America's Danegeld Empire
Predictably Catastrophic
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The Danegeld
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say:—
“We invaded you last night—we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ‘em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation for a reach and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:—
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the
time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:—
“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”
-Rudyard Kipling
Listen to the audio version of this article here:
![[AUDIO] America's Danegeld Empire](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hS3C!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-video.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fvideo_upload%2Fpost%2F180519785%2Fc30d5dca-e6f3-4005-a034-f233bb42a2b9%2Ftranscoded-1764696127.png)
American Danegeld
The Sneaker Collapse
The sneaker market has “collapsed.” Yes, you read that correctly. There is a speculative market in sneakers, the pieces of plastic and faux rubber made by child laborers in Southeast Asia, and it is not only large enough to be noticeable, but it has fallen off a cliff as of late November. Now, prices of various sneakers once seen as “investment”-worthy, such as Air Jordans, are deflating by 50% or more. The Dutch tulip jobbers send their regards.1
On one hand, this shouldn’t really be a story. Fools and their money are soon parted, particularly when they can be convinced to pile into a speculative bubble in slave-made junk by telling them that doing so is a way of “investing” in “alternative assets”.
But on the other hand, it does show just how much of the economy exists only because of endless streams of government money poured into the gaping maw of the welfare class: EBT was cut off for just part of a month, and the result was that the speculative sneaker market, which is primarily supported by EBT Americans, crashed.
Similar stories exist all over our rotten economy. Remember when Alaskan snow crabs almost went extinct in 2021 and 2022 after the stimulus checks were sent out? Or how lines would form outside of Louis Vuitton and Gucci stores as soon as (or perhaps before) the checks cleared?
Some of that’s just a joke, a mere noticing of correlation without any strong evidence of causation. Maybe the crabs were really hurt by “climate change”2 rather than stimulus check-encouraged overspending (though sales did rise with the checks).3 Sneaker sales could have fallen off for any reason other than the obvious, EBT-related one4, though the overlap of people who are bad with money, on EBT, and have sneaker collections is certainly large.5 Perhaps even LVMH stock went up despite the fact that those who tended to spend the stimulus checks the quickest and even started LLCs with names like “Dodge Hellcat LLC”6 (this is real) to take advantage of Paycheck Protection Program fraud are the most enthusiastic purchasers of that collection of brands.
But what is certain is that much of our economy only exists because money is stolen out of the hands of the productive and handed off to a seething, hostile underclass. Said underclass then wastes it on some frivolous expenditure or another, plowing the money back into “the economy” at an incredible velocity.
Doing so helps the oligarchs keep their riches while avoiding a revolt from the underclass, distracts the underclass with corn syrup and sneakers, the modern equivalent of bread and circuses, and harms the middle class immensely. It’s the financialization of paying the Danegeld.
The EBT Danegeld
Take, for example, how EBT works.
Right now, many of America’s largest companies—including Amazon, McDonald’s, and Walmart7—pay their workers so little that those workers are reliant on various forms of public assistance, namely Medicaid and food stamps. That public assistance is provided thanks to the (government-mandated) generosity of American taxpayers, and effectively subsidizes the corporate behemoths in their refusal to pay reasonable wages to their workers, keeping them below the poverty line.8 Often, the corporations even help coach the workers through the welfare application process.9
The impoverished, taxpayer-subsidized workers then use those food stamps to purchase goods from Walmart, particularly junk like Coca-Cola. About a quarter of soda-maker revenue comes from food stamps,10 for example, and Walmart rakes in perhaps $65 billion a year from EBT.11
Net taxpayers (which is to say middle-class or above White and Asian Americans12) lose out. They are not only bled white by taxes, but then see those tax dollars used to subsidize low wages, fund the relatively luxurious13 existence and lifestyle of a hostile underclass that does nothing other than try to prey on them, pay for the left’s welfare-based patronage network schemes,14 and enrich the generally leftist oligarchs who then fund all manner of awful NGOs and political projects. Mackenzie Bezos couldn’t afford to fund outright race communism15 without taxpayers picking up the grocery tab for a quarter16 of Amazon’s employees through SNAP and programs like it.
And why is the system allowed to keep going? Why did Republicans scramble to refund EBT when the shutdown meant it would soon be running out of funds? Because it is Danegeld, as the folks at The American Sun noted in a good article:
The analogy is thrown around on social media. The original Danegeld was silver extorted by Viking raiders from Anglo-Saxon kings too timid or too weakened to fight. Pay the danes, went the logic, and they will sail away. They never did. The tribute merely whetted appetite and advertised vulnerability. Charles Murray, in his prescient “Losing Ground”, warned that something similar was happening in America’s inner cities. Recall that our cities have high Gini coefficients with wide income and wealth inequality as they are ground zero for the Democrats’ barbell coalition. Transfer payments act not as charity but as protection money, buying social peace at the price of dependency and demoralization. SNAP, with its $120 billion annual price tag, is the most visible installment.
