Female boxer Angela Carini celebrated taking home the 2024 Italian women&#8217;s title for boxing after being forced to fight in the 2024 Paris Olympics against a competitor with a sex development condition who had failed previous gender tests with the International Boxing Association (IBA). 
The victory for Carini came months after she had to endure being beaten up in the ring by Imane Khelif, an Olympic boxer from Algeria, who had failed past gender tests — per the IBA — and was later allegedly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/french-journalist-claims-medical-report-proves-olympic-boxer-who-took-gold-in-womens-division-a-man">proven to be a biological male</a>, according to a French journalist who obtained a medical report.
After winning the title, the female boxer said, “Tonight was my revenge,” a <a href="https://x.com/oliverbrown_tel/status/1865887087456563426">Telegraph reporter</a> wrote on X. “Some 2024 for Angela Carini. She endured anguish and gross unfairness at the Paris Olympics, forced to withdraw after 46 seconds against an opponent who had failed two sex tests. Four months on, she has just won the Italian title…”
After Carini quit her match against Khelif — who had been allowed to fight in the female boxing category despite the controversy — the Algerian boxer went on to get the gold in the women’s welterweight final boxing match, something many criticized, as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shame-on-you-all-megyn-kelly-piers-morgan-and-others-react-to-algerian-boxer-getting-gold-after-failing-gender-test">The Daily Wire</a> has previously reported.
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Some 2024 for Angela Carini. She endured anguish and gross unfairness at the Paris Olympics, forced to withdraw after 46 seconds against an opponent who had failed two sex tests.
Four months on, she has just won the Italian title. ‘Tonight was my revenge,’ she says <a href="https://t.co/J1uxnKMsYE">pic.twitter.com/J1uxnKMsYE</a>
— Oliver Brown (@oliverbrown_tel) <a href="https://twitter.com/oliverbrown_tel/status/1865887087456563426?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 8, 2024</a></blockquote>
Megyn Kelly, host of “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast, blasted the move by writing, in all caps, about how unfair it was that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded Khelif the gold medal in a women&#8217;s event.
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“Don’t you see? Don’t you see what this insanity is doing to women??” Kelly <a href="https://x.com/megynkelly/status/1822024750845325447">wrote</a>. “WHY DO GIRLS HAVE TO SHARE THEIR BATHROOMS W/BOYS? THEIR LOCKER ROOMS? THEIR SPORTS? THEIR PRISONS?”
“To all the media who have FAILED WOMEN AT EVERY TURN on this boxing and virtually EVERY trans story: SHAME ON YOU ALL,” Kelly <a href="https://x.com/megynkelly/status/1822022126184099840">added</a><a href="https://x.com/megynkelly/status/1822022126184099840" target="_blank" rel="noopener">.</a>
Talk show host Piers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/piers-morgan">Morgan</a> called Khelif being named the women’s champion a “travesty.”
“From Emmeline Pankhurst to this … where are the world’s feminists now, as women’s hard-fought rights get so shamefully destroyed?” Morgan’s <a href="https://x.com/piersmorgan/status/1822023148646363464">post</a> read.
“BREAKING: A biological male just won an Olympic Gold medal in a women’s boxing competition. Congrats to everyone who supported this travesty,” he <a href="https://x.com/piersmorgan/status/1822024690556399657">added</a>.
Khelif previously failed gender eligibility tests by the IBA, but was allowed by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) to compete against biological women in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The Olympics formally cut ties with the IBA, which the IOC now dismisses as “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/boxer-who-failed-gender-tests-wins-gold-in-womens-boxing-without-dropping-single-round-entire-olympic-run">not credible</a>,” and allows boxers to compete based on the gender listed on their passports rather than enforcing any gender-related testing.

Boxing – Olympic Games Paris 2024: Day 6

‘Tonight Was My Revenge’: Female Boxer Wins Title After Olympics Gender Controversy

‘Tonight Was My Revenge’: Female Boxer Wins Title After Being Forced To Fight Male Boxer In Olympics

Boxing

female sports

Italy

Olympics

Paris

Transgenders

World

Actor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/alec-baldwin">Alec Baldwin</a> claims most Americans are “uninformed” about the real world. 
The 66-year-old made his feelings known while speaking at the Torino Film Festival in northern Italy, where he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
“Television news in the United States is a business. They have to make money,” Baldwin said during his speech, per <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/alec-baldwin-turin-film-festival-rust-shooting-americans-know-nothing-1236070459/">The Hollywood Reporter</a>. 
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<div id="id__cr5diph5l2n" class="css-146c3p1 r-bcqeeo r-1ttztb7 r-qvutc0 r-37j5jr r-1inkyih r-16dba41 r-bnwqim r-135wba7" dir="auto" lang="en" data-testid="tweetText">&#8220;There&#8217;s a hole, there&#8217;s a vacuum. There is a gap, if you will, in information for Americans,&#8221; the actor said on Monday. &#8220;Americans are very uninformed about reality, what&#8217;s really going on — climate change, Ukraine, Israel &#8212; you name it. The biggest topics in the world, Americans have an appetite for a little bit of information. That vacuum is filled by the film industry. Not just the independent film industry, not just the documentary film industry&#8230; but by narrative films as well.&#8221;</div>
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Alec Baldwin thinks Americans are &quot;uninformed&quot; about &quot;what&#39;s really going on&quot; in the world and says the film industry is helping to plug the gap.
&quot;There&#39;s a hole, a vacuum&#8230; a gap in information for Americans,&quot; the actor said at the Turin Film Festival on Monday. &quot;Americans are… <a href="https://t.co/lVBD6UO4pi">pic.twitter.com/lVBD6UO4pi</a>
&mdash; The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) <a href="https://twitter.com/THR/status/1861033691612410019?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 25, 2024</a></blockquote>
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A reporter for THR asked specifically about the incoming Trump administration, which Baldwin answered indirectly without mentioning President-elect Donald J. Trump by name.
“There are many challenges to face,” he said. “The environment, the problem of plastic, of permafrost: There are plastic molecules in every corner of the planet. These are the real problems to solve.”
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Baldwin continued, “It will be necessary for every building to have an alternative energy component. Every hospital, school, airport and government building will have to have photovoltaic panels on the roof. We must force states to work on alternative energy sources. But we will never get rid of oil and gas. Can you imagine an ambulance car or a fire department car that runs on electricity and has to be refueled at a charging station?”
The one thing the actor refused to discuss was the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mother-of-cinematographer-killed-on-set-boycotts-rust-premiere-says-alec-baldwin-will-profit">fatal shooting</a> on the set of his movie, “Rust,” when a prop gun Baldwin was holding discharged and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. The movie premiered this week at the Camerimage Film Festival in Torun, Poland, but Baldwin did not attend.
A New Mexico judge dismissed an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin, who has multiple civil lawsuits pending, including one from Hutchins’ mother, Olga Solovey.
“Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March and received the maximum sentence of 18 months in jail.
Baldwin has maintained all along that he was not responsible for Hutchins&#8217; death.

Alec Baldwin

Alec Baldwin: ‘Americans Are Very Uninformed About Reality’

Alec Baldwin: 'Americans Are Very Uninformed About Reality'

