I love Naomi Klein. Strong, courageous, principled. In her latest, Doppelganger: a trip into the mirror world (2023), willing to open her life for us to see for ourselves what makes her tick. A world of doppelgangers, shadow selves of many varieties from our repressed inner Other, to an AI construct of who you are in public.

Your social media profile is constructed by the ad world, which creates our ‘Others’ worlds, which become our online ghosts. We like a certain level of automated customization (suggest music, books, people) but the computer doesn’t know when to stop! Before the cell phone, we moved through world like phantoms, no trace, no algorithms, cloud. Free. Now there has been a radical shift in what our lives are for and it’s not pretty. We are all mine sites now, despite the intimacy of what’s mined. It’s done ‘behind factory doors’ by unaccountable mine operators. We have outsourced the management of our critical informational pathways to algorithms run by for-profit companies and govts. It (rightly) bothers Klein that protests of this are mostly far right, and our response is hate-speech laws.

We can bear unbearable realities only if we work to change them. She is not afraid to label the culprits. We must name the systems that have carved out the shadow lands, deemed them erasable: capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, patriarchy. Struggle helps us see each other, to break from the peculiarities of our identities. John Berger remarks on the power of mass protest. It can disrupt the smooth flow of business, and it lets you feel solidarity with your ‘class’ (e.g., peacenik, environment-nik), not just as individuals.

Klein nails her media doppelganger, Naomi Wolf, who flipped from liberal feminist to far right wacko after a brief flirtation with pro-Palestinian views. Big mistake. She was purged from academia after that and it seems her worldview as a liberal feminist collapsed with nothing to replace it, leading her down rabbit holes, antivaxxer conspiracies, cabals. Yes! Liberalism is a deadend.

Naomi Klein                                                                             Naomi Wolf

But Klein was and still is a feminist. Her evils include patriarchy. She wants no truck with the far right. Speaking of trucks, she slams the antivaxxers categorically, accusing all who kicked up a fuss over masks and vaccines as anti-social individualists.

Agreed. Wolf’s problem was liberalism—the individual is good/bad, so victim/perp is the focus, not the structures lurking in the shadows. ‘America is not entirely enslaved like Australia or Shanghai or Canada because [of the] millions of owners of guns. It is harder to subjugate an armed population.’ⁱ No! It’s our corrupt colonial institutions, stupid! Based on genocide and denial, so there is no trust. Guns only make things worse.

But wait a minute. The cabalists surely have a point. It’s the Faucis who threaten us with totalitarianism, vaccine passports, loss of sovereignty to unelected global elites (WHO, EU corporations). Klein falls on her own sword there. She didn’t know the damning results of the various parliamentary committees investigating Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act, who unloaded the stinking pile earlier this year. In February 2024, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association announced it was suing the federal government, stating that the Emergencies Act must be reserved for national emergencies, which they argued was a “legal standard that has not been met, that the normalization of emergency legislation threatens our democracy and our civil liberties.” Ouch. The truckers’ anger was not just selfish liberalism, and the government acted like a dictator. The other Naomi has a point.

I suspect Wolf’s errors (and her correct view of the truckers) spring not just from her liberalism but her earlier feminism (which she seems to have dumped). Her claim to fame is her bestseller The Beauty Myth (1991), which Klein damns with faint praise. She was a pretty face saying troubling things about anorexia when that was fashionable. We don’t know where Wolf stands on feminism now though I suspect she’s moved on after marrying a beefy body guard and falling in love with guns.

Klein may have lost her illusions about liberalism, but she’s still a feminist, the kind that denounces truckers, promotes transgenderism as well as the usual unqualified access to abortion. But these are very much focused on individualism, not social solidarity, let alone socialism, and public shaming and the censorship of #MeToo, built on militant feminism, is as ugly as you can get.

