Ceuta immigration incident, five days on

Politico reports on Tuesday a number of 72 thousand for the number of immigrants/refugees who arrived in the Spanish city of Ceuta from Morocco, most of which apparently came on this past Thursday. Virtually all were quickly returned to Morocco. It reports that 88 people died in the incident, presumably mostly by drowning. And most of Spain’s EU partners managed to pull themselves together and suppress support for Spain’s government rather than using the incident to pander to far-right nativists parties:

EU interior ministers sought to draw a line under five days of bitter recriminations over the arrival of 72,000 migrants in Ceuta, closing ranks behind Spain and accusing smugglers and foreign actors of exploiting the crisis to divide the bloc.

The show of solidarity marked a sharp shift after EU leaders publicly blamed Madrid’s migration policies for creating a crisis they warned could spill across Europe, prompting Italy to suspend air and sea links with Spain.

Following a three-hour emergency meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, ministers praised Spain’s response, stressed that the passport-free Schengen zone had never been at risk and called for tighter coordination among capitals during future migration emergencies. [emphasis added] (1)

I’ll just insert here that if the major military powers of west-central Europe want to have effective defense cooperation against possible Russian aggression, losing their minds at each other over immigration issues is not a constructive approach.

This is a good August 3 report from British Channel 4 on the Ceuta incident and its implications that features several commentators, including Gerald Knaus of the European Stability Initiative (ESI), one of the best-informed commentators of immigration issues. (2)

This was almost certainly orchestrated by the Moroccan government, because of the 72 thousand people who showed up in Ceuta at the end of the week, all but a few thousand had been returned to Morocco by Monday. The scenario almost certainly required careful planning.

Anne Applebaum also has a good comment on the Ceuta incident (She's married to the current Polish foreign minister, which doesn't mean she speaks for him but does mean she has to particularly careful about her formulations, especially on EU affairs.) She opens with this:

Mostly young, mostly male Moroccans crawling onto beaches, climbing hills, scaling walls, jumping over fences, surging past police in order to get into Europe: The photographs and videos that emerged from Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, on July 29 and 30 looked very much like migrant-terror videos, deliberately designed to be broadcast by the international far right. So closely did this incident resemble the “invasion” that MAGA and its European friends have long said is under way that it was hard not to suspect that it had been orchestrated.

Last week, according to El Pais as well as other Spanish, international, and Moroccan media outlets, many Moroccans saw a TikTok video nevertheless claiming that “the Spanish border is open and you can cross without papers,” meaning they could reach the European continent. The video appeared to reference a recent ruling by the Spanish supreme court making it harder to return migrants who arrive by sea, but it was not the only encouragement. Other messages, many of which have now disappeared, told people where to buy wet suits, flippers, goggles, floats, and even waterproof bags for documents and cellphones. Screenshots from Google Maps told them which sections of the Ceuta beach might have fewer police. Moroccan border guards were either unwilling or unable to stop them.

Surprised by the unprecedented numbers and perhaps fearing hundreds would drown—in the end, at least 70 people died in the water, including some children—the Spanish police let them land on the beach. This is when the photographs and videos began to circulate. Among those promoting them were senior members of the Trump administration, and senior leaders of the European far right. [emphasis added] (3)

The Republicans in the US are probably already working on ad spots for this year’s election featuring scary-looking footage with ominous music and commentary featuring young Arab and black men from the Ceuta incident.

Applebaum gives this good brief description of how the far right uses such messaging:

Readers can be forgiven for feeling a strong sense of déjà vu. For more than a decade now, European and indeed American politicians have known that real, fake, enhanced, or context-free pictures of migrants jumping fences will immediately create a wave reaction. Military rhetoric will be used — attack or invasion — and, to quote Vance, “radical left-wing globalist policies” will be blamed. Hardly anyone will ask why it is that so many people are so desperate to move that they will risk their lives. Few will mourn the dead.

Instead, far-right and MAGA politicians, influencers, and podcasters will immediately use the most divisive language possible in order to make voters as angry as possible, as fast as possible, regardless of what actually happened. Almost everyone else will be intimidated by their fury. As it turns out, it’s harder to stop the wave of anger than it is to stop the migrants themselves.

Guardian columnist Jonathan Liew comments, “Ceuta functions as a kind of border porn for the global far right: a locus upon which to project their most vivid and apocalyptic fantasies.” (4)

Kim Son Hoang reports for Austria’s Der Standard:

Spain may rely on a different migration policy internally than the majority of the other EU states [a reference to Spain’s recent immigrant-normalization action], but the country is also restrictive externally. Border protection – even in Ceuta – has been massively expanded, and there is also close cooperation with neighboring third countries such as Morocco or Algeria in order to be able to stop migration movements there.

It is the model on which the EU has been relying for years: to engage riparian states [who share a common waterway like the Strait of Gibralter] as Europe's bouncers, even if they resort to brutal methods. …

Of course, fake news around a ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court, according to which the way to mainland Europe via Ceuta is now open, played a role. But the mass border crossings would never have been possible without the active or passive support of the Moroccan authorities, who control and monitor the country so strictly. Videos on social media showing Moroccan officials carting tens of migrants to the border in trucks are likely to be fake. Numerous eyewitnesses reported that border guards on the Moroccan side did not intervene. And the New York Times writes that some of them even encouraged people to swim to Ceuta. [emphasis added] (5)

Notes:

(1) Sheftalovich, Zoya, et.al. (2026): EU ministers close ranks behind Spain after Ceuta migration crisis. Politico 08/04/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ministers-back-spain-after-ceuta-migration-crisis/> (Accessed: 2026-04-08).

(2) Moroccan Migrant incident: Why the right say UK could be invaded. Channel 4 News YouTube channel 08/03/2026. <https://youtu.be/ktcC0pQM3XA?si=dCLpnBZbnMlTqXao> (Accessed: 2026-04-08).

(3) Applebaum, Anne (2026): The Far Right Is Distorting Ceuta: We’ve seen this before. Atlantic 08/03/2026. <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/ceuta-spain-far-right/688154/?gift=hVZeG3M9DnxL4CekrWGK3-S2rg6vicUyi94WzO9WXUM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share&fbclid=IwY2xjawTdZi5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETEwd3VOWDVlcjZvUkFZS21Pc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHgLImglVgyVp6vs16MGU4r4txHJStFppg2peIFwEGRydpQIg7aJFAFXEjzSD_aem_bPMUJtHjJC6-NNx1V8XGOg> (Accessed: 2026-04-08).

(4) Liew, Jonathan (2026): Ceuta was a carnival of anti-migrant content for hateful opportunists on the right. Guardian 04-Aug-2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/04/ceuta-carnival-anti-migrant-content-opportunists-on-right-lesson-for-left> (Accessed: 2026-04-08).

(5) Hoang, Kim Son (2026): Spanien als Pull-Faktor, Marokkos Motive, Europa erpressbar: Die wichtigsten Punkte zu Ceuta. Der Standard 08/03/2026. <https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000333912/spanien-als-pull-faktor-marokkos-motive-europa-erpressbar-die-wichtigsten-punkte-zu-ceuta> My translation to English.

The recent refugee flow from Morocco to Spain and … Israeli involvement??

I have my reservations these days about the reporting from The Young Turks, especially from their two leading reporters, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian.

But Cenk and John Iadorola here have a decent discussion of the circumstantial evidence that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel had something to do with the strange flood of refugees this weekend from Morocco to the adjacent Spanish city of Ceuta. (1)

A blog entry by Jose Lev Alvarez Gomez at the Times of Israel website also attacks the Spanish government over its handling of the crisis this weekend. (2) He sneers out this silly claim: "The Sánchez administration’s border mess is a shameful abdication of constitutional duty that signals a profound strategic weakness. While Morocco’s demographic pressures are real, Spain’s vulnerability is entirely self-inflicted and the direct result of a hollowed-out border security apparatus."

What is the lesson Alvarez Gomez takes from this? “Morocco should propose a comprehensive Western Mediterranean Security Pact to the United States and the State of Israel under the Abraham Accord framework.”

Yes, Morocco is a participant in the Abraham Accords, one of the seven signatories, the others being Bahrain, Israel, Kazakhstan, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the US. (3)

It’s important to remember that Ceuta and Melilla are legally parts of Spain, whatever nationalist or moral claims Morocco may assert. The United Nations current list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, i.e., those with unresolved colonial status. Ceuta and Melilla are not among them. Gibraltar, the nearby island territory of Britain, is claimed by Spain. Western Sahara, the territory involved in the dispute between Morocco and Algeria that probably played some role in the short Ceuta crisis over the weekend, is also a Non-Self-Governing Territories on the list.

