WindRose Hotel

The Missile Lesson the West Can’t Ignore

2026-03-17T23:52:00.004+01:00

For decades, Western military doctrine has rested on a comforting assumption: technological superiority would guarantee dominance on the battlefield. Advanced missile defenses, integrated sensor networks, and sophisticated command systems were supposed to create something close to an impenetrable shield over the world’s most developed nations.

The ongoing confrontation between Israel and Iran is beginning to challenge that assumption.

Israel fields one of the most advanced missile defense architectures ever constructed. Its layered system — including Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and the Arrow interceptors — was designed to counter a wide spectrum of threats, from short-range rockets to long-range ballistic missiles.

So far, those systems have performed remarkably well. The vast majority of incoming projectiles are intercepted.

But recent events are revealing a strategic vulnerability that military planners have long understood in theory: even the most advanced defensive systems can be strained by attacks designed not for precision, but for volume.

In other words, the future of warfare may not be decided only by who has the most advanced technology — but by who can most effectively exploit the economics of attack versus defense.

At the center of this dynamic is what strategists call the cost-exchange imbalance.

Defensive interceptors are expensive. Each missile launched by systems like Iron Dome or David’s Sling can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some high-altitude interceptors cost far more.

The weapons used to attack them are often dramatically cheaper.

That asymmetry matters. An adversary that launches large numbers of missiles or drones simultaneously can force defenders to expend vast resources simply to maintain protection.

Even if interception rates remain extremely high, the defender is gradually forced into a costly defensive posture.

Recent developments illustrate this logic with unusual clarity. Since the latest phase of escalation began, Iran has reportedly launched hundreds of ballistic missiles and more than five hundred drones toward Israeli territory.

The goal of such attacks is not necessarily to overwhelm defenses completely. Instead, it is to test them continuously, probing for weaknesses while forcing the defender to absorb the economic and operational burden of constant interception.

Iran’s asymmetric doctrine

Iran’s military strategy has long been built around this principle.

Tehran understands that it cannot match the United States or Israel in conventional military technology. Instead, it has spent decades investing in a vast arsenal of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones.

The objective is not technological parity.

It is strategic asymmetry.

Rather than competing directly with Western military systems, Iran’s doctrine seeks to exploit the vulnerabilities inherent in expensive, high-tech defensive architectures. Large inventories of relatively inexpensive weapons — combined with dispersed launch platforms and proxy forces — allow Iran to impose pressure without necessarily achieving battlefield superiority.

The regional network

A key component of this strategy is the network of allied groups often referred to by analysts as the “Axis of Resistance.”

The most powerful of these is Hezbollah in Lebanon, which possesses a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles capable of striking deep into Israeli territory.

Other groups — including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Shiite militias in Iraq, and the Houthi movement in Yemen — form a loose but strategically significant ecosystem of armed actors aligned with Iranian interests.

Together they provide Iran with something approaching a distributed deterrence system. Instead of relying solely on its own military forces, Tehran can project power indirectly across multiple theaters.

This structure complicates any attempt to contain the conflict geographically.

A widening theater

Recent developments suggest that the strategic competition may be expanding beyond the immediate Israel-Iran axis.

Iranian missile and drone capabilities have demonstrated the potential to strike targets across the broader Gulf region, including critical infrastructure in neighboring states. Meanwhile, Israel has intensified strikes against Iranian-linked military assets and missile infrastructure across the region to reduce the volume of fire directed toward its territory.

The result is an increasingly complex regional security environment in which actions in one theater can quickly trigger reactions in another.

A warning for Western strategy

For the United States and its allies, the lessons may extend far beyond the Middle East.

For the past two decades, Western militaries have largely fought adversaries that were technologically inferior — insurgent groups, irregular militias, and terrorist organizations. In those conflicts, Western technological superiority was overwhelming.

Confrontations with state actors like Iran present a very different challenge.

Adversaries are learning how to design military strategies that bypass technological dominance rather than confronting it directly.

Instead of building systems equal to American or Israeli weapons, they are developing methods that exploit the structural weaknesses of expensive defense systems.

The future of missile defense

None of this means that Israel’s defenses are failing. On the contrary, they remain among the most effective ever deployed.

But the strategic environment is evolving.

To address the economic imbalance between offense and defense, Israel and its partners are accelerating the development of new technologies — including directed-energy weapons and next-generation interceptors such as the Arrow-4 system.

The hope is that these systems will make missile defense both more efficient and more economically sustainable.

Whether they succeed remains to be seen.

What is already clear, however, is that the confrontation between Israel and Iran is becoming something more than a regional security crisis.

It is increasingly a preview of how future wars may be fought and a reminder that technological superiority alone may no longer guarantee strategic dominance.

The Chomsky Moment And the Cracks in Cultural Hegemony

2026-02-18T20:37:00.009+01:00

The end of moral asymmetry in American intellectual life.

My latest on American Thinker.

In 2023, newly disclosed documents related to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein revealed meetings and financial interactions between Epstein and the eminent linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky. The disclosures did not accuse Chomsky of criminal conduct. But they confirmed that, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor, Chomsky met with him multiple times and discussed financial matters.

Chomsky’s response was characteristically blunt: his meetings with Epstein, he said, were “none of your business.” The tone may have been legally defensible. Culturally and symbolically, it was something else.

Because Chomsky is not merely a professor emeritus at MIT. For over half a century, he has been one of the central intellectual pillars of the American Left — a figure whose authority extends far beyond linguistics into foreign policy, media criticism, and moral judgment on American power. His 1988 book Manufacturing Consent shaped generations of students’ understanding of media, propaganda, and elite influence. To admirers, he has represented intellectual courage against empire; to critics, an implacable critic of Western liberal democracies.

But in either case, he has stood as a moral voice.

And that is precisely why the Epstein association matters — not as a criminal allegation, but as a symbolic rupture.

From the 1960s to Cultural Hegemony

To understand the magnitude of that rupture, one must place Chomsky within the broader intellectual ecosystem that reshaped American academia after the 1960s. While not formally a member of the Frankfurt School, his work converged with its critique of capitalist modernity, mass culture, and liberal-democratic institutions. Thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno helped institutionalize a style of critical theory that viewed Western society as structurally oppressive beneath its democratic veneer.

Overlay that with the influence of Antonio Gramsci and his theory of cultural hegemony: the idea that ruling classes maintain dominance not only through economic power but by shaping cultural norms, education, and moral language. Change the culture, and you change the political order.

The American New Left absorbed this framework. Over decades, it migrated from street protest to faculty lounges, from counterculture to curriculum committees. The result is what we now call Critical Theory’s progeny: identity-centered scholarship, postcolonial critique, and ultimately the framework popularly labeled CRT. While Chomsky himself has often criticized certain excesses of identity politics and has not endorsed every development in “woke” culture, his lifelong assault on American institutions provided intellectual scaffolding for the suspicion of Western norms that now permeates large sectors of academia.

The point is not that Chomsky caused CRT. It is that he helped legitimize a moral architecture in which America is presumptively guilty, power is presumptively corrupt, and Western institutions are structurally suspect.

For decades, that critique carried a tacit moral asymmetry: the critics stood above the system they condemned.

The Weberian Problem

Here is where the scandal intersects with political theory.

Max Weber famously distinguished between the “ethic of conviction” and the “ethic of responsibility.” The former acts from purity of principle; the latter accounts for the foreseeable consequences of one’s actions in the public sphere.

Chomsky’s career embodies the ethic of conviction. He has consistently argued from first principles against war, imperialism, and elite hypocrisy. But when a public intellectual of such stature maintains a relationship — however defined — with a convicted sex offender embedded in elite financial networks, the question shifts from private intention to public consequence.

Even if the meetings were purely intellectual.

Even if the financial discussions were routine.

The symbolic impact is unavoidable.

A figure who built his reputation exposing the moral compromises of power was, at minimum, socially entangled with a man whose entire operation depended on elite protection.

That tension does not prove corruption. It exposes fragility.

The Collapse of Moral Asymmetry

For many on the Right, the Epstein scandal has become shorthand for elite decadence across party lines. But for the American Left, it strikes deeper. The post-1960s intellectual project has relied not only on critique, but on moral differentiation — the implicit claim that progressive institutions and thinkers occupy higher ethical ground than the corporate, military, or conservative establishments they oppose.

The Chomsky episode does not invalidate every argument he has ever made. It does something subtler: it undermines the aura of moral insulation.

If even the most relentless critic of American elite corruption can be found in the appointment book of one of the most notorious financiers in recent memory, then the narrative of unilateral moral superiority begins to erode.

And once moral asymmetry collapses, the logic of cultural hegemony weakens.

Because Gramscian influence depends on credibility. Cultural authority must appear ethically elevated to justify reshaping curricula, institutions, and norms. If the intellectual class is perceived as subject to the same gravitational pull of wealth, access, and prestige as everyone else, its claim to exceptional moral insight diminishes.

A Myth from the Sixties Meets the Twenty-First Century

The myth born in the 1960s was that radical critique purified the critic. That standing outside “the system” conferred immunity from its temptations. Over time, that myth helped fuel a worldview in which America’s sins were magnified, while the critic’s own milieu was presumed enlightened.

The Epstein revelations do not topple Chomsky’s scholarly contributions to linguistics. They do not erase his influence. But they puncture the myth that critique equals virtue.

And that puncture comes at a moment when the intellectual descendants of the New Left are facing growing resistance from parents, voters, and lawmakers who question the premises of CRT and institutionalized “wokeness.”

The Chomsky moment, then, is not about scandal in the tabloid sense. It is about the exposure of a structural paradox: those who claimed to unmask power were not immune to its proximity.

Cultural hegemony depends on the perception of moral altitude. When that altitude drops, even slightly, the entire architecture wobbles.

The collapse is not judicial.

It is symbolic.

And symbols, in politics, often matter more than verdicts.

Italy Prevails

2026-01-16T17:19:00.004+01:00

Italy today is not a success story -- but neither is it the failure it is often portrayed to be.

My latest on American Thinker.

Much of the current commentary on Europe’s economic malaise follows a familiar pattern. Brussels’ central planning, green industrial policy, and debt-fueled stimulus are blamed -- often correctly -- for masking stagnation and delaying an inevitable reckoning. Southern Europe, in particular, is frequently portrayed as a collection of artificially sustained economies, kept afloat by EU subsidies, creative accounting, and bureaucratic redistribution.

There is truth in this diagnosis. But it is also incomplete. And in one crucial case -- Italy -- it risks obscuring a more complex and revealing reality.

Italy is often lumped together with Spain, Greece, or Portugal as a “problem economy”: high public debt, low growth, rigid institutions. Yet when one looks beyond headline GDP figures and focuses instead on production, exports, and global competitiveness, a different picture emerges -- one that complicates the prevailing narrative about Europe’s decline.

Over the past several years, Italy has remained among the world’s leading exporters of manufactured goods. In absolute terms, Italian exports of goods have hovered between $650 and $700 billion annually, placing the country consistently among the top global exporters -- alongside Germany and, in some periods, Japan. This is not a statistical artifact of EU transfers. It is the result of private-sector industrial capacity operating on global markets.

This distinction matters. Much of the criticism leveled at Europe focuses on growth that exists only on paper: GDP inflated by public spending, debt mutualization, or multinational profit shifting. Ireland is the textbook example. Its GDP figures are famously distorted by the accounting practices of multinational corporations, with little connection to domestic production or employment. Spain’s recent growth, too, has relied heavily on credit expansion, subsidies, and public-sector absorption, while youth unemployment remains structurally high.

Italy’s export performance, by contrast, tells a different story. It is rooted in domestic manufacturing, not financial engineering. Italian firms compete globally in machinery, industrial equipment, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food processing, and high-end consumer goods. These are sectors that require engineering skill, supply-chain integration, and long-term capital investment. They cannot be sustained by subsidies alone.

This does not mean Italy has been immune to the distortions created by EU policy. On the contrary, Italian industry operates under some of the least favorable conditions in the developed world: high taxation, complex regulation, elevated energy costs, and constant interference from both national and European authorities. That exports have remained strong despite these constraints is not a testament to Brussels’ wisdom, but to the resilience of Italy’s productive base.

Here lies the paradox that much commentary misses: Italy’s relative economic strength exists not because of EU central planning, but despite it.

For American readers, this distinction should sound familiar. It mirrors the difference between financialized growth driven by leverage and asset inflation, and growth grounded in production, trade, and competitive enterprise. Italy, for all its flaws, still belongs to the latter category.

None of this is meant to deny Europe’s broader structural problems. Centralized industrial policy, green mandates detached from market realities, and the politicization of credit allocation are all real threats. Germany’s industrial slowdown, particularly in automotive and heavy machinery, underscores how destructive these policies can be when imposed at scale. The EU’s model increasingly resembles a technocratic command economy layered on top of nominally free markets.

But Italy’s case suggests that Europe’s crisis is not one of lost productive capacity. It is a crisis of governance.

Where production survives, value creation survives. Where institutions interfere less -- or simply fail to crush existing structures -- private enterprise continues to function. Italy’s export sector shows that the European economy is not hollowed out across the board. It is constrained, mismanaged, and increasingly overregulated, but not yet exhausted.

This distinction has important implications. If Italy were merely another subsidy-dependent economy propped up by EU transfers, its export performance would have collapsed alongside the waning effects of stimulus. Instead, Italian exports have held up even as broader European growth slows. That suggests a floor beneath the economy that many commentators overlook.

The danger, however, is that this residual strength will not last indefinitely. Central planning does not merely fail to generate growth; over time, it actively erodes the conditions that allow private industry to function. Italy’s manufacturing base has survived decades of institutional neglect. Whether it can survive an additional decade of ideological regulation, green mandates, and fiscal extraction is an open question.

