[David Horowitz is the author of Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win, which was released June 2 by Humanix Books: Order Here.]

Black Lives Matter emerged as a national presence in the years 2014 and 2015 by declaring war on America’s law enforcement agencies. Black Lives Matter activists made headlines occupying America’s streets, targeting racially integrated and even majority minority police forces whom they accused of killing blacks at random merely because they were black. The Black Lives Matter activists fomented riots, burned and looted cities, and incited their followers with chants that ranged from “What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want them? Now!” to “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”[1]

The latter slogan was designed to highlight the movement’s baseless claim that a 19-year-old resident of Ferguson Missouri Michael Brown was singled out because he was black and shot by a police officer while he was surrendering with his hands up.[2] The protesters demanded that the officer be convicted of murder in advance of any trial – in other words, lynched. However, the facts as revealed in Grand Jury testimony and subsequent investigations by the Obama Justice Department, were quite different. The officer singled out the 300-pound Brown because he had just committed a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store owned by a much smaller Asian shopkeeper, whom he brutalized.

When the officer attempted to arrest Brown, he responded by attacking the officer and attempting to seize his gun, which was discharged in the scuffle wounding the attacker. According to the sworn testimony of six black eye-witnesses, Brown was fatally shot while charging the officer, who fired another five rounds in self-defense. Yet, so disregardful of the facts were the protesters’ claims that they demanded the officer be convicted of a racial homicide, and the chant “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” continued to live on as a battle cry.[3]

Black Lives Matter was formed in 2013 by three self-styled “Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries,” who selected as their movement icon convicted cop-killer and Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur.[4] Shakur had fled to Cuba after being convicted of the homicide she committed when her car was stopped for a broken tail-light by two New Jersey state troopers. Without any warning, Shakur shot trooper Werner Foerster. The 34-year- old Vietnam veteran was lying wounded on the ground pleading for his life, when Shakur walked over and executed him. Officer Foerster left a widow and a three-year-old son.[5] Black Lives Matter activists refer to the murderer as “our beloved Assata Shakur” and chant her words as a ritual, “at every meeting, every event, every action, every freeway we’ve shut down, every mall we’ve shut down.” [6] The chant is this: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” The last line is lifted directly from the conclusion to the Communist Manifesto, a document and war cry that has led to the murders of millions.[7]

The Black Lives Matter movement is not about particular injustices but about the alleged injustice of the American system, of capitalism, and of “white supremacy.” Its mission is not to save black lives. The thousands of deaths from black-on-black homicides draw no attention and inspire no protests, nor do the deaths of black police officers on the integrated police forces they attack. Their ferocious denunciations of slogans like “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” as “racist” reveal the racist impetus behind their own agenda.[8]

This agenda was on display in November 2015, when a group of 150 Black Lives Matter activists stormed the library at Dartmouth College and screamed at the bewildered students studying for exams: “F–k you, you filthy white f–ks!,” “F–k you and your comfort!” The activists ordered students who supported them to stand up, and verbally attacked those who refused, screaming at one of them: “You filthy white racist piece of sh-t!” When a female student burst into tears, a Black Lives Matter activist shouted “F—k your white tears.” Then: “If we can’t have it, shut it down.”[9] The only thing missing were black hoods and black sheets to complete the perverse parallel to the KKK racists of the past.

At the July 2015 Netroots Nation convention, a major gathering of the left, activists shouting “Black Lives Matter” blocked two leftist presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Kevin O’Malley from speaking because they were white. Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors seized the microphone and said by way of explanation, “Every single day folks are dying. Not being able to take another breath. We are in a state of emergency. If you don’t feel that emergency, you are not human.”[10] O’Malley responded to this: “I know, I know, Let me talk a little bit… Black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter.”

As the words left O’Malley’s mouth, the crowd erupted in boos and catcalls. Then they chanted:

If I die in police custody, don’t believe the hype. I was murdered!
Protect my family! Indict the system! Shut that sh*t down!

If I die in police custody, avenge my death!
By any means necessary!

If I die in police custody, burn everything down!
No building is worth more than my life!
And that’s the only way motherf***ers like you listen!

If I die in police custody, make sure I’m the last person to die in police custody.
By any means necessary!

If I die in police custody, do not hold a moment of silence for me!
Rise the f*** up!
Because your silence is killing us![11]

“Burn everything down!” is a slogan that mimic’s Marx’s claim that “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” The nihilistic racism of the Black Lives Matter message is based on a demonstrably false premise – that police have declared open season on black men. The premise is false not only because America’s police forces have long been racially integrated. But as black talk show host Larry Elder and many conservative writers have observed, the proportion of blacks killed by police is directly related to the number of violent crimes committed by black males and thus likely proportional to the number of blacks involved in violent encounters with the law.

