2020 will be remembered as the year that was “mostly peaceful” – meaning, it was anything but. Indeed, the phrase “mostly peaceful” – followed closely by “no evidence of fraud”, “great reset”, “build back better” and “new normal” – will doubtless become the slogans under which the Establishment regained (and further entrenched) its control over the approved mainstream narrative over the last twelve months. A number of domestic and international events could symbolise the passing 2020: the pandemic and its surrounding controversies, the US presidential elections, various international tensions as well as the escalating anarcho-tyranny on the Home Front.

The year was inaugurated in Australia with the bushfire crisis that transformed the urban cityscape into something reminiscent of a scene from Bladerunner: for a number of weeks in early 2020 people could comfortably gaze at the disc of the sun, filtered as it was through a pink and orange haze which dimmed the sky and infused it with the scent of ash; roads and access-ways to regional towns were blocked; people were stranded in regional centres, others had to be evacuated from popular tourist destinations threatened by the uncontrolled spread of fire hazards. The hellish scenery was a portent of things to come.

How it Went on the Home Front:
Australia

The further consolidation of the managerial state continued to amplify the already high levels of anarcho-tyranny throughout Australia, in states that are led by government of the Labor and Liberal-National inclination. Further confirming that the contest between the two major party blocks represents a distinction of little difference, the scope of civil liberties was further whittled away through legislative “reform” and the activities of unelected bureaucrats. Our neighbouring State of Victoria has led the way: there, under the auspice of dealing with the corona virus pandemic, laws have been passed that allow public authorities to take possession of private property if deemed necessary when responding to a state-wide disaster. South Australia passed corresponding laws that allow authorities to remove a child and place it with a state guardian with “reasonable force” during loosely defined “emergencies”. Western Australia followed suit by empowering authorities to perform forced medical examinations where deemed necessary.

Notably, this year our home state of New South Wales legalised abortion on demand and right up to the third trimester – amendments to the law which would mandate giving the unborn child anesthetics were voted down by the government of Gladys Berejiklian. As the year came to a close, Victoria again introduced a bill which would effectively criminalise attempts to convert a person to Christianity, with a $200,000 fine and ten-year maximum sentence. The Liberal opposition abstained from the vote as it passed the Lower House. This year, a 15-year-old girl who claims to want to “transition” was removed from her parents after they refused to consent to hormone therapy; this was the first case of its kind where a removal was ordered by a Magistrate on gender-identity grounds – the matter will be appealed to the Family Court in 2021.

This year, the government of Dan Andrews in Victoria remains popular despite his draconian governing style and communistic legislative agenda; Anastacia Palaszczuk (the “Mrs Bucket” of Australian politics for her consistent, and insistent, inability to pronounce her own surname) was returned as Premier of Queensland, and Jacinda Ardern was reëlected as Prime Minister of New Zealand. These trends lamentably evidence a people who value the perception of safety above actual liberty, as they prefer to be mothered with dysfunctional consequences over being lead with courage. By stark contrast, this year the Polish parliament effectively banned the killing of the unborn and the Hungarian parliament approved a bill that would ban same-sex “marriage” and adoption, returning the rule of law in that country under natural law paradigms. The Hungarian law, which aims to strengthen the culture of marriage, will come into full effect in 2021.

This year in the federal realm, the “conservative” Liberal National government folded under the pressure of the Greens and the Labor Party to establish an inquiry into so-called “right wing extremism”. This was announced by Home Affairs Minister, Peter Dutton, who was once a candidate for the Prime Ministership before being outmanoeuvred by Scott Morrison in 2018, and who continues to be a favourite among conservative elements within the Liberal party as an alternative national leader. While the only notable act of genuine Australian right-wing extremism in recent memory was last year’s murder spree in Christchurch, New Zealand, this inquiry has the vague smell of ideological manipulation:

Over the last half decade – roughly coinciding with the election of Donald Trump as US President and the rise of “Trumpist” populism throughout the West – the progressive establishment has been at pains to compare nativist rhetoric with the violent extreme actions of groups sympathetic to overseas terror networks such as Islamic Jihad. Of course, these equivalencies can only be made if the scope of “right wing extremism” and its impact on society is defined so broadly as to make it quantitively comparable to the terrorism of other foreign ideologies. Such comparisons are disingenuous and distort the reality of where the threat to civil society really emanates. We have seen how the scope of critical debate on the right continues to be pathologised in a left-leaning cultural environment; how does Minister Dutton propose to prevent his inquiry from being hijacked in similar fashion, and on this occasion potentially criminalise legitimate critical inquiries of the status quo by the dissident right?

Likewise, as the year draws to a close Prime Minister Scott Morrison (who for reasons that defy comprehension is somehow understood to be a man of the centre-right) announced legislation that would criminalise online trolling and harassment. In the current political environment, we know exactly who will have the power to define what trolling and harassment is in the context of such laws: certainly not us; not those who would otherwise support the PM, undeservedly, at the ballot box; and certainly not the Christians who absurdly believed throughout 2020 that “ScoMo” is their champion in Canberra. This year, the Prime Minister committed to introducing legislation which would protect religious liberties throughout the Commonwealth; a draft bill extended protection to speech that was essentially uncontroversial, thus defeating its very purpose.