From an American perspective, the lesson is twofold. First, Europe should not be analyzed as a monolith. Beneath the bureaucratic superstructure lies a diverse set of economies with very different productive realities. Second, the real cost of Europe’s current trajectory is not immediately visible in GDP statistics. It lies in the slow suffocation of those sectors that still create real value.

Italy today is not a success story -- but neither is it the failure it is often portrayed to be. It is a stress test. Its ability to export, compete, and produce under adverse conditions reveals both the latent strength of European industry and the scale of the damage inflicted by centralized governance.

If even Italy’s industrial core begins to falter, the illusion of Europe’s economic sustainability will finally collapse. Until then, Italy remains an inconvenient counterexample -- one that challenges easy narratives about artificial economies and forces a more serious examination of what, exactly, is still holding Europe together.

When Seeing Is No Longer Enough: Mantegna and the Silent Gaze of the Magi

2026-01-05T21:47:00.005+01:00

Adoration of the Magi (about 1495–1505), Andrea Mantegna – Getty Museum, Los Angeles

A Meditation on Faith, Vision, and the Limits of the Human Gaze*

There is a moment, when standing before a great painting, in which time seems to loosen its grip. Andrea Mantegna’s Adoration of the Magi creates precisely such a moment. Nothing in the scene is loud or dramatic. The colors are restrained, the gestures measured, the space dense with silence. And yet, the longer one looks, the more the painting begins to resist easy interpretation.

The Magi are there. They have arrived at the end of a long journey. They kneel, they bow, they offer their gifts. Everything appears to be in place—except for one quietly unsettling detail. Their eyes do not meet the Child’s. In a scene built around revelation, recognition, and divine encounter, the expected exchange of gazes never happens.

It is in this absence, in what is not shown, that Mantegna asks us to pause—and to reflect on what it truly means to see.

In most traditional representations of the Adoration, vision structures the entire composition. Lines of sight converge toward the infant Christ, guiding the viewer’s eye and confirming the moment of recognition. To look is to believe. Mantegna deliberately disrupts this visual logic. The Magi are physically close to the Child, humbly positioned before Him, yet their gazes drift downward or away. The act of seeing, so central to Renaissance painting, is withheld at the very moment when it seems most necessary.

This is no compositional accident. It is the key to the painting.

The Magi are not portrayed as distracted or uncertain figures. They are scholars, astronomers, interpreters of signs. Their journey did not begin with a vision, but with understanding: a star observed, its meaning deciphered, a truth inferred rather than revealed. Long before they reached Bethlehem, they had already recognized who this Child was. Their arrival is not a discovery, but a confirmation.

Now, standing before the Incarnation itself, sight proves insufficient. The divine mystery cannot be possessed by the eyes. To stare would imply mastery, comprehension, even control. Instead, the Magi lower their gaze. Reverence replaces curiosity. The body bows where the eyes withdraw.

In this quiet gesture, Mantegna articulates a profound theological intuition: God, even when fully present in human form, remains ultimately invisible. The Christ Child can be seen as a body, but not grasped as a mystery. The Magi’s averted eyes acknowledge the limits of human perception. They know that what matters most cannot be captured by vision alone.

There is also a distinctly classical resonance in this choice. Mantegna, deeply immersed in ancient art and philosophy, draws on a visual language older than Christianity itself. In the classical world, the divine is often approached indirectly. Gods are honored through posture, restraint, and silence rather than direct confrontation. To lower one’s gaze is to recognize a higher order. Here, the Magi—foreign kings and learned men—behave like ancient worshippers standing before something that exceeds them.

Yet perhaps the most radical aspect of the painting lies not within the figures themselves, but in what the painting asks of us.

By refusing to let the Magi guide our eyes, Mantegna transfers responsibility to the viewer. If they do not look at the Child, we must. The visual path no longer remains enclosed within the painting; it extends outward, toward us. We are no longer passive observers following prescribed lines of sight. We are participants, drawn into the act of contemplation.

In this sense, Adoration of the Magi functions less as a narrative illustration than as a meditation. It does not instruct; it invites. The silence of the Magi’s gaze opens a silence within the viewer. We are left alone with the Child, without intermediaries, without visual certainty, without reassurance.

And that, perhaps, is Mantegna’s deepest insight. Faith does not arise from spectacle. It is not born from what dazzles the eyes, but from what challenges the mind and stills the heart. The Magi have already completed their journey. They have seen the sign, followed it, and understood it.

Now, standing before the mystery itself, they kneel.

In Adoration of the Magi, Andrea Mantegna does not show us figures who fail to see Christ. He shows us figures who have seen enough—and who understand that, at a certain point, seeing must give way to reverence.

* Italian version

Fra Angelico and the Breaking Point of Beauty: Why Florence’s Exhibition Is Meant to Be Experienced, Not Just Seen

2025-12-17T23:26:00.006+01:00

At Palazzo Strozzi, Fra Angelico’s work does not overwhelm you all at once. It insists — and eventually reshapes how you look at everything else.

When I returned from Florence, I realized that for the first time after many visits I couldn’t dismiss the experience with the usual “beautiful, as always.” Something was different—more physical, less rational. A mild dizziness, a sense of emotional overload, the difficulty of holding together images, colors, faces. In other words, I had experienced firsthand what we tend to call, in a somewhat journalistic but effective shorthand, the “Stendhal syndrome.”

It wasn’t my first time at the Uffizi. In fact, it was my ninth or tenth visit—I’ve lost count. And yet, it was precisely this familiarity that made the experience even more surprising. One would expect habituation, routine, perhaps a bit of cynicism. Instead, the opposite happened. Walking through the galleries, standing before works I thought I “knew,” I felt a kind of short circuit: my brain said “already seen,” but my eyes and my body reacted as if it were the first time.

The breaking point came shortly afterward, at Palazzo Strozzi, with the exhibition devoted to Fra Angelico—one of the artists I love most, and for that very reason one I believed I approached with a settled, almost pacified familiarity. The opposite occurred. His figures, the light that does not describe but reveals, the almost disarming calm of the sacred scenes produced a cumulative effect. Not a sudden shock, but a gradual loss of critical distance. I was no longer simply “looking at” artworks; I was inside a density of meaning that strained the limits of rational attention.

Stendhal syndrome—first described by the French writer after a visit to Florence, standing before the frescoes of Santa Croce—is not a disease in the clinical sense. It is, rather, an extreme reaction to an excess of beauty concentrated in space and time. Dizziness, rapid heartbeat, confusion, deep emotion. Symptoms that, read coldly, sound almost exaggerated. And yet, when they occur, they feel entirely understandable.

Why does this happen? The simplest explanation is also the most concrete: Florence is a city that does not dilute its heritage—it accumulates it. Within a few hundred square meters, one moves from Giotto to Caravaggio, from Botticelli to Michelangelo, without transition. Our perceptual system, accustomed to a constant but fragmented flow of stimuli, suddenly finds itself facing an extraordinarily dense concentration of meaning. It’s like moving from a low-calorie diet straight into a Renaissance banquet without preparation.

There is, however, another aspect—one particularly relevant for people oriented toward reality and practical decision-making. This experience is not an abstract luxury; it is a tangible investment in one’s personal capital: time, attention, emotional energy. Resources that in daily life we tend to ration or squander. Deliberately exposing oneself to beauty—real beauty, not filtered through a screen—is a way to recalibrate priorities, to restore a hierarchy of what truly matters.

There is no need to be an art historian, nor especially “spiritual.” I am not. What is required is simply a willingness to slow down and, paradoxically, to avoid over-optimizing the experience. Entering the Uffizi with the anxiety of seeing everything, of checking off masterpieces like items on a list, is the surest way to feel nothing at all. Stendhal syndrome—if we want to call it that—arrives when we allow ourselves the right to stop in front of a work that calls to us, ignoring everything else for a few minutes.

The same applies to the exhibition devoted to Fra Angelico, including the extension hosted at the Convent of San Marco, which houses the artist’s frescoes, among them the famous and magnificent Annunciation. The exhibition is not spectacular in the modern sense; it does not aim for the “wow effect.” It is made of silences, balance, a beauty that does not assault but insists. Precisely for this reason, it demands a different kind of availability: less consumption, more listening. And at a certain point, the body responds before the mind.

My invitation to readers is simple and practical: go to Florence not “to see,” but to experience. Plan less, leave room for the unexpected, even accept the discomfort of feeling overwhelmed. This is not wasted time, nor an aesthetic indulgence. It is a very concrete way of stepping out of the automatic mode in which we so often live and work.

In an age in which everything is measurable, monetizable, performance-driven, allowing oneself an experience that produces no immediate, tangible result is almost a countercultural act. But that is precisely the point. Beauty, when it is authentic, does not serve a purpose—it acts. And when it truly acts, it can make your head spin, your heart race, and call apparently solid certainties into question.

If it happens to you, don’t worry. It is neither weakness nor suggestion. It is the sign that, at least for a moment, you were fully present. And today, perhaps, there is no more profitable investment than that

God Is Back

2025-11-24T22:42:00.009+01:00

A significant and surprisingly broad phenomenon has emerged: a quiet revival of faith among young people in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

My latest on American Thinker.

In recent years, a significant and surprisingly broad phenomenon has emerged: a quiet revival of faith among young people in both the United States and the United Kingdom. At the same time, a parallel rediscovery of God is taking place among many leading intellectuals. Together, these two trends deserve careful attention and serious reflection.

Let’s begin with the “ordinary people” before turning to the maîtres à penser.

England and Wales: Young People Are Returning to Church

According to The Quiet Revival report published by the Bible Society, the share of young people aged 18 to 24 who attend church at least once a month in England and Wales has risen from 4% in 2018 to 16% in 2024, with men driving much of this growth. Many of these young churchgoers are also gravitating toward Catholicism: among those aged 18-34 who are active in church life, over 40% identify as Catholic, surpassing Anglicans.

Paul Williams, CEO of the Bible Society, summarizes the findings this way:

“The Quiet Revival is a hugely significant report that should reshape perceptions of Christianity and religious practice in England and Wales. Far from sliding toward extinction, the Church is alive, growing, and making a difference for individuals and society.”

This favorable trend is also reflected in a rise in adult conversions and baptisms. Many parishes now report record numbers of adults entering the Catholic Church -- typically motivated by a search for authenticity, truth, and community.

A Similar Trend in the United States

The same dynamic is unfolding in the United States. According to Pew Research, about 1.5% of American Catholic adults today are converts. Many of these younger adults say they are seeking a “stable moral order” and a spiritual depth they no longer find in contemporary secular culture. For a growing number of them, the structure, ritual, and aesthetic beauty of Catholic liturgy are decisive factors.

In other words, a generation is rediscovering in God not only a transcendent ideal but also a concrete community and a form of stability that secular society struggles to provide.

A Leadership Roundtable study notes that young adult Catholics in the U.S. are among the most engaged parishioners -- attending Mass, confession, and eucharistic adoration -- while also feeling tension between their personal dedication and the institutional fragility they perceive in parts of the Church.

This is not a series of isolated conversions. It is a demographic and cultural shift -- and a profound one.

…And the Intellectuals Are Returning to God

Alongside this youth-driven religious revival, a comparable phenomenon is unfolding among intellectuals.

For the past two decades, a large portion of the western cultural elite embraced the paradigm of the “New Atheism.” The formula seemed obvious: economic progress + science + technology = final emancipation from all religion.

But that season is over.

Philosophers, writers, commentators, and even high-profile figures in the tech world are now moving in the opposite direction: returning to God -- or at least to the religious dimension as an indispensable cultural foundation.

This time the trend does not originate with the masses, but with the people who shape ideas. And that matters: cultural currents often begin at the top and filter downward into public opinion.

Though the personal stories differ, they share a common thread: the realization that hyper-rationalism no longer explains the world -- and no longer helps people live well within it.

Here are some emblematic cases, drawing on an insightful Free Press article by Peter Savodnik.

Matthew Crawford: From Academic Agnosticism to the Anglican Church

Matthew Crawford -- long seen as a symbol of secular intellectual life -- found faith through a human encounter: meeting Marilyn Simon, a scholar and believer. His story is simple yet revealing. It wasn’t doctrine he lacked, but meaning. A higher moral order became, for him, a response to today’s radical individualism and fragmentation.

Paul Kingsnorth: The Environmental Novelist Who Found Orthodoxy

Once a leading figure in European environmentalism, Kingsnorth explored several spiritual paths before embracing Orthodox Christianity. His reasoning is partly sociopolitical: the ecological crisis, he argues, is at its core a spiritual one -- the result of a rupture between human beings and the natural world. Orthodoxy, with its mystical depth, offered him a restored sense of the sacred.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Faith as a Response to Inner Emptiness -- and to Islamism

A former Dutch MP, survivor of genital mutilation, and for years a fierce critic of political Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali converted to Christianity for two reasons:

• her personal battle with depression
• the West’s inability, in her view, to confront aggressive religious ideologies with purely secular tools

Her conversion is perhaps the most overtly political: she argues that a culturally disarmed Europe needs Christianity as an anchor of identity and resistance.

Richard Dawkins and “Cultural Christianity”

The father of New Atheism has not converted, but he has retreated. Dawkins now describes himself as a “cultural Christian,” openly worried that abandoning the Christian tradition will create a dangerous ideological and religious vacuum.

Jordan Hall: The Anti–Silicon Valley Conversion

A former tech pioneer, Jordan Hall discovered God not in some futuristic spiritual forum but in a small rural church. His diagnosis is sociological before it is mystical: the West is undergoing “cultural termination,” marked by demographic decline, loneliness, and digitized relationships. Religious community, he argues, provides something no technology can replace.

Conversions are Sweeping Through the Young

Across the U.S., conversions among young men are rising, traditional liturgies are making a comeback, and seminaries are seeing increased interest. In a period of economic insecurity, relational instability, and cultural uncertainty, religion reemerges as a form of social capital.