Despite being almost 65 percent of the population, whites commit disproportionately fewer of the nation’s violent crimes – 10 percent – and therefore are less likely to have encounters with police. Blacks are only 13 percent of the population, and black males, who commit the lion’s share of the violent crimes only 6 percent. Yet Black males account for nearly half the nation’s homicides.

Despite this disparity, whites are still 50 percent of the victims of cop shootings. Criminology professor Peter Moskos looked at the numbers of people killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 and found that 49 percent were white, while 30 percent were Black. In other words, if the statistics are adjusted for the homicide rate (as opposed to population numbers) whites [pursued by police] are 1.7 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police.”[12] And even this statistic doesn’t factor in the number of blacks killed not by white law enforcement officers but by black and minority ones.

Despite Black Lives Matter’s racist agendas, incitements to violence against police, and disregard for the facts, President Obama invited its leaders to the White House in February 2015 at the height of their protests, riots and incitements. When the Black Lives Matters leaders arrived in the White House, Obama put his arms around them figuratively. and pandered to them saying, “They are much better organizers than I was when I was at their age, and I am confident that they are going to take America to new heights.”[13] Think about that statement for a moment.

In August 2015, the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement and its false narratives: “[T]he DNC joins with Americans across the country in affirming black lives matter and the ‘say her name’ efforts to make visible the pain of our fellow and sister Americans as they condemn extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children.”[14] This shameful resolution went on to claim that the American Dream “is a nightmare for too many young people stripped of their dignity under the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and White Supremacy,” and to demand the “demilitarization of police, ending racial profiling, criminal justice reform, and investments in young people, families, and communities;” and asserted that “without systemic reform this state of [black] unrest jeopardizes the well-being of our democracy and our nation.”

The following month Black Lives Matter activists Brittany Packnett, DeRay McKesson, Johnetta Elzie, Phillip Agnew, and Jamye Wooten were invited to the White House to meet again with President Obama as well as senior advisor Valerie Jarrett and other administration officials. For Packnett, it was her seventh visit to the Obama White House. Afterward, Packnett told reporters that the president personally supported the Black Lives Matter movement. “He offered us a lot of encouragement with his background as a community organizer, and told us that even incremental changes were progress,” she stated. ““He didn’t want us to get discouraged. He said, ‘Keep speaking truth to power.’”[15] Evidently it was the police forces in Dallas, Chicago, Baltimore and other cities, headed by blacks and under siege from the left, that was the “power” needing to be confronted.

In October, Obama made a public announcement in support of Black Lives Matter, saying: “I think the reason that the organizers used the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ was not because they were suggesting nobody else’s lives matter. Rather, what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that’s happening in the African-American community that’s not happening in other communities. And that is a legitimate issue that we’ve got to address.”^[16]

The president’s support for a racist and violent vigilante group, his validation of its false version of reality and hostile attitude towards law enforcement, led predictably to more criminal violence. On July 7, 2016, Black Lives Matter activists staged rallies in numerous cities across the United States, to protest the recent shootings of two African American men by police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana. As was their practice, the demonstrators illegally occupied public thoroughfares and threatened violence chanting “No justice, no peace,” – a transparent threat to create mayhem if their demands were not satisfied. The Minnesota shooting by a Hispanic policeman was triggered by panic and should have been prosecuted as manslaughter; the other was the justifiable killing of a career criminal who was reaching for the officer’s gun. But like the lynch mobs they despised, Black Live Matters protesters were not interested in seeking remedies through the law. They had persuaded themselves there was no such remedy, and had been encouraged by the American president to take the battle to the enemy camp, which consisted of America’s integrated law enforcement agencies.