Celebrities

Entertainment

Hollywood

The following is part four of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-i-understanding-dantes-vision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">four-part series</a> taken from a <a class="c-link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" data-sk="tooltip_parent">speech</a> delivered by <a class="c-link" href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Michael Knowles</a> at the National Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Conference.
* * *
So let’s go back down to Francesca for a final point on language. Francesca attempts to translate the story of Lancelot and Guinevere into her own life. She makes an interpretive error: She confuses her own life with the life of the characters in the text, which leads to her death and damnation. And this terrifies Dante.
The canto ends with Dante falling “like a dead body falls.” Why? Because Francesca quotes Dante’s own style of poetry back to him. She alludes to a poem by Guido Guinizelli, the founder of Dante’s sweet new style of poetry. And Dante fears that he might have played a role in her damnation.
Which is why the canto is, if not political, at least politics-adjacent. Because it reminds us that there is no such thing as a purely personal sin. Man is the political animal. What we do affects other people. Dante is telling us what the feminists will tell us seven centuries later: the personal is political.
Now we come to the first political canto, “Inferno” VI, which concerns Florence. This is the circle of the gluttons, and Dante meets a Florentine he doesn’t recognize: Ciacco. When Dante asks him to identify himself, Ciacco responds, “Your city, which is so full of envy that the sack already overflows, kept me with her during my sunny life. Your citizens called me Ciacco.” Ciacco is like Florence. The city is like a body. It’s the body politic. And political ills are like bodily ills. The glutton is filled to overflowing, just as Florence is filled to overflowing.
<div id="attachment_807263" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-807263" class="wp-image-807263 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-865x576.jpg" alt="Ponte Vecchio bridge. The historic centre of Florence is protected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The dome of Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore otherwise known as the Duomo can be seen. Ian.CuiYi. Getty Images." width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Ponte Vecchio bridge. Florence, Italy. Getty Images.</div>
The allegorical meaning, Ciacco tells us, is that Florence is filled with envy. But there is a literal meaning too: There are too many people in the city. Dante’s ancestor Cacciaguida recalls this fact (and analogy) in “Paradiso” XVI, when he warns, “The mixing together of persons has ever been the beginning of harm to the city, as excessive food is cause of your diseases.” This argument follows Aristotle, who warns in “Politics” against “the reception of foreigners” in polities, as their presence “has generally produced revolution.” The practical politicians in the room will here find philosophical, poetical, and heavenly sanction to wear their MAGA hats and “build the wall.”
Foreigners are not bad in themselves. They just don’t fit. They’re not appropriate. Polities and people are not interchangeable. Florence, like all polities, is not just “an idea.” Ciacco traces the history of Florence through individuals and families. He recounts 86 years of Florentine history by recalling what happened after one Florentine nobleman (Mosca dei Lamberti) plotted the murder of another nobelman (Buondelmonte de&#8217; Buondelmonti) for jilting a Ghibelline girl for a Guelph. 
In our ideological age, it’s difficult to imagine that a romantic slight could be the immediate cause of a nearly two-century civil war. But sometimes it did. Dante actually traces the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict back to a single utterance by Mosca, recalled in “Inferno” XXVIII: “a thing done comes to a head.”
For Dante, history is civil war. A thing is done, it invites revenge, and then more revenge, and more revenge. Mosca’s utterance, which denies man’s agency in the unfolding of history, constitutes “the seed of evil for the Tuscans.” It’s the demise of the city.
But cities die. As Cacciaguida reminds us, “Cities have their end. The things of your world all have their deaths, just as you do, but in some it is hidden, for they last a long time, and lives are short.” Politics is the indispensable medium in which our salvation occurs, but politics understood as an end in itself leads to death.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show</a></h4>
So how do we attain the freedom to avoid this death? We find the answer in “Purgatory,” which opens with Cato, the great exemplar of Roman liberty. We meet in “Purgatorio” II a friend of Dante, the singer Casella, who recites one of Dante’s own poems back to him: “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona” — “love, which reasons with me in my mind.”
This old poem is important because it declares Dante’s belief that love is a rational thing. Others disagreed. Dante’s poet friend Guido Cavalcanti, for instance, thought love was irrational. The courtly love tradition presented love as a kind of madness. Dante says no: Love, properly understood, is rational — which will help us to understand the famous final line of the “Comedy.”
Having glimpsed the beatific vision, Dante concludes, “Here my high imagining failed of power; but already my desire and will were turned, like a wheel being moved evenly, by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” That love is not only rational; it’s the Logic of the universe. And the concord between that rational love and the individual will is, for Dante, the substance of freedom.
So the line that Casella sings to Dante is good and true. And still, Cato yells at the group for listening to it. “What negligence, what standing still is this?” he cries. “Run to the mountain to shed the slough that keeps God from being manifest to you.”
The souls have fallen prey to nostalgia, which is a danger not because the past is bad but rather that it’s past, and we’re on a journey, and we need to keep your eyes on the prize. History and the political order serve an important purpose, but the purpose is to point us beyond history and politics. Dante and Casella are delighting in the sweetness of a poetical and philosophical intuition, but in so doing, they’re forestalling the reality of that which they intuit and seek.
The past is good because it’s for the future. The polity is good because it’s for a community beyond the polity. The particular is good because it’s for the universal. History is good — but only in light of its end, which is the eschaton and the life of the world to come.
It’s all about hope, which is the theological virtue oriented toward the future. In “Purgatory” VI, Dante asks Virgil whether prayer works. Because in Book VI of the “Aeneid,” Virgil denies the efficacy of prayer. But the souls in Purgatory all pray that God hasten their journey. How does Virgil answer?
“Their hope is not deceived,” he says. “Where I fixed this point, defect was not amended by praying, because prayer was disjoined from God.” But with the Incarnation, God has entered into history and reunited man with himself. The pagans had no such communion with God — crucially, they didn’t even have hope for such a union. So the pagans have hopeless eternity; Christians have hopeful history. We get what we desire. And our desires are mediated and shaped by the people we encounter — most perfectly, by the God who becomes man.
In the world of politics, things don’t always appear hopeful. Hence Dante’s invective in “Purgatory” VI against Italy. “Ah slavish Italy,” he cries, “dwelling of grief, ship without a pilot in a great storm, not a queen of provinces, but a whore! … What does it profit that Justinian fitted you with the bridle, if the saddle is empty? Without the bridle the shame would be less.”
Emperor Justinian, who appears in “Paradiso” VI, codified Roman law, the bridle on human action. No offense to our libertarian friends, who say that “politics is downstream of culture.” But Dante sees the law as a tutor — the bridle that reins in our lower and destructive desires and thereby establishes the conditions for true freedom.
But the bridle is useless if the saddle is empty; law does nothing without a ruler to enforce it. So Italy has become a slave, having traded the liberty of the queen for the licentious servitude of the whore. Rome weeps, Dante says, “widowed and alone, and day and night calls out: ‘My Caesar, why do you not accompany me?’”
Italy is a bride in need of a bridegroom as the Church is the bride of Christ. Dante cries out, “O highest Jove, who were crucified on earth for us, are your just eyes turned elsewhere?” The polity is the bride of the Emperor, and that this natural union is a figure of that supernatural union. Nature and supernatural orders work together — or they should.
But the emperors — Albert and Rudolph Habsburg, specifically, in Dante’s view — have abandoned their bride because of covetousness. They preferred private interest to the common good. Albert and Rudolph show us that noble lineage does not necessarily confer true nobility. But, Dante says, this is how God arranged it. “Seldom does human probity rise up through the branches, and this is willed by him who gives it, that it may be attributed to him.”
Dante spells out this lesson more fully in “The Banquet.” “The divine seed,” he writes, “does not fall on a lineage, that is on a family stock, it falls on individual persons … the stock does not make individuals noble; rather, individuals make the stock noble.” Why? Because “God alone bestows it on the soul” for “every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above.”
Here again, a tension. On the one hand, Dante says we’re essentially creatures of social context, formed by historical, political, and legal circumstances out of our control; on the other hand, he says we’re essentially individuals, whose stock will be ennobled or degraded according to the graces bestowed by God on us individually. So which is it?
We find out in “Purgatory” XXVI, where Marco of Lombardy restates the problem: “You who are alive still refer every cause up to the heavens, just as if they moved everything with them by necessity. If that were so, free choice would be destroyed in you, and it would not be justice to have joy for good and mourning for evil.”
In reality, he explains, “The heavens begin your motions … a light is given you to know good and evil, and free will, which, if it lasts out the labor of its first battles with the heavens, afterwards overcomes all things, if nourished well. To a greater Power and a better Nature you lie subject and therefore free, and that creates the mind in you, which the heavens do not govern.”
We are born in our circumstances, made by “a happy Maker.“ But then we taste the flavor of lesser goods, which we pursue to our detriment “if a guide or rein does not turn away” our love for them. We need just rulers to direct our desires back toward reason. Therefore, Marco explains, “you can clearly see that bad government is the cause that has made the world wicked, and not nature corrupt in you.”
And the chief cause of this bad government, for Dante, is that the Church has usurped the power of the Emperor. Which brings out a beautiful paradox that becomes apparent in “Purgatory” XXVII, when Virgil bids farewell to Dante by saying, “No longer wait any word or sign from me: free, upright, and whole is your will, and it would be a fault not to act according to its intent. Therefore you over yourself I crown and mitre.” “Crown and mitre” — state and Church.
The purpose of the separation of Church and State on earth, in other words, is that they be united in heaven. The purpose of our subjection to rulers is that we become free and whole as individuals. The purpose of our particular experience in time is universal blessedness in eternity. These apparent opposites are not really opposed. One is simply the way to the other.
Thus, Justinian tells Dante in the final canto of the political triptych, “Different voices make sweet notes: thus different thrones in this our life produce a sweet harmony among these wheels.”
Dante’s voice will be formed by the particular trials of his particular exile, as Cacciaguida foresees in “Paradiso” XVII: “You will experience how salty tastes the bread of another.” This is an inside joke. The bread will be salty because of the tears of exile but also, specifically, because Florentine bread is made without salt — a universal saltiness understood through a particular saltiness.
“You will experience,” Cacciaguida warns, “what a hard path it is to descend and mount by another’s stairs” — the universal indignity of exile but particular to Dante’s — here is another little play on words, I think — because Dante’s patron is Cangrande della Scala — scala meaning “stairs.”
Notice the order. We expect an exile begging patronage to ascend the stairs of the patron’s court. But Dante says “to go down” and then “to go up,” which is the form of both the poem and salvation. As for Dante’s fellow partisans, Cacciaguida warns, “Of their stupidity the outcome will provide the proof, so that for you it will be well to have become a party unto yourself.”
Does this mean we should ignore politics? No. Dante has insisted in excruciating detail upon the importance of politics even to salvation. Dante himself remained active in politics as a pamphleteer until the death of Henry VII in 1313. But Dante is reminding us that exile and salvation ultimately pertain to the individual. We are judged alone.
“If I am a timid friend to the truth,” Dante concludes, “I fear I will lose life among those who will call this time ancient.” If Dante prefers political expediency to the truth, not only will he forfeit his salvation; he will lose even his significance in history. So having seen the face of God, with memory failing and only sweetness in his heart remaining, he returns to earth to meet us, who are where he was, to guide us on our own particular pilgrimages. And thank God for that.
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<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-i-understanding-dantes-vision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part I: Understanding Dante’s Vision</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-ii-the-pilgrims-journey" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part II: The Pilgrim’s Journey</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-iii-distinguishing-between-true-and-false-freedom" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part III: Distinguishing Between True And False Freedom</a></h3>

