Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,
During a terse exchange, Elon Musk told the virulently leftist editor-in-chief of The Economist that civil war in Britain is inevitable on current trends - driven by rapid migration of people whose beliefs clash with Western civilisation.
In response, Zanny Minton Beddoes accused Musk of supporting the "far right," and amplifying racists.
Musk called the coming confrontation a "reckoning," rejected the racist smear, and turned the tables on an interviewer determined to paint secure borders and opposition to rape and murder as fringe extremism.
When the interviewer insisted she lived in Britain and called the claim "nonsense," he shot back: "You live a very closeted existence!"
He expanded:
"If you have a large and growing, rapidly growing, group of people whose beliefs are antithetical to western beliefs, at some point there will be a reckoning."
Musk described the prospect as inevitable and called it a "crying shame" that mainstream outlets refuse to recognise the threat to Western civilisation.
Pressed on whether he was racist or anti-Muslim, Musk answered directly:
"My partner is half-Indian and I have four children with her. One of them was named after a famous Indian physicist. So I would say I'm not racist."
He continued:
"If people are coming to a country with antithetical views, I am against that. I'm against rape and murder, I'm against the imposition of rules and laws that are contrary to what we've come to accept in the West."
The interviewer's line of attack was clear.
She framed Musk's support for parties defending borders and cultural continuity as backing for the "far right" and even "very fringe parties."
Musk refused the frame.
"No, I support the NORMAL people," he said. "What you call the far right FALSELY."
He pointed out that the same positions - secure borders, safe cities, sensible spending - were mainstream only 10 or 15 years ago.
Speeches by Obama or Hillary Clinton on these subjects would today be denounced as Trumpian extremism by the "lunatic left."
When Beddoes claimed people "loathe" him, Musk was unmoved, firing back "I don't care, but the fact that, as you pointed out, a quarter billion people follow me is that I think a lot more people actually like me than don't. And I think a lot more people hate you and the media more than you realize."
?? Elon Musk just ENDED this snobby British reporter's career !
Question "we started this conversation saying superlatives. It's why people loathe you. Do you understand that?"
Musk "I don't care, but the fact that, as you pointed out, a quarter billion people follow me is... pic.twitter.com/kCZ7OPk0jy
OOF. Feel the burn.
WATCH: Elon Musk DEMOLISHES a Reporter to Her Face For Calling Him 'Far Right', DARES Her to Keep it In The Interview: 'DON'T CUT THIS'
"These are the NORMAL people"
"I would like to ADMONISH YOU and the Media"
Absolute Masterclass ? pic.twitter.com/Y481A616k4
The pattern is familiar. Positions once held by centre-left politicians are now labelled extreme so that any defence of Western norms can be pathologised. Musk called it out without apology.
She can't comprehend what he's saying. Fascinating. https://t.co/Uy7L0z4jYT
— ??? ??? (@antleary) July 23, 2026Watching this woman made me glad I cancelled my subscription. You got time with world's most brilliant man and just tried to lecture him. Nobody cares about your woke bullshit
— ClevelandRocks (@cavsfan1983) July 23, 2026The full interview, spanning AI, Europe, politics and the rest, is available here (for now):
The Economist Elon Musk July 23rd 2026 pic.twitter.com/xti3kXcZFc
— Lord Withers (@_lordwithers) July 24, 2026Musk's warning with regards to Britain is not abstract theorising. It lands against a backdrop of UK government moves that look like quiet preparation for internal fracture.
Last year Professor David Betz of King's College London warned that official talk of a Russian invasion threat was a convenient cover for hardening infrastructure and building a citizen's militia against domestic conflict.
Low trust, political factionalism and demographic change, he argued, are pushing Britain toward civil strife.
Just days ago the UK government urged households to stockpile long-life food, water, medicines and wind-up radios while announcing the largest home-defence wargame in decades - Operation Albiston Shadow - again framed around hybrid Russian threats. Betz's analysis remains the same: the real concern is internal, not external.
Musk's latest comments connect those dots in plain language.
