This American is fighting ISIS - and there’s footage to prove it

April 09, 2015

Writer

TheBlaze obtained exclusive video of volunteer civilians taking the fight directly to ISIS. Watch as Chris Toney and his squad are pinned down by ISIS sniper fire and forced to retreat. Even more amazing than the video itself is the personal stories of regular citizens sick and tired of watching evil rise and nothing done about it. Toney talked to Glenn on radio today.

Watch Toney's video below, via TheBlaze. The full story is a must read and can be found HERE.

Below is a rush transcript of Toney's conversation with Glenn:

GLENN: And Chris Toney is on the phone with us now. He's a U.S. Navy veteran. And he's over there on his own. He's over there because he believes in the cause. We wanted to talk to him about it. Why are you there, Chris?

CHRIS: I'm there, Glenn, because ISIS is killing innocent, women, children, men, taking over villages. And, by the way, it's nice to talk to you. Thank you for having me on your show.

GLENN: You're welcome.

CHRIS: I've been a big fan of you for a long time. And years ago, you talked about principles. And you talked about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And he said, silence in the face of evil is itself evil. We will not be held guiltless before God. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. We always grow up in the American educational system starting off with the Holocaust and what the Nazis did to the Jews. And we say as people, we will never allow that to happen again. Well, it's happening. It's happening right now. There is a Holocaust occurring in the Middle East against Christians, against Yazidis, and against Muslims. And the world is sitting back and wanting to play politics. They're saying, we don't want to get involved because we've been involved in too many wars. And it doesn't sound good politically. It doesn't help someone win an election campaign. It doesn't help someone keep their elected seats. So they don't want to get involved. They want to do the bare minimum. When an atrocity like this is occurring, we can't do the bare minimum. We have to step up and put an end to it. We have a thing on our team, what do real men do when Nazis kill Jews? Do you sit back and say that's someone else's problem. Or do you wait and hope that someone else is going to do it. When that doesn't happen, do you forget about it. No, you step up and be a man and try to do the right thing and help people.

GLENN: Chris, are you just a good American warrior. Or are you led by God?

CHRIS: I'm led by God. Now, I don't mean to say that in some sort of like crazy zealous kind of meaning. I guess it's a little bit of both, Glenn. The big question is, how do you get to this? What makes you want to go? A lot of prayer is involved. And when God calls you -- I'll kind of make a joke. When God calls you to go do some work in the Nineveh plain, you better go, or he'll get you there one way or the other. And I prefer not to go the belly of the whale, you know.

GLENN: So you're going. And, you know, you're pretty much on your own, you and your friends. When I read this story and it talks about air cover, the military doesn't have to give you air cover because you're -- you're not part of the military.

CHRIS: No. We're actually there volunteered alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga. The Peshmerga is the Kurdish regional government's official army. Technically, they're outlied alongside Iraq, and they're outlied alongside the United States. So in this fight against ISIS, the Peshmerga, the Kurdish Peshmerga are some of the abrasive people I've ever met. Glenn, I hope you get the chance to visit these people sometime. They're the most Kinds, warm hearted people you'll ever meet. They're very westernized. Their cities are more developed than my own here in Kentucky. Their shopping center is better than what I have. And they're very civilized people. The world talks about, where is the moderate Muslim standing against ISIS. I said to Jason when he interviewed me. They're in Kurdistan. The majority of the Kurdish people are Muslim. But they were so welcoming to me even, though I was a Christian and talked about my Christianity. They never treated me differently. They treated me just like a brother.

GLENN: I would be more concerned about you saying you're an American after we have turned our backs on the Kurds over and over and over again.

CHRIS: No. The Kurdish people, they -- they're smart. They don't group everyone together. They are very thankful to have us Americans there. When American volunteers show up, it is a big morale booster to their troops. And they know that we, the American people, support them. They sometimes have conflicts with the American government. And they separate the two.

Part of this conflict, from what I see, Glenn, is -- you know, ISIS is a world problem. But the Kurdish people are the ones that stepped up to the plate and are actually taking on that world problem on behalf of the world. And it's like the world is not properly supporting them. The Kurdish government is very poor. When I was there, many of their troops had not received their payroll for four months. Yet, they get up day in and day out and go to the front lines every day and they fight. They're severely underweaponized with ammo and guns. The guns they have are really outdated AK47s, RPKs, Dragunovs, some without scopes. The ammo situation is extremely low. Most of the guys I was with were former U.S. Army veterans, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they're used to going out on the lines outside the wire with 400-plus rounds on them. Every Kurdish Peshmerga soldier and ourself, we only rolled with anywhere between 90 and 120 rounds on us to a frontline battle.

GLENN: Wow. Holy cow.