Florence rooftops and cathedral di Santa Maria del Fiore or Duomo view

Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part IV: The Political Animal

Books

Dante

Florence

History

Michael Knowles

The following is part three of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-i-understanding-dantes-vision">four-part series</a> taken from a <a class="c-link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" data-sk="tooltip_parent">speech</a> delivered by <a class="c-link" href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Michael Knowles</a> at the National Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Conference.
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So does this mean Dante hates freedom? Nothing could be further from the truth. We hear in “Paradiso” V that “the greatest gift that ever in his bountifulness God gave in creating, and the most conformed to his goodness, the one that is most prized, was the freedom of the will, with which the creatures with intelligence, all of them and only they, were and are endowed.” Dante tells us in “Monarchia” that “the human race is in its ideal state when it is completely free” and that “the first principle of our freedom is free will, which many people talk about but few understand.”
Here Dante seems to be speaking directly into our own time, when so many people are confused about the true meaning of “freedom.” 
Dante distinguishes between true and false freedom: “If judgment controls desire completely and is in no way pre-empted by it, it is free; but if judgment is in any way at all pre-empted and thus controlled by desire, it cannot be free, because it does not act under its own power, but is dragged along in the power of something else.” Lord Acton summarizes this view in the pithy statement that freedom is not the ability to do what we wish but the right to do what we ought. 
Dante loves freedom. And it is because he loves freedom that he demands universal monarchy. Because, as he tells us in “Monarchia,” “The activity proper to mankind considered as a whole is constantly to actualize the full intellectual potential of humanity, primarily through thought and secondarily through action (as a function and extension of thought).” He adds that “mankind most readily attends to this activity … in the calm or tranquility of peace.” Therefore, “universal peace is the best of those things which are ordained for our human happiness.” And the only way to get universal peace is through a universal ruler.
But then doesn’t this therefore imply a merger of Church and State under one single ruler? Not for Dante. But Dante’s enemy Pope Boniface VIII thought it did, as the pope argued in 1302 in his papal bull “Unam Sanctam.”
Boniface argued that all power on earth lies ultimately with the pope — that even the emperor is subordinate to the pope. To defend his claim, Boniface made a couple of dubious scriptural arguments. Boniface also relied on the Donation of Constantine — a document later proven to be a forgery — in which the Emperor purportedly transferred authority over the western Roman Empire to the pope.
Dante says no. Even if Boniface’s questionable readings of scripture were accurate, even if Constantine had really attempted to transfer political authority to the pope, nevertheless it would not be possible. Because on earth, everything has limits. Even the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, which our Lord gives to St. Peter — the power “to loose and to bind” — cannot be absolute because Peter could not do things that God himself cannot do.
Peter could, for instance, absolve an unrepentant sinner. He could not “loosen a wife from her husband and bind her to another while the first was still alive.” There are limits not only to the power of the emperor but also of the pope. Those limits derive from the nature of their respective offices, and the distinction between the offices derives from the fact that man himself has two natures: corruptible body and incorruptible mind. Mankind therefore, having two natures, necessarily has two ends: happiness in this life and happiness in eternity. The political order — the Empire — is meant to serve man’s temporal happiness; the spiritual order — the Church — should conduce to man’s eternal happiness.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show</a></h4>
And yet Dante does not call, as later political thinkers will, for a “firm separation of church and state.” On the contrary, he concludes by warning that his argument “should not be taken so literally as to mean that the Roman Prince is not in some sense subject to the Roman Pontiff, since this earthly happiness is in some sense ordered towards immortal happiness. Let Caesar therefore show that reverence towards Peter which a firstborn son should show his father, so that, illumined by the light of paternal grace, he may the more effectively light up the world, over which he has been placed by Him alone who is ruler over all things spiritual and temporal.” 
The pope and the emperor have distinct realms of action. But we cannot totally separate the temporal and the spiritual just as we cannot separate the literal from the allegorical or the particular from the universal.
Now, having digressed for all that context, let’s move on to the pre-political canto, Canto V of “Inferno.” Here Dante encounters Francesca da Rimini, who had an affair with her brother-in-law Paolo, both of whom are killed by her jilted husband when he discovers them.
Paolo and Francesca fall in love, she tells us, while reading. They read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. And here Dante makes an important point about language. When read in Italian, it is most important to listen to the language.
<blockquote>Amor, ch&#8217;al cor gentil ratto s&#8217;apprende,
prese costui de la bella persona
che mi fu tolta; e &#8216;l modo ancor m&#8217;offende.
&nbsp;
Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona,
mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,
che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona.
&nbsp;
Amor condusse noi ad una morte.
Caina attende chi a vita ci spense&#8221;.
Queste parole da lor ci fuor porte.</blockquote>
“Love, which is quickly kindled in the gentle heart,” “love, which does not pardon any beloved from loving,” “love led us to one death.” That last phrase: “amor condusse noi ad una morte.” “Amor” — love — is precisely in the middle of “una morte” — “one death.”
It’s untranslatable. It is possible to gist in translation, but it only really works in Italian. Dante is showing, as he tells explicitly in his essay on language, “De Vulgari Eloquentia,” that particular languages are appropriate for particular works and particular writers. Not only do different circumstances call for different forms of language — the high grammatica of Latin versus the vulgar vernacular — but writers have a special obligation to their own native vernaculars simply by virtue of those vernaculars’ being their own. Dante writes in “The Banquet” of “the perpetual shame and mortification of the wicked men of Italy who praise the vernacular of others and disparage their own.”
Dante condemns his own teacher Brunetto Latini in part for betraying his vernacular. The point is that language is particular. There’s an old expression, “traduttore, traditore” — the translator is a traitor. Individual experiences are not interchangeable.
This is more evident in Canto XXXI of Inferno when Dante meets Nimrod, who builds the Tower of Babel. When Dante meets him, Nimrod says, “Raphèl maì amècche zabì almì,” which is untranslatable, not because of some pun, but more basically because no one knows what language it is. It seems the phrase is nonsense. Which in itself is meaningful.
Observing the Babel builders, the Lord says, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” So he confused their language and scattered them over the face of the earth.
The combination of political and linguistic unity would have unleashed invincible evil on the world. So God disrupted — temporarily — their political unity and permanently severed their linguistic unity. Now we see a chasm between what is said and what is understood — a chasm which is itself merely an exaggeration of the gap that appeared between word and meaning at the Fall.
Nimrod attempted to short-circuit the particularity of politics and history. He transgressed the limits placed on man at the Fall. We learn more about this fact in “Paradiso” XXVI, when Dante meets Adam, who explains that ”the tasting of the tree in itself” did not cause “so long an exile, but only going beyond the sign.” A crucial word: “sign.” Adam in disobedience figuratively “goes beyond the sign,” and as a result there emerges a distance between literal signs — that is, words — and the meanings that they signify.
In “Paradiso” XXVI, Adam corrects Dante’s earlier belief, articulated in “De Vulgari Eloquentia,” that Hebrew alone survived the confusion of languages at Babel — that Hebrew is in fact the original language created by God — “so that our redeemer, who was to descend from them (in so far as He was human), should not speak the language of confusion, but that of grace.”
Adam says no. “The language that I spoke was all extinct before Nimrod’s people became intent on the unfinishable work.” This is because “no rational effect, because of human preference, which changes following the heavens, has ever been enduring.” Nothing is immune from history. God himself enters into history, and the Word himself speaks a language that is contingent, particular, and constantly changing.
Even the names we call God change: first it was “I,” then “El,” and so on. “This is necessary,” Adam explains, “for the usage of mortals is like a leaf on the branch, which departs and another comes.” The usage of mortals changes because, as Dante writes in “De Vulgari Eloquentia,” “Nothing can be conveyed from one reasoning mind to another except by means perceptible to the sense.” And percepts are always changing. God does not change, but everything else does, including the names we call him.
This is one reason Dante chose to write the “Comedy” in the vernacular. For some of his minor works, he chose the high grammatica of Latin. For his magnum opus, he chose the low vernacular. To go up, we must go down.
* * *
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-i-understanding-dantes-vision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part I: Understanding Dante’s Vision</a></h3>
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The Florence Cathedral – Santa Maria del Fiore in an orange sunset.

Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part III: Distinguishing Between True And False Freedom

Catholicism

Politics

speech

The following is part two of a four-part series taken from a <a class="c-link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" data-sk="tooltip_parent">speech</a> delivered by <a class="c-link" href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Michael Knowles</a> at the National Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Conference.
* * *
In “Inferno” VI, Dante calls his political party “the party of the woods” — “la parte selvaggia” — because its central family, the Cerchi, came from a rural area. It seems to me — though I’ve never seen this in any commentaries on the poem — that this explains the repetition in the first lines. Especially when we consider the timing of Dante’s arrival in the dark wood just before his ascent to the Priorate, it seems to me Dante is calling our attention immediately to the political cause of his losing the straight way.
Some additional evidence for this view comes from Dante himself, in a letter preserved by the historian Leonardo Bruni, in which he says, “All my woes and all my misfortunes had their cause and origin in my ill-omened election to the Priorate.” So, if my interpretation is correct, this means even the vaguest and more general scene in the poem, “Inferno” I, is rooted in highly particular historical experience.
Dante then encounters three beasts at the foot of a “desert slope”: a leopard, a lion, and a lupa — a “she-wolf.”And the she-wolf scares him the most. Why? Lions and leopards seem scarier to me. What is it about the she-wolf?
We know that later on Dante will connect the she-wolf with avarice. Beyond that, we really don’t know Dante’s precise meaning. And I suspect we’re not supposed to know because we usually don’t understand the meaning of events as they occur. This isn’t “Pilgrim’s Progress.” In Dante’s journey, just as in real life, we don’t encounter giant, talking allegories. We encounter literal events and figures — with allegorical significance, no doubt, but allegorical significance that often eludes us, at least at first.
In the fallen world, there is a distance between sign and signified, between symbol and symbolized. It is a distance present in language itself. Angels don’t need language. Angels’ knowledge is directly infused. Humans need language because we’re incarnate. So we communicate in perceptible sounds and scribbles. But there’s a problem with our language. As a consequence of the Fall, a chasm has opened between what we say and what we mean. This distance — this desert, we might say — constitutes another kind of exile between word and meaning. We don’t quite say what we want to say, and we don’t immediately grasp the meaning of symbols.
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So politics is the particular things that happen, the full meaning of which we cannot know as they occur. And history is the record of politics, the significance of which we later interpret. But if we can interpret history, that means that history is not merely literal. Every particular thing evinces some universal truth, and the universal is made manifest to us only through the particular.
So what does the she-wolf mean? It seems to me the clearest connotation is political. The she-wolf nurses Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. What strikes the most fear into Dante’s heart — what most obstructs his path — is a political beast, a beast, we’ll read 40 lines later, which “lets no one pass by her way, but so much impedes him that she kills him.”
We learn this from the first character that Dante meets: Virgil, the poet of empire and history, whose “Aeneid” tells the story of the founding of Rome, the universal empire, transferred west from Troy to Italy through Aeneas, ancestor to Romulus and Remus.
Dante’s journey is not a straight-shot to God. It’s a journey incited by a particular individual, Virgil, whom we later learn was sent by another individual, Dante’s beloved Beatrice — not even a public figure — who will then introduce Dante to another individual, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who will serve as the final guide on the pilgrim’s journey, which is mediated at all times by real and specific people.
<div id="attachment_805345" style="width: 922px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-805345" class="wp-image-805345 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-171101483-912x576.jpg" alt="Dante Alighieri and Beatrice in Florence. 20th century illustration. Italian poet, 1265-1321. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)" width="912" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-171101483-912x576.jpg 912w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-171101483-300x190.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-171101483-768x485.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-171101483.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 912px) 100vw, 912px" />Dante Alighieri and Beatrice in Florence. 20th century illustration. Italian poet, 1265-1321. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)</div>
When Dante sees Virgil “in the great desert,” he cries, “‘Miserere di me,’ whatever you may be, whether shade or true man.” Dante doesn’t quite meet “Virgil.” He meets the “shade” of Virgil.
“Not a man — I was once a man,” Virgil explains. “My parents were Lombards, both Mantuans by birth. I was born under Julius, though it was late, and I lived in Rome under the good Augustus in the time of the false and lying gods.” Virgil is not a man because men are irreducibly historic beings. We are not souls flitting through eternity. We are incarnate creatures — composites of body and soul — and we can only ever be men by virtue of our place in history.
Therefore, Virgil identifies himself by his political circumstances: geographic in that he is Mantuan, and temporal in that he was “born under Julius.” Which isn’t even true, by the way. Virgil was born in 70 B.C. He was 21-years-old when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon. But Dante is connecting Virgil with the Empire, the perfection of political order.
Virgil speaks of the journey that they are about to undertake — even of God himself — in imperial terms. He refers to “that Emperor who reigns on high,” and he informs Dante that they will not exit the wood by going up. Dante will not retrieve the straight path by virtue of his own intellect and will. To go up, he must go down.
Dante is skeptical. He says, “I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul.” Why invoke Aeneas and Paul? What do they have in common? Two things. They both travel to the “immortal realm” — Aeneas to the land of the dead, Paul to the third heaven. And they both go to Rome. 
Dante writes of Aeneas: 
<blockquote>He in the Empyrean heaven had been chosen to 
be father of mother Rome and her empire: 
and Rome and her empire, to tell the truth, were 
established to be the holy place where the successor 
of great Peter is enthroned.
Through this journey that you claim for him, he 
understood things that were the cause of his victory
and of the papal mantle.
Later the chosen Vessel [Paul] went there, to bring back 
strengthening for that faith which is the beginning of 
the way of salvation.</blockquote>
Virgil tells Dante that he must venture into the pit of Hell, and the first thing Dante thinks of is politics. And it’s not a frivolous obsession. For Dante, Rome is divinely imbued with authority. God the Father sent his only begotten Son to be incarnate in the fullness of time into the Roman Empire. For Dante, Rome has a divine mandate to govern the whole world attested to in the Gospel of St. Luke: “There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed,” which for Dante signifies, as he explains in his political tract “Monarchia,” “that at that time the Romans exercised jurisdiction over the whole world.”
For Dante, it’s appropriate that the Romans governed the world because they were not only the noblest people but also providentially formed, as we see in the marriages of Aeneas, who had three wives: Creusa in Troy, then Dido in Carthage, and finally Lavinia in Italy — Asia, Africa, and Europe, all brought under the headship of one man. “Who will fail,” Dante asks, “to recognize divine predestination in that double confluence of blood from every part of the world into a single man?”
The Roman Empire’s divine mandate to govern is not only apparent but necessary, according to Dante, if Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross is to redeem all of mankind. As Dante explains in “Monarchia,” “If the Roman empire was not based on right, Adam’s sin was not punished in Christ.” That is, “If Christ had not suffered under an authorized judge, that penalty would not have been a punishment. And no judge could be authorized unless he had jurisdiction over the whole of mankind, since the whole of mankind was punished in that flesh of Christ.”
So Rome had the special right to govern the world. And this is good, Dante believes, because “mankind most closely resembles God when it is most a unity.” Today we worship “diversity” for diversity’s sake. Dante does not. Mankind, he writes, “is in its ideal state when it follows the footsteps of heaven, insofar as its nature allows. And since the whole sphere of heaven is guided by a single movement … and by a single source of motion (who is God) … mankind is in its ideal state when it is guided by a single ruler.”
In other words, we ought to imitate the heavens, and the kingdom of heaven is not a democracy — or an oligarchy, or a tyranny, or any form of government other than universal monarchy, which Dante concludes “is necessary to the world.”
* * *
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-i-understanding-dantes-vision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part I: Understanding Dante’s Vision</a></h3>

Divine Comedy. Journey of Dante through the Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. By Dore.

Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part II: The Pilgrim’s Journey

Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part II: The Pilgrim's Journey

The following is part one of a four-part series taken from a <a class="c-link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" data-sk="tooltip_parent">speech</a> delivered by <a class="c-link" href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Michael Knowles</a> at the National Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Conference.
* * *
Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet, politician, and political philosopher. The occasion of writing his magnum opus, the “Divine Comedy,” came as a result of politics. But before we get into the poem, we need some historical context. Those of you who have read Dante know that politics is a recurring theme. You need a lot of context.
Dante served in political life for just over seven years from 1295 to 1301. There were two dominant political parties in Italy during Dante’s time: the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The Guelphs supported the pope; the Ghibellines, the Holy Roman Emperor. Dante was a Guelph, and he fought the Ghibellines at the Battle of Campaldino in 1289. 
The Guelphs won. But after the victory, they split into two factions: the Whites, who wanted to limit the temporal power of the pope, and the Blacks, who wanted to expand the temporal power of the pope. Dante was a White Guelph: pro-pope but also pro-emperor — the medieval Florentine version of a RINO.
Eventually, the Whites took control, and Dante ascended to Florence’s supreme governing council, the Priorate, on June 15, 1300. This is an important date. Because it occurs historically just two or three months after the action of the “Comedy” takes place. Dante wrote the “Comedy” from 1308 to 1321, but the events occur in 1300 over the course of seven days, from Holy Thursday through Easter Wednesday.
Dante served in the Priorate for two months. In 1301, both the Whites and the Blacks appealed to Pope Boniface VIII to resolve the conflict. You can infer what Dante thought of the man by the fact that Dante signals his damnation in Hell three years before the pope actually died.
While Dante entreated Boniface to help settle the civil war in Florence, Boniface sent Charles of Valois, brother of King Philip IV of France, into Florence with the Black Guelphs to ransack the city, slaughter Dante’s friends, and exile the Whites, including Dante, who was stripped of his property and threatened with death if he returned. Dante never saw Florence again.
<div id="attachment_804553" style="width: 448px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-804553" class="size-large wp-image-804553" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-51160526-438x576.jpg" alt="Portrait of Italian poet, politician, and author Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321), early 14th Century. Author of 'The Divine Comedy.' (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)" width="438" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-51160526-438x576.jpg 438w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-51160526-228x300.jpg 228w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-51160526-768x1010.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-51160526.jpg 779w" sizes="(max-width: 438px) 100vw, 438px" />Portrait of Italian poet, politician, and author Dante Alighieri (1265 &#8211; 1321), early 14th Century. Author of &#8216;The Divine Comedy.&#8217; (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)</div>
Now, I know what you’re thinking: Who cares? Why do we need to know all these political minutiae to appreciate a poem about the afterlife? Isn’t the point of eternity that we don’t need to care about all this historical trivia?
An intelligent, widely read, deeply educated friend has made this complaint to me. He loves Dante’s cosmic vision, but he hates that Dante demands so much political and historical context. The references are just so particular. John Milton doesn’t demand that we memorize the annual register of Roundheads to appreciate “Paradise Lost,” but Dante insists that we learn about Forese Donati, Henry VII of Luxembourg, Charles of Anjou, and so many others. My friend in exasperation has joked that the poem could be called the “Divine Comedy: or, Guido Pizzarelli Gets His.”
But that’s the point. Politics and the particularity of politics are crucial to understanding Dante’s vision — because Dante understands that politics is the medium through which our salvation occurs. We are pilgrims who will reach our final destination, wherever that may be, only through history. The journey of our life will not occur through teleportation.
Our pilgrimages entail particular deeds done with particular people in particular places as well as particular words said in particular languages — languages which are, as Dante’s decision to write the “Comedy” in the vernacular underscores, historically contingent and constantly changing. If one were inclined toward academic jargon, one might say that Dante understands the whole cosmos through a hermeneutic of particularity.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show on DailyWire+</a></h3>
There is no escaping history. For us, there is no neutral or eternal standpoint. We must always be moving — in our minds, in our hearts, and in our bodies — because this is not our home. We are all exiles. The particularity of Dante’s exile from Florence is a literal representation of humanity’s allegorical condition since our first ancestors ate the forbidden fruit. All of history is and must be understood to be a kind of exodus.
Dante makes this point explicit in a letter to his patron in Verona, Cangrande della Scala. In the letter, Dante writes, “The sense of this work is not simple. … The first sense is that which comes from the letter, the second is that of that which is signified by the letter. And the first is called the literal, the second allegorical or moral or anagogical.” Dante points to the story of Exodus; he quotes from Psalm 113, which he again quotes in “Purgatory”: “When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion.”
Dante says the literal meaning is “the exit of the Children of Israel from Egypt at the time of Moses.” The allegorical meaning is “our redemption done by Christ.” The moral of the story is “the conversion of the soul from the struggle and misery of sin to the status of grace.” And the anagogical sense — the mystical or eschatological sense — is “the leave taking of the blessed soul from the slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory.” One line, four layers of meaning.
To ask why Dante needs to include all these obscure references to political figures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is to ask why God needs to lead a particular people at a particular time from Egypt to Jerusalem. It is to ask why God needs to send his particular Son to be born of a particular woman in the fullness of time in a particular town under the rule of a particular emperor to die on a particular Cross. That is simply how God tells his story — which is to say, that is how the story is told. We tell our stories with letters; God tells his story with us.
Dante begins his story in a similar way, with the literal and the allegorical, the particular and universal all immediately apparent. He begins, “In the middle of our life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood.” Dante is at this point 34-years-old, about to turn 35, which is middle age, according to Psalm 90. (For some of us, this is the first of many harsh facts that will appear in the “Comedy.”)
Beyond the language of “me” and “I,” there’s something even more particular going on in the first lines of this poem. We notice the repetition of the same word three times. Three is obviously an important number for Dante. The poem is divided into three canticles: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The rhyme scheme is what’s called “terza rima” — rhymes that occur in triplets interlaced. And three the number of the Trinity.
The repeated word is “selva” — wood. The translations don’t preserve the repetition, but in the Italian we read:
<blockquote>Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita. 
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte….</blockquote>
“Selva,” “selva,” “selvaggia” — there’s the meaning of “savage” there, but it’s also as if he said “a wood that’s a woody wood.” Dante had a rather robust vocabulary. So why the repetition?
The answer, I believe, lies in Canto VI of “Inferno,” the first of the three political cantos. Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is so meticulously ordered and harmonious that it can be read not only vertically but also horizontally across the canticles. And the sixes are all political cantos because the sixth day is the final day of creation before God rests and the day when God creates man, the political animal. “Inferno” VI is about the city; “Purgatorio” VI, the nation; “Paradiso” VI, the Empire.

Dante and the Divine Comedy Duomo Cathedral Basilica Florence It

Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part I: Understanding Dante’s Vision

President Joe Biden elicited a strange reaction from Argentinian President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/javier-milei" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Javier Milei</a> when, during a meeting with Pope Francis, Biden leaned in and rested his forehead against the Pope&#8217;s.
Biden met with Pope Francis while he was in Italy for the G-7 meetings with a number of other world leaders, and while he was speaking to the Catholic leader, he kept leaning in closer and closer until finally, the two were forehead to forehead. Pope Francis&#8217; expression was one of mild surprise at the president&#8217;s actions, but as Milei turned and saw the scene playing out, he appeared to recoil.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Priceless: <a href="https://twitter.com/JMilei?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JMilei</a>&#8216;s reaction to Biden and Pope 🤣<a href="https://t.co/oU6cheTkaT">pic.twitter.com/oU6cheTkaT</a>
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) <a href="https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1801949178794254663?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 15, 2024</a></blockquote>
Milei literally backed away as he realized what was happening, prompting a series of reactions on social media as well.
The Babylon Bee made use of the awkward moment, running with the headline, &#8220;Biden Disappointed After Huge Scoop Of Vanilla Ice Cream Turns Out To Be Pope Francis.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Biden Disappointed After Huge Scoop Of Vanilla Ice Cream Turns Out To Be Pope Francis <a href="https://t.co/eTNGEe0MHx">https://t.co/eTNGEe0MHx</a> <a href="https://t.co/5bLPMEVdjY">pic.twitter.com/5bLPMEVdjY</a>
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheBabylonBee/status/1801694159184474598?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 14, 2024</a></blockquote>
&#8220;Heads up, Your Holiness!&#8221; the New York Post added, sharing a video of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni&#8217;s reaction — apparent disbelief — as well.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Heads up, Your Holiness! <a href="https://t.co/kqUMtcz7aO">https://t.co/kqUMtcz7aO</a> <a href="https://t.co/Ahh3MHjN3V">pic.twitter.com/Ahh3MHjN3V</a>
— New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1801625430052540844?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 14, 2024</a></blockquote>
&#8220;Look at Javier Milei&#8217;s &#8216;wtf&#8217; face as he witnesses the exchange between the Pope and Dictator Biden. Lol,&#8221; Liz Churchill posted.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1712932862202000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0plT8RRdMy9XUpIhocnjQS">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Look at <a href="https://twitter.com/JavierMilei_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JavierMilei_</a> ‘s ‘wtf’ face as he witnesses the exchange between the Pope and Dictator Biden. Lol. <a href="https://t.co/3rgbRDPdeR">pic.twitter.com/3rgbRDPdeR</a>
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) <a href="https://twitter.com/liz_churchill10/status/1801773356330418372?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 15, 2024</a></blockquote>
&#8220;The pope doesn&#8217;t look like he enjoyed Biden&#8216;s strange head bump greeting. Biden doesn&#8217;t know the definition of personal space,&#8221; Sara Rose added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The pope doesn&#8217;t look like he enjoyed Biden&#8217;s strange head bump greeting. 
Biden doesn&#8217;t know the definition of personal space 🥴<a href="https://t.co/JQp6IaHVOL">pic.twitter.com/JQp6IaHVOL</a>
— Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) <a href="https://twitter.com/saras76/status/1801675700367208779?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 14, 2024</a></blockquote>
Biden&#8217;s trip to Italy for the G-7 meetings was marked by a series of viral video clips that raised questions about the president&#8217;s overall fitness for duty — including once when he appeared to wander away as the other world leaders were gathering to take photos, and then a press conference during which he complained that reporters who did not <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-scolds-reporter-who-dares-to-ask-a-question-i-wish-you-guys-would-play-by-the-rules">limit their questions</a> to the topic he preferred to address should &#8220;play by the rules.&#8221;

