The Economy

Today’s Morning Memo from Talking Points Memo.

Trump’s Corruption Is What’s Tanking the Economy

INSIDE: Eric Swalwell … Tony Gonzales … Pope Leo

David Kurtz Apr 14, 2026

WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 07: U.S. President Donald Trump (L) welcomes Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban as he arrives at the White House on November 07, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump and Orban are holding a bilateral lunch today and are expected to discuss trade and energy. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

It’s the Corruption, Stupid

In the aftermath of Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary, a typically shallow conventional wisdom has already emerged that unless President Trump gets the economy turned around, Republicans are going to have hell to pay in the 2026 and 2028 elections.

The NYT quotes the right-wing commentator Rod Dreher, who decamped to Hungary to work for an Orbán-funded think tank, as explaining the election result thusly: “When all boats aren’t rising, everybody looks at who’s on the yacht. In terms of MAGA, populism is great, but if you can’t deliver on the economy, none of it is going to matter.”

That is abundantly true and yet terribly misleading because the economic mess we’re in is entirely of Trump’s own doing. He’s not the usual American president held hostage to the vagaries and cycles of an economy largely beyond his control.

In historic fashion, Trump has torpedoed key pillars of the global economy by launching unprecedented trade wars and an unjustified elective war in the Middle East that has bottled up world oil supplies to such an extent that it threatens a recession. At home, he has dramatically throttled back the economic engine of immigration, targeted America’s world leading universities, and decimated its vibrant scientific and biomedical research base.

Except for the racist assault on immigrants, all of these moves are not driven by ideological imperatives but by corrupt impulses. The economic damage Trump has done was crafted purposely to create opportunities for self-enrichment for him and his allies. It generates its own currency which can be used to perpetuate his political power. What he dispenses he can take away.

The AP sums up the Trump family kleptocracy succinctly:

The family real estate business is undergoing the fastest overseas expansion since its founding a century ago, each deal potentially shaping everything from tariffs to military aid.

Led by Eric, and his brother, Donald Jr., the family business has expanded into cryptocurrencies with ventures that brought in billions of dollars but raised questions about whether some big investors received favorable treatment in return.

The brothers have also joined or invested in a number of companies that aim to do business with the government their father runs. Last month, they struck a deal giving them stakes worth millions in an armed drone maker seeking contracts with the Pentagon and with Gulf states under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.

It always sounds a bit earnest to deplore corruption, but one of the practical reasons for eschewing corruption is because at best it acts like an invisible tax on economic growth. At worst, it corrodes the economic engine to the point that it doesn’t properly function any longer. Before Trump, the United States was a world leader in combatting corporate and political corruption abroad for the unapologetically realpolitik reason that American companies could win on a level playing field. Under Trump II, the DOJ has explicitly stopped enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and we’re now in a grubby race to the bottom.

Any notion that Trump can get the economy “back on track” or dampen the economic shockwaves he has unleashed ignores the substance of what he’s done. Not only are Trump’s second term attacks on economic growth hard to reverse, let alone quickly, they’re deeply wired into who he is and what he’s about.

The Economic Warning Signs

The Middle East conflict is causing oil scarcity and rising prices that are contributing to significant “demand destruction” which could lead to the steepest drop-off in demand for oil since the COVID slowdown, the International Energy Agency is forecasting in its latest outlook.
The International Monetary Fund warns that the Middle East conflict will slow economic growth, fuel inflation and raises the possibility of a global recession.

Latest on the Middle East Conflict …

Israeli and Lebanese officials gathered in D.C. for rare direct talks — the first in a decade — as the Netanyahu government has seized on the wider conflict to advance Israel’s position on the ground in Lebanon.
Bitter irony alert: Talks between Iran and Trump administration are complicated by “the risk that any agreement that emerges may resemble the 2015 nuclear accord” that Trump abrogated in his first term, the NYT reports.
House Republicans have again abdicated their oversight roles by pushing off until at least May testimony originally scheduled for next week from senior Pentagon officials on the war in Iran.