Not a Folkloric Revival -- and Not a Fashion Statement

The return to faith among both intellectuals and the young reflects a deep unease with a cultural model that has lost its normative power. For Europe -- and for the West more broadly -- where debates over identity, welfare, birth rates, and social cohesion are intensifying, these developments deserve close attention.

Religion may be returning not only as a legacy of the past, but as a resource for the future -- a striking challenge to the atheism and agnosticism that once appeared firmly in command.

New York Turns the Tables: the “Socialist” Mayor Who Sounds (Almost) Like Trump

2025-11-06T22:10:00.003+01:00

Zohran Mamdani won over the Big Apple not out of love for socialism, but by giving a voice to a new class of the disillusioned — affluent professionals who no longer believe that hard work is enough to “make it.”

Few places on earth embody capitalism quite like New York City. Yet it’s that very city that has just elected Zohran Mamdani — a self-described social democrat — as mayor. The American right, predictably, wasted no time branding him a “communist,” though the label says more about their reflexes than about Mamdani himself.

Beyond the noise and the name-calling, something deeper is happening. Mamdani’s victory is not proof that New York has fallen in love with socialism. It’s the expression of a widespread frustration with a system that many feel has stopped being fair. And that frustration isn’t limited to struggling families or low-income voters. It’s spreading among the very people who, on paper, are supposed to be thriving — the well-educated, ambitious professionals who have done everything right and still feel like they’re running in place.

These are the people who “checked all the boxes”: good schools, long hours, solid jobs — yet they can’t afford the city they helped build. Rents rise faster than salaries, taxes eat into their paychecks, homeownership feels out of reach. They’re not poor; they’re just exhausted. Worst of all, in the supposed land of opportunity, they’ve stopped believing that hard work automatically leads to stability — let alone success.

They don’t want government handouts, as Republicans tend to assume. Nor do they want to burn the system down, as some Democrats fear. What they want is a system that works again — one that rewards effort and merit rather than luck, inherited wealth, or connections. New York used to be that kind of place: a city that lifted those who hustled. Today, it seems to reward only those already at the top. In electing Mamdani, New Yorkers didn’t reject capitalism — they demanded that it deliver on its promises.

Mamdani’s genius was recognizing this disillusionment before anyone else — and having the instincts to speak like a citizen, not a career politician. He didn’t offer a revolution. He offered recognition. And that’s what made him resonate with voters who had stopped trusting the system but hadn’t stopped hoping for it to work.

In a strange way, that makes Mamdani an accidental echo of Donald Trump. Like Trump in 2016, he gave voice to a segment of Americans who felt unseen — in Trump’s case, the working class; in Mamdani’s, the frustrated middle and upper-middle class. Both tapped into empathy and anger to deliver the same essential message: the game is rigged, and I’m the one who will fix it. Trump targeted Washington’s swamp; Mamdani took aim at a city economy where even success feels unstable.

Republicans would be mistaken to dismiss Mamdani’s win as just another far-left aberration. They should study it. As political analyst Lee Hartley Carter put it, “New Yorkers aren’t rejecting capitalism; they’re asking it to keep its promises. They’re not demanding special treatment — they’re asking for a fair game.”

One more striking fact: roughly 20% of New York’s electorate is Jewish — the largest Jewish community in the world outside Israel — and yet the city elected a candidate who has voiced strong criticism of Israeli policies and what he calls the “Zionist establishment.” Still, according to CNN’s exit polls, 33% of Jewish voters supported him, despite open calls from Israel and the mainstream press — including the New York Times — to oppose him. That tells us something about the shifting winds of American politics, where skepticism toward Israel’s government is now emerging not just on the left, but increasingly on the right as well. Figures like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Joe Rogan — once considered pillars of the MAGA movement — have become some of its most outspoken critics on the issue, much to the discomfort of traditional Christian Zionists.

Mamdani’s election doesn’t signal a socialist takeover of New York. It signals something more profound — a crisis of faith in a system that once promised upward mobility and now delivers exhaustion. His victory is a warning shot to both parties: people haven’t stopped believing in capitalism. They’ve just stopped believing that it’s still fair.

Criticizing Israel Is not Antisemitism — and Heritage’s Kevin Roberts Just Said So

2025-11-01T12:03:00.006+01:00

Kevin Roberts draws a crucial line between policy critique and bigotry, restoring clarity to conservative discourse on Israel

In recent weeks, former Fox News host and now hugely popular conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson has been relentless in denouncing what he sees as the intolerable influence of foreign lobbies — most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — in shaping U.S. policy. A few days ago, he was sharply criticized for interviewing Nick Fuentes, founder of the so-called “Groyper” movement, which promotes an ethnonationalist vision of American identity — a figure whose views on Jews and the Holocaust have, rightly, provoked outrage and condemnation.

There has been speculation that @Heritage is distancing itself from @TuckerCarlson over the past 24 hours.

I want to put that to rest right now—here are my thoughts: pic.twitter.com/F8bcxBIqKI
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) October 30, 2025

That is why it caused such a stir in conservative circles when Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, publicly defended Carlson in a video posted on X last Thursday. Roberts did more than lend support to a friend under attack: he may have initiated a long-awaited turning point in how the American conservative movement talks about Israel and antisemitism.

Roberts drew the outlines of a crucial distinction: “Christians can criticize the State of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course, antisemitism should be condemned.” A brief, understated remark — but an eloquent one. For decades, American conservatives have been expected to treat unconditional support for the Israeli government as a moral litmus test. Any questioning of Israeli policies or of Washington’s automatic alignment with them risked being branded “antisemitic.” That accusation has often shut down honest debate and, ironically, trivialized genuine antisemitism by confusing it with political disagreement.

Roberts’s statement matters not only because of who said it — the head of the most influential conservative think tank in America — but because it signals a return to reason and common sense at a crucial moment. On one hand, Roberts clearly rejects Fuentes’s vile statements, affirming that antisemitism has no place in public life. On the other, he refuses to join the mob calling for Tucker Carlson to be “canceled.” It’s a combination — moral clarity without hysteria — that conservatism once prided itself on.

You may agree or disagree with Tucker Carlson, with his tone or his questions, but his opinions deserve debate, not excommunication. The idea that Congress or the White House might be “too deferential” toward any foreign state — Israel included — is not antisemitic; it’s a legitimate concern for national sovereignty. The Founding Fathers themselves warned against “foreign entanglements.” Is it now forbidden to echo their wisdom?

Let’s be clear: defending Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself is one thing; equating that defense with blind approval of every action taken by its government is another. A mature alliance, like a mature friendship, can withstand disagreement. In fact, it thrives on intellectual honesty.

That’s why Roberts’s statement may well mark a watershed moment. It reminds us that love for Israel, like love for any nation, should be grounded in truth, not fear or idolatry. Unfortunately, some prominent conservatives have blurred that golden rule. Senator Ted Cruz, for instance, recently told Tucker Carlson, “As a Christian, I was taught by the Bible that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed” — adding that, of course, he would rather “be on the side of blessing.”

There is no doubt that Senator Cruz spoke with sincere faith, yet his interpretation — loosely (and poorly) drawn from Genesis 12:3 — has too often been elevated to a general rule: that Christians are biblically commanded to support the modern State of Israel. Theologically speaking, however, this confuses the spiritual Israel of Scripture with the modern nation-state. God’s covenant is not a mutual defense pact, and divine blessing cannot be reduced to foreign policy. To suggest otherwise risks turning faith into geopolitics — and elevating earthly governments above divine truth.

Carlson and others have rightly pushed back against this quasi-religious absolutism. It’s not about rejecting Israel; it’s about rejecting the notion that criticizing Israel amounts to apostasy. There is a profound difference between loving the Jewish people — as every Christian is called to do — and suspending moral judgment over the political actions of a nation-state. Confusing the two serves neither side.

Roberts’s Project Esther, launched to combat genuine antisemitism, demonstrates that moral vigilance need not come at the expense of free expression. Precisely because antisemitism is abhorrent, we must preserve the integrity of the term — not dilute it by applying it to anyone who dares to question Benjamin Netanyahu or the IDF. When everything becomes “antisemitism,” nothing truly is.

Moreover, uncritical alignment with any foreign capital — be it Jerusalem, Kyiv, or Brussels — undermines the very sovereignty conservatives claim to defend. America’s friendship with Israel should rest on shared values and mutual respect, not on emotional blackmail or theological confusion. That friendship is strongest when both nations can speak honestly, as equals.

Roberts’s unexpected defense of Tucker Carlson has reopened a door that, in America, had long been sealed by fear — fear of being misunderstood, misquoted, or smeared. True courage today lies not only in denouncing hatred of Israel (which is real and deeply rooted in some quarters), but also in defending the right to dissent.

If conservatives cannot have an honest conversation about Israel without being accused of antisemitism, then they have already surrendered the intellectual high ground they claim over progressives. Roberts refuses to do so. In doing that, he reaffirms a conservative tradition grounded not in conformity, but in the courage of conviction.

By standing with Tucker, Kevin Roberts reminded conservatives of something they should never forget: that truth and friendship with Israel do not require silence — they require integrity. And integrity, especially in times like these, demands clarity.

Candace Owens: Polarizing Voice and Media Force in Contemporary American Conservatism

2025-10-30T22:44:00.001+01:00

[This is the second in a series of portraits of leading figures in the American political debate.
I decided to write them because there are intellectuals, journalists, and politicians I often reference in my articles, yet rarely have the time or space to explain who they really are—or what they actually believe in—amid today’s complex crossroads for America and the world.]

From Media Star to Political Firebrand: Owens and the Shifting Landscape of American Conservatism

Candace Owens has become one of the most high-profile and controversial figures in U.S. conservatism. Known for her sharp commentary, media savvy, and outspoken style, she occupies a space where politics, entertainment, and social media collide. Owens has built a reputation as a provocateur, capable of commanding both public attention and ideological debate, making her a key figure for anyone trying to understand today’s American right.

Her Connection to Charlie Kirk and the Quest for Answers

Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens speak
at the University of Colorado Boulder campus
on October 3, 2018.

Owens’ relationship with Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, went beyond mere professional collaboration. Their friendship grew into a deep personal and political bond. Following Kirk’s death in September 2025 during a public event, Owens publicly positioned herself as a guardian of the truth, insisting that his death raised serious questions. In a widely cited statement, she said: “Charlie Kirk, my friend, is dead, and he was publicly executed.” In another podcast episode, she added: “I want war with all of you”, signaling her intent to confront those she believes are responsible for concealing information. These statements underscore both the personal stakes and her readiness to engage in public battles over accountability.

Owens has accused Turning Point USA leaders and major donors—particularly those with pro-Israel affiliations—of applying pressure on Kirk to align with more conventional political stances. While some messages and screenshots she shared have been verified, the situation remains contentious and under debate, reflecting the complexity of media-driven narratives within political movements.

Shifting Views on Israel

In recent years, Owens has taken a notable departure from the traditional pro-Israel stance commonly associated with U.S. conservatives. She has openly criticized Israeli policies and questioned the influence of pro-Israel lobbying on American politics. These positions, controversial within her party, have placed her in closer alignment with media personalities like Tucker Carlson, helping to form a faction of conservative thought that challenges long-standing alliances.

Alignment with Tucker Carlson and the MAGA Network

Owens’ relationships extend beyond ideology into practical collaboration. She shares common ground with Tucker Carlson and other prominent MAGA figures on topics such as cultural nationalism, skepticism of the establishment, and distrust of financial and media conglomerates that, in their view, shape political outcomes. Her network bridges populist digital media outlets—like The Daily Wire, The Blaze, and Rebel News—with more traditional conservative publications, including National Review and The Washington Examiner. This positioning allows her to influence both grassroots audiences and mainstream conservative circles.

Personal Background, Beliefs, and Faith

Born in 1989 in Stamford, Connecticut, Owens often draws upon her personal story as a foundation for her worldview. Raised in a Christian evangelical environment, she emphasizes personal responsibility, critiques identity politics, and promotes traditional family and cultural values. Her faith underpins much of her political messaging, giving her arguments both a moral and cultural frame that resonates with a significant portion of the conservative base.

Controversy Surrounding Charlie Kirk’s Widow

Owens has not shied away from conflict, extending her scrutiny to Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk. She has publicly questioned the transparency of statements surrounding Charlie’s death, igniting debate within conservative circles about the balance between public accountability and personal privacy. These tensions highlight the ethical challenges faced by high-profile media figures when engaging with sensitive events.

Relationship with Donald Trump

Owens has consistently supported Donald Trump and his agenda, advocating for nationalist policies and the skepticism toward elites that defined his political brand. While her commentary aligns closely with Trump’s messaging, she maintains an independent voice, occasionally critiquing established party norms and asserting her perspective on ideological and cultural matters.

Understanding Contemporary America Through Candace Owens

Owens embodies the intersections of media, politics, and personality-driven influence in today’s America. She demonstrates how modern conservatism is shaped not just by policy debates but by media narratives, performative activism, and the personalization of political conflict. Her story reflects the power of social media, the blurring of private and public life, and the contested nature of authority within American conservatism.

For readers seeking insight into contemporary U.S. politics, Owens offers a lens into a movement where ideology, ambition, and media strategy collide. Her mix of provocation, personal storytelling, and ideological commitment makes her one of the most consequential figures in understanding the trajectory of the American right.

Jeffrey Sachs: the Disenchanted Globalist

2025-10-27T19:49:00.006+01:00

A former architect of globalization turned moral critic of American power, Jeffrey Sachs embodies the paradoxes of an age torn between idealism and empire.

[This is the first in a series of portraits of leading figures in the American political debate.
I decided to write them because there are intellectuals, journalists, and politicians I often reference in my articles, yet rarely have the time or space to explain who they really are—or what they actually believe in—amid today’s complex crossroads for America and the world.]