The UK has seen repeated outbreaks of disorder linked to migration failures - Southport, Southampton and beyond. Official responses have often appeared two-tier. At the same time, the state is stockpiling resilience messaging and running large-scale domestic defence exercises while insisting the danger is primarily Russian.
The academic critique from Betz and others is that this is politically safer language for a deeper problem: a society whose cohesion has been eroded by rapid demographic change and elite refusal to confront incompatible values.
Musk is simply saying the quiet part out loud. Large-scale importation of populations that reject core Western principles - equality under the law, free speech, protection of women and girls - creates friction that does not magically resolve. When media and political classes treat any discussion of that friction as "far right," the pressure only builds.
Britain's leadership can keep pretending the only threats come from Moscow or from citizens who notice the transformation of their own towns. Musk is not pretending. Neither should anyone else who values the civilisation that still, for now, allows such interviews to happen.
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Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 16:30Authored by James Howard Kunstler,
Struggle session“. . .there is no saving the Left. There is only saving America from them.” — Sasha Stone
The polycrisis of 2026 whirls like a demon-infested storm overcoming this human project of ours like a medieval panorama of the world’s end. Everything is fraught, tilting toward hazard, menace, ruin. Even under a summer sun, the mind sees only darkness everywhere it looks.
Apocalypse now, it seems like.
You almost can’t blame the doomers, the black pill-ers, lost in their transports of dread.
But I tell you, we will get through this.
Is it a surprise that the IRGC has a death wish for its host, Iran? They’ve been advertising it loudly for half a century, yearning for martyrdom, the bliss of paradise, marriage to multiple perfumed virgins, all the pomegranates you could ever want, and perpetual dreamtime beside a gently burbling fountain in the palace of eternity. Trouble is, to get there you must have your head blown off.
That’s exactly what the IRGC is asking for, though the millions of ordinary Iranians probably have their doubts about the ask. They are hostages of the IRGC regime, which refuses to just stop being a problem for the world. Mr. Trump’s proffer for Iran still abides: become a normal nation, sovereign and all, only without atom bombs. Let ships sail through Hormuz unmolested. Sell your oil, make some money, trade with the other fellas across the Persian Gulf, have a nice civilized life with all the refinements of age-old Persian culture, even with its Islamic overlay. Be happy!
The USA does not seek to occupy Iran, steal its resources, subjugate its people, force them to buy Minnie Mouse plush toys, play baseball, eat Jimmy Dean sausage for breakfast, strum banjoes, or wear cowboy hats. Just stop projecting violence and discord all over the Middle East.
You can’t make us, the IRGC says. Yes, we will, the USA replies. And so it goes. Next up: bridges and power plants. Plus, every ship you damage, we’ll deduct the cost of repair from your frozen assets held in our banks. This is where things stand after the thirteenth night of strategic bombing against the IRGC’s launch sites, drone factories, missile storage caverns, and shoreline military installations. Iran prepared assiduously for this death-scene for decades, building hidey-holes here, there, and everywhere. But every time they launch something now, our satellites mark the coordinates, and boom, now there’s one less hidey-hole.
Iran’s currency, the rial, has an exchange rate against the US dollar of about 1,900,000 to one dollar. There is hardly a functioning economy left. The people are flat broke. Everyday life must be hell now. Could be the IRGC was getting tons of munitions and material for free from China, but days ago we blew up the railroad bridge at Aq Tekeh-Khan that was China’s main connection to Iran, so that’s over with.
You must doubt that Russia is capable of sending arms to Iran at this point. Russia needs every drone and missile it can fabricate now that Ukraine is sending drones clear into Moscow and St. Petersburg on a regular basis. Of course, that war is being stoked by NATO, which perforce includes the USA. A bill (H.R. 2913 — the Ukraine Support Act) that would furnish $1.3-1.8 billion in direct security, military, and reconstruction assistance for Ukraine plus $8 billion in loans was passed by the House in June, but languishes in the Senate. President Trump has threatened to veto it, as running counter to the administration’s preference for negotiations with Russia to end the Ukraine War rather than extend it.
