But years later, as Measure J finally, slowly, gets implemented, advocates say that changes meant to divert money from law enforcement might instead just funnel it back to them. 

Case in point: In June, LA County signed over the handling of changes to pretrial detention under Measure J to the consulting firm Accenture, a behemoth in the world of biometric databases and predictive policing. Accenture has led the development of “intelligent public safety” platforms and tech-enabled risk assessment tools for national security and law enforcement agencies in the United States and around the world, including in Israel and India. An Accenture advisory panel working on the Measure J implementation includes former federal and local law enforcement agents.

Accenture’s role was further publicized Monday after Civil Rights Corps, a nonprofit focused on injustice in the legal system, sent a letter to the LA County Board of Supervisors calling on them to immediately cancel the company’s contract. The contract takes the county away from its stated vision for a “care first, jails last” approach and toward carceral policies, CRC wrote in the letter. “Already, Accenture has concluded that electronic monitoring is a ‘favorable alternative’ to incarceration, ignoring the reality that electronic monitoring is expensive, unsupported by social science, and demonstrably racially biased as applied in Los Angeles,” the letter adds. “This is unsurprising: the consultants working on the Contract have deep ties to police departments and prisons.”

Measure J was one of at least 20 local criminal justice reform efforts that passed nationwide in the six months after Floyd’s murder. It was also part of a string of major wins by advocates in Los Angeles, who had been pushing alternatives to incarceration and investment in social services long before 2020. 

Measure J ran into predictable opposition: A group including the union for Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies sued to block the measure and delayed it from going into effect in 2021, but it was put back on track after a judge upheld it on appeal last year. Nationally, despite widespread support, the criminal justice reform wave was met by a well-funded and bipartisan opposition led by police, sheriffs, and conservative Republicans and Democrats who fearmongered about rising crime. In the years since the 2020 uprisings, efforts to reallocate police funding, implement federal and local police reforms, and invest in social services have been undone or derailed. Many of those who cheered the reform movement are frustrated that they haven’t seen the impact of so many policy wins. Accenture’s contract for Measure J shows another reason why. 

Criminal justice reforms are “being cannibalized,” said Matyos Kidane, an organizer with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, an abolitionist community group based in Skid Row. Kidane said the group organizes against reforms because of the way corporations and law enforcement groups exploit and defang such initiatives. He pointed to Axon, which has profited massively from the push to get police equipped with body cameras. 

“It’s a golden opportunity for them,” Kidane said. When Measure J passed, “Accenture was ready to go once this opportunity presented itself.” 

Accenture has not publicly announced the contract with Los Angeles County, which was signed in June 2023 without a competitive bidding process for a total of $8.6 million over two and a half years. The contract exceeded the $200,000 limit in state law and county charter for a sole-source contract, and the board of supervisors created a motion to allow the requirement to be skirted in order to implement Measure J. But that motion allowed for a contract of up to $3 million, far less than the final signing price. The county told The Intercept it had paid $2 million to Accenture so far. (The supervisors who signed the motion did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

“Even if it were entered into legally — which it was not — the Contract is duplicative, wasteful, and harmful to Los Angeles and should be canceled on policy grounds alone,” the Civil Rights Corp letter states. 

In presentations made in August to the Los Angeles Justice, Care, and Opportunities Department, which is administering the contract (published in September by the accountability group Expose Accenture) the firm gave an overview of its project timeline and plans to engage stakeholders in focus groups, interviews, workshops, and site visits. The firm highlighted targets for “quick wins” by October 1, 2023, such as creating a county website and launching marketing and communications for “Justice Involved Individuals” (i.e., people who have been arrested) and summarized top lines of conversations with 50 such people, including the observation that there was wide support for electronic monitoring as an alternative to custody. 

A spokesperson for the county CEO, which controls county budget decisions, directed questions about the CRC letter to JCOD, as did Accenture. Department spokesperson Avi Bernard did not answer specific questions about how the county raised the limit for the contract but told The Intercept that JCOD had used approved county procedures and consulted with county counsel throughout the contract process. Bernard said CRC had previously raised similar concerns. “County Counsel and Board reviewed these concerns and found no issues with continuing the contract,” Bernard said. He added that there had been “no conversations with Accenture” and JCOD related to the use of electronic monitoring. 

Bernard said that so far, Accenture had designed an independent pretrial services agency for the county, incorporated input from stakeholders, and supported a hotline, website, and marketing campaign. Bernard said the firm has now deployed a three-person implementation team to launch the independent pretrial services agency and is helping JCOD develop a case management IT system.

“It’s talking left while running off with the profiteers of mass surveillance and detention.”

The fact that Accenture was even an option for implementing Measure J came as a shock to many of its supporters, who had watched the county meet with community partners interested in helping carry out its implementation. The contract was also news to some county supervisors, according to advocates with knowledge of the contract process.

“It’s worse than talk left, walk right politics,” said Nika Soon-Shiong, founder and executive director at the Fund for Guaranteed Income and a Ph.D. researcher on digital identification systems. “It’s talking left while running off with the profiteers of mass surveillance and detention.”

Accenture has pushed counterterror and policing strategies around the globe: The company built the world’s biggest biometric identification system in India, which has used similar technologies to surveil protesters and conduct crowd control as part of efforts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party to investigate the citizenship of Muslim residents. And in Israel, Accenture acquired the cybersecurity firm Maglan in 2016 and has worked to facilitate collaboration between India and Israel aimed at “fostering inclusive economic growth and maximizing human potential.” 

Accenture ballooned into a giant in federal consulting over the course of the “war on terror,” winning hundreds of millions of dollars in lucrative contracts from federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security for projects from a “virtual border” to recruiting and hiring Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents. In 2006, Accenture won a $10 million contract for a DHS biometric ID program, the world’s second biggest, to collect and share biometric data on foreign nationals entering or leaving the U.S. The company has also worked with police departments in Seattle and in the United Kingdom. Jimmy Etheredge, Accenture’s former CEO for North America, sits on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation. 

Asked about Accenture’s international work on biometric identification, predictive policing, and national security, Bernard, the JCOD spokesperson, said the firm was involved in many different kinds of work. “Accenture is a large, international consulting firm with many lines of business. The specific consultants assigned to this project are part of a team in Accenture dedicated to the public sector. Their team comes from a variety of backgrounds, primarily in the health and human services industry.” 

But several LA-based advocates told The Intercept that the contract is yet another development that calls into question the county’s commitment to real criminal justice reform. The county has missed all of its deadlines for a plan to close the notoriously inhumane Men’s Central Jail, even as deaths in custody continue apace. In August, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department issued a Request for Information for a biometric identification system.

“I’m genuinely confused about how we ended up with this Accenture contract, especially as someone who participated in the development of the Care First, Jails Last (ATI) report,” said Danielle Dupuy-Watson, CEO of CRC, referring to an “Alternatives to Incarceration” working group commissioned by the county. “We hoped for transparency and accountability but instead we were gaslit.” 

Behind-the-scenes deals like the one with Accenture are one reason that popular reforms haven’t come to fruition, said Lex Steppling, an organizer with Los Angeles Community Action Network. 

“There’s the performance of democracy on the front end where a policy gets pressured into place, and on the back end there’s no governance.”

“People vote in that direction, and then it doesn’t happen. And they chalk it up to, ‘Well, politicians ain’t shit,’” Steppling said. People assume, he added, that when policy is passed, bureaucrats work out its implementation. “What we’re learning is there’s the performance of democracy on the front end where a policy gets pressured into place, and on the back end there’s no governance. It just simply gets procured and contracted away to these consulting firms.” 

That the county took a historic progressive reform and contracted it out to a firm that put the community’s plans back into the hands of law enforcement is a perfect expression of the problem, Steppling said. “There’s no democracy there. There’s no transparency there. Nobody even knows it’s happening.”

The post Biometrics Giant Accenture Quietly Took Over LA Residents’ Jail Reform Plan appeared first on The Intercept.

I was never that into cocaine — preferring the euphoria promised by MDMA or the relaxation offered by cannabis — but back in 2015, a cocaine-serving lounge bar, Route 36, in La Paz, Bolivia, was the talk of the backpacking circuit, and the scarcely-believable novelty of the place was alluring.