And Klein’s solution is totally secular. While she is not a doctrinaire workers-of-the-world Marxist, there is no hint that the key to transforming society may have a lot to do with spirituality, religion. She does embrace her ‘Naomi confusion’ as an ‘unconventional Buddhist exercise in annihilating the ego,’ but as a fillip. The thrill of being part of a mass protest that she finds transcendent (as do I) is a spiritual feeling. The high, the awe. The ‘class’ the protesters belong to is not so much a Marxian materialist one, but, especially now, a spiritual one, welling up from that part of our being, our ghost, our good doppelganger, the inner Holy Fool. It is the same feeling I get as a Muslim in communal prayer, which is always a protest against our sinful world, and a thanks for our conscious ability to change it.

Klein is conflicted. She buys into abortion, trans/ feminism, so wants laws to force acceptance and outlaw criticism. The nightmare of parents with flighty, confused teens hating themselves, with an aggressive state trying to settle the issue with force, is ongoing. Klein dismisses anti-vaxxers as selfish, refusing cooperation. But masks were 90% useless in 1918 and again in 2020. They should be recommended only (i.e., protect yourself with a good mask worn properly), and it was right to dispute and refuse dubious vaccines. Klein has no use for global corporations, but fails to at least consider WHO, Big Pharma, 9/11 (?) as conspiracies leading to fascism.

She does see capitalism as the underlying conspiracy. So I repeat: I love Naomi. She nails Israel too. In Israel post-1967, anti-semitism came to be treated not as a question in need of historically informed answers, but rather as something eternal. The spectral Shylock, the eternal Jew that is the shadow-double of all Jews. Israel made its own doppelganger, the sunbaked muscle-bound machine-gun-toting New Jew. With its own anti-self: the Palestinians, a eternal threat inside Israel and on its borders. Remembering genocide is a quest for wholeness. Retraumatizing freezes you in the shattered state.ⁱⁱ

Searching for ways to fight our collapsing world, our collapsing worldview, she digs up wonderful nuggets from the past. Red Vienna 1919-34, when social democrats swept the elections: ‘He who builds children’s palaces tears down prison walls.’ⁱⁱⁱ Then the Nazis took the socialist policies and refashioned them for their racial supremacist project.

So nations have doppelgangers too! How apparently easy it was for Germany to flip into its shadow self in 1933. We witnessed this today, when Russia finally moved against the increasingly fascist Ukraine in 2022, egged on by US-NATO. We flipped overnight. Our programmed Russophobia clicked in. Kill, kill, kill as many Russians as possible. All the while, ignoring the massive slaughter of Ukrainians for no real reason, as Russia won’t lose, with its nuclear trump card.

We witness it in the flip in Israel to genocide after October 7, 2023. Though it seems that this genocidal bent was already there, just better hidden. Klein’s insight: we have both selves built in and can flip between them. Unless we become aware and ‘not lose the thread’.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are archetypes for people and nations. We can live with our inner monster only by repressing, ignoring it.

As a parent of an autistic child, Klein is sensitive to the subtleties of that disability. An autistic person is inwardly forcused, lacking social norms. The archetypes are the hyperfocused artist, absent-minded professor. In Red Vienna, they were treated as different, requiring understanding, not as a disease, a pathology. Enter Hans Asperger, who started out a nice Viennese liberal, working with Georg Frankl, diagnosing young patients displaying autistic traits.

But much like Wolf, he flipped from nice liberal to Nazi executioner (of innocent children!), his own doppelganger shadow self. The autistic child shows a ‘poverty of gemut (group bonding)’, making them unsuitable to the eugenist program of creating a master race. They were transformed into diseased psychopaths. A small subset, little professors, were an exception, saved for Nazi use as codebreakers etc. The others were killed as defects. Asperger’s work will be remembered as the epitome of Nazism, double-sided atrocities in the name of collective health and wellness.

Like Asperger, Wolf flipped from liberal feminist to far right. Asperger flipped willingly to fit the new zeitgeist, as did Wolf, whose collapsed worldview had nothing to replace it with, leading her down rabbit holes. Asperger and his eugenist ideology lives on. Parents live through their children. They want them to have a ‘competitive edge’ to thrive in a world falling apart, rather than making a world where everyone can thrive.

