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FTR#1366 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
FTR#1367 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Peter Thiel
Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org
NB: This description contains material not contained or referenced in the original programs.
Introduction: Bringing up to date a number of points of inquiry, the program details the profound role of Peter Thiel’s professional orbit in the make-up of Team Trump.
Profoundly influenced by the writings and views of Third Reich theoretician Carl Schmitt, Thiel is at least as well-positioned as former PayPal buddy Elon Musk to profit from the incoming Trump administration.
Of particular significance is the ABN milieu’s crafting of a curriculum to be taught to school children!
“. . . . The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is an outgrowth of the National Captive Nations Committee, a group founded by Ukrainian nationalist Lev Dobriansky to lobby against any effort for detente with the Soviet Union. Its co-chairman, Yaroslav Stetsko, was a top leader of the fascist OUN‑B militia that fought alongside Nazi Germany during its occupation of Ukraine in World War Two. Together, the two helped found the World Anti-Communist League that was described by journalist Joe Conason as ‘the organizational haven for neo-Nazis, fascists, and anti-Semitic extremists from two dozen countries.’. . .”
The curriculum manifests fascist ideology: ” . . . . Its methodology was also universally panned, with many pointing out that the tens of millions of Soviet and Nazi losses during World War II were attributed to communist ideology. This means that both Adolf Hitler himself and many of his victims are counted towards the vastly overinflated figure. . . . The principal organization promoting the 100 million figure today is the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation . . . . The group, set up by the U.S. government in 1993, added all worldwide Covid-19 deaths to the victims of communism list, arguing that the coronavirus was a communist disease because it originated in China. . . .”
Ante Pavelic
Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation lionizes fascists and Nazis: ” . . . . Those included Roman Shukhevych, a Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator, as well as Ante Pavelić who ran a Nazi puppet regime in Croatia and is considered a chief perpetrator of the Holocaust in the Balkans . . . .”
Discussion and Analysis Includes: An alleged Chinese hack that will benefit Elon Musk’s Starlink; A recent post by Pterrafractyl about cyberhacks; A Musk associate named by Trump to head NASA; The founding of a firm called Sauron by a Thiel associate; Speculation about the possible effects of Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of UnitedHealth Care CEO Thompson; The possible appointment of RFK, Jr’s campaign manager “ex” CIA agent Amaryllis Fox to be a Deputy Director of CIA; Fox’s long, close association with Tulsi Gabbard; Elon Musk’s social media support of the AfD; The pro-AfD posts of the accused Magdeburg Christmas massacre “perp;” The chronicling of the ascent of Mr. Julani (Al-Qaeda, ISIS) in Syria in September of 2018; Mr. Julani’s being minted as Syrian head of state following the fall of Asad; The assassination of Russian General Kirillov, who opined that Covid was an American BW weapon.
It was PayPal cofounder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel who introduced his mentee, JD Vance, to President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2021. Three years later—with Trump and Vance just weeks from the White House—it’s Thiel who is sitting pretty as many people within his network head for official or advisory positions in the next administration.
David Sacks—who worked with Thiel at PayPal and wrote for the Stanford Review, the student newspaper Thiel founded as an undergraduate at Stanford University in 1987—was named as the White House’s incoming “AI and crypto czar” on Wednesday. Jim O’Neill, former CEO of Thiel’s personal foundation, has been picked as deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Elon Musk, whose financial and vocal support helped elect Trump, will be running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Musk had worked closely with Thiel at PayPal; and Thiel’s venture fund, Founders Fund, was an early investor in several of Musk’s companies, including space cargo business SpaceX, tunneling firm the Boring Company, and brain-chip startup Neuralink.
Carl Schmitt
Photo Credit: Wikiedia.orgTrae Stephens, a general partner at Founders Fund, is reportedly being considered for deputy secretary of defense, according to the Wall Street Journal. And Michael Kratsios, Thiel Capital’s former chief of staff and a director at Founders Fund–backed Scale AI, is reportedly handling tech policy during the Trump transition.
Then, of course, there is Vance, who worked for Thiel at one of his funds, Mithril Capital, then launched a venture fund that Thiel backed. Founders Fund still lists Vance’s venture firm, Narya Capital, as an “affiliate” on regulatory filings.
All of these individuals, including the vice president–elect, sit within powerful Silicon Valley networks with one man at their center: Thiel. There’s the PayPal Mafia, the group of early employees of the digital payments company that includes Thiel and Musk. There’s the conservative student paper, the Stanford Review. There’s Founders Fund, the $12 billion venture capital firm that has invested in the major startups working most closely with the U.S. Department of Defense—SpaceX, Palantir, and Anduril. And then there’s also Thiel’s personal endeavors, like his family office, foundation, or other funds.
Trump pulled people from these same networks during his first presidency, when Thiel was the sole voice of Trump support in Silicon Valley—donating more than $1 million and speaking at the Republican National Convention in 2016. During that first administration, Trump selected Ken Howery, a Stanford Review and PayPal alum, as the U.S. ambassador to Sweden (Howery was also reportedly at Mar-a-Lago during the 2024 election night). Trump also appointed Kratsios, Thiel Capital’s former chief of staff, as the White House’s deputy chief technology officer. And Mark Woolway, who was an early employee at PayPal and now works at Sacks’ Craft Ventures, was on Trump’s transition team for the Treasury Department in 2016.
While Thiel still describes himself as pro-Trump, he’s taken a step back compared with previous election cycles. By the time of the 2024 election, Thiel had made a decision not to donate to any campaign, which he told Fortune was because he was no longer convinced money mattered at the federal level and hadn’t been persuaded that this election would focus on “ending our decades-long technological and economic stagnation.”
But while Thiel is no longer a financial supporter, his closeness to those who will soon wield power and influence, including the vice president, is notable—and his longtime investments in companies that work closely with the U.S. government are likely to benefit.
Thiel’s politics are complicated and have evolved—and it’s difficult to place him in a particular bucket, though he’s been described as a conservative libertarian, and is also known for having nationalist tendencies. He is a backer of crypto and crypto companies and has warned against government regulation, particularly in the field of AI.
Thiel seems to already be thinking ahead. In an interview with The Free Press founder Bari Weiss shortly after the election, Thiel gave advice about what Vice President–elect Vance could do to be elected president in 2028, after Trump’s term ends.
. . . . This is going to have an economic effect — very negative for the telecommunications giants, who are likely to lose profitable USG contracts, and is lucrative for Elon Musk. Why Musk? His network of satellites handling classified communications — i.e., StarShield — is, I am told, seen by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) as the ONLY solution to secure the compromised military and intelligence networks. Musk may be on his way to becoming the first Trillion Dollar man. . . .
3. The CIA’s hacking tools are specifically crafted to mask CIA authorship of the attacks. Most significantly, for our the purposes of the present discussion, is the fact that the Agency’s hacking tools are engineered in such a way as to permit the authors of the event to represent themselves as Chinese.
Pterrafractyl has done a characteristically excellent job on cyberhacks, attribution for same and the use of those attacks as provocations: https://spitfirelist.com/news/cyber-attribution-the-mega-hacks-of-2021-and-the-existential-threat-of-blind-faith-in-bad-faith/
” . . . . These tools could make it more difficult for anti-virus companies and forensic investigators to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of previous hacks into question? It appears that yes, this might be used to disguise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russian, Chinese, or from specific other countries. . . . This might allow a malware creator to not only look like they were speaking in Russian or Chinese, rather than in English, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speaking English . . . .”
This morning, WikiLeaks released part 3 of its Vault 7 series, called Marble. Marble reveals CIA source code files along with decoy languages that might disguise viruses, trojans, and hacking attacks. These tools could make it more difficult for anti-virus companies and forensic investigators to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of previous hacks into question? It appears that yes, this might be used to disguise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russian, Chinese, or from specific other countries. These tools were in use in 2016, WikiLeaks reported.
It’s not known exactly how this Marble tool was actually used. However, according to WikiLeaks, the tool could make it more difficult for investigators and anti-virus companies to attribute viruses and other hacking tools to the CIA. Test examples weren’t just in English, but also Russian, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and Farsi. This might allow a malware creator to not only look like they were speaking in Russian or Chinese, rather than in English, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speaking English, according to WikiLeaks. This might also hide fake error messages or be used for other purposes. . . .
In the future, your home will feel as safe from intruders as a state-of-the-art military base.
Cameras and sensors surveil the perimeter, scanning bystanders’ faces for potential threats. Drones from a “deterrence pod” scare off trespassers by projecting a searchlight over any suspicious movements. A virtual view of the home is rendered in 3D and updated in real time, just like a Tesla’s digital display. And private security agents monitor alerts from a central hub.
By incorporating technology developed for autonomous vehicles, robotics and border security, Sauron has built a supercharged burglar alarm, Hartz argued.
The concept has resonated in Bay Area tech circles, where crime in San Francisco is a constant subject on tech podcasts, social media and executive group chats. While statistics from the San Francisco Police Department from October show that property crime and car theft has dropped in 2024 and that the homicide rate sits at a five-year low, the data has done little to appease the public’s fears.
Last month, San Francisco elected a mayor who ran on a platform of enhancing public safety and passed a proposition allowing the police more leeway to surveil residents. Around the country, voters have responded to similar perceptions of danger by rolling back police reforms instituted during the George Floyd protests.
. . . . This is the vision of home security pitched by Sauron, a Silicon Valley start-up boasting a waiting list of tech CEOs and venture capitalists.
Co-founder Kevin Hartz, a tech entrepreneur and former partner at Peter Thiel’s venture firm Founders Fund, named the company after the villain in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” a disembodied evil spirit depicted as a fiery, all-seeing eye in the sky. . . .
President-elect Donald J. Trump will nominate Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who led two private missions to orbit on SpaceX rockets, as the next NASA administrator.
Mr. Isaacman, the chief executive of the payment processing company Shift4 Payments, is a close associate of Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, and, if confirmed to the post by the Senate, would bring the perspective of an outsider to the space agency and its $25 billion budget. . . .
Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a former C.I.A. officer who is married to the son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., raised alarms for publishing a book about her work at the agency without going through a review process.
President-elect Donald J. Trump is considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter-in-law to serve as the deputy director at the C.I.A., according to four people briefed on the matter.
Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, 44, a former C.I.A. officer who is married to Mr. Kennedy’s son, met with Mr. Trump last week to discuss the job, the people said. The position does not require Senate confirmation, unlike the director job.
Mr. Kennedy, who is the president-elect’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is among those encouraging Mr. Trump to hire her, according to two people close to the Trump transition team. Like others interviewed for this article, they spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
In an interview in 2023, Mr. Kennedy said it was “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the C.I.A. was involved in the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963.
Ms. Fox Kennedy, who served as her father-in-law’s campaign manager, has raised alarms within the agency and among some lawmakers, in part because she published a book about her time in the C.I.A. in 2019 — while Mr. Trump was president — without going through the lengthy government review process required to check that classified information is not made public.
Some former officials questioned details in the book about Ms. Fox Kennedy’s meetings in Pakistan with Islamic extremists.
Another book, written by the former administration official John R. Bolton, was also published without a sign-off, and the Trump administration tried to seize his book advance.
The discussions about Ms. Fox Kennedy being considered for the C.I.A. role were reported earlier by Axios.
The Washington Post reported earlier this year that Ms. Fox Kennedy had been critical of Mr. Trump’s ability to manage the nuclear arsenal, as well as President Biden’s ability to perform the job at his age, in an email to Democrats. She later played a key role in negotiating Mr. Kennedy’s endorsement of Mr. Trump.
Editors’ Picks
Ms. Fox Kennedy has said she worked for the C.I.A. from 2002 to 2010, at one point posing as an art dealer in a foreign country under “unofficial cover,” meaning she did not have diplomatic immunity.
She has made comments on foreign policy that are at odds with how Republicans, including Mr. Trump, have approached adversaries in the Middle East. In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2016, she seemed to suggest that a problem in U.S. national security policy was that government leaders had not spent enough time listening to America’s enemies, including organizations that have sponsored terrorism, although agreement with them isn’t required.
“I think the question we need to be asking as Americans examining our foreign policy is whether we’re pouring kerosene on a candle,” she said, suggesting that the idea is to go beyond caricatures and more fully understand what motivates them. “The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them.”