G7 summit

WATCH: Biden’s Pope Francis Forehead Bump Gets Shocked Reaction From Javier Milei

Biden’s Pope Francis Forehead Bump Gets Shocked Reaction From Javier Milei

Executive

Javier Milei

Joe Biden

Pope Francis

President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/joe-biden" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joe Biden</a> was mocked on the international stage in Savelletri, Italy, Thursday afternoon while meeting with world leaders at the G7 summit after he wandered away from the group as they were taking pictures.
Those who attended included Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, EU Council President Charles Michel, and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The leaders watched a parachuting presentation outdoors when Biden began to wander away from the group.
Meloni was sprung into action and corralled the 81-year-old by gentling touching his arm and redirecting him toward the group.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
WHAT IS BIDEN DOING? <a href="https://t.co/iY33K2srII">pic.twitter.com/iY33K2srII</a>
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1801298970641141976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 13, 2024</a></blockquote>
Many expressed dismay at the embarrassing video clip, which comes as Biden has faced serious questions about his fitness for office after his presidency has been riddled with numerous instances of falling on stairs, on stages, and off his bicycle — all of which have been caught on video. He routinely forgets people&#8217;s names, where he is, and numerous other things, and has to rely on notecards for nearly all events.
&#8220;Would you trust someone in this condition to fly a plane, perform surgery, run a company, or watch your kids?&#8221; asked Robert Greenway, a national security expert. &#8220;If not, why let him manage international affairs, perform the duties of commander in chief, lead the free world, deter aggressors, or safeguard our economy?&#8221;
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Radio host Dana Loesch said it was obvious that all of the other world leaders were able to see Biden&#8217;s decline.
&#8220;Meloni, as host, moves to the right as surreptitiously as she can to shepherd Biden back to the fold while the rest of the leaders move in behind him to prevent him from drifting off again,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;Democrats&#8217;s obsession with power and their refusal to acknowledge Biden&#8217;s clearly obvious difficulties serve to make us look weak on the world stage.&#8221;
&#8220;Those who keep denying Biden&#8217;s obviously diminished faculties just look ridiculous at this point, stop,&#8221; she added. &#8220;He&#8217;s merely a vessel for the people who are *really* making the decisions at this point (and they don&#8217;t want Kamala). No way this man in this state negotiated a thing.&#8221;

ITALY-G7-DIPLOMACY-SUMMIT

Biden Mocked For Wandering Away From World Leaders During Photoshoot

The following is an edited transcript of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/hunter-biden-jury-deliberates-europe-turns-right-6-11-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Morning Wire interview</a> between Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley and Nile Gardiner from The Heritage Foundation.
Conservative and populist parties in several European countries made major gains in European Parliamentary elections Sunday, shaking up several regimes and prompting calls for snap elections. Nile Gardiner, Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, joined Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley to discuss what is driving Europe to the Right.
JOHN: Welcome, Nile. First, what has unfolded since Sunday?
NILE: Well, I think the results released on Sunday night are nothing less than a political earthquake in Europe. We have seen an emphatic rejection of socialist ruling elites across much of Europe. We have seen a resounding set of victories for parties on the Right in many European countries. And we&#8217;ve seen the utter humiliation of big European figures, such as Emmanuel Macron, president of France, Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany, and huge gains for conservative political parties.
JOHN: Who are some of the big names and parties emerging in this sort of rise of the Right?
NILE: The biggest winner, actually, from these European elections has been Georgia Meloni in Italy, whose Brothers of Italy party did extremely well in the European elections, quadrupling their level of support. Meloni has emerged as a very, very powerful leader in Europe. In France, of course, with Marine Le Pen, her political party took over 30% percent of the vote — double the size of the vote for Emmanuel Macron&#8217;s party. She will likely face off against Macron in the French presidential race in 2027. And if that election were to be held today, she would probably emerge as the winner.
<div id="attachment_749093" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-749093" class="size-large wp-image-749093" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2155980132-864x576.jpg" alt="Giorgia Meloni, Italy's prime minister, votes in the European Election in Rome, Italy, on Saturday, June 8, 2024. After a series of recent setbacks, Europes far-right parties are aiming for gains in elections to the European Parliament that kicked off on Thursday. Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2155980132-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2155980132-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2155980132-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2155980132.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
JOHN: Now, we saw a snap election called by Macron. What prompted it and how risky is this for the French president and his party? 
NILE: In France, Macron&#8217;s political party received only around 15% of the vote in the European Parliamentary elections. A massive humiliation really for Macron&#8217;s ruling party. Macron therefore decided to call a snap Parliamentary election. It will be held in two rounds, late June, early July. And these elections actually could go very badly potentially for the French president. And he could end up as a lame duck president for the remainder of his term, which stretches until 2027, if his party doesn&#8217;t do well in these Parliamentary elections. So, a high-risk gambit, of course, by Macron. In the UK, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, called an early general election to be held on July the 4th. The conservatives are trailing the opposition Labour Party very heavily in the polls, also, of course, this is a high-risk move by Sunak. He&#8217;s come under a lot of criticism for calling this early election and the UK is one of the only parts in Europe where conservatives are actually in real trouble. That&#8217;s probably largely the result of having been in power for 14 years and failing to deliver on a lot of the promises made by successive conservative governments. So a rather different situation in the UK compared to most of the rest of Europe, where we are seeing conservative parties really gaining a great deal of ground. The UK is a bit of an outlier in this area compared to the rest of Europe.
<div id="attachment_749095" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-749095" class="size-large wp-image-749095" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2156161328-864x576.jpg" alt="France's President Emmanuel Macron (R) and French President's wife Brigitte Macron (L) grab ballots before their vote for the European Parliament election at a polling station in Le Touquet, northern France on June 9, 2024. Voting began across Europe on June 9, 2024 on the final -- and biggest -- day of marathon EU elections, with balloting due in 21 countries, including France and Germany, where support for surging far-right parties is being tested. (Photo by Hannah McKay / POOL / AFP) (Photo by HANNAH MCKAY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2156161328-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2156161328-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2156161328-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2156161328.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />HANNAH MCKAY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images</div>
JOHN: Would you argue that a lot of the dissatisfaction is coming from the Right in the UK?
NILE: Yes, I think that a large part of the dissatisfaction with Rishi Sunak is that he&#8217;s not being conservative enough as prime minister. And so we&#8217;ve seen the rise of Reform, a party headed by Nigel Farage. Reform is now polling at around 15 to even 20% of the vote. These are largely conservative voters who have switched to Reform, so the ruling conservatives actually face a major challenge from Reform on the Right. Of course, the biggest challenge is from the Labor Party on the Left, but the Right in the UK is split right down the middle, and that will be a big factor in most likely allowing the socialists to take power on July the 4th.
JOHN: And what about in Germany? What are some of the trends we&#8217;re seeing there and some of the figures that are starting to define those trends?
NILE: In Germany, it&#8217;s significant that the ruling socialists headed by Olaf Scholz have done very badly. They pulled in only around 14% of the vote. Also, the Green Party did very, very badly. They&#8217;re the main allies of the socialists. They pulled in around 12% of the vote. On the Right, the Christian Democrats did very well, winning nearly a third of the vote. But the AFD political party, which in Germany is designated as hard-Right, they actually pulled in close to around 20% of the European vote, which was a big result for them. Now, I would say that the AFD are quite different from many of the other sort of Right-wing parties in Europe, and they&#8217;re somewhat isolated from the main political groupings in the European Parliament. Significantly, Marine Le Pen actually removed the AFD from her political grouping, the Identity and Democracy group within the European Parliament. So there are big differences among parties on the Right within Europe. But undoubtedly, the reality in Germany is that it is moving Right-wards. The Left is actually losing very heavily in Germany and I would expect to see next year with the national elections in Germany a conservative Christian Democratic Union-led government to take power. It&#8217;s hard to see how the socialists are going to survive with the national elections in Germany next year. There&#8217;s too much power in Brussels. And so most of the political parties on the Right that were successful in this election campaigned against the idea of Euro-federalism and against giving the EU, and the European Commission in particular, more power. We saw the sort of “Brexit Effect” in a big way in this European Parliamentary election.
<div id="attachment_749239" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-749239" class="size-large wp-image-749239" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2156163899-864x576.jpg" alt="POTSDAM, GERMANY - JUNE 9: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz casts his ballot in European parliamentary elections on June 9, 2024 in Potsdam, Germany. Elections to the European Parliament have been taking place since June 6 across European Union member states and will conclude tonight. (Photo by Kay Nietfeld - Pool/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2156163899-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2156163899-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2156163899-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2156163899.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Kay Nietfeld &#8211; Pool/Getty Images</div>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/hunter-biden-jury-deliberates-europe-turns-right-6-11-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LISTEN: Catch the full conversation on Morning Wire</a>
JOHN: Speaking of Brexit, as you mentioned, Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit and a pro-Trump ally, has decided to run for Parliament under the Reform Party. How will his entrance into the political arena affect the race?
NILE: Yes, as you point out, Nigel Farage jumped into the race as the leader of the Reform Party just last week. I think it&#8217;s a significant game changer in the sense that Farage is joining the race, heading the Reform political party and encouraging many more conservative voters to switch to Reform. No doubt about it, the conservatives are going to lose a lot more seats as a result of Farage&#8217;s decision here. I think also, secondly, Nigel Farage has a good chance of winning a parliamentary seat. He&#8217;s running in the constituency of Clacton, which is a strongly Euro-skeptic, pro-Brexit area. And if Farage ends up in Parliament, I think he&#8217;ll be a very important, influential figure. What this doesn&#8217;t change, though, in terms of the big picture, is the fact that Reform, even with 15 to 20% of the vote, will likely end up only with a few seats in Parliament because of the “First-past-the-post” political system. And so the conservatives will remain the biggest party on the Right in the UK in terms of parliamentary seats, regardless of how well Reform actually performs in terms of percentage of the vote, because Reform simply doesn&#8217;t have enough firepower to win a large number of MPs under the parliamentary system. So, I expect that Reform, if they do get a few MPs in Parliament, will be closely aligned with the conservatives in terms of how they vote in the next Parliament.
<div id="attachment_749241" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-749241" class="size-large wp-image-749241" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2155417741-864x576.jpg" alt="CLACTON-ON-SEA, ENGLAND - JUNE 4: Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage walks to speak to supporters as he launches his election candidacy at Clacton Pier on June 4, 2024 in Clacton-on-Sea, England. The launch follows yesterday's announcement that Nigel Farage will stand as an MP in Clacton at the 4 July general election and takes over from Richard Tice as leader of Reform UK. The Conservative-held seat in Essex was the first to elect a UKIP MP in 2014, a party that Farage founded. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2155417741-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2155417741-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2155417741-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-2155417741.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Carl Court/Getty Images</div>
JOHN: While the Right-leaning parties aren’t uniform, there are a lot of unifying characteristics of most of these parties. What would you say are some of the shared ideas and policies driving them?
NILE: Yes, that&#8217;s a very good question. I would say that the number one issue in the European Parliamentary elections was really the issue of mass migration, cultural identity – a fear among many in Europe that Europe is taking in far too many migrants — and has taken in too many migrants over the course of the last two decades. This election was a fundamental rejection of mass migration to open borders. So, all of the parties on the Right who gained heavily campaigned on a platform of secure borders, limiting the flow of migrants into their countries, cracking down on migrant crime, and also fighting against Islamification in Europe. Also, high on the agenda are environmental issues as well as a rejection of net zero ideology. Nearly all of the political parties on the Right that won big in the European Parliamentary elections fought against what they believed as far-Left ideological dogma dictating hugely expensive green policies. A third factor was rising Euro-skepticism and a belief among many in Europe that the European Union has become too centralized. And so most of the political parties on the Right that were successful in this election campaigned against the idea of Euro-federalism and against giving the EU and the European Commission in particular more power.
JOHN: Final question. What aspect of these trends in Europe do you feel are important for an American audience to understand?
NILE: From a U. S. perspective, I think the European election results are going to make the Biden White House very nervous. Because some of the big issues that successful parties on the Right in Europe campaigned on are the same issues that American voters are going to be voting on in November. And the European electorate emphatically rejected the kind of woke, Left-wing, elitism that has dominated Europe in recent decades. And many American voters share European voters’ concerns over mass migration, open borders, rising crime, and higher cost of living. So, what happens in Europe, I think is important to what happens in the U.S. as well.
JOHN: Nile, thank you so much for joining us.
NILE: Thank you.