Systemic forces buttress the ‘core capitalist imperative to expand and grow by seeking new frontiers to enclose.^iv I would add my own scaled-down feminism: this is all from the male aggression instinct, which capital has harnessed, and which needs to be controlled both at the individual and societal levels.

No question I prefer Klein to her Other. The social issues (feminism, gaylib) are secondary and will sort themselves out in due course. We can all agree that human behavior is still a mystery. The real issue is fighting capitalism/ imperialism. Klein didn’t lose the thread like her Other, because she had a good training in Marx and Jewish socialism. She settles on the Bund as her model belief, that Jews can only be free when everyone free, not by building a militarized ghetto. Bundists saw nationalism as the enemy, leading inevitably to race hatred.

As for autism, Klein questions whether it has increased or is just better diagnosed. But the number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder has continued to rise consistently and dramatically since the 1990s. What’s the explanation? How about capitalism? That is the conclusion of another (brilliant, Jewish female) academic, Liah Grenfeld, whose Mind, Madness and Modernity (2013)  argues that madness in its new form—the big three of contemporary psychiatry—schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression—was brought about by nationalism, the cultural framework of modernity, our secular, egalitarian, essentially humanistic and democratic world.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

In an incredible moment at the annual White House correspondent’s Dinner Saturday, Joe Biden lectured reporters, telling them they need to “rise up” and get behind his campaign, insinuating that if they don’t there will no longer be a free press in America.

Biden addressed the press, stating that “the most urgent question of our time is whether democracy is still the sacred cause of America. That is the question the American people must answer this year and you, the free press, play a critical role in making sure the American people have the information they need to make an informed decision.”

Biden again calls on journalists to defend democracy (i.e. crush Republicans):

"Move past the horse race numbers and the gotcha moments, and the distractions, the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics and focusing on what's actually at stake. I… pic.twitter.com/bdGSSCTgUr

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 28, 2024

First of all, Biden appears to be saying that he is ‘Democracy’ and if people do not vote for him that is somehow undemocratic.

Secondly, he is telling the press that they are capable of swaying public opinion in his favour, which is completely undemocratic.

He isn’t asking the press to report facts neutrally and let the people decide, as evidenced by his next sentence, which was replete with the usual disinformation about Donald Trump.

“The defeated former President has made no secret of his attack on our democracy. He said he wants to be a dictator on day one and so much more. He tells supporters he is the revenge and retribution. When in God’s name ever heard of another president say something like that? And he promised a bloodbath when he loses again,” Biden asserted.

While claiming he is not asking the press to “take sides,” he did exactly that.

“We have to take this seriously. Eight years ago, it could have been written off as just Trump talk but no longer, not after January 6. I’m sincerely not asking you to take sides, but asking a rise up to the seriousness of the moment,” Biden persisted.

“Move past the horse race numbers and the gotcha moments, and the distractions, the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics and focusing on what’s actually at stake,” he continued, adding “I think in your hearts, you know what’s at stake.”

“The stakes couldn’t be higher every single one of us has roles to play — a serious role, to play in making sure democracy endures, American democracy. I have my role, but with all due respect, so do you,” he lectured reporters.

He then had the gall to instruct reporters to provide “credible information,” rather than “disinformation,” while toasting the “free press.”

“In the age of disinformation, credible information that people can trust is more important than ever and that makes you, and I mean this with the bottom of my heart, makes you more important than ever. So tonight, I’d like to make a toast — to a free press, to an informed citizenry, to an American where freedom and democracy endure. God bless America,” Biden concluded.

A “free press” but I’m gonna tell you what to write about and what not to.

— Chrissy (@Chrissys067) April 28, 2024

So he's saying don't write anything about me, just go after Trump.