The Vindication of a Persecuted Man

However, the one piece of good news in 2020 was the vindication of George Cardinal Pell. Falsely accused and convicted by the Victorian justice system for allegations of sexual abuse, the Cardinal spent thirteen months of his six-year sentence in gaol before being released. Notably, the one judge on the Victorian appeals court to dissent from the conviction was the only member on the bench who had professional expertise in criminal law: Justice Mark Weinberg. The Cardinal’s further and final appeal, this time to the Federal Supreme Court, succeeded in overturning the Victorian judgment in a unanimous decision of the full bench. Cardinal Pell was one of the major figures in the Australian front of the Cultural Wars. He remains an advocate of traditional values, and was thus a staunch opponent of radical fads such as same-sex “marriage” and adoption – these made him a hated figure among Victoria’s political and cultural establishment. It should also be noted that Cardinal Pell was the first senior cleric to bring the Church’s sexual abuse crisis to the attention of the Vatican in the 1990s.

After his release this year, news of a transfer of $1.14 million from a Vatican rival (Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu) to ostensibly assist in the conviction of Pell, scandalised the press. Reports suggested that the payment was made by elements in the Church who were intimidated by Cardinal Pell’s inquiries into the state of the Vatican’s financial affairs. Nevertheless, Victorian police have stated that they do not intend to investigate the money transfers. As the year drew to a close, Keith Windschuttle’s comprehensive analysis of the Pell affair, George Pell: The Persecution of an Innocent Man, was published through Quadrant Books, and Ignatius Press also released the first volume of his Prison Journal. Thus, after several years of persecution by the militant secular and “progressive” lobby, Cardinal Pell – unbroken and vindicated – serves as an example of integrity, resilience and fortitude.

How it Went in Britain,
Europe and Beyond

Brexit finally happened in the United Kingdom, but not without continued wrangling with Brussels authorities who demanded a “deal” upon formal exit; that deal would essentially allow Britain to leave, but remain bound by EU laws and regulations such as decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. National sovereignty being the key motivating cause under which the Leave Campaign rallied its supporters, it would seem politically suicidal for any self-described conservative government to agree to such an exit. Sadly, there is no evidence that the ongoing anticultural trends have at all been interrupted with the election of that government: with unemployment rising, the UK has agreed to take up to three million Hong Kong residents as a response to China’s continued political enfeoffment of that former British territory.

Meanwhile, Cultural Marxism’s march through the institutions continues apace. This year, a girl who transitioned to being male by having her breasts removed and being fed testosterone over a period of some years, has complained that doctors should have “challenged” her decision after starting to have doubts about the process. Eton College reported one of its own academics, Will Knowland, to the UK’s counter-terrorism authority because he expressed a view that men and woman are biologically different – we wonder whether this is the kind of example used to inflate the statistics of those “dangerous right wing extremists” that intelligence agencies must dedicate resources to monitoring. Indeed, the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy was overhauled in 2020 so as to focus on “hateful behaviour”, not terrorism per se.  This year the UK Ministry of Defence came under fire for having more “diversity officers” than the Royal Navy has warships – 44 to 32 to be precise. A Cambridge University academic, Priyamvada Gopal tweeted that “white lives don’t matter” and called to “abolish whiteness”. Not only did the University defend her right to express her views (which apparently don’t fall into the category of “hateful behaviour”) but promoted her to full professor. In related news, a 20-year-old Wetherspoon customer was convicted of a hate crime this year after ordering a banana to a black man’s table using the pub chain’s phone app. Thus we know what is and isn’t socially acceptable (or legal) in the Old Country, and what kind of political outcomes it engenders:

This year we recall the fiasco of the “Rotherham 1400”, where hundreds of underaged English girls were systematically pimped by Pakistani and other Muslim gangs with impunity for over a decade: when the outrage reached levels impossible to ignore, it was revealed that local Council authorities received numerous complaints but did not act on them for fear of being called “racist” – indeed, the father of one girl was confronted by police after trying to rescue his daughter from sexual servitude. We further recall Sue Berelowitz, who was forced to resign from her £99,333 per annum position of Deputy Children’s Commissioner (collecting a redundancy of £134,000 upon exit) was then immediately retained as a consultant by the Children’s Commissioner Oliver Berman to draft a report on child sexual exploitation, on £960 per day. A comprehensive report into the fiasco was never made public by former UK Secretary of State for the Home Department, Sajid Javid. But this year, his successor Priti Sushil Patel issued a statement declaring that a majority of sexual exploitation in the UK was committed by whites. That statement relied on two documents published by Berelowitz in 2011 and 2015. Readers are reminded that this has all transpired under the reign of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his “Conservative” government.

The public soap-opera of Meghan Markel and Prince Harry climaxed this year with their removal from the Royal Family, mercifully cutting them off from the line of succession to the British throne. The fruit of this couple’s public activism was possibly one of the greatest sources of consternation for Monarchists throughout the Anglosphere (and Traditionalists anywhere). The spectacle of Prince Harry submitting himself to the crude pop-progressivism of his Yankee wife bordered on the absurd. Though the remaining contenders to the throne appear to be cut from the same ideological cloth, we pray that they will not be as obsessed with “saving the world” as this pair sadly remains, while their own people are routinely betrayed and exploited by the political and cultural establishment.

