Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish Articles at DanielGreenfield.org

First Elliot Rodger murdered his three roommates with a knife, hammer and machete. Then he shot eight people, three of them fatally, and tried to run over several others in his car. After the bodies were taken away, everyone on television agreed that it was the fault of the guns. Rodger had been in therapy since he was eight and was seeing therapists every day in high school. He had a history of making violent threats and the police had already gotten involved. He was on multiple prescription medications and had therapists whom he alerted to his plans by sending them his manifesto. A therapist reacted by notifying his mother who drove out personally. By then even more people were dead. In a country where a little boy with a pop tart chewed in the shape of a gun triggers immediate action, the professionals who cashed in on the killer’s wealthy family were in no hurry to call the police. One even reassured his mother while the shootings were going on that it wasn’t him. So it was...

Elliot Rodger is only the latest mass murderer whose creepy videos and massive manifesto will be pored over for clues to his state of mind. Rodger is in good company with killers like Osama bin Laden, Anders Behring Breivik and Christopher Dorner who exploited their murderous celebrity by running their mouths and fingers while unloading their deep thoughts on everything. Osama bin Laden suggested everyone read Jimmy Carter's Palestine as well as Walt and Mearsheimer's The Israel Lobby. Christopher Dorner regretted missing out on the next season of The Walking Dead. Breivik discussed his favorite video games and Elliot Rodger had to tell us every movie he watched. Mass murderers act like aspiring celebrities because that's what they are. They want to be famous. They are compulsive narcissists who need everyone to pay attention to them. Analyzing their manifestos for motive is a waste of time. Rodger, like Dorner, Breivik and Bin Laden, was obsessed with power fantasies...

It didn't take Egypt very long to revert back to a military oligarchy with elections. That oligarchy wasn't brought back by an armed coup in the dead of night, but by popular protests. The Arab Spring was trumpeted by liberals as a new era in the history of the Middle East. But the Middle East is better at undoing history than the media is at writing it. In Egypt, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi brushed away the effects of the Arab Spring. Now in Libya, General Khalifa Hifter is set to undo Obama's military intervention which put the Muslim Brotherhood on the road to taking over Libya, as they had taken over Egypt.  Forty-five years ago a group of officers led by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi seized control of Libya. Gaddafi enjoyed support from the military and Federalist opponents of a central government. And the rest is history, except that history in the Middle East repeats like a broken record. Now Khalifa Hifter, a former Colonel (his post-Gaddafi rank is higher and di...

When everyone is talking about your boss’ incompetence, it’s time for a #LikeABoss hashtag. ALSO LIKE #LIKEABOSS 1,600 Americans died chasing a political slogan that existed only in the heads of his speechwriters. In 2009, the CIA determined that there were at most 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Next year his own CIA director admitted that there were at most 50-100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That same year 499 Americans were killed in Afghanistan. Obama Lost the War on Al Qaeda, While Claiming to Have Won It Gitmo Terrorists Got Better Medical Care than American Vets - The 150 Jihadis have 100 doctors and nurses assigned to them 3 AM PHONE CALL A still-classified State Department e-mail says that one of the first responses from the White House to the Benghazi attack was to contact YouTube to warn of the “ramifications” of allowing the posting of an anti-Islamic video. “White House is reaching out to U-Tube [sic] to advice ramification of the posting of t...

Steven Spielberg threw a Holocaust party and everyone, from Samuel L. Jackson to Kim Kardashian, was invited. The gala evening for his Shoah Foundation began with a few jokes. Conan O'Brien's, “I called all my Jewish writers into my office and asked them for some Shoah jokes” really killed. Bruce Springsteen  played "Dancing in the Dark" whose lyrics "you can't start a fire without a spark" couldn't possibly have been more appropriate considering that the literal meaning of Holocaust is "Sacrifice by fire." Obama slipped in after his DNC fundraiser with Barbara Streisand and Jeffrey Katzenberg to shake hands with a bunch of studio heads, Jewish and non-Jewish, and accept an award as Ambassador for Humanity. There was no explanation as to what an Ambassador for Humanity does. Maybe he reaches out to space aliens. Or tries to commune with fish. Last summer, Obama had forced Israel to release the murderer of Isaac Rotenburg, an elderly H...

In 2008, Democrats insisted that Senator John McCain was too old to be president. At a rally introducing Hillary Clinton, Congressman John Murtha criticized him for even running. "It's no old man's job," he said. Obama and Kerry used language suggesting that McCain was senile. Left-wing activists claimed that could die of skin cancer at any moment. Late night comedians turned McCain's age into a target. McClatchy headlined a story, "Some wonder if McCain's too old and wrinkly to be president." There are no stories in which reporters ask passerby if Hillary is too old and wrinkly to take 3 AM phone calls.   In Newsweek , Anna Quindlen, a fanatical Hillary supporter, wrote that, "The senator's pursuit of the presidency reminds me a bit of those women who decide to have a baby in their late 50s." If she has any objection to Hillary's pursuit of the presidency while pushing 70, she hasn't written about it. By October,...

The circle of men whirls around the fire, hand in hand, hand catching hand, drawing in newcomers into the ring that races around and around in the growing darkness. A melody thumps through the speakers that teeter unevenly with the bass, the sound is old and new, a mix of the past and the present, like the participants in the dance, traditional garments blending with jeans and t-shirts until it is all a blur. It is Lag BaOmer, an obscure holiday even to  those who come to the fires. The  Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire is remembered through days of deprivation for the thousands of students who died in the war, until the thirty-third day of the Biblical Omer, the day when Jerusalem was liberated. Deprived of music for weeks, it rolls back in waves through speakers, from horns blown by children and a makeshift drum echoing an ancient celebration when men danced around fires and shot arrows into the air in a free Jerusalem. The fires and bows have remained a part...