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Why The Pro-Palestinian Shootings Backfired

Portfolio Armor's Photo
by Portfolio Armor
Friday, May 23, 2025 - 9:12
Elias Rodriguez
Elias Rodgriguez (right) protesting against Amazon and the police killing of a black youth in Chicago in 2017. 

Taking The Focus Off Of Gaza

The war in Gaza has been brutal. According to Noah Carl, when measured in lost life expectancy, it has been worse than the Rwandan genocide. 

Chart.

Of course, in absolute numbers of dead, the Rwandan genocide dwarfs the casualties so far in Gaza, but Carl makes a compelling case for the metrics he uses. Reading Carl's article on X earlier this week, it seemed like something that might move the needle politically on Gaza. 

Then a bearded leftist named Elias Rodriguez...

Shot to death a young couple outside of a Jewish museum in DC.

And did so in a particularly brutal manner, shooting the young woman in the back repeatedly as she tried to crawl away. 

So now, instead of talking about the death toll in Gaza, everyone in power is talking about the death of these two young people, who were about to get married. That's one way in way in which Rodriguez's actions backfired. Another way it backfired is by his pro-Palestinian supporters showing themselves to be antiwhite leftists. 

Some dispirited Palestine supporters, in claiming the shootings were an Israeli false flag, implicitly understand how the shootings have backfired.  

What Terrorism Needs To "Work"

As the Russian podcasters Russians With Attitude pointed out on X, Rodriguez's actions were never going to work in the U.S. anyway:

From a value-neutral, purely instrumental point of view, terrorism can “work” if you have a powerful political machine already in place that can blackmail society. E.g., Islamic terrorism in Western Europe makes political Islam stronger. Ukrainian nationalist terrorism in Ukraine makes Ukrainian nationalism stronger.

Anti-Israeli terrorism in the US does not make anti-Israeli positions stronger, because there is no power structure that will stand in front of the American people and say “see what your Zionism made us do!”, as happens with all “successful” terrorists.

Terrorism is essentially one guy with a gun and a second guy who is a lawyer or journalist or politician telling you that it's in your interest to consider the first guy's systemic grievances. With a second guy, the tactic might work. With just one guy, he's gonna get killed by cops and everyone will consider his grievances a criminal delusion.

Again, no value judgments described here, just how things work.

Let's leave this grim topic and close with a brief market note. 

The Nuclear Option

As ZeroHedge wrote last night, nuclear stocks soared after a report that Trump was going to sign an order to streamline reactor approvals. One of those nuclear stocks was Oklo (OKLO). It's up about 19% in the pre-market as I type this. Oklo was one of Portfolio Armor's top ten names back in December; the top names trade we placed on it then is now on pace for a ~400% return. 

We have another top names trade teed up for later today; if you'd like a heads up when we place it, you can subscribe to the Portfolio Armor trading Substack/occasional email list below. 

And if you want to add some downside protection, you can download it by aiming your iPhone camera at the QR code below (or by tapping here, if you are reading this on your iPhone). If you don't have an iPhone, all of its capabilities and more are available on the Portfolio Armor website. 

 

 

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