In France, the Yellow Shirts were swept off the streets as a result of the corona virus lockdown, but violence in no-go zones and the further polarisation of society on ethno-religious grounds continued. Samuel Paty, a Parisian teacher was beheaded by Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov, a Chechen “refugee” enraged by Paty’s display of the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons during a lesson on freedom of speech. The images displayed are considered blasphemous by Muslims. Anzorov was later killed by police during an attempt at arrest, his body returned to his hometown, and given a heroes’ burial by locals. The episode illustrates the utter moral bankruptcy of the French secular republican ideology, which indiscriminately invites all cultures into its body politic but then imposes a system of values that many find intolerable and offensive, pathologising and criminalising opposition from nationalist quarters, and driving sections of the immigrant community into separatism and violence. The response from President Emmanuel Macron was predictable: a doubling down on the “values” that have fostered the conditions for societal breakup, targeting Muslim citizens for compliance, and thus precipitating a backlash from the Islamic world both at home and abroad.

In what has become known as “Black Thursday”, a Tunisian refugee attacked a church in Nice and beheaded three parishioners; a far right activist threatened Arabic people in the streets of Avignon as retaliation for the Nice attacks, and was shot by authorities; another refugee from North Africa was arrested after threatening locals with a butcher knife; a man rammed a car into a Church and confessed he was inspired by the Nice attacker; a bomb threat forced the train station of Toulon to be evacuated; French embassies were threatened in Saudi Arabia, Moscow, Cyprus and Bangladesh. As tensions escalated, the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan portrayed himself as the regional champion for the cause of Muslims in Europe, engaging in a public tit-for-tat exchange with President Macron in a manner reminiscent of Donald Trump.

Throughout 2020, Turkey projected its cultural, political and military strength throughout the old Ottoman sphere and beyond. It was accused by France of involvement in a coup d’état in Mali as well as interference in the internal affairs of the tribalised territory formerly known as Libya. This year the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed enclave of Nagorno Karabakh was resolved on terms overwhelmingly favourable to the Azeri side. The isolation of Iran continued throughout the past twelve months, ironically forcing it to revive domestic production in a kind of reverse-globalisation effect – its non-oil industry in particular growing by 83%. Tensions with Washington and Tel Aviv have seen Iranian scientists assassinated throughout 2020 in an attempt to retard the nation’s nuclear arms aspirations. The most prominent killing however was that of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of a special military force charged with extraterritorial operations. The precision of Iran’s missile retaliation against a US base in Iraq have suggested that the country’s offensive capabilities are more impressive than once thought. Throughout 2020 President Trump resisted pressure to use decisive military action against Teheran.

The spectre of ethnic conflict has likewise defined the passing year. France again has been troubled in its territory of Caledonia where local separatists have demanded secession from Paris, this time taking up arms and blocking roads and thoroughfares to major urban areas. Tensions likewise continue to rise in South Africa with the continued persecution of the white Boer population. This year, the brutal murder of farm manager Brendin Horner enraged locals who have tried desperately to obtain recognition from the international community that they are being targeted in a semi-official campaign of intimidation and genocide.

Horner’s body was found tied to a pole and showed stab wounds to his head, face, shoulders, arms and hands, burns to his wrists and scrape marks over his body indicating he was dragged. Two men were apprehended by police for the murder: Sekwetje Isaiah Mahlamba and Sekola Piet Matlaletsa. Heavily armed members of the Boer and farming communities took to the streets, and a mob attempted to storm the Courthouse where the accused were being arraigned. Julius Malema, the charismatic leader of South Africa’s so-called “Economic Freedom Fighters” has inflamed racial antagonism with his violent anti-Boer rhetoric. This year he literally compared his movement and himself to the “Second Coming of Jesus Christ” and was photographed exchanging pleasantries with the Bheki Cele, Minister for Police in a Senekal court during legal proceedings. The two accused will face trial in 2021.

How it Went in Cyberspace

As traditionalists, witnessing the scope of public debate continue to narrow is of particular concern. After half a decade of political and cultural dissent against the neoliberal status quo showed signs of penetrating the popular consciousness (whether on the democratic socialist left or the identitarian right) that dissent on the right has had its public reach restricted through a seemingly coordinated strategy by social media and payment platforms to silence prominent online influencers. In 2020, views that might challenge the bi-partisan neo-liberal consensus have been effectively isolated in the public square and quarantined online. Stefan Molyneux, a popular libertarian who often strayed into taboo areas of social inquiry was one of the first high profile personalities to be disappeared from social media in 2020. Catholic commentator E. Michael Jones also had his material removed without warning from bookseller Amazon. Also banned were former Klansman David Duke and early AltRight personality Richard Spencer. The reddit page The_Donald, which once had 800,000 members, was likewise removed from the domain, and hundreds of accounts on Facebook associated with the so-called “boogaloo” movement were purged from the social media network.