These two conflicts must seem intractable for now, but the mojo driving them has clear and present limits.
If the USA does not underwrite Ukraine’s war effort, then that leaves the EU nations, who are increasingly broke, and for all their idle talk are really incapable of mounting a major arms production campaign.
The UK especially is skating on thin ice these days as Mr. Trump methodically cancels its long-running command and control of global finance through the City of London (as its “Wall Street” is called). In fact, it looks as if the floundering UK — with dopey Andy Burnham rolling in as Britain’s seventh Prime Minister in a decade — has passed the ball of globalist leadership to its forward striker (and all-purpose fixer) Mark Carney the Prime Minister of Canada.
Carney, who was previously chief of the Bank of England, has played a series of losing games against President Trump the past year, while Mr. Carney is busy wrecking the Canadian economy for the sake of the globalist “green” flimflam, a sustained high volume of third world immigration, and outlandish DEI activism that includes giving vast tracts of real estate back to Canada’s First Nations people, their Indians. Carney has also very actively played footsie with the CCP to a degree that is seriously pissing off Mr. Trump. Among all the other shocks and surprises upcoming, you might imagine him having to send the 82nd Airborne up to Ottawa to inform PM Carney that there will be no globalist seat of operations in North America.
Yes, things are getting that strange. And then, continuing the clean-up operation south of our border, there is Cuba to straighten out. Cuba is obviously next. Our patience with that failing state’s communist export project is particularly thin, now that the Democratic Party here is entertaining Marxist-Leninist dreams of glory.
On top of all that, we have serious concerns with the financial markets and the widening income inequality that drives the younger generations’ yen for “socialism” (free rent, free medicine, free stuff).
Financialization concentrates and compounds wealth while the salary-mule class stagnates, suffers, goes broke, and nurses its grievances.
We’re pushing into the season of financial train wrecks. AI has cornered all the free capital in the land — for something that appears to be an existential menace as much as any potential economic benefit — and it is wildly perverting the equity market. The bond market groans under the debt burden and the impossibility of fiscal prudence. Capitalism that can’t self-correct invites financial and political violence.
It’s probably a greater threat to us than the faraway wars, bad as they are. Mr. Trump, Secretary Bessent, and others in charge surely know this — that the American ownership class has become tiny, and that the cure for that is getting the vast dis-owned, forsaken middle-class back into businesses that they will own, in an economy based on production of real goods, not on playing games with money.
There is so much to be done and we can get it done if we screw our heads back on.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 16:20Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,
When I first heard the term “financial repression,” I thought it had to be a joke.
Why would governments and central banks use a term with such a negative connotation? Even people who are financially illiterate can understand that financial repression is a bad thing.
Simply put, financial repression is a strategy governments use to reduce their debt burden by manipulating interest rates below inflation.
It allows them to borrow in dollars and repay in dimes.
Here’s how the IMF describes it, emphasis mine:
“Financial repression includes directed lending to government by captive domestic audiences (such as pension funds), explicit or implicit caps on interest rates, regulations of cross-border capital movements, and (generally) a tighter connection between government and banks.”
More from the IMF:
“High public debt often produces the drama of default and restructuring.
But debt is also reduced through financial repression, a tax on bondholders and savers via negative or below-market real interest rates.
After WWII, capital controls and regulatory restrictions created a captive audience for government debt, limiting tax-base erosion.
Financial repression is most successful in liquidating debt when accompanied by inflation.”
For example, if inflation is 9% and governments fix interest rates at 4%, there is an ongoing 5% wealth transfer from the lender to the borrower. And that transfer compounds over time.
I think financial repression is how the US government will try to manage its otherwise impossible debt situation.
Consider this.
Among the biggest expenditures for the US government are so-called entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.
It’s unlikely any politician will cut entitlements. On the contrary, I expect them to continue growing.
That’s because tens of millions of Baby Boomers—about 22% of the population—will enter retirement in the coming years. Cutting Social Security and Medicare is a sure way to lose an election.