Alex Milan Durie writes:

Some observers believe that if Morocco did orchestrate the mayhem, it may have been encouraged by others, pointing at two leaders with a particular grudge against Sanchez – US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

[Spanish Prime Minister Pedro] Sanchez is one of Europe’s most consistently pro-Palestinian voices. He has explicitly said Israel’s war on Gaza is genocide, has been highly critical of the US-Israel war on Iran, and refused to allow jointly operated US-Spanish military facilities to be used to facilitate that war. …

There is no evidence that Morocco orchestrated events in Ceuta partly on behalf of Israel, just a lot of interesting coincidences.

But whether or not there was any conspiracy, one consequence of the episode is clear – the already frosty relations between the left-wing Spanish government of Sanchez and the far-right Israeli government of Netanyahu are now even chillier. [emphasis added] (4)

Ynet News Global, the English online site for the Israeli news agency Yedioth Ahronoth, reports that Morocco is also angry with Israel. Or maybe that’s diplomatic cover for Morocco cooperating with Israel.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon also criticized Sánchez on Friday. “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis surrounding its migration policy,” he wrote on X. “Perhaps before it continues lecturing us, it is time for Spain to explain to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”

Following Danon’s remarks, a Moroccan news site accused Israel of “exploiting the migration crisis in Ceuta to settle scores with Spain.” A Moroccan source told ynet that many Moroccans rejected the description of the event as illegal migration. “Many Moroccans said the incident had nothing to do with illegal immigration, but rather with Moroccans crossing the border into a Moroccan city under Spanish occupation,” the source said.

“They argued that the problem is the occupation itself, not the arrival of Moroccans on their ancestral land [Ceuta].” (5)

Another Ynet News Global report from April also references the diplomatic opportunities presented to Israel by the cities of Ceuta and Mellilla:

The geopolitical earthquake shaking Washington's relationship with Madrid has opened an unexpected window for one of the Arab world's oldest territorial grievances. Spain's refusal to allow the United States access to its Rota and Morón military bases during the Iran campaign, its consistent failure to meet NATO defense spending targets, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's confrontational posture toward the Trump administration have collectively generated something rare in North African affairs: a genuine crack in Spain's strategic armor over Ceuta and Melilla. Into that crack, Morocco's most consequential new partner, Israel, is uniquely positioned to press.

The pieces have been assembling for months. In March 2026, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, writing through the Middle East Forum, called on the Trump administration to formally recognize Ceuta and Melilla as occupied Moroccan territory, branding Spain "a colonial power running colonies across the Strait of Gibraltar." Days later, Representative Mario Díaz-Balart, chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security and one of Marco Rubio's closest congressional confidants, declared publicly that the enclaves "are not in the geographic territory of Spain" but rather in Moroccan territory, and that their fate should be "established, negotiated, and discussed between friends and allies." This was not the fringe speaking. This was the architecture of a coordinated strategic repositioning. [emphasis added] (6)

Israel even cynically advocates for Muslim Morocco to occupy and annex Ceuta and the similar Spanish enclave of Melilla. Because that’s what Israel has been doing since 1948, just seizing and taking over areas it wants? Like in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria right now?

Not that Spain handling of Ceuta and Mililla has been an example of sterling government. Quite the contrary.

In a 2022 incident, Moroccan police killed at least 27 emigrants trying to leave Moroccan territory to enter Spain. That was the opposite situation to what happened this past weekend, when it’s pretty clear that Morocco actively encouraged a mass rush of refugees into Ceuta – most of which were immediately returned to Morocco.

“It is horrible that the government would congratulate the Moroccan police,” tweeted progressive [Spanish] MP Íñigo Errejón. “Is this what the abandonment of the Saharawi people bought us?” Here he referred to Sánchez’s historic foreign policy shift this February with respect to the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara, which saw him back a plan to formalize Morocco’s brutal occupation regime in exchange for the normalization of diplomatic ties with the authoritarian monarchy [i.e., Morocco’s monarchy]. The move broke with decades of Spanish foreign policy and goes against international court rulings and the position of the United Nations General Assembly that recognizes Western Sahara’s right to self-determination.

In this respect, outsourcing its border security to Morocco has left Spain open to repeated blackmail as Mohammed VI’s government has sought to leverage the issue of irregular immigration against its European neighbor. In May 2021, Morocco opened the border at the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, allowing eight thousand people to cross in just forty-eight hours. This was, in part, retaliation for Spain’s condemnation of Donald Trump’s unilateral recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Then in March this year, Sánchez chose to sue for peace after one thousand migrants unsuccessfully tried to scale the fences in Melilla. Spanish intelligence believed that this could be the start of further mass incursions — and in the context of the Ukraine war, a destabilized border was not something Sánchez wanted to countenance.

Although it pulled out in 1975, Spain remains, under international law, the administrative power in Western Sahara, legally responsible for completing the decolonization of this resource-rich territory the land area of Britain. In exchange for selling out the Sahrawi people and turning his back on his country’s historic mandate, what Sánchez got from Morocco was an increased crackdown against irregular immigration, stopping people reaching Spain, with Morocco’s cooperation formally secured in a bilateral agreement on immigration in April. The immediate background to Friday’s killings was the violent dismantling of an immigrant camp close to Melilla on Thursday night by Moroccan police while Spanish and Moroccan police operated together on Spanish soil to immediately remove the vast majority of the five hundred people who scaled the fence. PSOE’s own electoral program contains the promise to end these types of migrant pushbacks, which deny those arriving any due process over the right to seek asylum. [emphasis added] (7)

Linda Dyan describes the incident in Haaretz. (8) According to her account, there was as many as 60,000 migrants/refugees coming into Ceuta. By seemingly all account, most of them had returned within a day or so, with only a few thousand of the tens of thousands that quickly crossed the border. Given the numbers involved, it’s very reasonable to assume that the Moroccan government actively encouraged the influx, though exactly how is unclear in the reporting.

Whatever role Israel may have played diplomatically is not clear from the current reporting. There are differences between Morocco and Spain over the Western Sahara and Israel does have criticisms of Spain over its public criticism of the genocide in Gaza and Spain’s refusal to allow the US to use its airspace for flights connected to the US-Israel War on Iran. Israel’s government has also shown sympathy for far-right parties in Europe like Germany’s AfD, with whom they find common cause in their Islamophobia – and demagoguery over immigration is a central part of those parties’ political strategies.

So those are legitimate question about Morocco’s and Israel’s role in Ceuta flap this past weekend, so long as we remember the skeptic’s adage that “correlation is not causation.” Dyan dismisses the questions about Israel’s role as a “conspiracy theory.” But she herself speculates that this represents a “weaponization of migrants by Morocco” while citing only the plausible Moroccan motivations already referenced above, including the fact that Morocco is one of the five signatories to the pro-Israel Abraham Accords. Dyan also writes:

... Morocco is a signatory to the Abraham Accords, and the two cooperate on defense and security.

Israel's Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon didn't do much to quell the theories. "Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy," he wrote. "Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it's time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa."

In a very recent article for the EJIL: Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law, Desislava Dimitrova goes a bit more into some of the international legal issues around refugees in Ceuta and Melilla. Even though Spain has had a more practical and humane policy for normalizing the residency of refugees, the larger problem remains of the EU’s protracted failure to adopt more pragmatic and humane policies for handling refugees:

Border management in Ceuta and Melilla cannot be reduced to mechanisms for the summary return of intercepted migrants. Instead, it must be grounded in safeguards that ensure the effective protection of fundamental rights, while fully complying with the law of the sea. In this context, technological developments can play an important role. Rather than being conceived solely as instruments of border enforcement, they should also be recognized for their potential to protect human life at sea. Realizing that potential, however, requires the prevailing securitarian approach to give way to one centred on the protection of life. (8)

Notes:

(1) Cenk Reveals Who Is Behind The Migrant Crisis In Spain. The Young Turks YouTube channel 08/01/2026. <https://youtu.be/ktHGVy4jBbU?si=YkSsxOSxPw0vBRfw> (Accessed: 2026-02-08).

(2) Spain Lost Ceuta: Morocco Must Now Finish the Job. Times of Israel 08/01/2026. <https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/spain-lost-ceuta-morocco-must-now-finish-the-job/> (Accessed: 2026-02-08).

(3) Israel and the Abraham Accords in 2025: Five years on. House of Commons Library 09/30/2025. <https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/israel-and-the-abraham-accords-in-2025-five-years-on/> (Accessed: 2026-02-08).

(4) Durie, Alex Milan (2026): Why did Ceuta migrant mayhem chill already frosty Israel-Spain relations? Aljazeera 08/01/2026. <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/1/why-did-ceuta-migrant-mayhem-chill-already-frosty-israel-spain-relations> (Accessed: 2026-02-08).

