Who remembers the book Animal Farm? In my last year of elementary school, before going to yeshiva, we were assigned Animal Farm by George Orwell to read during English literature class. (Yes, we actually learned something during the secular studies part of the day, but that is fodder for a different article.)
For those unfamiliar, Animal Farm is a satirical illustration of what was happening in Communist Russia. It tells the story of a farm where a strong pig managed to wrest control and impose new rules for how the farm should run. For example, the by-laws of the farm said, “All animals are equal.” But in very light print beneath this important law, there was an addendum stating, “Some animals are more equal than others.” The book brilliantly illustrated how the pig manipulated the entire farm, leading to the abuse of hard-working, conscientious animals in the name of equality and their eventual demise.
I remember reading Animal Farm and thinking Orwell had written a great book, but in order to make his point, he had exaggerated the lies of the communists. After all, no sane person could believe those lies and ascribe to such a philosophy.
Pravda and Its Lies
Later, those of us old enough to remember Communist Russia recall how Pravda, the government-sanctioned media, ran stories claiming that life in America was dreadful, with people suffering from hunger and government exploitation, while in the Russian “paradise,” everything was amazing.
The problem arose when a westerner managed to capture images of empty shelves in Russian grocery stores and the pinched looks on the faces of Russian people, and described how any Russian who spoke instinctively guarded their words. That was when everyone realized that the whole narrative was one big evil sheker.
Pravda, which means “Truth” in Russian, was trying to convince millions that what they saw wasn’t true. They kept hammering this falsehood until many Russians believed it. Those who didn’t believe were intimidated into at least repeating the party lines and never disclosing the truth they saw with their own eyes.
If there was one thing I remember thinking back then, it was that such evil sheker—manipulating, browbeating, and intimidating an entire society into parroting falsehoods while insisting that they are true—could not happen in America. After all, we have freedom of the press and freedom of expression so strongly enshrined in the Constitution that it could withstand the evil designs of power-hungry men…or so I thought.
I was wrong. What we have witnessed in recent years, especially in this election cycle, is a level of evil sheker by design that would have made even Pravda proud. In some ways, it has surpassed Pravda.
The New Lies
Let me be clear. I am not referring to the fact that politicians lie. Every politician lies, embellishes, and exaggerates their accomplishments while minimizing their mistakes. They also exaggerate and sometimes fabricate faults of their opponents. This is the regular, dirty politics practiced for centuries in America and many other places.
I am talking about a type of lie on the left and in many quarters of what today is the Democratic Party that is far more insidious. The lies they are propagating and want us to believe are designed to fundamentally transform our society. They lie to force us to think that good is evil and evil is good. We have seen this increase in scope and intensity over the last decade, and now, in today’s frenzied election cycle, it has gone completely out of control.
Let me give a few examples.
The Murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement
Number one: the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.
What happened then was unprecedented in American society on such a scale. There was a plan to sow anarchy in society so that the regular functioning of law enforcement would be suspended. This was coupled with a well-funded campaign by the far left to place “progressive” prosecutors in the largest cities, leading to crimes going unprosecuted and criminals being let loose with barely a slap on the wrist.
The design? To transform American society from one of law and order to one of anarchy.
We are seeing the fruits of this plan in our cities today. Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and many other cities are becoming uninhabitable. Anarchy reigns. Businesses are fleeing. The ultimate plan is to bring America down and weaken the very foundations that made America the greatest power in the world and the land of opportunity.
Changes to the Morality Code
Number two: changing the morality code.
Another way to destroy society is by undoing thousands of years of moral norms. Creating moral anarchy can only be achieved with complete, evil sheker, especially if the most vulnerable members of society—young kids and teens—are sacrificed. They have browbeaten society into accepting something that is against science, logic, and every instinct we possess. By taking over academia and the press, they have promoted a narrative that gender is a social construct.
This has poisoned society in an indescribable way. This is a lie that even Pravda would not have been able to pull off, but right here, in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, you can lose your job just for saying a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. Stalin would have been proud.
The Israel-Hamas War
Number three: the Israel-Hamas war.
If there was ever an example of completely turning good and evil on their heads, it can be found in the way the mainstream press has mimicked Pravda in painting good as evil and evil as good. Hamas atrocities are minimized or ignored. The fact that every casualty in Gaza could have been avoided if not for Hamas is conveniently forgotten. Vice President Kamala Harris’s response after meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu is a textbook example. As John Podhoretz wrote in the New York Post, when Kamala Harris says, “Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism,” it is a sentence with no meaning, only uttered by those who wish to follow it with a “but.”
“And here was Harris’s but: ‘But how it does so matters.’
“In other words, its right to defend itself should be conditioned on the results of its self-defense. And she made it clear that how Israel has done so matters to her—and she’s angry about it.