The result was, inevitably, tragedy. At a rally in Dallas, Texas, demonstrators shouted “Enough is enough!” while they held signs bearing slogans like: “If all lives matter, why are black ones taken so easily?”[17] During the demonstration, a black racist army veteran, named Micah Johnson, assassinated five police officers trying to protect the protesters, and wounded 9 others. Dallas police chief David Brown, who is black, explained: “The suspect wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”[18]

The anger generated by the lies of Black Lives Matter reached such a fever point in the wake of the Dallas massacre that, to justify the atrocity one Black Lives Matter activist speaking to a CNN reporter shouted: “The less white babies on this planet, the less of you we got! I hope they kill all the white babies! Kill ’em all right now! Kill ’em! Kill your grandkids! Kill yourself! Coffin, bitch! Go lay in a coffin! Kill yourself!”[19]

In the face of this racist hatred, the Obama White House stepped forward to provide still more support for the movement that had provided the tinder and lit the fuse. At the funeral for the slain Dallas policemen, the president lectured the surviving officers rather than the rioters, schooling them and the grieving family members about the racism of America’s police departments: “We also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow; they didn’t simply vanish with the law against segregation … we know that bias remains.”[20]

Exactly whose bias? White Americans played a large and historic role in the civil rights struggles that ended segregation, and established the Civil Rights Acts. There is no evidence that the shooter, Micah Johnson was harassed by, or suffered at the hands of white people. But there was evidence that he was influenced by Black Lives Matter and similar organizations at war with the police. And he was deeply affected by the series of false, racist narratives promulgated by these organizations and their allies in the press about the police shootings that had occurred over the previous two years.

The police were also profoundly affected by officer shootings and, even more so, officer assassinations, anti-cop demonstrations, riots, and threats. According to a Pew Foundation study published in 2017, “More than three-quarters of U.S. law enforcement officers say they are reluctant to use force when necessary, and nearly as many — 72% — say they or their colleagues are more reluctant to stop and question people who seem suspicious as a result of increased scrutiny of police, …”[21] This attitude on the part of police in areas which had become the focus of the protest-assaults – Ferguson, Baltimore, Dallas, Chicago – was accompanied by a dramatic spike in homicides  with the perpetrators and victims being overwhelmingly black.[22] As former Baltimore cop and now university criminologist Peter Moskos commented: “Murders and shooting increased literally overnight, and dramatically so. Of course, this took the police-are-the-problem crowd by surprise. By their calculations, police doing less, particularly in black neighborhoods, would result in less harm to blacks. And indeed, arrests went way down. So did stops. So did complaints against policing. Even police-involved shootings are down. Everything is down! Shame about the murders and robberies, though.”[23]

The entire syndrome of police withdrawal leading to spikes in crime rates was termed “The Ferguson Effect” after the city that was looted and burned following the shooting of Michael Brown, and the creation of the myth that he was killed with his hands up. It summed up the unintended – but not surprising – consequences of having an extremist organization like Black Lives Matter take over the nation’s streets, and – with the help of an American president – shape the national narrative on race.

The power of Black Lives Matter stemmed from its exploitation of the ideology of oppression – Identity Politics – a ready-made indictment looking for a crime. Black Lives Matter was at the center of a very large network, including hundreds of leftist organizations sharing the same vision. Among them: The Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Dream Defenders, Hands Up United, Black Left Unity Network, Black Workers for Justice, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Right to the City Alliance, School of Unity and Liberation, Dignity and Power Now, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Causa Justa/Just Cause, Organization for Black Struggle, Communist Party USA, Showing Up for Racial Justice, and others.

Many of these organizations are funded by America’s largest corporations and philanthropies, including the Ben & Jerry Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Margaret Casey Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

In the summer of 2016, the Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund, a six-year pooled donor campaign whose goal was to raise $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives coalition. This coalition embodies the extremist views and agendas of the Black Lives Matter radicals. In the official words of the Ford Foundation: “The Movement for Black Lives has forged a new national conversation about the intractable legacy of racism, state violence, and state neglect of black communities in the United States.” (Emphasis added) According to Borealis, “The Black Led Movement Fund provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to organizations working to advance the leadership and vision of young, black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America.”

In a joint statement, Ford and Borealis said that their Fund would “complement the important work” of charities including the Hill-Snowden Foundation, Solidaire, the NoVo Foundation, the Association of Black Foundation Executives, the Neighborhood Funders Group, anonymous donors, and others. In addition to raising $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives, the Black-Led Movement Fund planned to collaborate with Benedict Consulting on “the organizational capacity building needs of a rapidly growing movement.”[24]

The fact that Black Lives Matter was now a major national movement funded by America’s establishment elites did not prompt its communist founders to reconsider their political infatuation with totalitarians or their anti-American agendas. When Cuba’s sadistic dictator Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016, the Black Lives Matter leadership published an article titled, “Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante.”[25] It began, “We are feeling many things as we awaken to a world without Fidel Castro. There is an overwhelming sense of loss, complicated by fear and anxiety. Although no leader is without their flaws, we must push back against the rhetoric of the right and come to the defense of El Comandante. And there are lessons that we must revisit and heed as we pick up the mantle in changing our world, as we aspire to build a world rooted in a vision of freedom and the peace that only comes with justice. It is the lessons that we take from Fidel.”^[26]

