierre’s personality was organized primarily around moral absolutism. His self-conception as l’Incorruptible was not a mere political posture but a deeply internalized identity. Personal frugality, emotional restraint, and rhetorical solemnity served as symbolic reinforcements of moral superiority. From a psychological standpoint, this configuration suggests a rigid superego structure in which ethical norms were internalized as categorical imperatives rather than negotiable principles. Moral conflict could not be accommodated; it had to be eradicated.

This psychic architecture is indispensable for understanding Robespierre’s embrace of terror during 1793–94. The Law of Suspects, enacted on September 17, 1793, dramatically expanded the definition of counter-revolutionary guilt to include vague categories such as “enemies of liberty” and those lacking “civic virtue”. In practice, this legislation enabled the arrest of tens of thousands on the basis of suspicion alone. The resulting mass incarcerations and executions were not only tactical responses to military threats but also expressions of Robespierre’s moralized worldview. Political ambiguity itself became criminal.

The Revolutionary Tribunal exemplified this moral reductionism. Legal safeguards were progressively dismantled, culminating in the Law of the Great Terror, enacted on June 10, 1794, which eliminated defense counsel and limited verdicts to acquittal or death. The acceleration of executions—over 1,300 in Paris alone within six weeks—reflected not panic but moral certainty. Violence functioned as ethical enforcement. The guillotine, with its mechanical regularity, transformed killing into procedure, allowing Robespierre to experience mass death as impersonal justice rather than cruelty. Psychologically, such depersonalization constitutes a dissociative defense: suffering is abstracted, responsibility displaced, and violence reclassified as virtue.

Robespierre’s increasing hostility towards former allies further reveals the fragility underlying his moral absolutism. The executions of Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins—longstanding revolutionaries accused of “indulgence”—illustrate how moral rigidity devolved into paranoid purification. Dissent was no longer external but internal. The purges thus served not only political consolidation but also psychic stabilization. Each execution reaffirmed Robespierre’s self-image as guardian of revolutionary purity against an ever-expanding field of corruption.

Lenin’s psychological profile, though equally absolutist, was structured along a different axis. His narcissism was intellectual rather than moral. Lenin did not portray himself as virtuous but as scientifically correct. Authority derived from his conviction that he alone grasped the objective laws of historical development. This intellectual narcissism produced profound disdain for spontaneity, pluralism, and moral hesitation.

Lenin’s approach to violence during and after the October Revolution exemplifies this orientation. The establishment of the Cheka in December 1917 marked the institutionalization of terror as a permanent instrument of governance. Unlike the revolutionary tribunals of 1793, the Cheka operated extrajudicially from the outset. Its remit included summary execution, hostage-taking, and mass repression. Lenin explicitly endorsed these measures. In correspondence from 1918, he called for “merciless mass terror” against class enemies, insisting that hesitation would doom the revolution.

The Red Terror of 1918–22 provides stark illustration. Following the attempted assassination of Lenin in August 1918, the regime launched widespread reprisals. Thousands were executed without trial, often selected, not for actions but for social origin. Former nobles, priests, merchants, and officers were targeted as categories rather than individuals. The mass shootings at Petrograd and Moscow, as well as the use of concentration camps—precursors to the Gulag system—demonstrate how violence was bureaucratized and de-personalized. Psychologically, this categorical annihilation reflects cognitive reductionism: human beings were reduced to structural obstacles to be removed. 

The suppression of the Tambov peasant uprising (1920–22) further illustrates Lenin’s instrumental rationality. When peasants resisted grain requisitioning, the Red Army deployed poison gas, mass deportations, and hostage executions. Lenin personally authorized these measures, framing them as necessary to break “kulak resistance”. The scale and severity of the repression—tens of thousands killed or interned—underscore his willingness to annihilate entire populations in pursuit of economic and ideological objectives. Emotional detachment was not incidental but functional: empathy would have impeded efficiency.

Similarly revealing was the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. The sailors, once celebrated as heroes of the revolution, demanded free elections and an end to Bolshevik repression. Lenin and Trotsky responded with overwhelming force. Thousands were executed or sent to labor camps. The psychological significance lies in the readiness to destroy former allies once they ceased to serve the ideological script. Dissent, regardless of origin, was pathologized as counter-revolution.

