FIFTH COLUMNISTS

JACQUES PAUWELS—Western historiography tends to focus on the Wehrmacht’s spectacular advances and victories in the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa, while ignoring or minimizing its losses; conversely, the Soviet losses receive plenty of attention, while any Soviet successes tend to be ignored or downplayed. Even though the Wehrmacht’s performance did indeed appear to be very impressive, Hitler’s blitzkrieg in the east started to lose its blitz qualities after only a few weeks. Robert Kershaw, a specialist in the German-Soviet war, has described how “Blitzkrieg momentum petered out” as early as the first week of July, “the tempo faltered” in the following weeks, and the vanguards ceased “sprinting as they had done in the Polish and French campaigns.”

JASON HIRTHLER—Votes that might have gone to Sanders will be siphoned off by minor candidates posing as left-leaning reformers. Which means there will be a second vote, at which point superdelegates will again be permitted to sway the nomination in the direction of their choosing (i.e., whomever has bought them off). The field is so packed with pseudo-leftist poseurs that it has had to host two debates on back-to-back nights as it was impossible to reasonably stage manage a single debate of some twenty candidates.

MAX PARRY—Most of those targeted like Johnstone are anti-war leftists willing to defend Russia and Syria beyond merely protesting U.S. military aggression but challenging the propaganda narratives villainizing such countries used to justify it. The war in Syria has even been compared to the Spanish Civil War where the chasm between those defending the Syrian government against Western-backed jihadists is seen as a repeat of the discord in the 1930s, with presumably the ‘libertarian socialist’ Kurds playing the role of the POUM.

JONATHAN NACK—The left of the electoral spectrum in Ecuador is occupied by parties which identify with some variant of socialist politics.  It should be noted, however, that the larger parties that identify themselves as socialist have not sought to nationalize industries nor pushed policies to transition from a capitalist economy to a socialist dominated economic system.  The Correistas did very little along those lines when they were in power.  Only smaller socialist and communist Ecuadorian parties advocate moving now to further nationalize industry.

CJ HOPKINS—Last week, I published an inappropriate and deeply offensive satirical essay, for which I would now like to repeatedly apologize. The offensive satirical essay in question, The Media Are Still Screaming About the Trump-Putin-Nazi-Apocalypse Conspiracy — a Choice Sampling which I regret having written and for which I intend to repeatedly apologize throughout this essay, concerned what I perceived, at the time I wrote it, as an overreaction on the part of millions of decent, patriotic liberals to the first eighteen months of Donald Trump’s presidency and Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to destroy democracy and take over the world.