First of all…Mike Lindell has a TV station? He’s got something called “Lindell-TV,” anyway, which seems to be nothing but a streaming channel on an off-brand service. The costs for a kook to get online and make noise just gets lower and lower.

Anyway, one of the babblers on that network wants Kamala Harris to take a DNA test.

A host on Mike Lindell’s television network called on Vice President Kamala Harris to take a DNA test to prove a demonic spirit wasn’t prompting her to say she was Black.

During his daily “Let’s Talk About It” program on Lindell TV, host Will Johnson defended former President Donald Trump’s claim that Harris had only recently “happened to turn Black.”

What does demon DNA look like? How would we tell?

But Johnson suggested Thursday that Harris was lying about her race and should take a DNA test.

“How about we get Kamala Harris to do a DNA test like him and like Elizabeth Warren?” Johnson said. “Then we’ll put it to rest. She comes back, and she’s a little bit more Black than Elizabeth Warren is Indian, then we’ll, OK, go, she can be Black half the time.”

“Why not do that?” he asked. “And then they say we are the weird ones — we’re the weird ones because we don’t want to go along with the insanity.”

Elizabeth Warren was negligibly Indian, and most importantly, did not have any cultural connection to any tribe. Harris has a father who is black, so she’s roughly half black genetically, but what matters more is that she grew up with black and Indian heritage. You don’t get to tell her what her background is. She’s black and Indian. That the Republicans are diving into this weird obsession with inventing criteria for people’s cultural and genetic heritage is creepy.

Mr Johnson is the insane weird guy who wants to quantify how “black” a person is allowed to be. It doesn’t make any sense — if 23andme comes back and says she is 43.5% black, how does one “be” black 43.5% of the time?

I’ve had 23andme analyze my DNA, and this is what it tells me.

I guess I’m 2/3 Scandinavian. What does that mean for my allowed behavior? So two of my 3 meals per day should be matpakke, herring, or kjøttkaker, and the other meal should be pasties, bangers and mash, or mushy peas? Since I’m an atheist, I’m probably fractionally demonic, so my snacks should probably be demonic.

This is what we mean by calling these bozos “weird” — they have this twisted idea that people must conform to the stereotypes rattling around in their heads.

One hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, pious Christian churches would gather donations to fund missionary work — they’d send people to Africa or to Indian reservations to ‘enlighten’ the heathen, which often meant chastising native peoples for living life without proper obedience to Christian authorities. These frequently had horrible consequences. Here in the US, we had boarding schools, forced separation from family, and vicious denigration of native culture. Kids died. Communities were trapped in poverty. And it was all to ‘save’ people from an imaginary hell.

It’s still going on.

The Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona spans 2,625 square miles – just a little larger than the state of Delaware, but with a population just over 14,600.

Based on our reporting and speaking with members of the tribe, there are over 80 churches on the reservation, representing 27 different Christian denominations. The tribe indicated that there was an official list the churches operating on the reservation but no list has been delivered.

East Fork Lutheran school was founded in 1951 by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (Wels), a religious group which has been active in Arizona since 1893 as part of its Apache Mission – an effort to convert “unreached tribes” to Christianity. This was one of many schools built on the reservation by Wels. The mission has shifted to now being focused on training Native American Christians to lead in the ministry and serve as missionaries to other Indigenous nations throughout the US and Canada.

Oh god. WELS. I grew up in a very liberal Lutheran church, where we learned that the Wisconsin synod was the wellspring of the devil — extremely conservative, tied tightly to hateful conservative politics, and consorting with them was even worse than hanging out with the Baptists* (isn’t sectarianism wonderful?). We’d get that message in between the Sunday calls to support our mission in Africa.

WELS is running a school in Arizona, and they recently expelled a couple of young Apache girls for…DANCING. It was satanic, don’t you know.

The way the school saw it, it was devil worship.

In October 2019, three teenage girls were punished for participating in a spiritual ceremony. Their Arizona school expelled two of them, and let the third off with a warning, citing their attendance as a violation of school policy and grounds for expulsion.

Caitlyn, now 18, says she and her friends were disciplined for participating in a Sunrise Dance, a traditional Native ceremony at the core of White Mountain Apache culture.

The Monday after the dance, Caitlyn’s parents told her to stay home that day. They had received a call from East Fork Lutheran school telling them not to send their daughter in. She didn’t know why. Then around noon, her mom got another phone call. The principal wanted to meet with Caitlyn, her parents and the local preacher. The principal and preacher also invited the two other girls and their families to their own private meetings with school leadership.

The Sunrise Dance was a very big deal for young women in their culture, but the church hated it. You’re not allowed to think differently in their church, and some of the stuff taught in the Apache community was competition with white Christian mythology, so it must be crushed.

For the first 12 years of her life, Caitlyn looked forward to having her own dance – a sacred coming-of-age experience celebrating the transition from girlhood to womanhood. It’s a great financial sacrifice for the family. Over four days, a girl’s community prays for her. They offer her gifts and witness her as she participates in rituals symbolizing her maturity and growth. A medicine man presides over the event, praying and singing with holy members of the community called Crown Dancers, who recite the creation story to the audience.