The interview was given at a time when President Barack Obama had broadened the drone program he had relied on for counterterrorism operations, which led to large numbers of civilian deaths. She is critical of the agency’s post‑9/11 emphasis on counterterrorism and asymmetrical warfare more generally and wants to see a rebuilding of human intelligence gathering capacity in rival powers like China, Russia and Iran, according to a person with knowledge of her thinking.
Ms. Fox Kennedy is liked by a number of people in Mr. Trump’s orbit, and she is close with Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s choice to serve as director of national intelligence. She has been discussed for other jobs in the administration, including an ambassadorship, but she has wanted a role at the C.I.A. for some time, according to one of the people briefed on the matter.
Ms. Fox Kennedy is expected to meet with John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s choice for C.I.A. director, this week.
Through a spokeswoman, both Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Fox Kennedy declined to comment. Through an aide, Mr. Ratcliffe declined to comment.
Karoline Leavitt, the incoming White House press secretary, declined to address questions about Ms. Fox and the C.I.A. role, saying only that Mr. Trump is choosing “the best and the brightest individuals” and will announce appointments when they’re ready.
It is not clear how serious Mr. Trump is about choosing her for the role. While some deputy directors are chosen by the head of the C.I.A., others are tapped by the president. David Cohen, the current deputy director, was the suggestion of the White House and then endorsed by William J. Burns, who took the top job.
Ms. Fox Kennedy’s ties to Ms. Gabbard will put someone trusted by an outspoken critic of the U.S. intelligence community and military in a pivotal position at the C.I.A. In late October, Ms. Fox Kennedy wrote on social media that she had known Ms. Gabbard for roughly a decade.
“Donald Trump has surrounded himself with the precious few American leaders who still speak the truth at great personal cost,” she wrote, counting Ms. Gabbard among them.
John Maguire, a former C.I.A. officer who became known for catching a spy named Harold “Jim” Nicholson, spoke in favor of Ms. Fox Kennedy.
“She’s infinitely qualified for the job,” he said. “She’s a very talented woman.”
It was not the first online intervention by Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and adviser to Donald Trump, on behalf of once-fringe anti-immigrant parties in Europe.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, on Friday endorsed Germany’s far-right party, a group with ties to neo-Nazis whose youth wing has been classified as “confirmed extremist” by German domestic intelligence.
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Mr. Musk posted to X, referring to the anti-immigrant party, the Alternative for Germany, by its German initials.
In doing so, he is wading into German politics at a moment of acute turmoil, and at the very same time that he has wielded his influence in Washington to help blow up a bipartisan spending deal that was meant to avoid a government shutdown over Christmas. The German government recently collapsed, resulting in early elections, which are planned for next year. . . .
. . . . News that members of the AfD attended a secret meeting with the Austrian extreme-right provocateur Martin Sellner, who has admitted to once being a member of a neo-Nazi group and has called for deporting migrants en masse, led to large protests early this year. Then, starting in May, a leading light of the party was twice given a hefty fine for using Nazi-era slogans during campaign stops. . . .
. . . . Last month in the eastern state of Saxony, police arrested eight people suspected of being members of what they called a right-wing extremist terrorist organization, which they said had been plotting to overthrow the government. Three of the eight were AfD members; one was an elected local official. . . .
. . . . It also echoed in Washington, where Democrats and even a few Republicans raised alarms, pointing out Mr. Musk’s heavy influence on Mr. Trump.
“Literally is a neo-Nazi party. Not even joking,” Adam Kinzinger, a Republican former congressman from Illinois and longtime critic of Mr. Trump, posted on X.
Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview with CNN, ”This is not normal.” He added, “What Elon Musk thinks tends to eventually be what the president of the United States thinks. And if the United States takes an official position in favor of neo-Nazis in Germany, I mean, it is absolutely catastrophic.”. . . .
7b. Insane Anti-Muslim Jihadist Terrorizes Christmas Market; Moon of Alabama.org; 12/2024.
Yesterday Elon Musk lauded the German right wing (but in my opinion not radical) AfD party as the only one “that can save Germany”.
A few hours later a Saudi man, living in Germany, drove a car into a crowd attending a Christmas market in Magdeburg:
Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and wounding at least 200 others.
Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.
The state governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose to five from a previous figure of two and that more than 200 people in total were injured.
Before details were known followers of the AfD and other famous anti-immigration politicians, jumped onto the case with tirades against Muslims and immigrants.
Unfortunately for them the facts of the case were not in their favor.
The culprit is neither an Islamist, nor an illegal immigrant or asylum seeker. He in fact is a supporter of the AfD’s and Elon Musk’s opinions.
Dr. Taleb Al Abdulmohsen, a Saudi citizen of Shia heritage, had come to Germany eighteen years ago to learn his medical specialty, psychiatry. He had stayed in Germany and worked at a local mental hospital.
Over time he had disavowed Islam. A few years ago he had launched a web forum, WeAreSaudis.net, which helped people from Islamic countries, who were allegedly endangered for repudiating their faith, to find asylum:
Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.
He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The man was well know. The BBC as well as the German broadsheet FAZ had interviewed him.
In a very long Twitter thread, written in Arabic on August 20 2024 and pinned to his account, Talib Al Abdulmohsen describes his years-long fight with other atheist activists in Germany who were also trying to arrange refuge for Saudi asylum seekers.
He alleged that some of them were actively preying on female Saudi asylum seekers who were living with them. He went to the police and filed complains with several prosecutors to get the German state to act against those he accused.
He however did not present evidence to support his claims. Asked by the police the female Saudi asylum seekers rejected to file claims.
A civil suit for defamation launched by the other activists against him was successful.
Some three years ago Taleb Al Abdulmohsen began to show signs of persecution mania. He claimed that letters from a prosecutor had vanished from his mail box. Two lawyers he had hired soon rejected to work on his cases. He started to accuse the German and Saudi government of working against him.
In mid 2023 there were first signs and warnings that he might go berserk.
He again and again filed his ‘evidence’ against other atheist activists to which the prosecution did not react with the urgency he had thought was required. (machine translation):
Do you know where the biggest contradiction is? If a Saudi citizen blows up a German embassy or randomly slaughters German citizens, they call him a terrorist. But when a Saudi citizen uses all peaceful means to protect himself and Saudi citizens, you find the police and the prosecution trampling on the law as if there is no law in the first place!
His outrage got ever stranger (machine translation):
This is a picture of a letter written by the Public Prosecutor the next day, in which he says, “Yesterday they brought me the file because the whistleblower (Talib Al-Abdul Mohsen) is at the service center.” Then he briefly recounts what happened between me and him, and then asks the police to investigate the matter through the file and even through social media.
But the police refused to investigate the matter!!!
After that, the prosecutor suspended the investigation again!!
What is this farce?!
If they act like this, why is it that when a Saudi citizen blows up a German embassy or randomly slaughters German citizens, they call him a terrorist??? What is the alternative to bombing and slaughtering when seeking justice in Germany? Where is the peaceful alternative?
I need to know the peaceful alternative, please tell me about it.
Taleb Al Abdulmohsen could not grasp that he simply had no legal case to make. His mind wandered off into conspiracy theories:
British Pakistani Index @PakistaniIndex — 22:29 UTC · Dec 21, 2024
(2/2) ⬆️ A video interview featuring Dr. Taleb Al Abdulmohsen, the suspect in the Magdeburg Christmas market attack, has surfaced, sparking further questions about his motives.
In the 45-minute video, published eight days before the attack on the US-based Islamophobic blog RAIR Foundation, founded by Amy Mek, Dr. Taleb claimed that the German government was conducting a “covert secret operation” to “hunt down Saudi ex-Muslims and destroy their lives” globally. He also alleged that Syrian jihadists were being granted asylum in Germany.
...The not so peaceful alternative Taleb Al Abdulmohsen found for himself was to imitate ISIS Jihadis and to drive a car into a crowd at a Christmas market .
His rants, filings and acts do not support the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant claims Elon Musk, the AfD and other such types have made.
Talib Al-Abdul Mohsen has in fact long supported them:
Taleb Al Abdulmohsen @DrTalebJawad — 13:40 UTC · Jun 18, 2016
Ich und AfD bekämpfen den gleichen Feind um Deutschland zu schützen.
I and AfD are fighting the same enemy to protect Germany.The anti-Muslim, pro Israel ‘activist’ committed a terrorist act in Europe because, he alleged, the ‘left’ wants to ‘destroy Europe with Islam’.
There are of course a lot of political points one could make about this case.
But to me this simply looks like a sad story of someone who’s mind got seriously dislocated when he moved from the strictures of his own society into a more liberal one he was unable to really understand.
Alan MacLeod on the “Crucial Communism Teaching Act,” which is now being read in the U.S. Senate, where it is all but certain to pass.
Congress has just passed a bill that will see the U.S. spend huge sums of money redesigning much of the public school system around the ideology of anti-communism.
The “Crucial Communism Teaching Act” is now being read in the Senate, where it is all but certain to pass. The move comes amid growing public anger at the economic system and increased public support for socialism.
The Crucial Communism Teaching Act, in its own words, is designed to teach children that
“certain political ideologies, including communism and totalitarianism … conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy that are essential to the founding of the United States.”
Although sponsored by Republicans, it enjoys widespread support from Democrats and is focused on China, Venezuela, Cuba and other targets of U.S. empire. The wording of the bill has many worried that this will be a centerpiece of a new era of anti-communist hysteria, similar to previous McCarthyist periods.
The curriculum will be designed by the controversial Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and will ensure all American high school students “understand the dangers of communism and similar political ideologies” and “learn that communism has led to the deaths of over 100,000,000 victims worldwide.” It will also develop a series titled “Portraits in Patriotism,” that will expose students to individuals who are “victims of the political ideologies” in question.
A Discredited Book
The 100 million figure originates with the notorious pseudoscience text, The Black Book of Communism. A collection of political essays, the book’s central claim is that 100 million people have perished as a result of the communist ideology.
However, even many of its contributors and co-writers have distanced themselves from it, claiming that the lead author was “obsessed” with reaching the 100 million figure, to the point that he simply conjured millions of deaths from nowhere.
Its methodology was also universally panned, with many pointing out that the tens of millions of Soviet and Nazi losses during World War II were attributed to communist ideology. This means that both Adolf Hitler himself and many of his victims are counted towards the vastly overinflated figure.
The book was condemned by Holocaust remembrance groups as whitewashing and even lionizing genocidal fascist groups as anti-communist heroes.
The principal organization promoting the 100 million figure today is the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which has shown a similar level of both anti-communist devotion and methodological rigor.
The group, set up by the U.S. government in 1993, added all worldwide Covid-19 deaths to the victims of communism list, arguing that the coronavirus was a communist disease because it originated in China.
It is these people who will be designing the new curriculum that will be taught in social studies, government, history, and economics classes across the United States.
China Hawks
One of the central goals of the bill is also to “ensure that high school students in the United States understand that 1,500,000,000 people still suffer under communism.” This is a clear reference to China, a rapidly developing country that, in just two generations, has gone from one of the poorest on Earth to a global superpower, challenging and even surpassing the United States on many quality-of-life indicators.
The bill goes on to detail how the school curriculum will “focus on ongoing human rights abuses by such regimes, such as the treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” by the Chinese “regime” and its “aggression” towards “pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong,” and Taiwan, who it labels “a democratic friend of the United States.”
Furthermore, many of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s “Witness Project” case studies – likely the source for the “Portraits in Patriotism” series – are from China.
This includes Rushan Abbas, the founder and executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs, a pressure group funded by C.I.A. front organization, the National Endowment for Democracy. Abbas was also previously employed as a translator at the notorious Guantánamo Bay torture camp.
The U.S. is currently engaged in a quickly-escalating Cold War against China that includes channeling money and support to separatist movements, including those in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as MintPress News has reported.
In September, the House of Representatives passed a bill that authorized $1.6 billion to be spent on anti-Chinese messaging worldwide.
Latin America: Model & Target
The other major target of the bill will likely be socialist or communist-led governments in Latin America. The act’s sponsor is Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican Congressperson representing Miami.
A part of Florida’s famously conservative Cuban-American community, in 2023, she introduced the FORCE Act, which attempted to block any U.S. president from normalizing relations with Cuba unless its government is overthrown. She has repeatedly condemned President Biden for easing the (illegal) U.S. sanctions on Venezuela.