At Route 36, bags of cocaine are served on silver platters, and a friend and I got incredibly high that night. Too high, perhaps, though it was all undeniably good fun. But as soon as my first-person dispatch for Vice from the lively dusk-till-dawn session went viral, I feared that I perhaps shouldn’t have glorified the use of a moreish drug that typically leaves a trail of violent destruction in its wake.

As the years passed, however — with cocaine becoming both unprecedentedly popular and increasingly affordable despite the billions spent on the war on drugs to avoid these exact outcomes — I’ve come to realize that accepting that adults take cocaine, and legally regulating the drug, is the only sensible path forward. Establishments like Route 36, the world’s first cocaine bar, might just represent a more enlightened, peaceful future for us all.

After all, U.S.-led authorities around the world have tried everything else, and to great human cost. Coca fields across the Andes, where cocaine’s main ingredient grows, have been sprayed with harmful herbicides like glyphosate, harming the local Indigenous people for whom coca holds unique spiritual and nutritional value, and killing anything that tries to grow in the contaminated soil. Consumers and traffickers of cocaine have been imprisoned en masse, helping to create a prison–industrial complex which serves as a university of crime for its incarcerated and a fertile recruitment ground for armed drug gangs.

The war on drugs is not just a political metaphor — in many places, it’s a full-blown, militarized conflict with vast numbers of casualties. It has fueled unparalleled bloodbaths in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed across the world, notably in Colombia, Mexico, and most recently Brazil, where a police raid on a cartel-controlled favela in Rio led to more than 130 deaths in one night in late October. “This was a slaughter, not an operation,” one bereaved mother told The Guardian. “They came here to kill.”

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In the international waters around the U.S., the “legally indefensible” and “barbarian” campaign the Trump administration is waging against boats suspected of trafficking drugs from Latin America has killed at least 83 people in 21 extrajudicial airstrikes.

Such boats, if some of them are indeed carrying drugs, would mostly be ferrying a popular white powder which many people appear to have an insatiable appetite for. As President Donald Trump acknowledged in 1990 before becoming a politician, legalizing drugs is the only way to end the war on drugs. After all, people want to sniff cocaine. “You have to legalize drugs to win that war,” Trump said in 1990.

Cocaine was first extracted from the coca leaf in 1855 by a young German chemist, Friedrich Gaedcke. A few decades later, it was identified as a highly effective local anesthetic. Cocaine was then vaunted as a “nerve food” wonder drug by pharmaceutical companies and psychologist Sigmund Freud, who initially claimed it was a panacea for depression. Then, it was widely used as both a medicine and as a recreational drug.

Pope Leo XIII was such a fan of one cocaine-infused tonic wine as a mental fortifier, “when prayer was insufficient,” that he awarded its creator a Vatican gold medal. President Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Edison, and Queen Victoria were also partial.

In 1886, Coca-Cola launched as a “brain tonic and intellectual beverage” flavored by the cocaine-containing coca leaves.

But as the invigorating drug’s addictive nature became impossible to ignore, there was a backlash. Coca-Cola removed the cocaine from its recipe in 1903, though it still derives its distinctive taste from the bitter leaves (thanks to its ongoing effective monopoly over coca imports to the U.S.).

Next, in 1914, the U.S. passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, which heavily regulated cocaine and stymied its use outside of medicine — where it had become long essential for ear, throat, and, perhaps ironically, nose surgery.

The U.S. then set about creating a sprawling drug control regime to assert its geopolitical control in Latin America, protect pharmaceutical interests, and promote a heathen culture in which alcohol and cigarettes are OK, but every other drug is bad. In 1961, the United Nations placed cocaine and coca under strict international control — along with heroin and cannabis — and required governments to criminalize non-medical use.

Prohibition coincided with increased interest in cocaine. After decades of negligible use, it was rediscovered by countercultural elites in the late 1960s, just as Colombian traffickers were perfecting their methods. Cocaine hit Miami in the early-1970s, and the rest is history.

“When cocaine came to town, it was so ridiculously profitable,” Roben Farzad, author of “Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami,” told PBS. “It made people do such crazy things in the name of money and power and blood lust that you had something approximating a failed state by 1981 in Miami.”

Today, cocaine is one of the world’s most reliable commodities. It’s a multibillion-dollar market serving around 50 million global consumers. Production in the Andes is at a record high. Purity is the highest it’s ever been. Cocaine is cheaper, stronger, and more accessible than at any point in history. From bankers to bricklayers, everyone is at it — and the interests of cartels all over the world are enmeshed with the legal economies.

This state of affairs represents a totemic, catastrophic policy failure. It’s high time for a grown-up conversation which acknowledges that the drug laws — by funneling untold riches to violent criminals — are more harmful than the drugs themselves, as research increasingly shows.

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“We’re losing badly the war on drugs,” Trump said more than three decades ago. “You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars.” Instead, taxes on legal profits on the sales of drugs like cocaine could be spent to educate the public on the dangers of drug misuse, the future president recommended. “What I’d like to do maybe by bringing it up is cause enough controversy that you get into a dialogue on the issue of drugs so people will start to realize that this is the only answer; there is no other answer,” he added.

Fast forward 35 years, and Trump is waging his illegal, extrajudicial campaign on boats carrying suspected drug traffickers. If history tells us anything, the cartels will simply switch to other methods — over air or land — to get the lucrative cocaine into the U.S., after the Coast Guard seized a record 510,000 pounds over the last fiscal year.

That means that 2 million pounds of cocaine likely made it into the country by sea hidden in shipments of bananas and corn, or in stealthy narco-subs, since it has been estimated that interdiction efforts only capture a fraction of illegal drugs imported. Port staff, border guards, and law enforcement officers are no doubt being corrupted to an extent we will never be able to comprehend. The tentacles of the illegal drug trade will always penetrate the legal economy because there’s just so much money at stake — more than any other illegal commodity industry.

That’s why the cocaine business continues to infect even quaint corners of the world, as cartels continually shift their operations away from enforcement hotspots to evade detection. Spare a thought for Saõ Miguel in the Azores, a tropical paradise that suffered an explosion in problematic cocaine use when half a ton washed up on its shores in 2001; or the degeneration of Cape Verde into a narco-state thanks to gangs seeking new smuggling routes.

In the Amazon, land defenders who object to the razing of their land for secret coca plantations are killed. Ecuador, once one of South America’s safest countries, is the latest state to be rocked by an explosion of prison massacres, political assassinations, and street bombings; the homicide rate has increased sixfold in just five years. Even Scandinavian gangs are killing over the cocaine trade, in the once peaceful countries of northern Europe.

So what would happen if cocaine was legalized? Organized crime groups would be deprived of a uniquely profitable income stream. The purity of the drug would also not be at the whims of these criminal groups, as batches contaminated with fentanyl regularly kill people who use cocaine. Others may celebrate that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which has 93 offices across 69 countries, would lose much of their raison d’être. And, depending on whether there would be an amnesty and reconciliation process for the criminal groups who control the cocaine trade, there would be a new class of legal cocaine merchants.

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Undoubtedly, there will be concerns that cocaine legalization could increase use. But it is already available for delivery faster than a pizza in many major cities across the world, and regulation — as even Trump noted — would help bring people who are addicted into closer contact with essential health services. This policy overhaul could also potentially reduce the thousands of deaths from cocaine misuse each year. There would be controls over public usage, as outlined in nonprofit Transform Drug Policy Foundation’s book “How to Regulate Stimulants,” as well as plain packaging, and a huge remit for drug education and harm reduction services.

At Route 36 — which under any regulated system would not be permitted to serve cocktails, since cocaine enables one to drink extraordinary amounts of alcohol — I was already asking myself about the morality of taking cocaine. I resolved in 2018 never to take it again, at least until I could ensure it was from an ethical source, but the reality is that the growing market is not going to magically disappear. Legalization is the only way to change the story of cocaine, from field to nose, being written in other people’s blood. The real immorality would be the continuation of the failed status quo.

The post Legalizing Cocaine Is the Only Way to End the Drug War appeared first on The Intercept.