(5) Ben Air, Lior (2026): 'Not migration, but a city under Spanish occupation': Morocco turns its anger on Israel. Ynet News Global 08/01/2026. <https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bj00vypcbge> (Accessed: 2026-02-08).

(6) Ayoub, Amine (2026): Abraham Accords reach the Strait: how Israel can help Morocco reclaim its north. Ynet News Global 04/26/2026. <https://www.ynetnews.com/opinions-analysis/article/bki11ns9tzx> (Accessed: 2026-03-08).

(7) Gilmartin, Eoghan (2022): Spain’s Government Is Turning a Blind Eye to Killings at Its Border. Jacobin 06/28/2022. <https://jacobin.com/2022/06/europe-spain-morocco-border-killings-psoe-sanchez> (Accessed: 2022-08-10).

(8) Dayan, Linda (2026): Israel's Fault? The Conspiracy Theory Surrounding Spain's Ceuta Border Crossings. Haaretz 08/02/2026. Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2026-08-02/ty-article/.premium/israels-fault-the-conspiracy-theory-surrounding-spains-ceuta-border-crossings/0000019f-c245-d3b5-a99f-efe5cc7f0000?gift=5ad3c1cf6fa642c7a12b20f3d98569ed> (Accessed: 2026-03-08).

(9) Dimitrova, Desislava (2026): The Spanish Supreme Court on Rejection at the Borders of Ceuta and Melilla: What About Human Rights at Sea? EJIL:Talk! 07/30/2026. <https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-spanish-supreme-court-on-rejection-at-the-borders-of-ceuta-and-melilla-what-about-human-rights-at-sea> (Accessed: 2026-03-08).

Refugee influx from Morocco into Spain

Judith Kohlenberger of the Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien has become a prominent commentator on immigration issues in the EU. And she is one of the best-informed and insightful analysts of the issue.

She posted a Facebook comment August 1 on the current situation of immigration into the Spanish city/enclave of Ceuta, describe here in a news report from Britain’s Channel 4:

Having paid close attention to immigration in the US and now living as a (completely legal, fully documented) immigrant in the EU, I’m routinely frustrated at the superficiality of the political dialogue and often the mainstream reporting on immigration issues.

In the ongoing politics of defending liberal democracy, immigration continues to be a centrally important issue, because rightwing anti-democracy parties make national identity as well as race and religion a central part of ethnonationalist identity politics (völkisch politics in German).

The German version of Kohlenberger’s post is imbedded below. Here is my English translation interspersed with my commentary:

“Three aspects that become clear from the still-confused situation in Ceuta, and the role of Morocco, Spain and the USA for Europe's migration policy.” (JK) That refers to the current panic over the influx of thousands of refugees from Morocco to the autonomous Spanish city of Ceuta. From Google Maps:

As the map above shows, Ceuta is on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Britannica has already updated its entry on Ceuta to include the recent crisis:

Ceuta is a Spanish exclave, military post, and free port on the coast of Morocco, at the Mediterranean entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. It is an autonomous city administered by Spain. Ceuta, Melilla (also an exclave), and other tiny islets along the coast of North Africa constitute the territories of Spanish North Africa.

Ceuta is surrounded by a double fence with barbed wire. In 2006, the fence was raised and military personnel and weapons were increased to secure the borders. Even so, thousands of immigrants, mainly African refugees, unsuccessfully try to cross the border every year. In July 2026, mass migration into Ceuta caused prime minister Pedro Sánchez to deploy further military units there. (2)

The visual is important to understanding the sleazy and dishonest politics of the political xenophobes. When we see and hear reports of dark-skinned young men running across a border into Europe, that immediate gets the adrenalin of völkisch types flowing. And of course they are calling this an “invasion” in typical Trumpista language. Sánchez calls the sudden influx of refugees from Morocco ““a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity.”

For anyone who’s not an oxycontin-head – forgive the retro Rush Limbaugh reference – thousands of unarmed civilian refugees coming across the border is not a military invasion. Non-rightwing parties should not encourage or validate the use of “invasion” for refugee influxes, or as a part of “hybrid warfare.” The latter phrase is fine for hostile cyberattacks by other nations. But describing immigrants as invaders legitimates ignoring international law on refugees as well as the use of vigilante violence against immigrants. This is as true for the US as for Europe.

Spain’s current Prime Minister (since 2017) is Pedro Sánchez, head of the main social-democratic party, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). He is generally considered a left politician and has drawn hostile comments from the Trump regime, like various other European leaders across the spectrum, including the hard-right Georgia Meloni. And he’s publicly treated this as some kind of hostile act by the government of Morocco.

There is a foreign policy issue between Spain and Morocco that probably played some part in the sudden surge of refugees this week.

[T]he crossing could be linked to the rivalry between Morocco and Algeria, and a recent trip by the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, to Algiers.

The last mass border crossing, in May 2021, took place after Morocco loosened border controls during a diplomatic row with Spain over Spain’s decision to allow the leader of the Western Sahara independence movement, the Polisario Front, to be treated for Covid-19 in Spain.

Morocco and the Polisario Front both lay claim to Western Sahara, which was under Spanish rule until 1975, when colonial authorities handed over the territory to Morocco and Mauritania.

That diplomatic crisis ended in 2022 when Madrid reversed its longstanding policy of neutrality and backed Morocco’s plan for Western Sahara – a move that had caused a diplomatic rift between Madrid and Algiers, which supports the Polisario group.

Sánchez visited Algiers on 20 July – the first such visit by a Spanish head of government in four years – marking a thaw in relations with Algeria. (3)

But, “Sánchez blamed the sudden inflow on human traffickers spreading rumours about a recent Spanish supreme court ruling that irregular migrants arriving by sea cannot be immediately returned.” He may have reasons that he doesn’t want to place foreign-policy issue on the front burner at the moment. But resorting to cheap xenophobic posturing – it’s the court’s fault for recognizing the rights of immigrants and refugees! – is destructive in itself.

And European politics over the last decade and a half have shown again and again that when left and center-right policies pander to xenophobia, it consistently strengthens the far right/Trumpist/Orbánist parties and groups.

Kohlenberger’s first major point:

The supposedly "demotivating" effect of the CEAS [Common European Asylum System] reform, which has been in force since 12 June, is clearly not occurring in view of strong migration drivers such as high youth unemployment in Morocco (which decades of empirical migration research confirms). Ceuta has one of the most massive border fortifications in the world, secured with double fences made of barbed wire, and yet tens of thousands arrived. The illusion of deterrence has developed further cracks - and makes Europe susceptible to blackmail by outsourcing (border) power to third countries. [emphasis added]

What does the new CEAS system involve?

The new "Common European Asylum System" (CEAS) will require that asylum seekers undergo a mandatory preliminary screening at the EU's external borders, in an attempt to speed up procedures for people coming from countries with low rates of acceptance of asylum applications.

This means that asylum seekers from countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Turkey and Nigeria will be subjected to fast-track border procedures in camps that are largely closed off. According to Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, fewer than 20% of the asylum seekers from these and dozens of other countries have their rights to asylum recognized.

It’s not yet usual to call these concentration camps. But in practice that’s what is envisioned here, like those the ICE Gestapo and the Trump regime are using in the United States. Greece currently has such a system of closed camps, and it functions pretty badly, as one can easily imagine. But it’s a perfect concept for xenophobic politicians because it encourages people to see refugees as bums and criminals.

Another leading immigration policy expert, Gerald Knaus, points to the unrealistic, largely scam nature of the last CEAS (Knaus also speaks in the Channel 4 report above just after 3:30):

According to the European Commission, the largest groups of asylum seekers in 2025 came from Afghanistan and Syria. The asylum recognition rate for people hailing from these two countries is over 20%. Consequently, individuals from these countries do not go through border procedures but rather through regular asylum procedures. And responsibility for these procedures also lies with the countries of first entry.

Knaus points out that although Germany and Austria do not lie on the EU's external border, more than half of all successful asylum applications in the EU within the last 10 years were granted in these countries.

Knaus believes that this will remain unchanged and that the numbers will be influenced more by developments in the asylum seekers' countries of origin than by EU law. "If the fall of the Assad regime brings an end to the exodus of Syrians entering the EU, then the number of asylum applications in Germany and Austria will also drop dramatically. That had nothing to do with the interior minister, nor does it have anything to do with CEAS, nor does it have anything to do with border controls," he told DW. Since the regime change in Syria at the end of 2024, the number of people leaving the country has been declining sharply. (4)

The EU countries and Switzerland are part of the 29-country Schengen Area, which authorizes and requires the first country of arrival, whether for refugees or authorized travelers, to check the credentials of the person entering the Schengen Area. In the case of asylum seekers, that creates a complication when larger surges of refugees occur, in that most of them will come to countries like Greece or Spain or Italy. And in the normal arrangement, the country of entry is required to handle the asylum request. As Knaus’ comment indicates, in practice Germany has often handled asylum processes for people who entered the Schengen Area via another member country.