— linda thompson (@lthomps54) April 28, 2024

It's a campaign rally. These are his constituents.

— Janice (@jannyfayray) April 28, 2024

In other words, take sides 🙄

— Jeff Trent (@JLTrent86) April 28, 2024

This all comes in a week when Biden has managed to ignite a war with The New York Times.

The Times is annoyed with Biden’s complete disinterest in providing interviews or access for reporters, while his administration is angry that the Times isn’t falling into line as a propaganda arm against Trump.

Biden ‘joked’ about it, Saturday. It’s funny because it’s true.

In other words, take sides 🙄

— Jeff Trent (@JLTrent86) April 28, 2024

*  *  *

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.

After years of leftist activists disrupting the speech of groups and individuals they disagree with and threatening people with "cancellation" for having the "wrong" opinions, it's hard to find sympathy for them when they finally get a taste of their own medicine.  Woke protesters have recently sought to bring back the old Seattle CHAZ model of taking over public property and declaring it their own territory; in this case the territory is college campuses around the US. 

The problem of western progressives hijacking causes in order to insert their own agendas has been noted by many in the independent media.  While some people may be approaching the Gaza protests in good faith, there are many others who are not.

Apologists might argue that the goal of a protest is to "disrupt" but there are still laws in place that activists must follow.  These include laws that make it illegal to obstruct other citizens from using public property, public roads and public buildings (the insane actions of anti-oil protesters come to mind).  Regardless of how you might feel about the Israel/Hamas conflict, the reality is that it has nothing to do with students trying to go to classes at universities across the country, and stopping them from doing so violates their rights.  

This is something that the Gaza protesters seem to have forgotten; their cause is not the only important matter at hand.  If they are merely speaking their minds and engaging in fair discourse then they have every right.  Once they start taking over colleges and acting as if they own the place, then there's going to be a problem.  It has also been reported that more than half of these activists are not even members of the colleges in question.   

Various states have handled the matter differently.  Texas Governor Greg Abbot received criticism for what some argued were heavy handed tactics when removing protesters from campuses after declaring a no-tolerance policy for "antisemitism."  Many conservative commentators suggested that even though they don't like the activists involved, antisemitism is not a valid reason to remove them.  

In other states police have been mostly de-fanged and can do very little even when protesters block other students from attending classes.  However, they may have found a way around this.  At Arizona State University fraternity members stepped in and tore down protester encampments while police stayed out of their way.

Early this morning police at ASU, with help from fraternity members, tore down the pro-Hamas encampment.

An extremist watching whined because she wasn’t being allowed to continue to break the law.

Imagine the embarrassment of being this girl’s parents.pic.twitter.com/CU4IwuuCYb

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) April 27, 2024

In other words, this is not a case of police interfering with protester activities, this is members of the student body cleaning up their own campus. 

One has to wonder why campuses are being targeted over a war on the other side of the world that does not directly involve them in any way?  If funding of Israel is the issue, then why aren't these protestors on the front lawn of the Biden White House?  It only makes sense if the goal is to exploit the Gaza issue in order to get visibility for other agendas.   

Authored by David Keltz via American Greatness,

If you believe, correctly, that the entirety of Joe Biden’s presidency has been one unmitigated disaster after another - not only for the American citizenry, but for the United States’ standing on the world stage and for our allies around the globe who have embraced the cause of freedom and religious liberty - fasten your seatbelts, because you haven’t seen anything yet.

If you believe, correctly, that under Biden we are no longer a country that has any interest in securing our border, curbing inflationary spending and excessive taxation, bringing down the price of energy, ridding our institutions of disastrous DEI initiatives, and returning our education standards to one that embraces merit, respect for our Founding Fathers, and our Constitution - brace yourselves, because we may be nearing the point of no return if we aren’t already there.