The idea meant the world to Caitlyn. But she didn’t have her own Sunrise Dance: if she were found out, she would be expelled from school immediately, a stain on on her permanent record that could affect her college opportunities.

At the time, her private school’s teachers were mostly white people who would often discuss the satanic nature of Apache traditions. When Caitlyn was in fifth grade, she was given an F on an art project for drawing the White Mountain Apache crest and including an eagle feather. An “A” student, she was devastated to be chastised this way. As Caitlyn remembers it, her teacher smiled and explained that this kind of project wasn’t allowed because it denoted “pagan worship”. Her father was furious but the family couldn’t do anything about it. It was what the girl and her family expected from the white people who worked on the reservation.

That Apache creation myth is wild. It’s longer and more detailed and far more interesting than what is contained in the book of Genesis, so I can see why Christians were concerned. If, in my youth, I’d been presented with Genesis and the Apache myth as alternatives, I would have rejected both, but I’d have been tempted by the far more appealing Apache tradition. I can see why stuffy old evangelical missionaries would want to stamp out the competition.

The problem here is that this exclusive attitude means depriving young women of an opportunity for a good education, because Christian schools tend to be better supported financially by their sanctimonious and devout external donors, while as usual, public schools limp along — especially reservation schools, which are usually woefully undersupported. I think these girls are better off being evicted from a religious school, and that the secular schools are going to be far more beneficial for their identity and progress.

When it came time for registration, Maria did not receive any notification from the school. It finally notified her two weeks before the school year started that her children would not be invited back. She had to move them to the public school. “Now that they’re in a public school, and they’ve adjusted to it, they are more proud of their traditions or culture, they’re more proud of who they are,” she said.

But there are 80 churches on that one reservation? I am reminded of how ticks can swarm and kill moose.

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*My wife was brought up Baptist. Neither of us are at all religious.

It’s inarguable that a state-sponsored genocide is taking place in Gaza. There are people who are experts in genocide (that’s the saddest specialization ever), like Francesca Albanese, who states the consensus view.

Citing international law, Ms. Albanese explained that genocide is defined as a specific set of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

“Specifically, Israel has committed three acts of genocide with the requisite intent: causing seriously serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group,” she said.

Furthermore, “the genocide in Gaza is the most extreme stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure of the native Palestinians,” she continued.

Another expert, Raz Segal, explains how the actions in Israel constitute genocide.

Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, concretely says it is a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal believes that Israeli forces are completing three genocidal acts, including, “killing, causing serious bodily harm, and measures calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.” He points to the mass levels of destruction and total siege of basic necessities—like water, food, fuel, and medical supplies—as evidence.

He says Israeli leaders expressed “explicit, clear, and direct statements of intent,” pointing to Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s statement during an Oct. 13 press conference. In his statement, Herzog said, “It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true,” Herzog said. “They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” (Herzog later said that he is not holding the civilians of Gaza responsible for keeping Hamas in political power, when asked to clarify by a journalist at the same press conference.) Segal says that this language conflates all Palestinians as “an enemy population,” which could help prove intent.

Segal calls it a textbook case of genocide.

Indeed, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed. Perpetrators of genocide usually do not express their intentions so clearly, though there are exceptions. In the early 20th century, for example, German colonial occupiers perpetrated a genocide in response to an uprising by the Indigenous Herero and Nama populations in southwest Africa. In 1904, General Lothar von Trotha, the German military commander, issued an “extermination order,” justified by the rationale of a “race war.” By 1908, the German authorities had murdered 10,000 Nama, and had achieved their stated goal of “destroying the Herero,” killing 65,000 Herero, 80% of the population. Gallant’s orders on October 9th were no less explicit. Israel’s goal is to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza. And those of us watching around the world are derelict in our responsibility to prevent them from doing so.

You know, the University of Minnesota also has a Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, but they’re not quite so outspoken, for a very good reason. You can be fired in Minnesota if you speak the truth about Israel’s ongoing genocide…or at the very least, you can be denied employment here. Raz Segal — you know, the scholar I quoted up above — was set to be the director of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, but the job offer was abruptly retracted, specifically because of that “textbook case of genocide” article.

A professor who wrote days after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks that Israel’s military operation against Hamas in Gaza was “a textbook case of genocide” has had his offer to head University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies revoked after two members of the center’s advisory board resigned in protest last Friday and several Jewish leaders voiced their concerns.

Jeff Ettinger, the interim president of the University of Minnesota, said during a Friday morning Board of Regents meeting that Joe Eggers, the interim director of the center, would remain in the position as a new director search is conducted. Ettinger noted that the search process may extend until 2025 or 2026.

The official withdrawal of Raz Segal’s job offer came after a pause was announced on Monday amid increased scrutiny of Segal’s comments on Israel, Jewish Insider was first to learn.

I always figured Ettinger would be a chickenshit tool of business interests, uninterested in scholarly integrity.

