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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

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The leftist protest at Berkeley this week: Feel the hate!

12:45 pm

All this guy wanted to do was selling
All this guy wanted to do was sell
“Freedom” t-shirts. Click for video.

While a lot of reports have done good work documenting the Antifa and leftist protests that attempted to shut down a Turning Point USA event on the campus of UCLA at Berkeley earlier this week (here, here, and here), I want to highlight one fundamental and truly ugly aspect of these protests that I think we no longer see because it has become so common.

While it is clear these leftist protesters have nothing positive to propose, it is their hate and anger that stands out above all. All they can do is vent hate, pure and simple.

The screen capture to the right is a typical result of this hate. It comes from video whereby this guy had set up a table outside the event, attempting to sell a variation of the “Freedom” t-shirt that Charlie Kirk was wearing when he was assassinated. A crowd of leftist mask-wearing protesters soon surrounded him, shouting obscenities and threatening him. Finally, one protester named Jihad Dphrepaulezz grabbed the t-shirts as well as a chain necklace from the man and ran. The man chased him and they got into a fight, resulting in this man’s bloodied face.

Dphrepaulezz has now been charged with assault and robbery. The t-shirt seller, who remains unidentified, was initially arrested but then released when the police determined he was the victim.

This violence however is typical now of the left at these protests, so typical we are no longer even shocked by it. It stems from blind angry emotions, driven further by an utter ignorance that embarrasses them if challenged in any way. If you were to ask them to give any examples proving that Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA supported bigotry or “fascism”, their response would be incoherent or confused, because they clearly have never listened to even one nanosecond of any Turning Point USA event, with or without Charlie Kirk. I have, and I can say unequivocally that Kirk or his organization were and are the exact opposite of these false slanders. Kirk and his organization have always stood for individual rights, freedom, and open debate. They also stand for an end to bigotry, for not ranking people by their skin color or religion but solely based on their character and actions.

And above all, Kirk and his organization have always stood for bringing the two sides of the political debate together to talk as civilized rational human beings about the issues everyone so passionately cares about.

The left however can no longer debate anyone rationally. Instead, we have these protests, designed to silence debate. And to do so they scream obscenities and insults, chanting “Fascists out of Berkeley!” repeatedly as if that means anything. And if that doesn’t work, they next turn to violence, as happened above to this t-shirt vendor.

This tactic — of screaming and disrupting events to silence them — isn’t news, as this kind of violent protest behavior has been standard leftist tactic to silence speech now for more a decade. At Berkeley in 2017 it prevented then-Breibart editor Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking there. Since then it has been used in numerous campuses nationwide to shut down conservative events.

What is different now is the level of emotional hate exuded by these protesters. They are literally so filled with this venom that they now almost routinely lose control of themselves, resulting in violence and vandalism of the sort seen above, that even a decade ago was rare.

Below are two more clips. All I see is hate. Hate for the right. Hate for debate. Hate pure and simple.

What terrifies me the most about this is how Americans are generally no longer horror-struck by this spewing of hate. Have we become so desensitized to such emotions that we now see this as normal behavior?

If so, the future is dim indeed, because it means the response to this hate is almost certainly going to be as hateful, and violent. And that won’t be good for anyone.

There is one bright light in all this darkness. Below is a video taken inside the Berkeley Turning Point USA event. Notice how the room is filled. These attendees not only refused to be intimidated by that hate, they entered the room with cheerful enthusiasm.

Let us all imitate that enthusiasm, with joy and hope.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

One comment

One comment

  • Saville
    November 12, 2025 at 2:29 pm

    Sooner or later (probably sooner) one of those antifa cowards are going to attack the wrong person or groups of people.

    And then it’ll be “Saturday Night in Sioux City” (The Angel and the Bad man)

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