If you believe, correctly, that in the first three and a half years of Biden’s presidency we have turned our back on America’s greatest ally in the Middle East, failed to come anywhere close to holding the Mullahs accountable for their belligerent behavior towards the U.S. and the Jewish state, and have done next to nothing to instill any sort of fear or deterrence to the nefarious grand visions of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping - just wait, because the current chaos we’re seeing across the world will seem rather tame for what may be in store in the not so distant future.

If, God forbid, Biden finds a way to end up back in the Oval Office come high noon on January 20, 2025, the gloves will be completely ripped off.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone who didn’t hate our country would deliberately continue to take us even further towards the path of self destruction.

But make no mistake: a potential second Biden administration, freed from the burden of having to win another election without having to pathetically pander to moderate and independent voters or pretending to support Israel and throwing a bone to leftist Jews every now and then, will not only double down on its ruinous policies that will have deleterious effects for years to come, but a potential second Biden administration will do so with impunity, without any regard for the consequences that the American people will be forced to reconcile with.

Take the border crisis.

Since Biden took office, there have been 9.2 million encounters with illegal immigrants nationwide—including more than 7.6 million encounters at the Southwest border. Nationwide encounters have now increased by 28 percent compared to March 2021. And this past March, it was reported that there were 107,298 border encounters by the Office of Field Operations (OFO), specifically at ports of entry—an increase of 375 percent compared to March of Fiscal Year (FY) 2021.

This includes 113,742 encounters with single adults at the Southwest border. So no, contrary to the leftist myth, it is not merely mothers and children who are entering our country.

And as if those figures are not horrific enough, so far in FY24, 24,376 Chinese nationals have already tried to enter the country at the Southwest border. Encounters of Chinese nationals in March 2024 have now increased by a whopping 8,500 percent compared to March 2021, surpassing all of last fiscal year—just six months into FY24.

We do not know who these people are. We do not know if they have good intentions or not. We do not know if they love our country or if they want to assimilate. We do not know if they wish to cause harm to American citizens. What we do know is that they broke the law to come here and are overwhelming public resources across the country at taxpayers’ expense. We cannot afford to accommodate them, nor should we.

As horrendous as these border crossing numbers are now, in a second Biden term, these figures will only further be exacerbated as the Democrat Party looks to import millions of likely new voters without a care in the world for what it will do to our cities. The lack of respect that Biden and the Democrat Party have for the citizens of this country knows no bounds.

How about inflationary spending?

During Biden’s first three years, his administration has already accumulated $6.32 trillion in debt, including by spending $391 million on Green New Deal initiatives that will do virtually nothing to stop so-called “climate change” but will dramatically raise the cost of energy. Prices are now up by 19.4 percent since Biden took office. Gas is up more than 50 percent since January 2021, and inflation has been at or above 3 percent for 36 straight months.

But don’t expect Biden to change his drunken spending habits with our money anytime soon. The best we can do is stop complaining about the price at the pump and buy an electric vehicle, says Pete Buttigieg.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in the final year of his first term, Biden will rack up another $1.582 trillion in debt, meaning our total debt will reach $7.902 trillion by the end of his first four years in office. Only President Barack Obama, who oversaw a debt increase of more than $9.5 trillion during his two terms, dug us into a deeper hole.

In a second Biden term, without any constraints towards continuing to deceive the public about the illusion of fiscal sanity, Biden will likely blow Obama’s figures out of the water as he looks to fully enact his progressive wish list—so that his favorite historians can compare him to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

How about Biden’s proposed tax plan for his second term?

If implemented, it would impose a corporate tax burden on businesses that would be among the highest in the world. This includes a $5.5 trillion tax increase on the wealthy and corporations, while spending $7.3 trillion on defense and much of the rest on federal entitlement programs, including affordable housing and student debt cancellation.

If Biden returns to the White House, he intends to let the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) expire at the end of 2025. This would cause a family of five earning $90,000 to see its marginal tax rate jump from 12 percent to 15 percent and would cause its $6,000 in tax credits to fall to $3,000 under the Biden plan.