Latest on the Middle East Conflict …

Israeli and Lebanese officials gathered in D.C. for rare direct talks — the first in a decade — as the Netanyahu government has seized on the wider conflict to advance Israel’s position on the ground in Lebanon.
Bitter irony alert: Talks between Iran and Trump administration are complicated by “the risk that any agreement that emerges may resemble the 2015 nuclear accord” that Trump abrogated in his first term, the NYT reports.
House Republicans have again abdicated their oversight roles by pushing off until at least May testimony originally scheduled for next week from senior Pentagon officials on the war in Iran.

Lawless Boat Strike Death Toll: 170

The U.S. attacked an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Eastern Pacific on Monday, bringing the campaign’s overall death toll to at least 170. In announcing the attack, the U.S. Southern Command introduced new Orwellian language: “Applying total systemic friction on the cartels.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is waging a pressure campaign against the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to squash a potential investigation into the boat strike campaign, The Intercept reports.

Must Read

TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports from Frisco, Texas, the country’s fastest growing city and a haven for South Asian immigrants, which far-right activists are seizing on as “proof” of the Great Replacement Theory.

Thread of the Day

IMPORTANT

Local authorities in St. Paul, Minnesota have launched a criminal investigation into the notorious ICE detention in January of Hmong American ChongLy “Scott” Thao. They’re investigating the warrantless raid on an American citizen’s home as a potential kidnapping, burglary, and false imprisonment.

Quote of the Day

Cheryl Kelley in The Hill:

American law is built on a simple rule: The government cannot get around legal limits by creating a new structure to do the same thing another way. The Posse Comitatus Act reflects that rule. It exists to prevent the federal government from using a large, armed force for general policing inside the U.S. But by tripling ICE’s size, giving it $75 billion in multi-year funding insulated from normal oversight, and deploying it far beyond immigration enforcement — from neighborhood operations to general airport security — the administration has achieved in practice what those restrictions were designed to prevent.

Swalwell and Gonzales Both Resign

In a rapid-fire combo of scandal-fueled resignations, Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Tony Gonzales (R-TX) both announced last evening that they would resign their seats — though neither gave a date certain for their departures. Depending on the exact timing, the resignations should be a wash and not effect majority control of the House.

Two Big Wins

In the lawsuit over the removal of the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument, the Trump administration has reversed course and confirmed in a new filing that it will reinstate the flag and not remove it again.
The American Library Association and a union of cultural workers have reached a settlement in their lawsuit against the Trump administration that saves the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, the NYT reports: “The Trump administration reaffirmed that it had reinstated all previously canceled grants, in keeping with a separate legal ruling last year, and reversed all staff reductions. It also promised not to take any further steps to reduce the agency.”

Good Read

Wired: Government Workers Say They’re Getting Inundated With Religion

Pope Making Everyone Look Dumb

The senior senator from Ohio:

Unintentional Edginess From CSPAN

(snip)

Some News From Bilderberg

Last year I posted about this, because of the consensus of attendees that they should prepare for war. Gee whiz they called that! A lot of people ignore this, because it’s all a buncha rich people who think they run the world. Well, it is a buncha rich people, and no doubt they do run some parts of the world, but all the wee little people all have free will, and they use it. Bilderberg prepares those with all the money for what appears will happen due to free will’s this, that, and the other thing. I don’t care who wore what, or even who was there, but the tiny things within the name-dropping matter; that tells us what they come away with as info for keeping their interests safe. So, in case I’m not the only one, here is this.

Secretive Bilderberg group just met – but who knows what global elite said?

Charlie Skelton

This year’s conference had plenty of newsworthy aspects, but it’s a mystery why the press fails to talk about it

The 72nd meeting of the Bilderberg group, the elite and secretive policy conference that is the longtime subject of endless conspiracy theories, was held at the weekend in Washington DC. A security cordon went up around the opulent Salamander hotel for the notoriously media-shy summit, which was packed as ever with prime ministers, military leaders, tech billionaires and the heads of giant investment companies.

Bilderberg, which since the 1950s has been the intellectual engine room of Nato, took place this year at a time of immense crisis and uncertainty for the alliance. In recent weeks, with Trump threatening at every turn to withdraw from the “paper tiger” of Nato, the “Trans-Atlantic Defence-Industrial Relationship” (as it’s called on the agenda) has reached a strained breaking point.