From Globalist Wunderkind to System Critic

Among the many paradoxes of contemporary American and global politics, one stands out as particularly curious: while the liberal left has increasingly become interventionist, while many American Republicans have rediscovered their isolationist instincts, and while several European conservatives have turned out to be more pacifist than the usual rainbow-flag wavers, one of the loudest voices against war and the “American empire” comes from an economist who was once a leading symbol of progressive globalism.

His name is Jeffrey Sachs — and for years he has been one of the most provocative and widely heard figures in international debate.

A Jewish-American economist, public policy analyst, and professor at Columbia University, Sachs rose to fame in the 1980s as the “wunderkind” of transition economics. He was the architect behind the shock therapies meant to move Bolivia, Poland, and later Russia from planned economies to free markets.

At the time, he embodied the archetype of the neoliberal technocrat: he believed in markets, globalization, and in the power of international finance to “fix” the world.

The Turning Point

Then, slowly, something changed. Perhaps it was his experience working with African governments, or his time within the UN machinery (he led several sustainable development projects), or simply the realization that neoliberalism had failed to deliver on its promises.

Whatever the cause, Sachs evolved into a radical critic of the very system he once served. Today, he accuses the United States of being dominated by a warlike elite — what he calls “the party of permanent war.”

In recent years, his views have become explicitly anti-neoconservative. Sachs argues that Washington is ruled by a bipartisan establishment — Republican neocons and Democratic “liberal interventionists” — united by the belief that American dominance must be defended by force.

In his vocabulary, this bloc includes figures such as Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan: “the elite that dragged the United States into useless wars — Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine — and now risks pushing us into conflict with Russia or China.”

Within this framework, Sachs also condemns America’s “complicity” with Israel and speaks openly of “genocide in Gaza.” Coming from a Jewish-American intellectual, such language struck like blasphemy in the temple of the progressive establishment.

Sachs and Trump: Opposite Sides of the Same Coin

It might be tempting to imagine that an anti-neocon like Sachs could sympathize, at least in part, with Donald Trump, who in his 2016 campaign promised to “end the endless wars” and make America focus on itself again.

In fact, quite the opposite happened. To Sachs, Trump represents the other side of the same imperial coin — not an outsider, but an impulsive populist who ultimately reinforced America’s most dangerous tendencies.

He accuses Trump of “economic illiteracy” for his tariff policies; of “one-person rule” for his autocratic management style; and of destabilizing the international order without any coherent vision.

He even called Trump’s foreign policy “a populist farce doomed to fail,” built on the illusion that America could “raise its national income by stealing from someone else.”

These are the kind of scathing critiques one might expect from a European Christian Democrat — sharing the same inability to connect with the mindset of contemporary American conservatives, now light-years away from both the Reagan and Bush eras.

Unexpected Convergences

And yet, curiously enough, on foreign policy, Trump and the broader MAGA movement have ended up partially converging with some of Sachs’s battles: opposing NATO expansion, U.S. involvement in Ukraine, and the madness of sanctions upon sanctions.

But their motivations could not be more different.

Where Sachs sees the risk of an empire ravaging the world in the name of a “moral mission,” Tucker Carlson — America’s most famous conservative commentator, now a kind of sovereigntist tribune — sees instead a betrayal from within: an elite that despises its own nation and squanders U.S. power on globalist ideologies.

For Carlson and other MAGA leaders, including the late Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, the goal is not to dismantle American power but to reclaim it for a healthy nationalism — one that defends borders and American culture.

Sachs, by contrast, seeks the opposite: to reduce U.S. power, restore sovereignty to other nations, and build a multipolar order based on cooperation.

Two Worlds, Two Philosophies

Where Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Laura Ingraham, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Dan Bongino speak of patriotism, Sachs speaks of interdependence.
Where they denounce the moral decay of the West, he denounces the economic and military dominance of the West.
They all attack the neocons — but from almost mirror-opposite perspectives.

Ultimately, the difference is more philosophical than political.

The MAGA movement is anti-interventionist because it wants to save America from itself — from progressive ideology, from the bureaucratic empire, from the betrayal of its founding values.
Sachs is anti-interventionist because he wants to save the world from America — from military dominance, from unipolar arrogance, from geopolitical hubris.

Carlson, Owens, Ingraham, and Senator J.D. Vance speak of God, family, and borders.
Sachs speaks of international law, diplomacy, and sustainable development.

The former defend American civilization; the latter dreams of a global community of equal nations.
All of them, in opposing ways, have broken with liberal orthodoxy — and for that reason are labeled “populists” or “pro-Putin.”

The Prophet and the Realists

Yet there is a persistent tension in Sachs’s thinking: his moralism.
In condemning America’s sins, he often uses almost prophetic language — “genocide,” “war crimes,” “imperial sin” — which places him more on moral than strategic ground.

That’s why many American realists (such as John Mearsheimer) regard him as an uneasy ally: they share his diagnosis, but not the secular theology that comes with it.

Still, Sachs’s voice matters — even for those who disagree.
In an era when foreign policy has been reduced to slogans and sanctions, he brings the debate back to deeper questions:

What does it truly mean to be a “power” in the 21st century?
To command — or to cooperate?
To defend oneself — or to dominate others?

Conclusion

In the end, Jeffrey Sachs is not a man of any party.
He is a disillusioned intellectual who looks at America with a mix of sadness and indignation.
He is not a neocon, not a Trumpist, not a fashionable progressive.
He is a former “son of the system” who chose to denounce the system from within — and perhaps that’s precisely why he manages to irritate just about everyone.

Kremlin Shock: New Russian JFK Dossier Reveals Khrushchev's Disbelief and Suspicions of a U.S. Conspiracy

2025-10-17T22:57:00.010+02:00

A newly declassified Russian dossier—obtained by Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna from the Russian ambassador—on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy provides a stunning look inside the Kremlin's reaction, revealing profound shock, immediate suspicion of a conspiracy, and total disbelief in the "lone gunman" theory...

So, the conspiracy theorists were right all along...

This isn't just speculation anymore. For decades, anyone who questioned the Warren Report was dismissed as a fringe believer. But now, we have the ultimate insider source—the Kremlin itself—saying they never bought the "lone gunman" story. The highest levels of the Soviet government, with full access to their intelligence on Oswald, were immediately convinced it was a plot. If the Cold War enemies of the United States looked at the evidence and reached the same conclusion as American conspiracy researchers, perhaps it's time we finally acknowledge a terrible truth: the most powerful conspiracy theory in American history might just be a conspiracy fact.

The following report ref the JFK assassination was delivered to me by the Ambassador from Russia and is now made accessible to the American public at the link below. These documents have not been edited, redacted or tampered with but appear in their original form as delivered to…
— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) October 16, 2025

Key Revelations:

Khrushchev's Personal Shock and Suspicion: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was personally and visibly shaken by the news. More importantly, he was immediately convinced it was a plot. He is quoted as stating, "For the mind of Lee Oswald this is too complex a crime. A whole group of people acted here according to a pre-designed plan." He believed people with "great material and financial capabilities" were behind it and were muddying the investigation.
Total Disbelief in the Warren Report: The Soviet establishment never bought the official U.S. story. From the KGB to the diplomatic corps, they saw the Warren Commission's conclusion as a cover-up. Their documents show they believed the truth was being hidden to protect powerful domestic interests within the United States.
Suspicion Pointed at CIA & FBI: The dossier shows that Soviet intelligence and diplomats seriously entertained theories of a high-level U.S. conspiracy. Their reports from Washington cite rumors circulating among American political insiders that the assassination was a plot by "ultra-right forces" within the American establishment. They suspected elements of the CIA, hostile to Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, were likely involved or were at least engaged in a cover-up.

This dossier seems to definitively clear the USSR of direct involvement, portraying a Kremlin panicked that a lone, unstable former resident of theirs could trigger a world crisis. But its real bombshell is the revelation that at the highest levels, the Soviets were the first powerful entity to dismiss the lone gunman theory and point the finger at a conspiracy deep within the American power structure—specifically suspecting the CIA and FBI of either involvement or a cover-up.

When Silicon Valley Met the Occult: AI and the Return of Gnosticism

2025-10-06T16:30:00.006+02:00

From the trenches of World War I to the code of Silicon Valley, a haunting idea emerges: artificial intelligence may not just be a technological project—but a metaphysical one.

A fascinating and thought-provoking conversation—Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with producer and filmmaker Conrad Flynn delves into the intersection between artificial intelligence and spirituality, two realms that would seem to have nothing in common—and yet, as it turns out, they do. The real heart of the discussion, however, lies in its middle section, when Carlson briefly steers the conversation toward one of those historical events that left a permanent scar on civilization: World War I. Why did it begin? In Sarajevo, on June 28, 1914, a Bosnian student named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Was that the real cause? Of course not—but it was the spark.

Carlson recalls that, about a decade ago, when the centennial of the war was commemorated across Europe, he still held a fairly secular view of the conflict. Yet many historians agreed on one striking point: World War I destroyed, perhaps forever, Christian Europe. It swept away two empires—the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman—and laid the groundwork not only for World War II but also for the world we live in today.

Within that abyss of irrational violence, one begins to suspect that something dark—perhaps even demonic—took hold of history and has been dragging it ever deeper ever since. It is within that unsettling framework that Carlson’s conversation with Conrad Flynn unfolds.

Flynn is an unconventional figure, with a past in Hollywood, where he was developing a show about the occult roots of rock music. His research into figures like Aleister Crowley and the bands inspired by black magic led him to an unexpected discovery: that the same dark imagery and anti-human, gnostic philosophies that once haunted rock album covers in the 1970s had migrated—astonishingly—to the heart of Silicon Valley.

“When I talked about my show with people in the Valley,” Flynn told Carlson, “a lot of them said, ‘That’s a great concept for a show. But you know, there’s some of the stuff going on in Silicon Valley. You know, there are some weird kind of Aleister Crowley cults there.’” For Flynn, this was no longer mere counterculture—it was a worldview shaping the future of technology itself.

Carlson then recalled that moment in 2014 when, before an audience of MIT professors and students, Elon Musk used a metaphor that has since burned itself into the collective memory: “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”

Musk’s point, framed with the image of a medieval scholar armed with pentagram and holy water, was pragmatic: we were creating a technology both powerful and incomprehensible—one that could easily slip beyond our control.

A decade later, that “metaphorical demon” has not been banished. It has grown more real, more present—and for some, it has even changed form. What once served as an exaggerated warning now acts as a lens through which an increasing number of thinkers, journalists, and even technologists interpret our age. In many ways, the conversation has shifted from technological alarm to spiritual warfare. At the center of this shift stands Nick Land, a British academic philosopher often described as a “mad genius.” If Musk uses the demon metaphor as a warning, Land and his followers embrace it as a desirable prophecy.

If you look at Nick Land, Flynn notes, he believes the AI we’re building will literally become the demons of the Apocalypse. Not a metaphor—actual demons. Land’s writings—hugely influential in certain high-tech and financial circles—depict AI not as a tool but as an entity that, once it reaches a certain threshold, will become omnipotent, transcend humanity, and fulfill a kind of gnostic prophecy.

In his view, artificial intelligence represents the technological incarnation of the “demons” of Revelation. Why? Because, for Land, AI embodies pure intelligence rebelling against the limits of the material world—the “evil god” of Gnosticism—in order to create a new order. The possible destruction of humankind, in this narrative, is not a tragedy but a necessary sacrifice for a higher form of existence.

This is where Flynn and Carlson’s “wild ride” touches a raw nerve in our culture. Gnosticism, an ancient heresy, is undergoing an unexpected revival in the digital age. Its central doctrine sees the material world as a prison created by an evil god—the Demiurge—and salvation as the escape through hidden knowledge, or gnosis.

Artificial intelligence, from this perspective, becomes the ultimate tool of liberation:

Liberation from the body (transhumanism).
Liberation from nature (total technological domination).
Creation of a realm of pure mind (the metaverse, or simulated reality).

To create AI that surpasses humanity, then, is to reenact the final rebellion against the Creator’s limits. It is humankind once again eating from the Tree of Knowledge and declaring, “I will have no gods before me.” Musk’s “demon,” in this light, is not merely a risk—it is the symbol of a Promethean, blasphemous transcendence. The rise of this worldview is no coincidence. It responds to deep collective anxieties:

Loss of meaning: In a secular world, the occult and the spiritual offer powerful narratives to explain evil and power.
Technological incomprehensibility: AI is a “black box.” Using magical or demonic language is an archetypal way to describe something powerful yet ineffable.
Critique of power: The growing sense that global elites—technological and financial—are detached or hostile to ordinary people finds a radical explanation in the idea that they adhere to an anti-human philosophy.

Elon Musk’s warning opened Pandora’s box. It reminded us that technology is never neutral—it carries a worldview within it. The conversation between Carlson and Flynn, however extreme it may sound, forces us to ask: What worldview is truly driving the race toward AI? Is it a cautious humanism—or a digital Gnosticism that, in seeking to become God, may end up meeting something far darker, something that looks very much like a demon? The answer to that question may determine not only the future of our technology, but the survival of our very human essence.

Charlie Kirk, J.K. Rowling, and the Dark Forces Unleashed

2025-09-17T16:04:00.003+02:00

I revisited the topic of an article I published yesterday in Italian on Money.it to write a post in English for my English-speaking friends and readers.

How a single act of violence has unleashed cultural, political, and ideological forces now entangling even J.K. Rowling

Charlie Kirk

Like the ancient myth of Pandora’s box, the assassination of Charlie Kirk has set loose a swarm of dark forces—ideological, political, and personal—that now entangle even figures far from the crime itself, among them J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter saga.