A second Biden term will not only constitute a tax increase for the rich; it will apply to the middle class as well. But the concerns of working class families are no longer of any importance to Biden or the Democrat Party—and they haven’t been for quite some time.

Look at Biden and the left’s support for DEI.

If he serves a second term, he will continue his war against white America—including when he unconstitutionally chose to exclude billions of dollars from white business owners and farmers regardless of need. Never mind that a federal appellate court and the United States Supreme Court already issued an injunction against the measure—but that won’t stop Biden from trying to enact similar discriminatory policies in the future, because, as we have already learned, he is the divider in chief.

Finally, look at Biden’s betrayal of Israel. Biden and his ilk, including Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, keep prefacing every public comment with the hollow perfunctory statement that the Jewish state has a right to defend itself, and yet, apparently killing Hamas terrorists, who seek its destruction and use its citizens as human shields, is crossing a line—so they’re calling for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Democratically elected leader of Israel, to be ousted. Never mind that 62 percent of the Israeli public supports Netanyahu’s plan for achieving victory in Gaza, while just 16 percent oppose his plan.

If Biden really supported Israel, he would keep his mouth shut and allow Netanyahu to do his job - and he wouldn’t keep funding the terrorist Iranian regime. Just wait and see what happens in a second Biden term, when the Jewish vote no longer matters to Biden.

Instead of Biden working on strengthening our relationship with our strongest allies, he undermines them. Meanwhile, China and Russia are watching closely because they know we have a weak president who is unlikely to make good on any of his threats in response to continued acts of aggression towards our allies, including when he repeatedly tells Iran, “Don’t.” A second Biden term will only further embolden our enemies to do whatever they want.

So what can be done?

To all those who decided to vote for Biden the first go around because they wrongly believed that he would resemble a “return to normalcy” and would supposedly govern as a moderate, what more evidence do you need in order to not vote for him? How many more catastrophes and physical and mental gaffes need to happen before people connect the dots and say this man cannot and should not serve again?

We are led by unserious people who cannot even keep the peace and figure out how to protect Jewish students on college campuses - but these are the people who could be dictating our foreign and domestic policy for the next five years.

Unless, of course, the American people have finally decided that, come November 5, enough is enough.

US officials are deeply alarmed at new reports that China is greatly expanding its economic, diplomatic, and possibly even military presence in the island paradise region of the Caribbean, just off America's doorstep. 

Newsweek says it has in its possession leaked documents which show China has established a sprawling economic zone and outpost on Antigua and Barbuda, and has "secured privileges that resemble those of a small state."

This means that from this location lying just 220 miles from the US Virgin Islands, Beijing could expand its espionage capabilities, akin to what is already happening in nearby Cuba, where China is in negotiations with the Cuban government to establish a a new joint military training facility on the island.

United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which is based in Doral, Florida (near Miami) and oversees US operations and security in Central and South America and the Caribbean says that China is likely using its state-owned enterprises to conduct intelligence-gathering, just as in other parts of the world.

"Given the breadth of investment into logistics infrastructure China has made in the Caribbean, we are concerned that China could task its state-owned enterprises and diaspora to conduct intelligence or influence operations against the U.S. and our partners in the region for military purposes," SOUTHCOM said in a statement.

"Those concerns are further heightened when you consider the Chinese Communist Party's practice of targeting, recruiting and bribing officials," it continued.

The leaked corporate documents reviewed by Newsweek indicate the following:

This natural paradise on the island of Antigua, where officials will study the thoughts of Xi Jinping, is about to be razed for a Chinese-run special economic zone. According to documents reviewed by Newsweek it will have its own customs and immigration formalities, a shipping port and a dedicated airline and will be able to issue passports. It will establish businesses offering everything from logistics to cryptocurrencies, facial surgery to "virology."

Already this has had a chilling effect in some places locally:

Increasingly, people were afraid to speak out about the flourishing relationship especially if they did business through the China-built shipping port in St. John's, she told Newsweek: "Everybody feels like their testicles are in a vise; that if you say the wrong thing, if you align yourself the wrong way, you're putting yourself in danger," Isaac said. "At night, I switch on my alarm and say my prayers."