The head of Nato and Bilderberg regular Mark Rutte arrived at the conference fresh from a “very frank” conversation at the White House. But away from Trump’s bluster, and for all his rhetoric about abandoning Nato, there were no signs that the Americans are withdrawing from Bilderberg. Far from it – the Americans were there in force.

Wall Street titans, including the CEOs of KKR and Lazard, and the heads of huge corporations like Pfizer, met behind closed doors with a delegation of senior politicians close to the president. Big business lobbying in private is Bilderberg’s speciality, and this secretive mix of the private and public sectors fits perfectly with Trump’s brand of crony-capitalism.

Trump’s trusted secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, was attending, alongside his favourite trade guru, Robert Lighthizer. They were joined by Trump’s economic ally Jason Smith, the chair of the influential House ways and means committee, and his secretary of the army, Dan Driscoll, known as Trump’s “drone guy”.

It was no surprise with the conflict in Iran dominating the global news cycle that this year’s conference had a wartime flavour: with the “Future of Warfare” on the agenda, and a participant list including the four-star admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command. From the private sector there was a healthy contingent of military contractors and drone manufacturers, led by the Bilderberg insider Eric Schmidt, who’s the former head of Google and a keen evangelist for drone warfare.

Earlier this year, Schmidt told the FT that “future wars are going to be defined by unmanned weapons”, with “swarms of drones operated remotely and increasingly automated with AI targeting”. Thriving in this rich overlap between drones and AI are companies like Anduril Industries, whose co-founder and CEO, Brian Schimpf, is attending the Washington conference, alongside his collaborator in Trump’s “Golden Dome” project, Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp.

Karp is close to fellow billionaire tech-bro Peter Thiel, whose name, remarkably, is absent from this year’s participant list. Thiel has been a member of the group’s steering committee since 2008, and it was unheard of for him to miss a Bilderberg. Thiel’s reach runs deep into the Trump administration, and his influence within Bilderberg has also been growing through the years. Through the American Friends of Bilderberg Inc, he largely funds the lavish Washington-based meetings, alongside fellow steering committee member and billionaire Schmidt.

Thiel operates in the powerful liminal area between big finance and big intelligence – most notably, he set up Palantir with the help of funding from the CIA. This shady intersection was the birthplace of Bilderberg, and is baked into its history: the group was set up by British and American intelligence, and there’s always a handful of spy chiefs at the conference. This year, three intelligence directors were present, including the head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli. It is a fascinating backstage world which Thiel will now miss along with the strategising, the talent spotting and the big ideological discussions on “China” and “the west”.

It was no small thing for the arch-networker Thiel to skip Bilderberg. After all, Bilderberg is all about the chance to stay three steps ahead with all that lovely, off-the-books access to policymakers such as breakfast with the president of Finland, tea with the head of the IMF, and cocktails with the King of Holland.

Quite why the press fails so spectacularly to talk about Bilderberg, such a major annual summit with so many senior politicians present, is an enduring mystery. This year’s conference had plenty of newsworthy aspects, not least the presence of Vivian Motzfeldt, the former Greenlandic foreign minister and ex-speaker of the Inatsisartut (Greenland’s parliament).

Motzfeldt was the first Greenlander to appear at Bilderberg, and her presence was a clear signal to the Trump administration that Greenland has powerful allies within the Trans-Atlantic partnership. Motzfeldt no doubt contributed to the session on “Arctic Security”, and might even have been moved to quote the final sentence of Trump’s recent anti-NATO vent: “REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”

But as there was no press oversight for this conference, it is something that we will probably never know.

Some News From The Poor People’s Campaign:

Randy/blundersonword is correct about moral turpitude in the US’s government, though of course many believe that moral is as moral does for each person. What I consider moral can be immoral to others (though I never get why… Anyway.) This came in my email today, and maybe others wish to participate with this absolutely moral activism. Thanks for checking in!

Please join us on Tuesday, April 14 at 8:30AM ET for an emergency press conference convened by Bishop William J. Barber, II, DMin, President & Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy, and Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.

Bishop Barber will respond to President Trump’s widely circulated AI‑generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ, recent statements from Franklin Graham, and the Pope’s global call for renewed moral commitment to the poor and to pluralist democracy.

Bishop Barber will address the theological and democratic dangers of these developments and call faith leaders nationwide to resist the misuse of religion to sanctify policy violence and division.