And in July, she denounced what she described as the “socialist curse in Central America and the Caribbean,” singling out Cuban, Venezuela, Honduras and Nicaragua as countries requiring regime change.
She is, however, an avid supporter of the far-right president of Argentina, Javier Milei, accepting his invitation to attend his inauguration. Argentina, she said,
“is going to set the course and point of reference for the rest of Latin America as to the way that a country should be governed… Free market economy, small government, individual liberties, freedom, private sector, no corruption, that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Perhaps the only foreign country she praises more than Argentina is Israel, whose actions she has supported at every step, even going so far as to denounce what she called the “one-sided pressure for a ceasefire” in Gaza.
Salazar’s bill passed easily, 327–62, with limited opposition from Democrats or Republicans, who voted for and against it in roughly equal measures. Even many members of the Progressive Caucus voted in favor, proving that anti-communism is as popular on the left as it is on the right.
A New McCarthyism?
The imminent passing of the Crucial Communism Teaching Act harkens back to earlier anti-communist periods in American history, namely the Red Scare of the 1910s and the McCarthyist era of the 1940s and 1950s.
During those times, organized labor movements were ruthlessly attacked, workers from all professions, including professors, government officials, and teachers, were fired en masse, and some of America’s brightest minds had their careers derailed due to their political leanings. This included singer Paul Robeson, actors like Charlie Chaplain and Marilyn Monroe, playwright Arthur Miller and scientist Albert Einstein.
The point of these operations was to break any opposition to the power of the state and big business and ensure the United States maintained its capitalist course. Today, however, fewer Americans than ever are happy with the current political and economic system.
1977: Roy Cohn, chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the McCarthy hearings, debates American author Gore Vidal on McCarthyism.
A recent Gallup study found that only 22 percent of the public are satisfied with how things are going, with a majority responding that they are “very dissatisfied.” Living standards have been stagnating or dropping for decades, and alternative economic systems are becoming more desirable.
A 2019 poll from Axios found that 48 percent of adults under 35 prefer socialism to capitalism, including 57 percent of female respondents.
There are some signs that Washington is slowly moving towards a new McCarthyist era. President-elect Donald Trump [whose lawyer in the 1970s and 80s was McCarthy counsel Roy Cohn], for example, has promised to carry out mass deportations of leftists once he becomes president, stating:
“I will order my government to deny entry to all communists and all Marxists. Those who come to join our country must love our country. We don’t want them if they want to destroy our country … So we’re going to be keeping foreign Christian-hating communists, socialists, and Marxists out of America.”
“At the end of the day, either the communists destroy America, or we destroy the communists,” he explained. But he also stated that American citizens espousing anti-capitalist views would be purged. “My question is, what are we going to do with the ones that are already here, that grew up here? I think we have to pass a new law for them,” he said.
That Trump would actually deport millions of American citizens en masse appears like too drastic a step right now, but it is clear that both Democrats and Republicans are serious in their anti-communist convictions. Therefore, the Crucial Communism Teaching Act will likely only be the start of this campaign.
The memorial was supposed to be unveiled in November 2023 but that was put on hold after questions surfaced about many of te names listed.
The Department of Canadian Heritage is being told that more than half of the 550 names on the Memorial to the Victims of Communism should be removed because of potential links to the Nazis or questions about affiliations with fascist groups, according to government records.
As originally planned, there were to be 553 entries on the Ottawa memorial’s Wall of Remembrance.
The department had determined that 50 to 60 of the names or organizations were likely directly linked to the Nazis, according to the documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen through an access to information request.
A 2023 report for Canadian Heritage recommended more than 330 names be excluded to be on the safe side, the records noted. The exclusions were recommended because of the lack of information about the individuals or organizations and whether they might have links to fascist organizations or the Nazis. Some of the entries could also be removed because they have no direct link to Canada.
The memorial, which is located near the corner of Wellington and Bay streets, is supposed to honour those who suffered under communism.
But concerns have been raised over the years by Jewish organizations and historians that names of eastern Europeans who collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust have been put forward in an attempt to whitewash their past.
The memorial was supposed to be unveiled in November 2023 but that was put on hold after members of Parliament honoured Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian soldier with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, a voluntary unit that was under the command of the Nazis. That incident became an international embarrassment for Canada.
Canadian Heritage spokesperson Caroline Czajkowski told the Ottawa Citizen that a new date for the memorial unveiling has not yet been set. Asked whether the more than 330 entries on the Wall of Remembrance will be removed, Czajkowski replied “the review of the commemorative elements is ongoing.”
The main spokesperson for Tribute to Liberty, the organization which advocated for the memorial, did not respond to a request for comment.
Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, a senior director at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said her Holocaust education organization has been raising concerns for years with Canadian Heritage regarding the potential inclusion of Nazi war criminals in the memorial.
“In 2021, we discovered that one particular Nazi leader was being honoured by the Memorial and it took us more than a year of very active advocacy efforts before his name was finally removed,” she said. “We told officials repeatedly that we believed there could be a great number of Nazis being commemorated but sadly this problem did not appear to be a priority for the department.”
Kirzner-Roberts said the recent report commissioned by the department confirmed her organization’s worst fears. “It finds that more half of the individuals commemorated in the memorial may have been Nazis or Nazi collaborators,” she said. “It is totally unacceptable for Nazis and collaborators to be honoured by a Canadian public memorial, especially one meant to recognize victims of state violence and tyranny.”
Federal officials in other departments have continued to warn Canadian Heritage that the inclusion of Nazi collaborators on the memorial will cause international embarrassment.
“It is important to note that many anti-communist and anti-Soviet advocates and fighters were also active Nazi collaborators, who committed documented massacres,” Global Affairs Canada officials warned their counterparts at Canadian Heritage in 2021.
Private donations had already been made to the monument in the names of Nazi collaborators, the CBC reported in July 2021. Those included Roman Shukhevych, a Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator, as well as Ante Pavelić who ran a Nazi puppet regime in Croatia and is considered a chief perpetrator of the Holocaust in the Balkans, the CBC reported.
Canadian Heritage officials were also voicing their own concerns in internal messages.
“It has come to our attention that a number of entries that have been put forward for recognition may have been affiliated in some capacity to fascist and Nazi organizations,” wrote Tristan‑E. Landry, a deputy director at the department. “For example, some of proposed individuals were linked to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its military, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army….and to a lesser extent with Baltic nationalist groups (i.e. members of the Latvian SS).”
Kirzner-Roberts said the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre is urging the federal government to implement new, rigorous vetting procedures so this type of situation does not happen again.
The Memorial to the Victims of Communism has already been the focus of multiple controversies over its exact purpose, location, size and cost over the last 15 years. The price tag for the project has ballooned to an estimated $7.5 million — including $6 million in public funds — from an original budget of $1.5 million that was supposed to be funded entirely through private donations from Tribute to Liberty.
. . . . Under the guise of promoting freedom, organizations like the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations often acted as a vehicle for fascist emigres to regroup and exploit Cold War tensions . . . . in the West to rewrite history in a way that would equate communist atrocities with the Holocaust, Boeckner said.
“They basically brain poisoned an entire generation or two of Canadians into thinking that the Soviets were the bad guys during World War II,” Boeckner told The Intercept. . . .
. . . . ‘Leading expert’ on Xinjiang relies on speculation and one questionable media report . . . .
The second key source for claims that China has detained millions of Uyghur Muslims is Adrian Zenz. He is a senior fellow in China studies at the far-right Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which was established by the US government in 1983.
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is an outgrowth of the National Captive Nations Committee, a group founded by Ukrainian nationalist Lev Dobriansky to lobby against any effort for detente with the Soviet Union. Its co-chairman, Yaroslav Stetsko, was a top leader of the fascist OUN‑B militia that fought alongside Nazi Germany during its occupation of Ukraine in World War Two. Together, the two helped found the World Anti-Communist League that was described by journalist Joe Conason as “the organizational haven for neo-Nazis, fascists, and anti-Semitic extremists from two dozen countries.”
Today, Dobriansky’s daughter, Paula, sits on the board of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. A former Reagan and George HW Bush official and signatory of the original Project for a New American Century document, Paula Dobriansky has become a fixture in neoconservative circles on Capitol Hill.
Akhmad Kurbanov is suspected of murdering Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops of the Russian Armed Forces. He was located and detained shortly after planting the bomb that killed Kirillov and his aide. In the photo above, reportedly lifted from social media by the FSB, Kurbanov is chanting, “I’m number one.” (Okay, that’s a joke.)
Russian authorities made quick work of scouring surveillance video feeds to identify the suspect car and capture Mr. Kurbanov. Within 24 hours, with no signs of torture or duress, Kurbanov was spilling his guts:
“I came to Moscow on instructions from the Ukrainian special services”: interrogation of Igor Kirillov, the head of the RKhBZ troops, and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov, detained for the murder. The citizen of Uzbekistan faces punishment up to life imprisonment, the FSB reported.
“Why did I do this, for what? They offered me 100 thousand dollars and a European passport”
On instructions from the Ukrainian special services, a native of Uzbekistan installed a high-power IED on an electric scooter, which he parked near the entrance to Kirillov’s house. For observation, I rented a car sharing car and installed a Wi-Fi video camera there – the filming was broadcast online to the city of Dnepr. When the officers left the entrance, the contractor remotely activated the IED.
Here is a video of Kurbanov’s confession:
Here is what we do not know: How did the Ukrainian SBU identify and recruit Kurbanov to carry out this attack? I doubt that the SBU advertised it as a job opening on social media. Kurbanov reportedly has ties to an ISIS group based in Uzbekistan. The most likely explanation is that the SBU has regular contact with Uzbekistan militants and consulted with the leaders of Kurbanov’s Islamic group in coming up with a volunteer to carry out the operation, i.e., Mr. Kurbanov and his accomplice.
There are other pertinent questions. Did Kurbanov have prior training in building and planting an improvised explosive device (IED) and wiring it correctly to be remotely detonated? Did Kurbanov build the bomb or was it prepared by someone else and delivered to him? How did Kurbanov verify that the video camera used to transmit images of the entrance to Kirillov’s apartment building was functioning and pointed in the right direction? At a minimum, Kurbanov had to do a communications check with his SBU handlers to ensure all systems were functioning properly prior to the attack. Russia, like the United States, is able to intercept such communications.
I am surprised that someone in Kirillov’s position did not have better security. At a minimum, he should have had security surveillance covering the entry and exit points to his building. That would have alerted authorities when the scooter was parked adjacent to the entry. Even better, a permanent assignment of security guards to patrol outside the building. None of those measures were in place.
Press reports reveal that General Kirillov believed he was a target, not just of Ukraine, but by the West, because of his role in revealing the nefarious work of more than 40 US-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine and his belief that the US used COVID as a biological weapon. In making this charge, he also accused US pharmaceutical companies of being collaborators . . . .
12. “Al Qaeda’s Resurrection” by Bruce Hoffman; Council on Foreign Relations; 3/6/2018.
Next, we excerpt of an article by CFR member Bruce Hoffman. Noting Al Qaeda’s resurgence and Al Qaeda’s emphasis on the Syrian conflict, Hoffman cites the so-called “Arab Spring” as the key event in Al Qaeda’s resurgence. ” . . . . The thousands of hardened al-Qaeda fighters freed from Egyptian prisons in 2012–2013 by President Mohammed Morsi galvanized the movement at a critical moment, when instability reigned and a handful of men well-versed in terrorism and subversion could plunge a country or a region into chaos. Whether in Libya, Turkey, Syria, or Yemen, their arrival was providential in terms of advancing al-Qaeda’s interests or increasing its influence. . . . It was Syria where al-Qaeda’s intervention proved most consequential. One of Zawahiri’s first official acts after succeeding bin Laden as emir was to order a Syrian veteran of the Iraqi insurgency named Abu Mohammad al-Julani to return home and establish the al-Qaeda franchise that would eventually become Jabhat al-Nusra. . . .”
