Trump has only been in office for five months, but he has quickly managed to smash up a bunch of things. One of those things is the relationship with Europe, which has been in place since the end of the Cold War. By walking away from Project Ukraine, he is putting the world on notice that things will never be the same between the United States and the rest of the NATO countries.

Something similar seems to be developing in the Middle East. He went for the homerun shot against Iran, but that failed, leaving the region on the edge of war and Israel scrambling to avoid Iranian missiles. Trump is left with two terrible choices, either of which probably breaks the old order in the region. He can launch and attack that probably fails or cut a deal, either option looks like a loss.

There is the third option to commit to a long air war against Iran, but you do not win wars with just air power. That was the lesson of Iraq. It took a million-man army to topple the regime. Iran is bigger, tougher, and more stable than Iraq under Saddam, so toppling the government will be much more difficult. The long air war would most likely be a very expensive failure.

The way things currently sit, the end result of this Iran – Israel war will be a new security arrangement in the Middle East. Israel will not be able to threaten her neighbors, expecting the United States to cash the checks she writes. That will be a revolutionary change in a region that needs it. Whatever it looks like in the end, it will be the result of Trump smashing and breaking things.

That is the show this week. As with so many other things, Trump is not the man with a plan, but a man with a hammer. He breaks the old stuff, often by his mere existence, but this opens the way for new stuff. He has broken the political order in Washington and now that he has real power, he is breaking the order abroad. He is the Mule, the destroyer of worlds, bringing the end of empire.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• Trumps Foreign Policy
• Project Ukraine
• Israel
• China
• Fast Versus Slow
• Trump’s Legacy

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The show was recorded while the usual suspects were starting yet another war in the Middle East, this time with Iran. At this point it is hard to know where it leads, but we know Trump is powerless to do anything about it. It is sadly clear over the last three administrations that no White House runs foreign policy. The important decisions are made by people outside the political system.

That is why war is on the list of things that could bring doom to America. The people making these decisions are not thinking about what is best for the United States or the American people. Therefore, the United States and the American people could easily be sacrificed, deliberately or accidentally, in service to the alien cause. Civilization ending wars tend to be tragic accidents.

Even so, America is in no danger of being conquered militarily, so it is hard to see war as the direct cause of our demise. War could trigger other things, like a massive spike in oil prices that then set off a financial collapse. If Iran decides it needs a regional war and blows up Saudi oil facilities, then we could see an energy crisis. Unlike the 1970’s, an energy crisis today could trigger collapse.

That is the show for this Friday the 13th. I go through the possible end times scenarios and rank them on a scale of one to ten. A bit of a spoiler, but war is pretty far down the list of possible doomsday scenarios. It could be a triggering event that eventually leads to one of the other items on the list, but war itself is not a likely end for us. The most likely cause of our doom is, well, you will just have to listen.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• Doomsday
• Debt Bomb
• Financial Collapse
• Civil War
• Secession/Breakup
• War
• Collapse
• Technology – AI
• Biology – Genetic Hazard
• Demographic
• The End

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Contents

• 03m16s Lunacy, Muslim-style
• 10m07s Imaginative warfare
• 15m12s Rumors of war
• 22m29s Trump and Musk
• 27m25s Valediction

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Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Welcome, listeners and readers. This is your conclusively genial host John Derbyshire with the D-Day edition of Radio Derb. I know of course that most of you listen to the show on Saturday, which will be the 7th; but Friday is when I sit down to record it, so “D-Day edition” is valid.

Calendrical matters are at the front of my mind this week as Tuesday, June 3rd, was my birthday, my 80th birthday. I didn’t broadcast that fact in advance, so I was pleasantly astonished at the number of emails I got wishing me a happy birthday. How did people know? A moment’s reflection reminded me that my birth date is there for all to see on my personal website. It’s also on Twitter, if you go looking; and it’s on my Wikipedia page in between the descriptions of me as a hate-filled far-right homophobic racist misogynist full of hate.