You can watch the press conference on the Repairers of the Breach website here: https://breachrepairers.org/get-involved/live/

USA TODAY: A US citizen was detained in his underwear. ICE is being investigated

A US citizen was detained in his underwear. ICE is being investigated
Local officials are investigating after ICE detained U.S. citizen Scott Thao at his home and took him outside, barely clothed in freezing weather.

Read in USA TODAY: https://apple.news/AnQ1BhYOBSTqN-S2644o5dQ

Shared from Apple News

Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie

Maybe If I Change The Title?

Because this is important history that we really ought to review, because the leopards who were “only” going for certain parts of the population are going for all the population, these days.

“Not all Republicans are racist, but racists vote Republican, and they do it for racist reasons.”

Why the Deeply Racist Nixon-Reagan Tapes Are Only a Surprise to Those Not Paying Attention

While the explicit nature of the “monkey” and “cannibal” slurs is jarring, it sits within a long, documented tradition of presidential prejudice that has shaped the nation’s policies.

By Asheea Smith

History always has a funny way of spinning the block, and every once in a while, we run into something that refuses to stay buried no matter how much time has passed. Recordings reported by CBS revealed a deeply disturbing discussion between former Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan—and you guessed it, it’s super racist.

Per the news outlet, former President Richard Nixon was speaking with then-California Governor Ronald Reagan following a United Nations meeting to recognize the People’s Republic of China. While global attention should’ve been centered on the diplomatic shift, Reagan reportedly phoned Nixon’s White House to voice his frustration over African delegates who celebrated the decision. At one point, Reagan flat out called them “monkeys”—and it only went downhill from there.

Before we get to that, here’s the real question: Why is anyone shocked? To treat these recordings as a singular, shocking “glitch” in the American presidency is to ignore the very fabric of the office. Yes, the explicit nature of the “monkey” and “cannibal” slurs is jarring, but it sits within a long, documented tradition of presidential prejudice against Black folks that has shaped the nation’s policies for decades.

Long before Reagan and Nixon shared a laugh at the expense of African diplomats, Woodrow Wilson was busy re-segregating the federal workforce and praising the post-Civil war Ku Klux Klan as an “Invisible Empire of the South,” per History. Andrew Jackson publicly framed Native Americans as an “inferior race” to justify the brutal displacement of the Trail of Tears. Even Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the Civil Rights Act, was notoriously recorded using the N-word in private to describe the very people he was legislating for—often viewing civil rights through the lens of political leverage rather than inherent humanity.

When we look at the timeline, Nixon’s own history of referring to Black people as “genetically inferior” or Reagan’s later “welfare queen” trope aren’t outliers; they are the quiet parts being said out loud. So, as these clips circulate on social media, the most revealing part of the story isn’t the racism itself—it’s our collective lack of surprise that it happened at all.

Let’s get back to the audio. Reagan told Nixon “Last night, I tell ya, to watch that thing on television as I did. To see those monkeys from those African countries, damn them. They’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes.”

Laughter is heard on the other end of the call after the disgusting statement. But that’s not all.

After Reagan’s reckless and racist phone call, Nixon later spoke with William Rogers—then Secretary of State—and doubled down on Reagan’s racist remarks. And if you thought the last phone recording was bad… just wait, it gets worse.

(snip-embedded TikTok; click the story title above to go to the page, if you wish)

“He saw these cannibals on television last night, and he says ‘Christ, they weren’t even wearing shoes, and here the U.S. is going to submit its fate to that…” Nixon said.

Later that month Nixon had a laugh with his long time best friend, former Florida banker and businessman Charles “Bebe” Rebozo. And as you may have expected, the racist banter continued to roll.

“That reaction on television was that it proves how they ought to be still hanging from the trees by their tails,” Rebozo said with a laugh during his call with Nixon.

Tiktok’s comments section was riddled with folks asking, “Where’s the surprise?” and “The way my jaw did not drop,” alongside emojis. And let’s be real, we get it.

While there’s certainly shock value in hearing these recordings, none of this is entirely surprising. This is a country built on Black labor and Black suffering—one where federal power has long been used to contain Black political movements, including COINTELPRO, which targeted organizations like the Black Panther Party and other Black-led groups working toward progress and self-determination.