Hoffman notes that Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State were, at one time, part of a unified organization: ” . . . . Al-Qaeda’s chosen instrument was Jabhat al-Nusra, the product of a joint initiative with al-Qaeda’s Iraqi branch, which had rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). But as Nusra grew in both strength and impact, a dispute erupted between ISI and al-Qaeda over control of the group. In a bold power grab, ISI’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the forcible amalgamation of al-Nusra with ISI in a new organization to be called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Julani refused to accede to the unilateral merger and appealed to Zawahiri. The quarrel intensified, and after Zawahiri’s attempts to mediate it collapsed, he expelled ISIS from the al-Qaeda network. . . .”
After today’s events in Syria, US credibility as a major player in the global war on terrorism — Islamic terrorism to be precise — is destroyed. Despite spending ten years on the US list of bad terrorists and earning a $10 million bounty on his head, Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani welcomed a US delegation, led by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, to Damascus.
She was accompanied by former U.S. envoy to Syria Daniel Rubinstein who will stay in Syria as the top U.S. diplomat on the ground.
Leaf greeted Jawlani with the news that the US was lifting the $10 million bounty as long as Jawlani pinky-swore “to not allow terrorist organizations to operate within Syrian territory or pose threats to the US or neighboring countries.”
What a difference two years makes! I guess the following US policy to, “defeat ISIS,” is no longer in effect. . .
The Political Implications of the UFO Phenomenon and the "ET" Myth
The Big Lie has finally been exposed. Hitler wasn’t some sort of far right fascist. No, no. He was virulently left-wing. A communist, in fact! And now the world knows the truth. Thanks to Elon Musk and AfD chief Alice Weidel.
Yes, that was literally the message to the public delivered to a global audience during a live discussion on X.com between Elon Musk and AfD chief Alice Weidel. A very real discussion about how the Nazis were actually a bunch of leftist communists. Coming just weeks after Musk gave his full-throated endorsement of the AfD in Germany’s upcoming elections next month. This wasn’t some random interview. It was an endorsement and a promotion.
Of course, this wasn’t just a promotion of the AfD. It was also a promotion of one of the most insidious and Orwellian memes of our times. A meme that has a lot more than just Weidel and Musk promoting it. This is a good time to recall how now-failed 2024 North Carolina GOP Gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson — notorious for his ‘Some Folks Need Killing’ call for the execution of leftists — made this same ‘Hitler was a leftist’ argument during a speech at the second annual Moms for Liberty summit, which is a reminder that the Christian Nationalist movement behind the Trump administration is keen on promoting the ‘Hitler was a communist’ meme too. This is a very popular idea these days. That’s part of the context here. This isn’t just a Musk/Weidel thing. This is a global far right thing.
But as we’re going to see, there’s another very intriguing angle to this story: in engaging in that interview with Weidel, Musk may have been violating EU law. Specifically, the laws against media platforms giving unfair promotion to one politician or party over another. And it sounds like EU regulators are now actively investigating. With the kind of powers that could make this a very messy, and expensive, investigation if it pans out. Not only is there a team of up to 150 bureaucrats tasked worth enforcing the Digital Services Act (DSA) but there’s also a team of experts at the European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency that can be brought in should an examination of X.com’s internal algorithms be deemed necessary. Algorithms that are presumably systematically promoting far right content at this point based on user experiences. Other DSA powers include discovery powers that could involve examining X.com’s internal communications, such as Slack messages.
Importantly, the DSA team isn’t just potentially investigating whether or not X.com has been unfairly promoting the AfD in Germany’s elections. Any sort of unfair promotion is potentially a grounds for punishment and that includes the promotion of Musk’s own tweets. Which is something he is notorious for doing, algorithmically. And if the DSA deems punishment necessary, that can include fines up to 6 percent of X.com’s global revenues. That’s not chump change.
So what should we expect from this investigatory threat by the EU? That’s unclear at this point, but we can be pretty confident how Musk will response: tasking Donald Trump to serve as Musk’s pit bull and demand the EU back down. Not only would it be unimaginable at this point that Musk won’t be asking Trump to intervene on his behalf, but it’s already started. Except it’s not Musk doing the asking. Mark Zuckerberg is now publicly calling on Donald Trump to protect Silicon Valley from EU regulations and fines. That was Zuckerberg’s message to Trump during a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, along with the a general message of how excited Zuckerberg is to see someone with Trump’s masculine energy leading the country.
Zuckerberg’s self-debasement also come less than two months after Meta was slapped with an $841 million EU fine over abusive marketplace practices. The latest in a series of large fines levied against not just Meta but a number of other Silicon Valley giants. Which is why it’s important to keep in mind that Zuckerberg’s public fealty gestures to Trump weren’t just done on his own behalf. He was squirming on behalf of the Tech Industrial Complex.
That’s all part of the gross context of Elon Musk’s decision to promote the ‘Hitler was a communist’ meme in an interview designed to throw the upcoming German elections in favor of the AfD. It wasn’t a move intended to install a far right government in Germany. It’s also part of a larger movement to use the return of an overtly fascist administration in the US to extend oligarchic power as much as possible. The second Gilded Age will be a tech oligarch-owned and operated Golden Age. If Germany’s electorate doesn’t choose a far right government on board with the tech oligarchic agenda, Trump the Mad Man will bully them into it. It’s a global power play and, at this point, the tech oligarchs have the momentum. So much momentum they are apparently feeling ready to go with the ‘actually, Hitler was a communist’ meme. Which is kind of power play one should expect shortly before the ‘actually, we’re Nazis and it’s too late for you rubes’ end game move:
“But one claim in particular, about the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), or Nazis, and World War II, was particularly off: Weidel said Adolf Hitler was not “right-wing,” but a “communist.” This historical revisionism, an attempt to retell the history of National Socialism, is not new. As nationalists rise in international politics, it is frequently being repeated.”
Hitler was actually a left-wing communist. If only the world understood. That was the gist of the conversation between Elon Musk and AfD head Alice Weidel, hosted on Musk’s X.com platform, ensuring a massive global audience for a meme that has been aggressively promoted in recent years:
As historian Thomas Weber points out, it’s not that the Nazis didn’t utilize the word “socialism”. There was even a more explicitly socialist wing of the party led by Gregor Strasser. A wing that happened to be mass murdered in June of 1934, a reference to the Night of the Long Knives. So, sure, there was a more socialist-leaning wing of the Nazi party. It just happened to be the wing that was mass murdered by Hitler’s unambiguously fascist wing. And yet, as Weber notes, Hitler still viewed himself as a kind of ‘socialist’. A fascist far right conception of ‘socialism’ that isn’t remotely close to the traditional definitions of socialism. In other words, a fascist word game is what comprises the kernel of truth underlying the claims that Hitler was a communist:
What kind of impact will Musk’s disturbingly cozy interview and full-throated endorsement of the AfD have on Germany’s elections? Time will tell. Soon too, with Germany’s elections set for February 23, less than 5 weeks away. And as the following article describes, the groups trying to answer that question include the EU regulators tasked with ensuring media outlets operating in the EU are treating politicians fairly, and not giving one party an unfair boost over others. And this team of EU Digital Services Act enforcers aren’t just tasked with answering that question. They also have the power to issue fines up to 6 percent of global annual revenues. But perhaps even scarier, from Musk’s perspective, is that this group of regulators has discovery power that gives them access to X.com’s internal memos and even the algorithms driving X.com’s behavior. Which makes this the kind of investigation that could expose the pro-fascist secret sauce that has been guiding Twitter ever since it became X.com:
“A team of up to 150 European Commission officials in Brussels and Seville will help scrutinize whether Musk’s social media site plays by the European Union’s tech rules. They wield far-reaching investigative powers that allow them to visit X’s offices and request access to its algorithm and internal correspondence.”
Far-reaching investigative powers that include gaining access to not just internal correspondences but even X’s algorithms. This isn’t a low stakes threat. A probe like that might start off investigating wither or not X.com was giving an unfair advantage to the AfD, but who knows what else they could end up discovering:
And note how this isn’t just an investigation into whether or not X.com was giving the AfD an unfair boost. The boosting of Elon Musk’s own speech on the platform — which he is most assuredly doing — is also a potential grounds for fines under EU law. It’s the kind of regulatory oversight that is bound to trigger Musk’s ire, in part because the evidence will likely be overwhelming and probably found in the company’s own Slack messages:
And as the article reminds us, the potential investigation into X.com’s boosting of the AfD would be on top of an landmark case against X.com already underway, with fines that could go as high as 6 percent of global yearly revenue. These are regulations with teeth:
It’s hard to imagine Musk is just going to accept an EU investigation with all of these potential ramifications. And yet, it’s not clear what Musk on his own can do other than threatening to pull out of the EU market. Other than running to Donald Trump for protection. Which is exactly what appears to be happening. Except it’s not Musk asking for this favor. As we can see, cajoling Donald Trump into behaving Silicon Valley’s pit-bull is turning into a group effort, with Mark Zuckerberg serving as groveler-in-chief:
“Zuckerberg’s appearance on Rogan’s podcast comes just days after he announced that Meta will end its third-party fact-checking program and move to a so-called community notes model. The move has been widely interpreted as an attempt by Zuckerberg to ingratiate himself with the incoming Trump administration, which has long denounced the moderation policy as censorship with a left-wing bias.”
As we can see, the groveling is in full swing. Zuckerberg has a clear strategy for dodging EU fines and regulations: befriend Trump and have him bully the EU into dropping the rules. Or at least dropping the rules when it comes to US tech firms.
It’s not particularly surprising to see Zuckerberg publicly prostrate himself like this. As the following Reuters piece from back in November notes, Meta was just fined nearly $841 million by the EU for abusive marketplace practices and that’s just the latest in a series of significant fines levied against not just Meta for a range of Silicon Valley giants, including Apple and Google. Which is a reminder that Zuckerberg wasn’t just prostrating himself for his own sake. He was doing it on behalf of the Tech Industrial Complex:
“It’s the first time the EU has imposed a fine on the social media giant for breaches of the bloc’s competition law. Brussels has already slapped Big Tech rivals Google and Apple with billions in antitrust penalties.”
It’s a first for the EU. Will it be the last? That’s for Trump to decide. At least that’s the paradigm we appear to have entered. The US bullying other countries isn’t a new thing. But it’s not usually this explicit. Trump’s sovereignty knows no bounds. The bully-in-chief on the world’s playground.
Or at least that’s the plan for the second Trump administration. Trump’s plan. But also, obviously, the tech oligarchy’s plan. And when it all happens to end in some sort of global disaster, they can just eventually explain to everyone how Trump was actually a communist.
No one said the Project 2025 purge was going to be pretty. Or polite. Or constitutional. And as we’re all learning, just because something isn’t constitutional doesn’t mean it can’t happen. And it’s happening. It’s unconstitutionally executive order after another. A “a blitzkrieg on the law and the constitution,” as Laurence Tribe put it. And very much in keeping with the Republican Party’s decades long quest to establish the Unitary Executive.
But the unconstitutionality of this moment isn’t limited to President Trump’s litany of executive orders. Orders which were largely prepared well in advance from the Project 2025 playbook. There’s also the increasingly unconstitutional behavior of the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE), which has been effectively operating like the Project 2025 technology arm and engaging in what amounts to a kind of ‘hack’ of the US government’s technical infrastructure. The random people — largely young men — tapped by Elon Musk to carry out his ‘DOGE’ activities now have more power than almost anyone in the US. And no one understands what their plans are and what limits there are on their activities. We really are in uncharted territory here.
Not entirely uncharted territory, of course. The US’s has arguably had an out-of-control national security state effectively covertly running many aspects of the country since at least November 22, 1963. But this really is new in terms of how out in the open it all is. Made all the weirder by the absurdist ‘anti-Deep State’ MAGA narrative underpinning the whole thing.
And that brings us to one of the more remarkable actions in these opening Project 2025 salvos: the unilateral decision by the Trump administration to dissolve U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and have the State Department subsume its operations. A decision that involved sending Elon Musk and his team of hackers to the USAID headquarters that resulted in a showdown between the ‘DOGE’ team and USAID’s security officers. A shutdown won DOGE team and resulting in the firing of USAID’s security officers, along with the resignation of USAID’s recently appointed new chief. And, in turn, the DOGE team was granted to the entirety of the USAID headquarters including the ‘sensitive compartmented information facility’ aka the SCIF.