Even after remembering all that, I was still surprised by the number of emails that came in: surprised, and stirred. I offer my sincere, heartfelt thanks to all who emailed, most especially to those of you who told me you’ve been following me ever since such-and-such, with some of the such-and-suches going all the way back into the 20th century. Thank you, thank you!

And yes, I had a very happy birthday. It was a lovely June day. I did some garden work and some undemanding household chores. For dinner my wife and kids took me to an excellent Italian restaurant in the village here and let me make a complete pig of myself. Life is good; all the better with a loving family and friends far and near. Thank you, again thank you!

I shall have more calendrical observations later. First, a glance at the week’s news. It’ll only be a brief one; I’m still in a holiday mood.

Continue reading →

Fifty years ago, the word “antisemitism” did not often turn up in everyday discourse and when it did it lacked the punch of today. The person who thought poorly of Jews was like the guy who was into conspiracy theories. Only in the upper reaches of society was it a fearsome accusation. That changed and now it is the worst thing that can happen to someone with a professional career.

The funny thing about the term and the meaning behind it is that it now has a definition that only professional anti-antisemites can explain. Fifty years ago, an antisemite was someone who hated Jews. Today, it is complicated. The determination as to whether someone is an antisemite requires a team of experts who have not only studied the man’s life but have also been trained in anti-antisemitism.

Eric Hoffer noted that mass movements in America become a religion, a corporation, or a racket, but in reality, they often become all three. You see it here. For some, anti-antisemitism is a way of life, like a religion. For others, it has become a lucrative career that provides them with regular appearances on television. For most now, it is a racket that lets them earn more than their talents warrant.

Ironically, this is only possible because America has no history of antisemitism and never possessed a critical mass of people who were hostile to Jews. The great wave of immigration in the 19th century that brought Jews to America delivered Jewish people into a land that was largely indifferent to them. Like the rest of the migrants, they had a rough go of it at first, but otherwise they encountered no opposition.

This is what makes the present moment interesting. Just as America is becoming something like medieval Spain in terms of demographics, we are seeing the first flickers of hostility to Jews. They are at the forefront of the open borders policies that have wrecked American demographics, thus creating conditions for the sort of tribalism from which most stereotypes about Jews arose.

That is the show this week. It is mostly an exploration of the anti-antisemitism world in search of a definition for it. Sprinkled in is the usual commentary about the weird things one finds when he goes down this rabbit hole. Unlike the anti-racism rackets, the anti-antisemitism rackets are far more complicated and have a logic to them that explains both anti-antisemitism and antisemitism.

It also explains why it must always bee looking for or producing antisemites that paly the familiar role of Old Scratch. One the one hand, the industry is ready accuse anyone of being an antisemite. On the other hand, it does produce people who think they are in a great struggle with the Jews. Negative identities, which is anti-antisemitism, must always preserve that which it claims to oppose.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• Buckley
• Defining Antisemitism
  • The American Government (Link)
  • Stockholm Declaration (Link)
  • Holocaust (Link)
  • More Holocaust (Link)
  • American Jewish Committee (Link)
  • ADL (Link)
  • Spelling (Link)
• The Main Issues
• America
• Full Circle

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Contents

• 02m24s Open the pod bay doors, Hal
• 06m46s AI scrapes Grub Street
• 14m06s Trump 47 report card: (1)
• 19m14s Trump 47 report card: (2)
• 23m00s Trump 47 report card: (3)
• 28m29s Cooking the data at Harvard
• 30m34s The LGBTQ+ Community Month
• 31m51s Smartphones are a human right
• 33m15s Signoff with Carousel

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Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Welcome, listeners and readers. This is of course your provocatively genial host John Derbyshire with commentary on the news this penultimate day of May 2025.

Just a wee housekeeping note before we start. I took my signoff music last week from a YouTube clip of two Chinese ladies playing Chinese music on Chinese instruments in a big public square. The people passing by in the square who stopped to listen didn’t look Chinese; neither did the buildings around the square. I surmised that it was a European city, and noted that someone in the YouTube comment thread thought it might be Munich.