That said, these tapes don’t feel like an isolated incident, but rather a reminder of how deeply racism has been woven into political life at even the highest levels. And while the exposure of this kind of rhetoric may be unsettling, it ultimately tells a familiar reality of Black folks’ lived experience in America.

This Seems Like A Wonderful Idea!

Not before free public restrooms, but still. Maybe service organizations or churches can help out with space, etc. Anyway, enjoy simply reading about a nice thing.

This ‘wind phone’ in Phoenix offers a space to talk through grief after someone dies

KJZZ | By Sam Dingman

Published April 9, 2026 at 12:43 PM MST

The “wind phone” set up at New Vision Center for Spiritual Living in Phoenix.

Back in 2020, a woman named Amy Dawson lost her 25-year-old daughter, Emily.

In the midst of her grief, she discovered a monument in Japan, built by a man named Itaru Sasaki: a small white phone booth on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, in the town of Otsuchi. Sasaki, who’d suffered a loss of his own several years earlier. He called it a “wind phone,” and the idea was simple: step into the booth, pick up the receiver and speak to those you can no longer reach on a regular phone.

Dawson fell in love with the idea as a way of communicating with Emily, and set up a wind phone of her own. And Dawson set up a website encouraging others to set up or find their own wind phones.

Here in Phoenix, the idea connected with a member of the congregation at the New Vision Center for Spiritual Living, who told Rev. Karin Einhaus about it.

Einhaus was moved by the story, and resolved to set up a wind phone that’s open to the public on the center’s campus.

And not long after, she got a call from another member of the congregation. (snip-go read it! It’s not at all long.)

Just How Far?

Hello All. I have not had a lot to say for a while, but there are some things that just can’t be unseen, some events that just can’t be ignored any longer. I’ve asked before, any who would support him, Just what will it take? Just how far can he go before it’s too far?
Please forgive me for reposting such a vulgar picture, but I think it gives credence to what follows. Sorry to spoil your dinner.

By now, everyone has seen this pic. For me, no – this was not the final straw, I just have to hope it is for others. So, does this ass-clown meet the full representation of the Biblical Anti-Christ? I think so. The following was written in February of 2014, so no, it is not a set up. Here is the link: (link) It is absolute plagiarism, unabashed shameless copying, purposefully done, so they aren’t my words or my prejudices. It was written before said ass-clown was in office for the first time, before he was a politician. I think there are plenty of examples for each of these seven characteristics, and I am sure any reader of the blog can find plenty of examples of their own. And, while some may not believe in the Christian Bible much less that representation of what the Anti-Christ will look like, simple logic would show he’s extremely unfit. Ok, here we go…

So what are we looking for?

He is Lawless
Paul calls him “The Man of Sin,” literally “The Man of Lawlessness” (2 Thess. 2:3). He will disregard God’s Word and God’s law and replace it with his own arbitrary laws. He will re-define what is evil and what is good. He will promote doctrinal and ethical lawlessness.

He is a Destroyer
In the same verse, Paul names Antichrist as “the son of perdition,” meaning “son of destruction.” He will physically destroy those who oppose him; he will spiritually and eternally destroy all who believe him and follow him.

He Opposes God
“He opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God” (v. 4). Well, that doesn’t help much, does it? Half the world oppose God and exalt themselves over Him. But what’s unique about this opposition is that the Antichrist opposes mainly by substitution.

He is a Substitute
As “Anti” can mean “instead of” as well as “against,” Antichrist can mean “replacement Christ,” “instead of Christ,” “substitute for Christ.” Paul confirms this when he says that the Antichrist “sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thess. 2:4). This is not necessarily an enemy from outside the church, but from inside it. He opposes Christ by replacing him, by taking Christ’s titles, worship, and roles.

He is a Deceiver
The only other person called “the son of perdition” was Judas (John 17:12). Under cover of professing to be a friend of Christ, He tried to destroy Christ. This theme of deception is taken up by Jesus, Paul, and John when describing the Antichrist. In fact, the dominant message from passages dealing with the Antichrist is, “Don’t be deceived!” Just as Satan rarely comes painted red with horns, a fork, and a pointy tail, the Antichrist will not come with a big “A” on his forehead. Like Satan, he will come with false signs, wonders, and miracles; he will be so plausible and persuasive that, if it were possible, He would deceive even the elect (Matt. 24:24).