The most defining feature of Donald Trump’s first year back in office has been the brutality of his deportation machine and his administration’s numerous attempts to upend due process. Back in March, the Trump administration wrongly deported Kilmar Ábrego Garcia to a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador. Ábrego Garcia’s legal status protected him from deportation to his home country for fear of persecution.

“I think most Americans are intelligent enough to recognize that everybody deserves due process,” says Ábrego Garcia’s attorney Benjamin Osorio. “There’s a process. They get a jury of their peers. And the same thing in immigration: This guy had a lawful order protecting him from being removed from the United States, and the government violated that.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to Osorio about Ábrego Garcia’s case. After months of being shipped around detention centers, he is free and fighting deportation orders from home with his family. “I think the courts have probably never seen more immigration habeases in their life.” says Osorio. “In the habeas sense, I would think that Kilmar’s case has had a lot of effect in the immigration practice.”

Ábrego Garcia’s story epitomizes the unlawfulness and cruelty of the Trump administration’s deportation agenda and for that reason his story has become a political flashpoint. But what’s less understood is the scale and scope of fulfilling the administration’s vision of mass deportation.

A new investigative video series from Lawfare and SITU Research called “Deportation, Inc.: The Rise of the Immigration Enforcement Economy,” maps out a vast web of companies that make up the rapidly growing deportation economy, how we got here, and the multibillion-dollar industry driven by profit, political power, and a perverse incentive structure.

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“The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 was a pivotal moment. It was a major restructuring of immigration, and that was also a point at which the framing of immigration went from more of a civil matter to more of a national security concern,” says Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare. “And with that transition, the amount of money and contracts began to flood in.”

Gauri Bahuguna, deputy director of research at SITU, adds, “It was in the Obama administration where the detention bed quota comes in, and that’s really the key unit of measurement that drives this particular part of the immigration enforcement industry, is ‘How much money can you make per detained individual?’”

“Even though the bed quota is gone formally from the law there, it still exists in contracts with companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group,” says Bahuguna. “There is payment for detaining a certain number of people, whether or not the beds are occupied, and then the perverse incentive to keep those facilities filled because there’s an economies of scale.” McBride underscores that the current immigration system is “treating people as these products and units and to maximize profit.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy.

The most defining feature of Donald Trump’s second term so far has been the brutality of his deportation machine, from masked agents tackling people in the streets to shipping people off to prisons in far-flung countries.

The Trump administration wrongly deported Kilmar Ábrego Garcia to a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador back in March. But last week, a judge’s order finally freed him.

Kilmar Ábrego Garcia: [Speaking in Spanish]

Interpreter: I stand here today with my head held up high.

AL: That’s Ábrego Garcia speaking at a press conference after his release, joined by advocates and an interpreter at his side.

KG: [Speaking in Spanish]

Interpreter: Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws, and I believe this injustice will come to its end.

AL: Ábrego Garcia is now back in Maryland with his family and is continuing to fight deportation orders. His story epitomizes the unlawfulness and cruelty of the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.

Joining me now to update us on Ábrego Garcia’s case is one of his lawyers, Benjamin Osorio.

Benjamin, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Benjamin Osorio: Thank you.

AL: Kilmar Ábrego Garcia was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — custody last Thursday. To start, can you tell us how he’s doing since his release?

Benjamin Osorio: He’s pretty tired. I don’t know if you saw when he went to go check in with ICE that morning, it looked like he hadn’t slept. I think he’s exhausted from the whole process. He’s bounced around from being deported in March to detained at CECOT — obviously, he’s much happier to be out of CECOT and back in the United States. But then, re-detained again, briefly out for a weekend, back in ICE detention, and then now out.

He’s ecstatic to be with his family, but at the same time, I mean, he’s still limited in what he can do and obviously still facing federal charges.

AL: During the press conference when he spoke after his release, during the segment where an advocate and a pastor are speaking, you can see him visibly getting emotional. It seemed like he was tearing up. Has this episode changed him?

Benjamin Osorio: I didn’t know him before, so it’s hard to say whether it’s changed him, but again, somebody having been through what he has been through, I don’t know how it could not. At this point, if I was him, I would just want resolution to everything and not be in detention.

AL: Back in March, Ábrego Garcia was detained by ICE in Baltimore, as you’ve mentioned, and then within a few days he was sent to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador. What can you tell us about his experience in CECOT?

Benjamin Osorio: Well, it’s been reported, so this isn’t anything confidential or of that nature. But he was taken off the plane and beaten — that’s sort of their welcome greeting — was beaten as he was taken off the plane. And then their heads were shaved.

They were basically beaten on a daily basis, from what it sounds like. They were put on their knees for long periods of time, and if you passed out, you were beaten. They were not allowed to go to the bathroom — many of them urinating on themselves, defecating on themselves.

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He would talk about, in the middle of the night, you would hear people screaming out for help and nobody doing anything. The lights on 24/7 — blinding lights. Sleeping on all metal beds: no sheets, no pillows, no nothing like that. So it doesn’t sound like a pleasant experience.

AL: How did that compare to his experience at the ICE detention facilities that he was shuffled around to?

BO: He’s been segregated from everybody else, so not the same group housing that you would typically find in ICE. But being in solitary and only interacting with other individuals for certain hours of the day also has a detrimental effect on your morale and psyche.

AL: Of course, yeah.

BO: ICE conditions aren’t good, but again, better than CECOT.

AL: Can you remind us, for people who might not know the full story, from the beginning of this ordeal, what happened to him? What was the process? Why was he moved to these different centers, and what happened there?

BO: Since he’s been back in the United States, he was paroled back in when he was brought back in. He’s been shuffled back and forth between both immigration and criminal custody. So that’s been one of the reasons that he’s been moved back and forth. He was taken out to Tennessee, staying in a Putnam County Jail there, while they were arraigning him on the federal charges and then figuring out whether he was going to be released on bond.

Once he was released on bond, he was then re-detained by Baltimore [Enforcement and Removal Operations] and then taken down to Farmville [in Virginia]. The judge in the federal district court case had ordered him to be kept within 200 miles, and then they transferred him from Farmville to Moshannon detention center [in Pennsyvlania]. And that’s where he was released from recently.

AL: Can you talk a little bit about the legal strategy of these dueling, federal attacks against him — both on the immigration front and the criminal front — and how that complicated his situation?

Benjamin Osorio: I guess, let’s talk about the three-front war, right? So he’s got an immigration case, which is pending before the immigration court.

He then also has the habeas case, which — even though he’s out now — continues because of some of the things that have happened in the immigration case that’s taking place in the federal district court in Maryland. And then he’s got the criminal case taking place in federal district court in Tennessee. So he’s got a criminal defense team working on the criminal case.

He also has us, who are partnered with Quinn Emanuel working on the district court litigation. And then he has us just working on the immigration court litigation.

So it’s kind of messy, but what he was granted before is called withholding of removal. Typically before the Trump second administration, you were not seeing these third-country removals that you’re seeing now.

So if you won withholding of removal, they can’t remove you to your home country, but they can remove you to a third country. So let’s say that he has this protection from El Salvador, they were not supposed to have been able to send him to El Salvador, but they could send him to Mexico, to Honduras, to Guatemala as part of these third-country agreements. They could do that.

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He would be a very visible candidate for them to try to go after to do that. We feel that we also were fighting the immigration case to try to normalize his status, get that back reopened, and adjust his status. Now when they paroled him back into the United States, they also created some new immigration options for him as well, potentially applying for asylum because he’s back within one year of having entered the United States, but also he’s married to a U.S. citizen.

So now that he has a lawful entry back into the United States, he could potentially adjust status through her. So it’s messy. And obviously, the government has put the full force of DOJ and DHS behind it to try to make an example of him.

AL: You mentioned like his particular circumstances made him the perfect target for this administration and what they’re trying to do.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that and how his case became a flashpoint in this administration’s immigration policies. This was the case that finally pushed Democratic senators to say, “We’re going to go and visit these detainees,” people who have been removed. Why did that happen?

BO: I think most Americans are intelligent enough to recognize that everybody deserves due process, right? There’s a reason that if somebody that we all know goes and commits a murder, they still get a trial. We don’t summarily execute them unless they’re a danger to the police officers arresting them or anything else like that. There’s a process. They get a jury of their peers.