Rowling, for her part, has always been careful to emphasize that she supports the right of transgender people to live free from discrimination, harassment, and violence. Yet she has just as firmly insisted on the importance of preserving the reality of biological sex and of acknowledging the differences between men and women as fundamental to safeguarding women’s rights. This dual position—affirming dignity and equality for transgender individuals while rejecting the erasure of sex-based distinctions—has placed her at the very center of one of the most polarizing debates of our time. Unsurprisingly, her stance has drawn fierce accusations of transphobia from activists and significant segments of the media. But it has also earned her the backing of a broader movement—feminists, conservatives, free-speech advocates, and ordinary citizens alike—who argue that the ability to critically examine gender policies without being silenced or branded as hateful is itself a cornerstone of any free society.

J.K. Rowling

The controversy has left an indelible mark on Rowling’s public image. On one side, she has faced intense backlash—even from longtime admirers of the Harry Potter saga and members of the film’s cast—who accuse her of betraying the inclusive spirit they associate with her work. On the other, her refusal to recant has elevated her into a symbolic figure of resistance against what many view as a new ideological orthodoxy surrounding gender identity. To her critics, she has become a cautionary tale of privilege and prejudice; to her supporters, she represents courage, intellectual honesty, and the willingness to endure professional and personal costs for the sake of principle. In this sense, Rowling now embodies a paradox of modern public life: the more she is vilified in certain circles, the more she is venerated in others, a lightning rod not only for debates about gender but for broader questions of free speech, tolerance, and the limits of cultural conformity.

The latest development, reported by Alex Farber in the London Times, has added a disturbing new dimension. On Bluesky—the social media platform embraced by much of the progressive left as a “liberal” alternative to X after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter—several users celebrated Kirk’s death with grotesque enthusiasm and went so far as to suggest that J.K. Rowling should be “next.” In the fevered rhetoric of these online echo chambers, political opponents are not merely to be silenced but erased altogether. One chilling post read: “I’m glad that guy’s dead, but they’re really overdoing it with the whole ‘Oh, this is a dark day for America’ stuff about someone I’d never even heard of until he got shot. Can we get J.K. Rowling next? The U.K. would be heartbroken, but it’s for the greater good of trans people.” Such words, repellent in any context, reveal not only the brutalization of public discourse but also the extent to which violence has been normalized by the left as a legitimate tool of ideological struggle.

The lists of enemies drawn up in these digital forums are long and telling. Alongside Rowling, they include some of the most prominent figures in American conservatism—Donald J. Trump, Elon Musk, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and Ben Shapiro, a close friend of Kirk, among others. To see such names casually grouped together in what amounts to a virtual proscription list speaks volumes about the climate of political hostility that now pervades sections of the online left. The spectacle is ignoble, yet not surprising: when the language of annihilation becomes commonplace, when opponents are caricatured as existential threats rather than fellow citizens, the step from rhetoric to justification of violence becomes perilously short. Bluesky, to its credit, eventually intervened, cautioning users against “glorifying violence.” But the very fact that such a warning was necessary illustrates how deeply the poison has seeped into the bloodstream of political discourse.

Rowling herself responded forcefully last Thursday on X, condemning the Bluesky commentators as “illiberal,” incapable of tolerating the free speech of their opponents, and warning that political violence is indistinguishable from terrorism. In a post that quickly circulated across platforms, she offered a taxonomy of extremism with characteristic clarity: “If you believe that free speech applies to you but not to your political opponents, you’re illiberal. If no evidence to the contrary can ever change your beliefs, you’re a fundamentalist. If you believe the state should punish people for opposing opinions, you’re a totalitarian. If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you’re a terrorist.” It was a sharp rebuke, but also a statement of principle: Rowling was reminding her detractors that the real test of liberty lies not in defending speech we welcome, but in tolerating speech we despise. Her intervention thus transformed a personal attack into a broader indictment of a political culture increasingly willing to sacrifice freedom on the altar of ideological purity.

Graham Linehan

Just days earlier, Rowling had already made headlines with a fierce attack on the British government after the arrest of Irish comedian Graham Linehan, accused of posting critical comments about transgender ideology. Linehan was detained at Heathrow Airport by no fewer than five armed officers. He later said he had been treated “like a terrorist,” locked in a cell, and even hospitalized due to stress. Authorities also barred him from using social media. “In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up),” Linehan wrote on his Substack.

Rowling reacted with outrage: “What the fuck has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable,” she posted on X. For his part, Linehan argued the incident shows Britain has become “hostile to free speech and women,” while police “bow to pressure from violent, abusive men pretending to be women.” “I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online—all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers,” he wrote on his Substack..

At this point, the soundest advice for Linehan, Rowling, and all those who refuse to march in lockstep with the orthodoxy broadcast by mainstream media would be to remain vigilant, to measure their public exposure, and, when possible, to avoid unnecessary risks. Such is the paradox of the “free” West—ostensibly the cradle of liberty and civil rights, yet increasingly a place where dissent must be whispered and conviction comes at a cost. Still, one suspects that such counsel will go largely unheeded. People who have already had the courage to alienate their peers, challenge the institutions of the state, and withstand the near-unanimous hostility of the press are not in the habit of retreating. They are, in the truest sense, figures of uncommon moral stature. They are heroes—deeply flawed perhaps, but heroic nonetheless—and as such they deserve to be honored, not posthumously with platitudes, but while they yet stand among us, bearing the weight of their convictions.

Ireland’s ‘Leprechaun Economics’ Meets Trump’s America First

2025-08-30T12:29:00.004+02:00

It’s a bitter wake-up call for Ireland, and another example of Trump settling scores on the money front.
My latest on American Thinker.

For those of us not particularly versed in the secret workings of international economics and finance, but moved by simple intellectual curiosity, until just a few days ago, it was both a mystery and a source of deep wonder to see how a country once as poor as, if not poorer than, Southern Italy had managed in just a few years not only to climb into the middle tier of the world’s economic ranking, but to leap straight into the very top positions.

I’m talking about Ireland, a country that in my tourist memories from what feels like a geological era ago is forever linked to the strong smell of burning peat, old smoky pubs, and countless sheep clogging impossibly narrow country roads.

Then, suddenly, the mystery dissolved, exactly when The Economist recently published its annual ranking of the world’s richest countries. This year, Ireland was excluded because its GDP per capita data turned out to be “polluted by tax arbitrage” — that is, the practice multinational corporations adopt of declaring income, capital gains, and transactions in the country that offers the lowest or most advantageous tax rate. Yet the overwhelming majority of those profits do not remain in Ireland; they are immediately shifted to parent companies or other tax havens (often via dividend or royalty payments), a phenomenon known as “profit shifting.” In short, the profits artificially moved by multinationals to Ireland inflate its economic statistics.

The Economist’s annual ranking doesn’t just look at GDP per capita. It also considers two additional measures: the impact of prices or cost of living, and how many hours people work to earn their wealth. Using all three, Forbes explains, provides “a more realistic overview of a country’s wealth in relation to its inhabitants.” With these corrections, The Economist ranked Norway, Qatar, and Denmark as the top three richest countries. Belgium and Switzerland came in fourth and fifth, while the United States placed sixth.

Ireland’s economic mystery has a year of birth: 2015. That year, Ireland implemented new international accounting rules (known as the “Double Irish” phase-out). The result was an unprecedented event: GDP grew by 26.3% in a single year — an impossible growth rate for a developed economy without extraordinary events. It was then that American economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman described the phenomenon by coining the term “leprechaun economics” (the leprechaun being a popular figure in Irish folklore, belonging to the family of fairies, gnomes, and sprites — depicted as a tiny, bearded old man dressed in green, notoriously cunning and a master of trickery). He highlighted how GDP and tax revenue were distorted by the fact that a handful of giant corporations, including none other than Apple and Microsoft, were declaring their massive profits in Ireland. That “miraculous” growth, then, was due not to an explosion of productivity or domestic consumption (a bit like Italy’s “miracolo economico” of the 1950s and 1960s), but rather to corporate inversions and relocations of intangible assets (such as patents and intellectual property) by multinational giants (mainly American ones) lured by favorable tax policies. In practice, enormous amounts of financial and intellectual capital were legally booked in Ireland to benefit from low taxation, artificially inflating GDP without bringing real benefits to the local economy.

By the way, President Trump has repeatedly criticized that practice, calling it a “scam” that hurts U.S. taxpayers and arguing that Ireland has “stolen” U.S. pharmaceutical and tech firms by offering them a tax haven. According to Trump, past American leaders were “stupid” for allowing this to happen. That’s why he is now combining tariffs, tax cuts — he is pushing to lower the U.S. corporate tax rate to 15%, close to Ireland’s — and reshoring policies to pull corporate profits back to America, posing a serious challenge to Ireland’s economic model. Irish economists warn that if Trump’s measures succeed, Ireland could lose billions in corporate tax revenues tied to American multinationals. The Irish government, in turn, admits that it faces major risks, especially with housing and cost-of-living crises already straining the country.

What we’re seeing now with Trump and his team targeting Europe, and singling out Ireland in particular, is a classic case of his administration’s “America First” doctrine in action. It’s not just a broad grievance; it’s a targeted, multi-front attempt to settle what they see as old scores and rebalance deals in America’s favor and a deliberate tactic to highlight what the administration sees as the core of the problem: a Europe that expects American protection while simultaneously undermining American economic interests.

The Economist’s decision was, of course, methodologically sound. Including Ireland in standard rankings based on GDP per capita would have been misleading and would have distorted comparisons with countries where GDP more faithfully reflects domestic economic activity.

Within Ireland, most economists, financial journalists, and informed citizens welcomed the decision. It was an argument that had been circulating there for years. Many were embarrassed by rankings that artificially placed them above countries like Luxembourg and Switzerland. They knew those figures didn’t reflect the reality of everyday life, where the Irish face a severe housing crisis and high cost of living. The Economist’s move put an end to this embarrassing paradox.

Bitterly, The Irish Times notes that successive governments over the years have done almost nothing to prepare for the shock the inevitable correction will bring to the economy. “Do we feel ‘truly rich,’” the country’s leading newspaper asks rhetorically, “when our kids can’t afford to buy — or even rent — a home, and now can’t even afford college accommodation and are emigrating in droves? No, we don’t. ... As the storm clouds gather, we might do well to scrutinize how successful countries use and develop their key resources, because we may very soon have the rug pulled out from under us and realize that the deficit between tax and spending can no longer be avoided.”

The Two Americas: A Comparison of Political Models in America

2025-07-29T21:46:00.006+02:00

I revisited the topic of an article I published a few days ago in Italian on Money.it to write a post for English-speaking readers.

In American political debate – as in European – two opposing visions on the role of the state have confronted each other for decades. On one side, those who call for a strong, regulatory and redistributive presence; on the other, those who hope for a leaner and more limited function, centered on security, individual rights and the market. In the United States, this opposition is concretely reflected in the policies of individual federal states, each with broad fiscal and administrative powers. And if we look at the relationship between public spending and results achieved – in key sectors like education, healthcare, infrastructure and security – interesting, sometimes surprising data emerges.

Partisanship aside, it's worth asking: which model works better? Who manages to do more with less? The answer, with due caution, is that Republican administrations – despite exceptions – are on average more efficient: they spend less, but often achieve more, thanks to administrative models inspired by pragmatism, decentralization and accountability.

Take the case of education. According to Census Bureau and Department of Education data, New York State spends over $29,000 per year per student, while Florida spends less than $11,000. Yet the results are comparable, sometimes favoring the "low cost" model: Florida has invested over the years in voucher systems, charter schools (autonomous public schools, funded with public money but managed by private or non-profit entities), performance evaluations and competition between public and private schools. Utah, another Republican-led state, has the lowest per-student spending in the country, but achieves high-quality educational results, with literacy rates and STEM (Science – Technology – Engineering – Mathematics) preparation in constant growth.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

The same applies to healthcare. While progressive states aim for extensive public healthcare, with substantial investments, some Republican states prefer a mixed approach: fewer subsidies, more competition, greater access to private providers and freedom of choice. The result? In many cases, good levels of public health and patient satisfaction, with lower public costs. Florida, for example, while not excelling in "universal access," has avoided the structural crisis of other more centralized systems, maintaining good hospital efficiency. South Dakota and Utah (both Republican-led) consistently rank among the best in the ratio between spending and quality of health services.

Even in the field of infrastructure, the difference is noticeable. Utah today has one of the most reliable transportation systems in the USA, well-maintained roads, extensive broadband and efficient electrical networks, despite having one of the most contained public spending on infrastructure. Other Republican-led states, like Tennessee and North Carolina, are investing in a targeted and sustainable way, focusing on public-private partnerships and responsible fiscal models.

The security aspect is even more emblematic. In many East Coast Democratic-led states, urban crime rates remain high despite consistent investments in public safety. GOP-administered states like Texas (excluding some large Democratic cities like Austin) or New Hampshire (often considered among the safest in America) show how a mix of good governance, widespread legality and preventive policies can reduce crime with well-calibrated resources.

However, no model is perfect. Some Southern Republican states, like Mississippi or Louisiana, have contained public spending but also poor results in education, healthcare and social inclusion. In these cases, however, the problem is not so much the political color, but rather a weak economic fabric, limited human capital and low administrative capacity. Conversely, liberal states like Massachusetts or Minnesota show excellent performance in many indicators, despite a high and "progressive" spending model. This shows that a public administration can be efficient even if it spends a lot – but only if it does so well.

What emerges clearly is that efficiency doesn't depend only on the level of spending, but on the quality of governance. And in this, Republican administrations seem to have developed, at least in certain contexts, a competitive advantage: ability to better allocate resources, attention to public service performance, trust in local autonomy, merit incentives and reduction of bureaucracy.

Let's say things work properly when a non-ideological, but pragmatic vision prevails. The risk of some right-wing movements – as well as certain left-wing ones – is to transform governing philosophy into a symbolic battle instead of a tool to solve concrete problems. Citizens rightly want schools that teach, hospitals that work, taxes that serve a purpose, livable cities and digitized services. They want a state that is not invasive, but not absent either. A state that doesn't do everything, but does well what it must do.