"China, its state-owned companies and aligned private businesses are expanding rapidly in the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda and in other Caribbean countries in this strategic region long known as 'America’s third border,' according to a Newsweek investigation of government and corporate documents as well as interviews with Antiguan leaders," the publication continued.

Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne has rejected Newsweek's reporting as follows: "This cold war rhetoric going back to the relationship between the USSR and the USA, they are now trying to create and trying to use this sensational speculation that the PRC (People’s Republic of China) is now trying to use Antigua and Barbuda as a base.

"This is utter nonsense,” Browne continued while emphasizing "we will never ever enter into any arrangement with any country to hurt another. Much less to hurt a country like the United States in which we are so dependent on their tourism, we are dependent on their trade and investment." He added: "It will be like hurting ourselves. So protecting the US is protecting our own national interest."

Some analysts have speculated that China's interest in the Caribbean is related to the standoff over Taiwan and that Beijing wishes to counterbalance the global geopolitical chessboard. For example, the level of US military and intelligence infrastructure in place across the South China Sea and among Washington's regional allies not far off China's coast, even firmly entrenched on the island of Taiwan, are already immense and growing. For American national security officials, Monroe Doctrine assumptions are still alive and well, and deeply ingrained. It appears Beijing is significantly challenging that.

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

John Earle Sullivan, the onetime racial-justice activist and provocateur who filmed the deadly shooting of Ashli Babbitt at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to six years in federal prison by a judge in Washington D.C.

Mr. Sullivan, 29, of Tooele, Utah, did not receive the 87 months recommended by federal prosecutors for his role on Jan. 6. But his 72-month sentence was well beyond the 30 months his defense attorney recommended.

The sentence meted out on April 26 by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth brought to a close the more than three-year prosecution of Mr. Sullivan, one of the most recognizable Jan. 6 figures. He was arrested on Jan. 14, 2021—one of the first Jan. 6 suspects taken into custody by the FBI.

Judge Lamberth sentenced Mr. Sullivan to serve two years of supervised release after his prison term and ordered him to pay $2,520 in restitution and special assessments.

Mr. Sullivan came to the Jan. 6 events in Washington trailed by filmmaker Jade Sacker, who has since published a documentary about the liberal Mr. Sullivan and his conservative activist brother James.

Although media continue to report that Mr. Sullivan dressed as a Trump supporter on Jan. 6, that wasn’t true. On Jan. 5, he posted a widely shared photo of himself to social media donned in a Trump ball cap. He did not wear Trump gear on Jan. 6.

Mr. Sullivan was found guilty by a District of Columbia jury in November 2023 of obstruction of an official proceeding, civil disorder and aiding and abetting, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a dangerous weapon, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a dangerous weapon, unlawful possession of a dangerous weapon on Capitol grounds, disorderly conduct in a restricted building or grounds, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.

Judge Lamberth denied Mr. Sullivan’s motion for release from jail pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision on the constitutionality of the felony obstruction of an official proceeding charge used against at least 353 Jan. 6 defendants.

The High Court heard oral arguments in that case on April 16 and is expected to rule by late June.

‘I’ve Got a Knife’

The weapon that brought Mr. Sullivan enhanced felony charges was a retractable dual-edge Smith & Wesson M&P tactical knife—something Mr. Sullivan boasted about to the crowd outside the Speaker’s Lobby, where Ms. Babbitt was shot at 2:44 p.m.

“Let me through, I’ve got a knife,” Mr. Sullivan said as he moved through the dense crowd, according to his video. “I’ve got a knife.”

Once he reached the left side of the Speaker’s Lobby entrance, Mr. Sullivan lobbied Capitol Police Officer Kyle Yetter to abandon his post—for his own safety.