The eulogy then turned to Black Lives Matters’ own icon, cop-killer Assata Shakur, who fled to Cuba to avoid paying for her crime: “As a Black network committed to transformation, we are particularly grateful to Fidel for holding Mama Assata Shakur, who continues to inspire us. We are thankful that he provided a home for Brother Michael Finney Ralph Goodwin, and Charles Hill, [cop-killers and airplane hijackers-DH], asylum to [Black Panther leader, rapist and murderer] Brother Huey P. Newton,[27] and sanctuary for so many other Black revolutionaries who were being persecuted by the American government during the Black Power era.”[28]

The eulogy expressed gratitude to Castro for “attempting to support Black people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina when our government left us to die on rooftops and in floodwaters.” This was another Black Lives Matter lie obvious to anyone who watched the rescue efforts on TV, where virtually all the rescuers were white and all the rescued black. Responsibility for the failure to evacuate residents rested squarely on the Democrat mayor of New Orleans who was black and was eventually sent to prison for his crimes. The eulogy lauded a dictator who put AIDS sufferers, many of whom were black, in concentration camps for having “provided a space where the traditional spiritual work of African people could flourish.” In a religious language suited to their adoration, the tribute closed by saying: “As Fidel ascends to the realm of the ancestors, we summon his guidance, strength, and power as we recommit ourselves to the struggle for universal freedom. Fidel Vive!”

As delusional and repellent as these sentiments should be to any American, and as troubling coming from an organization endorsed by the Democrat Party and supported by American philanthropy and the Obama White House, they are matched if not exceeded by Black Lives Matter’s endorsement and embrace of Islamic terrorists who have sworn the destruction of Jews, Christians and the United States. In January 2015, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors joined representatives from Dream Defenders on a 10-day trip to the Palestinian Territories in the West Bank. Their objective was to publicly draw a parallel between what they portrayed as Israeli oppression of Palestinians and police violence against blacks in the United States.[29] The following August, Cullors was one of more than 1,000 black activists, artists, scholars, politicians, students, and “political prisoners,” to sign a statement of alliance with the Hamas terrorists who ruled the Gaza strip.

Proclaiming their “solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and commitment to the liberation of Palestine’s land and people,” the Black Lives Matter group demanded an end to Israel’s “occupation” of “Palestine,” condemned “Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and chokehold on the West Bank,” and urged the U.S. government to end all aid to Israel. They also exhorted black institutions to support the terrorist-sponsored Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions movement designed to strangle the Jewish state.[30] On their return to the states, the repulsive call for liberation  “From Ferguson to Palestine” quickly became a slogan of the movement.[31]

Black Lives Matter had in fact achieved a kind of transformation, although it was more the climax of a trend that had begun with the death of Martin Luther King, than something original. President Obama had touched on it in his attempts to conflate what he called the “messy” aspects of the Black Lives Matter “protests” with what he regarded as similar rough edges he detected in the civil rights and suffragette movements of the past.[32] But those movements and their leaders were clearly part of the American tradition and their allegiances and beliefs could be traced back to the Founders who had created a Republic based on democracy and individual rights. By contrast, Black Lives Matter leaders identified with alien, totalitarian forces, with Islamic imperialists and terrorists who were conducting a 70-year genocidal aggression against the Jewish state. They had joined declared enemies of the United States and its democratic ally. This was a foretaste of the insurrection they are now leading, setting fire to the country that made them the freest, richest and most privileged black community in the world.

Notes:

Bruce Bawer is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

In his 1976 novel The Alteration, Kingsley Amis imagined a contemporary Britain in which the Protestant Reformation never took place. In The Plot against America (2004), Philip Roth imagined a 1940s America in which Charles Lindbergh beats FDR in the 1940 election and signs peace treaties with Germany and Japan. In her new novel, Rodham, Curtis Sittenfeld imagines an equally portentous alternate world: one in which Hillary Rodham never married Bill Clinton – and ended up being elected president in 2016.

