Frank Cousins

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@koshercockney Maybe there should be a Palestine Iron Cross, given the actual Palestinian Arabs were in support of the actual Nazis during WW2.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@Daniel_Sugarman Is there anything in the universe that shouts “I’m a self-righteous ars*ho1e” more loudly than penning an OPEN LETTER? I really don’t think so.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@CinemaTweets1 12 Monkeys is his best film, and my all-time favourite.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@koshercockney My favourite Metallica songs are Enter Sandek Man and Master Of Bupkis.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@CanaryStaff “increasingly fantastic tales to obscure the truth” is kinda The Canary’s M.O. so……

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@HeidiBachram @nicolelampert I think I’ve just become extra Zionist by watching this dumbass.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@ImtiazMadmood It’s like team Zack watched a doc on the Corbyn years; padding the party vote, cosying up to terrorists, stuffing the advisory roles with trots, tankies and Islamists. But hit the rewind button before the bit where Corbyn’s antisemitism got hit wrecked at the elections.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@HeidiBachram Communist revolutionaries have always been middle class.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@JoosyJew Yeah if you’d told me 5 years ago Shami and Caroline Lucas would be the voices of reason I’d have thought you were insane.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@SociologenHD Schools have to pick up the pieces of immigration, and universities have to pick up the pieces of the consequential weaker high-schooling. Which they’ve done by dropping standards under the cloak of woke.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@TiceRichard @British_Airways Every airline sells more tickets than seats

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@HeidiBachram Good time to invest in Palestinian flags and fire extinguishers then

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@OliverKamm @TheGreenParty The riots in France have shown Palestinianism to be nothing more than cover for far-left anarchy and Islamist violence. A lot of hempy lefties though are still dumb enough to think it’s about human rights.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@kelvmackenzie States exist because they have borders they can defend and are recognised by their neighbours. The first is a must-have. The second a nice-to-have.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@HenMazzig Just being pedant here but even if Palestinians had been murdered for being Palestinian (which they haven’t) it still wouldn’t be racism.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@stephenpollard He’s not an idiot. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@JuliaHB1 So disingenuous isn’t it. “I don’t believe any state has the right to exist.” Yeah but I don’t see you passing motions to ban any others, right?

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders.

And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap.

I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece.

A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable.

Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000.

At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation.

At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product.

Look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable: how much the state is involved.

At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper.

B. The mechanism: why it's systematic.

When the state subsidizes demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid plus blocked building permits, and rents skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient.

In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing ERs, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work.

The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in.

C. Suffering demands a culprit.

A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and I don't deny it for a second.

But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat.

And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world?

D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain.

Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem.

Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit?

No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time.

E. One lens, a thousand causes.

And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them.

F. The perfect inversion.

Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And young people blame the first for the crimes of the second.

It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene.

G. The ballot box confirms it.

In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease.

In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the center, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: the problem is the market, the solution is the state.

H. The way out.

These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target.

The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture.

That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@Glinner The mum tells me my grandpa almost died of a heart attack laughing so much the first time they watched The Producers.

[Frank Cousins @TankSnakeTree]

@mishtal I have no sympathy for the old Greens. They’ve been (at best) tolerating antisemitic antizionism for years. Caroline Lucas has been pushing the “Israel is the root of all evil” narrative for decades.