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John Banks

@johnlbanks.bsky.social
40 followers 32 following 146 posts

Essayist and activist on foreign policy, authoritarianism, tech, and security issues. Elder Gen Z, Big L Liberal. Writing a lot more about Canada-US relations. Words in Liberal Currents.

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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 11h
This feels like it's beyond satirization, Legofying recent mass scale terrorist attacks to sell your war propaganda to kids is so tasteless on so many levels. x.com/IsraeliPM/st...
x.com
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Bold of you to rule out the Americans, considering they just did the same in Alberta
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I think it is bad that Moshe Feiglin is finding his return more than welcome in Israel, and worse that he is continuing to associate with terrorists throughout this comeback with no consequences. www.timesofisrael.com/shin-bet-rep...
timesofisrael.com
Shin Bet reportedly declined to probe alleged terrorist professor, who sought to enlist right-wing figures
Indicted mathematician, who allegedly plotted to assemble terror militia and kill hundreds of Arabs, met with podcaster who apologizes for not informing police; densely written letter said to outline ...
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
by the way, Rosenheck made an X post rejecting that statement and says she does not believe those concerns are plausible. It's very, very obvious that she's fishing for free promotion and Greenblatt's just handing that out for her and other mediocre "talent" instead of doing his actual job.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Where is the ADL right now? Celebrating itself for the brave step of publishing John Spencer's wife's pointless and terribly boring propaganda book, because a bookstore cancelled a launch event following online backlash and a concern over being able to hold everyone, including protestors.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
It's striking how it's just treated as normal how the world's richest man will promote the most extreme figures imaginable with absolutely no institutional pushback from those we charge to do so. That man ran literal advertisements for neonazi paramilitaries.
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Reposted by John Banks
Adam Gurri @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com · 04/10/2026
Great follow up to @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com’s essay last week www.liberalcurrents.com/the-return-o...
liberalcurrents.com
The Return of the Cutting-Off Way
Structural changes are driving us towards a more chaotic world, defined by "neither peace nor war, but conflict."
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
This is a man who was grifting for progressive Resistance cash since 2016, and pivoted to recruiting Canadian conservatives to become American. Now he's hoping to net some evangelical cash by shilling Americs as a haven from antisemitism. www.foxnews.com/politics/tru...
foxnews.com
Trump indicates support for Christian-backed plan to help Canadian Jews escape antisemitism
Donald Trump amplified a plan to create expedited immigration pathways for Jewish Canadians facing antisemitic persecution, as Christian lawmakers press his administration to act.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Joe Roberts is a PR professional who immigrated to Canada because he supposedly wasn't safe in America in 2016. Now he's supposedly unsafe in Canada and safe under America's authoritarian regime that always has a Nazi scandal in the news.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Tafsik is another. It has a lot of ties with Republican activists and actively promoted the Tulsa project last year. It's openly recognised by Republicans as a pet project, and it's also very clearly modelled after a similar racist campaign against South Africa pushed by the pro-apartheid right.
thespec.com
Calls emerge for U.S. refugee status as group helps Jewish families flee Canada
OTTAWA - A former Ontario man and a Conservative U.S. think tank are encouraging the Trump administration to offer refugee status to Jewish Canadians who feel threatened by rising antisemitism
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Allies For A Strong Canada was one such organisation, started by retired general Rick Hillier. Its staffers include some glaring overlap with Jamil Jivani's office. Hillier is a business associate and creditor of MAGA firebrand Cory Mills, and on the hook for millions.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
We need an earnest discussion about how narratives about antisemitism being out of control in Canada is propaganda from the transnational far-right, and certain new groups supposedly focused on tackling antisemitism have troubling ties with the Trump administration or Republican Party
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Bizarre that the Globe can run a story on US interference in Canada and then, on the same day, run a story that Tulsa fluff piece promoting American efforts to undermine us and Canadian identity. All of the people involved are Americans, something the piece barely mentions once, at the end.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I think more than that, it proves once again that you can openly be a Nazi and get a pass from the public so long as you're a registered Republican.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
"MAGA is signalling that Alberta, or Ellesmere Island and the Arctic Archipelago, are to be our Donbass and Crimea, and views the best way of capturing Alberta to be empowering the white nationalist separatist movement, in part because of its shared “white” civilizational identity." l1nq.com/groebes
liberalcurrents.com
With Friends Like These
To defend itself from Trump's thuggery, Canada must seek new friends.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Rufo's entire career has been defined by his willingness to coordinate and promote neo-Nazis and the radical right. Almost every single article covering the man whitewashes this.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This is how you attack Republicans.
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Reposted by John Banks
mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
its worth asking why posts like this — a purported leftist warning others not to trust elected left-wing politicians — consistently do so well on the site where racist Trump ally Elon Musk controls the algorithm that chooses what posts people see
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
There are still videos out there of his past employer's shows putting up Canada's version of Vic Mackey on air, completely unchallenged. He's a gross person and you're gross if you boost him.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Blundell is a discredited shock jock who spent the past several years sucking up to extremists like Mackenzie. He's an evil dickhead and that Americans keep promoting him as a Canadian voice makes me, someone actually involved in the Liberal Party, more hostile to Americans. x.com/ItsDeanBlund...
x.com
Dean Blundell🇨🇦 (@ItsDeanBlundell) on X
The masked pussies from @JeremyMacKenzie's incel playdate group, Second Sons, standing on overpasses with homemade banners, hoping people will feel sorry for the biggest pile of victims and homo eroti...
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Would have expected this more from J Edgar
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Hi @perreaux.bsky.social you should look into publications surrounding the names HB Bradford, and Brad Betters. Both of these follow a similar MO as a previous Emirati influence campaign identified by Adam Rawnsley, down to using what loojs to be a GAN generated image
