Dynamic Coalitions to Unmask the Emperors Above — Part 3
Naming Names
Deep corruption is a path to the destruction of our Liberal system and indeed, a primary weapon used by enemies of the USA foreign and domestic today. Like an unfair parent playing favorites among siblings, corruption erodes more meritocratic functioning in the immediate. Additionally, corruption erodes perceptions of fairness, leading to resentment, demotivation and conflict, limiting future potential.
Unfortunately, our federal DOJ remains unwilling or unable to enforce the law against this band of criminals even after they incited a coup and then after Trump grossly mishandled national nuclear secrets. While Manhattan prosecutors have apparently brought charges against Donald Trump (finally, yay), this highlights the failure of the DOJ to bring the same charges and many more. While state and local charges are welcome insofar as they are legitimate, it is our federal authorities that are best empowered to enforce the law against this mob of Emperor-Oligarchs.
In order to most effectively apply pressure to enforce the law, we will need to exit echo chambers and form diverse coalitions of characters and capabilities that bridge the partisan divide.
Perhaps not exactly a coalition, a diverse set has emerged in this difficult era since 2016. This group of reliably honest and truth-seeking, compassionate, anti-authoritarian, expert voices in US and global affairs have all proven themselves dedicated and competent thought leaders in this struggle against autocracy.
A Diverse Group of Voices in Defense of Liberality
Tom Nichols - Intellectual leader of the moderate conservative never Trump movement, Retired Professor of National Security at the Naval War College with particular expertise in Russia-related affairs, now journalist for The Atlantic. Moderate conservative.
Garry Kasparov - Exiled Russian opposition leader and former World Chess Champion, Chairman of Human Rights Foundation and founder of Renew Democracy. Moderate conservative.
Bill Browder - After making anti-corruption efforts a basis for his post-Soviet Russia investment fund, Putin’s regime shut down Browder’s firm, abusing and killing Browder’s lawyer in the process. Since, Browder has turned human rights activist and rallied Western governments to enact ‘Magnitsky’ sanctions in order to punish such human rights abuses in autocratic nations. Moderate.
Kamil Galeev - a Wilson scholar and post-Soviet sociologist and journalist until recently living in Moscow. Deep insights into Russian society, power structures and psychology. Moderate.
Preet Bharara - Former US attorney with organized crime expertise. Liberal.
Timothy Snyder - Professor of history at Yale and best-selling author, with particular expertise in Central Asia, Snyder has emerged as one of the foremost experts and analysts surrounding the Ukraine war and the global struggle against autocracy. Liberal.
Marcy Wheeler aka emptywheel - Journalist and legal specialist, top notch court watcher. Liberal.
Sarah Kendzior - Anthropologist specializing in post-Soviet, central Asian autocracy, best-selling author and journalist. Hosting Gaslit Nation podcast, the Oracle of St. Louis has been perhaps the most prescient voice on the rise of autocracy in the USA since 2015. Progressive.
Jim Stewartson - Alternate reality gaming pioneer, entrepreneur and storyteller, Jim has an excellent grasp on emerging technology, gamer culture, communications, influence and their intersections. Since 2020, he has been dedicated to battling misinformation and its spreaders, primarily surrounding the QAnon cult. He has identified Michael Flynn as the central puppet master behind the QAnon cult along with supporting characters promoting the toxic narrative. Progressive.
Ruth Ben Ghiat - Professor, author and analyst specializing in authoritarianism and especially fascism. Progressive.
Mob of Dark Triad Tyrants Attempting to Subvert Western Liberality
On the other end, the core of the mob of Oligarch-Emperors dedicated to taking down American liberality is also becoming clearer. Incomplete of course, I’ve sorted the below into several groupings that link the various mobsters.
Money Laundering & Lobbying/Politics
Oleg Deripaska of Russia - prominent oligarch and industrialist, carries out foreign influence operations at Putin’s behest according to the Mueller report.
Paul Manafort - worked under Deripaska and Yanukovych in Ukraine, Trump in US, partner to Roger Stone in infamous lobbying firm that would eventually be known as leading the Torturer’s Lobby. Employed Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik as assistant, boosting Putin puppet Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine until ousted in EuroMaidan in 2014. In 2016, Manafort would pass Trump campaign strategy and polling data to Kilimnik that would be used in Russia’s on-line influence campaigning assisting Trump. Manafort would plead guilty in witness tampering conspiracy with Kilimnik among other crimes in the Mueller investigation, but never charged with crimes related to collusion.