Despite stylistic differences, Robespierre and Lenin shared a fundamental incapacity to recognize others as autonomous moral agents. From a developmental psychology perspective, this suggests impaired “mentalization”. Opposition was interpreted, not as disagreement but as moral corruption or structural deviance. Consequently, violence acquired an air of inevitability.

Both leaders also exhibited marked emotional austerity and social withdrawal. Their reluctance to engage in ordinary social life reinforced authority but deepened isolation. Isolation intensified suspicion. Deprived of corrective feedback, both increasingly relied on internal narratives of betrayal. Terror became self-reinforcing: fear confirmed paranoia, paranoia justified repression, and repression entrenched power.

This dynamic accords with established models of authoritarian personality, which emphasize the interplay between dominance and insecurity. Such leaders are not psychologically secure. Their need for absolute control compensates for internal fragility. Power functions as an external stabilizer, imposing order upon both society and the self. 

The handling of failure further illuminates these personalities. Neither Robespierre nor Lenin demonstrated genuine self-criticism. Military setbacks, economic collapse, or popular resistance were invariably attributed to insufficient repression. Violence thus substituted for reflection. Rather than revising assumptions, both escalated coercion. 

The persistence of terror beyond immediate necessity underscores its expressive function. Once institutionalized, violence became ritualized, reaffirming alignment with virtue or history. Each execution symbolized inevitability and correctness. Atrocity communicated omnipotence.

The contrast between Robespierre’s “moralized terror” and Lenin’s “instrumental terror” reflects divergent emotional economies within a shared absolutist framework. Robespierre’s violence was theatrical and ethical; Lenin’s procedural and technical. Yet both converged in their effect: the annihilation of individuality and the normalization of death as a political tool.

Ultimately, the personality profiling of Robespierre and Lenin demonstrates how revolutionary leadership magnifies latent psychological traits. Ideology supplied justification; crisis provided opportunity; personality determined execution. Their atrocities were not historical aberrations but behavioral culminations of rigid cognition, narcissistic self-identification, emotional detachment, and intolerance of uncertainty.

The broader implication is sobering. Extreme political violence need not arise from overt sadism. It often emerges from moral certainty, intellectual arrogance, and the refusal to acknowledge human complexity. Robespierre and Lenin exemplify how revolutionary ideals, when filtered through psychologically brittle leadership, can transmute aspirations of emancipation into systems of terror. Their legacies endure as warnings of what occurs when conviction eclipses conscience and abstraction supplants humanity. 

Without any mitigating self-irony, Robespierre and Lenin embodied an unlimited commitment to ideology, indifferent to the concerns of ordinary people, their lives and freedoms.

Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

Under Keir Starmer’s Labour government, the UK has become a dystopian nightmare where criticizing the Prime Minister gets you banned from entry. Meanwhile, boatloads of illegal migrants wash across the Channel daily, rewarded with hotel stays and taxpayer-funded perks.

Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek learned this the hard way when her travel authorization was revoked just days after calling out Starmer’s hypocrisy on immigration and free speech.

This blatant act of political censorship highlights Labour’s twisted priorities: protect the establishment narrative at all costs, even as unchecked migration erodes British sovereignty and burdens citizens.

I’ve been banned from traveling to the UK. 🇬🇧

No reason given. No right to appeal. Zero due process.

Just an email saying the UK government deems me "not conducive to the public good" - exactly three days after I criticized Keir Starmer.

I guess my point that the UK is no… pic.twitter.com/JAcMMcjf1I

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) January 14, 2026

Vlaardingerbroek, a 29-year-old Dutch lawyer, political commentator, and activist, has built a reputation for her outspoken criticism of mass immigration, globalism, and threats to Western culture. Formerly affiliated with the Netherlands’ Forum for Democracy party, she advocates for “remigration” policies to preserve national identity and has amassed a large following on social media for her unfiltered takes on Europe’s migration crisis. As such, her views have made her a target for leftist regimes eager to silence dissent.

The UK government informed Eva “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good.”

Holy sh*t.

I’ve been banned from traveling to the UK. They revoked my ETA.

"Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conductive to the public good."

3 days after posting this about Starmer. https://t.co/NqWBtaTkZe pic.twitter.com/lm5lZgL2i7

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) January 14, 2026

The post she referenced slammed Starmer directly: “Keir Starmer wants to crack down on X under the pretense of “women’s safety”, whilst he’s the one allowing the ongoing rape and killing of British girls by migrant rape gangs. Evil, despicable man.”