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We need to start calling it out for what it is: state aligned actors who want to undo Canada's social fabric as a means of pressuring the Carney government for diplomatic concessions. It's the same as the pro-Trump influencers right now, many of whom overlap in their advocacy.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We've seen countless times and again that the lobby of a *certain country* keeps trying to whip up hatred against domestic minorities. We have evidence, from Israeli journalists and disinformation scholars, of propaganda campaigns that more resemble Russian active measures than public diplomacy.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
He's saying there's a "leadership vacuum" but disappeared from the ICC debates AND keeps lying about his relationship with O'Rourke (probably why he's not saying her name). Won't be honest about his slate, and keeps lying about what other campaigns support.
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Okay, so I have a plan to get everyone on our side. First, we be absolutely as viscerally unpleasant as possible. Next, we downplay any time we get what we want, say it's the bare minimum and so forth. Finally, if anyone gives up and says we win or apologizes, we belittle them.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
It's not a great response at all, Walsh's whole thing is imitating Trump's behaviour, but for Israel.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
That's because totalitarianism requires control over all elements of culture, and technology very much is an element of culture! Also: Pol Pot's voluntarism. China's cosmotechnics, a particularist viewpoint for technological ethics that justifies whatever evil bullshit the PRC develops/refines.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
copycat? it's even more broken, disfunctional, and spammy
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
What really gets my goat about this is that these guys already knew how to hide corrupt transactions using real estate. Why don't we know more about who is buying properties from Trump's businesses? One of his purchasers Rybolovlev just got nailed in the Cyprus Anti-Corruption Authority's report!
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The problem isn't whether Vance "has the juice," the problem is that it's still going to be legal to be a Republican in 2029.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Reading this thread as a Canadian is just about the most depressing shit imaginable. If you carry on as you say you should, our relationship with America will be permanently over. Nothing short of wholesale, complete purges of the Republicans from all institutions of public life matters to us.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Talking to Democrats genuinely feels like they just do not care what their allies think and that if they just do what they want, everything will get better. Biden's actions were unacceptable to me the first time around. Repeating them is a great way to get me to support America's destruction.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Absolutely none of these arguments matter, simply pointing out Trump is unpopular is the exact same feckless nonsense Israeli libs say to excuse their failures to act on Netanyahu's crime spree. We don't care about your country's buyers' remorse, you will only be forgiven if you eradicate the GOP.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is a meaningless stat even if it *were* true lmao. You people elected this government, your buyers' remorse after attacking us doesn't change that YOU ARE ATTACKING US.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
don't forget to punish everyone involved too
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Crippling American capabilities and performance relative to its competitors is the single greatest deterrent in an era of great power competition, and we should always carry the threat of letting Beijing surpass Washington if it does not respect our soveriegnty.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Hitting America in the bond market would devastate the country (and the world). AI agentic swarms can devastate infrastructure and American data systems. Targeted hits on strategically important oligarchs and institutions, kinetic and otherwise, can cripple institutional development and continuity.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Deterrence is more than simply nukes. Deterrence means developing the circumstances to inflict high costs on the enemy as punishment for miitary action. Real deterrence should not be things that unite Americans, but what divides them. Economic crises, hate, disasters, and protracted conflict.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I'm against this idea that we should be exploring traditional nuclear arms, as the deterrence provided by them is increasingly finding itself challenged by Russian aggression against NATO. We should be looking towards other forms of deterrence and force our adversaries to waste resources adapting.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Sorry for the typos, my hand is still broken.
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Yes. It's both cruel and stupid. Cruel because it dehumanizes us. Stupid because it implies enough of us agree on anything for there to be a "transgender ideology" beyond the acknowledgement of our existence.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
That "if" is carrying a massive burden there. America has proven it's not reliable in the short teem though, and the idea "kick the can down the road" is remotely politically tolerable, you have seriously misjudged Canada's domestic political consiferations.
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This is bad and should be called out. I push back against accusing everyone that breathes for wanting to throw us under the bus, so it is credible when we call it out when it unambiguously occurs. This is an unambiguous occurrence.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The institutions under assault have important roles in shaping how the public understands crimes against humanity and other grave violations of international war. That is wholly because America intends to commit such crimes in the future. So yes, you are the Bad Guys.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Democrats don't have an answer to this. They do not have a coherent foreign policy and cannot formulate one without first excising the Republican Party from the political system entirely. Republicans know this, which is why their divergence on foreign policy accompanies authoritarian consolidation.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Mostly because it tells me a lot of those Americans are not going to understand why that architecture us declining beyond "Trump did it." Your foreign policy is hijacked entirely by deranged white nationalists inspired by the genocidal screeds of colonialism and fascism.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
You can get offended and chest thumpy all you want, but the weight of American crimes this century absolutely outweighs those of a cavedwelling Islamist cult that ceased being relevant 12 years ago. It's sad seeing people upset about the decline of our security architecture not getting this.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I don't care how icky the introspection makes you feel, America's currently got an attempted autocracy filled to the brim with neo-Nazi staffers that are responsible for over 750,000 deaths so far, 15 million by 2030. Libbed out Americans need to start accepting they are now the Evil Empire.
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John Banks @johnlbanks.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
He's not going to stop, there's an underlying dogma that the right is convinced if they follow it, will bring them a competitive export sector.
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