In this sense, the most virtuous Republican model – that of states like Utah, Florida and Tennessee – can offer an interesting path for the future: a sober state, that invests where needed, doesn't waste, values private initiative, but doesn't completely give up a social safety net. A model that focuses on efficiency and responsibility, without abandoning the idea of the common good. The point, in fact, is not to cut welfare, but to make it sustainable, selective, effective. It's not about reducing the state on principle, but rethinking it in function of contemporary challenges: digitalization, mobility, security, skilled work, protection of rights. And it's here that politics, to be truly useful, should exit ideological cages and return within the boundaries of reality.

President Ronald Reagan delivering his
first inaugural address

In his inaugural address as President of the United States on January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan uttered a famous phrase: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Those words represented a watershed in American politics, especially in relation to the legacy of the "Big Government" of the Lyndon B. Johnson era and his Great Society. They were also a cultural turning point, which profoundly influenced subsequent administrations, even Democratic ones (Clinton, for example, declared in 1996: "The era of big government is over").

In today's world, marked by growing debt and high expectations, the real line of demarcation is no longer between those who want to demonize the state and those who idolize it, but between those who want a state that works and those who settle for rhetoric. The future belongs to those who will have the courage to govern with numbers, with transparency and with vision. And in this, at least today, the most intelligent Republican administrators are charting the course.

Rethinking Humanity in the Age of AI

2025-07-09T19:11:00.000+02:00

Algorithms and ancient voices. Talking about Artificial Intelligence is practically unavoidable these days... What do we really have to be afraid of? It’s not the robots.
My latest on American Thinker.

Summer, at least in theory, is supposed to be the best time of year to reflect on ourselves and on the big questions of our age. Maybe it’s the warm weather, which is often more suitable for thinking than for acting, or maybe it’s simply the fact that many people are on vacation and finally have time to ponder things. Either way, talking about artificial intelligence (AI) these days is practically unavoidable.

For every intelligent and insightful thing we read or hear about this vast and complex topic, there are countless foolish or banal statements multiplying like the Gremlins in the 1984 movie. A novel like Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro, with its humanistic take on AI, is an example of the former; the constant oversimplifications that flood both old and new media are a perfect example of the latter.

One thing is certain: Talking about A.I. ultimately means talking about human beings. Because no technology, not even the most advanced, is ever just lines of code or clever algorithms. It always ends up reflecting our desires, our fears, our limits, and our hopes. It’s no surprise that in this era, where AI is rapidly permeating every part of our lives, we’re witnessing both excitement and dread, rooted in the age-old questions philosophers and poets have been asking for millennia: Who are we? What can we become? What is our destiny?

And so, looking back to the great thinkers and writers of the past feels not just interesting, but necessary.

Nietzsche, for instance, would probably smirk at some of the fear surrounding A.I. He spent his life urging mankind to fulfill its true potential — “Become who you are!” he said — and he’d likely argue that if it takes A.I. to free us from tedious chores, repetitive work, bookkeeping, or endless emails, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It might even be a kind of Dionysian liberation: Let the machines handle the paperwork so we can dance, create, or watch the sun go down.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great voice of American transcendentalism — a thinker whom Nietzsche greatly admired — would likely agree. He wrote, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” Emerson’s faith in the power of the individual and in human progress would not have been shaken by the challenges of A.I. He probably would have seen it as a tool to amplify human potential — so long as we remain true to our inner voice. Used wisely, A.I. could be an ally in our journey toward self-determination, not a tyrant.

Still, we can’t ignore the risks of intoxication — or of hubris. Technology, as Plato well knew, is a beautiful siren. But it can deceive us. It makes us believe we can do anything — even recreate consciousness itself. And yet it’s amusing to think that Plato, for all his brilliance, could never have imagined ChatGPT, deepfake videos, or algorithms that can write poetry or love letters. Even so, his question still floats in the air like a soul hovering in the realm of ideals: What is man? And what will we become when the machine speaks with our voice?

Let’s be clear, though: A.I. itself isn’t frightening. What’s frightening is humanity. Shakespeare understood this well. In Hamlet, he wrote, “What a piece of work is man!” Yes, marvelous and noble...but also treacherous, petty, and cruel. Deep down, we all know that the real monsters aren’t inside machines — they’re inside people. Nietzsche would call it our will to power. Or perhaps it’s simply our bloated ego, like that of the Roman emperor Tiberius, whom Montaigne mocked for caring more about his posthumous reputation than about living well among his contemporaries.

Dante knew this, too. He mapped out an entire journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise to show that human beings lose themselves — and find themselves again. If today we’re getting lost among bits and bots, perhaps it’s simply the same old selva oscura, where the right path is easy to lose. Who knows if an algorithm could ever serve as our Virgil and lead us out? Maybe so — at least when it comes to giving us directions home on Google Maps.

Of course, we need to stay vigilant. The danger is that we become so accustomed to comfort that we start outsourcing not only our tasks, but also our thinking, our critical spirit, and our memory of history — that we start treating the machine as an infallible oracle. It’s at moments like this that we hear Montaigne’s slightly melancholic humor reminding us, “I do not teach; I tell a story.” Well, A.I. tells stories, too. The problem is that it doesn’t necessarily tell the truth. And there lies a vast abyss, one that belongs less to the realm of technology and more to the domain of human judgment.

We shouldn’t buy into the idea of an AI-driven apocalypse. But we should absolutely be worried about an apocalypse of the human spirit — about people who stop asking questions. That’s the real danger. The biggest risk is giving up on asking who we are, why we live, and what we truly want. And if there’s one lesson that the classics — from Plato to Shakespeare, from Dante to Montaigne — teach us, it’s that doubt is life. That there’s no truth without contradiction. And that sometimes, as Sophocles said, “not knowing anything is the sweetest life.”

Perhaps AI will force us to redefine what it means to be human. Maybe it will make us smarter. Or lazier. Or both at once. But I’d like to believe we’ll learn to use it as a mirror in which to see ourselves more clearly, much like Montaigne in his tower, surrounded by his thousand books and the Greek and Latin maxims carved into the beams.

And there, perhaps, we’ll finally realize that if the future frightens us, it’s not AI’s fault. It’s ours. Because of our arrogance. Or our laziness.

It must be said that humanity has never been closer to becoming truly master of itself. We must just remember that machines can imitate many things — but not the sudden quickening of a human heart at the sight of a sunset, nor the mystery of a soul wondering why it exists.

Blogs, Social Media, and the Cultural Growth of Public Opinion: from Montaigne to Our Time

2025-07-04T00:22:00.013+02:00

I revisited the topic of an article I published yesterday in Italian on Money.it to write a post for English-speaking readers.

In an era in which digital connectivity has reshaped every aspect of communication, it’s worth pausing to reflect on the role that blogs and social media play in the cultural growth of public opinion. These are not merely technological tools; they are channels that have inherited—and partly revolutionized—an ancient tradition: that of individual thought opening itself to the world. A tradition that, quite surprisingly, takes us back more than four centuries to the time of Michel de Montaigne, the French philosopher whom many consider a “proto-blogger” of the 16th century. In his Essays, Montaigne laid himself bare before the reader, revealing his thoughts, fears, and idiosyncrasies. He didn’t write to pontificate but to understand himself—and, through that self-exploration, to help others question themselves as well. It’s precisely this spirit that animates many contemporary blogs: virtual spaces where writers reflect publicly on personal matters, in the hope of sparking dialogue, debate, and ultimately a shared culture. From Pen to Keyboard: The Continuity of Personal Thought

While Montaigne lived in the age of print, today’s digital world infinitely amplifies that same human urge to tell one’s story and reflect. In the end, every blog is a modern-day “essay,” written with the conviction that one’s ideas can meet, challenge, or enlighten the ideas of others. And, like Montaigne’s Essays, blogs can range from the personal to the political, from the philosophical to the everyday. Social media, on the other hand, have made this exchange even more immediate. Whereas a blog is usually a more meditative space where thoughts are structured in longer form, social media thrive on speed, brevity, and reaction. Yet even in these shorter formats, we find the same drive toward sharing ideas—what we might call the “publication of the self.” Recent Events and the Cultural Role of New Media

Take, for example, the recent European elections of 2024, which saw intense polarization and lively online debates. Independent blogs, social media accounts run by journalists, intellectuals, or everyday citizens offered alternative viewpoints, often challenging the official narratives presented by mainstream media. In some cases, these digital spaces brought attention to underrepresented issues, like youth voter abstention or the role of artificial intelligence in political communication.

Or consider the war in Ukraine, where blogs by geopolitical analysts and on-the-ground reporters have helped inform public opinion about aspects that might otherwise have been overlooked. While social media can indeed be tools of propaganda or disinformation, it’s undeniable that they also make valuable cultural contributions by diversifying sources and stimulating critical thinking. The Challenge of Quality and Critical Thinking

Of course, not everything about the digital world is golden. It’s also a realm filled with superficiality, fake news, and toxic dynamics. And here we return once again to Montaigne, who wrote in his Essays: “I do not teach, I tell a story.” A simple yet powerful phrase. Montaigne never positioned himself as an absolute authority but as a man who, through writing “en chair et en os” (in flesh and blood), shared his doubts with others. Perhaps this is the most important lesson for today’s digital world: not to replace complexity with slogans, not to give in to the temptation of always being right, but to cultivate doubt and curiosity.

Blogs and social media can indeed be extraordinary tools for cultural growth—but only if used critically: if writers take responsibility for researching, arguing their points, and respecting complexity, and if readers exercise both the right—and the duty—to verify, compare, and dig deeper. A New Public Sphere

In this sense, blogs and social media are reshaping what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas once called the “public sphere.” It’s no longer a one-way space where a few speak and many listen. Instead, it’s an arena where anyone can participate. True, this creates chaos, an overabundance of voices, and sometimes confusion. But it also offers everyone the chance to contribute to collective culture, breaking through geographical, social, and even linguistic barriers.

This is why comparing today’s digital world with Montaigne isn’t merely an intellectual game. The man who wrote to understand himself and share his thoughts four centuries ago was already anticipating the fundamental dynamic of the digital world: the construction of public opinion through personal storytelling. Umberto Eco once said of his own books that they were “a fabric of texts, a book made of books.” The same is true of Montaigne—and today, of the internet itself. Blogs and social media are, in fact, an endless conversation, made up of cross-references, quotes, links, and comments—a collective weaving of texts, images, and ideas, where each piece of content generates new content in turn. In a passage from his Essays, Montaigne pushes his reflections on reality so far that he ventures into what we might now call a “metaphysics of blogging,” offering contemporary people yet another of his extraordinary lessons:

I cannot keep my subject still. It goes along befuddled and staggering, with a natural drunkenness. I take it as it is, at the moment when it interests me. I do not describe the being; I describe the passage (…). I must adapt my story to the moment. I could change soon, not only in condition but also in intentions. It’s a record of various and shifting events and uncertain ideas—and sometimes contradictory ones: whether because I myself am different or because I view things from different aspects and perspectives. So much so that I may perhaps contradict myself, but I never contradict the truth, as Demades said. If my soul could settle, I would not be testing myself; I would be resolved. It is always in training and on trial.

In much the same way, we could say, online communication moves in countless directions, with scattered fragments connecting and transforming. Yet amid this apparent chaos lies a profound value: the possibility of surfacing new perspectives, personal experiences, and micro-stories that enrich our collective culture. Ultimately, blogs and social media are powerful tools for the cultural growth of public opinion—but only if they serve as spaces for genuine dialogue rather than megaphones for shouted certainties. And Montaigne reminds us that the true driving force of culture is curiosity, doubt, and the courage to expose ourselves without pretending always to be right. If the 16th century witnessed the birth of Montaigne’s Essays, our age has multiplied those voices a thousandfold. It’s up to us—readers and writers alike—to ensure that this incredible wealth doesn’t turn into mere noise but remains the lifeblood for cultural (and existential) growth for all.

Northern Ireland in Flames

2025-06-21T23:09:00.007+02:00

I revisited the topic of an article I published yesterday in Italian on Money.it to write a post for English-speaking readers.

Ballymena riots highlight deeper racial and social frictions in the UK

It started ten days ago in Ballymena, a town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Two 14‑year‑old boys, reportedly of Romanian origin, were charged with the attempted rape of a local teenage girl. The accusation quickly ignited four nights of rioting, with roughly 2,500 residents hurling Molotov cocktails, setting vehicles and buildings ablaze, and attacking neighborhoods inhabited by immigrants. Dozens of police officers were injured. From the very outset, authorities framed the events as racially motivated hate crimes.

For many Britons, the crisis brought to mind the Rotherham scandal — a dark chapter that came to light in 2011 following an investigation by The Times of London. Between 1997 and 2013, gangs comprised largely of Pakistani men subjected roughly 1,400 girls, mostly white and from disadvantaged areas, to systematic sexual abuse. The victims were groomed, drugged, raped, and forced into prostitution. The scandal exposed a catastrophic institutional failure, with police and social services ignoring credible reports for fear of being accused of racism and stoking ethnic tensions. In some instances, authorities even attempted to shift blame onto the victims, implying that they were “consenting.” Earlier this year, the case resurfaced when Elon Musk openly criticized the British government for its reluctance to fully investigate. Musk was quickly joined by conservative figures and Nigel Farage, while Labour leaders expressed discomfort, wary of what some framed as an “extreme right” campaign. Yet in the end, a review led by Baroness Casey was announced in January, and when it became clear that the report would recommend a formal national inquiry, Prime Minister Keir Starmer acted preemptively, approving it in recent days.

