Paolo Roberto, 50, a native of Sweden (his father was an Italian), had made a name for himself: a well-known boxer, he had his own TV show, he appeared in many programmes; Swedish girls loved to dance with him in Dancing with the Stars; he also had a profitable business: he imported Italian olive oil and gastronomic products sold in the large Swedish supermarket chain CO-OP. All that glory vanished in a moment. Swedish police trapped him as he visited a girl of dubious character and then paid her for her services. It was a honey-trap. The policemen appeared from their hiding places and whisked Roberto off to the local precinct where he was booked and the nation alerted. He didn’t deny a thing; he expressed extreme remorse.
In Sweden, it is perfectly legal to be engaged in prostitution. Today no one in Sweden can tell a woman what to do with her own body, be it abortion, sex change or prostitution. Yet it is a crime for a man to pay a woman for sex.
It is not sane; it is as though selling crack were legal while buying crack is the only crime. Usually it is other way around, a casual user goes free while the pusher is arrested. But it does not matter; Sweden is not the only country in the world with such a strange law on her books.
Roberto was charged for this crime. It could be worse: Sweden has some extraordinary crimes in its law book, one of them is Rape by Misadventure or Careless Rapewhich is committed by a man who has sex with a woman who ostensibly agrees to or even solicits sex but inwardly she is not willing. She may be doing it for money, or boredom, but not for pleasure, and the man carelessly overlooked her conflicting emotions. It is Swedish Rape. Pity they never apply the same logic to working people; we often do even less pleasant things for money, to buy food or pay rent, but the landlord is not punished for raping his tenants.
This new definition of rape deserves Victor Hugo’s pen. It is Swedish Rape to have sex without a condom. It is Swedish Rape if the next day, or a few days later, the woman feels she may have been raped. Or cheated, or underpaid, or mistreated. For this ill-defined offence, Julian Assange has already spent ten years in various detention halls. If he would have killed the girl he would be free by now. Note that you may be guilty of Swedish Rape if you claim to be infertile and your partner becomes pregnant. Are you guilty of rape if you claim to be a Jew but aren’t? This is an Israeli contribution to the concept of rape. But I digress.
Paolo Roberto is charged with paying a woman for sex, the crime Judah, son of Jacob, committed with Tamar (Genesis 38). The 25-year-old girl consented, but that does not matter. She came from a rather poor South European country, so probably her consent doesn’t mean much. Or perhaps she consented just in order to entrap the guy and this is how Swedish justice works. Swedish prisons would be empty if police weren’t allowed to entice and entrap Swedes.
The consequences for Paolo were terrible: he hasn’t been tried yet; he hasn’t been found guilty; his likely punishment is little more than a fine; but he was dropped like a hot potato by Swedish TV, by Swedish sports, by the Swedish chain that marketed his olive oil. His company was bankrupted overnight. The man was crushed like a bug. It was not Swedish law that crushed him. In the eyes of Swedish law he is still innocent until proven guilty. Swedish law did not force the supermarkets to remove his olive oil (actually, a very good one, I used to buy it) from its shelves. Paolo was lynched by the New Puritan spirit that is part and parcel of the New Normal.
Once upon a time, Sweden was an extremely liberal and free country. Swedes were known, or even notorious for free sexual mores. Independent and brave Swedish girls weren’t shy, and they were comfortable with very unorthodox ‘family’ unions. But, while the US has always espoused its own brand of politically-correct Puritanism, the global media is now dragging along the other Western states in its wake. France and even Sweden participated in their own renditions of the American BLM protests, called for #MeToo, and seem eager to trade in their own cultures for the New Puritanism.
This rising Puritanism is a contrarian response to the personal freedom we enjoyed since the 1960’s, and a jaded weariness with the excessive commercial sexuality of the mass media. The media sells everything with a lot of sex. You cannot turn a TV on, daytime or night, without seeing an implied or explicit act of copulation. They sell cars, snacks and sneakers by displaying naked bodies. This flood of pornography is turning the public mood against sex. Who should we blame for this blatant exploitation of sex? Men.