With the most precarious geopolitical situation since World War 2, National Defense—another large expenditure—is unlikely to be cut. Instead, defense spending is all but certain to increase. President Trump has proposed increasing it from $917 billion to $1.5 trillion. The ongoing war with Iran guarantees military spending has nowhere to go but up, way up.
Different types of welfare programs also make up a considerable part of the federal budget and are unlikely to be cut.
In short, efforts to reduce expenditures will be meaningless unless it becomes politically acceptable to make chainsaw-like cuts to entitlements, national defense, and welfare, while also reducing the national debt enough to lower interest costs.
In other words, the US would need a leader who—at a minimum—returns the federal government to a limited Constitutional Republic, closes the 800 military bases abroad, ends entitlements, kills the welfare state, and repays a large portion of the national debt.
However, that is a completely unrealistic fantasy.
It would be foolish to bet on it happening.
In any case, don’t count on increased tax revenue to offset these increases in federal expenditures.
Even if tax rates went to 100%, it still wouldn’t be enough to stop the debt from growing.
According to Forbes, there are around 902 billionaires in the US with a combined net worth of about $6.8 trillion.
The US federal government spent around $7 trillion in FY 2025, and will almost certainly spend a lot more in FY 2026 and beyond.
Even if the US government confiscated 100% of billionaire assets through a wealth tax, it wouldn’t cover even a single year of current federal spending.
And even after confiscating all billionaire wealth, the US government would still have to borrow more than $200 billion to cover FY 2025 spending.
Here’s the bottom line: increasing taxes, even to extreme levels, isn’t going to change the trajectory of this unstoppable trend—even slightly.
The truth is, no matter what happens, the deficits will not stop growing, nor will the debt needed to finance them.
In short, it’s politically impossible to even slow the federal spending growth rate, let alone cut it.
That means issuing ever-increasing amounts of debt is the only way to finance continuously expanding budget deficits.
The ever-growing interest expense on the ever-growing federal debt compounds the problem. It adds to the deficit, which must be financed with even more debt, which creates even more interest expense.
So what options does the US government have to deal with this impossible situation?
In my view, the US government has no choice but to implement financial repression.
The idea is to stealthily confiscate wealth from bondholders without causing too much alarm.
Financial RepressionThere are many flavors of financial repression.
Capital controls. Mandates forcing banks, pension funds, and insurance companies to buy government bonds. Regulations that make government debt appear “safe” or “risk-free” on institutional balance sheets. Yield curve control. Interest rate caps. Restrictions on moving money abroad.
And countless other policies designed to trap capital inside the system and push it toward government debt.
For example, many countries have forced private retirement funds into unwanted government debt. I have no doubt the US government would do the same under pressure.
They could try to sell it to a scared and financially ignorant public as a safety measure—a way to help people protect their retirement savings by moving them into “safe” Treasuries amid a stock market collapse.
They could sell it with patriotic lies and push War Bonds, as they have done in the past.
They could mandate that a certain amount—say, 25%—of all new contributions to private retirement accounts must consist of Treasuries. For your own good, of course.
They could even forcibly convert existing assets held in retirement accounts into government bonds.
No matter the method, the result is the same.
The government needs to borrow enormous amounts of money at artificially low interest rates.
So it creates rules, incentives, and restrictions that force or pressure savers and institutions to finance government deficits on terms they would never voluntarily accept in a free market.
That is the essence of financial repression.
It’s no wonder financial repression is so attractive to politicians.
It allows them to reduce the real value of the debt without admitting they defaulted, without officially raising taxes, and without making the politically impossible spending cuts that would otherwise be required.
And they can do it while perhaps not even 1 in 100 people truly understand what is happening.
Financial repression will not arrive with a public announcement. It will come through policies that appear reasonable, temporary, and even protective—while quietly eroding the value of your savings and limiting your financial freedom.
This is only one part of a much larger crisis now taking shape. Read our free report to understand the forces driving it, the risks they pose to your wealth and personal freedom, and the three strategies you can use right now to prepare.
Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 15:40