“Bro, I’ve seen people out there get hurt,” Mr. Sullivan said. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

As soon as Mr. Yetter, Capitol Police Sgt. Timothy Lively, and Officer Christopher Lanciano moved away from the door that they had been guarding, Mr. Sullivan urged the men around him, “Go! Go! Let’s go! Get this [expletive],” according to his video.

A short time later, Mr. Sullivan was the first to call out the presence of Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, who crept along the other side of the entrance with his Glock pistol pointed toward the crowded hallway.

“There’s a gun! There’s a gun! There’s a gun!” Mr. Sullivan shouted as the service weapon became visible on his video screen.

Mr. Sullivan’s video showed Mr. Byrd repeatedly placing his finger on the trigger of his gun and removing it before he lunged forward and fired the weapon at Ms. Babbitt, who had just begun climbing into a broken outside window of the doorway.

In an interview filmed moments later by Infowars employee Sam Montoya, a highly agitated Mr. Sullivan said he believed he saw Ms. Babbitt die.

‘I Have the Video’

“She climbed in the window and then she got shot right here in the neck,” Mr. Sullivan told Mr. Montoya. “I got it all. I’ll post the video. I have the video. I have the video of the guy with the gun and then shoot her. …I have it all. I was right at the door.”

As it turned out, Ms. Babbitt was still alive as Capitol Police officers carried her head-first to the ground floor of the Capitol. Even as she was loaded into an ambulance, Ms. Babbitt bled profusely from the upper chest wound caused by Mr. Byrd’s bullet. She was pronounced dead at 3:15 p.m. at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.

Mr. Sullivan was paid $90,000 by several media outlets for the use of his Jan. 6 video, money that was seized by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Prosecutors said Mr. Sullivan’s Jan. 6 conduct was a continuation of the violent rhetoric he expressed during the civil unrest in 2020 after the controversial death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Mr. Sullivan dubbed himself “Jayden X” and “Activist John,” and operated a website called “Insurgence USA.”

“Going into winter of 2020, Sullivan began to advocate for a violent dismantling of the government,” prosecutors wrote in their 45-page sentencing memorandum. “In one Instagram post, Sullivan posted, ‘We will have live updates on the location for tonight’s purge. Spread the message. Let the electoral purge commence.’

“In December 2020, Sullivan tweeted, ‘Riots are meant to bring change, so purge the world with fire,’ and, ‘An armed revolution is the only way to bring about change effectively.’”

Mr. Sullivan’s sentencing memo said his behavior on Jan. 6 was not reflective of the kind of man he is.

“Those who know him from church, from social interactions, and from his supportive family all enthusiastically commend him as a decent, honest man of integrity, good faith and devotion to those in his world,” defense attorney Steven Kiersh wrote.

“John Sullivan’s conduct on January 6, 2021, was clearly a deviation from the person that is reflected in his background,” Mr. Kiersh wrote. “His conduct on that day is not reflective of the totality of the kind, decent and generous man that he is.”

Mr. Kiersh said his client’s mental health has markedly declined since he was jailed following his jury trial. He asked Judge Lamberth to take that into consideration when crafting a sentence.

“Mr. Sullivan has been held in protective custody and in virtual isolation throughout the duration of his incarceration,” Mr. Kiersh wrote. “Undersigned counsel meets with defendant regularly at the D.C. Jail and has seen a dramatic decrease in his mental stability and his overall physical presence.

“Counsel has repeatedly spoken with the D.C. Jail’s legal counsel regarding defendant’s status but has been told there is nothing that can be done to remove his protective custody housing status due to concern for his physical safety,” Mr. Kiersh said.

Mr. Sullivan was born in Galax, Virginia, in July 1994 and adopted by an Army lieutenant colonel and his wife. He earned the rank of Eagle Scout before graduating from high school in Stafford, Virginia.

He moved to Kearns, Utah, in order to pursue his dream of becoming an Olympic speed skater, according to court records. Injuries forced him to abandon his quest for the Winter Olympics.