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And the same thing in immigration: This guy had a lawful order protecting him from being removed from the United States, and the government violated that. And so the Constitution is designed to protect us from the government. And so here is the government violating somebody’s due process, violating the Constitution.

And I think that’s why people cared about it. I don’t think it was necessarily about Kilmar, or his specific person — or it’s not about whether Kilmar is a good guy or a bad guy. It’s about, the government owes a responsibility to do the right thing,

AL: The order to release Kilmar — a federal U.S. district judge in Maryland said that federal authorities lacked a legal basis for continuing to detain him. Has his case changed anything in your view, as far as how judges are handling other similar cases, or how the administration is approaching targeting people like Kilmar?

BO: Yes. The federal district courts probably are not fond of how many habeas we filed. But there’s been a change in bond rules too. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this. In September, there was a case that came out from the Board of Immigration Appeals called Matter of Yajure Hurtado, and it basically tries to change the rules to make so many people ineligible for bond.

Because they were trying to change the rules without actually going through Congress to change the law — which actually governs statutes and mandatory detention and who’s eligible for bond — we started filing a ton of habeases. And so I think the courts have probably never seen more immigration habeases in their life.

Like I said, they’re probably sick of it, but at the same time, they’ve been great and fast-acting on these habeas. Sometimes a habeas, a normal habeas, could pin for a while. But they’ve been great on ordering either the immigration courts to hold a bond hearing and find a head jurisdiction or beyond that ordering these people released. So in the habeas sense, I would think that Kilmar’s case has had a lot of effect in the immigration practice.

AL: What’s next for Ábrego Garcia after his release? Obviously, you mentioned his pending cases.

BO: It’s hard to say. We’re still in the middle of briefing both before the immigration side of things, both at the immigration court level because the immigration judge just issued a new order the other day, and then also before the Board of Immigration Appeals.

And then because of some of the acts that the board and the IJ have taken — the immigration judge — have taken, now Judge [Paula] Xinis has ordered an additional briefing on the [Temporary Restraining Order] right now in federal district court.

Look, I was shocked. People were asking us when we first started if we were going to be able to bring him back. And then I was kind of shocked that Xinis found that he didn’t have a removal order. It’s not something I would’ve predicted in the beginning. But then when there was that hearing a couple weeks ago, and she was talking about there not being a valid order because he was ordered removed to Guatemala.

I mean there’s been a lot of different turns here. I think it’s hard to predict what ultimately happens. Like I said, if I’m him, I just want to be out and I want to be with my family, and if that means it’s in Costa Rica or whether that’s here in the United States as long as I’m not detained, I would be happy.

AL: Any final thoughts? One thing I would ask maybe if you want to elaborate on is this idea that it doesn’t really matter what kind of person it is when we’re talking about these cases. Like, what matters is the statute and the constitutional protections that are here. And that’s completely at odds with how the administration has framed all of this — that the people it’s going after are criminals who deserve whatever’s coming to them. I think that’s an important distinction, but if there’s any other point that you touched on that you want to elaborate on?

BO: I just think it’s funny. I hear different officials go on TV and they say, we’re going after the individuals who are breaking the law, or we’re going after the individuals here who are here unlawfully. But there have been many cases where they are making the people unlawful.

So when they take away Temporary Protected Status from people from Haiti and Sudan and from Venezuela, these countries that have ongoing crisis in them, they made them undocumented. And when they say that we want people to do things the right way — look, Congress passed Section 208 [of the Immigration and Nationality Act] and made asylum a lawful pathway. Asylum is a lawful pathway to get status here in the United States.

Now, if Congress wants to change the laws, that would be well within their right to do. But until they do that, their attempts to block asylum-seekers and their attempts through different regulatory changes or through the Board of Immigration appeals to whittle away asylum and go after victims of domestic violence — I don’t know, to me, that’s not the American way, and it’s sad that our government is targeting some of the most vulnerable individuals in our society.

AL: What else is on your docket right now?

BO: It’s pretty crazy, the number of detentions has obviously picked up pretty significantly, and that’s sort of my specialty, is detained removal.

It’s just very sad because I see so many families — and families of people with U.S. citizen spouses and families of people with U.S. citizen kids — getting ripped apart. People always ask me, they say, “Why don’t people just do it the right way?” I have friends who are not immigration lawyers or, I’m from Georgia, I have a lot of friends who have maybe very different views on immigration than I have, and they’re like, “They’ve been here for 20 years. Why haven’t they fixed their status?” And I’m like, “Our immigration system is broken. I don’t think you understand like how complicated it is for somebody who’s been here 20 years.”

Even if they have a U.S. citizen spouse, if they have more than two entries, they might be subject to a 212(a)(9)(C) and be subject to the “permanent bar.” That means they have to stay outside for 10 years — away from their U.S. citizen spouse, away from their U.S. citizen kids.

And then I have other things, where people are active members of this community. I have a family I represent that the U.S. citizen spouse works for a local school board, and they have two small U.S. citizen kids. And it’s sort of complicated, but at one hearing where the judge was ordering him removed, even though we won later on appeal and he’s still here — a 7-year-old girl’s coming up to me. And I have 6-year-old twins. So she’s about my kids’ age, and she’s asking me, “When is Dad going to come home?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

And so I just think people don’t understand like how much damage we’re doing to future generations of Americans. I don’t think people understand how much damage we’re doing to the economy. I don’t think people understand how much damage we’re doing to the American brand here.

AL: Thank you so much for taking the time, Ben. We know you have a lot on your plate, so we really appreciate it.

BO: Thank you.

AL: After a quick break, we’re going to zoom out and talk about exactly who is profiting from the Trump’s deportation agenda, and take a closer look at what has become a rapidly expanding and lucrative industry. We’ll be right back.

Break

AL: Welcome back to The Intercept Briefing. The militarization of U.S. borders and immigration policy is a project that’s been long in the making.

Bill Clinton: We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of law.

George W. Bush: We’re going to get control of our borders. We’re going to make this country safer for all our citizens.

Barack Obama: Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws.

Unknown: President Obama has deported more undocumented workers than President Bush did.

Donald Trump: And we will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States.

AL: The violent immigration raids we see in communities across the country today could not have happened without the bipartisan efforts of past presidents — those who paved the way for an insatiable immigration bureaucracy and an unhinged administration ready to take it over.

As of November, ICE is detaining more than 65,000 people, a historic high, according to The Guardian. Under the guise of protecting national security, officials have transformed U.S. immigration over the last two decades into a cash cow for private corporations. Today, Trump’s deportation machine takes up more than half of all federal law enforcement spending. And Trump’s marquee spending bill raises that to 80 percent.

Democratic senators just released a report that found that the Trump administration diverted $2 billion in Pentagon funds to target immigrants, as our colleagues Nick Turse and Noah Hurowitz reported earlier this month.

A new investigative video series from Lawfare and SITU Research maps out this vast web that comprises the deportation economy: how U.S. immigration enforcement has evolved into a rapidly growing multibillion-dollar industry shaped by private profit, political power and a perverse incentive structure. Joining me now to talk about this industry are some of the folks behind the project.

Tyler McBrien is the managing editor of Lawfare, a nonprofit publication covering law, national security, and foreign policy.

Tyler McBrien: Thanks for having me, Akela.

AL: And we’re joined by Gauri Bahuguna, a computational designer and deputy director of research at SITU Research, a visual investigations practice in Brooklyn, New York.

We’ve worked with SITU on reporting on reconstructions of police responses to protests, it’s great to have you on.

Welcome, Gauri.

Gauri Bahuguna:  Thank you for having me.

AL: To start, for both of you, what drove you all to do this project? What did you feel was missing from the public’s understanding of how the system works?

GB: This project actually began as far back as 2023, and at the time we were interested in expanding the notion of immigration enforcement beyond the border. So at the time we were looking at the various, the physical, the digital, and the political infrastructures that create this everywhere border, so to speak.

And from there, obviously, the election last year was a huge point for us to track and study. The industry part came up in our research of how and why this immigration enforcement seems to be a growing hot- button issue.