Well, it’s not quite correct to say that Sittenfeld imagines it. There’s not really much in the way of imagination in this stunningly vapid, pedestrian piece of work, which plods from incident to incident without a single vivid detail or snappy exchange of dialogue or hint of wit. It’s so flatfooted, so thoroughly uninspired, that one assumes, in the early pages, that Sittenfeld – who is a woman – banged it out prontissimo, Joyce Carol Oates-style, with the cynical objective of cashing in on all the poor hapless women who were so devastated by Hillary’s loss that they’d presumably be desperate to escape into an alternate universe in which Hillary won. But as one reads on, one acquires the distinct, and horrifying, impression that Sittenfeld’s heart is actually in this leaden, lifeless thing, and that escaping into her own sketchily depicted parallel universe is Sittenfeld’s way of consoling herself.

The premise here is simple: If only Hillary had ditched Bill back in Little Rock, she could’ve taken a different route to the 2016 elections – and won! Forget the critics who say that Hillary’s only real credential for being president – and, before that, a U.S. Senator and Secretary of State – was her wedding ring. Sittenfeld’s novel implicitly argues the opposite: that Bill has, all along, been an ethical and professional liability to Hillary; that on her own she’d have been able to be truer to her extraordinarily high moral values, and could have followed an independent path that led to a long-term senatorial career earned entirely on her own merits and,  ultimately, to the White House.

Until reading Rodham, I’d never heard of Sittenfeld before. It turns out, however, that she’s published five previous novels with Random House, including American Wife, based loosely on the life of Laura Bush, and Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice. No, I haven’t so much as looked at these books, but the fact that they sound like the worst kind of hacky “women’s fiction” doesn’t mean that they aren’t masterpieces. In fact, Sittenfeld has made the bestseller list, been translated into a couple of dozen languages, and garnered glowing reviews featuring such words as “masterful,” “brilliant,” and “poignant.” How is it, then, that such a highly praised writer has produced a book that reads, in large part, like a rough draft of a Harlequin romance? Here, for instance, are our two Yale Law School geniuses confessing their feelings to each other:

“I love you, Hillary,” he said. “I’m in love with you, and I love you. I can’t believe that you exist.”

“That I exist? You’re the Arkansas Renaissance man and future president.” I looked at him more seriously. “I’m in love with you, Bill, and I love you, too.”

Here’s Hill opening up to Bill about her insecurities:

“…No one like you has ever been interested in me. You’re so much handsomer and more appealing. And I realize I’m not beautiful, and I realize you could easily find someone who is. It doesn’t make sense that someone like you wants to be the boyfriend of someone like me.”

Some time later, here’s Bill reassuring her of his love:

A silence arose between us, filled with the hum of the campus, which was, like that of Wellesley, absurdly beautiful: A nearby dogwood tree filled the air with a sweet spring scent. Bill’s voice was serious when he spoke again. He said, “I really don’t think you understand. All this time, I needed you. I needed you, and I was looking for you, and now I never want to let you go.”

And, still later, after she’s caught him in a sexual indiscretion, there’s this:

….he dropped to his knees. He looked up at me, took both my hands, and said, “The flesh is weak. Lord knows how weak my flesh has been. But, Hillary, my spirit is yours. My soul and my spirit and my heart—they’ll always be yours, no matter what.”

So much for the soap opera. At other moments I thought I was reading Fifty Shades of Gray. For those of you who’ve always wanted to picture Hillary and Bill having sex – well, your ship has finally come in. As for the rest of you, good luck getting these images out of your head:

And then I could feel the nudging of Bill’s erection, it was probably going to happen, then it was definitely going to happen, he was entering me, and I gasped—I gasped both because it felt so incredibly good and because I couldn’t believe I was naked with this man….

And:

…when he was thrusting into me, I had such a strong sense of wanting him to come inside me….When Bill was inside me, sometimes I was mindless with how good it felt, and sometimes I was aware, with a kind of granular precision, of the unlikely sequence of events that had made our lives intersect….

Granular precision? Oh well, never mind. Here’s more:

His body in my arms, pressed against me, was shocking. Looking into his eyes was shocking. That we were literally fused, that his erection was inside me and my legs were wrapped around him, hooked through the backs of his knees—all of this was shocking. It was shocking that we’d found each other and it was shocking how natural yet thrilling having conversations with him was and it was shocking that we were naked, even though we’d never spoken until a few weeks earlier. Falling in love was shocking, shocking, utterly shocking.

The key word, if you missed it, is “shocking.”

After Bill exits Hillary’s life, there’s no more throbbing and pulsating, although decades later we hear about Hillary’s “first postmenopause sex” (“I was delighted to discover I still had the knack, as long as there was lubricant nearby”) and her “ritual predebate diarrhea.”