“I’ve become a victim of two tier justice and Keir Starmer is a TYRANT!”
World exclusive Outspoken interview with Eva Vlaardingerbroek after being banned from the UK.@EvaVlaar ❤️ pic.twitter.com/eOWH3av0HU

— Dan Wootton (@danwootton) January 14, 2026

Meanwhile Starmer recently announced that one of his top priorities was getting an anti-white Egyptian extremist to the UK and was “delighted” to “welcome”‘” him:

Despite el-Fattah’s vile history – including posts like “fucking hate white people … a blight on the earth they are” and calls for “random shooting of white males” – Starmer celebrated his return to the UK.

As we higlighted, el-Fattah has praised Osama bin Laden, denied the Holocaust, and urged violence against police and Zionists. Yet Labour bent over backward to import this hate-monger, exposing their contempt for British values.

Last month, the UK government welcomed into the country a man who told people to "burn Downing Street," said "I don’t like white people," and called British people "dogs and monkeys."

Apparently, he was 'conducive to the public good'. https://t.co/keEFFGu5bJ

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) January 14, 2026

Meanwhile @Keir_Starmer announced his "top priority" was getting this guy to the UK and was "delighted" to "welcome" him... 😩 pic.twitter.com/dnyv50mPFi

— Emily Wilding Davison🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@Wommando) January 14, 2026

As Vlaardingerbroek’s ban made headlines, recent reports confirm the UK’s borders remain a sieve. In the first week of January 2026 alone, dozens braved sub-zero temperatures to cross the Channel in small boats, adding to the over 41,000 arrivals in 2025 – the second-highest year on record. These migrants are often housed in hotels at taxpayer expense, with costs soaring to £8 million per day, while British families struggle.

You're not a rapey illegal migrant so Keir Starmer won't let you in

— Inevitable West (@Inevitablewest) January 14, 2026

The Home Office plans to evict some from hotels by spring 2026, but with crossings continuing unabated – 32 detected in the first five days of the year – the system is overwhelmed. Labour’s “one in, one out” scheme faltered when the first 2026 return flight to France was cancelled, leaving more invaders to stay.

But if u get on a dinghy, we’ll put you in a hotel, feed u, give u healthcare, internet, phones and free travel.

— Adam Brooks AKA EssexPR 🇬🇧 (@EssexPR) January 14, 2026

This ties into deeper rot. A former aide to Starmer recently blew the whistle on a “deep state” – a “political perma-class” of insiders, NGOs, and lobbyists – controlling the government and obsessing over fringe issues like el-Fattah’s case while ignoring voter concerns.

The former aide Paul Ovenden described it as a “stakeholder state” that shifts power “away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore.”

Ovenden slammed policies that “import antisemitic Islamists who wish us harm” and treat “British citizenship as a scrap of paper.” This blob forces the government to “row with muffled oars” to appease campaign groups and regulators, sidelining secure borders.

The reason for Vlaardingerbroek’s ban is clear. Her call for “remigration” of immigrants made her persona non grata. And the Labour government’s message is clear: Dissent against open borders and leftist agendas? You’re out. But if you’re an illegal crosser or hate-spewing extremist, welcome aboard – hotel room included.

The "You cannot appeal this decision" is the most Leftist sentence I have ever read.

This fascist thinking is so fundamental to their ethos that they do not even recognize it.

It is simply the air that they breathe and is of no consequence. pic.twitter.com/QsiolJGjWx

— Andy Martin (@Dollarlogic) January 14, 2026

This hypocrisy must end. Brits deserve a government that puts citizens first, secures borders, and defends free speech against the deep state’s grip. Until then, the invasion continues, and patriots like Vlaardingerbroek pay the price.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Authored by Jim Bovard

"There is no censorship here in Germany," according to Steffen Meyer, a top spokesman for the German government. In reality, Germans have freedom of speech except for ideas that politicians and government contractors and nonprofit activists don’t like. Germany is providing a road map for freedom can be squashed throughout the western world.

Germany was the scene of some of the twentieth century’s worst tyranny but today’s German leaders have only noble intentions for oppression. Berlin’s Best and Brightest™ “improved” democracy by turning politicians into a privileged caste. After a conservative editor mocked a top German law enforcement official by posting a meme showing her holding a sign, “I hate freedom of opinion,” he was convicted and sentenced to a seven months in jail for “abuse, slander or defamation against persons in political life.” The editor is on probation while the sentence is suspended but many other Germans have been locked up for similar offenses. The U.S. State Department Human Rights Report stated that German police “routinely raided homes, confiscated electronic devices, interrogated suspects and prosecuted individuals for the exercise of freedom of speech, including online.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz personally filed almost 5,000 complaints against his online critics, sometimes resulting in police raids against people he accused.

