Michael Shellenberger

In the name of compassion and bodily autonomy, Democrats let drug dealers kill mentally ill homeless people. Behind the rhetoric, the goal of progressives has always been the destruction of civilization, which they blame for inequality and suffering.

@durov Classic

🥖 The French government is accusing X of the very things the French government itself is doing: - Illegally collecting personal data - Processing personal data without proper security - Extracting data from automated systems - Violating the secrecy of electronic communications

@ProfEricAdler And yet it’s also predictable

It’s amazing to me that universities are in a race to ditch the liberal arts, precisely when AI is challenging the value of vocational training for white-collar jobs.

SF spends $102k a year per homeless person. It spends $20k a year per resident. SF spends more per homeless person than the 10 largest US cities combined spend per resident.

The line that appears in the new note alleged to be written by Jeffrey Epstein in jail -- whatchou want me to do, bust out cryin'? -- looks to be a reference to an inside joke between his brother Mark and him

Droht das Ende der freien Debatte? Norbert Häring beschreibt im Interview ein Netzwerk aus EU, Militär und Faktencheckern, das die öffentliche Meinung beeinflussen soll. berliner-zeitung.de/article/der-wa…

@berlinerzeitung @SOS_projevu Terrifying

At the heart of the case for progressivism is compassion. New York’s democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, paused the police sweeps that had moved homeless people indoors in winter. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass cut the fire department’s budget while expanding city services and proposing cash assistance for people in the country illegally. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation that would have allowed taxpayer dollars to support sober housing. The result of those policies is death and destruction. In San Francisco, a mentally ill homeless woman lived on a sidewalk until her feet rotted from gangrene, after which the hospital amputated them and discharged her back to the same block. After Mayor Mamdani paused the sweeps, at least 19 mentally ill or drug addicted homeless people died outdoors in a single cold snap. In Los Angeles, the underfunded fire department failed to stop the fires in Malibu and other neighborhoods last year, and encampment fires continue to shut down freeways. I told Michael Malice in a recent conversation that many progressives genuinely care about the people on the street. The point is not that their feelings are insincere. The point is that their feelings produce policies that kill the people the feelings are about. Republicans are locked out of New York and have not won a statewide race in California since 2006. The 2026 California gubernatorial primary, however, is the first race in two decades where two Republicans could plausibly advance to the November runoff. And the Democratic field is so divided that the California Democratic Party has openly urged its weaker candidates to drop out, fearing exactly that scenario. PPIC reports that affordability and homelessness are the issues voters cite most often. Newsom’s approval rating on homelessness is the lowest of his tenure. Why does a movement that calls itself compassionate let the feet of a mentally ill homeless woman rot? Could the voters of California finally reject progressivism?... x.com/shellenberger/… Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative journalism, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video! x.com/shellenberger/…

In the name of compassion and bodily autonomy, Democrats let drug dealers kill mentally ill homeless people. Behind the rhetoric, the goal of progressives has always been the destruction of civilization, which they blame for inequality and suffering.

There really are conspiracies. Democrats weaponized the CIA and FBI to spy on and entrap Trump advisors to delegitimize the 2016 election by falsely accusing the president of being a secret agent for Russia. “Former” military and Intelligence Community (IC) officials created a censorship-by-NGO scheme, designed specifically to circumvent the First Amendment, that censored, and still censors, millions of people in the US and Europe for disfavored, legal speech. And senior FBI officials, retired IC leaders, and IC intermediaries ran a sophisticated information operation to persuade journalists, social media executives, and millions of voters that Russians had obtained and manipulated the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. But not everything is a conspiracy. There is no evidence that NASA faked the moon landing, and abundant evidence that it happened. There is no evidence that the condensation trails (contrails) left by jets in the sky contain chemicals intentionally sprayed by the government to control the population or weather, and abundant evidence to the contrary. And there is no evidence that low levels of radiation from nuclear power plants, electromagnetic fields, or cell phone towers cause measurable harm. It’s true that suspicious things have happened and are happening. The FBI didn’t let Joe Kent, the director of the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), investigate Charlie Kirk’s death, and Israel has influenced US foreign policy. Jeffrey Epstein hid cameras in Kleenex boxes, sent himself an email suggesting a scheme to blackmail Bill Gates, and worked for the arms dealer at the heart of the Iran-Contra scandal. President Trump confirmed that the US government knows more about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) than it has revealed, and high-level current and former IC officials say they exhibit characteristics that US technologies lack and may indicate non-human intelligence (NHI). The CIA experimented with mind control, its director visited Jack Ruby in prison shortly before he became psychotic, and high-level scientists and officials are dying and disappearing. But those facts do not prove many of the theories currently circulating. The FBI was right to deny Kent and the CTC new powers to go on a fishing expedition, since doing so would be precisely the abuse of IC power the US Constitution protects us against. Trump has wanted to attack Iran for decades and is solely responsible for the US military action. The email Epstein sent himself was in the voice of a Gates advisor trying to get more compensation, and there is no good evidence of a domestic or foreign intelligence agency working with him to run a sex blackmail operation. There is still no hard proof of NHI or recovered craft. And there is no good evidence of any connection between, or pattern of, high-level scientists dying. And many of those theories undermine the search for truth. Kent’s claim that Israel may have been involved in Kirk’s murder could support the defense of Kirk’s shooter, Tyler Robinson, against whom the evidence is overwhelming. Falsely claiming that Israel controls Trump undermines public trust in democracy, just as did the false conspiracy theory that Russia controlled him. Smearing and scapegoating everyone who associated with Epstein as complicit in his crimes has undermined our justice system and legitimized mob rule. False claims about UAP have been used for decades to maintain government secrecy. And irresponsible claims about the government murdering its scientists worsen delusions about mind control, directed energy weapons, and gangstalking. And so the question now is: how do we distinguish between real conspiracies and unproven theories? What can we learn from proven conspiracies and disproven ones? And how should we think about conspiracies and conspiracy theories moving forward? The Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley recently invited me to give a talk on the subject, and I addressed Russiagate, censorship, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Epstein, the JFK assassination, MK-Ultra, and UAPs. An edited version of that talk follows. x.com/shellenberger/… Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning journalism, read the full article, and watch the full video! x.com/shellenberger/…