Kohlenberger’s second point:

Spain's migration policy, which, by the way, is by no means as liberal at the borders and in border protection as commonly assumed, is encountering an acute dilemma that will soon become apparent in other European countries as well: Increasing demand for labor, especially in sectors such as agriculture and tourism, which are increasingly unattractive for locals, runs up against the imperative of isolation and deterrence and still far too few legal access routes to the country. What young Moroccans are obviously looking for in Spain: work (not social benefits). [emphasis added]

Europe needs more foreign labor if it wants to have healthy and growing economies in coming decades. Italy’s Meloni – whose political party is a lineal descendent of Mussolini’s fascist party – has actually suggested some pragmatic policies, such as creating easier paths for legal immigrants to work come to Italy to work. But she also indulges in dumb demagoguery. Her government set up two small centers in Albania to hold immigrants detained trying to enter Italy.

Italy opened two centres in Albania – in Gjadër and Shëngjin – in 2024 as part of a controversial pact aimed at processing the asylum applications of adult men intercepted at sea by Italian government vessels and detaining refused asylum seekers pending their deportation.

The five-year deal, which is costing Italy an estimated €130-140m (£112-120m) a year, has faced numerous legal challenges. Citing European law, Italian judges have rejected many transfers on the grounds that migrants’ countries of origin were unsafe to be repatriated to if their asylum requests were rejected.

Several people are believed to have arrived at the facilities since the European parliament adopted a plan this month enabling the creation of offshore “return hubs” – centres outside the EU where undocumented people can be held for unspecified periods while waiting to be sent back to their home country. [emphasis added] (5)

Although there is a scam aspect of this arrangement, it’s not harmless. The cited article describes reported abusive conditions for even the few hundred people held there.

Kohlenberger’s third point:

The migration issue is increasingly dominated by false reporting, sometimes with considerable effects. Not only in terms of the interpretation of the court ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court on "hot returns", which seems to have triggered this movement in the first place - the reactions of incumbent EU politicians, probably out of domestic political calculation, also show this: Ceuta is not part of the Schengen area, so an onward journey of the migrants without further controls was therefore excluded from the outset; the "Schengen Agreement" cannot be unilaterally "terminated", as Meloni believes, because it is now binding EU law; newly arriving migrants would not fall into Spain's current regularization offensive - and so on.

These are important lessons that should be learned from the acute crisis for the further positioning of European migration policy. In any case, only one and a half months after the new European asylum rules came into force, they did not pass the first stress test. [emphasis added]

Her original Facebook post:

Notes:

(1) Spain deploys troops as tens of thousands cross Ceuta border. Channel 4 News YouTube channel. 07/31/2026. <https://youtu.be/47EBP1i1XLc?si=v_waGYCKFYbN5Msj> (Accessed: 2026-08-01).

(2) Editors (2026): What is Ceuta? Encyclopedia Britannica 07/31/2026. <https://www.britannica.com/question/What-is-Ceuta> (Accessed: 2026-01-08).

(3) Why is Ceuta a migration flashpoint and how were so many people able to cross from Morocco? Guardian 07/31/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/31/ceuta-spain-eu-border-africa> (Accessed: 2026-01-08).

(4) Rieger, Bernd (2026): What impact will the new EU asylum law CEAS really have? DW News 06/12/2026. <https://www.dw.com/en/eu-asylum-law-ceas-germany-deportation-migration/a-77508144> (Accessed: 2026-01-08).

(5) Giuffrida, Angela & Rankin, Jennifer (2026): Italian MEP suggests government wants to ‘hide truth’ about Albania migrant centre. Guardian 06/30/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/30/italy-mep-government-truth-migrant-detention-centre-albania> (Accessed: 2026-01-08).

AOC on The Majority Report

It is no surprise for anyone following American politics that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is a successful politician with an outstanding talent for her chosen field.

She sat for an interview this week with Emma Vigeland on The Majority Report. (1)And her insight in analyzing political situations and framing issues in a coherent and convincing way was on full display.

Her discussion on how to frame corruption as an effective electoral issue is especially good. When Emma asks what she thinks would be the most “fertile ground” for Democrats to go after if they take control of the House and/or the Senate, AOC responds (emphasis in italics):

It's a little hard because their law-breaking is so prolific.

So where my instinct says to go is two things: their source of money and their source of political power. So, if I were just to go just off the top of my head in terms of political power, you want to go after Epstein. You want to go after not just corruption generally, but corruption in the ways that undermine their base.

She also gives her observations on why Trump in 2024 was able to appeal to more women than many expected.

I think that after the general election, there was, especially in the Democratic establishment, so much hay made about like “bro podcasts” and [how] that's where they ran up the numbers.

I think that the media has just as much of a misogynistic blind spot as anywhere else. I mean, they are the misogynistic blind spot in many ways. You’ve never experienced that [she says to Emma with obvious irony]. ...

But I actually think a lot of it was MAHA [Make America Healthy Again, i.e., “alternative medicine”]. I think that there was very little political analysis done on how [the Republicans] really focused on women, on moms, on radicalizing and doing a lot of persuasion in an electorate that was much more swingy than, to be frank, white male voters. Those have generally broken more strongly towards Republicans.

But they really focused a lot on women and they have had probably the biggest betrayals, with the glyphosate rulings, with their complete throwing in with Big Ag and Monsanto and Bayer, including coordinating with the Supreme Court and all of that. And so I think their political vulnerabilities are in, we want to focus on corruption in the ways that undermine their promises. And we want to go after investigations that cut off the supply of their illicit money flows.

AOC talks about meeting with MAHA advocates:

A lot of them really don't believe that their fight is partisan and in and it's not in many ways. We do have extraordinary corruption in our agricultural system, in our big corporate system, as well, and this is an area where both parties and our entire political system has been compromised. ...

And this goes back decades where you have a big company that is doing manufacturing of some kind and they just dump whatever cancerous byproduct that they have and poison communities around them. And then they just pay off our political class to ignore it and to let it continue to happen or to shield them legally, like with glyphosate, from everyday people trying to get that back. And … it's because there's a ton of anxiety around our health care system.

She talks about how both parties have had “a lot invested in trying to convey an ascendant and popular movement as ineffective. And so there is a lot of incentive by our political establishment to do everything they can to maintain that narrative because it's one of the few things that they have.”

She describes her approach as trying to frame issues in terms of three kinds of arguments: moral, economic, and political.

AOC is one of the Democratic leaders who talks about issues in a larger narrative framework that what she calls “the consultant class” too often do. Speeches by Democratic leaders too often wind up sounding like they are reciting a laundry list of issues that poll well. But without a clear narrative articulated in the context of fighting the Republicans and the corporate donors who oppose all those popular things.

They need to convey the kind of passion that gets people out to the polls in off-year elections like 2026.

[The quotations here are edited in the standard manner to take out verbal ellipses and repetitions in the live version. The full AI transcript is available at the YouTube link.]

This post first appeared on the Substack page of the Progressive Caucus of Democrats Abroad.

Notes:

(1) Rep. AOC Joins the Majority Report. RepAOC YouTube channel 07/30/2026. <https://youtu.be/DiMEaZ17BhE?si=4Yq2YVeOeMF54cs8> (Accessed: 20226-31-07).

War from Poland (?) to Yemen

A reminder that long wars bring lots of problems.

A Russian missile has landed and exploded 50 kilometers or so inside Poland’s border with Ukraine. (1)

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk is initially playing down the significance of the event, saying “there are no reasons to think Poland was the intended target for this missile.”

NATO headquarters in Europe issued a statement:

In response to a Russian missile of currently unknown type that entered Polish airspace and later crashed into Polish territory - one of many missiles fired by Russia at Ukraine overnight - NATO and Poland activated their air and ground defences.

Two NATO fighter jets, which were Polish F-16s, a NATO Multinational Multi-Role Tanker Transport Unit Airbus A330 refuelling aircraft, a Polish Saab 340 Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft, and a Polish Mi-24 helicopter, were scrambled.

NATO is in close contact with the Polish authorities about the violation of Poland’s airspace.

The Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Alexus G. Grynkewich, spoke earlier today with Poland’s Chief of Defence General Wiesław Kukuła about NATO and Poland’s response to the incident, which remains under investigation.

SACEUR underlined that NATO will continue to take all necessary measures to defend NATO territory.

This a reminder of a couple of things. One is that it’s not unusual for adversary and potentially-adversary powers to violate each other’s air space occasionally to test the response of the other country. They don’t usually do that by firing a missile with an explosive warhead. In this case, it occurred during a big attack by Russia on neighboring Ukraine, so it could have been a mistake. And Poland’s initial response seems to treat it as such.