He is a Heretic
John’s main concern with the Antichrist is his promotion of false doctrine surrounding the person and work of Christ (1 John 4:3; 2 John 7). Just like the mini-antichrists in John’s day, THE ultimate Antichrist will not deny everything about Christ, but just enough to undermine the power of Christ’s gracious salvation.

He is a Politician
While Daniel and Revelation confirm and expand upon these six characteristics, their main emphasis is on the political nature of the Antichrist. He will head up a kingdom, even an empire, similar to other nation states or empires. These books also make clear that this aspect of Antichrist’s work will become clearer and clearer nearer the end of time. Deception will be replaced with destruction, fraud will give way to force, the wolf in sheep’s clothing will shed his fleece and bare his fangs.

Serious, scary stuff, isn’t it?

Serious, yes. In that way may I ask: Seriously, Republicans, Democrats, Supreme Court Justices; just what the hell is it going to take?

Will They Do It?

Something to keep track of.

Trump administration agrees to return rainbow Pride flag to New York’s Stonewall monument

By JENNIFER PELTZ and MICHAEL R. SISAK

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration said Monday it will resume flying a rainbow Pride flag on a federal flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, reversing course two months after removing the banner from the first national monument commemorating LGBTQ+ history.

The government revealed the decision in court papers as it agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by advocacy and historic preservation groups who had sought to block the Feb. 9 removal. A judge approved the deal.

The Interior Department and National Park Service “have confirmed their intention to maintain a Pride flag at Stonewall,” lawyers for the government and the groups wrote in a joint court filing.

The flag — one of several Pride banners at the 7.7-acre (3.1-hectare) park — won’t be removed, except for “maintenance or other practical purposes,” the filing said. (snip-details of position and measurements of the Pride flag)

https://apnews.com/article/stonewall-rainbow-flag-trump-lgbtq-historic-preservation-ac4ab59d3251476139700db6687828ca

Hrmphh. Nobody Ever Listens To Us.

Feminists began raising the alarm about the manosphere decades ago – and we were ignored

Laurie Penny

We were told we couldn’t take a joke, and that social media isn’t real life. Now the misogyny of early chatrooms and Gamergate has reached the White House

Harrison Sullivan, known as HSTikkyTokky, in Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere. Photograph: Netflix/PA

Why has it taken so long for us to treat misogyny as a political problem? The modern manosphere has been metastasising for many years – and for years, mainstream culture has responded with a helpless shrug. There was nothing unusual about men hurting women, even if the technology was new.

In the early aughts, angry and alienated men began indulging in recreational misogyny online, bombarding women and girls in the public eye with threats, insults, harassment, hacking, and hideous “revenge porn”. Strange as it may now sound, though, “the internet” was still seen as separate from “real life”.

That, at least, was what I was told the first time I went to the police about the death threats I was receiving as a young columnist. Nothing could be done, because what happened on social media wasn’t real and didn’t count. If I didn’t like it I should get offline, and presumably continue my work via rotary phone and fax. Those of us who were early targets of what would become the manosphere did not have the luxury of ignoring the issue. For us, it was easy to see that this was something new and serious, easy to understand how the tactics used against us might be deployed elsewhere – and how quickly matters could escalate.

Which is what happened in 2014. In May of that year, the terrorist Elliot Rodger killed six people and brought global attention to “incels” – young men radicalised by sexual resentment.

Three months later came Gamergate, a global orgy of online harassment targeting women in the video game industry. It all started when up-and-coming game creator Zoe Quinn was attacked by a bitter ex-boyfriend in a book-length tirade of sexual and professional jealousy. The non-scandal became a lightning rod for tens of thousands of gamers furious that women were intruding on a medium that was meant to be their personal power fantasy.

On anonymous forums like 4chan, men coordinated an extraordinary campaign of abuse dressed up as concern for “journalistic ethics”. Quinn and other creators were driven from their homes, but the firestorm was already out of control. Over the next few years, as “incels” continued to carry out acts of mass murder, every entertainment industry, from comics and publishing to film and TV, was besieged by obsessive trolls casting themselves as brave rebels against illiberal “social justice warriors”. The more they got away with it, the more they treated it like a game.