Now, it’s not hard to imagine a US agency tasked with global charitable work would have the need for all sorts of sensitive documents that could end up in a SCIF. But, of course, USAID isn’t just a charitable organization. It’s also a known front for all sorts of US intelligence work, with makes the granting of this SCIF access to Musk’s team of DOGE hackers all the more remarkable. What kinds of national security secrets did the DOGE team just access? And what are they doing with that information?
So is Musk framing the dissolution of USAID as part of the ‘war on the Deep State’? Well, sort of. But it’s really being frame more as the more on ‘DEI’, with Musk and Trump both characterizing the agency as being run by a bunch of ‘radical Marxists’. It’s the kind of framing consistent with the absurdist far right narrative about the ‘Deep State’ somehow being a left-wing entity. Sort of like Musk’s recent boosting of the far right meme that Hitler was actually a communist. This is a good time to recall how the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation received millions of dollars in grants from US government agencies, including USAID. It’s hard to get more anti-communist than the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
But there’s another very interesting area of USAID’s history that Musk has explicitly cited as an example of the agency’s ill intent: USAID’s funding of the EcoHealth Alliance’s gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. Now, on the one hand, that’s an accusation based on very real history. But on the other hand, it’s the kind of history that Musk, and especially Trump, may not want to talk about. At least not accurately. After all, the US’s moratorium on gain-of-function research was lifted in December of 2017, during Trump’s first term. And as we’ve also seen, while that moratorium was lifted in December of 2017, it appears the EcoHealth Alliance was allowed to fund the research in Wuhan while the moratorium was in place. The Trump administration extended the EcoHealth Alliance’s contract for another five years in 2019 before terminating it in April of 2020. And while the narrative conservative push about the EcoHealth Alliance’s alleged role in the COVID pandemic is almost uniformly focused on the funding of the Chinese lab in Wuhan, the much larger story also involves extensive parallel research conducted inside in United States. Any honest investigation of the lab origins of the pandemic would have to include that domestic research. Much of which, again, happened during Trump’s first term. Are the ‘DOGE’ hackers going to be investigating that history with their unprecedented access to these agency records? Of course not.
And then there’s another major are of USAID’s focus in recent years: Ukraine. As we’re going to see, USAID alone had donated roughly $46 billion in aid to Ukraine since 2022 alone. What kind of covert intelligence programs might there be hiding in that $46 billion in aid? How about covert support for Ukraine’s many Nazi-affiliated organizations like Azov of Right Sector? How will DOGE’s mass audit of USAID handle those kinds of revelations. The Ukrainian Nazis’ ideology of a global white supremacist struggle is very much align with Musk’s worldview at this point, after all. And let’s not forget about the Russian allegations of Pentagon-funded Ukrainian biolabs where migratory birds were being weaponized to spread diseases in a targeted manner. Is the DOGE team planning on revealing those kinds of programs too?
That’s all part of the grim context of this decision to send a team of DOGE hackers into the USAID’s headquarters to grant them access to virtually all of the agency’s most secure documents. There is undoubtedly A LOT hiding under that rock. USAID really is a covert intelligence front. But, contrary to the ‘radical Marxist’ narrative that has captures MAGA’s imagination when it comes to the US national security state, the scandals hiding under that rock are almost certainly right-wing in nature, whether they were approved by a Democratic or Republican administration. The underlying agenda of US’s national security state is very much a conservative agenda that is extremely aligned with the Trump/Musk far right ideology, after all. Which is also a reminder that this push to ‘expose the Deep State’ also serves as a wonderful excuse to purge the US government’s of the records of the egregious crimes committed under the first Trump administration and all the yet-to-be-exposed crimes from decades past. Along with an excuse to put the Unitary Executive in place and finally do away with constitutional checks and balances:
“Established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, USAID oversees a vast portfolio of programs designed to provide humanitarian relief, combat poverty, support global health and more. In 2023, it managed appropriations worth $40 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service. USAID is present in more than 100 countries from Ukraine to Peru. The agency’s staff numbers more than 10,000, the majority of whom are overseas.”
Can President Trump just unilaterally shutdown a congressionally authorized agency with a $40 billion budget? That’s part of what we’re going to find out. But this isn’t just a story about a possible illegal move the shut down USAID. It’s also about the aggressive push by Elon Musk’s DOGE team to gain access to restricted systems at the agency, resulting in the removal of USAID’s top two security officials. There was a showdown over access to those secure systems, and the DOGE team won. And the overarching justification for all of these moves appears to be the assertion that USAID is run by a bunch of ‘radical lunatics’ and ‘radical-left marxists who hate America.’ It’s quite a framing for this shutdown. Especially since USAID actually funds the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. It’s the kind of framing that, if successful, can presumably be applied to virtually any other government agency. The long-feared Project 2025 ideological purge isn’t just purging individuals. It’s purging entire agencies, under the premise that these agencies are nests of ‘radical-left marxists who hate America’:
And note that it wasn’t just the top security officials at USAID who were fired. The political appointee, who was just nominated by Trump days ago, resigned too. But in the end, the DOGE employees gained access to all the systems they demanded, including the contents of USAID’s SCIF. Interestingly, it looks like those top USAID security officials were let go the day after the DOGE employees were given access to the SCIF. It’s that kind of purge:
And as we can see, when Republican representative Brian Mast was asked whether or not it would be legal for the Trump administration to unilaterally shutdown a congressionally authorized agency, he dodged the question. It’s a clue as to how this power grab is going to play out. The congressional majority looks like to just go along with these moves. Keep in mind that, with majorities in both chambers of Congress, it’s not like the Trump administration couldn’t shut down USAID legally. The majority votes would probably be there. But that’s not the path they are choosing. Which is also a reminder that this move is very much in keeping with the GOP’s decades-old desire to establish the Unitary Executive. A king-like executive office that doesn’t need to deal with pesky constraints like checks and balances and who can simply anoint figures like Elon Musk with near complete power over government functions:
And as the article notes, the sensitive programs those DOGE employees gained access to include programs in Ukraine. As we’re going to see, Ukraine is has been far and away the largest recipient of USAID funding in recent years:
So how much has USAID given to Ukraine? Well, as the following Forbes piece describes, USAID has actually given $46 billion in aid to Ukraine since the start of the war in 2022 alone. It’s going to be interesting to see what this alleged USAID ‘Deep State’ audit reveals when it comes to all that billions in aid. Especially when it comes to aid knowingly going to far right groups like Azov or Right Sector. Groups very much aligned with Musk’s emerging globalist white supremacist worldview. All allegedly being orchestrated by ‘radical Marxists’ running the agency, we are assured.
But there’s another area of Musk’s ire against USAID that should be extremely interesting to see play out: his accusations about USAID’s role in financing the EcoHealth Alliance’s gain-of-function research. How will Musk’s team handle a topic that largely played out during Trump’s first term. After all, it was December of 2017 when the US lifted its gain-of-function research moratorium. Which, again, is a reminder that this massive purge doubles as an excuse to purge the government of all the evidence of wrongdoing left behind from the first administration:
“Trump officials and Musk’s concerns about USAID are primarily based on partisan concerns, rather than any actual wrongdoing by the agency. The Office of the Inspector General that oversees USAID has said in recent reports the agency does have some room for improvement, citing issues with ensuring the United Nations and other organizations inform USAID of any misconduct within the groups its funding, failures by the UN and other groups to provide the inspector general’s office with information to help its investigations, and jurisdiction issues making it hard for USAID to sue any foreign organizations that misuse its funds. The inspector general also argued USAID needs a better system to identify whether the groups it’s funding have any ties to terrorist groups or “corrupt actors,” after House Republicans expressed concern in 2023 that the agency’s humanitarian aid being sent to Gaza could be sent to groups with ties to Hamas.”
Yeah, as we can see from the litany of complaints about USAID, the primary ‘evil’ the agency is accused of by the MAGA movement appears to be too much ‘wokeness’ and a general sense that the agency is run by a bunch of ‘radical Marxists’. In other words, it’s a narrative that serves as an extension of Project 2025 and the planned mass bureaucratic purge. It’s just, in this case, the purge involves shuttering an entire independent agency:
But, of course, with USAID long serving as both a kind of US charity but also a US intelligence front, those accusations against USAID about ‘radical Marxism’ also serve to frame all of the various questionable ‘Deep State’ actions of the agency as somehow being in the service of a ‘radical Marxist’ agenda, in keeping with the larger delusional MAGA narrative about the ‘Deep State’ somehow being leftist in orientation. And that brings us to the very real accusations around USAID’s role in the funding of the EcoHealth Alliance and the key role EcoHealth Alliance played in the funding of gain-of-function research around coronaviruses in the lead up to the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, as we’ve seen, the US’s gain-of-function moratorium put in place during Barack Obama’s second term was actually lifted in 2017 under the first Trump administration. And as we’ve also seen, while that moratorium was lifted in December of 2017, it appears the EcoHealth alliance was allowed to fund the research in Wuhan while the moratorium was in place. The Trump administration extended the EcoHealth Alliance’s contract for another five years in 2019 before terminating it in April of 2020 And that’s just one example of the very real and very scandalous behavior of the EcoHealth Alliance in relation to the COVID pandemic. Scandalous behavior that has yet to be really meaningfully understood by the world and that mostly took place under Trump’s first term. So when we see Musk making hay of USAID’s role in the financing of the EcoHealth Alliance’s gain-of-function research, keep in mind how there is still much about that chapter of history that we have yet to learn. And destroying USAID would probably be a great way to ensure we never learn it:
Similarly, with USAID playing a massive role in the US’s overall aide package to Ukraine — $46 billion since February 2022 — there is no doubt a larger number of intelligence-related covert activities involved in that massive flow of aid. Including, potentially, the Russian claims of Pentagon-funded Ukrainian biolabs exploring the use of migratory birds for the targeted dissemination of diseases on enemy countries. It’s going to be very interesting to see what, if anything, we hear from the Trump/Musk administration about claims like that now that they’ve made the ‘exposure of the Deep State’ an apparent core tenet of the second Trump term and are carrying out some sort of mass government audit of everything. Again, let’s not forget that many of these programs would have started during the first Trump term:
And, of course, there’s the reality that this unilateral dissolution of USAID and merger into the State Department doesn’t appear to actually be constitutional. And yet it’s happening. Unitary Executive here we come:
So is USAID just going to be unilaterally dissolved and merged into the State Department without any congressional pushback or approval? Yeah, it appears so. Or at least that’s the declared plan. With no plans declared yet to stop it:
“Mr. Trump made Secretary of State Marco Rubio the acting administrator of USAID, sources said, and Rubio himself soon confirmed it to reporters traveling with him in El Salvador. ABC News earlier reported his status as chief. Rubio said in a letter to congressional leaders that he has authorized Peter Marocco, director of foreign assistance at State, to perform the duties of deputy administrator of USAID and to begin a “review and potential reorganization of USAID’s activities to maximize efficiency and align operations.””
Yes, the State Department is fully on board with the order to just subsume USAID, with Peter Marocco getting assigned to take over the agency’s operations under the State Department. Marocco, unsurprisingly, has already been identified as one of the individuals who stormed the US Capitol on January 6. Very on brand. And it’s happening. Just because it’s unconstitutional doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It’s not the first time Americans get to learn this lesson. We’ll see how well it gels after four years of learning it non-stop. Because that’s what the emerging Unitary Executive presidency is going to be: one long constitutional crisis. The kind of crisis where recent appointees, like Trump’s newly appointed USAID chief Matt Hopson, end up in the kind of situation where they have to either accept the unconstitutional upheaval of the agencies they were tasked with managing. Or resign, like Hopson did after refusing the Musk-led collapse of his agency:
It’s all quite the show of power. Extra-constitutional power. And, so far, they’re getting away with it. Which is a reminder that the Unitary Executive was unlikely to ever by formally declared. It’s more of a de facto thing, made de facto one successful power grab at a time.
It’s not an unconstitutional power grab. That’s the assurance we keep hearing in the face of what sure looks like an unconstitutional power grab, with one federal agency after another facing some form of existential threat under the growing power of an executive branch that has fully embraced a strategy of implementing Project 2025 through the manifestation of Karl Rove’s Unitary Executive Theory, carried out under the guise the guise of ‘DOGE audits’. Teams loyal to Elon Musk are being sent into federal agencies with ambiguous claims of complete authority to carry out whatever agenda they choose. And, at this point, it’s an agenda that has mostly succeeded. USAID is apparently gone now, without congressional input. But USAID’s demise is just prelude to a much larger target that is already succumbing to a DOGE takeover: The US Treasury.