The German media are gung-ho for government censorship of average Germans. The New York Times noted, “Authorities in Lower Saxony raid homes up to multiple times per month, sometimes with a local television crew in tow.”  The Times reported that in 2022, “Christian Endt, a journalist in Berlin whose coverage of Covid drew a steady stream of insults online, reached a breaking point. After an anonymous Twitter user had called him ‘stupid’ and mentally ill, he embarked on a mission to see if he could get the person prosecuted.” The Twitter account didn’t have a real name but Endt used an image search of his picture and tracked it down to a small-business owner. Local prosecutors fined that guy more than a thousand dollars. Endt told The New York Times, “I was not even sure if what this guy wrote was a crime or not. In the end, I’m happy they did something about it and this person got a signal that there are some limits on free speech.” But is there no limit to the cowardliness of some German journalists? Publicly admitting that you ran crying to the authorities after some dweeb called you stupid and crazy makes a journalist unfit for writing about anything that offends anyone.   

Journalist J.D. Tuccille, writing in Reason, notes:

“Last November, a Bavarian man was investigated for referring online to then-Deputy Chancellor Robert Habeck with a pun that roughly translates as ‘idiot.’ Police raided the home of a Hamburg man for calling a local politician a ‘pimmel’ (dick). Berlin banned the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel slogan ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ And Irish protesters in Germany were forbidden to speak in Gaelic because police wouldn’t be able to tell if they were saying verboten things.”

Going back almost a decade, Germany was the most aggressive online censor among advanced nations. I noted in USA Today in 2017:

“In June, German police raided dozens of homes across the nation suspected of offensive social media postings and “conducted home searches and interrogations,” according to The New York Times. Facebook is deleting 15,000 posts a month in Germany but the government is threatening a $50-million-plus fine unless Facebook suppresses far more comments. Judith Bergman of the Gatestone Institute commented on the German mandate: ‘When employees of social media companies are appointed as the state’s private thought police…free speech becomes nothing more than a fairy tale. Or is that perhaps the point?'”

Writing in The Hill, I warned in late 2017 that American politicians sought the “Germanification of Facebook here,” with pervasive censorship on political command. That vision was fulfilled during the Covid pandemic. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg later publicly complained that the Joe Biden administration had forced his company to suppress even true information during the pandemic.

The plight of freedom in Germany continues to worsen. The Future of Free Speech, a think tank at Vanderbilt University, did a massive study examining the nature of deleted comments in Germany, France, and Sweden in 2023. That study found that 99.7% of the deleted comments by Germans on Facebook and 98.9% of the deleted comments on YouTube were actually legally permissible. The social media companies, intimidated by the German Network Enforcement Act, were far more censorious than the law demanded. The Vanderbilt study found that most censored comments were simply “'general expressions of opinion'…that did not contain linguistic attacks, hate speech or illegal content, such as expressing the support for a controversial candidate in the abstract.”

Germany is destroying free speech in part to forcibly suppress anger over brutal crimes committed by immigrants. Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, recently noted in The Washington Post:

“A woman, furious at the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl in a Hamburg park, called one of the perpetrators a ‘disgraceful rapist pig’ in a WhatsApp message. She was prosecuted for insult and defamation, and ordered to spend the weekend in jail—while the rapist, because of youth sentencing rules, served no time.”

Censorship defines down self-government to “one person, one vote, one time.” Whoever wins a national election will exploit the censorship regime to perpetuate their own power. German politicians are conniving to outlaw the second largest political party, the Alliance for Deutschland (AfD) and its ideas because elitists disapprove of its positions. But it is not the AfD’s fault that Germans’ trust in politicians and government has plunged in recent years.

German government funding for censorship increased five-fold since 2020. Andrew Lowenthal, the founder and CEO of Liber-net, commented, “In Germany large swathes of civil society have abandoned their traditional role as watch-dogs of power. Instead, they have joined forces with the State to suppress popular discontent.” There are 330 different organizations now part of the German censorship machine. (See the excellent graphic produced by Liber-net.) As journalist Mario Nawfal wrote, “When your “fact-checkers” are on government payroll, they’re not checking facts—they’re enforcing narratives. The objectivity claim is window dressing. The real damage? Public trust is collapsing faster than the censorship can contain it.”