Gamergate brought together the disparate strands of what we now call the manosphere: the grifting pickup-artists, the Christian nationalists, the bitter “incels” and the furious fans triggered into mass social vandalism whenever they heard a story they weren’t the hero of. This slurry of half-formed fixations congealed into a coherent ideology of aggrieved entitlement, with its own language – “escaping the matrix”, “taking the red pill” – and their own logic of heroic victimhood in the face of women’s sexual power. The rage and alienation of men abandoned by post-crash capitalism was channelled towards a common cause – one ripe for co-option by the worst possible actors.

Throughout the mid-aughts, mainstream media continued to underestimate the manosphere. The fringes of the right did not make the same mistake. Gamergate was the proving ground for some of the central propagandists of the new “alt-right”. Steve Bannon, the political svengali and co-founder of Breitbart News, saw the potential in this cohort of cranks. He went on to run Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, helping to deliver that key demographic to a president who personified everything the new cult of male supremacy most admired, as he crowed about sexual violence and held the notionally free world hostage to his every emotional spasm.

In hindsight, it is startling that all of this was normalised for so long. It was apparently inconceivable that violence against women could constitute a crisis – unless, of course, the violence was blamed on immigrants or on transgender people, at which point women’s safety suddenly shot to the top of the political agenda. When feminists and others in the infected eye of the storm tried to raise the alarm, we were told we were exaggerating for attention, or that we couldn’t take a joke. Under the posturing, cartoon frogs and memespeak, these were lost young men who deserved patience and understanding, and if we didn’t offer it we were heartless, humourless killjoys.

Identical arguments were used to dismiss the rise of Maga until it was far too late. The playbook tested out on feminists and on Black, queer and female creators in the mid-aughts was replicated in far-right movements across the global north – as was the response of muted both-sidesism. Then as now, politicians, pundits and industry leaders officially disapproved of the worst excesses of the manosphere, but declined to take an explicit stand, terrified that any display of moral integrity would alienate their base.

As the 2010s turned into the 2020s and the manosphere continued to expand, funnelling its recruits towards ever more extreme, explicitly racist ideas, it became fashionable to cast “social justice warriors” as the pressing danger to human freedom. Politicians and public figures seemed far more concerned about the #MeToo movement, which seemed proof positive that feminists had gone too far – and deserved, perhaps, to be punished for it. After the third or fourth time a documentary crew came to interview me about all the death threats, I realised that they didn’t want to help – they wanted to watch.

Lots of people did. After Gamergate, bigotry became a growth industry for enterprising young lads unburdened by conscience. As a journalist, I interviewed many young far-right men who admitted that what they really wanted was to be influencers and film-makers. For clicks and views they courted controversy and flirted with the far right – but it didn’t take long for the relationship to get serious. As Kurt Vonnegut writes in his anti-fascist masterpiece Mother Night, “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be”.

Today, nobody is pretending that this is a joke any more. Trump, in his deranged dotage, is openly courting the manosphere, and the young men of gen Z are veering towards the far right en masse. There’s a clear line from the social vandalism of Gamergate to the mega-grifting male supremacists, scamming their followers with the promise of a reality where women and girls are non-player characters, to be defeated, exploited or traded for tokens in a brutal marketplace of human value. Many young men have lived their entire lives in the shadow of this weaponised misogyny – and so have young women. And that sinister ideology is still gnawing at the heart of power.

A few weeks ago, in a break from encouraging his deranged president to take over Greenland, White House adviser Stephen Miller found time to post a tweet on X that appears to be mocking the new Star Trek series for being too diverse. Elon Musk emerged from his fug of racial conspiracy theories and transphobia to agree. This is embarrassing, and not just because any half-literate nerd knows that Star Trek has been woke since 1966. Because even after turning the world into their personal thunder dome, the representatives of aggrieved white male power are still unsatisfied, still demanding we cater to their every petty whim. They will continue to do so until the rest of us, at last, refuse to tolerate their nonsense.

Laurie Penny is a journalist, author and screenwriter. They write the substack Force of Culture

This Week’s “Lay Lines”

is a fundraiser for a friend of the cartoonist. I’m posting it not so much to try to help, but because I promised I’d post this every week. There is, as always, great art here!