Yes, the US Treasury Department has been ransacked, digitally speaking, with teams of DOGE employees being granted unprecedented access to some of the most sensitive systems in the US government tasked with handing trillions of dollars in payments annually. Unprecedented access that, as we’ll see, not only includes the ability to read sensitives information about hundreds of millions of US residents but modify the source code that handles those payments. In effect, these DOGE teams were granted the power to unilaterally cut off access to federal funds to not just agencies but individuals of their choice. In other words, the takeover at the Treasury is putting in place the ability to execute the unconstitutional “impoundment” strategy the Project 2025 planners have long been discussing and that would further cement Trump’s Unitary Executive status. It’s happening.
So has there been any institutional pushback to this power grab? Sure. With mixed success. On the one hand, the career civil servant who was a top official at the Treasury and who refused to grant the DOGE team access to the Treasury’s systems ultimately ended up being put on leave and suddenly retiring following a standoff. And the DOGE got its unprecedented access to not just modify those payment systems but do so in secret without the Treasury’s staff being aware of what they were changing. Possibly irreversible changes. And according to anonymous sources, extensive changes have already been made. Changed made by a team of DOGE staffer that includes as 19 year old high school graduate and a series of early 20-somethings whose salient work experience appears to be past jobs or internships at companies own by Musk or Peter Thiel.
The DOGE employee who has reportedly made those extensive changes has run into a bit of trouble himself already. But just a bit. That employee, 25 year old Marko Elez, turns out to have a history of proudly racist social media posts. With the most recent racist posts from just back in September, less than 6 months ago. Posts like “I was racist before it was cool” and “Normalize Indian hate!”. Elez resigned from DOGE following reporting by the Wall Street Journal on Elez’s history.
So is a history of racist posts now a point too far for the new Trump administration? Of course now. Following Elez’s resignation, Vice President JD Vance posted on social media his view that Elez shouldn’t be punished for his past transgressions because that would just reward journalists who want to destroy people. Instead, Elez should be forgiven and reinstated in his DOGE position. Keep in mind Vance has an Indian American wife and half-Indian children. But he was very keen on forgiving the “Normalize Indian hate” guy. That sure is some remarkable forgiveness in JD Vance’s heart. The kind of forgiveness he doesn’t seem to have a capacity for when it comes to childless cat ladies for some reason. Soon after Vance made his position clear, President Trump followed suite and also called for Elez’s reinstatement. Elon Musk then rehired Elez and called for the punishment of the Wall Street Journal reporter who wrote the initial report.
Oh, and it turns out the 19 high school graduate DOGE team member has already been found to have been fired from a previous job for leaking data. Yep. He has yet to be fired.
But there is a bit of good news here: A federal judge has now blocked the DOGE team’s access to the Treasury’s systems entirely on Saturday morning, citing a risk of “irreparable harm”. A hearing on the matter is setting for February 14th. So the DOGE capture of the Treasury has been put on hold. For maybe a week.
We’ll see what ultimately happens, but at this point, with the Republican-controlled congress seemingly fully on board with this Unitary Executive power grab, it appears federal judges are the only check remaining in the system of checks and balances. The kind of check that is likely to be overruled by the far right Supreme Court at some point. In other words, it’s probably just a matter of time before the DOGE team regains its Treasury access. Meaning it’s also just a matter of time before the mass unconstitutional impounding of the federal government makes Project 2025 the New Normal:
“The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.”
New sweeping authorities obtained following a standoff with agency leaders who are eventually fired or resign. It’s a theme. But as we can see, the hijacking of the Treasury Department isn’t quite the same as the hijacking of the rest of the government agencies currently getting overrun with DOGE minions. Because if you control the flow of the money in and out of the Treasury’s core systems, you effectively control the rest of the federal government. In other words, they’re putting in place the power to deploy the unconstitutional “impoundment” strategy for carrying out Project 2025 that would further cement Trump’s Unitary Executive status. Unilateral executive branch control over federal spending. That’s pretty clearly the plan underway, with the GOP majority in congress apparently fully on board with this historic executive branch power grab:
And note how the people who have been granted this kind of deep access to these critical federal payment systems include random Silicon Valley executives like Tom Krause, who now apparently has access to sensitive personal information about the millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds and other payments from the federal government. Information the career officials refused to grant access to...before they were fired. What is Krause doing with that data? And who else is getting access to it?
And note how the pretext for this coup at the Treasury is to hunt down improper federal payments and yet it’s not actually the Treasury’s job to do the vetting for all these recipients. That task is, logically, done by the agencies that directed the payments in the first place:
And as the following Wired piece describes, the DOGE team tasked with this weird public/private coup at the Treasury isn’t just following disturbing orders from Elon Musk. It’s a shockingly inexperienced DOGE team, largely consisting of young men in their early 20s, including one 19 year old high school graduate. That’s who is being granted access to some of the most sensitive systems in the federal government. What makes them qualified for the job? Being in the orbit of Musk or Peter Thiel, apparently:
“WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.”
Yes, Elon’s government wrecking crew consists of a group of young men, ages 19–24, whose primary life experience preparing them for this awesome responsibility appears to be a brief work history in Musk’s orbit. And as these anonymous sources warn, there’s very little visibility on what Musk’s squad of hackers is actually doing because these aren’t actually public officials. It’s more like a hostile takeover of the government:
And note how it’s not just that the DOGE squad was selected from companies associated with Musk or Peter Thiel. They are particularly inexperienced employees at these companies, with one of the members of the DOGE team apparently a recent high school graduate. But he spent three-months as an intern at Musk’s Neuralink so apparently he’s qualified:
And while the questions over what exactly this DOGE team has been doing inside the Treasury looms large over this story, we have gotten some answers. For example, it turns out 25 year old DOGE team member Mark Elez was granted permission to not just read the software code that operates these systems but modify that code too. It’s the kind of access that doesn’t just potentially grant the DOGE team the power to cut off federal funds to any program, or individual, they choose to block, but it also grants them to power to make changes that could end up be irreversible:
“Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a secure mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.”
As we can see, this isn’t just a crisis of granting access to sensitive data. Marko Elez, a 25 year old DOGE employee, has apparently been given permissions to modify the treasury’s payment systems, causing potentially irreversible changes. Which is the kind of power that goes far beyond just ‘hunting for inefficiencies’. Elez appears to have been setting up the de fact power of impoundment:
And as the following TPM piece confirms, Elez doesn’t just have the power to make changes to the Treasury’s payment systems. He already made extensive changes, with Treasury’s staff only have limited visibility on what he’s changing. The Treasury is getting hacked from the inside:
“I’m told that Elez and possibly other DOGE operatives received full admin-level access on Friday, January 31st. The claim of “read only” access was either false from the start or later fell through. The DOGE team, which appears to be mainly or only Elez for the purposes of this project, has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system. They have not locked out the existing programmer/engineering staff but have rather leaned on them for assistance, which the staff appear to have painedly provided hoping to prevent as much damage as possible — “damage” in the sense not of preventing the intended changes but avoiding crashes or a system-wide breakdown caused by rapidly pushing new code into production with a limited knowledge of the system and its dependencies across the federal government.”
And as we can see, Talking Points Memo is confirming these insider accounts of what Marko Elez and his team has been up to at the Treasury. Claims of “read only” access are simply false. The code isn’t read only. They not only can modify the code to the Treasury’s payment systems but have already made extensive changes.
It’s all quite alarming. And then we got this update: it turns out Marko Elez has a history of disturbingly racist social media posts. A very recent history of such posts. Surprise!
“The deleted profile associated with Elez, who was embedded in the Treasury Department to carry out efficiency measures, advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act and backed a “eugenic immigration policy” in the weeks before President Trump was inaugurated.”
Oh what a shock. Marko Elez has a history of horribly racist tweets. Recent history, like the “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” and “Normalize Indian hate,” posts he made just back in September, roughly five months ago. These posts weren’t just the product of some long forgotten youthful phase:
And note this interesting fun fact about Elez’s relationship with Musk’s companies: he’s worked at SpaceX, Starlink, and X. You have to wonder how many more Musk firms he’s going to land at after this whole scandal:
Well, so long to Elez. It was quite a ride, no doubt.
Except, of course, the ride isn’t over. Because this is the new ‘Golden Age’ era of America, where having one’s history of racist posts exposed is actually a reason for public sympathy and forgiveness. Specifically, sympathy and forgiveness from President Trump and Vice President JD Vance. And with Musk now calling for punishment for the journalist who wrote the above WSJ piece:
““I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” wrote Mr. Vance, whose wife, Usha Vance, is the daughter of Indian immigrants. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back.””
Firing Marko Elez over his very recent racist posts would be rewarding journalists who try to destroy people, and therefore Elez should be brought back to the job. That was seriously the reasoning put forward by Vice President JD Vance. With President Trump quickly agreeing and Elon Musk pressing for the punishment of the Wall Street Journal journalists who published the initial report on Elez’s racist posts. The message is clear: bigots will be protects and those who expose them will be punished:
Finally, note how Elez is just one of the DOGE hackers who has already had their past, pretty recent past, catch up with them: Edward Coristine, the high school graduate, was fired from a previous job over leaking internal information. This is someone who has been given access to one of the most sensitive systems in the United States:
Will Coristine get let go over his past work history of leaking sensitive data? If so, how long before JD Vance calls for his reinstatement? We’ll see. But it’s not hard to imagine that happening. Then again, getting fired over leaking data probably isn’t quite as controversial as getting fired over racist comments in Trump’s new Golden Age America. Because Project 2025 was always about a return to values. 19th century values, specifically.
It’s been a chaotic opening for the second Trump administration. Clarifying chaotic, in many respects. Especially when it comes to the key goal of all this chaos. Because it’s not a giant chaos monster that’s emerging from all these illegal executive actions. It’s the Unitary Executive — Karl Rove’s decades-old ambition brought back to life under Project 2025 — taking form and ready to take as tight a grip as it chooses. The kind of grip that might start with the federal government but won’t end there. An uncheck grip on power. No checks. No balances. Just the whims of the president.
It’s that unitary executive image of the federal government that hasn’t just been clearly embraced by President Trump. As the following article makes clear, there’s a modern twist on today’s unitary executive theory: it’s not just that the president is to have power unchecked by congress or the courts. The federal workforce task with executing those orders won’t really have any say in the matter either. Because it will be an AI-powered federal workforce largely under the control of whichever Silicon Valley oligarch is managing that AI. That’s the vision of the unitary executive coming into view. Fire as many federal workers as possible and replace them with AI. The kind of vision that Elon Musk is obviously very excited to make a reality.
But not just Musk. As we’re going to see, Musk’s open power grab has a number of ‘usual suspect’ fans in the tech sector. Figures like Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, who tells reports how, “Everyone in the DC laptop class was extremely arrogant...These people don’t realize there are levels of competence and boldness that are far beyond anything in their sphere.” Yes, according to Lonsdale, what’s happening now at the federal government is an explosion of “competence” and “boldness”. That’s how it’s being spun. Because of course. Which AI company is more likely to get federal AI contracts than Palantir?
We also getting more details on the truly sinister plans to force as many federal employees to voluntarily quit as possible. It sounds like the plan isn’t just an immediate “return to the office” order, in the hopes of getting remote workers to quit. There’s a further incentive planned to ‘encourage’ the laggards to quit too: selling off half of the federal office real estate with the intention of increasing the distance and time federal workers have to travel to make it to and from the office each day. Yes, congesting US highways with intentionally long commutes for federal employees is the plan. Which makes this a good time to recall how Russel Vought — key architect of Project 2025 and now the head of the OMB and the CFPB — explicitly stated that a big part of Project 2025 was the plan to inflict “trauma” on the federal workforce.
Also keep in mind that this sale of federal properties will be happening in the context of an already depressed commercial real-estate market that is continuing to threaten the pension funds industry. A federal CRE fire sale, executed to troll the federal workforce. What a great sign for the depressed CRE market.