The Aspen Institute Germany, founded in Berlin in 1974, is massively subsidized by the German  Foreign Office (the equivalent of the U.S. State Department) to proselytize for the destruction of free speech across Europe. In December, the institute published a report: Hybrid Realities: Disinformation, Influencers, and the Defense of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Here’s the painfully portentous first paragraph of the Executive Summary:

“Democracy depends on the integrity and credibility of public discourse. It functions most effectively, when citizens can exchange ideas freely, engage in respectful disagreement, and make collective choices informed by reliable information. Transparent and inclusive dialogue fosters trust between individuals and institutions, which in turn underpins the legitimacy of democratic decision-making and helps ensure that differences of opinion do not lead to societal division. Sustaining this foundation requires an information environment that upholds transparency, enables verification, and encourages responsibility in maintaining fact-based public communication.”

That pious prattle sounds like “good government” gobbledy-gook but the reality is that those goals create endless penalty flags for government-subsidized referees to throw at private citizens and social media. As a New York Times article on German censorship explained in 2022, “The authorities in Germany argue that they are encouraging and defending free speech by providing a space where people can share opinions without fear of being attacked or abused.” So to have the space for free speech, government officials must have unlimited power to assure that nothing improper or insulting is said.

The new German report echoes the same themes and goals as a 2022 Aspen Institute report championing censorship for the United States. That report called for the Biden administration to “establish a comprehensive strategic approach to countering disinformation and the spread of misinformation, including a centralized national response strategy, defining roles and responsibilities across the Executive Branch.” It portrayed objectivity as an enemy of truth. Aspen Institute commissioners “discussed the need to adjust journalistic norms to avoid false equivalencies between lies and empirical fact in the pursuit of ‘both sides’ and ‘objectivity,’ particularly in areas of public health, civil rights, or election outcomes.” The report called for creation of a “Public Restoration Fund…with a mandate to develop systemic misinformation countermeasures through education, research, and investment in local institutions.”

The Aspen Institute also urged government officials to impose “Superspreader Accountability,” to “hold superspreaders of mis- and disinformation to account with clear, transparent, and consistently applied policies.” The Aspen Institute neglected to condemn President Joe Biden as the Supreme Superspreader for his false promise that the COVID vaccine would prevent COVID infections. “Disinformation” is often simply the lag time between the pronouncement and the debunking of government falsehoods.

The new censors in Germany and beyond want to protect government against alleged private falsehoods but offer no remedy for government lies that deceive the citizenry. Instead, Germany’s censorship champions promise to protect “the integrity and credibility of public discourse” based on the notion that government is morally and intellectually superior to private citizens. As German journalist Jasmin Kosubek observed, “Germany’s censorship machine creates digital ‘priests’ who claim the truth—and silence those who challenge them.” Today’s Germans are haunted by the intellectual ghost of a philosopher bootlicker from two hundred years ago. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel declared, “Men are as foolish as to forget, in their enthusiasm for liberty of conscience and political freedom, the truth which lies in power.” Hegel bluntly equated government and truth:

“For Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements.”

Hegel probably did more to propel modern totalitarianism than perhaps any other philosopher. German philosopher Ernst Cassirer, who fled the Third Reich, commented, “These words, written in 1801, contain the clearest and most ruthless program of fascism that has ever been propounded by any political or philosophy writer.”

Actually, maybe another Hegel doctrine explains why the ruling class continues to proclaim that Germans are free. Hegel asserted that “the State is that in which Freedom obtains objectivity, and lives in the enjoyment of this objectivity.” So, objectively, Germans have free speech because the government attaches so many muzzles and blindfolds to the citizenry.

And the government will always be there to protect the “freedom” of oversensitive journalists by harshly punishing anyone who calls them a dummkoff.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The oligarchy that really controls the Empire of Chaos has hit the panic button, as the structural contours of Hegemony seriously wobble.

The petrodollar is one of the key features of this Hegemony: a recycling machine channeling non-stop buying of US Treasuries then spent on Forever Wars. Any player even thinking of diversifying from this infernal machine is met with asset freezes, sanctions – or worse.