The Old Puritanism was hard on women; the witches were burned, and the whores were evicted from their homes. The New Puritanism is hard on men. Men are being taught that hanky-panky can have serious consequences. On the site of one of their destroyed statues of Jefferson, the Americans should erect a statue of Andrea Dworkin, the obese lying feminist who famously said that every intercourse is rape, and Penetration is Violation. She is an icon of New Puritan America.
They could not outlaw sex per se, so they invent sordid stories of incestuous sex, of paedophilia, of abusing priests, each storyteller trying to outdo the last. The vast majority of these stories are sheer inventions, like the witchcraft stories of the 17thcentury in Old Puritan New England. We are in the midst of a global media campaign, and men are the targets. The Patriarchy will be diminished by the systematic demonization of boys and men.
In the current media frenzy I cannot trust any story, any accusation of a man involved in a sordid sexual crime: these media campaigns are too often employed to unseat a commercial competitor or destroy the popularity of a political rival. Often the man is not even accused of any crime, but only of frivolous behaviour: a touch, or an immodest proposal; natural acts celebrated in the days of my youth. Yes, my young readers, in the 1970’s you could touch a woman’s knee and suggest she accompany you on a passionate weekend at a seaside resort, and she would often agree. This libertine era is over completely. Even to me, it now seems mythical, like Atlantis. It is gone.
The US is the media’s inspirational model of the New Puritanism. Remember the women who lined up to claim that the future Supreme Court judge tried to kiss or even rape them when they were kids in college? The most credible of them would not even allege he behaved criminally; just immorally according to New Puritan standards. Now every relationship must be re-evaluated in the light of the New Puritanical historical revisionism. Women who pose for a picture with a presidential candidate now have a certain amount of power over him. During a media campaign the allegations come fast and furious, but upon investigation they turn out to be spurious and motivated by self-interest or politics.
It is good to see that sometimes, quite rarely, a man can still escape a close encounter with his life intact. Former First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond had been accused of all the usual sexual sins and was fully cleared by the court. No less than ten women were recruited (apparently with the knowledge of Nicola Sturgeon, Salmond’s successor); they came forward and claimed that they were sexually attacked by Salmond. They were rather sloppy with their proofs, and it turns out that they claimed they were attacked at times and places where Salmond could not have been present. The case was dismissed and Salmond was found not guilty. Scottish prosecutors had spent years of labour trying to condemn Salmond, and it spectacularly failed.
You might ask, why have these perjurers (who are well-connected women close to the centre of power of the ruling SNP party) not been prosecuted for their attempt to frame the man? Well, the very idea of these trials is that the accusing woman can’t lose. If she wins, she can collect millions, and if she loses, even her name remains secret. These ten perjurers are exempt from legal consequence; nor are they required pay expenses and damages. The women are protected. Who pays? Our colleague, the excellent writer and former HM Ambassador Craig Murray, that’s who. Murray was reporting on the trial of Alex Salmond for the public’s benefit, published onto his own blog, when he was charged with disclosing the identities of some of the perjuring women. A conscientious man, Craig wasn’t guilty of naming names, but even his vague description of “an SNP politician, a party worker and several current and former Scottish government civil servants and officials” was considered by the court to be a monstrous breach of confidentiality.
The public was well prepared for this onslaught on mankind by the poisonous #MeToo culture, a massive wave of carefully coordinated media hysteria. Women in communes and nunneries are known to menstruate at the same time when living in close proximity. #MeToo was a similar mass event. It was designed to push women’s buttons. They even offered up an appropriately grotesque scapegoat: Harvey Weinstein, a movie producer with 386 Hollywood production credits under his belt.
