My article yesterday morning on the telecom threat to New York City represented my 100th article here at American Spectator. My first article, an analysis of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s semi-farcical attempt to overthrow Vladimir Putin, appeared on June 30, 2023. I thought of that article as something of a one-shot venture, a diversion from my new retirement career as a thriller writer. But the article was positively received, and with this encouragement, I wrote several more. Soon I found myself contributing steadily, across a wide range of subjects.

Going back through the author archive, just glancing at the titles, my first thought was that, if there was a common thread, that thread was the challenge of civilizational suicide. Over and over, the unifying theme seemed to be the inability — really, the unwillingness — of those in power to stand up for America, either in the face of threats from abroad or here at home. Our position in the world seemed under constant attack, and the position of right-thinking Americans at home was being undermined at every turn, oftentimes by a political and cultural establishment that seemingly hated everything that this country had once stood for.

Worse, when one looked to the nations that historically had been our friends and allies, the rot seemed even deeper. The UK had become a cesspool of political correctness, France bitterly divided against itself, Germany sinking into cultural and economic dysfunction. All of western Europe was overrun by an increasingly radical Islamist wave, with whole sections of great cities, even, astonishingly, in places like Sweden, turned into “no-go” zones run by unassimilated gangs. There was no place to turn if we wished to look for help; if things were to be turned around, if the march to self-destruction halted, we would have to find the necessary strength in ourselves.

Early on, I wrote on multiple occasions about subjects I knew from my career in national security, nuclear weapons and countering terrorism. Again, on multiple occasions, I wrote on the Ukraine war, on the threat from Iran, and the challenge posed by China. These were the things I knew best, the things that I wanted most to write about, the topics where I felt most ready to speak. But events soon called for a different focus.

Outraged by Hamas’ October 7 massacre of innocent Israelis, I responded that very day with an angry essay, and, in the months following, I returned to the subject again and again. This also meant writing about the unavoidable corollary, the broader threat to our way of life posed by radical Islam — -in an early article I characterized Israel as the “canary in the coal mine” for all of Western civilization as we once knew it. This also prompted several essays on the plight of poor Christian farmers in Nigeria and across Africa, victimized by Muslim terrorists, ignored, by and large, by Western governments and many of our so-called “humanitarians.”

This led, inevitably, to consideration of the explosion of anti-Jewish hatred on our college campuses, our city streets, and even more powerfully, in the capitals of western Europe. Suddenly, a past hatred had become a terrible force in the present day. Worse, it wasn’t just a product of our “colonization” by Muslim immigrants, but instead had become fashionable among our own so-called “progressives.”

“From the river to the sea,” a catchphrase for genocide, became common currency in our public discourse, not least led by the Ilhan Omars and the Rashida Tlaibs. Inverting the popular leftist messaging, we now found ourselves in a world where hate had a home. Contemplating the way that so many leftists have cheered the assassination of Charlie Kirk, with no meaningful rebuke from the Democrat establishment, one sometimes feels that hate now has much more than a home — it has a gilded palace. And again, one of the most distressing things was that ordinary people, otherwise down to earth people, erstwhile friends, people who should have known better, have allowed themselves to be captured by a roiling wave of intellectual dishonesty.

This became all the more evident when it blended with hatred for Donald Trump, and, by extension, all those Americans who supported him. The mildest of these was the condemnation of Trump as an aspiring autocrat, once again an inversion of the march of leftist autocracy begun under Obama and continued under Biden (but I repeat myself). More often, and more viciously, this became Trump the fascist and Trump as Hitler. The attempts on Donald Trump’s life and, tragically, the assassination of Charlies Kirk, all testify to what happens when Nazi slurs become the common coin of the left’s contribution to political discourse.

I regard the “Trump equals Hitler” assertion as utter nonsense. And the idea that the left is in any way, shape, or form the “resistance” is even more nonsensical. When you have the universities, the news and entertainment media, and a phalanx of billionaire patrons on your side, your claim to be downtrodden is laughably absurd; this alignment of power on the left more nearly approximates Nazism in power than anything on the right. It is precisely what the Nazis undertook to achieve after seizing power through a process called “Gleichschaltung.” Drawing on nearly a decade spent studying the rise of Nazism, I challenged this leftist fantasy repeatedly.