At the same time, the Empire of Chaos cannot demonstrate raw power by bleeding itself dry in the black soil of Novorossiya. Dominance requires ever-expanding – plundered – resources, side by side with that non-stop printing of US dollars as a reserve currency to pay for astronomic bills. Additionally, borrowing from the world works as imperial financial containment of rivals.

But now a choice becomes imperative – an inescapable structural constraint. Either keep astronomical spending on military dominance (enter Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion budget for the Department of War.) Or keep ruling the international financial system.

The Empire of Chaos cannot do both.

And that’s why, when the math was done, Ukraine became expendable. At least in theory.

Against the weaponization of the US Treasury bond system – de facto monetary imperialism – BRICS incarnate the strategic choice of the Global South, coordinating a drive towards alternative payment systems.

The straw that broke the steppe camel’s back was the freezing – actually stealing – of Russian assets after the expulsion of a nuclear/hypersonic power, Russia, from SWIFT. Now it’s clear that Central Banks everywhere are going for gold, bilateral deals and considering alternative payment systems.

As the first serious structural shock to the system since the end of WWII, BRICS is not overtly trying to overturn the system – but to build a viable alternative, complete with large-scale infrastructure financing bypassing the US dollar.

Venezuela now illustrates a critical case: Can a major oil producer survive outside of the US dollar system – without being destroyed?

The Empire of Chaos has ruled, “No”. The Global South must prove it wrong. Venezuela was not that critical on the geopolitical chessboard as it represented just 4% of China’s oil imports. Iran in fact is the crucial case, as 95% of its oil is sold to China and settled in yuan, not US dollars.

Iran though is not Venezuela. The latest coordinated intel op/terror attacks/regime change attempt on Iran – complete with a pathetic mini-Shah refugee in Maryland – miserably failed. The threat of war, though, remains.

BRICS Pay, The Unit, or CIPS?

The US dollar now represents less than 40% of global currency reserves – the lowest in at least 20 years. Gold now accounts for more global foreign exchange reserves than the euro, the yen and the pound combined. Central Banks are stockpiling gold like crazy, while BRICS accelerates the test of alternative payment systems in what I previously defined as “the BRICS lab”.

One of the scenarios being directly proposed to BRICS, and designed as an alternative to cumbersome SWIFT, which does at least $1 trillion in transactions a day, features the introduction of a non-sovereign, blockchain-based trade token.

That’s The Unit.

The Unit, correctly described as “apolitical money”, is not a currency, but a unit of account used for settlement in trade and finance between participating countries. The token could be pegged to a commodity basket or a neutral index to prevent domination by any single country. In this case it would work like the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), but within a BRICS framework.

Then there’s mBridge – not part of the “BRICS lab” – which features a multi-central bank digital currency (CBDC) shared among participating central banks and commercial banks. mBridge includes only five members, but that includes powerful players such as the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Other 30 countries are interested to join.

mBridge tough was the inspiration behind BRICS Bridge, still being tested, which aims to speed up a range of international payment mechanisms: money transfers, payment processing, account management.

It’s a very simple mechanism: instead of converting currencies into US dollars for international trade, BRICS countries exchange their currencies directly.

The New Development Bank (NDB), or the BRICS bank, established in Shanghai in 2015, should be the key connectivity node of BRICS Bridge.

But that, for the moment, is on hold – because all the NDB’s statutes are linked to the US dollar, and that must be reassessed. With the NDB integrated into the broader financial infrastructure of BRICS member-nations, the bank should be able to handle currency conversion, clearing, and settlement under BRICS Bridge. But we’re still very far away from that.

BRICS Pay is a different animal: a strategic infrastructure for building a self-described “decentralized, sustainable, and inclusive” financial system across BRICS+ nations and partners.

BRICS Pay is on pilot mode all the way to 2027. By then the member-nations should start discussing a deal to set up a settlement unit for intra-BRICS trade no later than 2030.

Once again, that will not be a global reserve currency; but a mechanism offering a “parallel, compatible option” to SWIFT within the BRICS ecosystem.

BRICS Pay, for the moment, is also a very simple system: for instance, tourists and business travelers may use it without opening a local bank account or exchanging currency. They simply link their Visa or Mastercard to the BRICS Pay app and use it to pay via QR code.

And that’s exactly the crucial problem: how to circumvent Visa and Mastercard, under US financial system vigilance, and incorporate BRICS members cards such as Union Pay (China) and Mir (Russia).