We actually have Segal’s own account of what happened.

What happened is that there was a completely regular hiring process in a public university. There was a public announcement of the job. There were applications. There were Zoom interviews. There were campus visits. There was actually significant community engagement also during this process. And then, eventually, the search committee deliberated and made a recommendation to hire me to the interim dean, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. I was then, on the 5th of June, sent an official job offer.

And then, as you described, two professors who were formerly on the advisory committee of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota resigned and, together with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, put a lot of pressure, which was really a hateful campaign of lies and distortions against me and based on their political position in support of Israel. And on 10th of June — so within days, right? — the interim president of the University of Minnesota sent me an email withdrawing the job offer.

He goes on to explain what Ettinger said was the reason, and why that’s a contemptible act of cowardice.

He said that due to the public-facing role of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and its director, community members have come forward with some concerns. And that was given as the reason for the withdrawal. And it’s important to say, of course, that this is a crude and very dangerous political — the legitimization — right? — of a political interference in an absolutely legitimate hiring process in a public university. It’s, you know, completely unacceptable that a political pressure group, the JCRC of Minnesota and the Dakotas here, and a political position, of support of Zionism and the state of Israel — right? — especially, of course, at a time when Israel is committing the crime of genocide for eight months now, right? But regardless, actually, any political position, any pressure group is not a criteria — should not the defining factor in a hiring process, and certainly once an official job offer has been made.

This actually might be a case of discrimination, because I’m targeted here specifically as an Israeli American Jew, and I’m targeted because of my identity as a Jew who refuses the narrowing down of Jewish identity to Zionism and to support of Israel, whatever it does, which is the position of the JCRC of Minnesota and the Dakotas in its claim to speak for all Jews in the Twin Cities, which is absolutely false. I mean, I’ve received hundreds, hundreds of emails in support, including from many Jews in the Twin Cities, who say explicitly that the JCRC does not speak for them, does not represent them. A community letter from within and outside the university in Twin Cities, again including many, many Jews, have now attracted more than 500 signatures. There’s also a letter of scholars from around the world, including many in the University of Minnesota, of course, that has attracted about a thousand signatures, maybe a bit more, in support of me. So, this idea that the JCRC speaks for all Jews — right? — is absolutely false.

But again, this kind of crude political intervention in the hiring process, and its legitimization by the university, is extremely dangerous. It joins this attack that we’re seeing in the academic world, that has intensified since October, of really suppressing academic freedom. And this is a very, very dangerous sign. That’s the reason that students and faculty members across the University of Minnesota, not only in the College of Liberal Arts, are furious at this decision of their interim president and are not willing to accept it.

We’re missing out here, and that’s a black mark against the University of Minnesota. All it takes is a vocal conservative group complaining to craven caretaker president, and boom, we lose a prominent scholar.

Do you have a positive or negative opinion of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives? The right has been howling up a storm, claiming that DEI is a bad, wicked thing and hitching all kinds of anti-DEI campaigns to that idea.

It hasn’t worked. A Post-Ipsos poll asked what people’s attitudes towards DEI were, and a majority said it was a good thing.

The numbers also went up when the pollsters explained what DEI actually meant, which tells us that there’s a lot of bias and misinformation out there. Turn off Fox News, everyone!

It’s some online magazine, but I don’t need to ever read it. They just came up with something they call The Sinai Awards, given to the 36 people who have made the world freer for the rest of us, and the list of award recipients will make you gag a little bit.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali • Masih Alinejad • Marc Andreessen • Julian Assange • Olivier Assayas • Nayib Bukele • Ted Cruz • George Deek • John Fetterman • Stephen Friend • Michel Houellebecq • Coleman Hughes • Jon Huntsman • Martin Kulldorff & Jay Bhattacharya • Mark Laita • Bernard-Henri Lévy • Conor McGregor • Douglas Murray • Elon Musk • Anonymous UPenn Student • J.K. Rowling • Christopher Rufo • Salman Rushdie • Natan Sharansky • Michael Solomonov • Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik • Thomas Sowell • Amar’e Stoudemire • Nadine Strossen • Quentin Tarantino • Ritchie Torres • Tu Youyou • Michael Walzer • Bari Weiss • Ruth Wisse

I don’t know half of them, but given the company they keep, I’d rather not know more.

Today is the official changeover day for the Minnesota state flag. I like it!

I especially like it because I just learned what the meaning of the original design — that cluttered, ugly illustration of farmers and Indians — was intended to be an illustration of Manifest Destiny.

Minnesota Legislature adopted that flag and seal in 1893.

A poem written by the wife of one of the artists who painted the seal said it was a representation of Manifest Destiny. intended to be an allegory of oncoming progress and civilization, and the removal of native people from the landscape.

“For the artists who created the seal, this is intended to be an allegory of oncoming progress and civilization, and the removal of Native people from the landscape,” said Minnesota Historical Society Director of Research William Convery.

If I’d known that, I would have been much more irate about it. This changeover has a similar significance to the destruction of confederate flags and monuments to rebel generals.