Questions To The French Government At The National Assembly, In Paris

‘A Political Earthquake In Europe’: Right-Leaning European Parties Gaining Ground

'A Political Earthquake In Europe': Right-Leaning European Parties Gaining Ground

Elections

Emmanuel Macron

Europe

European Union

France

Germany

Giorgia Meloni

Morning Wire

Readers Pass

Law enforcement officials in Italy arrested three Palestinians this week at the start of Ramadan for allegedly planning to conduct terror attacks on foreign soil.
Italian police did not disclose the names of the three Islamic terrorist suspects but said that they were connected to the Palestinian terror group Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades.
&#8220;The suspects engaged in proselytism and propaganda (&#8230;) and planned attacks, including suicide attacks, against civilian and military targets on foreign territory,&#8221; police <a href="https://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/199665eee7d0e77c1487527864">said</a>.
The arrests happened in the Italian city of L’Aquila where the suspects made contact with an existing terror cell.
“It is rare for terrorist organizations such as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades to orchestrate schemes to target civilians on foreign soil,” said Joe Truzman, Senior Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal. “However, this heinous plot serves as a stark reminder that this group and its affiliates in the West Bank and Gaza are not ‘resistance fighters,’ as they claim to be, but cold-blooded terrorists with the sole purpose of inflicting death and destruction.”
David May, FDD Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst, added: “The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades are linked to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s supposedly moderate Fatah party. Italy’s arrest of the three terrorists planning attacks underscores the folly of treating Abbas and the PA as peace partners.”
Numerous Islamic terror suspects have been arrested throughout Europe for plotting attacks in the months following Hamas’ October 7 massacre in Israel.
During the massacre, 1,200 people were murdered, 5,300+ were injured, and hundreds more were taken hostage.
Israel launched a military offensive inside Gaza following the attacks and has so far eliminated at least 13,000 terrorists, Israel said this week.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/netanyahu-blasts-biden-for-criticizing-israels-military-strategy-hes-wrong-on-both-counts">Netanyahu Blasts Biden For Criticizing Israel’s Military Strategy: ‘He’s Wrong On Both Counts’</a>

Police special units prepare to spring into action during

Multiple Palestinians Arrested In Italy At Start Of Ramadan For Plotting Islamic Terror Attacks

Radical Islam

Radical Islamic Terror

Italian lawmakers are introducing legislation which would discipline teachers who ban Christian Nativity scenes from classrooms in the name of cultural sensitivity. 
The bill was introduced by senators from the Brothers of Italy party, of which Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a member. The lawmakers said that it was necessary to preserve Italy’s cultural roots and to protect Christians from being discriminated against. 
“For some years there have been embarrassing and unacceptable decisions by some schools to ban nativity scenes, or to turn Christmas into an improbable winter festival to avoid giving offence to practitioners of other religions,” said Senator Lavinia Mennuni, who introduced the legislation.
Mennuni added that she didn’t want recognition of the Nativity to just become part of a generic holiday celebration, but to allow its celebration to remain distinct.
“Allowing the transformation of sacred Christian festivities into another anonymous type of celebration would constitute discrimination against the students and their respective families practicing the majority religion,” she said. 
The Brothers of Italy <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/21/italys-ruling-party-drafts-law-to-safeguard-school-nativity-scenes">said</a> that the legislation “is absolutely essential to safeguard and protect [Italy’s] cultural roots, which are exemplified by the nativity scene.&#8221; Nativity scenes celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and frequently depict him lying in a manger surrounded by Mary and Joseph. 
The bill would discipline teachers who ban Nativity displays, saying that those measures are “an attack on the deepest values and traditions of our people.” 
The legislation <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/21/italys-ruling-party-drafts-law-to-safeguard-school-nativity-scenes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">criticizes</a> the decision of some schools to make Christmas celebrations more generic, saying that, “a festival devoid of any historical and cultural commemorative context pertaining to our nation and which, lacking any ethical content, is destined to assume a purely hedonistic-consumeristic connotation.&#8221;
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Meloni, elected prime minister in 2022, frequently speaks openly about her Christian faith. “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian. No one will take that away from me,” she said in 2019.
The legislation was criticized by Left-wing Italian parties and Italian teachers’ associations. 
“Anything related to the culture of a country and its religion cannot be imposed by law,” <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/39883d0f-29c7-41be-b48f-a041619d0a0c?shareToken=3313143ea005faae31d87967d56ce608" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Antonello Giannelli, of the Italian association of head teachers.
“This is the same right wing, led by Giorgia Meloni, for whom today, the holy family fleeing from persecution would probably end up in a detention center,” said Riccardo Magi, head of the Left-wing Piu Europa party.