…
When Mayor Eric Adams of New York warns that cutting SNAP will produce “looting in the streets,” he is not predicting famine but signaling the unspoken compact. Keep the EBT cards loaded, or the underclass (violent, resentful, and concentrated in vote-rich urban wards) will make life untenable and governance impossible. The threat is rarely articulated so baldly, but it hovers over every budget negotiation like the ghost of the ‘60s riots.
Such a fact was well-attested by the social media meltdown that occurred as a SNAP shutdown looked imminent: countless threats of robbery17 and violence18 were spurred by the mere possibility of such an outcome, with one EBT American even suggesting that cannibalism is on the table (watch below). Adding to the infuriating nature of the Danegeld transfer payments is that the EBT recipients tend to gloat online about how they’re ripping off taxpayers.19
The Whole Empire Is Built on This
EBT is just one example, and, given that it costs “only” $100 billion a year out of a $7 trillion or so budget, a relatively minor one.
But the same is true of almost every other government action and all the noxious programs on which the regime spends money, both at home and abroad: cowardice is our policy because it is easier.
Why, for example, have tens of millions of illegals been allowed to pour into America, and under the Biden administration, welcomed in with a red carpet?20 Why are welfare programs like EBT lavished upon them once they’re here?21 In large part because of some vague concern that they or their home countries will harm us more harshly, perhaps by being yet more uncooperative with trade and drug enforcement agreements, if they are not allowed to invade at will, and a belief that they’ll cause chaos if here without welfare. Much else goes into it, of course, but that fear of something worse—or, perhaps more accurately, something requiring more courage and violence to correct—happening if they aren’t paid off with lavish subsidies and tolerance of criminality, lies at the root of our moral cowardice.
Similarly, we tolerate criminality generally for the same reason. Why are dangerous repeat offenders let off the hook time and time again despite the clear fact that they pose a danger to the community22 and have made our cities more violent than active war zones? Why does the NFL allow certain players to assault certain officials,23 or do schools generally refuse to punish black bullies? Love of anarchotyranny is certainly part of it, but not the whole explanation. The other aspect is that the authorities live in fear of what will happen if they crack down. Looking at cartel violence in the “Global South”,24 the blood-drenched chaos of America’s black insurgency movement in the 70s, and our own recent history of violent riots in the face of reasonable policing decisions,25 they’ve decided that it’s better to just pay the Danegeld. So, instead of doing what Bukele did and solving crime, our rulers let the criminals run the show. They send them their welfare checks, let the criminal elements do more or less as they want, put them in a cushy prison where they can brag for a bit every so often, and use the Community Relations Service to make sure no victim stirs up any reprisals. The violent elements are paid off and patted on the back rather than being fought, much as the Anglo-Saxons handed piles of silver to the Danes again…and again…and again.
The same is true abroad. Why, for example, did America pay the Taliban $40 million every single week during the Biden years?26 Because we were afraid to fight it if it attacked our interests, and hoped paying it off would do the job Danegeld once did. The same is true of why we tolerated bacha bazi amongst our “allies” while intervening in Afghanistan, and made every possible accommodation for their cultural tradition of boy rape: doing so was easier than fighting back against such a great evil.
Such is also why we’ve allowed Somalis, Afghans, Haitians, and other such groups to pour into America and commit fraud that aids terror groups27; all the chaos and expense of that requires less moral courage than either letting them rot at home or imposing order on them. With neither the will for global social Darwinism nor colonialism, we simply invite in the worst of the worst from the Third World despite knowing the massive cost in social cohesion, cash, and blood of doing so.
Our allies (satrapies) do the same thing. Britain allows28 the Paki and Sikh-composed “grooming gangs” to continue raping hundreds of thousands of little British girls because to crack down on them would be to risk unrest, to risk open unpleasantness that gets to the root of the problem and requires moral courage to carry it through. So instead, the welfare Danegeld is paid to the Allah-worshipping new Danes even as they inflict stomach-churning horrors on little girls. Sweden does the same thing.29 So too does Germany.30 In country after country, the welfare checks are sent out even as new details of unspeakable horrors are unearthed daily; much like the Danegeld of days past, it merely whets the avaricious appetites of the rape and murder-minded invaders.
Such is the case everywhere one might look. We do not deal harshly with enemies, opponents, or the insane. We do not fight them, stand up to them, or force them to reform. We do not drive the invaders out at spearpoint, nor do we hang even those criminals who clearly deserve it. Instead, we do what the British of ages past did and pay the Danegeld—raising taxes on the productive and going into debt to do so, as they did—even as the enemy inflicts unspeakable atrocities on our people.
Cowardice is at the root of that, and the cowardice has metastasized to such a great extent that paying the Danegeld is at the root of our empire. It is now what our interventions and agreements abroad generally consist of, what we make our satraps do as their native populations are eviscerated, and what all of our domestic policies consist of: welfare, entitlements, and pro-crime policies are the basis of our world order.