The actresses that accused Weinstein (over eighty women) would still be unknowns if he had not given them parts in his movies. And they repaid him with such cruel ingratitude. Actresses have a certain psychological setup that makes them extremely untrustworthy. They have many other qualities to offset this deficiency, but you can’t just accept the words of a lady who plays today Lady Macbeth and tomorrow Madam Butterfly as solid truth. They are acting, in life as well as in their line of work.
Consider the beautiful Angelina Jolie. She is mad as a hatter. Even her own father said that she had “serious mental problems.” Her long history of violent self-abuse culminated with her choice to cut off her breasts because of a DNA test that indicated risk for breast cancer. She has had a long line of boyfriends and husbands, and a lot of kids adopted out of Africa, taken away from their natural parents. Is she a reliable witness? She would say anything that is fashionable. The woman wants to be adored as the model of an excellent person; this is a honourable goal, but she is extremely unsuitable for it.
Weinstein’s eighty accusers collected millions; the great producer went to a life-long jail sentence. The public, the great American public was eager to lynch the man who gave them True Romance and Pulp Fiction. Was he guilty as charged? Even the charges were a travesty of justice. Men of his generation (and of mine, too) routinely propositioned women. We are all guilty, though not many of us racked up Weinstein’s numbers. Yet every woman was free to refuse. No police reports against Weinstein appeared until the #MeToo media campaign was in full swing. Did he harass them? You and me are harassed daily by offers to take another credit card or bank loan; we are free to refuse this definitely harassing offer. Every unsolicited proposal is harassment; and we receive daily hundreds of proposals of various nature. What is so different about a sexual proposal to a woman? Weinstein may or may not have committed a crime, but in the poisonous air of #MeToo there is no need to prove any accusation, and the man was lynched.
Perhaps now I am going to lose your tentative sympathy, but I do not believe the allegations against Jeffrey Epstein and Ms Ghislaine Maxwell, either. And the attack on Prince Andrew is similarly unbelievable. Chapeau for Mr Trump who dared to express sympathy to Ms Maxwell. This was an act of incredible bravery, to step out of line and to say a few kind words to her and about her. The cowardly Clinton and Obama, who were close friends with Epstein and Maxwell, were mum. Trump who was not particularly close to the couple, spoke up for them. He really deserves being re-elected, despite his many faults. Such a man is a master of his own mind, and this is a very rare quality.
I may mull over a proposal to buy the Brooklyn Bridge, but how possibly can one believe the stories of the disturbed woman who claims that she had to be forced to have sex with fabulously wealthy Mr Epstein or to meet glamorous Prince Andrew, let alone that she suffered “extreme distress, humiliation, fear, psychological trauma, loss of dignity and self esteem and invasion of her privacy” on his island retreat? The complete absence of evidence and the complete lack of objectivity could only prevail in the midst of a media campaign. It is believable what Ms Maxwell said in a deposition, that Ms Giuffre was “totally lying.” Indeed all these gold diggers are totally lying.
Like this one: An anonymous accuser says she’ll testify that ‘evil’ Ghislaine Maxwell raped her ’20-30 times’ starting from when she was 14 and claims she was forced to abort Jeffrey Epstein’s baby. Honest and reputable men like Prince Andrew are forced into the demeaning and impossible position of having to argue and justify themselves against wild accusations. There are no reasonably believable accusations of crime against these people. A woman had a photo of her taken with Prince Andrew. She was at least 17; at this age girls in England are perfectly entitled to have an affair with a man. Other girls in other photos were apparently of age, too. Young, yes, but not criminally young. Furthermore, a posed photo does not always indicate a sexual relationship. Some women claim they were babies and they were raped, but there are no proofs of anything except their greed.
Mike Robeson who investigated the claims came to conclusion that they were often initiated by big business to rip off rich Jews. New Puritanism is the Joker card that can trump the antisemitism ace. He wrote:
I’ve read Whitney Webb’s investigative articles on Epstein, which are often cited by the alternative and leftist crowd as evidence of his Mossad connections and blackmailing activities. But Webb’s articles are actually full of unsubstantiated rumors, possible immoral or illegal activities between high level people based on coincidental social or business connections and potentially damning rumors corroborated mainly by her previous articles and posts. She has done some fine reporting on other issues. But on the Epstein case, she is part of what Israel rightly refers to as the New Puritanism.