Roger Stone - longtime partner to Manafort in lobby firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. Friend and consultant to Trump, and convicted in the Mueller investigation for having lied to Congress about coordinated timing of stolen document dumps with Wikileaks, another act of collusion. Stone had a direct line to Proud Boys and Oath Keeper militant groups during Jan 6 attack, having courted their leadership by hiring them for personal security services.
Donald Trump - casino and real estate businesses rife with corruption, fraud, nexus to organized crime, money laundering and tax evasion. Trump Org was recently convicted of criminal tax evasion. Trump was connected to many Russian and central Asian oligarchs from before 2015 Presidential run including Putin, Rinat Akhmetshin and Dmitry Rybolovlev. Several contend that Russian sources rescued Trump’s finances underwriting ‘loans’ via Deutsche Bank, which Trump repeatedly defaulted on. In 2019, Deutsche Bank was exposed for concurrently running a vast money laundering operation for Russian criminals linked to the Kremlin and its security services, dubbed Global Laundromat, totaling about between $20-80 billion. Today, payments to Trump from LIV Golf, owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, are reportedly being investigated, along with the rape trial, and the porn star hush money fraud trial.
Tevfik Arif - former Soviet official, now real estate magnate and Trump associate through Bayrock Group, which carried out several Trump-licensed real estate projects, highly suspiciously and with financing linked to Russian organized crime and the Kremlin. Arif was also busted aboard a yacht acting as a floating brothel for elite Turks. Arif was charged for pimping out models some underage, Esptein-style, but not convicted.
Felix Sater - Russian-American mobster convicted in a multimillion securities fraud scheme with Russian mafia players in 1998 and aggravated assault for stabbing a man with a broken bottle in 1991. Sater is also associated with the Trump family via Bayrock. Together with Michael Cohen, he attempted to broker a deal for Trump Tower Moscow. Sater infamously boasted in a 2015 e-mail to Cohen:
Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it … I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process
Charles Moginigal - FBI Counter-intelligence agent recently implicated in laundering money for Deripaska, led FBI NY field office counterintelligence operations during the 2016 elections and subsequent Mueller investigation
Rudy Giuliani - Former NYC Mayor originally famous for his work as a US Attorney taking down the Italian mob and later ‘America’s Mayor’ during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. According to Sarah Kendzior and others, disrupting the Italian mob opened space for the Russian mob to take its place and also ingratiated Giuliani to them. Later, in the 2020 Presidential campaign, Giuliani would work to dig up dirt on the Bidens with central Asian fraudsters Fruman and Parnas, who’d be later convicted of laundering illicit Russian money into Trump’s campaign. Giuliani was also very close to the source for ‘Hunter Biden’s laptop’, seemingly helping to launder Russian secret service files into US campaigns while leaving plausible deniability.
Devin Nunes - Former Congressman and Chairman of House Intelligence Committee ran interference during Mueller investigation, now heading (failing) Trump Media. Propogandist and general moo-ron.
Kash Patel - Aid to Nunes then Defense Department instrumental in politicizing intelligence during Mueller investigation and in corrupting Pentagon to thwart federal response on January 6, enabling coup attempt. Also now at (failing) Trump Media.
John Solomon - Media Executive and propogandist for Oleg Deripaska, critical to spreading confounding narratives surrounding the Trump-Russia scandal and later the impeachment scandal, surrounding Ukraine. His BS would be thoroughly discredited in both the Mueller report and impeachment hearings. The Hill would have to change his columns from news to opinion retroactively, of course long after his lies pervaded public consciousness.
Fossil Fuel/Middle East Security
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel - long accused of corruption and now organizing consolidation of power in Israel, currently dismantling the authority of the Supreme Court, the critical check on his government’s power. Long time friends with Kushner family.
George Nader of Lebanon - envoy to Middle Eastern tyrants, Saudi Arabia ruler MBS and UAE ruler MBZ and Eric Prince’s Blackwater. Convicted multiple times for raping young boys.
MBS of Saudi Arabia responsible for the murder of Jamal Kashoggi among a brutal crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia. American billionaire Jeffrey Bezos, whose Washington Post broke the Kashoggi murder story, accuses the Saudis of surveillance and a blackmail attempt, that they outed his extramarital affair, resulting in the most expensive divorce in human history.
He has engaged in naked corruption with Kushner and Trump. The LIV Golf Tour appears their latest device to channel corruption and influence into the USA (perhaps via surveillance, espionage and blackmail).