CHRIS: You didn't have a lot of extra ammo to engage in a blind shoot firefight with ISIS. You had to pick your shots, which was tough. Something that I noticed was fighting ISIS is a lot like fighting ghosts. Glenn, on the Kurdish Peshmerga side very much remind me of something you would see on World War I. There's a lot of open fields. That you have to cross without any cover. As the line advances, the blows are still following you. It will actually push dirt up making a reverse trench for us to use as cover. ISIS's side reminds me a touch of Vietnam in that they dig spider holes in the ground and have underground tunnels all over their defenses. So they'll pop up in one area and engage you. Then when you're engaging them, they disappear. And you don't see where they went. Basically, they go down that hole. And they're crossing the battlefield underground. Then they'll pop up somewhere else unexpectedly and engage you from your flank or even behind you in different areas. It's very dangerous. It's like fighting ghosts.

GLENN: How, well-equipped are they? And how much of their equipment is our old equipment?

CHRIS: They are very well-equipped. They obviously have a lot of ammo. The big battle that we engaged in, they had four T62 tanks that were rolling up to start pounding where we were at, so they have tanks. They are very well-trained soldiers, Glenn. That was -- that was some of the discussion that myself and the guys that I was with. The guys were telling me that these were not like fighting the insurgents that they fought in Iraq before. That they just picked up a gun and fought them.

PAT: Where are they getting the tanks, Chris?

CHRIS: I honestly don't know exactly where they got them. A lot of them were left by the Iraqi army when ISIS first started invaded. And the Iraqis dropped their weapons and left their Humvees and left these tanks and ran away. ISIS just took them over.

GLENN: You in your article said that France is actually doing a better job, and I'm seeing this every single time, France has picked up almost the position of the big dog in the world, where we used to be. And we've become France. You said in the article that France is doing a better job than the United States is.

CHRIS: Yes. Absolutely. As a matter of fact the big operation on the 18th of March that the United States was supposed to provide the air support, we had another big op two days prior on the 16th where we were liberating two people. And France was providing the air support that day. They did an amazing job. They blew up whatever tanks were in the area. They took out all the trucks that had the DShK guns on the back of them. They took out all the hardened bunkers and whatever -- if there was a group of ISIS guys clumped together, they would take them out. They leveled those villages before our advance. Which that saves a lot of lives.

And what happens is, you know, France is providing that. And we knew that. But when you get the news stories that come out here in the United States, it's always U.S.-led coalition forces did this. That's saying that the United States is getting the credit. Because it's the U.S.-led coalition. Not France.

GLENN: We're running out of time here. You're fascinating to talk to. I hope we can have you back. And I would like to join you sometime. I'm trying to get over to the Middle East this summer. And I would love to meet these people.

I want to ask you a kind of two questions. If you combine your answer into one. It is this, do you see more people coming like you -- more, you know, soldiers and former soldiers coming over and joining the fight because we're just dropping the ball and they can't sleep at night, you know, seeing this go on and somebody has to stop it, and what can the average person do to assist you?

CHRIS: Yes. A lot more men and women are going over to volunteer. They're -- it's becoming more common. I'm personally aware of at least six people. More people that have volunteered and joined the unit that I was part of over the last two weeks. And there's about five more that will be there in another week. So more people are doing this.

I would say this, Glenn, is that, there's a lot of ways to get involved. You can get involved in funding by meeting these people online. That are actually over there and making donations to help them buy the equipment --

GLENN: How do we do that?

CHRIS: There's different ones. There's not a centralized location for that, Glenn, right now. A lot of these guys, they started GoFundMe pages with their photos on there. They show the photos of them over there. If you see those, those are good guys to support.

GLENN: I tell you what, can you do me a favor? Because I don't want to be taken by a scam or something and give it to the wrong guys. Will you be willing to send me an email or get us information on maybe whose pages we can trust and which GoFundMe and we'll post it and make sure -- that way we're not giving our money to somebody we shouldn't be giving our money to.

CHRIS: I'll be happy to do that, Glenn. Number one thing for Americans to understand. And this is something I came to learn -- you know, when I watch your show, I didn't take your word for things. I read books and started studying things like you told us to do. And what I've learned is, Americans have got to stop thinking that they can't do something. We can do something. We're Americans. We're not Americannots. And we have to stop waiting for someone else to do it all the time. This next election coming up, whoever the president will be, it may make some things better. But we can't expect them to magically make something perfect. And it's the same thing with God. When we pray to God to do something, we can't expect God to do it for us. God will give us the wisdom and the intelligence and the passion and the courage and the strength to do it ourselves. And we have to step up as Americans and start doing more. If you want to go over and fight, if that's what your calling is, you can go do it and you can find a way to get there. You can find a way to support a family while you're there. You can make that happen. If you want to help support the people that are there, and I'll help you out, Glenn, and get you a list of people that you can help there.

GLENN: We will post that at GlennBeck.com by the end of the day today and post it up on my Facebook page as well. Chris, we will pray for you. We wish you all the best. Please stay in contact with us. Let us know how we can help you. God bless you.

CHRIS: Thank you, Glenn. God bless you as well.

Faith, family, and freedom—The forgotten core of conservatism

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn's Show Prep

This American is fighting ISIS - and there’s footage to prove it

Faith, family, and freedom—The forgotten core of conservatism

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

Conservatism as stewardship

Rebuilding what is broken

A creed for the rising generation

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Transcript

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

Ancient evil, new clothes

A time for choosing

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

The new currency of power

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

The forgotten way

The only way