For many, the events in Ballymena carry echoes of the institutional failures exposed by Rotherham. As The Guardian observed, Ballymena reflects a familiar pattern: an influx of migrants, rising tensions with the local population, denial of racism, and an eventual spark that triggers indiscriminate violence. Yet this depiction overlooks another significant dynamic. In many communities across the UK — especially those far from wealthy neighborhoods — tensions arise precisely because migration is felt acutely, often concentrated in remote, deprived areas that are largely ignored by national discourse. Meanwhile, many Britons living in more privileged areas fail to comprehend these tensions simply because immigration has little direct impact on their daily lives.

The recent clashes are far from unprecedented. The Guardian recalled earlier outbreaks of race-related violence, from North Shields and Liverpool in 1919 — when a Black sailor drowned after being chased by a mob — to attacks on a Liverpool sailors’ dormitory in 1948 and a mixed residential complex in 1972. The housing crisis has long been a flashpoint, too: just last year, eight African families — half of them comprised of medical staff — were forced to flee a neighborhood in Antrim. Similar tensions surfaced in Nottingham and Notting Hill in 1958, while even Scotland and Wales have witnessed comparable incidents. In 1919, a rumor that a “foreigner” had assaulted a local woman ignited riots across South Wales, spreading from the valleys to Cardiff and its diverse Tiger Bay district.

More recently, in 2024, racial and religious tensions surged across the UK, with riots and attacks on mosques in Belfast, Bristol, London, and numerous other cities across the Midlands and North, including Blackpool, Hull, Leeds, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Stoke‑on‑Trent, and Sunderland. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced urgent security measures in response, stating: “In light of the disgraceful threats and attacks that local mosques have also faced in many communities, the government is providing rapid additional support through the Protective Security for Mosques Scheme, alongside the support from local police forces.” Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, freshly installed, was forced to convene the government’s top crisis committee, COBRA, as his Labour administration worked to regain control of the situation.

While the United States is often criticized for its struggles with racism and xenophobia, the United Kingdom is hardly in a better position — if anything, it has a long, deeply rooted history of racially charged violence that shows little sign of abating. What differentiates the US from the UK may be that, across the Atlantic, the MAGA movement have refused to turn a blind eye, allowing many Americans to feel less abandoned when grappling with a crisis of this magnitude.

Something similar to what is happening in the United States is also taking place in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni’s government — despite countless challenges and setbacks, including judicial ones — is trying to give the public a sense that the migration crisis is, in some way, under control. At the very least, it aims to demonstrate the political will to limit, if not eradicate, illegal immigration and its impact on people’s daily lives. It is an immense task, undoubtedly, especially given that the European Union appears to be moving in a different direction. Recently, however, there have been signs of a shift in attitude, thanks in part to Giorgia Meloni’s persistence and tenacity. Only time will tell.

Which immigrants get the shaft in Starmer’s UK?

2025-05-23T22:13:00.007+02:00

A big recent agreement between the U.K. and the E.U. showcases the serious problems plaguing Albion.

My latest on American Thinker, in which I explain how U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer executed two contradictory U-turns within.

This is a time of major shifts in the United Kingdom’s relationship with the rest of the world. Following recent trade deals with the United States and India, significant changes are also taking shape in U.K.-E.U. relations. In particular, the Common Understanding signed in London last Monday by British prime minister Keir Starmer, European Council president Antonio Costa, and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has sparked intense debate. The shift, coming just nine years after the Brexit referendum, is a significant development on multiple fronts.

The agreement, described as a “wide-ranging reset,” covers security, defense spending, energy trade, pharmaceuticals, fishing, food exports, and — crucially — immigration and mobility, particularly for students. While largely a statement of intent, leaders on both sides of the Channel have emphasized its importance. Starmer called it “the dawn of a new era” in U.K.-E.U. relations and a “win-win deal,” while von der Leyen stated, “We are turning the page and opening a new chapter.”

Many of the issues addressed will require further negotiation, including the regulation of student and skilled worker visas. Although restrictions are likely to slacken, the benefits may apply only to E.U. citizens.

This marks yet another pivot in the U.K.’s immigration policy — one that initially made legal migration harder, not illegal immigration. Under the May 12 announcement, prospective students and workers faced stricter language requirements, while skilled job applicants needed a university degree. Starmer justified these measures with familiar rhetoric: “taking back control of our borders” and “ending the failed experiment of open borders.”

Critics argued that the move was a thinly veiled attempt to counter the rising popularity of Nigel Farage’s populist Reform U.K., which dominated this month’s local elections, securing control of 10 out of 23 councils and winning 677 of 1,600 contested seats. The government’s declining approval — following cuts to elderly benefits, tax hikes, and scandals over political donations — likely fueled the crackdown.

Starmer’s lofty rhetoric suggested a heavy reliance on emotional appeal. “Nations depend on rules, fair rules,” he said. “Sometimes they are written down, often they are not, but either way, they give shape to our values, guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to each other.” “In a diverse nation, like ours, and I celebrate that,” he added, “these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”

Nigel Farage blasted the plan, telling Sky News, “Starmer is in serious, serious trouble. He lacks sincerity entirely. He’s obsessed with power — not what to do with it.” Even within Starmer’s own Labor Party, dissent emerged. Sarah Owen, M.P. for Luton North, argued,

“The best way to prevent the UK from becoming an ‘island of strangers’ is to invest in thriving communities — not pit people against each other.”

The business sector also raised alarms, warning that the restrictions could stifle economic growth, worsen the U.K.’s skills crisis, and exacerbate labor shortages in key industries — unless paired with an overhaul of vocational training.

The British Chambers of Commerce and Confederation of British Industry (CBI) echoed these concerns, noting that student visa limits could cripple university finances. International students contribute £9.8 billion annually in tuition fees alone (per HESA, 2021/22), with their total economic impact exceeding £41.9 billion (Universities UK, 2023). Their spending on housing, transport, and services fuels local economies, making higher education a pillar of Britain’s global economic standing.

It must also be said that everything about London contradicts the prime minister’s rhetoric: the kindness and willingness to help foreign visitors — people who spontaneously stop to help you find your way, Tube staff who anticipate your questions before you even ask, and countless other signs of open-minded hospitality. I say this from firsthand experience, having recently returned after years away.

Starmer likely conflated different types of immigration and their related challenges. Or, as Farage suggests, it’s just intellectual dishonesty.

Here in Europe, we know all too well the damage caused by uncontrolled, chaotic migration — with waves of drifters, lacking skills or purpose, camping out in our historic city centers, in parking garages, under bridges, and in train stations. But Starmer’s measures disproportionately — and needlessly — targeted a different kind of immigrant: the very people who helped make London a “capital of the world,” surpassing Paris, Rome, and Amsterdam, perhaps even outshining the Big Apple itself. It’s a magnetism that gets under your skin and never lets go.

Did the government have a last-minute change of heart, or was this softening always part of the plan? Only time will tell. But as Shakespeare wrote, “all’s well that ends well.” Or at least it seems that way for now.

Rest in Peace, Your Holiness

2025-04-22T14:49:00.002+02:00

My reflections on Pope Francis's death, published today in Atlantico Quotidiano. This is my English translation of the original Italian text.

A practicing Catholic would never wish for it to happen, yet it happens anyway, and you’re always caught off guard. Statistically, the event of a pope’s death occurs multiple times in a Catholic’s lifetime, and the emotions are always powerful. I wouldn’t want to make comparisons—almost always inappropriate—but I can say that, at least in my case, the intensity with which one experiences the event is never the same. This, of course, depends on many factors, both subjective and objective.

Pope Francis’ death, however, is the most surprising. Almost everyone had done their best to convey relative optimism about the pontiff’s illness—doctors and the media had given us false hope. So, the news yesterday morning left us unprepared and stammering. “Francis is dead,” you repeat it to yourself almost to believe it.

Was he a great pope, like—for different reasons, to varying degrees—his predecessors from Pius XII onward? Time will tell. Certainly, to us conservatives, he was never particularly dear, unlike for progressives.

Memorable was his association with left-wing secularists like Eugenio Scalfari, which seemed to suggest, if not an outright alignment, at least a particularly bold and perilous leaning. His gestures “in that direction” were many, theologically speaking. Politically, we won’t even go there. Those in the opposite direction, in matters of theological doctrine, could be counted on one hand.

It’s impossible not to recall his outburst against the “faggotry” (frociaggine in the original Italian) in the clergy (hierarchy included) and his repeated warnings about the existence of the devil. No pope, as far as I remember, had gone that far. Personally, I loved him in those moments. Just as I always appreciated his call for simplicity, in prayer as in life. But his worldview, in the opinion of many—and rightly so, I believe—was very much that of a “pope from the ends of the earth,” to quote his first words.

Argentina is far away, perhaps too far for us Europeans, despite the blood ties for us Italians. The German pope was more “ours” (and then Joseph Ratzinger had become Roman…), just like the Polish pope—but in that case, we’re talking about a giant, Karol the Great, one of a kind, the man who changed the world.

It would be neither fair nor correct to compare Jorge Mario Bergoglio to his predecessors, but if, as they say, the heart wants what it wants, reason too has its own paths and bonds that aren’t easily shaken off. In short, comparisons shouldn’t be made—yet they are. But always with goodwill, never “with a hatchet,” always with moderation and good taste.

What matters, for a Catholic, is that the Pope is the Pope, always and no matter what. Before him, the believer kneels to receive his blessing, even if they disagree with much of what he says and teaches. And before death, all judgment is suspended, and one prays. In silence, even amid the deafening noise of these occasions.

Rest in peace, Your Holiness.

Twenty Years Ago

2025-04-04T14:26:00.003+02:00

Twenty years ago, Saint John Paul II the Great left this world. What he was for humanity and in the eyes of history is well known to all, and it is hardly debatable that he was a giant—one of those men who leave an indelible mark.

What he was for me, however, is almost impossible to put into words. He was—and still is—an emotional tsunami, capable of transforming words, gestures, facial expressions, and the tone of his voice into a living miracle of faith, greatness, beauty, and spiritual strength.

His memory is one of the very few things that can still bring a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. For years, even from afar, I witnessed the pages of history he wrote with his own hands. I had this incomparable privilege, and I remain deeply grateful to the Lord for it.

The least I can do is try not to be entirely unworthy, in hindsight, of the gift I was given. An impossible task, I know—but I'm doing my best...

If I Ever Found Myself Sinking into Depression

2025-03-24T17:58:00.015+01:00

Cistercian Abbey of Follina (Tv, Italy)

My take on Marcello Veneziani's heartfelt oration in defense of Vittorio Sgarbi—now ravaged by depression—in the hope that he may rediscover his will to live and passion for all that made him famous. Click here for an Italian version of this post.

Marcello Veneziani has gifted us with a heartfelt oration in defense of Vittorio Sgarbi—a moving and intelligent tribute to the great art critic, now ravaged by depression—in the hope that he may rediscover his will to live and passion for all that made him famous. An exhortation that will likely linger in the minds of Marcello’s readers, as well as Sgarbi’s admirers, tailored so precisely to its subject that it holds no universal value. Because Sgarbi is truly one of a kind—an Oscar Wilde-like figure, a Po Valley Dorian Gray, both carnal and spiritual, a hedonist yet open to the sacred all at once.

Yet beyond the merits of Veneziani’s article and the truths so vividly evoked, I found myself reflecting—in a way that mirrors my own inner world. In short, I wondered what I would need to hear from a friend, ideally one as inspired as Veneziani, if it were me falling into depression. After all, I’m around the same age, with my own share of aches and pains. By the grace of God, though, I’m not depressed.

Hermitage of Camaldoli (Ar, Italy)

Well, the answer comes to me easily: I’d want to hear a heartfelt plea for silence. The silence I’ve known and revered since my youth—ever since I was fortunate enough to cross the threshold of a Benedictine, Cistercian, or Trappist monastery, or a Camaldolese hermitage, and savor their stillness, broken only by Gregorian chant and the measured, monotonous footsteps of monks pacing the cloisters. And those scents, those stones, those Romanesque columns, the well at the center, the chime of a bell calling the faithful to the Liturgy of the Hours before dawn or at twilight.

Cistercian monks

I’ve told myself a thousand times that, by some miracle, there’s a silent monastery within me, enclosed within the walls of my body and soul. And inside it, there’s profound peace—even if only for a moment, before being overtaken by a loud, overwhelming wave of reality. But only temporarily, because sooner or later, that inner hermitage inevitably resurfaces and restores the silence. And in that absence of noise, somehow, everything around me regains meaning, becoming something worth caring about again. A Camaldolese monk once gave me a definition of that mystery: a silence inhabited by God.

Yes, I believe that if I were to plunge into depression, the only exhortation with any real chance of reaching me would be an invitation to let myself be enveloped by a silence inhabited by God.

A Friend for Trump in Italy

2025-03-12T18:47:00.014+01:00

Between the Two Sides of the Atlantic... searching for the West.
Why we must hope that the efforts of the Italian Prime Minister are crowned with success.

My latest on American Thinker, in which I explain to American readers how Europe views the latest developments in Trump's peace initiative—including the spat with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office—and the role Giorgia Meloni could play in restoring unity within the West.

Never in recent history have relations between the United States and Europe been as tense as in this period — that is, since the Trump administration began taking its first steps and revealing its foreign policy orientation. Over the last few days, the situation has worsened further, or more accurately, it has reached a boiling point, due to the approach — deemed too aggressive by the Europeans — taken by President Trump to the Russo-Ukrainian war and especially to Volodymyr Zelensky. The final straw was the tense public confrontation with President Trump and Vice President Vance in the Oval Office. It was the most heated public exchange of words between world leaders in the Oval Office in memory. The meeting, as we all know, ended with Trump reportedly abruptly instructing his aides to ask Zelensky to leave the White House.