The DW News report embedded above discusses some about NATO’s procedures like Article 4 consultations.

But this is also a reminder to all the NATO allies that in case Russia actually does attack a NATO member, the allies have an obligation to back Poland (or any other NATO country) in such a conflict with Russia. But no one can count on the Trump 2.0 regime to join into such a defensive coalition. Of course, one missile is only one missile. And Russia will surely be looking closely at how the NATO capitals are responding behind the scenes and what adjustments they may make to their defensive posture.

Ukraine has also attacked an Iranian ship in support of the US-Israeli war effort against Iran, which is being backed by Russia and China. One would think Ukraine has enough worries as it is. This could encourage more support to Iran by Russia and China. Because the US is now in a tangled nightmare of a war in the Middle East in which combatants/targets so far include Iran, Iraq, Syria (Israel occupies part of it), Lebanon (Israel occupies even more of it and Lebanon’s more important military force is the Iran-allied Hezbollah militia), Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen (the Houthis), Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt.

And on top of that, Israel has been threatening Türkiye.

I guess fans of Left Behind-type End Times fantasies may be rejoicing that The End Is Near. (Aren’t they always?) But this don’t look good to me. BTW, Iran alone is bigger than Germany, France, Spain and Great Britain combined.

From Google Maps:

What the hell are we doing?

And all this is taking place while the world’s strongest military power, the US, seems to be incapable of conducting anything like normal diplomacy in either the Iran War or the Russia-Ukraine War.

By the way, Iran alone is bigger than Germany, France, Spain and Great Britain combined.

Scott Lucas updates his audience on the most recent developments on the Trump Report of the Times of London/Times Radio. (2)

Notes:

(1) Missile crashes in Poland during massive Russian strike on Ukraine. DW News YouTube channel 07/30/2026. <https://youtu.be/lBuh_uwXXjY?si=l02riS1-jExCmWBn> (Accessed: 2026-30-07).

(2) This is the ‘biggest lie’ Trump has ever told. Trump Report and Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel 07/30/2026. <https://youtu.be/UUH6ZazaGBo?si=WksdJuleqDp0s4Eo> (Accessed: 2026-30-07).

Current state of the Russia-Ukraine forever war

In recent interviews, Sir Bill Browder and Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse addressed the state of the Russia-Ukraine War, on which both of them are emphatically pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia in their positioning.

Whitehouse addresses the war around 19:30, emphasizing that the front lines are very much a war-of-attrition situation, in which Ukraine is experiencing small losses but in the process is exacting a large price in Russian casualties. (1)



The financier Bill Browder is one of Vladimir Putin’s least favorite people because of his high-profile campaigns for accountability for Russian state-ordered assassination. He was a leading promoter of the Magnitsky Act (2) that the US Congress passed in 2012, and there was an expanded version enacted in 2016. Meidas Touch recently interviewed Browder: (3)



Now that Trump has gone full Roy Cohn and is calling everybody he doesn’t like “Communist,” it’s worth noting the Browder has an interesting family background, especially for a high-roller financier. His grandfather was Earl Browder (1891-1973), who was Chairman of the US Communist Party (CPUSA) from 1930 to 1944. I posted about this family connection a few years ago.

But apart from that entertaining aside, it was notable to me that Whitehouse, despite being emphatic in his support for Ukraine, described in a matter-of-fact way without holding out any hope for an immediate breakthrough by the Ukrainians.

Browder goes even further and says the most likely outcome is a frozen conflict. With an eventual settlement like that over North and South Korea. And there are lots of reasons to think this is the best solution that is all reasonable or practical for both sides and for other nations affected as well. That doesn’t mean that it’s what will happen. Wars are complicated and very messy.

Notes:

(1) Trump aides ‘don’t see a way out’ of Iran war: Senator Whitehouse. Al Jazeera English YouTube channel 07/26/2026. <https://youtu.be/iVoEJ49MXgc?si=hSiHKVZeW0qJe-3p> (Accessed: 2026-26-07).

(2) The US Global Magnitsky Act: Questions and Answers. Human Rights Watch 09/13/2017. <https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/13/us-global-magnitsky-act> (Accessed: 2026-26-07).

Iran War punditry: A coincidental encounter with Bobo and Ruth on PBS

David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart are the two regulars on the PBS Newshour’s weekly wrap-up discussion of the news. This feature has been running for decades. On Friday, Ruth Marcus was sitting in for Capehart. I realized to my shock about two minutes into the segment that I’d hadn’t yet heard any groan-inducing banalities.

Back during the 2000s, it was common for the left-of-center blogosphere to refer to David Brooks as “Bobo,” after his 2000 book Bobos in Paradise. “Bobo” was supposed to be a nickname for “bourgeois bohemian.” But that longer phrase never really caught on, I’m sure not least because Americans have a hard time pronouncing “bourgeois.”

But the nickname did stick to Bobo himself for a long time and was part of his image of trying half-creative ways of making stale conservatives truisms sound not totally senseless. A project which never succeeded very well.

So it was like a blast from the past to me today when I called up the latest weekly wrap-up, (1) which had dropped away over time from my regular weekend fare. That’s why I was so surprised when the first things that Bobo and Ruth said didn’t sound hopelessly superficial. That could be because they’re stepped up their reporting a bit. Or maybe because even the flakiest attempt at legitimate news commentary sounds deeply profound in comparison to Donald Trump’s constant ravings.

Bobo says right at the start, “I try not to make predictions because I'm not a total idiot, but I do think -- it would not surprise me if this war were still going on in January of 2029, when Trump leaves office.” Which made me think that I hadn’t heard anyone vocalizing that, but it strikes me as an entirely plausible possibility. And he enlarged on the thought:

I just don't think he cares. I don't think he cares about the midterms. I don't think he cares about gas prices. I think he cares about legacy.

And he wants to see himself as a man who remade the Middle East. And he would not be the first U.S. president who had that illusion. And he talks about -- there's scuttlebutt today that the Cabinet is gathering to think maybe we should do a big massive expansion of the war.

I don't think we have the material to do that, like the missiles, all that kind of stuff. So it would not surprise me if this dragged on with this, what we have been seeing the last couple months, the missile, missile, missile exchanges, small exchanges, this, that, talk, non-talk.

And that could go on forever. And MAGA came into office saying we will have no more forever wars. Well, here we are.

Ruth responds by saying:

He's gotten us into the kind of forever war that he's pledged that he was going to avoid. And it's not even a forever war. It's like a Groundhog Day war, because we're in this same cycle of threats and then retrenchment and threats and retrenchment, and we have an MOU and we don't have it.

I don't actually see how this could continue, even if he wanted it to, through January of 2029. Is that what we have to get to?

I quoted Dan Drezner a couple of days ago writing with dismay, “I am … simply unprepared for a world in which [Bill] Kristol sounds way more radical than Ezra Klein.” And by that, he meant that Kristol seemed to be much further on the center-left of the spectrum than Ezra.

And I’m not prepared for a world in which Bobo and Ruth Marcus sound sensible and realistic!

Bobo even managed to give a good explanation about how the Trumpists actually do have a ground operation that is effective at turning out Republicans to vote and maintains a notably more cohesive party structure than the Democrats.

By the end of their 10-minute segment, I was leaning heavily toward the theory that I had somehow entered a parallel universe. But the sky outside hasn’t turned green on anything. And the physicists say that if there are parallel universes, it’s not possible to cross from into the other. So I’m left to wonder how this startling event happened.

Most foreign policy experts that I take seriously – John Mearsheimer and Robert Pape are two that pop to mind – are saying that there no obvious way that the United States can achieve anything in the immediate future that will look like a win for the US, though many of the Trump cultists will pretend to believe whatever he says about it. But it’s also obvious that staying in the war will also eventually end with the results being a loss and a major mess for the US, the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, and large parts of the rest of the world.

Former Vermont Sen. George Aiken is mainly remembered, at least outside his home state, as recommending that the Johnson Administration should solve the Vietnam with the formula, "declare victory and get out." That would still be the most sensible basic approach for the US in Iran. I hear commentators saying that Trump should just “take the L” [for “loss”] i.e., just pull out of the war.

