Two issues of Quadrant ago I wrote about the dire legal straits of former President Donald Trump under the assault of Democrat federal and state prosecutors who seemed to be weaponising US law to ensure the conviction of Tom Wolfe’s ultimate Great White Defendant by any technicalities necessary. It’s a process well-described as early as […]

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The Coutts documents show the bank lied in saying Nigel Farrage's account was closed for lack of funds. Its forty-page dossier, full of left-wing clichés and rumours, spoke of xenophobia, racism and reputational damage from being associated with BREXIT's chief advocate. So, with an arrogance unthinkable when banks focused on banking rather than activism, he was cast contempuously aside

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Contrary to what the New York Times would have its readers believe, Trump did not 'denounce the rule of law' unless every indicted man who proclaims his innocence is held to be denouncing it. What he asserted, quite correctly, was that law enforcement had been hijacked by Democrats and their elected prosecutors to take out the most formidable opponent they face in next year’s presidential election, namely himself.

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New-style disinformation requires little in the way of evidence. You don’t have to show the origins of fake reports, as was the case when exposing Soviet mischief, or how they are linked to the crime. No, you infer the crime itself from the fact that something undesirable has happened. After that you confidently attribute it to someone or some thing you don't like and which can be portrayed as benefitting

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It’s not in principle foolish or wrong to take precautions against violence and terror in politics—but things take a trickier turn when we go from protecting ourselves against violence to conflating it with political ideas we oppose and then fail to define. If much of your policy is based on a false belief, it’s going either to fail or to produce perverse results. As a case study, look to recent events in Germany

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If the COVID hysteria teaches us anything -- and the full measure of its lessons are many -- it is that good ideas are not improved while bad ideas survive and are pursued ever more fanatically. Meanwhile, intelligent critics of whatever is the current official orthodoxy, who should be prized and consulted, are instead demonised, circumvented, shunned and punished. What chance, do you think, this wisdom will be absorbed the next time mass panic sets in?

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Biden’s grand strategy—yes, surprisingly, he has one—is to align US interests with woke ideology. Consider, for example, his strategy to promote democracy around the world and the money earmarked to achieve that end. It turns out that such support will be going to programs for 'women and girls', 'empowering the LGBTQI community' and to 'worker organisations'

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Question America's chaotic, state-supervised federal elections and you’re an 'election denier', therefore an enemy of democracy and most likely a Trumpist conspiracy peddler. As President Biden’s press spokesman has said of those long delays in tallying votes -- inexplicable to citizens of efficient democracies -- that’s how the system is intended to work. Well, yes, exactly as intended

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On the afternoon of the Queen’s death, I was attending a conference of the Common Sense Society on history and politics at Bowood House, a splendid stately home owned by the Lansdowne family, planted confidently in Wiltshire’s heart of England. Apart from a few people, mainly lecturers, most of the conference attendees were not British […]

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Since the Fall of the Soviet Union, the transfer of powers from national governments to supranational bodies, courts and enforcement agencies has continued apace, nationalism and patriotism being seen by progressives as obstacles to a new post-national, post-democratic age. Now, and not before time, the national conservatism of Reagan and Thatcher is reasserting itself

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