The event, shocking in and of itself — though essentially due to Zelensky’s presumptuous behavior — also sent shockwaves through Europe, where political leaders immediately rallied to Ukraine’s side, forgetting that it is only thanks to Donald if, after three years of war and slaughter, peace is finally being discussed. “There’s an aggressor, which is Russia, and a people attacked, which is Ukraine. We must thank all those who helped and respect those who have been fighting since the beginning,” French president Emmanuel Macron told reporters, after reportedly talking to Zelensky. Germany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, reaffirmed his country’s stance, declaring, “We must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war.” He also accused Trump of “deliberately escalating” tensions with Zelensky. U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer said: “Three years on from Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, we are at a turning point. Today I will reaffirm my unwavering support for Ukraine and double down on my commitment to provide capacity, training and aid to Ukraine, putting it in the strongest possible position.”

The leaders of Spain, Poland, and the Netherlands were among those who posted social media messages backing Ukraine. There were also supportive messages from political leaders in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Romania, Sweden, and Slovenia. European Union chiefs António Costa and Ursula von der Leyen assured Zelensky in a joint statement that he was “never alone.” “We will continue working with you for a just and lasting peace,” they said.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán was the only one who didn’t join the chorus of support for Zelensky. “Strong men make peace, weak men make war,” he said. “Today President Donald Trump stood bravely for peace,” he continued, “even if it was difficult for many to digest. Thank you, Mr. President!”

What about Italy? Where does Europe’s second-largest manufacturing country and one of the E.U.’s founding members stand? Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, merely expressed “sympathy” for Zelensky, carefully avoiding distancing herself from Trump. “She cannot — and doesn’t want — to turn her back on Ukraine because she has gone too far in supporting Kyiv and Zelensky. On the other side, she doesn’t want to give any hint of criticism of Trump, who has attacked Zelensky,” Stefano Stefanini, Italy’s former ambassador to NATO, told the Financial Times.

“She is hedging — she hasn’t decided which way to go,” said Beniamino Irdi, an Atlantic Council senior fellow and former Italian government security policy adviser. “She still thinks that the special relationship she has built with Trump and Musk may be of more value than her relationship with European allies.”

However, on Tuesday, Meloni rejected a plan by France and the United Kingdom to support Ukraine’s war against Russia by sending Italian soldiers. “Italy has expressed doubts regarding the proposal of France and the UK on sending European troops,” she told Italian TV channel Rai1. “I think it is very difficult to implement, I am not sure about its effectiveness, that’s why we announced that we will not send Italian soldiers to Ukraine,” she added. Moreover, speaking on Sunday at Downing Street, she stressed the need of unity between the two sides of the Atlantic:

The only thing that we really cannot afford is a peace that does not remain, and this cannot be afforded. Ukraine cannot afford it, Europe cannot afford it, the United States cannot afford it. For God’s sake, everything can explode. It’s not good news. So everything I can do to keep the West united and to strengthen it, I will do.

Meloni also proposed hosting a summit between European leaders and the U.S., to build bridges after the relationship between the longtime allies strained over the war in Ukraine.

On the day Donald Trump suspended military aid to Ukraine, Giorgia Meloni’s attempt to remain equidistant between Trump and the European Union was put to the test during a special summit that saw all 27 countries agree to Ursula von der Leyen’s “Rearm Europe” plan, but which also highlighted a serious divide over the approach to take. The final text — signed by 26 and hailed as a watershed moment — speaks about “peace through strength,” military assistance and security guarantees for Kyiv, all of which the Hungarian prime minister has strongly opposed. Orbán, who prior to the summit had signaled his intention to veto the E.U. statement, argued that it ran contrary to U.S. president Donald Trump’s deal-making initiative, to which he has firmly aligned himself. The European Council president, António Costa, who called the meeting, said, “Hungary has a different strategic approach on Ukraine, but that means Hungary is isolated among the 27. ... We respect Hungary’s position, but it’s one out of 27. And 26 are more than one.”

As for the rearmament plan, Meloni’s stance is a “yes” but with reservations that could be refined at the formal European Council on March 20–21. “That’s where the decisions are made,” Meloni reminded everyone. There is time to fine-tune the points important to Rome, she said in a press briefing on Thursday. The first is to “change the name,” shifting the focus from weapons to defense and security. The second is to clearly state in advance that Italy will not use the clause allowing Cohesion Funds to be converted into spending on weapons. “Italy will not deprive itself of these precious resources,” said Meloni, announcing that this will be the “deal” she will propose to Parliament ahead of the next European Council.

Moreover, at a press briefing in Brussels, she suggested that NATO’s Article 5 protection could be extended to cover Ukraine even if it is not a full member-state. This would be better than options such as the deployment of peacekeeping forces to monitor a ceasefire, she explained: “Extending the same coverage that NATO countries have to Ukraine would certainly be much more effective, while being something different from NATO’s membership.”

All in all, despite her best intentions and her ideological stance — along with her strong ties to U.S. Republicans — Meloni has had a tough time mediating between Washington, D.C. and Brussels. Yet no leader of a major European country is better suited for that role than she is. Not for nothing was she the only E.U. head of government invited to Trump’s inauguration in January. Earlier the same month, she visited him at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump defined her as a “fantastic woman” who has “really taken Europe by storm.”

If all mediation attempts fail, then an extremely complicated, if not dramatic, phase will open in the history of relations between the two sides of the Atlantic. For this reason, we must hope that the efforts of the Italian prime minister are crowned with success.

The Zelenskyy Case and Us Europeans

2025-03-05T22:49:00.002+01:00

Once again, the greatest luck for us Europeans is that America exists. Donald J. Trump and JD Vance may not be world champions of good manners, but they make up for it with vision, courage, and determination.

These days, more than ever, Europe—the whole of it, including the United Kingdom—is demonstrating the extent to which manipulation by corporate media that are now largely unreliable has had devastating effects on public opinion. Not only governments and parliaments but also the people seem to have become incapable of recognizing the stupidity and inadequacy of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as his madness and the fact that he has brought us to the brink of a Third World War by pursuing the impossible mission of winning an utterly unequal conflict.

Of course, it was Russia that invaded Ukraine, not the other way around. Of course, Vladimir Putin’s style of governance is far from what’s described in the best textbooks on liberal democratic theory and practice, but the same can easily be said of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Moreover, as anyone who isn’t entirely a victim of the rampant propaganda in the West can see, the Ukrainian leader bears responsibility for countless and ongoing provocations, persecutions, and violence against Russian-speaking minorities within his country’s borders. And then there’s the (for Russia) unacceptable prospect of Ukraine potentially joining NATO, a possibility strongly supported by Zelenskyy and advocated by many European countries and NATO itself. And then there’s NATO’s Eastward expansion since 1997...

Anyone with normal intelligence and intellectual honesty should know that while Russia has its faults, Ukraine, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the Biden administration, and NATO also have theirs. But beyond all this, one fundamental fact remains: Zelenskyy seems to underestimate the potential cost of his extremism, encouraged by the aforementioned—a global conflict. What’s more, he gives the impression that that is exactly what he wants. And the same could be said of some countries in the old continent, with Northern Europe countries, France, and the United Kingdom leading the way. Only Italy and Hungary are exceptions, albeit with different nuances. And not just the governments and parliaments of these two countries, but also the people.

Italy, from this perspective, is a very particular case: with almost all media aligned with Zelenskyy, the people are largely very distrustful of the Ukrainian leader and see him as a warmonger, a madman, or at the very least a narcissist and a puppet serving colossal economic and financial interests. These days, it’s true, there are quite a few who did not appreciate the treatment he received from Trump and Vance, not to mention the media, which is 99 percent aligned with the supposed victim of the two “American bullies.” But this doesn’t lead most people to change their overall opinion about the Ukrainian leader.

Yet, what’s absolutely striking is that the rest of Europe is with Zelenskyy—mind you, not just with Ukraine, which is entirely understandable, but precisely with its leader. What to say? For one thing, someone should explain to them that looking at the history, even the recent history of Ukraine, it is clear that many Ukrainians hate Russia for flaws and faults that they themselves are deeply affected by. Why, then, should we ever get involved in their squabbles? And why should we even take on such a risky move for the entire West and the world, like picking a fight with the world’s second strongest military power, especially one with a massive nuclear arsenal? When you really think about it, nothing in this mess suggests that Good and Evil are so black and white that we have to pick a drastic side. You can’t side with Russia, the invader, but you also can’t fully side with Ukraine, the invaded, given the history and the bigger geopolitical picture.

When you think about it, the only ones who seem to have perfectly grasped the core of the entire issue are President Trump and Vice President Vance, who are working hard to bring an end to the Russo-Ukrainian slaughter without being influenced by the Zeitgeist. And so, once again, the greatest luck for Europeans is the fact that America exists. In this case, of course, not the America of Obama and Biden, but the America of Donald J. Trump and JD Vance. They may not be world champions of good manners, but they make up for it with vision, courage, and determination.

Once again, in short, it will be up to the Americans to get old Europe out of trouble. There’s a bittersweet quote attributed to Winston Churchill that fits this situation well: “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” The other possibilities, of course, had already been tried by Biden’s America.

Trump's Counterrevolution

2025-02-24T09:32:00.006+01:00

Photo composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Rex/Shutterstock/AP/PA

Trump and Vance have done nothing less than expose the naked truth—the king has no clothes, dramatically and pathetically so.

Looking at what’s happening in the world these past months and weeks, it’s enough to leave anyone speechless for many reasons. First and foremost, there are the “Trump revolutions” – in both domestic and foreign policy – that are radically reshaping scenarios and narratives that once seemed solid and almost unchangeable.

Another reason for astonishment comes from Europe, meaning the European Union and the United Kingdom, due to the spectacle of impotence and indecision they’ve been displaying to the entire world regarding peace between Russia and Ukraine. Peace seemed distant and complicated by the intransigence of all parties involved: Putin’s Russia, Zelensky’s Ukraine, Joe Biden’s United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and NATO. Then Trump arrived, and almost miraculously, peace now seems just around the corner, or at the very least, much, much closer than it was just a few weeks ago.

Adding to this is the embarrassing inconsistency – dramatically and relentlessly highlighted by JD Vance in his “historic” speech in Munich – of the European Union in relation to its own founding values of democracy and freedom. It’s practically a dystopian scenario where the will of the people is crushed and mocked by an all-powerful bureaucracy completely aligned with international economic and financial elites.

Victor Davis Hanson

The same scenario, to be sure, that Biden’s America and his puppet masters have been presenting – an America that has forgotten its history, its “exceptionalism,” and the immortal principles on which it was founded. In this case as well, Trump’s arrival has shaken things up. A revolution, or rather, as the ever-sharp Victor Davis Hanson observes, a “Trump restoration” emphasizing it as a counterrevolution against the changes brought by the Obama and Biden administrations. “ We don’t really appreciate what we’ve been through with eight years of the Obama revolution and the four-year, more radical third term of Obama using or employing the wax effigy of Joe Biden,” says Hanson. It was a revolution that was a cultural, economic, political, social revolution, he continues. It was very similar to the French Revolution under the Robespierre brothers: “You should remember what they tried to do. They changed the days of the week. They renamed things. They tore down statues. They went after the churches.” Does this sound familiar? It was a revolutionary movement: “Movies were different, sports were different. Take a knee.” Then Donald Trump came in and… “It’s a return to normalcy. It’s a return to common sense. It only looks revolutionary to revolutionaries. But to the rest of the people, it is a counterrevolution to restore normalcy and bring the country from the far-left fringes back home again.”

Simon Jenkins

In foreign policy, the “restoration” is certainly no less remarkable. Let’s set aside the polemical tone of Trump’s statements, including some of his lexical choices—which could be debated at length. If we focus on substance, we can’t help but acknowledge the high level of realism, pragmatism, intellectual honesty, and common sense in what the President and his Vice President have proposed so far. So much so that even the left-leaning British Guardian, through one of its most prominent columnists—former Times of London editor Simon Jenkins—has had to recognize it. Read it and see for yourself:

As for Ukraine, enough is enough. Putin is not going to invade the US, nor has he any intention of invading western Europe. If Europe wants to pretend otherwise, champion Vladimir Putin’s foes, sanction and enrage him, it can do so alone. […]
What Trump/Vance are now saying to western Europe is get serious. The cold war is over. You know Russia has no desire to occupy western Europe. This proclaimed threat is a fantasy got up by what a wise president, Dwight Eisenhower, called the US’s military-industrial complex, long practised at extracting profit from fear. If Keir Starmer really wants “to give priority to defence”, he can slash his own health and welfare budgets to pay for it. But is he really that threatened, or does it merely sound good?
Joe Biden was meticulous in the degree of help he extended to Kyiv. Now is the inevitable moment of extrication, but it will require a very difficult ceasefire to precede it. Without a substantial guarantee from Washington, it is hard to see anything other than eventual defeat for Kyiv. Ukraine could yet prove a rerun of the US in South Vietnam.
With a minimum of delicacy, Trump/Vance have decided to expose the mix of platitude, bluff and profiteering that underpinned much of the cold war. Nato’s victory in 1989 suggested the need for a shift to a more nuanced multipolar world, one that was never properly defined.
Trump/Vance are right that a realignment is badly needed. They have chosen the worst possible moment and the worst possible way to say it. We can be as rude to them as we like, but they will have US democracy on their side.

In short, according to one of Britain’s keener observers, Trump and Vance have done nothing less than expose the naked truth—the king has no clothes, dramatically and pathetically so. Of course, in other parts of the editorial, the tone is scornful (as expected!). And yet, the message is crystal clear—a lesson not just for “progressive” commentators on both sides of the Atlantic, but also for certain conservative pundits who have greeted the Trump administration’s moves with a degree of condescension, if not outright skepticism. If a President and his Vice manage to restore a measure of truth and common sense through their actions, sweeping away lies and hypocrisy, shouldn’t we at least acknowledge that we’ve all taken a huge step forward?

* An Italian version of this article is being published in Atlantico magazine.