Even CNP member Stephen Moore is warning about these moves. Well, it’s not quite a warning. As Moore put it, “We’re moving toward an imperial presidency. And whether or not that’s a good thing remains to be seen.” Yes, as Moore sees it, an imperial presidency might be a good thing. Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s where we’re heading. This is a good time to recall how Moore happens to be one of the key architects of Trump’s 2017 tax cut and a an advocate of returning to the gold standard. That’s the guy pointing out that Trump is created an imperial presidency and wondering if it will be a good thing or not.
It’s happening. Constitutional or not, the unitary executive is coming into form, ushered along by a congressional Republican majority that appears very comfortable with the all that is happening. Including, it appears, being very ok with the replacement of the human federal workforce with untested AI technology that will be operating at the whims of the US’s new God King President in charge of the AI (and the Silicon Valley oligarchs quietly managing it):
“The DOGE campaign has generated chaos on a near-hourly basis across the nation’s capital. But it appears carefully choreographed in service of a broader agenda to gut the civilian workforce, assert power over the vast federal bureaucracy and shrink it to levels unseen in at least 20 years. The aim is a diminished government that exerts less oversight over private business, delivers fewer services and comprises a smaller share of the U.S. economy — but is far more responsive to the directives of the president.”
Yes, the DOGE campaign is wildly chaotic. But as we can see, it’s also a carefully choreographed plan executed with the full backing of the Trump White House. The chaos is hiding the strategy at work here. A strategy that, if successful, will result in the evisceration of federal agencies, with White House officials already preparing budgets that assume layoffs as much as 60 percent:
And note the overtly trollish bad faith nature of this plan: they are combining ‘back-to-office’ orders with massive federal real estate sales in order to force federal employees to take long commutes so they’ll want to quit. But they won’t even tell federal workers whether or not they are going to be facing these long commutes until after they’ve been given the opportunity to accept the resignation offer. US roads are going to be even more congested as part of this intimidation scheme. All done in the name of “efficiency”:
But this isn’t just a plan for mass layoffs. It’s a plan to replace those laid off employees with artificial intelligence. AI that will presumably be somehow owned and operated by the private sector:
And as we are reminded of from the comments by Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, companies like Palantir are also obviously in a leading position to play a role in providing the AI services that will presumably be replacing all these federal workers. What kind of lucrative contracts will Palantir get as a result of the decimation of the federal workforce? This is also a good time to recall how Lonsdale has also played a key role in securing Saudi investments in Silicon Valley, making this also a good time to keep in mind that the outsourcing of the federal human workforce to AI firms will allow for potentially all sorts of international investors in the AI space to play a potential role in the execution of the US government’s policies:
And, again, it’s all be done in the service of Karl Rove’s decades-old question to realize the “Unitary Executive”, with an executive branch unchecked by the legislative and judicial branches. An AI-powered executive branch that unquestioningly carries out whatever orders the president issues. It’s such a radical change in how the US constitutional fundamentally operates that even Stephen Moore is raising alarms about it. This is the same CNP member Stephen Moore who happens to be one of the key architects of Trump’s 2017 tax cut and a an advocate of returning to the gold standard. That’s the guy warning that “We’re moving toward an imperial presidency. And whether or not that’s a good thing remains to be seen.” Which isn’t exactly a warning. He’s open to it being a “good thing” after all:
And if you’re assuming that a federal AI will be factoring in pesky details like the constitutionality of the various orders its given, don’t forget that the upending of that constitutional order is inherent in the establishment of the Unitary Executive. Doing whatever the president demands will be the constitutional order under an imperial presidency. The only person standing in his way at that point will be the tech oligarch actually managing the federal AI. An AI that will presumably have immense influence over what information and analysis the president sees. Which is a reminder that America’s new AI-powered imperial presidency constitutional model won’t just include electing a king (assuming there are elections anymore). There’s going to be two kings. The public-facing king to keep the rubes placated, and the real king behind him running the AI.
How do you make a bad joke worse? Have a fascist tell it.
That wasn’t a joke. It’s the sad context of the authoritarian ‘jokes’ President Trump decided to unfurl on social media this week. The kind of authoritarian jokes a fascist might make before making good on the ‘joke’. Jokes that are already being spun as just ‘Trump trolling the libs’ but, as we’ll see, are more or less a darkly humorous celebration of the historic power grab underway by the Trump administration. A Unitary Executive power grab that envisions a President unchecked by both Congress and the courts. The kind of power grab that, if successful, won’t just pave the way for the full realization of Project 2025 but will also effectively transform the American President into an American King.
It started with a declaration on Truth Social that wasn’t even really a joke. Just a declaration on Trump’s Truth Social account that appeared to channel Napoleon’s sense of Imperial authority: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” The post was pinned to the top of his Truth Social profile. The quote nearly matches one that appeared in a 1970 movie about Napoleon Bonaparte.
At best, the post could be thought of as a deadpanned attempt to ‘troll the libs’. But it wasn’t presented as a joke. It was ‘Trump being Trump’. And Trump clearly views himself as playing some sort of historic ‘national savior’ role. A role that will likely entail illegal acts. Trump is envisioning his second Presidency as one that will operate outside the Constitution. And reshape American government and society, under the guise of ‘saving the country’. It wasn’t just a bad joke. He’s telling us out loud.
Also keep in mind that the sentiments in Trump’s Napoleonic post don’t necessarily exclusively apply to the President. He pardoned all the January 6 insurrectionists as one of his first acts, after all. That post was effectively a preemptive ‘get out of jail free’ card to anyone who ‘takes up the fight’ to ‘save the country’. Or at least that’s one way of interpreting his post. Vague authoritarian declarations are handy like that.
And then we get the followup post a few days later: first, Trump uses the power of the federal government to end the new congestion pricing system designed to decrease congestion on New York City’s streets. The federal action was followed up with a Trump Social post by Trump depicting a Time-magazine-like cover with Trump standing in front of New York City in the background and a crown on his head. The picture declared “Long live the King!”. The magazine was named “Trump” instead of “Time”.
It was clearly a bad joke. Made even worse by the fact that is came just days after the Napoleonic post. But as we’ve seen, the context that makes that “Long live the King!” joke so bad is the dark reality that the ‘saved America’ that he is planning on making a reality will have a president with king-like powers. A “Unitary Executive” on steroids. Even worse, this isn’t just a ‘MAGA’ agenda or the brainchild of Trump’s fascist mind. This is the vision of America’s ‘old-school’ fascist networks like the Council for National Policy (CNP) and the Koch network. The same networks that co-organized the events leading up to the January 6th Capitol insurrection alongside the first Trump White House. This is the oligarchy’s ‘rolling back the 20th century’ decades-old agenda. Trump and Musk are just the agenda’s contemporary, and very enthusiastic, faces. Trump might be today’s ‘King’, but it’s this network that will be truly anointing the next one. And the one after that. As we’ve seen, the writing has been on the wall for a while now that the GOP’s plans for the imposition of the Unitary Executive theory were seen as crucial for the full execution of Project 2025, itself a revolutionary scheme that is effectively a plan to undo the last century. Not only rolling back the federal government to a pre-New Deal status but rolling back the judiciary and recognized civil rights to something closer to 19th Century America.
And as we’re going to see in the third article below about the Trump administration’s plans for a showdown with the Judiciary branch, part of what makes this whole plot to make the Unitary Executive a reality is that Trump administration is simultaneously turning to the courts to ratify their power grab over Congress’s authority to designate some federal employees as protected from firing without cause at the same time the administration is getting closer and closer to acting in full contempt of recent court rulings. Darkly cynical but also efficient. Trump is grabbing power from both Congress and the Courts. Having the corrupt Supreme Court hand over Congressional power and then defying the courts when it wants is more or less how we should have expected this to play out. And it’s playing out. It’s happening.
As we’re going to see, even John Yoo — who infamously defended the George W. Bush administration’s torture policies and is now seen as a ‘guiding light’ in MAGA-world — warns that Trump has raised an issue that is as old as the republic: Does the president have the authority to disregard a law if necessary to respond to a threat to the nation’s security?” As Yoo warns, “The question is, even if such a prerogative power exists, whether the circumstances today are so dire that justify its use. I don’t think so, but the president has access to greater information, much of it secret or classified, than the public does. I tend to think that President Trump, as he often does, is raising the question even though he does not intend to go this far.”
Think about what Yoo just argued: that it’s possible a president could face circumstances that justify the breaking of laws to save the nation. But today is not one of those situations. And yet, as Trump was ‘joking’ about with his Napoleon quote, he really is ‘saving the country’. That’s how he’s framing things. A ‘saving the country’ underlying justification for his pretext for his entire agenda. An agenda to implement the Project 2025 scheme to roll back the progresses of the last century and leave a king-like presidency in its place.
And as is implicit with Yoo’s interpretation of the legality of extra-constitutional actions, if the ‘safety of the nation’ can be portrayed as imperiled, illegal actions will indeed be justified. It’s an invitation for Trump to make things much, much worse in the hopes of creating a situation that’s so bad the country gets close to collapse. Or, alternatively, an invitation to just declare a state of emergency whether one exists or not. Which is more or less what’s happening now.
That’s the horrible context of President Trump’s week of bad jokes. The joke is on us, whether we realize it yet or not. And the joke is only going to get worse and worse as this plays out, with Trump and his fellow travelers laughing along the way:
““CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED,” he wrote. “LONG LIVE THE KING!””
Is Trump trolling NYC? Of course he is. But that doesn’t mean this is purely a joke. Using humor as a kind of dodge for authoritarian declarations is a classic element of fascist psychological operations, after all. And there’s no denying that Trump’s “Long live the king!” ‘joke’ is very much aligned with the push to assert the Unitary Executive theory that has animated the opening month of the second Trump administration:
It’s a pretty sick joke for a president. Made all the more sicker by the fact that Trump’s “long live the king!” ‘joke’ came just days after he made another authoritarian post that doesn’t even appear to be a joke. The kind of declaration Napoleon would have made. The kind of declaration that doesn’t just excuse any action by Trump but, potentially, any actions taken by those acting to make Trump’s authoritarian vision for future a reality. A declaration that anything done ‘to save the country’ is legal. In other words, anything you do ‘for the King’ will go unpunished, legal or not:
““He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump claimed in a social media post, now pinned atop his profile.”
He didn’t just post this Napoleon-inspired declaration on social media. He pinned it to the top of his profile. Again, it may have been intended as a joke but it’s obviously more than just a joke. And keep in mind that, unlike his “Long live the king!” declaration, the idea that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” is the kind of slogan that could apply to all sorts of bad acts and actors. Like January 6 Capitol insurrection. Or political violence yet to be committed by ‘pro-Trump’ militias. In other words, this is the kind of slogan that almost serves as an alternative to the “Stand back, and stand by” message Trump had for the Oath Keepers back in September 2020. Except this new message implicitly suggests they’ll definitely get pardoned again in whatever they do while Trump is in office as long as it can be construed as fighting to “save the country”. Even John Yoo — one of the most prominent defenders of the George W. Bush administration’s torture policies — appears to feel that Trump’s actions are out of line. Recall how Yoo was actually one of the lawyers who advised Mike Pence that he had no constitutional right to intervene in the electoral vote counting, which is a disturbing commentary on the current state of affairs of US conservative legal theory. The pro-torture guy — someone characterized as as “guiding light” to MAGA-world — felt the plot to overthrow the 2020 election through any means necessary was a bridge too far. And as we can see in Yoo’s comments, he doesn’t necessarily feel like a president won’t ever have the authority to disregard law if necessary to response to a threat to the nation’s security. But Yoo appears skeptical that the US is currently in such a situation. Which is a reminder that making the situation worse, or just declaring it’s worse, plays directly into Trump’s authoritarian ambitions:
And as we can see, the Trump administration is already taking its push to put the Unitary Executive Theory into practice with a court case that appears to be designed to force the Supreme Court to overturn a 1935 precedent that allowed Congress to create federal employee protections that prevents certain employees from being fired without cause. With the Supreme Court’s far right majority assist the Trump administration in its historic executive branch power grab? We’ll see, but that’s the Trump administration’s plan:
And that cynically designed legal case seemingly intended to force the Supreme Court to overturn the 1935 precedent that grants Congress some degree over oversight on the firings of federal workers brings us to the ultra-cynical counterpart to that strategy: at the same time the Trump administration is turning to the courts to strip Congress of its ‘check’ on the ability of the President to fire federal workers without cause, the Trump administration is increasingly trying to put itself above the jurisdiction of the courts entirely:
“The most dramatic example came Thursday. U.S. District Court Judge Amir H. Ali ordered the Trump administration to comply with a temporary restraining order (TRO) lifting its 90-day pause on foreign aid. He stopped short of saying Trump officials were in contempt of his ruling as the plaintiffs in the case had wanted.”