A friend more resourceful than myself emailed in to tell me he had copied and pasted a couple of screenshots from that YouTube clip into Grok. Grok, he said, seems confident the video is shot in Milan, identifying the Castello Sforzesco and the Piazza del Duomo. Thank you, Sir!

Grok describes itself as, quote, “your truth-seeking AI companion for unfiltered answers with advanced capabilities in reasoning, coding, and visual processing,” end quote. In other words, it’s an Artificial Intelligence chatbot. Let’s have a starting segment on AI. Continue reading →

While everyone is enjoying a bit of a respite from the crazies flying their freak flags in our faces, it is important to remember that they have not gone away. Like cicadas, they have merely gone into hibernation. There they will rest up and conjure some new versions of their egalitarian lunacy. A decade from now they will spring forth and start the cycle of madness over again.

In the interim, the people who orchestrated the freakshow will be busy gnawing away at the fibers of society in an effort to prevent regeneration. They can still use Trump to generate support and get money from soulless oligarchs, who think underwriting this stuff will bring them peace. The lawfare we see against the Trump admin is a good example of what will be the norm now.

The crazies will also refit their image by disposing of the old freaks and finding new freaks to be the face of their craziness. Expect new faces in the media saying the same old things but with new language. Just as the New Democrat was the old crazies in new baby boomer wrappers, the next round of freaks will be the same freaks but dressed up in the garb of the new generation of millennials.

That is the show this week. It is a vacation week for many and a slow week in general, so I am trying to keep in light. Even though it is fun to mock these people now that the tide has turned against them, it is important to remember that the freaks never change, and they never quit. The coming peace in the culture war is a false dawn. True peace only comes when freaks are permanently forced to the margins.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• The Freak Show
• The Freaks
• Shadow Freaks (Link)
• Death To Freaks

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Contents

• 01m22s Mortalism in the news
• 07m04s Regretful mortalism
• 13m52s A clumsy Commencement
• 20m18s A joyful Commencement
• 26m11s Hesperophobia (cont.)
• 36m47s That pesky semicolon
• 38m53s Romania’s new President
• 41m32s Rotherham’s new Mayor
• 43m40s Signoff with cultural appropriation

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Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! That was of course Franz Joseph Haydn’s Derbyshire March No. 2 and this is your indigenously genial host John Derbyshire. What does it mean to be “indigenously genial”? I’m not sure, but give me a break here, I’m running out of adverbs.

I’ll open today with a segment on a peculiar way of thinking which I shall call “mortalism,” although I’m not at all sure that’s the correct descriptor.

Mortalism isn’t crazy in itself; it’s actually quite logical, although in my opinion misguided. Like so many other ways of thinking, though, it has a lunatic fringe. This week we encountered that lunatic fringe. Here we go. Continue reading →

This weekend is the official launch of summer in America. It does not feel like the first weekend of summer, but that is probably due to the weather. It has been cool and rainy here for most of spring. Even so, it is the start of the summer season. That means the A-list fabricators will be taking off, leaving the media mendacity to the second string for the next few months. The quality of lies will be low.

It will be interesting to see if the Trump admin maintains the pace. The last four months has been a whirlwind. This week we got the South Africa stuff, which is one of those things that no one thought possible six months ago. The Overton window is moving so quickly it is hard to keep up with it. Now that official Washington is heading off for the summer, it will be interesting to see if the admin takes a break

The other thing to watch for this summer is if the crazies get brought out of storage to riot somewhere. If you scan Bluesky, they are depressed. The money dried up and then the jobs dried up. Now they are left to trade scare stories to one another in the weird echo chamber that is Bluesky. If it is an Orange Man Summer, the fever swamp could be on suicide watch by August.