TM: What we are trying to do with this project is to make visible an entire system, as much as that’s possible. All the facets of the immigration enforcement economy — be it detention, deportation, surveillance, and interdiction — because I’m sure listeners can relate, the past year has just been this feeling of jumping from fire to fire. And you can easily miss the forest for the trees.

We wanted to highlight not just these big-name companies that people will be familiar with — the Palantirs, the Googles, even maybe the GEO Groups, the private prisons — but also smaller companies that do food service or IT services that make up these web of contracts for ICE and DHS.

AL: Tyler, that’s a good segue because we know that this is obviously a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s agenda, but there’s been a bipartisan effort to build up this machine since long before he first took office, which really accelerated when George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security and ICE after 9/11. But what other figures helped drive that expansion prior to Trump? How did we get to where we are today?

TM: The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 was a pivotal moment. It was a major restructuring of immigration, and that was also a point at which the framing of immigration went from more of a civil matter to more of a national security concern. And with that transition, the amount of money and contracts began to flood in because of this “higher echelon” issue of national security versus civil enforcement.

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2002 was a pivotal moment, but like we said, it was building before that. We really try to convey that in the videos — of having not only Trump on the campaign trail promising the biggest deportation campaign in history, but also dating back to Bush, of course to Bill Clinton, and before.

Just to also back up, the framing that we wanted to put forth was that of the military–industrial complex, and throw out this provocation that we may be seeing an immigration–industrial complex following the same dynamics.

AL: Gauri, can you talk about the main ways that this deportation economy operates?

GB: It was in the Obama administration where the detention bed quota comes in, and that’s really the key unit of measurement that drives this particular part of the immigration enforcement industry, is “How much money can you make per detained individual?”

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And for now, even though the bed quota is gone formally from the law there, it still exists in contracts with companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group, where there is a minimum quota that ICE must fulfill in order to be in contract with these companies. And any detainees above that minimum guaranteed daily population, they get discounts on.

So there is payment for detaining a certain number of people, whether or not the beds are occupied, and then the perverse incentive to keep those facilities filled because there’s an economies of scale.

TM: This is another, I think, motivation behind the project is to highlight not only the ideological and political motives of the current immigration system — think Stephen Miller’s vision — but also the profit motive driving this perpetual system. And the upshot of it is something that Gauri just touched on, which is treating people as these products and units and to maximize profit there.

AL: Can you talk more about this incentive structure and who is profiting?

Like you mentioned, everyone knows Palantir, GEO Group, CoreCivic, and you mentioned there’s some other names that people may not be as familiar with playing a significant role there. But yeah, I’m curious to hear more about who is actually profiting.

GB: The main profiteers are those large private prison corporations like CoreCivic and GEO Group, because ICE has different kinds of facilities that range from completely owned and operated by ICE to agreements with the marshals, and then completely contracted detention facility centers.

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And because of the pricing structure offered by these private companies, it is the lowest price per night per detainee in private detention centers. However, ICE will often work with local and state governments, who then subcontract out to these private companies to detain populations. So what happens is that almost or close to 90 percent of all of the detainee population are held in private prisons because it just makes that much more economic sense.

TM: As Gauri said the biggest ones are the private prison contractors. I think the biggest single contractor is GEO Group, which listeners will probably be familiar, but they’re also smaller firms. In surveillance, we have the big names like Google, Palantir, Clearview, but there are also smaller companies, like BI2 Technologies. There are investment firms like BlackRock and Vanguard.

In the video, we have this map that shows just this web of companies. But I think what was really interesting in doing this project was to come to realize that this analogy between the military–industrial complex and the immigration–industrial complex was sometimes not so much an analogy as just the extension of one into the other.

So some of these firms are the same. You have Northrop Grumman, where you have big weapons manufacturers. You have gun manufacturers that are also benefiting.

AL: Because they’re arming the guards?

TM: Exactly. And arming for some of the immigration raids, so for example, Operation Midway Blitz.

AL: Does the incentive structure that you were talking about, Gauri, does that have the potential to limit future avenues for policy change on immigration? And is that already happening? Like the idea that the incentives are built around the fact that this economy already exists and it needs to continue existing or else it’ll be bad for the economy, and does that make it harder to unwind this machine?

GB: That’s an interesting question. I think because these are being detailed in the contracts themselves, I would imagine, it is something that could be addressed and there could be safeguards against having these types of quotas. Because again, it is just another expression of the detention bed quota, and they did successfully get that repealed.

AL: But the idea that like, even though they repealed that, it’s still part of this structure. Like, the economy is operating with a mind of its own, like outside of the policy sphere.

TM: I think that’s the dynamic that we’re warning that is already happening and will continue to happen and further entrench.

So if you think about detention, for example, which is the first chapter of the video that we put out. Often companies like GEO Group will have idle facilities that were just a red line on their balance sheet. And now there’s this huge incentive to get these idle facilities up and running — fill the beds.

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And then the way that it can become entrenched in that community, for example, is then that creates some jobs. And it’s this perverse choice between an economic boon to the local community in some small way versus not having those jobs. And so, you can see how these incentives — these just pure economic incentives — can just keep driving the machine as you said.

AL: This is obviously very linked to the broader phenomenon of mass incarceration in the U.S. and the push and pull over cutting the number of people that we have behind bars outside of the immigration system. Did that come up at all in this project? Are there characters or actors who play a major role in building up the carceral system who also play a role in this system? We know private prisons, GEO Group and CoreCivic, are a big part of this, but obviously they don’t incarcerate the majority of people in the U.S. But I’m curious how this came up, if at all, during your research and how you think about the nexus between the U.S. prison system and immigration detention.

GB: Yeah, absolutely. They’re so closely tied together because GEO Group, their facilities are both, again, they’re private prisons and also immigrant detention facilities. I believe some of the private prisons were then converted into detention centers. And now because there is this tipping point where there’s just so much more money in this immigration enforcement, you see other actors [are] moving toward that.

I also just wanted to note that the myth really that it creates jobs for local people was something that we found to be not necessarily true in our research. And one of our colleagues actually took a road trip through America and visited a lot of these towns that were in close proximity to these facilities. And because of the stop-and-start nature, so sometimes they would be filled, so the detention center was operational, so there were a few jobs given out. Then it would shut down, so they would all lose their jobs immediately. And more recently, with the immigration detention facilities, because of language requirements, they were not even hiring people from the neighboring towns.

So it’s not even that there was a direct benefit to the community.

AL: That’s really interesting. Did they interview people who lived in the town or where, who were they talking to?

GB: Yes, pretty much people in the local watering hole. This is the facility that is also mentioned in the video in Michigan, one of the GEO Group idle facilities that was just recently opened, and I believe it’s the largest immigration detention center in the Midwest. So he was speaking to a lot of people in small towns around that detention center, and they all expressed similar sentiment.

AL: I also just want to touch on this idea that ICE and CBP have really exponentially increased the amount of power and influence that they have over not just immigration policy, but our government in general.

There’s been so much great reporting on just how much money has been diverted from other parts of the government, or how many agents have been diverted to these agencies to sort of power this machine.

But I wonder, can you talk about that phenomenon? Like, these two small agencies that were intended for a very particular purpose have pretty much become the face of the government at this point.

TM: Yeah, I guess I don’t want to overstate something that I said earlier about the profit motive and the economic factors driving all of this/ That’s a fear, and something that we’ve been seeing that is driving policy. But of course the political and the ideological motives are also driving this.

You see this in the national security strategy that was just released by the administration — that border security and controlling immigration is the national security threat. So you see it elevated in the political arena as well. And then it’s not just the administration. You have Congress to thank for the exponentially higher billions that are flooding into DHS and ICE, who can then award the contracts to these companies.

GB: It’s the result of decadeslong lobbying campaigns, right, to push for these harsh immigration laws. So I think there’s definitely the political angle, and also because of how CBP and ICE are allowed to operate, which is slightly different from other law enforcement agencies; they have a lot more leeway. Border Patrol, for example, they have a 100-mile radius within the U.S. border, that they can stop people without a warrant and just question them. I think these types of extra powers make it easier for the conversion or the misappropriation of a military force, so to speak.