A word about Sittenfeld’s prose. Workmanlike at best, at worst it’s just plain dreadful. Here’s Hillary on Bill: “What was unfolding between us felt continuously replenishable, regenerative.” Hillary on Anita Hill: “In the sense that Clarence Thomas was confirmed, she didn’t prevail.” Hillary contemplating a 2012 presidential race: “At that point, I would be sixty-four years old, and, assuming my own senatorial reelections, I’d have held office for twenty years.” And here’s Hillary on the presidential campaign trail, wondering if she’s slipped up while chatting with journalists: “Had I pronounced the Cuban names displeasingly to them?”

Don’t look to Rodham for verisimilitude. At no point does anything in this book feel authentic. Sittenfeld sets scenes in law schools and on election campaigns, but doesn’t come close to capturing the atmosphere of either. Her supporting cast contains several smart women who feel disappointed because they settled for marriage rather than pursuing careers; but they’re all interchangeable cardboard cutouts. (Michelle Obama doesn’t actually appear, but Hillary mentions her in passing: “like everyone else, I thought she was terrific.”)

Meanwhile the book’s heterosexual men, real or fictional, are all jerks, fools, bullies, weaklings, sleazebags, and/or sexual predators. Among them is Donald Trump, who, in Sittenfeld’s only attempt at humor, is portrayed as (of course) a clown. Clarence Thomas isn’t a character, but Sittenfeld manages to smear him anyway (and in a particularly shabby way). She even allows one of her characters to get in a dig at Obama: “Those of us from Chicago know Barack isn’t as pure as we all pretend.” Throughout, we’re invited to agree with a gay male aide of Hillary’s who says: “Men are such assholes.” The one exception to this rule in the whole book is the rich, doting, and utterly one-dimensional lapdog with whom President Rodham finally finds happiness.

Anyway, back to Sittenfeld’s story (the word “plot” doesn’t apply here). In 1992, Hillary is elected to the Senate from Illinois and Bill loses the race for President. He leaves politics, becomes a tech billionaire in Silicon Valley, and decides to make another try for the White House in 2016 – only to find himself up against Hillary, who also tosses her hat in the ring. As this conflict takes shape, the reader, who’s been slogging through this mind-numbing morass for over 200 pages, thinks: Aha! Finally the big showdown. Yippee! So this is what Sittenfeld has been preparing us for. The potential for drama increases when Hillary finds out that Bill has been taking part in drug-fueled orgies and that a woman whom he raped decades ago is prepared to talk.

But guess what? Nothing happens. Nada! Just when we’re expecting the big dramatic climax, Hillary informs us, suddenly, bluntly, that she won the Democratic nomination and general election; and next thing you know she’s winding things up, telling us how content she is with her life as commander-in-chief and how proud she is “of the legislation my administration has gotten passed without Republican support: reversing the Hyde Amendment to allow poor women access to abortions through Medicaid; creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants; exceeding the climate-change commitments in the Paris Agreement; and requiring background checks on all gun sales.”

We’re plainly meant to melt into tears at the thought of what we missed by not getting a President Hillary. For my part, I sat there stunned at this staggeringly lame excuse for a payoff. What kind of fiction writing is this? You’d never know that Sittenfeld had ever read a novel, let alone written several of them to widespread acclaim.

But hey, that’s just me. If your heart was broken when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump, and the pain hasn’t healed even after multiple readings of her various memoirs and binge viewings of the four-part Netflix documentary Hillary, here’s the book for you. Pour yourself a glass of chardonnay and enjoy.

On May 29, the anniversary of the Islamic conquest of Constantinople, Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center,  was interviewed on Global Patriot Radio about that event’s significance.  The hour-long interview can be listened to here.

For Ibrahim’s May 29 article summarizing the Fall of Constantinople, see below:

*

Today in History: The Sword of Islam Conquers Ancient Christian Capital.

Today in history, on May 29, 1453, the sword of Islam conquered Constantinople. Of all Islam’s conquests of Christian territory, this was by far the most symbolically significant. For not only was Constantinople a living and direct extension of the old Roman Empire and current capital of the Christian Roman Empire (or Byzantium), but its cyclopean walls had prevented Islam from entering Europe through its eastern doorway for the previous seven centuries, beginning with the First Arab Siege of Constantinople (674-678). Indeed, as Byzantine historian John Julius Norwich puts it, “Had the Saracens captured Constantinople in the seventh century rather than the fifteenth, all Europe—and America—might be Muslim today.”