U.S. District Court Judge Amir H. Ali didn’t rule that the Trump administration was in contempt of his court. But he came close. And based on everything we’re seeing from the Trump administration’s intentions, getting away with defying the courts is very much on the agenda. That’s part of what makes the DOJ’s court case described in the previous article — seemingly designed to get the Supreme Court to overrule the 1935 precedent that gave Congress the ability to create civil service protections for some federal workers — so darkly cynical. At the same time the Trump administration is turning to the courts to strip Congress of its powers, its also seeking to defy the courts. A strategy of strategic defiance that includes defying temporary restraining orders that were going to expire anyway in a matter of days:
And as the article reminds us, figures like JD Vance and Elon Musk have a history of openly calling for Trump to simply defy the courts and dare them to do something about it. As legal scholar Peter M. Shane describes, this is all part of the assertion of the Unitary Executive theory. Whether we are talking about mass indiscriminate firings, the unconstitutional impoundment of congressionally authorized funds, or the open defiance of the courts, it’s all part of a put to undo the checks on the Executive Branch. And, in turn, the creation of a king-like president:
As we can see, Trump knows how to weaponize a bad joke in classic fascist fashion. Expect many more of them. He’s clearly amused.
And why not be amused? Trump’s fascist purge — a purge long planned for and backed by the Council for National Policy and its fellow travelers — is steadily becoming a reality. The Republican congressional majority is handing over power readily and the corrupt Supreme Court majority Trump installed in his first term are lying in wait to grant him the judicial blessings he needs to fulfill his kingly desires. They are galloping towards unchecked power with little standing in their way. A real revolution is underway.
Although it’s going to feel more like a counter-revolution. A 1930s-meets-the-18th century kind of revolution. What’s old is new again. That’s also part of how fascism works. Get ready to hear a lot more bad old ‘jokes’.
Well, the long-expected Trump administration’s showdown with the US courts appears to be in full swing. A showdown with the judiciary that Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance fully endorse. We aren’t quite at the stage of a ‘lawless presidency’ but we’re getting there. The Unitary Executive is coming into view.
But as we watch the showdown with the judiciary branch play out, it’s going to be important to keep in mind that this isn’t really going to be showdown between the Trump administration and the entire Judiciary. It’s going to be individual judges or federal prosecutors who make the decisions to defy the Trump administration’s whims and issue rulings or open prosecutions that challenge the administration. Individual public employees who are, themselves, potentially going to be facing all sorts of forms of intimidation that the public may or may not be aware of. Intimidation that, increasingly, can be fueled by the vast powers of the federal government now being turned against the federal workforce and even pesky members of the public at large. That’s the chilling picture that has emerged in recent weeks, as a number of federal employees have resigned in the face of what they describe as a truly dangerous incursion of “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) staffers into some of the most sensitive parts of the federal bureaucracy. Including more than 20 civil service employees who resigned last month from the United States Digital Service (USDS) while decrying what they felt was a demand by DOGE to use their technical knowledge to take control of highly sensitive databases containing the kind of information that could be easily weaponized against individuals. Databases that includes the largest database of medical information in the world at the Social Security administration. Or all of the incredibly sensitive information at the IRS.
But the kind of weaponizable information now at the fingertips of DOGE employees isn’t just stored in all these sensitive federal databases. The grim reality is that the federal government’s vast anti-Insider Threat detection systems are now perfectly in place for weaponization by DOGE against federal employees. Insider Threat Detection programs set up, typically, in response to the Edward Snowden breach and that resulted in government-issued laptops and computers being filled with all sorts of spyware ostensibly there to detect improper activities. And as we’re as we’re going to see, reports are already coming in from federal employees of anonymous harassment campaigns that appear to be deploying information obtained from their government-issued computers. This includes Andrew Bernier, a US Army Corps of Engineers researcher and a union leader who claims to have started receiving anonymous threatening emails shortly after he filed an official charge accusing the Trump administration of violating his union’s collective bargaining agreement.
So as we watch to see how the Trump administration’s planned defiance of the judiciary plays out, it’s going to be important to realize that the direct assault on constitutional checks and balances doesn’t just necessarily include the open assault on the judiciary branch’s authority. There’s also going to be a DOGE-fueled shadow intimidation campaign that’s already underway. And sure, such an intimidation campaign would obviously be incredibly illegal. Especially if it was targeting federal judges and prosecutors. But do you know what else is illegal? Storming the Capitol on January 6 to prevent the lawful certification of an election. But we all saw how that kind of illegal behavior was handled. Which is a reminder that whoever is waging this anonymous intimidation campaign against federal workers is presumably doing it with the full knowledge that they will probably be pardoned at some point. That is, if they’re ever caught, which is unlikely to happen under a Trump-led DOJ anyway. Which is all why we should get ready for more stories about the mass resignation of federal employees in protest to the crimes they are being asked to commit along with more stories about the federal employees who haven’t yet resigned being anonymously threatened:
“The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.”
It isn’t just the mass resignation of federal career staffers. It’s also he fact that the people being brought in to replace them are young political ideologues whose loyalty appears to be primarily towards Elon Musk. And as we can see, even when these mass resignations are reported, Musk casually just declares it all to be “fake news” and that the resignations were purely just “Dem political holdovers” who were going to be fired anyway:
And as we can see, this mass resignation was taking place insisde the United States Digital Service (USDS), an office that was somehow being integrated into DOGE, underscoring the importance of gaining access to this department’s access and technological skill set. Which makes the limited technical understanding of the DOGE employees on display during the ideological purge sessions all the more disturbing. DOGE is assuming control of highly technical US agencies and then gutting the agencies of their technical knowledge, creating massive security risks in the process. Risks that don’t just stem from the dangerous ideologies animating the DOGE staffers. Risks that also just arise from the loss of all this expertise:
And as the following piece warns, there isn’t just a growing risk that all of this sensitive data held by the federal government will be actively abused by DOGE staffers as part of their DOGE responsibilities. There’s also the risk of all of that data being stolen and falling into private hands. The kind of risk that is all the more glaring when we find DOGE staffers like Edward Coristine, who was fired from a job for data theft, or Gavin Kliger, an open fan of Nick Fuentes and other Holocaust deniers. With so many new people now gaining access to all of this data with little oversight over that access, the temptation to steal it is going to be greater than ever. After all, it’s not like there’s going to be one obvious culprit if this data suddenly shows up for sale on the Dark Web or otherwise falls into the hands of private bad actors:
“Before DOGE launched, most of the records at issue were kept in the hands of a select few officials to preserve privacy and avoid crossing legal red lines. Now Musk’s group is seeking often-unfettered access, citing suspicion of fraud and waste. In addition to concerns about exposing private information, some critics fear that handing all the data to DOGE could enable bad actors to leak sensitive information to compromise political adversaries, act on personal vendettas or stir up online mobs against opponents.”
And then we get to the gross insider threat risk that has now exploded under DOGE. An insider threat that is really emerging from all these DOGE outsiders suddenly being granted unprecedented access to highly sensitive government databases without any real oversight on what they are doing with all that data. Are any of these databases being downloaded to the deluge of personal devices that have suddenly inundated the White House’s WiFi permissions? We have no idea and probably never will unless that data suddenly shows up on the dark web or other criminal outlets. And as the article warns, this isn’t just highly sensitive data on federal employees. This is highly sensitive data on the public at large too. And while the accessing of all this highly sensitive data isn’t necessarily illegal, the inappropriate accessing of that data is most definitely illegal and the bases for lawsuits. Which is a reminder that the members of this DOGE team, and Musk, will probably need pardons by the time this is all over. Pardons or just a general end to the rule of law as we’ve known it:
And as the article warns, that highly sensitive personal information includes the world’s largest repository of medial information at the Social Security Administration. Again, how many pardons is President Trump going to have to issue for DOGE employees alone? It’s hard to imagine they aren’t engaged in rampant lawbreaking at this point:
And when it comes to the prospects of the DOGE staffers engaging in blatant crimes with all the data they’ve been given access to, we just have to look at the backgrounds of DOGE staffers like Edward Coristine or Gavin Kliger. Coristine was fired from a job for data theft while Kliger is an open fan of Nick Fuentes and other Holocaust deniers. What kind of crimes are individuals with these kinds of backgrounds going to be inclined to commit when they know they will likely be protected by the president of the United States no matter what they do? It’s not just their dangerous ideologies. It’s the implicit enabling that comes from Trump’s pardon precedent:
And those concerns about just what all these criminal-minded far right DOGE staffers might be doing with the full knowledge that they will likely be pardoned for anything they do should only amplify worries from people like Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq War veteran who tracks and reports violent right-wing extremists. As Goldsmith expressed, “I’m very concerned that the entire federal government is being compromised by people who want to target, harass and maybe even kill me”:
And as we’re going to see in the following Wired piece, those fears of active harassment and intimidation, or maybe worse, aren’t just fantasies. We’re already getting reports of federal employees receiving anonymous harassment, including Andrew Bernier, a US Army Corps of Engineers researcher and a union leader who began receiving a flood of threatening emails shortly after filing an official charge accusing the Trump administration of violating his union’s collective bargaining agreement. The threats suggested this anonymous person had access to Bernier’s government-issued work laptop. And as the Wired report warns, the idea that someone might have remote access to the contents and activities of Bernier’s laptop isn’t some dystopian nightmare. It’s to be expected thanks to the federal government’s Insider Threat detection programs. Insider threat detection programs that can now be exploited anonymous by DOGE, the greatest insider threat the US federal government has ever faced:
“But the most eerie thing about the emails, which Bernier says began arriving after he filed an official charge accusing the Trump administration of violating his union’s collective bargaining agreement, is that they included personal details about his life—some of which he believes might have come from surveillance of his work laptop. The author referenced Bernier’s union activities, nickname, job, travel details, and even the green notebook he regularly uses. The most recent email implied that his computer was loaded with spyware. “Andy’s crusade, like so many before it, had been doomed from the start,” one email stated. “The real tragedy wasn’t his failure—it was his belief that the fight had ever been real.””
Anonymous threats involving personal details that indicate someone had been accessing his government-issued work laptop. That’s what Andrew Bernier, a US Army Corps of Engineers researcher and a union leader, started experiencing shortly after he filed an official charge accusing the Trump administration of violating his union’s collective bargaining agreement. Anonymous insider intimidation that seems to have relied on powerful access to Bernier’s government records and even his laptop. The anonymous intimidation has become such a menacing presence in Bernier’s life that he even asked the local police to keep an eye on his residence. The kind of request that makes a lot more sense when you keep in mind that DOGE is being staffed by criminals and white nationalists who know they will likely be pardoned by the president for anything they do:
Also note the grand irony here: the information that can now be used to anonymously intimidate federal employees is likely gathered from “insider threat” programs. Which is a reminder that allowing fascists to gain accessing to insider threat detection systems poses a pretty enormous insider threat:
And note how widely used some of these insider threat detection programs are across the federal government: Of the 15 Cabinet-level departments, at least nine had contracts as of late last year with threat detection software suppliers such as Everfox and Dtex Systems:
And as federal law enforcement warns, the accessing and utilization of the kind of information gathered by these threat detection services won’t necessarily be obvious to the public or even the federal employees targeted by this purge. The information can instead be used internally to ideologically profile employees and determine who should be fired based on their loyalty to the MAGA agenda, at which point other excuses can be found to fire them. Excuses or, in the case of employees like Andrew Bernier, anonymous intimidation that can’t be tracked back to anyone:
And let’s not forget that we are only in the opening phase of this government takeover. The purge phase, when all non-MAGA loyalists are forced out of the jobs one way or another. We haven’t yet reached the fascist recruitment phase where ideological purists are recruited to take over these positions. Which is also a reminder that, while the anonymous fascist intimidation is starting with the federal workforce, we shouldn’t assume it’s going to end there. Especially after the Trump administration is done getting away with the open defiance of US courts. This is just the warm up act, when the fascists get to hone their skills.