Overall, for bigger and more complex transactions, the problem of bypassing SWIFT persists. All these “BRICS lab” tests need to solve two key problems: messaging interoperability – via secure, standardized data formats; and processing the actual settlement, as in how funds move via Central Bank accounts bypassing the inevitable threat of sanctions.

Internalization of The Yuan, Or a New Reserve Currency?

The inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson is on the global forefront of studying solutions to minimize US dollar hegemony. He is adamant that “the line of least resistance is to follow the already-in-place Chinese system.” That means CIPS – the China International Payment System, or Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, yuan-based, and already extremely popular, used by participants in 124 nations across the Global Majority.

Prof. Hudson insists “it’s very hard to create an alternative. The Unit’s principle (his emphasis), reported to be 40% gold and the rest in member currencies is fine. But this is best done through a new Keynes-style central bank to denominate debts and claims for payment to settle imbalances among member countries – along the lines of the Bancor.”

The Bancor was proposed by Keynes in Bretton Woods in 1944 – to prevent serious discrepancies in external balances, protectionism, tariffs and the scam of nations built up as tax havens. It’s no wonder the hyper-Hegemonic US at the end of WWII vetoed it.

In a new paper on the Weaponization of Oil Trade as the Bedrock of the US World Order, first published at democracycollaborative.org, Prof. Hudson clarifies how “Russian and Venezuelan freedom to export oil has weakened the ability of US officials to use oil as a weapon to squeeze other economies by threatening them with the same withdrawal of energy that has wrecked German industry and price levels. This supply of oil not under US control thus was held to be an infringement of the US rules-based order.”

And that brings us to one of the key reasons for the BRICS drive towards alternative payment systems: “The US foreign policy of creating choke points to keep other countries dependent on oil under US control, not oil supplied by Russia, Iran or Venezuela, is one of America’s key means of making other countries insecure.”

Prof. Hudson succinctly lines up the five imperatives for the Empire of Chaos: “control of the world’s oil trade is to remain a US privilege”; “oil trade must be priced and paid for in US dollars”; the petrodollar must rule, as “international oil-export earnings are to be lent to, or invested in, the United States, preferably in the form of US Treasury securities, corporate bonds and bank deposits”; “green energy alternatives to oil are to be discouraged”; and “no laws apply to or limit US rules or policies.”

Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr, one of the co-founders of the NDB, and its vice-president during 2015-2017, advances in parallel with Prof. Hudson, designing a viable path towards a new international currency in a paper that he is currently finalizing.

Considering that the US dollar system is “inefficient, unreliable and even dangerous”, and has become “an instrument of blackmail and sanctions”, Batista Jr cuts to the chase along the same lines of Prof. Hudson, arguing that “the only scenario that may present some viability would be the large-scale internationalization of the Chinese currency (…) But there is a long way to go before it can replace the dollar in a significant way. And the Chinese are reluctant to try.”

Batista Jr then proposes a solution similar to Prof. Hudson’s: “A group of countries in the Global South, something like 15 to 20 countries, which would include most of the BRICS and other emerging middle-income nations”, could be at the forefront of creating a new currency.

Yet “a new international financial institution would therefore have to be created – an issuing bank, whose sole and exclusive function would be to issue and put into circulation the new currency.”

That sounds very much like Bancor: “This issuing bank would not replace the national central banks and its currency would circulate in parallel with the other national and regional currencies existing in the world. It would be restricted to international transactions, with no domestic role.”

Batista Jr clarifies that “the currency would be based on a weighted basket of the currencies of the participating countries and would therefore fluctuate on the basis of changes in these

currencies. Since all currencies in the basket would be floating or flexible, the new currency would also be a floating currency. The weights in the basket would be given by the share of each country’s PPP GDP in the total GDP.”

Inevitably, “the high weight of the Chinese currency, issued by a country with a solid economy, would favor confidence in the backing and in the new reserve currency.”

Batista Jr is fully aware of “the risk that the initiative will provoke negative reactions from the West, which would resort to threats and sanctions against the countries involved.”

Yet the time for action is pressing: “Will we gather economic, political and intellectual efforts to get out of this trap?

The costs of maintaining Hegemony are becoming prohibitive. BRICS, gathering forces for the annual summit later this year in India, must capitalize on the fact that we are fast approaching the structural change moment when the Empire of Chaos loses the ability to unilaterally enforce its will – except via all-out war.

