2025: Another Bloody Retrospective
Don't Look Back in Schadenfreude
The title of this newsletter implies historical reflection, which I enjoy. Self-reflection, less so, except insofar as the self can provide insight into the world (“as above, so below” and all that). Gaze at the stars, not your navel. Release a new album; don’t repackage your greatest hits. The past is a sealed book, but the future has yet to be written, so that’s where the pen should be aimed. Who needs another bloody retrospective when the world keeps spinning in interesting, dangerous new directions?
And on that paradoxical note, here are my five most viewed posts from the past year, in descending order, along with some brief commentary. I write to organize my thoughts, crush knaves, and craft the perfect sentence, but I’d be doing so in a void without my readers. So, in order of appreciation, thank you for reading, commenting, liking, subscribing, and paying for my posts in 2025. Truly, despite delusions of Stoic autarky, I require external validation just like everybody else does, and even appreciate being artfully challenged.
Upon review, my most popular subjects in 2025 have been the Middle East and fascism. They’re both near to my heart, like twin daggers trying to kill me, and I approach them in a likewise visceral manner. Other topics I wrote about that didn’t make the list include right-wing antisemitism, left-wing anti-Zionism, Nietzsche, post-liberalism, globalism, Russia's war of genocidal inclusion, shifting definitions of right and left, the conservative vibe shift, ethnoreligions, nativism, civilizational politics, and conspiracy theories. When writing, my goal is to mix history, current events, and philosophy with wit, kishkes, and pathos. The exact quantities may vary depending on the qualities called forth. But less self-reflection and onward to 2026.
The Final Countdown (of the Year)
In my fifth most popular post of 2025, I made the case for a Palestinian monarchy. Specifically, the King of Jordan should rename his kingdom, become the King of Palestine, and absorb the West Bank and Gaza. The Arab world’s best-run states are monarchies. Jordan is an invented country (yes, all countries are invented, but some more than others). Why not drop the name and embrace the far more lucrative “Palestine” brand, while gaining land and subjects in the process? Sometimes you need to expand a problem to solve it.
The Palestinians Need a King
When he announced his Freedom Agenda in 2003, President George W. Bush declared that “Sixty…
My fourth-ranking post of 2025 argued that, for Israel, it’s better to have a demographic majority and less territory than a demographic minority and more territory. The Jews aren’t the Han Chinese and the Palestinians aren’t the Uyghurs. The math of a “Greater Israel” just doesn’t add up. I’ve thought of writing a follow-up post trying to make the only logical case for Greater Israel: namely, that Israel should encourage the mass conversion to Judaism (or at least the embrace of a Hebrew Muslim or Christian identity) by Palestinians. I call this the Idumaean option.
The Limits of Greater Israel
The 19th-century Russian revolutionary Alexander Herzen once said that the Slavs had no history, only geography. By contrast, Sir Isaiah Berlin noted, “The position of the Jews is the reverse of this. They have enjoyed rather too much history an…
My bronze-medal post of 2025 recalls the halcyon days when fascists embraced the label as a term of endearment. What happened since? Who tarnished fascism’s once-good name? Sadly for Nazi apologists, it was the fascists themselves. Mussolini made the world-historical mistake of allying with Hitler, who dragged Germany, Italy, fascism, and everything else he touched down with him. Fortunately, the contemporary right has learned its lesson and would never make common cause with Nazis…
Who Discredited Fascism?
Nowadays, the term “fascist” is invariably used as an insult. But it wasn’t always so. Benito Mussolini coined the term when he founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento militia in 1919, which evolved into the National Fascist Party in 1921. (“Fascism” derives from the La…
In my second most popular 2025 post, I likened young Nick Fuentes to a less talented Ernst Röhm and predicted that, like his homosexual Nazi precursor, he’ll be on the receiving end of a MAGA Night of the Long Knives. Hitler comparisons are overdone, and ignore the rich cast of fellow degenerates and sociopaths who made up the National Socialist elite. In 2026, we’ll see if anyone in MAGA has the political maturity to purge civilization’s enemies to the right.
The Groypers Will Get Their Night of the Long Knives
Normally, I’d shy away from Nazi comparisons for being in bad taste. Unless you’re running industrial-scale death camps and invading every nearby country to build a racial empire, you’re probably not in the same league as Hitler. But lately, far from defending themselves from the accusat…
In my most-read 2025 post, I argued that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward normalization between Israel and its neighbors. In presentist discourse, the Israeli–Arab conflict is often seen as uniquely intractable, Israel’s creation as sui generis abominable, and the Gaza War as an apocalyptic, generation-defining singularity. Actually, many formerly intractable enemies have been rendered tractable, nearly every state has bloodied roots, and Gaza isn’t even the deadliest modern conflict in the Middle East, let alone the world. It was a dark year for the Holy Land, but it’s always darkest before the dawn.
The Long View on the War in Gaza
Now that the war in Gaza is tentatively over, what are its long-term consequences? According to one view—let’s call it the doomer left perspective—Gaza has “destroyed what rem…