While many – but certainly not all – of the personalities banned, suspended or otherwise removed may indeed be promoters of toxic ideology, their censorship is routinely used as a justification to clamp down on views which are neither illegal nor unsavoury, but which may simply be inconvenient to the prevailing orthodoxies at Big Tech and its client lobbies among the political elite. Thus, in the name of “fighting” against “extremism” and “disinformation”, thousands of social media accounts were further suspended after news of electoral irregularities started being aired in November by supporters of President Donald Trump. In stark contrast, AntiFa accounts that systematically called on violence against supporters of President Trump remained unmolested, and continue to carry out doxing campaigns against conservatives and advocate violent insurrection in the streets.

It is this hypocrisy that has stained any moral pretence of online censors, and which defines the activities of those who claim to be motivated by a mission of creating a “safer” and more “tolerant” space online. While this is not a new development, nobody with an online presence in 2020 can honestly deny that the rules are being selectively applied. In 2020, the US House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee hearings into “Big Tech” were held with the CEOs of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Apple being questions about their companies’ market power, competition policy and “permissionless innovation” – focusing on the companies’ dominance over social media technology and preferential treatment in promotion of information and products online. A concern highlighted by the Committee was that concentrated economic and financial power would lead to concentrated political power. The outcome of these hearings may set the tone of future policy development in the areas of privacy, cybersecurity, freedom of speech as well as tax reform and competition.

In similar moves this year, the Australian government took legislative steps to force Google to pay for Australian news content that it linked to, which induced Google to threaten to cease hosting Australian news at all. Also this year, it was reported that similar anti-trust prosecutions against Google by the European Union have not resulted in a change in its competition practice. In the United Kingdom, Google was this year granted leave to appeal a decision in a class-action case concerning the company’s sale of 4.4 million individuals iPhone data to advertisers, without those users’ knowledge or consent. Once ultimately decided, the case will be a landmark decision in the area of data protection law. In the wake of the 2020 Brexit, Google shifted the authority over its UK data to its US based corporate entity. As the year drew to a close, Poland’s Minister for Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro announced he would introduce laws that would prohibit social media companies banning or censoring opinions and views that are not illegal under the country’s laws – the first move that explicitly protects speech online in the Western world that would impose fines of up to €2.2 million. In contrast, Norway and Scotland passed legislation that criminalised “hate speech” even if communicated in the privacy of one’s home.

2020 United States
Presidential Elections

After almost an entire term of fighting off conspiracy theorists who claimed that the 2016 US Presidential elections were gamed by “Russian bots”, President Donald Trump was this year finally acquitted in his Impeachment proceedings. This victory, however, was buried by the shenanigans that would conclude his first – and perhaps last – term as US President. 2020 saw one of the more spectacular electoral controversies in recent memory, with Trump’s commanding lead in all key states effectively reversing in the early morning the day after polling in circumstances that were, at the very least, inherently suspicious – or at least they certainly would have been if the candidate brands were reversed.

Most striking was data from electoral records showing ballots collected from the dead: one egregious example showed that the oldest voter was born in the mid nineteenth century. Others testified online that their ballots did not show up as received on official registers. It should be noted that in the US, voters do not have to present any identification documents before voting in their elections. During this year’s elections, numerous Republican scrutineers were either evicted from polling stations, were not allowed to return after taking a break, or were not permitted to stand sufficiently close enough to be able to observe the counting procedure. The remaining polling clerks then took the remarkable step of covering up the windows of the centres in which the ballots were being “counted”. Lawsuits filed by the President’s legal team were routinely dismissed at State level by judges appointed by the local Democrat machine. Appeals to higher courts did not fare much better.

Videos of these irregularities were recorded and uploaded online, before being “disappeared” by social media moderators. Twitter deleted any posts that showed electoral clerks filling-in ballots, or postal workers boasting about their destruction of ballots for the incumbent President; a disclaimer was then placed on all posts that disputed the US electoral results, and a constant refrain of “no evidence of fraud” accompanied any news bulletin addressing claims of illegality or unfairness. Some precincts recorded an electoral turnout rate of over 200%. “Technical glitches” distorted real-time vote counting, before being “corrected”. Facebook removed the description of Donald Trump as “President” and replaced it with “political candidate”, before the US electoral colleges were declared, and the mainstream press routinely referred to Joe Biden as “President Elect” before the electors declared their votes to Congress. In a move that surprised many US conservatives, the otherwise Republican-leaning broadcaster Fox News joined the chorus of the rest of the mainstream media in legitimising this electoral outcome. Ironically, the talking heads who insisted the 2016 elections were defrauded by foreign powers seemed entirely unconcerned at the questionable events recorded at polling stations in 2020 or electoral role irregularities.

We noted our disappointment in the Trump Experiment in last year’s annual review. That disillusion has only been enhanced over the last twelve months. While we’re not residents in the US, we do feel an affinity to that groundswell of anti-establishmentarian reaction from the right that largely delivered the President to the White House. Thus, we too felt betrayed by his convergence with the Swamp he was elected to drain. Noted: the one demographic Trump lost was among white males, at minus five per cent. That’s us, and that’s not a small amount given the margin by which he lost (or was defrauded) in this election. If Trump hadn’t pursued “prison reform”, intervened to released criminal rappers from Swedish gaols, surrounded himself with political transvestites like Charlie Kirk, and generally allowed his domestic social agenda to be reëngineered by his daughter and son-in-law, the situation would likely have been different. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that the electoral turnout was at record levels, with Trump obtaining more votes at the ballot box than Hillary in 2016. Thus the President’s campaign may go down in history as being too “clever” for its own good. In the last week of 2020, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner while Julian Assange remains a prisoner in the UK pending extradition proceedings to the US.