TM: And just to add one point to what Gauri said about lobbying. If you take GEO Group, for example, their PAC, according to FEC filings, was the first to max out donations to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

AL: On this point about this being part of the national security strategy and this lobbying apparatus, this is also a strategy that Trump and his allies want to push beyond the U.S. and into Europe, for example. Can you talk a little bit about that, how the Trump administration is essentially lobbying to export this around the world, export this system around the world?

TM: Yeah. I can speak to one aspect of this. Take the video that we put out on detention. We broke it down into three ways in which the detention economy works. One is permanent facilities. We talked a lot about private prisons. One is temporary or soft-sided facilities. But the third that we cover — as a sort of form of outsourcing or contracting — is “alternative jurisdictions,” as we call it.

So think El Salvador, CECOT. Think the talk about detaining migrants at Guantánamo Bay. And then of course the system of deportation, these third-country removals, these are transactional often in nature, in terms of what a country would economically benefit very often from receiving migrants from the United States.

We wanted to expand the idea of what a contract could be or what this transaction could look like beyond just the U.S. government and a private company in the US. It’s really more expansive than that.

AL: Can you talk about how you compiled this project? I know a lot of the information was public or open source, but tell me about your approach. Where did you start?

GB: So the first step was to identify who are the main actors within this economy. And that was identified through looking at the budgets and the contracts that you mentioned. This is open-source information.

And then after that, we really wanted to understand further how this is exploding as a way. So I think looking for the details within the contracts that really jumped out, like the tiered pricing, for example. And then moving into now, how do you put this all together and visualize it? And I think that’s where we started being a bit more experimental with our research. And so one example is the parametric tool that we use to visualize deployed resources, which is one of the soft-sided detention facility contractors.

So just trying to visualize what detention at this scale means because I don’t think that’s something that is particularly present in most of the conversations. So it was a combination of trying to find and really parse through these government contracts and all of this jargon. And then translate it into a way that was, again, paints this picture of it being beyond the border and located to other geographies within the United States.

TM: On this parametric tool. I think Gauri and some of her colleagues at SITU really helped understand projections and what these big numbers and big promises would actually mean.

What that gets at is just the reason for contracting in the first place. The government just doesn’t have the capacity to find, detain, and deport the numbers of people that they are setting as a goal. And sometimes not even the single facility or single company that are contracted to do something can do it, which means that there likely will be more contracts and more money going into it.

So I think that’s one thing that the SITU team really helped me visualize at least, was, what do these massive numbers mean and what will they continue to mean?

AL: Tyler you brought up Stephen Miller earlier. Obviously we’re going to have to talk about him at some point. Top White House adviser Stephen Miller is widely recognized as the brains behind Trump’s deportation agenda. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent had this great piece about his vision earlier this week. He wrote, “Miller’s grander aims are best understood as an effort to destroy the entire architecture of immigration and humanitarian resettlement put in place in the post-World War II era.” I really encourage people to go read this because they interview Miller’s family members and go into like this book that his family member wrote about the immigration apparatus, like when they came to the U.S. Anyway, very interesting.

But can you guys talk about Miller, his vision, and how that’s coming to life under Trump’s second term — and how that deviates or doesn’t deviate from lthe post-9/11 vision of this system?

TM: I haven’t read the piece, and I can’t believe you’re asking me to crawl into Stephen Miller’s mind. [laughs]

AL: Sorry, someone has to. [laughs]

TM: I would go back to what I was saying in the past answer, where the way to achieve the scale at which Stephen Miller wants to deport and relocate people again is only achieved through a massive expansion of contracts. And that’s why the funding bill was so material to this.

AL: You’re talking about the “Big, Beautiful Bill.”

TM: Exactly, yeah. So I think Stephen Miller and even the Trump administration as a whole can announce that they want to hit these benchmarks, but it’s then these contractors who come in.

GB: Yeah, I agree with what you said but also wanted to acknowledge the very prominent white nationalist undercurrent of his vision.

AL: Yeah.

GB: And I think that we can see that play out in how the language of how to describe migrants is very dehumanizing, “illegal aliens.” And it’s just rife with xenophobia in every news coverage.

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And I think that is moving the country toward a more, or less tolerant overall perspective of what migrants are and specifically which migrants are “good” and worthy of being in this country. And I think that is probably the most scary part of his vision coming to life.

TM: Yeah, it’s a great point. We were constantly asking ourselves what part of this system we have today is continuity and what part is rupture. And I think to Gauri’s point, I mean that the rupture is just the destruction of any sort of refugee program, save for white Afrikaners from South Africa, is just a nakedly, racist policy. I think there’s just no other interpretation.

AL: You’ve both mentioned this capacity issue — Miller and Trump have these quotas that incentivize these policies, but maybe don’t have the capacity to fulfill that vision, even though they’ve been very successful at it so far. But this brings up this notion that I heard a lot prior to Trump’s election. Policy people and reporters who cover immigration were saying, “Not that this is overblown, but take it with a grain of salt because there is no capacity to do what they’re saying that they want to do.” We’re obviously seeing that not really be borne out right now. But even if there isn’t capacity to achieve their goals, does it matter because of how much they’ve already been able to do? Obviously by diverting money, resources, and agents from all of these other departments, but despite all the handwringing over capacity, like this is still obviously happening in full force.

GB: I don’t think it matters that much both for the base that they’re trying to appeal to and also the corporations and individuals involved in this large scale operation. What happens is that yes, it’s completely impossible for them to meet the targets they’re setting for themselves, but in doing so, they create like an urgency and that’s when more of these regulations start to dip and drop.

[White House border czar] Tom Homan, for example, has already been calling to reduce the detention standards in ICE facilities, if it’s not permanent facilities, and we go into the tents. And then within the tents again, how much more can you pack in so you squeeze more profit, reduce the living conditions of these places, and then you have a lot more to show for that’s closer to this target, but whether or not they ever reach, it doesn’t matter to the people affected.

AL: Right. I want to mention another piece that was recently published. Above the Law published this story about ICE, perhaps, inadvertently, posting a “watchlist” of immigration lawyers. We know the administration routinely attacks its perceived enemies, including immigration attorneys. What do you make of that and how the administration has gone after the legal system to power its agenda?

TM: Yeah, I think it’s a clear attempt to reduce the friction that they face in the immigration system. And often that friction is happening in the courts. Some of the biggest administration immigration stories of the year have been about these high profile deportation cases. Kilmar Ábrego García, for example, Mahmoud Khalil, of course. You’re seeing the strategy deployed across other issue areas too. It’s the flip side of the capacity — they’re building out capacity while also trying to reduce the barriers, and most of the barriers are legal ones.

AL: Right.

GB: Even just in the geographic distribution, it’s again, trying to set up these obstacles for accessing legal counsel. So that’s very intentional, right? They’re extremely rural areas where most of these facilities are. It’s very difficult for people to be in touch with lawyers in facilities like Alligator Alcatraz; there was no access at all.

So I think there is this both contempt and disregard for the law, but also intentional fear of limiting access.

AL: Given where we are today and how big this deportation economy has grown and how deeply it’s spread its tentacles into all of these other sectors that we’ve touched on, is it possible to unwind this and what would that take?

TM: It’s such a hard question. Like I said earlier, we throw out the analogy to Eisenhower’s military–industrial complex farewell speech. I think it’s safe to say that his warning went unheeded, and the military–industrial complex only increased exponentially. Which is one of the reasons we wanted to shift this new warning that, you know, maybe it will be heeded this time.

But it is worrying to me because I think you contrast the current moment to the first administration, first Trump administration, where there were sometimes successful worker-organized protests, for example, especially at tech companies. After contracts with ICE were made public, workers came together to protest and sometimes those contracts were canceled. I feel like you’re not seeing the same dynamic here. There is, I guess, some power in the consumer base and if consumers are made aware of companies or investments that they are a part of that are also being used to detain and deport people often illegally, then perhaps there’s some sort of pressure point there.

AL: And this reminds me, we didn’t even talk about this. The first anti-ICE protests that we saw under Trump [this term] brought the first National Guard deployment that we saw. And now I feel like people don’t even really — he’s deployed the National Guard to so many cities that people don’t necessarily connect that to that being an effort to tamp down on opposition to this deportation machine.