Jared Kushner - Family so tight with Netanyahu, it is said Netanyahu would displace Jared from his childhood bed when visiting the Kushner’s in New York. Jared’s father a convicted felon, son also engaged in naked corruption with Middle Eastern tyrants while advising father-in-law Trump as an official US emissary, accepting billions from Middle Eastern state sovereign funds.
Mercer/DeVos Family - Far-right super donors, responsible for funding the 2016 makeover of the American right wing as well as pushing Brexit in the UK, funding Steve Bannon’s activity at Breitbart as well as Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 elections. These efforts would be rewarded with Betsy DeVos placed as Secretary of Education and Bannon as a top advisor in the Trump administration. Cambridge Analytica acted in illegal and unethical fashion to support the Trump campaign, stealing private data from Facebook to assist in targeting messaging, as well as violating campaign finance laws. According to former GOP insider Steve Schmidt, the Mercer family has used dark money to quietly bankroll this fascist movement.
Erik Prince - brother to Betsy DeVos, and founder of Blackwater, mercenary services provider infamous for abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. He famously coordinated a January 2016 meeting of Middle Eastern and central Asian power players aligning foreign powers behind President-elect Trump’s administration, including George Nadar representing the UAE, Kirill Dmitriev heading Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, and creating a back channel to Russia. In the US, Prince coordinates a spy network through Project Veritas, which infiltrates left wing groups and via deceptive editing releases propaganda to harm or control them.
Mike Pompeo - deeply corrupt Secretary of State under Trump, purged State Department including the Investigator General investigating him, while advantaging Saudi Arabia and Israel against US interests.
Elliot Broidy - top Republican fundraiser and Trump booster, convicted in multiple corruption scandals, and Asian and Middle Eastern foreign lobbyist.
Ideological/Spiritual
Alexander Dugin of Russia - Fascist ideologue and philosopher, Christian fundamentalist and Russian ultranationalist.
Michael Flynn - Former Trump and Obama National Security Advisor, fired by both. Disgraced for lying about communications with Russian ambassador in wake of their election interference. Former US General and psychological warfare specialist. The force behind QAnon and several other vectors of on-line psychological warfare. Line to alt-right, Christian occult fundamentalism and milita community.
Steve Bannon - ardent nationalist, media executive, tied to Mercers, Prince and former advisor to Trump.
Richard Spencer - White Nationalist, neo-Nazi, one of the primary leaders of alt-right, heavily influenced by Dugin.
Most of us will not be directly involved in coalitions that can subpoena and prosecute this mob of course, but that doesn’t mean we cannot help with unmasking the Emperor above. Leveraging the strengths of our democracy is key, particularly our strength in numbers, the diversity of our skillsets, and the appeal of democracy’s decency in its more peaceful and fair settling of conflicts.
Breaking through to reach so many who’ve lost the plot is not an easy task and nearly all of us have friends and family that remain reachable. We should work on the lowest hanging fruits within our networks.
We can also help to identify and correct misinformation in-person and on-line, although we should be careful to avoid messaging traps like focusing on the misinformation (even to prove it wrong) rather than the reality, as explained in the article linked below.
We can help to boost, support and elect decent politicians. We can amplify the truth, however ugly it may be. But we shouldn’t do this from echo chambers or with any viciousness, as those risk being counterproductive, furthering tribal divisions.
It should be said too, wherever we can form functional teams and networks that can help bolster our communities, we strengthen our bonds. Working together, we demonstrate common cause and align our interests. Within tighter bound groups, arguments seem more persuasive. Even if such groups and networks are not at all politically focused, so long as they bridge partisan divides, these help us to moderate and communicate to one another our decency, that we are not the boogey-men our enemies would make us appear to one another. Moreover, robust civil society is a foundation of self-determination, democracy. Either We the People act to solve our problems, or central authorities must do it for us.
Getting out of our echo chambers is important for our own health and attitudes also. Ideological rigidity and intolerance for opposing views are some of the basic features linking left and right extremes of the political horseshoe - the more we isolate ourselves from opposing views in our echo chambers, the more we trick ourselves into believing most think like we do. Warping perceptions, ideological isolation creates intolerance for other viewpoints, which may seem more extreme to us than they are. Forming diverse coalitions and engaging in debate outside of comfort zones is critical for mental health, as well as the survival of our free, open society.
Up Next:
Michael Pollan, Timothy Leary and the Other Original American Sin Part 1/3
Cancelling Native American Sacremrents