This year also saw the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, former justice on the US Supreme Court, and her replacement by “charismatic Catholic” Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The collective broad-left reacted predictably to this third appointment, which supposedly created a supermajority of “conservatives” on the bench, yet the Court denied to hear a suit filed by the state of Texas that alleged illegalities in the electoral law of those key states which laid the conditions for the ballot fraud described above. Testimony leaked by an anonymous Supreme Court Clerk described that the Judges’ discussions concerning whether or not to hear the Texas case were bitter and hostile: while similar conclaves were held in a cordial atmosphere, yelling and profanities could be heard through the walls on this occasion. Late in the year, this same Supreme Court likewise struck down a state law that required that fathers be listed on the birth certificates of children born to lesbian couples. So much for the “conservative supermajority”.

Political Violence, 2020

2020 has been a year in which the debate concerning politically motivated violence has taken centre stage. This kind of violence is not new, and has plagued democratic societies for decades, however the continued polarisation of the US society has heightened tensions and created fertile ground for radicalisation on both the right and left. This year, the racial complex that continues to haunt American society precipitated civil unrest not seen since the Rodney King Riots or similar upheavals in the 1960s. Despite the fact that whites make up the largest number of victims of police shooting in the US, the death of an African American is frequently the cause of often-violent protest, reducing many neighbourhoods to something approximating a war zone. This year the death of George Floyd became emblematic of this problem. Floyd, who was under the influence of narcotics and resisted police arrest after being apprehended for using counterfeit banknotes, passed out and died while resisting arrest and being restrained by a police officer.

The riots that ensued under the banner of “Black Lives Matter” were supported by “allies” of the extreme left persuasion, notably the so-called “anti-fascists” or AntiFa. These proliferated like mushrooms after a storm, with their outrage fanned by a media sympathetic to an ideology of ostensible anti-racism. This year, however, that ideology was revealed to be less anti-racist as anti-white, and more broadly, anti-anything-associated-with-“whiteness”, including conservatism, and especially Trumpist populism and the culture that fosters it. This was made easier in an activist climate that pushed otherwise normative thought and rhetoric into the margins of social acceptability: this year self-described “rights campaigner” Jen Bokoff denounced salutations of “Merry Christmas” as “white supremacy culture at work”, and the Anti Defamation League declared Caucasian depictions of the infant Christ as an anti-Semitic “general hate symbol”. Emboldened by this assault on the mainstream culture, there was no appeasing the mob. Whole city blocks were occupied and declared “independence” from the established state and federal authorities. The more colourful of these was the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” or “Free Capitol Hill” in Seattle, run by self-proclaimed “warlord” rapper Raz Simone, who patrolled its streets distributing AR-15s from his Tesla. Predictably, this experiment in police-free community run by self-selected champions of the oppressed devolved into anarchy within a month.

Elsewhere, police attempted to placate the mob by “taking the knee” in the street instead of restoring order to besieged communities. Videos circulated online showing white “allies” who cheered the protesters, but who were themselves assaulted for the sins of their complexion and class status. Having effectively razed their own local suburbs, BLM protesters turned their attention to upper-class residential neighbourhoods, demanding that locals surrender their property for the benefit of the “oppressed”. Another video went viral showing a liberal ally asking protesters outside to be quiet, pointing to the Democrat electoral paraphernalia displayed on his front lawn, only to be told that “asking for silence is white supremacy”. Protesters besieged cafes and restaurants, demanding patrons declare fealty to their radical theories by lifting a fist in the air in the spirit of performative solidarity.

All of this occurred throughout 2020 in the context of continued iconoclasm, where symbols deemed part of America’s racist legacy remained under constant attack. Historically inconvenient, politically incorrect and racially “insensitive” names were removed from streets, colleges, and public institutions. The “Southern Baptist Convention” formally renamed itself the “Great Commission Baptists” – the very word Southern having been seen as offensive. Attempts to mitigate black deaths at the hands of police included the proposed passage of “Karen Laws” which would effectively criminalise calling police on a black person under certain circumstances. But any concessions to the mob and its demands only served to whet its appetite further, amplifying the violence visited on the public square and causing the kind of criminal thuggery liberal talking heads in the press attributed to the rightist boogieman.

This first high-profile victim of the BLM-AntiFa riots was C. A. Shoultz, who attempted to protect his business from a mob before being brutally assaulted, hit over the head and neck with a skateboard, and left for dead. The man survived the attack, but has been portray by the Reuters press agency as the offending party simply because he was armed with a sword and confronted a crowd of 10 to fifteen rioters outside of his place of business. Another high-profile case of defensive killing by a supporter of President Trump was that of Kyle Rittenhouse, who was pursued by three AntiFa affiliated rioters while retreating from a mob in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during an armed citizens’ patrol of the suburb. In the ensuing melee, in which Rittenhouse was beaten, pushed to the ground and assaulted with a weapon, he fired several shots, killing rioters Anthony Huber, Joseph Rosenbaum and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz. The later was subsequently identified as a member of a group known as the “People’s Revolution”. Rittenhouse surrendered himself to police, was indicted for reckless and intentional homicide, and later released on bail. He awaits trial and sentencing.