Authored by Christian Vezilj via American Thinker,

Hollywood has mastered the art of moral performance. Award shows have become political stages where actors speak with the confidence of prophets and the certainty of philosophers. But beneath the applause lines and emotional crescendos lies a contradiction that becomes impossible to ignore: the courage they demand from others is courage they themselves will never have to summon.

This contradiction was unmistakable at the recent Golden Globe Awards. The ceremony quickly transformed into a coordinated tribute to Renee Nicole Goode, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent. Mark Ruffalo dedicated his award by saying, “This is for Renee Nicole Goode, who was murdered,” adding, “I don’t know how I can be quiet.” Wanda Sykes echoed the sentiment on the red carpet, declaring, “Of course, this is for the mother who was murdered by an ICE agent, and it’s really sad.” She went further, urging confrontation: “We need to be out there and shut this rogue government down, because it’s just awful what they’re doing to people.”

Celebrities wore coordinated pins reading “BE GOOD” and “ICE OUT,” signaling solidarity and moral urgency. The messaging was unified, emotional, and unmistakably political. The narrative was clear: this was a moment to resist, to rise up, to confront injustice.

But what was equally clear — and far more revealing — was what they chose not to say.

While the Golden Globes stage was filled with speeches about ICE, not a single celebrity mentioned the mass slaughter, imprisonment, and torture taking place in Iran at that very moment - Hundreds of protesters have been killed by the Iranian regime. Thousands have been dragged into prisons. Torture, rape, and forced confessions have been documented by human rights groups. The government has imposed sweeping internet blackouts to hide the brutality from the world. [ZH: regardless of whether this is yet more 'regime change paint by numbers' - it was completely ignored].

And yet, on one of the most visible cultural platforms in America, the silence was absolute.

• No speeches.
• No pins.
• No hashtags.
• No calls to “shut down” the Iranian government.
• Nothing.

The contrast is staggering. When the villain is a U.S. agency, outrage is immediate, coordinated, and emotionally charged. When the villain is a foreign authoritarian regime slaughtering its own people, the outrage evaporates. The issue is not the moral weight of the cause. The issue is whether the cause is useful to the narrative they want to tell.

But the hypocrisy runs even deeper. It extends to the way Hollywood reacts to domestic events that do not fit its preferred storyline. When Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed inside the Capitol, there were no celebrity tributes. No emotional speeches. No coordinated pins. No calls for accountability. Instead, the officer who shot her was widely described as a hero. The shooting was framed as necessary, justified, even praiseworthy.

Whether one agrees with either shooting is not the point. The difference in reaction reveals the deeper truth: Hollywood’s activism is not driven by universal moral principles. It is driven by selective outrage, selective empathy, and selective courage.

This brings us to the heart of the matter: the asymmetry of risk. Celebrities routinely encourage ordinary people to “stand up,” “fight back,” or “put your body on the line.” Sykes’s call to “shut this rogue government down” is a perfect example. These are not metaphorical suggestions. They imply confrontation, danger, and the possibility of violence.

Yet the people delivering these messages do so from behind layers of insulation that ordinary Americans do not have. They live in gated communities. They travel with private security. Their homes are protected by surveillance systems, controlled access, and armed guards. They are not wrong for wanting safety — everyone wants safety — but they are wrong for preaching danger for others while choosing safety for themselves.

A working‑class person who confronts ICE or police in the street faces real, immediate, physical danger. A celebrity who posts a hashtag or makes a speech faces none. Their activism is symbolic, not sacrificial. It costs them nothing. And yet they speak as though they are shoulder‑to‑shoulder with the people they are urging into the streets.

This is where the phrase “We’re in it together” collapses. When celebrities use it, they rarely mean shared sacrifice. They mean shared sentiment. They mean shared optics. But they do not mean shared risk. Their version of solidarity is digital, not physical.

The deeper civic insight is this: selective outrage and selective courage are symptoms of a broader cultural problem. We have built a society where moral authority is often claimed by those who bear none of the consequences of their own prescriptions. Hollywood’s activism is not dangerous to Hollywood. It is dangerous to the people they encourage to act on their behalf.

True solidarity requires more than a speech, a pin, or a social media post. It requires standing in the same place, facing the same risks, and sharing the same consequences. Anything less is performance.

And performance, no matter how passionate, is not courage.