Supposed evidence of Frau Maxwell’s salacious involvement is the famous photo of Prince Andrew below. This is all the New Puritans need to justify believing the rumors and drawing their “I told ya’ so!” conclusions. But hobnobbing has long been a sport played by the wannabes with the tacit collusion of the rich and/or famous.
Take a look at the fun couple under Prince Andrew and his alleged squeeze. You may recognize Rosalynn Carter, then First Lady of the US. Standing next to her is none other than William Gacy, a few months before he was arrested as a serial killer and cannibal of those he’d butchered. Are we to draw certain conclusions from this photo?
Below Rosalynn Carter is another photo, this one showing then President George Bush being hobnobbed by political has-been George Wallace and by young political wannabe Bill Clinton. What conclusions can be drawn from this? Was George already then grooming Billy Boy for higher things in life? Or is it merely more photographic evidence of how wannabes crawl up the ladder of personal and career advancement? For it is clear that the rich and/or famous, like Rosalynn Carter and Prince Andrew, have to put up with photo ops, sometimes to their later discredit.
Another motivation for the liquidation of Epstein’s empire is the collaboration between the media and the unknown figures behind the scenes who are likely to walk away with Epstein’s millions. Something similar has happened in the past few years to other wealthy Jews.
The girls were treated well. They admit that they cooperated in finding more girls who would massage Epstein, even supposedly knowing that they too would be ‘horribly abused’ by the ‘monster’. The reporters and the interviewed women are perfect examples of New Puritans. I feel dirty after watching them perform. None of their emotional anecdotes reach evidentiary standards and any court would dismiss their cases out of hand.
As for the source of Epstein’s fortune, here is a plausible investigation. It is interesting that no one can really agree on the amount nor the source of his millions.
Justice, or what is passing under that name, gets screwed whenever the law is used to empower a person with a personal grudge, either on his own behalf or to benefit a media consortium. Emotional appeals could never been considered in the better world of Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington. Perhaps they had slaves, but they would not have condemned a man, free or slave, on the basis of empty accusations. Physical evidence is still required in the legal courts. Only on TV can people be destroyed by edited testimony.
I am very tolerant of anti-Jewish rhetoric. So tolerant that I am often accused of it myself. Still, the accusations against Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and let’s not forget poor Mr Harvey Weinstein, are often marked by cliché characters such as the crass foul-mouthed Jew and the innocent girl he despoils. Meanwhile, the facts of each case are monotonously repeated: one man’s career is destroyed while dozens of girls become famous; millions of dollars are suddenly difficult to track and soon begin to evaporate; the man is demonized and the women are sainted.
Can the New Puritanism overturn the Jews and their unstoppable juggernaut cry of antisemitism? Leo Frank was lynched by the mob and the ADL was formed to make sure it never happened again, no matter what the crime. Is New Puritanism the new mob violence? Perhaps mob violence is the only way our rulers can overwhelm the paralyzing effects of being called antisemitic. Perhaps the New Puritanism is an opening salvo in a larger war between shadow forces.
But I could never believe that Maxwell and Epstein were connected with the Israeli Intelligence agency, the Mossad. With all my sympathy to our esteemed colleagues Philip Giraldi and Whitney Webb, there is not a single shred of evidence for such connection. Conjecture, yes; evidence, no. Even the father of Ghislaine, the late Mr Maxwell, who was not a saintly person by any means, might be with better evidence accused of collaborating with Soviet Intelligence, the KGB, than with the Israelis. A person of his standing probably connected with Israelis, too, but he was no Mossad agent.