Normally there would not be a show this week, as the Friday before a holiday weekend is a good time for a break. I had some time to kill, so I threw something together that was light and not too taxing. It is a good time to relax and not think about the madness of this age, so the show is easy listening. I hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day weekend and thank you for reading and listening.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• A Bunch Of Stupid Questions
• Outro

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Contents

• 03m31s Welkom in Amerika!
• 12m28s A church that won’t help white people
• 20m45s Death of a church
• 27m48s SCOTUS ponders citizenship
• 30m34s Latest from Woke Academia
• 32m34s For the boys in blue
• 34m28s Date-appropriate Signoff

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Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners and readers. That was some of Haydn’s Derbyshire March No. 2 and this is of course your significantly genial host John Derbyshire, with observations on the news at precisely the middle of May 2025. Fifteen days gone, fifteen still to go.

It sometimes happens, by sheer good fortune, that one week’s lead segment follows naturally from the previous week’s lead segment. That’s what has happened this week.

In last week’s podcast my lead segment was headlined “The decline of Jim Snow.” I defined Jim Snow as, quoting myself:

The social dogma on race that has prevailed since the 1960s … characterized by white guilt and favoritism towards blacks (a/k/a “affirmative action”) and by deference to what I have called “the romance of American blackness” — narratives about cruel leering white people beating up on helpless pleading blacks.

End quote.

My thesis was that the case of Shiloh Hendrix, the young white Minnesota lady who made a pile of money via crowdfunding following a heated exchange with a black man that the man posted on social media — that case, I argued, was yet further evidence that Jim Snow, as a social dogma, is losing its force.

I think one of the lead news stories this week may further reinforce that thesis; so that is my first segment today.

Before proceeding with it, I’ll just note as a matter of general interest, following on that segment from last week, that as I speak here on Friday afternoon the crowdfunding site for Shiloh Hendrix shows donations now up to $779,158. This time last week they were $759,786; so that’s a one-week increase of $19,372, damn near twenty thousand dollars. Continue reading →

After finishing the show last week, I thought I left too much on the cutting room floor, so I picked up those scraps to make a follow on show this week. With next weekend being Memorial Day, there may not be a show on Friday, so I figured a sequel to the original while the ideas were fresh in my mind made some sense. If I do a show next week it will be on short topics, so send your suggestions.

The thing I wanted to get to last week, but spent too much time bashing the Protestants, is that we are in an age in which we not only have a fractured morality, but we also have a fractured metaphysics. The extreme example is we have some people who think their sex is assigned to them at birth. If they wish hard enough, they can change their sex and transcend the two-sex paradigm.

Crazy people are a part of every society, so while these people are fringe weirdos, they get support from a large and powerful segment of society. Many of our ruling class question the basics of reality. They are open to sex being imaginary because they are open to reality being a shared delusion created by the pale penis people to dominate the nonwhite population.

It is exceedingly difficult to have a society composed of people with differing opinions about how society ought to be organized and how we ought to live in it. If the differences are not too wide, then some compromise can be made. It is not possible to have a stable society when large parts of it have a different conception of reality from other parts of society, which is the present situation.

This new paganism is in some way an effort to create a new universal morality to replace the old one and use it to clear the decks of the alternatives. In another way it is an acknowledgement that the differences in how these different groups understand reality is too different to ever have a shared morality. Attempts to impose a new morality just highlight these differences in how we perceive reality.

The Gaia worshippers, for example, are not dealing in practical issues like the physical world when they demand sustainable agriculture and renewable energy. These are not real things that can exist in the physical world as most people understand it. Therefore, it is probably not possible for them to share the same society as those who think we should exploit our resources to advance our material existence.

The race issue is where the differences in morality and metaphysics make clear that the gaps are two large to traverse. If you think magic is why black people commit so much more crime than whites, you can never find a compromise with those who think behavior is rooted in biology. There can be no agreed upon ways to deal with black crime that are satisfactory to both camps.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• Paganism Review
• The Moral Society
• Unifying Morality
• The Great Disaster
• New Paganism
• Metaphysics & Morality

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