In yet another civil disturbance, this time in the Denver Civic Centre Park, a “BLM – AntiFa Soup Drive” organised by the Denver Communists, Colorado Socialist Revolution and other far-left groups was scheduled at the same time as a “Patriot Muster”, virtually guaranteeing trouble between the two camps. Matthew Dolloff, a private security guard hired by a media outfit and who the local police tweeted had “no affiliation with Antifa” shot and killed a member of “Patriot Prayer”, navy veteran Lee Keltner, after being sprayed with mace during an altercation. Dolloff has been charged with second degree murder. In another incident vaguely reminiscent of the case of James Fields, an incident involving a vehicle claimed the life of Garret Foster, an armed protester who attended an anti-police-brutality rally in Austin, Texas. On this occasion, Daniel Perry, who is an active US Army sergeant and whose car was surrounded by protesters, claimed that Foster raised his AK-47 before he reached for his own firearm releasing a shot in self-defence. Perry’s car was also shot at as he left the scene. Neither Perry, nor the individual who shot at him as he departed have faced prosecution.

Despite media attempts to whitewash the phenomenon, the assault and killing of Trump supporters and populist advocates continued on the streets of America’s major cities in 2020. Jesse Ousley was beaten by two individuals who took issue with his MAGA hat, and later died on the way to hospital due to brain injuries. Ousley’s is an interesting case because it illustrates the grievance hierarchy according to which an individual’s victim status can be assessed: here, the victim was black, Latino and a homosexual, but his murder for wearing a MAGA hat seems to have relegated him to the bottom of the stack. The incident has not been described as a “hate crime”, and Ousley’s attackers have not been prosecuted, despite the fact that the girlfriend of one of the attackers allowed him to use her phone to call for help. Another victim of the leftist mob in 2020 was Bernell Trammell, a black supporter of Donald Trump, who was shot and killed in Milwaukee. Trammell was known for being a political independent who supported the Black Lives Matter movement, but he was also an outspoken Christian and proudly displayed Republican Party paraphernalia on his property.

Another victim of the leftist mob in 2020 was Aaron “Jay” Danielson, also known as Jay Bishop. Danielson was shot dead by an AntiFa rioter in the progressive stronghold of Portland, Oregon during clashes between BLM protesters and supporters of the local Police Force. He was photographed after the shooting lying dead, wearing a “patriot prayer” hat and a “Blue Lives Matter” patch. His attackers reportedly called out “we got a couple of them right here” before he was killed. The assailant was identified as Michael Forest Reinoehl, who boasted online of being “100% ANTIFA all the way” and attended protests while armed. Reinoehl was later apprehended by the police, resisted his arrest, and subsequently killed while being taken into custody; there have been accusations that the police failed to identify themselves before attempting to take him into custody.

Jack Gardner, who killed AntiFa rioter James Scurlock in Nebraska while defending his father and himself from the violence that is now routinely visited upon supporters of President Donald Trump, committed suicide in Oregon on the day he was supposed to surrender himself to the authorities. The affair begun during one of the many BLM-AntiFa riots that have been plaguing the US through much of 2020. Originally, those authorities did not press criminal charges against Gardner, accepting that his actions were of a defensive nature when his business was besieged by far-left vandals. Garner released two warning shots into the air before being manhandled into a headlock by Scurlock, begged to be released, and then fired a shot during the ensuing struggle thereby killing his assailant. However, a campaign orchestrated by AntiFa-aligned networks pressured the District Attorney to allow the matter to be reviewed by a grand jury, which ultimately moved to indict him on charges of manslaughter and “terroristic threats”.

It is open to speculate that Garner did not see that he could possibly be afforded a fair and just trial in this highly politicised climate. Readers are reminded that the “Proud Boys Four” remain in gaol after defending themselves against masked and hooded AntiFa thugs who set upon them as they left a function; no attempts were made to identify the attackers in that case, but their victims, who threw punches in retaliation, are still behind bars. This year, Shane Moon, another Proud Boys member, was run down in a car by Charles R. Holliday-Smith, a Vancouver BLM militant, as Moon returned from a memorial dedicated to a Patriot Prayer victim of AntiFa homicide. Moon suffered bleeding on the brain as a result of his attack and had to be hospitalised, but in yet another contrast to the case of James Fields, prosecutors flatly refused to press charges against Moon’s far-left assailant.

2020 statistics have been published by various NGOs, progressive think-tanks and other entities “proving” that “right wing extremism” is a greater threat to public order than was once believed – yet we have every reason to believe that these numbers are inflated by disingenuously including deaths occasioned in self-defence, while examples of left-wing violence motivated by political bias or outright hate is denied or downplayed.

This year, perhaps understandably, President Trump announced that he would be designating AntiFa as a terrorist organisation. Critics immediately responded with claims that AntiFa isn’t an organisation at all, but merely a rhetorical designation for a loose collection of self-identified individuals acting under a broad ideological banner. We recall, however, that voices with within that same constellation of critics were quick to demand RICO-styled investigations of the “alternative right” – a collection of often mutually antagonistic individuals of no coherent philosophy or organisational framework – after the 2017 Charlottesville scandal. Also this year, according to a report of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, anti-fascists have been linked to “zero” murders in the US in the last quarter of a century – a strange assertion to make about an organisation that allegedly doesn’t exist, especially in light of some of the killings that did indeed happen over the last twelve months.