The true “resistance” today can only be resistance to this all-encompassing progressive establishment. Ironically, for all the complaints about the (virtually non-existent) propensity for violence on the right, we see every day how the left has embraced violence, violence in words and violence in deeds. In Weimar Germany the assassins stood on the right; in today’s America they stand on the left. If anything, the Nazi shoe more nearly fits the leftist foot in today’s America, with Antifa the poster child for storm trooper thuggery. And ICE? As agents are threatened with assassination for simply enforcing the law of the land, it’s time for the mindless hatred to end.

As I came to the end of an afternoon spent re-reading old articles, my first reaction was one of sadness, almost depression. Over and over, I recalled moments of despair as I tried to make sense of the things occurring all around us today. But within these 100 articles, I also found a source of hope, specifically in the numerous articles I’d written about the heroes from World War II. These young men were not, as some facile leftists proclaim, the agents of an anti-fascist crusade, but simply the defenders of the American way of life. Children of the depression, they knew their country in all of its flaws, but believed it better than all other countries on earth. They loved it devotedly, and often enough, sacrificially.

More, they loved it concretely, rejecting high-sounding political .abstractions in favor of a heartfelt dedication rooted in faith, family, and friendship. In this, they found common ground with allied nations, Britons, Australians, Canadians, Frenchmen, and Poles, citizens from around the world, united not by political abstractions and high rhetoric, but by a simple desire to not be ruled from Tokyo or Berlin.

One of the most insidious features of post-World War II international relations has been the rise of globalism, the triumph of the “anywheres” over the “somewheres.” Loving one’s country, wanting to preserve it, wanting to live in peace across the globe with those who also loved their countries — this was passé, old hat, a contemptible relic. The new world order was one of global institutions, the UN, the European Union. It was all about the triumph of the all-knowing elites and about putting the home-loving “deplorables” in their place. It was the top-down authoritarianism of the “experts” and their slavish followers.

Barack Obama epitomized this triumphalism, not just at home, but among the progressives of Europe. It was scarcely accidental that he received the Nobel Peace Prize, only months into his presidency, at a time when even he himself wondered aloud what he’d done to deserve it. But it was really no wonder at all, but rather the perfect moment of world progressivism on the march.

Then, in 2016, came the two-fold shock, first the British public’s rejection of European Union membership with the Brexit vote, then the rejection of Hilary Clinton — the great avatar of progressivism at its worst — in favor of Donald Trump. After 2016, nothing could be the same. After disbelief, the so-called “elites” reacted with rage, employing every lever of power to reassert their control. “Russiagate” was one such action, and there were many more, here and across Europe.

Indeed, one can read the whole George Floyd episode, all the “mostly peaceful protests” and the like, as a carefully orchestrated and encouraged effort by the elites to undermine the conservative opposition. The same was obvious in the crude exploitation of Covid to propel Joe Biden into the White House. The sheep wore their masks, even alone in their cars, a sign less of “following the science” than of obedience to fashionable prejudice, more “Handmaid’s Tale” cosplay than serious health device.

But now the “deplorables” are on the march once again, both here and in Europe — witness the rise in Italy, of all places, of Giorgia Meloni. We find ourselves fighting a daily battle for the soul of America, indeed the soul of the Western world. And the Western world, however hesitantly, is fighting back. How heartening it has been to see massive demonstrations in the UK and elsewhere, demonstrations occasioned by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, demonstrations supportive of the values he stood for.

After decades in which our institutions have been corrupted and destroyed, when our weakness was exposed at every turn, it’s nice to look around and see that we’re no longer alone in our resistance. In the midst of all this, it’s been an honor to write for The American Spectator, an honor to share a tribune with so many wonderful writers and thinkers. And it’s also humbling to think that my words resonated with so many great and thoughtful readers.

There’s much to be done, and the forces ranged against us are powerful. We can still lose. Our slow-motion civilizational suicide has not yet been prevented, but thus far merely delayed. But the first signs of victory are all around us, across the U.S. and around the world. It’s a great time to be in the fight.

We might call it a turning point.

READ MORE from James H. McGee:

The Ever-Evolving Terrorist Threat

Ted Cruz and the Specter of ‘Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner’

Sentries at Every Church Corner — The Cameronian Tradition

James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. He’s just published his new novel, The Zebras from Minsk, the sequel to his well-received 2022 thriller, Letter of Reprisal. The Zebras from Minsk finds the Reprisal Team fighting against an alliance of Chinese and Russian backed terrorists, brutal child traffickers, and a corrupt anti-American billionaire, racing against time to take down a conspiracy that ranges from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.