But there’s another well-known foreign policy maximum that even Lyndon Johnson liked to use: It’s easier to get into a war than to get out of it. (Although I believe LBJ’s version was a bit more colorful.) In the case of the current US-Israel War on Iran, just pulling out won’t satisfy Iran’s demand for release of frozen Iranian funds or for some kind of real peace agreement with both the US and Israel that would include Israel surrendering territory it currently occupies back to Lebanon and Syria. And by blocking the Strait of Iran and having their Houthi allies in Yemen block Saudi Arabia from using the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Iran can do serious damage to large parts of the world economy. Iran may also insist on specific conditions

And the genuine incompetence of the Trump 2.0 regime’s diplomacy – if it even deserves the name of diplomacy in any normal sense – can’t be overlooked as a major problem. How can they get any kind of meaningful war-termination agreement on which both sides could agree would require diplomatic competence of a kind we have yet to see from Washington in this war.

MS NOW reports:

The Strait of Hormuz remains at a virtual standstill because of President Donald Trump’s foolish war, and now, in what represents a new global energy price nightmare, Houthi militants in Yemen have begun to block a separate corridor [the Bab el-Mandeb Strait] that is critical for global oil shipping. On Thursday, oil surged past $100 a barrel for the first time since May in response to the news that the war with Iran is on the brink of expanding to a new front. And Trump’s promise to bomb the Houthis should they continue is unlikely to improve the situation.

Those Houthi militants, who are allied with and supported by Iran, announced Monday that they would were [sic] enacting a blockade in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait against Saudi Arabia. The Houthis said their blockade is retaliation for airstrikes against a Yemeni airport intended to prevent an Iranian aircraft from landing. (Yemen’s Saudi-backed government claimed credit for the attack.) On Thursday, the Houthis said they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers and successfully warned 10 more to turn back. (Saudi Arabia’s official news agency confirmed at least one tanker was hit.) (2)

Notes:

(1) Brooks and Marcus on the Iran conflict becoming a 'forever war'. PBS Newshour 07/24/2026. <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-marcus-on-the-iran-conflict-becoming-a-forever-war> (Accessed: 2026-25-07).

(2) Allem, Zeeshan (2026): The Houthis’ commandeering of a Red Sea strait is a huge deal. MS NOW 07/24/2026. <https://www.ms.now/opinion/houthis-red-sea-ship-strait-oil-bab-al-mandab-trump-iran> (Accessed: 2026-25-07).

Christian Right Trumpism

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), still the largest Protestant denomination in the US, is apparently going through yet another way of “conservative takeover.” And after decades of conservative takeovers, that’s an impressive accomplishment!

The latest wave is even embracing the Christian Nationalist notion.

This is being spearheaded by a group called the Center for Baptist Leadership, headed by William Wolfe. In June, the SBC selected Willy Rice, the candidate favored by Wolfe’s Center, as their new president.

Kiera Butler reports:

Wolfe and his colleagues oppose SBC leaders whom they see as “caught up in the spirit of the worldly ‘MeToo’ movement, DEI ideology, and social justice signaling,” according to the group’s website. Those misguided aims, the Center for Baptist Leadership claims, have led to a scourge of problems, including women pastors, financial secrecy, and an obsession with blaming the SBC as a whole for the sex abuse scandals in individual churches, thereby bringing “perverse, anti-Christian standards of justice to judge claims of abuse.” [my emphasis] (1)

The SBC has a decentralized structure in which local church can ordain Baptist ministers and there is no centralized organization in charge of assigning pastors to individual churches like the Catholic Church or the Presbyterians. Which limits the denomination’s ability to address issues involving sexual abuse or other misdeeds by SBC pastors.

It also tends to be very politically conservative, i.e., supportive of Trumpism. And conservative Christian organizations including churches are a very important element in Republican get-out-the-vote efforts.

Jennifer Cohn reported in 2024:

Approximately 100 right-wing organizations have signed onto Project 2025, an expansive plan for controlling (and in some cases dismantling) federal agencies in the event that Trump or another Republican wins the presidential election this year. Many of these organizations are led by Christian fundamentalist political operatives, suggesting that they may use the plan to force all Americans to submit to their extreme religious beliefs. ...

Despite [a] hurricane of attempted deflection, the Christian Nationalism promoted by [William] Wolfe is extreme, not mainstream, as evidenced not only by Przybyla’s excellent article, but also by a shocking online manifesto found by the Beacon, which identifies Wolfe as an editor. ...

Specifically, it states that “Christian Nationalism is a set of governing principles rooted in Scripture’s teaching that Christ rules as supreme Lord and King of all creation, who has ordained civil magistrates with delegated authority to be under Him, over the people, to order their ordained jurisdiction by punishing evil and promoting good for His own glory and the common good of the nation.” ...

This idea of forcing the American public to submit to the authority of Christian “civil magistrates” isn’t new. It was also championed by Christian extremist Stephen Wolfe (@Perfinjust on “X”) in his book, “The Case for Christian Nationalism,” an infamous screed, which William Wolfe enthusiastically promoted in a tweet that he later deleted. The two men are not apparently related, despite having the same last names and a shared ideology. ...

The manifesto denies that “civil authorities have the right to coerce or command obedience to the dictates of men apart from God’s Word.” (emphases in Cohn’s article].) (2)

But it’s not just Protestant Christian fundis who also in the theocracy game. Sarah Jones reported, also in 2024, and J.D. Vance’s fondness for “Catholic integralism.”

His rise as a national figure has carried relatively obscure ideologies closer to political power, including what the AP called a “subset” of postliberalism, known as integralism. What is integralism, then, and could it influence our would-be vice-president? As held by prominent thinkers like Adrian Vermeule of Harvard Law School, integralism imagines a future when the state may punish the baptized for violations of ecclesiastical law. (3)

Thomas Carter in a recent piece discusses the “political and spiritual intersection of Silicon Valley Techbros & Opus Dei adjacent Catholics.”

Patrick Deneen, high priest of Catholic Integralism, who mentored Pete Hegseth and helped shepherd JD Vance to his Catholic conversion, says a break between Musk Doge and Bannon Maga is inevitable, but not yet, as they have a common enemy - basically anyone woke, with a lick of sense and not red pilled. (4)

Catholic Integralism is basically a conservative Catholic theocratic movement. It’s also one reason that Vance doesn’t like the current American Pope Leo’s vision of the Catholic Church: (5)

Butler also reminds us of one of the leading figures of the Christian Right, Brother Al Mohler of the SBC:

And there are signs that the SBC’s ties to Christian nationalists extend beyond the Center for Baptist Leadership. Consider Al Mohler, a prominent SBC leader who has served as president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky since 1993. He has witnessed decades of social change, but put forth this year’s amendment [at the SBC] to ban women pastors. He appeared last week on the podcast of Doug Wilson, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist pastor—though not a member of the SBC—who presides over a small fiefdom in Moscow, Idaho. Mohler expressed frustration with what he considered a misconception that Baptist forefathers were “some kind of strict separationist when it came to Christian morality and the society.” Baptists, he said, actually had a lot in common with Christian nationalists like Wilson. “I have been calling for maximum Christian influence in the public square my whole life,” he said. [my emphasis]

Notes:

(1) Butler, Kiera (2026): The Southern Baptist Convention Was Going Mainstream. Then the Christian Nationalists Weighed In. Mother Jones 06/22/2026. <https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/06/the-southern-baptist-convention-was-going-mainstream-then-the-christian-nationalists-weighed-in/> (Accessed: 2026-29-06).

(2) Shocking Online Manifesto Reveals Project 2025’s Link to a Coordinated ‘Christian Nationalism Project’. Bucks County Beacon 03/07/2024. <https://buckscountybeacon.com/2024/03/shocking-online-manifesto-reveals-project-2025s-link-to-a-coordinated-christian-nationalism-project/> (Accessed: 2026-21-07).

(3) Jones, Sarah (2024): J.D. Vance and the Rise of the ‘Postliberal’ Catholics. New York 09/22/2024. <https://archive.ph/RFRNz#selection-1189.0-1189.54> (Accessed: 2026-01-05).

(4) Carter, Thomas (2025): Techbros & Rise of Catholic Fascism. Medium 05/09/2025. <https://medium.com/@thcarter123/techbros-rise-of-catholic-fascism-99f6080ef347> (Accessed: 2026-01-05).

(5) Why some U.S. conservatives want Catholicism to shape the country. The Hill YouTube channel 04/12/2016. <https://youtu.be/HIje43bnNEI?si=gTnyj6LHRqeG3-Cd> (Accessed: 2026-21-07).

The implications of mass acceptance of vigilante murder – with the example of the Azaria Affair in Israel

Joshua Leifer writes in Haaretz about an incident of an Israeli soldier murdering a wounded man in 2016 wound up becoming a celebrated act and how the trend in that direction has intensified in the ensuing decades:

Earlier this week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz requested that President Isaac Herzog pardon Elor Azaria, a former Israeli soldier convicted of shooting to death a wounded Palestinian man, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, in Hebron in March 2016.