I can understand my American friends. There never was a time worse for American men, when the statues and memorials of their great ancestors have been uprooted, when their wives and daughters are queuing to press their pink lips upon the boots of black ghetto dwellers, when their manhood is defined as “toxic” and their sons are dreaming of a same-sex union with a glorious black buck. If the US were occupied by the Communists as Amerikaenvisaged, it wouldn’t be as bad as what you’ve got now. You have been humiliated thoroughly. I understand that in such a situation you might jump at the chance to break the bones of rich Liberal Jews like Epstein and Weinstein. I wouldn’t refuse you this comfort. They are anyway already lynched.
However, if you want ever to walk free, you’d better deal with the New Puritan takeover. Women are wonderful creatures, but often they can be manipulated and do what they are asked to do. They are also excellent actors and are not troubled by honour. Men are more independent and solitary by nature; that is why our Masters want to suppress masculinity. It is easier to shepherd a flock of cows than so many bulls. Women love to be the victims, to blame men for their failings; add social distance and fear of viral infection; add the mask (the New Western Burka); add lockdown, and the problem of how to send the children to school might just solve itself. No children. The New Puritans are currently purging Hollywood of the most relentlessly heterosexual men, but when they run out of rich Jews, they just might come after you.
The New Normal is the New Puritan. The pandemic fit into it tight as a glove. Under millions of cameras and tracing applications, privacy shrinks and disappears. New Puritanism erases the gap between public and private realms. In the world we knew, there was a difference between the twain. A man having an affair with a woman (or with another man) was in a private realm. Do whatever you wish in privacy of your home; just don’t frighten the horses, Victorians once said. Now there can be no privacy. Sex is already more of a political opinion than a physical act. You might be lionized as a homosexual or despised as a breeder, your choice. Any affair, or even the attempt to start an affair could be deadly in the post #MeToo world. In an era of socialized medicine, sex is seen as a dangerous weakness that might endanger lives and imperil the global healthcare system.
Much of the severity of New Puritanism can be sourced directly to American culture. America was founded by the Old Puritans of Mayflower in 1620 and has periodically been subject to hysterical outbursts, from witches to Red scares. Nowhere has the use of sex for advertising and commerce been so widely spread as in the US. As the US has become the model for the world, an epidemic of American hysteria is starting to infect countries all around the world. #MeToo reached even Russia, but it is still only a minor phenomenon, mainly to be found among only the most woke of hipsters.
Orwell imagined a future of “state-enforced repression and celibacy” while Huxley predicted “deliberate, narcotising promiscuity”. The New Puritans have chosen Orwell’s world. I grew up in something more akin to Huxley’s, and I can tell you which one is better. Communist Russia was very permissive in the private sphere. People had a lot of sex, with their girl/boy friends, with spouses, with neighbours, with wives of their friends, with their colleagues, with their teachers and students. The Soviets had none of the restrictions we have now against sexual relations in the University between teachers and students; in fact, no restrictions against sex with coworkers, something that now we would call abusive and then call the police. As religion had little influence in Soviet society, adultery was frequent, and unless connected with a public scandal, had no consequences.
Russians as well as the French could not understand why Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky made waves in the US that blew into an impeachment trial and ended with the bombardment of Belgrade. Bill was unfaithful to Hillary? That’s not nice, but it is their private affair. President Clinton lied? Well, he was not in the confession booth. Traditional religions, be it Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, are quite tolerant of venial sin. Puritanism, the Old as well as its New offspring are deadly serious in everything, and are unafraid of killing or bullying a sinner to death. They may have begun with witches, but they are ending up targeting ordinary folk.
Currently their targets have a lot of wampum, for it is no fun to bully a person for no material gain. Us, impecunious men, we have nothing to be afraid of yet. But it might be wise to save society before the New Puritans bring down disaster onto all of us. In my opinion, America’s influence on the world should be reversed, or at least limited. Let America get influenced by Europe for a change. Mercifully, Europe is suffering from a very light case of New Puritanism that may be entirely cured with a healthy dose of Anti-Americanism. I hear the vaccine is under development.
Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net
This article was first published at The Unz Review.
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