The Alternative
It needn’t be that way. There are alternatives.
Take crime, for example. The current way of dealing with it is to mix slaps on the wrist with welfare payments, and to pay for the welfare by taxing those whom the criminals prey upon. All that has done is beget ever more crime. The Vikings took the silver and gold and gave nothing in return; our Danes to the same, while also prattling on about it being our moral duty to care for them as they burn down cities and rape, rob, or murder passers by.
That is how we deal with it for the aforementioned reasons, but there are alternatives: Britain, in its golden age, simply hanged them. Horse thievery, rape, murder, or any other of the ~220 capital crimes led to one being executed so that it could never again happen. Such a course of action was harsh, but also effective: by the 1800s, it meant that violent crime was effectively solved, and the flourishing of high culture resulted from that. El Salvador is now experiencing much the same thing, as Singapore has for decades. A zero-tolerance policy toward crime works. Quite well, in fact. But it requires the will to enforce it, come what may, rather than paying the Danegeld. It only works if the criminals are actually hanged/caned/imprisoned in terrible conditions, rather than given welfare checks and kid-glove treatment.
The same is true of relations abroad. We don’t need to try to appease hordes of countless barbarians, nor try to appease those who would do us harm, whether as nations or individuals. They can just be dealt with via gunboat diplomacy and magnificent sternness. Take, for example, a classic telling of how the British dealt with an angry horde abroad during the Victorian Age, from William Manchester’s Visions of Glory:
[S]ometimes British contempt could be magnificent. Dressed to the nines, buttons glittering and collar starched, Captain William Packenham went ashore to deal with a gang of cutthroats who were massacring Armenians. The leaders of the pogrom gathered around him, glowering and fingering the edges of their bloody knives. Packenham stroked his beard and told the interpreter: “Let us begin. Tell these ugly bastards that I am not going to tolerate any more of their bestial habits.”
Such is what we could do with the Haitians, Somalis, Afghans, and others. They needn’t be invited in, nor given reams of money. They can just be terrorized into compliance by a view of the gunboat, or shelled into compliance if necessary. Such requires fierceness, martial excellence, and prudence, however, all of which are anathema to the Danegeld-paying cowards.
Such a change in policy will, of course, be difficult. Our morals and spirits have long been corrupted by just paying off the metaphorical Danes rather than summoning the courage to fight them, and everything from our foreign policy to our speculative sneaker markets have been rotted from within by the same malignant tumor. Yet still it must be done. We can no longer live with the spiritual and physical rot that comes with relentlessly taxing the productive and law-abiding to pay off the worst elements, and we need not do so.
Such is what the Anglo-Saxons learned, before the end. Tribute is the price of cowardice, and freedom from the oppressive yoke of the invader and leech is the reward of courage. It’s time to recover that freedom that Americans long knew how to grasp—our first war as a new nation was fought to prevent us from having to pay tribute to the Barbary pirates, after all—and stop paying the Danegeld.
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A funny description of the EBT one:
An entertaining post on this: https://x.com/Game_Dev_Steve/status/1994958602730443001
A collection of insane, Covid-era fraud with funny names: https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1867344802859430122
Described here: https://x.com/TheThe1776/status/1933641056454914160
For example, many benefits that normal people have to pay for are just provided free to welfare recipients: https://x.com/EBTofTikTok/status/1993303024081715508
Similarly, many of the EBT American videos that emerged show them with professionally done hair and nail jobs, which are hardly the hallmarks of a starving proletariat: https://x.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1993447378880446588
For example: https://x.com/CovfefeAnon/status/1946450775938421056
Another example: https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1889001021587742774
For example: https://x.com/Real_Ames/status/1984973453552709821
The utter insanity of that administration: https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1995555212396826944
A recent example: https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1995303611065336134
For example: https://x.com/runews/status/1983238934969606484
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_unrest
The most amazing aspect of the suicidal behavior of most western democracies is that the political class who tolerates the barbarians imagines themselves immune from consequences they have imposed on their citizens. Even Muslim rulers know better than to allow their people such liberty to cause chaos. Especially Muslim rulers.
This analogy can reveal even more functional aspects to the Western story;
The Old English (and Nords and Baltics) were already accustomed to paying taxes. The Danegeld was de facto another tax, and was later replaced by similar taxes. Raiding turned into dominion, when those men became English Kings, and bribes turned into legal taxes.
Which brings to light that the same American men who would be paid to protect citizens, are instead paid to not intervene with government. So unless someone can hire them to do otherwise, this won't change. This is true of the entire judiciary branch.
The executive branch is more turbulent, but they're incapable of rerouting these funds, and it's by design in the Constitution. Only a complete takeover could override Congress, which we should expect in the coming years; most likely from those same thugs who spread their criminal underlings.
I'm no history buff, so I wonder if there's an analogy with a better ending. Somehow the Christian Inquisition (Spain, Rome, France) feels closer to the cleansing needed; strike directly at evil, without trying to redo society a la revolution style.