2020 Reveal:
AntiFa and its Freudian Complexes

Instead of obsessing about the non-existent threat of rightist terrorism, criminologists and civil society watchdogs might find that a better investment of their time would be to investigate the curious – we dare say queer – connection between self-described AntiFa or BLM rioters and their history of sexual crimes. BLM “activist” Kenneth Wayne DeBerry, who sucker-punched a Trump supporter and left him for dead on the streets of Washington during the “Million MAGA March” was found to be a child sex-offender recently released from prison. Mica Rhodes, one of the prominent organisers of the Portland “autonomous zone” and affiliated with both BLM and AntiFa was similarly revealed to have been convicted of sexual offences against minors. A conviction of child pornography appeared in the criminal history of Blake David Hampe, who this year stabbed Trump supporter Andrew Duncombe before being restrained by a crowd and delivered to the police. Likewise, the late and aforementioned Joseph Rosenbaum was a convicted paedophile while the late and also aforementioned Anthony Huber had a criminal history that included battery and repeated domestic abuse.

This year, AntiFa thugs violently attacked an anti-paedophilia march in Ireland, accusing the attendees of being “fascists” – but of course. Indeed, the founder of Ireland’s “Anti Fascist” movement and leading abortion-on-demand activist, Pat Corcoran, was himself convicted of possession of child pornography in 2013 but remains a respected organiser among the European extreme-left to this day. What accounts for the comparable tolerance with which this issue is treated by the media, while it reacts with extreme sensitivity to allegations of so-called “far right” “extremism”? “Cuties”, a French produced series that explicitly and blatantly sexualised under-aged girls, was launched this year with the usual Hollywood fanfare across all major social media platforms. The project made it past script, casting, production, filming and promotion, and not a single commentator in the media raised an eyebrow.

There seems to be a pattern here, but the investigative journalists of the mainstream press don’t appear to be interested in exposing this issue with the same gusto as they might relish, say, viciously libeling a Catholic Cardinal for unsubstantiated and ridiculous allegations of sexual abuse. At the close of 2020, the correlation of sexual deviancy and the politi-cultural left cannot be denied. This was the year when two prominent sexual predators in “progressive” establishment were finally brought to justice. This first was Harvey Weinstein, high-profile film producer who was found guilty of rape, sexual abuse and misconduct for acts going back to the 1970s. The allegations initially instigated the #MeToo movement that shook the industry. This year he started the first of his 23 years in prison. The second was Ghislaine Maxwell, a “socialite” with ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who allegedly committed suicide before being sentenced for his crimes last year. Maxwell is accused of assisting Epstein to recruit and groom under-aged girls for what was alleged to have been for political blackmailing and related purposes. Her trial date is set for mid-2021.

Coronavirus No. 19
The Scent of 2020

The most notable global event that defined the passing year would undoubtedly have to be the ongoing corona virus pandemic. Evidently originating from Wuhan, China, it spread rapidly to the rest of the world causing particular damage to northern Italy, Spain and later the United States. What governments the world-over have done in the name of controlling the pandemic has roused the concerns of many civil libertarians as well as those skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry’s close relationship with state agencies. Draconian rules designed to enforce “social distancing” have seen the effective gutting of small business and local economies, the shutting down of places of religious worship, and unprecedented intrusion into the private lives of individuals. These regulations, however, did not seem to prevent radical leftist protests and causes, including the so-called “black lives matter” demonstrations that spread across the globe after the death of George Floyd in the US, or the well-attended funeral of former Justice of the US Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The absurdity of these attempts to mitigate the impact of the virus has resulted, for example, in the criminalisation of people taking nature walks alone, or failing to wear a mask which is capable of only filtering dust (i.e., completely ineffective for filtering an air-born virus). Those who exercised their rights to protest against these regulations have been visited by the police, sometimes violently manhandled after forced entry into their homes. One emblematic case in Victoria included footage of police entering a pregnant woman’s apartment, handcuffing and taking her into custody, for promoting an anti-lockdown protest on social media. Comparable heavy-handed tactics also occurred overseas: Dr. Andreas Noack, a German scientist had his home raided by police while he was giving an online seminar into the science of the virus outbreak; another example from Belgium saw the raiding of a family home by riot police for supposed social distancing violations, resulting in one person needing hospitalisation.

Government agencies and NGOs have repeatedly reminded the public that the pandemic is life threatening, and on a mass scale. The crisis has been used as an opportunity to “reform” almost all aspects of civil society, from moving towards a cashless economy to regulating how far apart people can stand in public or how many can meet at home for family gatherings and other festive occasion. The Australian and UK governments have indicated that vaccination passports will have to be shown by people wishing to travel overseas. The French proposed travel regulations will extend to internal movement as well.  Nevertheless, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has declared that measures that restrict movement or mandate the wearing of masks are a violation of basic human rights. As the year progressed, the US Center for Disease Control quietly revised their mortality statistics for CovID19, noting under the heading “comorbidities” that only 6% of fatalities were caused solely by the virus. Those expressing reservations about the whole affair have continued to be mocked and slandered in the press. All this in the name of combating an alleged plague with a survival rate of over 99% – a figure also provided by the CDC.