GB: That actually connects quite well to what I’m about to say, which is I am a little skeptical about whether the toothpaste can be put back into the tube just because of how deep these roots have gotten into every part of our daily lives. And so the first pieces were about detention, and we’re going to do one on deportation and interdiction. Then the final one is a data surveillance piece. And I think that is really, that’s where so much money — like far beyond what the deportation and detention is estimated.

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I think this data surveillance piece is what will ultimately also impact citizens most directly, right? It’s being tested on migrants and then slowly, as you mentioned with the National Guard, it just creeps into daily life and becomes normalized. So I think just because of the, and we see that the large tech companies are also embedded into this administration, so I just feel like we’re moving towards a very dark point of no return.

AL: Thank you for using the toothpaste and the tube analogy, because I think that is a perfect analogy for this. It’s not only impossible to do, but it’s very messy. Thank you both for joining me on the Intercept Briefing. This has been a great conversation on a depressing topic, so we really appreciate it.

GB: Thank you.

TM: Yeah, thanks so much for having us.

AL: We’re going to add a link to the SITU and Lawfare series in our show notes and on our website. Really encourage you all to check it out. It’s fantastic work and more to come in 2026, so hopefully we will talk more about that then.

That does it for this episode.

Before we go, a quick note: We’re taking next week off. In our place, we’ll feature an episode of The Intercept’s new series, Collateral Damage, hosted by investigative journalist Radley Balko. And we’ll be back with a new episode the following week.

Thank you for showing up every week for The Intercept Briefing. This show exists because of you — our listeners and readers of The Intercept. If you believe in the work we’re doing, you can support us at theintercept.com/join. Every contribution, whatever the size, keeps independent journalism alive.

If you value what you’re hearing, leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. It’s one of the most powerful ways to help new listeners discover the show. And if you have story ideas for the new year or want to share feedback, reach us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.

Happy holidays, and happy new year.

The post Deportation, Inc. appeared first on The Intercept.

The scale of the Trump administration’s plans to warehouse human beings is hard to fathom. Here’s one way to put it in perspective: On a given day, New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex holds approximately 7,000 detainees. President Donald Trump’s regime, which is currently holding a record 70,000 people in immigration detention, now plans to develop a network of Rikers-sized concentration camps for immigrants nationwide.

The Department of Homeland Security is racing to buy up and convert two-dozen-plus warehouses into mass detention centers for immigrants, some capable of holding up to 10,000 people. According to documents released last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to spend $38.3 billion acquiring warehouses across the country and retrofitting them to collectively hold nearly 100,000 beds.

“If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they’ll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight,” noted Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “The federal government hasn’t operated a prison camp inside the United States that large since Japanese Internment.”

When Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, last week announced that ICE’s “surge” in Minnesota would wind down, it marked a significant victory for the thousands of Minnesotans who have fought back against the federal forces terrorizing their state; resistance forced the Trump regime to change its plans. But nothing is ramping down when it comes to the deportation machine at large. When billions of dollars are spent to turn industrial spaces into detention camps, authoritarian desires meet market logic: The warehouses must be filled.

Local communities are nonetheless pushing back, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable federal forces with unlimited funding, abetted by powerful private interests who stand to gain from this carceral build-out.

As The Appeal reported last week, investors on a recent quarterly earnings call for private prison giant CoreCivic were worried that ICE’s unprecedented detention numbers were still not high enough. “I think people thought we’d be at that 100,000 level,” one caller reportedly said of the number of people currently held by ICE. “We’re at a little over 70,000.”

The company’s CEO stressed the major financial gains made though Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign and assured callers that the drawdown in Minnesota did not, in his view, portend “meaningful changes in enforcement style or approach.” That is to say, the racial profiling, cruelty, and mass roundups will continue, and private prison corporations like CoreCivic and Geo Group, alongside giants of surveillance infrastructure like Palantir, will collectively make billions from DHS spending. What author John Ganz has called “ICE’s function as an employment program for the Trumpenproletarian mob” — now with 22,000 officers — will also continue to be handsomely funded.

None of this is a surprise: When Congress passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocating ICE nearly $80 billion in multiyear funding, the administration made clear that money would be no object in enacting its project of ethnic cleansing and the expansion of the carceral system for targeted groups of immigrants and opponents. The warehouse purchases and related government contracts have, as The Lever reported, been a boon for Trump-connected real estate brokers and a bailout for “commercial real estate owners, who have struggled to sell their properties over the past year under the weight of macroeconomic headwinds and Trump’s tariff war.”

Economic stimulus based in ethnic cleansing would, of course, be despicable. But the Trump regime can’t even pretend this dizzyingly expensive project serves its own base. Only a small number of interested businesses and parties stand to gain. Meanwhile, as public resistance in both Republican- and Democratic-majority locales has already made clear, everyone else stands to lose. And hundreds of thousands of our immigrant neighbors stand to lose the most.

Trump’s mass deportation plan is estimated by the libertarian Cato Institute to have a fiscal cost of up to $1 trillion over a decade. And the losses? Due to the loss of workers across U.S. industries, the American Immigration Council found that mass deportation would reduce the U.S. gross domestic product by 4.2 to 6.8 percent. It’s money that could be spent improving our collective lives. The $45 billion total budgeted for ICE detention centers is nearly four times the $12.8 billion the U.S. spent on new affordable housing in 2023. The huge budget for ICE mega warehouses reflects the most Trumpian mix: cronyist dealmaking in service of white nationalism.

The historian Adam Tooze has at various points recalled the words of economist John Maynard Keynes, who said in 1942 that “anything we can actually do we can afford.” Keynes was arguing that sovereign governments have extraordinary capacity to mobilize finances; the constraints lie elsewhere. Tooze has stressed that the limits of what a government can “actually do” are political, technical, material, and logistical — and extremely complicated as such. But, he points out, they are not budgetary. The Trump administration has made clear that it can afford anything when it comes to the rounding up and brutalizing of immigrants and antifascist protesters. That, however, does not mean the government can actually do everything it wants.

A number of warehouse owners, facing local backlash and pressure, have already backed out of lucrative sales to ICE. According to Bloomberg, Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison’s company announced that a transaction to sell a 550,000-square-foot warehouse in Ashland, Virginia, “will not be proceeding.” The company made clear that the move was political, saying, “We understand that the conversation around immigration policy and enforcement is particularly heated, and has become much more so over the past few weeks. We respect that this issue is deeply important to many people.”

For ICE, money is no object. But constant and relentless public protest, blockades, boycotts, and local government pressure significantly lessen the appeal for warehouse owners and potential contractors to do this fascist work.

Deals for warehouses near Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, and Byhalia, Missouri, have also fallen through. In each case, warehouse owners faced protests and mounting pressure. In some jurisdictions, backlash to ICE warehouses have come in the worst sort of NIMBY variety — including complaints from Republicans who do not want immigrant detainees brought to their town en masse. Concerns about water and sewage systems and economic strains in remote areas also abound. But if local self-interest becomes a barrier to the expansion of Trump’s deportation regime, that’s no bad thing, given the urgent need to hold back Trump’s deeply unpopular but otherwise unrestrained forces.

We need every possible limit on what Trump and his loyalists can actually do.

The post Can Trump’s Plan for Warehouse Immigrant Detention Camps Be Stopped? appeared first on The Intercept.

The video, which has been viewed more than 2.2 million times on YouTube and millions more on other platforms, sparked a renewed crackdown in Minneapolis, with the Department of Homeland Security announcing on Monday it would visit 30 sites suspected of fraud across the city. A DHS official told CBS News Minnesota its agents would focus on a “little of everything,” when asked whether immigration enforcement would be a part of the crackdown. Threatening arrests, the agency posted a video to X in which agents enter a smoke shop and question an employee about a nearby day care center.

This isn’t the first time the conservative YouTuber has gotten the attention of the Trump administration. Shirley participated in President Donald Trump’s “Roundtable on Antifa” in October after an altercation at an anti-ICE protest. At age 23, his videos aren’t merely influencing his audiences — they’re also influencing government action.

This worries immigrant rights advocates, who fear that the fallout from Shirley’s video will only worsen the harm already being done to Minnesota’s immigrant communities at a time when Trump has taken to calling Somali people “garbage” at his rallies.