A lot of conspiracy theories turned out to be true. But not everything is a conspiracy. It's wrong to ignore real conspiracies. It's also wrong to make false accusations. In a new talk, I explain what we know, suspect, and just don't yet know, about all the big ones.

@DL_Sayles @RyanHoliday 😂

@shellenberger @RyanHoliday If only there were a philosophy out there that could help Holiday better control his responses to external circumstances and persons outside of his control and help him maintain an inner concord. If only…

Lol what kind of crime do you have to commit in a past life to be condemned to white knight for a member of the most corrupt family in the history of American politics? You're a fucking goober.

@KathleenAMille2 @RyanHoliday 🙏🏻❤️

@shellenberger @RyanHoliday If I was going to subscribe to any Substack it would be yours and Dr. Robert George. Smart and civil and humble. Your response is one of a gentleman who thinks befor he responds.

Cole Allen, the man who sought to murder high-ranking Trump administration officials, as well as the president, at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner late last month, is an enigma, according to many in the media. A former student of Allen called him a “kind of a normal guy.” Allen was of above-average intelligence, graduated from Caltech with an engineering degree, obtained a master’s in computer science, and received teaching credentials. In December 2024, Allen’s employer named him “Teacher of the Month.” Understandably, then, investigators told reporters they had not yet pieced together a motive. But it’s clear Allen had a savior complex. He felt a moral duty to sacrifice his life to save people he considered victims. “I’m not the person raped in a detention camp,” he wrote. “I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up, or a child starved, or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration…. I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” Allen not only sought to play the rescuer, he also sought recognition for his sacrifice. “Oh, and if anyone is curious is [sic] how doing something like feels,” he wrote in his manifesto, “it’s awful. I want to throw up; I want to cry for all the things I wanted to do and never will, for all the people whose trust this betrays; I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.” There is still much we do not know, including about Allen’s mental health. Jim Clemente, a former FBI profiler who worked the Unabomber and DC sniper cases, said that Allen “doesn’t sound like a psychopath.” But new facts are likely to radically alter the conclusion that he had a savior complex. Clemente noted that Allen wanted to “be some kind of hero, and that would make him feel better about himself, and it would be worth it to lose his life doing this.” And individuals with a savior complex may also suffer from intersecting issues like grandiose delusions, cluster B personality disorders, or depression. At the heart of progressive politics is rescuing victims. Consider Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who law enforcement shot after they interfered with police operations in Minneapolis. Good used her car to disrupt an ICE operation. Pretti was killed by federal agents after he placed himself between an agent and a woman the agent had pushed to the ground. Both appear to have been gripped by the savior complex. All of this matters because Allen’s case comes at a time of rising left-wing violence in the name of protecting vulnerable people. Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah man, killed Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in September 2025, saying, “There is too much evil and the guy spreads too much hate.” Nicholas Roske, the California man sentenced to ninety-seven months for arriving outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home with a Glock and a tactical knife in June 2022, told the FBI he wanted to kill three conservative justices to swing the Court for “decades to come.” The savior complex appears on the right as well. People who bomb abortion clinics cast themselves as rescuers of unborn children. Anders Breivik killed seventy-seven people in Norway in 2011 in the name of rescuing civilization. But more on the Left than the Right have a savior complex, in my experience. The language, behaviors, and thinking of Allen, Pretti, and Good are familiar to me personally, as I had a savior complex starting in my teens, which contributed to my radical left-wing activism. But what is the savior complex, exactly, and why is it so prevalent on the Left?... x.com/shellenberger/… Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning journalism, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video! x.com/shellenberger/…

The motivation of Trump's would-be assassin is a mystery, say the media. But it's not. He had "savior's complex," which is far more common on the Left than the Right. I should know, since my own savior's complex led me to become a radical left-wing activist in my youth.