When Muslim forces failed again in the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople (717-718), conquering the ancient Christian capital became something of an obsession for a succession of caliphates and sultanates. However, it was only with the rise of the Ottoman sultanate—so named after its eponymous Turkic founder, Osman (b.1258)—that conquering the city, which was arguably better fortified than any other in the world, became a possibility, not least in thanks to the concomitant spread of gunpowder and cannons from China to Eurasia. By 1400, his descendants had managed to invade and conquer a significant portion of the southern Balkans—thereby isolating and essentially turning Constantinople into a Christian island in an Islamic sea.

Enter Sultan Mehmet, or Muhammad II (r. 1451-1481)—“the mortal enemy of the Christians,” to quote a contemporary prelate. (Note: “Mehmet” is simply an English transliteration of the Turkish pronunciation of “Muhammad.”) On becoming sultan in 1451, Constantinople sent a diplomatic embassy to congratulate him; the 19-year-old responded by telling them what they sought to hear. He “swore by the god of their false prophet, by the prophet whose name he bore,” a bitter Christian contemporary retrospectively wrote, that “he was their friend, and would remain for the whole of his life a friend and ally of the City and its ruler Constantine [XI].” Although they believed him, Muhammad was taking advantage of “the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit,” wrote Edward Gibbon. “Peace was on his lips while war was in his heart.”

What was in his heart soon became apparent. Throughout the spring of 1453 the city watched helplessly as Ottoman battalion after battalion made its way to and surrounded Constantinople by land and sea. One contemporary remarked that Muhammad’s “army seemed as numberless as grains of sand, spread . . . across the land from shore to shore.” In the end, some one hundred thousand fighters and one hundred warships came.

Few Western Europeans came to Constantinople’s aid. In the end, less than seven thousand fighters, two thousand of whom were foreigners, made ready to protect fifteen miles of walls, while only twenty-six Christian ships patrolled the harbor.

Muhammad commenced bombardment on April 6. Although he tried to go over, through, and under the walls, he made little headway. Some six weeks after he had started bombarding Constantinople, he was no nearer his goal. At his wit’s end, the sultan held council with his senior officers. Although there was some discussion of withdrawing, in the end, Muhammad decided on vomiting forth every last man he had against the walls in one last-ditch effort.

But first he would need to inflame his men.

So he assembled and exhorted them: “As it happens in all battles, some of you will die, as it is decreed by fate for each man,” he began. “Recall the promises of our Prophet concerning fallen warriors in the Koran: the man who dies in combat shall be transported bodily to Paradise and shall dine with Mohammed in the presence of women, handsome boys, and virgins.”

Even so, Sultan Muhammad knew that rewards in the now were always preferable to promises in the hereafter. As Sheikh Akshemsettin had earlier told him, “You well know, that most of the soldiers [particularly the dreaded Janissaries] have in any case been converted [to Islam] by force. The number of those who are ready to sacrifice their lives for the love of Allah is extremely small. On the other hand, if they glimpse the possibility of winning booty they will run towards certain death.”

So the “Sultan swore … that his warriors would be granted the right to sack everything, to take everyone, male or female, and all property or treasure which was in the city; and that under no circumstances would he break his oath,” wrote a Catholic prelate who was present. “He asked nothing for himself, except the buildings and walls of the city; all the rest, the booty and the captives, would be theirs.”

Any Muslim still uninspired by the boons of the here or hereafter was left with a final thought: “[I]f I see any man lurking in the tents and not fighting at the wall,” warned the sultan, “he will not be able to escape a lingering death,” a reference to Muhammad’s favorite form of punishment, impalement (which Vlad the Impaler—“Dracula”—was introduced to while a “ward” in the sultan’s court). Muhammad’s “announcement was received with great joy,” and from thousands of throats came waves of thundering cries of “Allahu Akbar!” and “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet!”

“Oh! If you had heard their voices raised to heaven,” wondered a Christian behind the wall, “you would have been struck dumb with amazement… We … were amazed at such religious fervor, and begged God with copious tears to be well disposed towards us.” All this “most terrible shouting,” echoed another eyewitness, “was heard as far as the coast of Anatolia twelve miles away, and we Christians were very fearful.”