At the time of the shooting, Azaria was a 19-year-old army medic who arrived on the scene of a stabbing attack carried out by two Palestinian men against Israeli soldiers near the settlement of Tel Rumeida. In grisly footage captured by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem that subsequently circulated widely online, Azaria can be seen firing a single shot to the head of al-Sharif, one of the two assailants, who lies wounded and immobile on the ground.

In 2017, an Israeli military court sentenced Azaria to 18 months in prison for the crime of manslaughter (although he would ultimately serve only nine months and was released on parole). The court charged that Azaria had violated military orders and the rules of engagement, killing al-Sharif when he posed no immediate threat to soldiers or civilians. (1)

Azaria became a hero for the Israeli right. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, initially backed Azaria's prosecution, but pivoted once he realized where the wind was blowing and called Azaria's parents to offer support.”

Leifer observes that for the settler movement, “it was precisely Azaria's merciless, gratuitous act of killing that made him a hero.” Though the Israeli armed forces (IDF) “wanted to demonstrate that Azaria's conduct and his trial was the exception that proved the rule.” But, in fact, “Azaria's trial was one of the last times a soldier was jailed for unlawfully killing a Palestinian. In the intervening years, acts like Azaria's have become normalized, and, in some precincts of the Israeli right, lionized.”

This kind of celebration of murderous, criminal violence is a standard part of fascist ideology and practice. We saw something very similar during the Nixon Administration when rightwingers celebrated the homicidal thug Lt. William Calley, who commanded the war crime that became known as the My Lai Massacre – also known as the Son My Massacre, after the Vietnamese name of the village. (2)

We see something very similar in today’s Trump Cult and their celebration of the often lawless and sadistic and sometimes explicitly murderous conduct of Trump’s ICE Gestapo and the deadly neglect practiced by the for-profit private prison companies that run ICE detention systems, which are being accurately described as concentration camps.

In Israel, the Azaria affair turned out to be a turning point in the acceptance by the Israeli government and large parts of Israeli society that became impossible for most people to overlook after Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023 by Hamas. Bar Peleg reported last week:

The Israeli military has opened dozens of criminal investigations into the deaths of detainees held in its custody during the Gaza war, but none has resulted in an indictment, according to IDF data.

The IDF attributed the lack of charges to what it described as evidentiary challenges inherent to warfare. However, most of the investigated deaths took place inside military detention facilities equipped with security cameras and where numerous potential witnesses were present, including soldiers and detainees.

Data obtained following freedom of information requests submitted by Hatzlacha, a nonprofit that works to expand public access to information, shows that there have been 57 investigations into deaths in IDF custody, including 56 Palestinians from Gaza and one Lebanese. (3)

Two analysts back in 2017 warned about the problematic developments that they were seeing in the Azaria Affair, which have since presented such a horrific set of examples that has drastically changed:

The main problem lies in societal perspectives surrounding Azaria’s actions. The tragic root of the affair is linked to the fact that large segments of the public, backed by a portion of the political establishment, openly reject basic principles of the rule of law and of a society that respects human rights. IDI’s Peace Index poll, conducted in October of 2015 – just six months before the Azaria affair took place – found that 53% of Israeli Jews supported the killing of a terrorist even after he had been subdued. More and more frequent are public figures, from Knesset members to government ministers to popular singers, calling for changing the rules of engagement to allow the killing of terrorists, regardless of whether they constitute a clear and present danger.

This represents not only a moral failure, but also a perverted view of the meaning of justice. If a majority of the public believes that it is permissible and even right for a soldier to kill a terrorist without trial, even after the terrorist has been subdued and is no longer a threat, the underpinnings of the entire legal system begin to crumble. [my emphasis] (4)

The late writer Uri Avnery wrote about the moral and political implications of the murder committed by Azaria and what it reflected about the ethnic division within Israeli Jewish society between “Mizrahi” (Jews of non-European descent) and Ashkenazi, who Avnery describes as defining “all Israelis of European and American origin, who adhere or pretend to adhere to Western values.” And he reported:

Public opinion polls [in 2017] tell us that for the large majority of Mizrahim, killing a seriously wounded "terrorist" is the right thing to do. After the singing in court [in support of Azaria during his trial], his father kissed him and cried out: "You are a hero!" For many Ashkenazim, [the murder] was a despicably cowardly act.

One casualty of the affair is the Chief-of-Staff, Gadi Eizenkot. Until recently, he was the most popular person in the country. Now he is cursed by the Mizrahim as a contemptible lackey of the Ashkenazi "elites". Yet, in spite of his German-sounding name, Eizenkot is of Moroccan descent.

And he observed:

For more than 40 years now, the army has not fought a real war against a real military. It has deteriorated into a colonial police force, the instrument of a system of oppression of another people. In the performance of this role, many acts of brutality are committed every day.

Quite recently, an innocent Arab teacher, a Bedouin citizen of Israel, got involved by accident in an incident, when policemen clashed with the local population. They shot the teacher, in the erroneous belief that he was about to run them over.

The man was severely wounded and bleeding, with policemen all around him. They did not call the medics. He slowly bled to death. It took 20 minutes. (5)

If this recalls the action of Jonathan Ross, the ICE Gestapo goon who reportedly murdered Renee Good in Minneapolis this year, it should. It’s the same mentality. And the kind of personalities who sang in court in support of the killer Elor Azaria in 2017 are very similar to the Trump cultists who support such murderous action by ICE in the US today. And to the ghouls in the American South – and not exclusively in the South – who came to watch public lynching of blacks and sometimes other minorities.

Any state who intends to practice the rule of law cannot afford to be indifferent to such public enthusiasm for vigilante murder.

Notes:

(1) Leifer, Joshua (2026): How the 2016 Azaria Affair Foreshadowed the IDF's New Impunity. Haaretz 07/16/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-politics/2026-07-16/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-the-azaria-affair-foreshadowed-the-idfs-new-impunity/0000019f-6a91-d782-ad9f-fffbf9880000> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

(2) The My Lai Massacre. PBS American Experience n/d. <https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/vietnam-my-lai-massacre/> (Accessed: 2026-23-07).

Herring, George (2012): The Vietnam War and the My Lai Massacre. History Now 31:Spring 2012. <https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/vietnam-war-and-my-lai-massacre> (Accessed: 2026-23-07). “The murder of more than 400 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai and My Khe by US soldiers on March 16, 1968, stands as one of the darkest days in the nation’s military history.”

Taylor, Telford (1971): Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy, 123-153. New York: Bantam Books.

(3) Peleg, Bar (2026): IDF Opened Dozens of Probes Into Deaths of Detained Gazans. No One Was Charged. Haaretz 07/16/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-crime/2026-07-17/ty-article/.premium/idf-closed-dozens-of-probes-into-deaths-of-detained-gazans-no-one-was-charged/0000019f-6fa6-d853-a9bf-7fb7fdd50000> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

(4) Cohen, Amichai and Shafran-Gittleman, Idit (2017): The Azaria Affair: How Israel’s Leadership Betrayed Democracy. Forward 08/07/2017. <https://forward.com/opinion/379250/the-azaria-affair-how-israels-leadership-betrayed-democracy/> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

(5) Avnery, Uri (2017): Uri Avnery: the Sergeant Azaria affair mirrors a rift in Israeli society. PIME Asia News 03/03/2017. <https://www.asianews.it/en/middle-east/israel/uri-avnery-the-sergeant-azaria-affair-mirrors-a-rift-in-israeli-society> (Accessed: 2026-23-07).

Saving liberal democracy without going all-in on compulsive centrism

“I am … simply unprepared for a world in which [Bill] Kristol sounds way more radical than Ezra Klein,” says Dan Drezner in a footnote to a recent Substack. (1)

Esquire columnist Charlie Pierce refers to Kristol as “Butcher’s Bill” Kristol, using a old term for casualties in war, referring to Kristol’s chronic neocon enthusiasm for wars.

Kristol became an enthusiastic NeverTrumper. And if he wants to be part of the “popular front” against Trump, I’m fine with that. (2) That’s a bit of historical sarcasm, because Bill’s father Irving Kristol is one of the founding thinkers of what we now call “neoconservatism.” Kristol Sr. and some other leading figures of the 1980s neocons had previously been Trotskyists – or at least influenced by Trotskyism. (3) Trotskyists were known for being so pure in their Marxist doctrine that they were said to “support revolution everywhere except for where one was actually going on.”

Whatever the exact influence of the Trotskyist perspective may have been, the neocons had an intense fondness for the kind of “regime change” operation that resulted in the disastrous Iraq War. Their idea was that it was immoral to allow regimes that were anti-American and/or annoying to Israel should be replaced by revolutionary wars of liberation to establish liberal democracy. Or at least to make them cooperative with America and friendly to Israel. We’ve seen the results for decades now. But even though the theory was pretty thin to begin with, groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) are still out there promoting the neocon regime-change gospel.