“Why? She is horrified by ‘the images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.’
“She is right in every particular but one—the odd omission from her words of the total and complete responsibility of Hamas for every single one of those images, and every single second of desperation and hunger suffered by the people of Gaza.
“What has numbed people to the suffering is the misdirection of the blame away from those who started the war to hide among the civilians, steal the food aid, and hide in the tunnels.”
The Most Recent Presidential Debate: Oops! Debacle
Number four: the present election cycle.
Until President Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, where his age and infirmity were revealed undeniably, the mainstream press was in full Bolshevik mode, telling us that the president was vigorous, running circles around aides decades younger than him. If you questioned his ability to fulfill his presidential duties after seeing him get lost on stage and shuffle off with a blank, shuttered look in his eyes, you were accused of something akin to treason. The main networks simply would not allow talk of his frailty on the airwaves, and his press secretary and surrogates angrily told us that what we saw was bias and we were terribly evil for even thinking—let alone sharing—that Scranton Joe, “everyman’s hero,” might no longer be up to the task.
Then, after the debate, the big undemocratic switcheroo took place. All of a sudden, Biden was expendable. Not because they didn’t want him to be president anymore, but because keeping him in would ensure a Trump victory. The party bosses made an about-face, and he was dropped like an unusable dirty rag.
From Border Czar to Denial
Number five: Kamala Harris can walk on water.
That, in a nutshell, is what the entire American Pravda media has been feeding us ever since they undemocratically forced Joe Biden to pull out of the race. When they realized that they could not win, they were left with no choice. Kamala had to run. There was only one slight problem. She had proven over almost four years as vice president that she was incompetent, lazy, and just not likable. The answer has been the total Pravda remake of her personality. All her blemishes haven’t just been airbrushed, but transformed into savvy political skills. Kamala, who was so disliked by her own staff that she faced constant turmoil and turnover in her office, is now painted as a combination of “tough,” “lovable,” “brilliant” and “tenacious,” and, by the way, she is also a black woman.
Perhaps the greatest indication of the Bolshevik nature of this Kamala remake is how the press is dealing with her record on the southern border. Kamala was given one job by President Biden this past term: to take control of the porous border. Until last week, it was common knowledge that Kamala’s purview as vice president included the southern border. That’s why, in 2021, the New York Times referred to her as Mr. Biden’s “border czar.”
That was then. Before Kamala Harris was running for president. As of the past 48 hours, this fact has been reclassified by the press as disinformation. Why? Because it’s deemed politically unhelpful.
Peter Savodnik of the Free Press writes, “In March 2021, Axios published a story with the headline ‘Biden Puts Harris in Charge of Border Crisis.’ Politics reporter Stef W. Kight informed us that the vice president would be ‘addressing the migrant surge at the U.S.-Mexico border,’ and that Harris would ‘lead efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) to manage the flow of unaccompanied children and migrant families arriving at the border in numbers not seen since a surge in 2019.’
“Lest anyone wonder whether this was a big job with a great deal of responsibility, a White House official told reporters: ‘President Biden said during the transition, whatever the most urgent need, he would turn to the vice president, and today he is turning to the vice president.’
“Today—July 24, 2024—the same reporter at the same outlet has a story headlined ‘Harris Border Confusion Haunts Her New Campaign.’
“Kight now reports: ‘In early 2021, President Biden enlisted Vice President Kamala Harris to help with a slice of the migration issue.’
“We are told that there is ‘confusion around the VaP’s exact role’ and that ‘early media misfires and the rapidly changing regional migration crisis have made the issue a top target for the GOP trying to define their new opponent. And it has become even more critical for Harris to find a clear border message, fast.’ The story also quotes former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson: ‘She is not the border czar.’
“Just to make sure readers understand that Axios, in 2021, in no way intended to provide Republicans, in 2024, with a talking point that might help Donald Trump, Axios has added an editor’s note at the bottom of the new piece: ‘This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ in 2021.’”
CNN is claiming that Harris’s job was never to be in charge of the border; her job was to combat “the roots of immigration.” This spin has been echoed by other outlets like USA Today and Time Magazine.
Where Does That Leave Us?
If this isn’t Pravda, I don’t know what is. Pravda’s reporters were forced to lie under threat of a one-way ticket to Siberia. The American media has become no less adept than the Stalinist Bolsheviks.
So where does this leave us? In an extremely dangerous place. The anarchists will do anything to preserve their power. The country is a powder keg, and in the time remaining in this election cycle, things will presumably only get worse. There is nothing the left won’t do to preserve their power and stranglehold on society. As Jews, we should certainly be terrified of the anarchy that can only worsen.
As American citizens, we must understand that for different reasons than those stated by Joe Biden, “our democracy is at risk.”
Really.