The all-out assault was set for May 29. Atonement, ablutions, prayers, and fasting, “under penalty of death,” were ordered for the Ottoman camp the previous day. Fanatics of all sorts were set loose to inspire the men to jihad. Wandering “dervishes visited the tents, to instill the desire of martyrdom, and the assurance of spending an immortal youth amidst the rivers and gardens of paradise, and in the embraces of the black-eyed virgins [the fabled houris],” writes one modern historian. Criers swept throughout the camp to horn blasts:

Children of Muhammad, be of good heart, for tomorrow we shall have so many Christians in our hands that we will sell them, two slaves for a ducat, and will have such riches that we will all be of gold, and from the beards of the Greeks we will make leads for our dogs, and their families will be our slaves. So be of good heart and be ready to die cheerfully for the love of our [past and present] Muhammad.

Finally, on May 29, around two a.m., Muhammad unleashed all hell against Constantinople: to blasting sounds of trumpets, cymbals, and Islamic war-cries, cannon fire lit the horizon as ball after ball came careening into the wall. Adding to the pandemonium rang church bells and alarms. After the initial wave of cannon fire, the sultan implemented his strategy: “to engage successively and without halt one body of fresh troops after the other,” he had told his generals, “until harassed and worn out the enemy will be unable further to resist.”

On and on, wave after wave, the hordes came, all desirous of booty or paradise—or merely of evading impalement. With ladders and hooks, they fought, clawed, and clambered onto the wall. “Who could narrate the voices, the cries of the wounded, and the lamentation that arose on both sides?” recollected an eyewitness. “The shouts and din went beyond the boundaries of heaven.”

After two hours of this, thousands of the Ottomans’ most expendable raiders lay dead beneath the wall. Having served their purpose of wearying the defenders down, Muhammad—now mounted near the wall and directing traffic with a mace in his hand—ordered another wave of fresh Anatolian Turks to crash against the wall. They built and clawed atop human pyramids of their own dead and wounded, all while cannon balls careened and crashed— to no avail. Having the high ground, the Christians slew countless. “One could only marvel at the brutes,” conceded a defender. “Their army was being annihilated, and yet they dared to approach the fosse again and again.”

By four a.m. nonstop cannon fire had made several breaches, which the Ottomans’ elite shock troops, the Janissaries—composed of abducted Christian boys indoctrinated in jihad—charged, even as their former coreligionists held firm. An eyewitness offers a snapshot:

[The defenders] fought bravely with lances, axes, pikes, javelins, and other weapons of offense. It was a hand-to-hand encounter, and they stopped the attackers and prevented them from getting inside the palisade. There was much shouting on both sides—the mingled sounds of blasphemy, insults, threats, attackers, defenders, shooters, those shot at, killers and dying, of those who in anger and wrath did all sorts of terrible things. And it was a sight to see there: a hard fight going on hand-to-hand with great determination and for the greatest rewards, heroes fighting valiantly, the one party [Ottomans] struggling with all their might to force back the defenders, get possession of the wall, enter the city, and fall upon the children and women and the treasures, the other party bravely agonizing to drive them off and guard their possessions, even if they were not to succeed in prevailing and in keeping them.

A small detachment of Turks entered the city through a minor doorway which the defenders had left open during the chaos. They quickly planted the Islamic flag, causing consternation among the defenders.

Playing on their worst fears, the sultan cried aloud, “The city is ours!” and ordered his best Janissaries to charge. One Hassan—“a giant of a beast”—slew all before him and inspired other Turks to press in behind him. When a well-aimed stone took him down, he continued swinging his scimitar on one knee until riddled and “overwhelmed by arrows” he was welcomed into paradise by the houris. “By then, the whole host of the enemy were on our walls and our forces were put to flight.” Thousands of invaders flooded in and slaughtered the outnumbered defenders; others were trampled underfoot and “crushed to death” by the press of men.

Crying, “The City is lost, but I live,” Emperor Constantine XI stripped and flung off his royal regalia and “spurred on his horse and reached the spot where the Turks were coming in large numbers.” With his steed he “knocked the impious from the walls” and with “his drawn sword in his right hand, he killed many opponents, while blood was streaming from his legs and arms.” Inspired by their lord, men shouting “Better to die!” rushed into and were consumed by the oncoming throng. “The Emperor was caught up among these, fell and rose again, then fell once more.”

Thus “he died by the gate with many of his men, like any commoner, after having reigned for three years and three months,” wrote a chronicler. And on that May 29, 1453, the 2,206-year-old Roman state died with him, and “the saying,” observed another contemporary, “was fulfilled: ‘It started with Constantine [the Great, who founded Constantinople in 325] and it ended with Constantine [XI].’”

Note: The above account is excerpted from the author’s book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. Unless noted otherwise, all quotes come from contemporary eyewitnesses and primary sources documented therein.