At least Kristol Sr. nominally promoted an “ethic of restraint” even in foreign policy, in Michael Signer’s judgment. In an essay on the occasion of Kristol Sr.’s passing, Michael Signer noted that Bill didn’t seem to share much of his father’s attitude of “restraint”:

There is perhaps no more respectful way for progressives to commemorate Kristol’s legacy than to explore the decline of his thought - as dramatically evidenced by the contrast of Irving Kristol’s ideas and those of his son, Bill. Irving Kristol placed practical experience at the heart of his political theory. By contrast, his son would choose the inducements of pure theory - of a foreign policy chasing dreams rather than the hardscrabble earth. Where a certain humility drove the ideas of Kristol père, a certain hubris has driven those of Kristol fils. These intellectual differences have had profound consequences for world events, including the disastrous conduct of the war in Iraq. …

[I]n the years to come his son [Bill] fixed neoconservative foreign policy on abstractions and evils - on metaphysics rather than physics - particularly when it came to democracy. As a result, the striking feature of Bill Kristol’s political theory is not the ideas but the extravagance surrounding them. In a now-famous 1996 Foreign Affairs article co-authored with Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol wrote that Republicans should endorse a policy of “benevolent hegemony” that was “good for conservatives, good for America, and good for the world.” “America,” he added, “has the capacity to contain or destroy many of the world’s monsters, most of which can be found without much searching.”

Monsters, power, and dreams - in retrospect, the Iraq War seems so simple. [my emphasis] (5)

But, to be fair to Bill Kristol, he is singing the praises of liberal democracy against Trumpism. He was one of the attendees at a Liberalism for the 21st Century Conference (LibCon 2026) at which Ezra Klein surprised him by making Kristol look like a leftie radical by comparison. Klein has recently been advocating an “Abundance” agenda, which he and Derek Thompson advocated in a 2025 book of that title. In their construction, the problem of housing affordability is due a bunch of whiny NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) liberals who insist on building codes and environmental reviews and similarly useless sissy stuff.

What, your house burned down because of faulty wiring because there were no building codes or inspectors? That’s just the free market at work! Because once it burns down, nobody will buy that house again, right? Free Enterprise!!

Christopher Jones explained the problems with that framing:

Let’s start with a limited view of abundance as a policy agenda to build better by avoiding layers of review, overly long permitting processes, burdensome reporting requirements, and so on. That these inefficiencies should be corrected is all well and good in theory, but what would corrections look like in practice? The reader does not really know, because Klein and Thompson explicitly avoid getting into the weeds by claiming that they are offering “a lens” to think about problems rather than “a list” of recommendations.

Consider railroads. They cite Americans’ construction of a transcontinental railroad in less than a decade during the 1860s as an instance of how the nation used to be able to build. But what they don’t say: This technological progress came at immense cost by way of hundreds of dead workers, tens of thousands of exploited Chinese laborers, wide swaths of lands stolen from Native Americans, and staggering amounts of financial manipulation that enriched robber barons while leaving others destitute. How do we recreate the benefits of railroads while avoiding such harm?

Another rub: their environmental assumptions. Klein and Thompson echo the claims of ecomodernists who believe that we can solve all our environmental problems through technological innovation and economic growth. Dubbed solutionists, ecomodernists assume a world of infinite renewable energy, which means we can have it all—abundant food, medicine, travel, and wildlife. This Pollyannaish vision ignores the messy realities on the ground, such as the massive environmental costs that accrue from mining, manufacturing, and disposing of the materials necessary for generating so-called clean energy. It’s an unrealistic vision that fails to engage with hard choices. (4)

Drezner’s report on that LibCon event is a reminder that there it’s easier to talk about broad concepts on the questions of how to preserve and strengthen liberal democracy against Trump’s or any other brands of fascism. (That F-word does not appear in Drezner’s essay.)

What Bill Kristol offered to the convention does not seem all that impressive in Drezner’s telling, in which he describes Kristol’s diagnosis as follows:

Illiberals have captured too many institutions — corporations, law firms, some universities — creating authoritarianism within the government, beyond the government, and projecting pressure from the government. He fretted that there had not been enough people who have expressed revulsion about Trump. Kristol was nonetheless pleased that 20% of Trump’s supporters have abandoned him ...

Since public opinion polls have been showing historically low ratings for Trump and his Presidency and elections in 2026 have shown a strong tendency to rejecting Trump’s and the Republican Party’s agenda and candidates, it hard to guess what Kristol means when he grouses that not enough people are negative on Trump.

If Drezner’s article doesn’t dissuade you from any curiosity about LibCon, here is a two-hour segment of the of the 2025 version of the event featuring, among others, Bill Kristol. And there are hours more of video of it at C-Span. (6)

Mainstream pundits all too easily fall into the trap of assuming that voters care only about one or two issues and are too blinkered to pay attention to Big Issues like the sanctity of elections or the rule of law. Actually, most Americans who are not Trump cultists actually do think democracy is important and do understand why it’s a very bad thing when the laws apply to jaywalkers but not to mega-criminals like Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

The challenge for the Democratic Party and civil institutions that care about a democracy that works for ordinary people is to develop political narratives and campaigns that call attention to the massive corruption and criminality for which the Trumpified Republican Party stands and connect those Big Themes with specific and visible problems like the shrinking access to health care, the mass closing of rural hospitals, the ever-escalating costs of college and the ever-decreasing resources of public schools.

Drezner cites Ezra Klein at the conference as arguing “that liberalism had become too enmeshed in institutions and procedures rather than grander visions.” Unfortunately, lazy centrists who are attracted to Ezra Klein’s Grand Vision of, uh, less rigorous housing codes never get around to exciting people with meaningless “moderation” or grand visions like, the President shouldn’t be allowed to use the Presidency to make billions of dollars for his own crime family.

It’s also critical for the Democrats to build a much stronger infrastructure to train and recruit candidates at all levels and building more effective networks of people to run get-out-the-vote campaigns at election time. Despite being laser-focus on making billionaires richer and more powerful, the Republican Party through its Christian-fundamentalist political networks does have an impressive get-out-the-vote political network.

Not starting wars like the current one with Iran that have massive negative implications for large numbers of people in the US and across the world would also be a great idea. Although for Ezra Klein and other insistent centrists, that might not qualify as enough of a Grand Vision – or at least not “centrist” enough for their liking.

But for Democrats wanting to get people to the polls in November, that should look very attractive.

Notes:

(1) Drezner, Daniel (2026): Whither Liberalism? Drezner’s World 07/19/2026. <https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/whither-liberalism> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

(2) The Soviet-line Communist parties in the 1930s promoted the idea of a “popular front” of Communist, Socialist, and nonsocialist parties who supported liberal democracy in order to politically and militarily defeat fascism.

(3) William King has contested the nature of the Trotskyist influence on “neoconservatism.” (Neoconservatives and “Trotskyism” (2004). American Communist History 3:2, 247-266. [It's an academic journal, if you're wondering.]) He argues rightwing isolationist “paleoconservatives” invented the story of Trotskyist influence as a form of redbaiting against the interventionist neocons. He cites several examples of liberals who echo that analysis. King points out that Irving Kristol himself later made references to having considered himself a Trotskyist for a few years. He also gives a glimpse of what a fractious set of theories and positions it was that constituted American Trotskyism.

The US Radical Right has long had a fondness for people who claim to have been Communists but who converted to the True Light of hardcore rightwing fascism (or something adjacent). The former Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers was one of that group, who could claim to be defectors from the Communist cause who understood better than anyone how really evil the Reds were.

The historian Bernard DeVoto in 1951 describe (with heavy irony) the pose of the devout ex-Communist’s pitch this way: “I understand, I am right now because I was wrong then. Only the ex-Communist can understand Communism. Trust me to lead you aright because I tried to lead you astray. My intelligence has been vindicated in that it made an all-out commitment to error.” As DeVoto notes from the beginning of his essay, the pose is very similar to that of the converted Christian who claims he understands sin much better than most people because he was once so sinful. (The Ex-Communists. Atlantic Monthly Feb 1951, 61-65. <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1951/02/the-ex-communists/639665/> (Accessed: 2026-21-07).) And that stance is still popular on the far-right today.

(4) Signer, Michael (2009) : The Neoconservative Père et Fils. Dissent 12/03/2009. <https://dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-neoconservative-pere-et-fils/> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

(5) “Abundance” Is Not the Answer. Los Angeles Review of Books 07/20/2025. <https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/abundance-is-not-the-answer/> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

(6) Conference on Liberalism in 21st Century, Part 1. C-Span. <https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/conference-on-liberalism-in-21st-century-part-1/664282> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).