the holy family

Proposed Italian Legislation Would Discipline Teachers Who Ban Nativity Scenes In Schools

Christianity

Christmas

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The African migrant who raped and murdered the British girl for which authorities falsely blamed Amanda Knox in 2007 was released from prison in 2021, remained in the country, and was rearrested this month for allegedly beating another woman.
Rudy Guede, a migrant from the Ivory Coast, was given a 30-year sentence for murder in 2008, but Italian authorities quickly reduced the sentence to 16 years, then let him out even earlier than that in November 2021.
Now, he&#8217;s been rearrested over allegations of beating up another woman, according to the <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/12/06/news/meredith-kercher-killer-rudy-guede-re-arrested-on-assault-allegations/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Post</a>, citing Italian media.
The Italian prime minister’s office did not return a request for comment asking Guede&#8217;s immigration status and whether he could have been deported after his assorted run-ins with the law.
But the “trial of the century” that gripped the media for years beginning in 2007 looks very different since it has become clear that European governments have let in hordes of migrants and then covered up their crime sprees — and punished Westerners who called attention to the problem.
In retrospect, the Knox case reads like Italian authorities concealing a brutal rape by a migrant by inventing an absurd tale about a seductress from Seattle — even if they had to imprison an innocent American for four years to do it. It worked: Everyone remembers the case, but most don’t even remember that an African migrant was the true culprit.
The reality is that Guede broke into a house, sadistically raped British college student Meredith Kercher, defecated in her bathroom, and darted out into the night to go dancing at a nightclub.
Police had his fingerprints and were well familiar with him; he had broken into a law office not long before using methods identical to the home break-in. Days before the murder, a kindergarten teacher found him breaking into the school and in possession of a knife like that used to stab Kercher, but the police inexplicably dropped the case. If they hadn’t, the murder likely wouldn’t have occurred.
But they did, and it did. And that soft approach was different from the tact reserved for Westerners. They arrested Knox, beat her, and wrote up a false confession in a language she did not understand, she wrote in her memoir, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Be-Heard-Amanda-Knox-ebook/dp/B00AHCPXKS/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Waiting To Be Heard</a>.
The crime scene was covered in Guede’s fingerprints and DNA, from the semen staining the room to the feces smeared in the bathroom and the unflushed toilet. Eventually, Italian police could not avoid arresting him — tracking him down in Germany, where he fled. He admitted to German police that he was at the scene but claimed he didn&#8217;t kill Kercher, and that he had fled because he was black and thought police would frame him.
To any logical person, that would have solved the case. But that’s not what happened, and it wasn’t the black person who was being framed.
Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini worked with the migrant to turn the story into one in which Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, inexplicably worked with the migrant to rape their friend. The prosecutor called Guede &#8220;this poor Rudy&#8221; and said Knox and Raffael had accused him of &#8220;being the only one&#8221; to attack Kercher.
Fueled by leaks from prosecutors, the media saturated the world with a case that they covered as a sexualized &#8220;Foxy Knoxy,&#8221; an American sociopath, who ruthlessly stabbed to death and raped her roommate. She had two accomplices, they acknowledged, but those less colorful figures were secondary and essentially anonymous in the narrative.
Knox and Sollecito did not even know Guede, but prosecutors used another migrant, Hekuran Kokomani, to provide false testimony that they did. His testimony was absurd, including claiming he knew Knox through her uncle (who was never in Italy), that she brandished a knife at him which he fought off by throwing olives at her, and that he recognized her because of the gap in her front teeth (which, when he saw her teeth in court he remarked, &#8220;oh, she doesn&#8217;t have it anymore.&#8221;)
A homeless heroin addict named Antonio Curatolo came forward at the last minute to become what the media called the &#8220;super witness.&#8221; He offered testimony that was just what the prosecution needed — and it turned out the same prosecutor had used the same criminal vagrant for the same role in two prior unrelated trials.
Prosecutors selected a knife from a drawer in Sollecito&#8217;s home and declared it the murder weapon through “intuition,” without ever checking Guede&#8217;s apartment. The knife was the wrong size to have stabbed Kercher, but they claimed it did anyway, and that it contained her DNA. The DNA test was flawed but they withheld that evidence from Knox. (After her conviction, it was revealed that the test was wrong. Knox wrote, &#8220;Now I know that these mistakes weren&#8217;t missteps. [They were] giant, intentionally misleading leaps, to come up with results designed to confirm our guilt.”)
Knox’s DNA was not found anywhere at the crime scene itself, but prosecutors turned that lack of evidence into the accusation that she tampered with it — an absurd claim since Guede’s DNA was everywhere, and it would have been impossible for Knox to clean up her own DNA but selectively leave his.
Based entirely on his imagination, prosecutor Giliano Mignini told the jury that Knox had personally stabbed Kercher to death, and that she was not just a participant in, but the ringleader of, the rape. &#8220;For Amanda, the moment had come to take revenge on that simpering girl&#8230; it was an unstoppable game of violence and sex,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Let&#8217;s try to imagine&#8211;she insulted her. Perhaps she said, you were a little saint. Now we&#8217;ll show you. Now you have no choice but to have sex.&#8221;
Due to the overwhelming evidence, Guede was quickly convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years, but his sentence was reduced to 16 years. Prosecutors sought life in prison for the Westerners, and Knox was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 25 years. She was acquitted on appeal in 2011, but prosecutors would not relent — not only retrying her for murder, but also charging her with slander for exposing the police’s scheme. In 2014, she was found guilty and given 28.5 years, significantly more than Guede. The Supreme Court finally found that she did not kill Kercher. The appeal of the slander charge is still ongoing.
Guede has never formally taken responsibility for the rape, though he allegedly told three fellow inmates that he and a friend showed up at Kercher’s apartment uninvited and gang-raped her before going to a nightclub and dancing.
Scientific experts testified at trial for the defense that the police’s purported DNA evidence on the knife was egregiously flawed, but prosecutors convinced a jury that while the defense’s witnesses had a motive to lie, the government had no such motive.
In the 15 years since, one motive has become clear.
The affair seems like an early exercise by the government and media to conceal the effect of mass immigration from third-world countries. As Europeans have noticed those effects, their countries have tried to hide it, even if it means imprisoning Westerners who speak out.
In 2016, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3397826/American-murdered-Florence-took-kinky-sex-game-strangled-autopsy-finds-police-arrest-drug-dealer-seen-outside-apartment.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an illegal African migrant</a> in Italy, Cheik Tidiane Diaw, strangled to death an American woman named Ashley Olsen. Authorities initially falsely tried to blame a consensual &#8220;kinky sex game.&#8221;
In 2022, the situation in Italy got so bad that the nation elected conservative Giorgia Meloni as prime minister, with Meloni supporting a naval blockade to stop African migrants from flooding Italy&#8217;s shores.
In Ireland, a migrant stabbed children last month, and when the citizenry <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/riots-break-out-in-ireland-after-children-stabbed-outside-school" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rebelled</a>, Ireland authorities blamed the &#8220;far right&#8221; for the safety crisis. Legislators there have proposed a law that would make it illegal to possess any material that could &#8220;incite hatred,&#8221; such as memes questioning the effects of mass migration.
But Knox may stand as one of history’s earliest, and most tragic, victims of the migrant rape coverup — not dissimilar to the prosecution of the father of Loudoun County’s rape victim simply because his family&#8217;s personal tragedy <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posed a narrative inconvenience</a> to the leftist agenda.
Contrary to the contemporaneous portrayal by the media and prosecutors, what happened in Italy in 2008 was never a co-ed sex scandal, and it was never a close case. It was obvious, from its earliest days, that it was a depraved rape and murder by a criminal African migrant.
The idea that it was more plausible that a 20-year-old from Seattle orchestrated the scheme was always absurd — a defamation by Italian authorities that served a purpose.
&#8220;It was just the start of the many invented stories and giant leaps the prosecution would make to &#8216;prove&#8217; I was involved in the murder,&#8221; Knox wrote in her <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Be-Heard-Amanda-Knox-ebook/dp/B00AHCPXKS/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">memoir</a>.

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