This year, researchers scrambled to find a vaccine for Covid19, but not without some embarrassing hiccups along the way. Severe allergic reactions have been reported by subjects undergoing the Pfizer vaccine trials, neurological problems have been reported by test subjects taking the AstraZeneca vaccine, the Queensland University vaccine showed test subjects as positive for HIV, concerns have also been raised about adverse effects of a corona vaccine on a woman’s ability to conceive, and people reported positive and negative diagnoses after taking the same Covid tests consecutively, one immediately after the other. A nurse in Juneau, Alaska collapsed during a live press conference after being vaccinated. CNN informed its readers not to be concerned if people start dying after taking the corona vaccine. Bill Gates, a vociferous proponent of vaccination (and population control) admitted that side effects could be “super painful” but that the public shouldn’t worry. Covid test kits showed positive results for orange juice in Poland, and kiwi fruit in Italy.

As the year drew to a close, a study of ten million people in Wuhan China published in Nature Communications showed that only 300 cases of asymptomatic transmission were found – and none of those were positive for Covid19. This data seriously undermines the legitimacy of lockdown regulations which have had a massive impact across the globe. The Olympic Games have had to be postponed in Japan this year. Armed protesters also stormed the Michigan statehouse out of frustration over draconian pandemic regulations. Meanwhile, an outbreak of polio in Sudan was linked this year to the use of an oral vaccine for that virus in Africa. Despite this, numerous doctors’ groups and scientists who challenged or merely questioned the approach of governments in dealing with the pandemic were accused of “spreading misinformation”, engaging in “conspiracy theory” and removed from social media services.

The Passing of a Man of Letters
And a Semicentenary

Jean Raspail, who is perhaps best known as the author of the prophetic dystopian novel Camp of the Saints, passed away this year at the age of 94. Throughout his turbulent life, Raspail witnessed the cultural demise and political infantilisation of his country, France. A Catholic and Royalist man of letters, it was no surprise to see how Raspail’s warnings were contemptuously dismissed by the liberal gentry throughout Europe and abroad. Much like his spiritual kin, the Englishman Enoch Powell, the French writer attracted a large following of concerned compatriots at home. However, and also like Powell, he was hated by the those whose heritage he sought to defend from the continuing onslaught of political iconoclasts and cultural vandals, in France and elsewhere. His target was the inversion of virtue, the political anti-order that it produced, and the tyranny it naturally, inadvertently must lead to. This prophesied tyranny is now the political reality of France, as illustrated above.

This year was the 50^th anniversary of the seppuku of Japanese author, playwright, essayist, cultural critic and radical traditionalist, Mishima Yukio. Born Kimitake Hiraoka but known the world over by his pseudonym, “Mishima” wrote a number of texts which have made an impact on Western reactionaries in the last decade. Not without controversy for his lifestyle and personal inclinations, Mishima nevertheless represented a man who was painfully aware of the decay of his nation. For this reason, his work has resonated among those of us in the West likewise lamenting the materialist fixation, spiritual enervation and ultimate decline of our civilisation. Mishima performed ritual disembowelment after a failed attempt to instigate a coup d’état at the main Japanese Self Defence Force base in Tokyo in 1970. He took the ultimate step in a hopeless cause. In an interview for the BBC during which he was describing the concept of suicide in Japanese culture, he concluded: “sometimes, when you suicide, you win.” This isn’t our civilisation, and it’s not our morality, but we can respect a man who has the courage to confront his own mortal fears.

A Final Word

This year, obvious and highly observable patterns and behaviours were routinely denounced as “lies” or “conspiracy theories” by a cultural, political and media elite that has itself routinely lied to the public, while feigning ignorance as to the reasons for its moral bankruptcy and the resulting political apathy or reactionary populist revolt. This year that populist revolt kept simmering under the surface of a largely disenfranchised people who, despite advances made by so-called “outsider” political parties and the continued agitation of anti-establishmentarian movements among the grass roots, remain largely without any form of cultural influence or effective political representation in the halls of executive power.

It seems that every year that has passed since we started these annual reviews, the editors cannot imagine that the situation in which we find ourselves in could get any more chaotic, dystopic, and as our friends in the Old Left might say “internally contradictory”. However, it appears that despite the continued amplification of the global-crazy, the system seems remarkably resilient to implosion. This year, we are forced to question our belief whether this trajectory is fundamentally unsustainable. Perhaps the social engineers are right, and the human condition can indeed be manipulated into compliance, even when the demands go against the very essence of what it means to be human. Of course, we don’t discount the possibility that a tipping point may indeed exist, or that some novus actus might be encountered, though what it might be, and when it might come, is anyone’s guess. While possibilities are not likelihoods, we remain hopeful that Men of Virtue and Sacrifice, inspired by a sense of the Good and True, will ultimately prevail. It is in this spirit that we proceed into 2021 while mindful of the year that has passed.

– SydneyTrads Editors

SydneyTrads is the web page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum: an association of young professionals who form part of the Australian independent right (also known as “non-aligned right”).