“The very real-world consequence is that it’s going to exacerbate the situation that we have in Minnesota right now where we have a lot of people, including U.S. citizens or people with lawful status being arrested and detained by ICE,” said Ana Pottratz Acosta, who leads the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Minnesota Law School.

The video, she said, reinforces xenophobic tropes about the Somali community, specifically tying the community to fraud. Pottratz Acosta said she was worried the increase in DHS visits to day cares could be a pretext to simultaneously conduct immigration detentions.

“They’re doing these visits at day care sites under the auspices of conducting a fraud investigation, but if they happen to see anyone who fits a profile, they might be arrested,” Pottratz Acosta said.

Related

U.S. Citizens With Somali Roots Are Carrying Their Passports Amid Minnesota ICE Crackdown

Shirley’s video builds off of the growing interest in a nonprofit fraud scandal in Minnesota involving a pandemic-era program focused on child hunger, which has resulted in dozens of guilty pleas. The Trump administration claims Minnesota’s fraud issue is much larger, to the sum of $9 billion worth of government funds being fraudulently funneled from social services. Republicans have painted Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, both Democrats up for reelection, as responsible for an alleged lack of oversight. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who is Somali American and Muslim, has also been the target of right-wing and xenophobic attacks. Among other racist stereotypes and false claims, Trump said, “We gotta get her the hell out” of the country at a Pennsylvania rally earlier this month.

State regulators said Monday that inspectors had visited the day cares mentioned in the video in the past six months, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune, that there was no evidence of fraud at the sites during those unannounced visits, and some of the centers have already been closed or suspended. According to Minnesota Public Radio, state Republican lawmakers had steered Shirley toward the day care centers he visited in the video.

Shirley defended his video and said people have been silent about “Somalians committing this fraud” because “people are scared to be called Islamophobic, racist.”

“Fraud is fraud — it doesn’t matter if it’s a Black person, white person, Asian person, Mexican,” Shirley told Fox News. “And we work too hard simply just to be paying taxes and enabling fraud to be happening.”

Despite Shirley’s insistence that race and religion have nothing to do with his investigation, the YouTuber has a long track record of using his man-on-the-street videos to target immigrants in the U.S., platforming individuals who spread xenophobic and Islamophobic beliefs and conspiracy theories. While Shirley’s videos include interviews with those protesting against such hate, he often presents immigration and Islam as a growing threat taking over the country. Combined with sensationalized headlines — “Exposing Dangerous Illegal Migrant Scammers” or “The UK’s Insane Migrant Invasion” — the end result is often a portrait of immigrants as lawbreakers, a societal threat, and a strain on government resources.

Shirley did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

In 2019, Shirley began to post prank videos with friends on YouTube while attending a public high school in Farmington, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. At first, his focus wasn’t especially political. He garnered a large number of his 1 million subscribers after sneaking into influencer Jake Paul’s wedding in Las Vegas.

But amid his comedic stunts, he documented the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in 2021, where he interviewed far-right commentator and InfoWars founder Alex Jones and infamous rioter Richard Barnett. Shirley said he did not take part in the violence and filmed himself leaving without entering the building. Later that year, Shirley took a two-year hiatus from YouTube to go on a mission in Santiago, Chile, as part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In late 2023, after his return to the United States, Shirley shifted from prank videos to focus on political topics, such as immigration and crime. In May 2024, he orchestrated a stunt in which he paid day laborers $20 to jump into the back of a U-Haul van, drove them to the White House, and gave them signs demanding a meeting with Biden.

Shirley’s mother, Brooke — herself a right-wing influencer who goes by Brooker Tee Jones on TikTok, where she has more than 250,000 followers — occasionally joins her son in the videos. It was Brooke who pushed her son to start covering immigration at the southern border after his mission trip, according to an interview with Columbia Journalism Review. Early on, she’d feed him questions to ask and lines to say in the videos, she recalled. Her content has similarly focused on immigration in recent years, including other videos that accuse Somali residents in Minnesota of health care fraud without providing evidence.

Reached by The Intercept, Brooke did not answer questions about her work or the work of her son.

Shirley has made a habit of visiting cities and countries that are settings for right-wing, anti-immigrant conspiracies, such as Aurora, Colorado, amid the manufactured crisis around the Tren de Aragua gang.

During a visit to El Salvador in 2024, Shirley filmed a series of videos sympathetic to President Nayib Bukele’s violent anti-crime crackdown on his citizens, including a video from the notorious CECOT prison. It’s his most-viewed video to date, with 6.6 million views. In another video from El Salvador, Shirley recorded from the Centro Industrial prison, which has become a manufacturing hub where incarcerated men build school desks and vegetable market display racks, a form of forced labor. “It’s pretty amazing if you think about what Nayib Bukele has been able to do with this country — the streets are as safe as they’ve ever been, because all these guys are out,” Shirley said while inside a CECOT cell block, gesturing to the incarcerated men. At no point in the video does he mention the stories of torture and abuse within the country’s prison system.

Shirley was recently awarded a “citizen journalist of the year” prize by far-right media figure and Project Veritas founder, James O’Keefe, in large part because of his CECOT video.

In other videos, Shirley himself has become a part of the story.

In September, Shirley and a small crew filmed a video antagonizing street vendors in New York City’s Chinatown, referring to them as “Dangerous Migrant Scammers.” Vendors could be seen scrambling away while Shirley strolls down Canal Street. At one point, one man tells Shirley to leave and asks why he’s filming, leading to a physical confrontation with Shirley’s cameraman.

Several weeks later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided the street, detaining nine individuals. Shirley praised ICE for the raid that left the street “completely clean of illegal activity” and taunted an individual who was detained as a “scammer [who] got ICED.”

Shirley has accompanied federal agents during immigration raids in Chicago, interviewing a detained man in the backseat of a federal vehicle. Since Trump’s election, media access at raids has largely been given only to outlets or individuals sympathetic to the administration’s mass deportation campaign.

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Alongside other far-right influencers such as Andy Ngo and Cam Higby, Shirley landed an invite to participate in Trump’s “Roundtable on Antifa,” a White House event where the administration advanced its campaign against antifascist activists. “People may wonder, ‘What’s the threat to us as Americans?’ You’ll be labeled as a fascist, you’ll be labeled a Nazi, and they’ll wish death upon you as they wished death upon me,” Shirley said of the decentralized protest group at the event.

Leading up to the Minnesota day care video, Shirley released a video about “the rise of Islam” in the U.S. and what he called “Minnesota’s Somali Takeover.” The July video makes a spectacle of the call to prayer and individuals praying inside a mosque and singles out Omar, as well as an Islamic center that converted from a Lutheran church to illustrate his point of the apparent takeover.

In October, Shirley published an hour-and-a-half sitdown interview with British far-right anti-immigrant and anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, during which he repeated the false claim that there are “40,000 British Muslims” on the United Kingdom’s terror watchlist living in Britain. The figure is a misreading of a real list by British intelligence agency MI5, which does not include religious identifiers and contains the names of many people who have never traveled to the U.K. “At what point does this break out from a revolution to a civil war?” Shirley asked.

Shirley’s recent viral video in Minnesota was a continuation of this narrative.

In an attempt to lure people into gotcha situations, Shirley visited day care centers and health care facilities that he claims are operated by Somali Americans. Taking a page out of his prank days, he poses as a parent looking for child care for his fictitious son, “Joey.” Throughout the video, Shirley approaches individuals with dark skin or women wearing hijabs, peppering them with questions about supposed “missing” children and whether they were aware of fraud.

Police are called on Shirley and his team twice in the video, including while at one health care complex where a woman explains to a responding officer, “He’s trying to assume because they’re Somalian providers everyone here is fraudulent — he’s here with some kind of propaganda.” He claimed to be “checking rates” for health and child care. Police eventually escorted him out of the building.

The video’s claims of fraud rely heavily on a Minnesota resident and apparent whistleblower who is identified in the video as David. Toward the end of the video, David claims he was attacked by Somali men who he had confronted about the alleged fraud, describing the men as “very, very violent people.”

Since early December, federal agents have increased their presence in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, profiling and detaining individuals who appear to be Somali, including individuals who are U.S. citizens. The crackdown has also led to the targeting of Latin American immigrant communities in search of undocumented residents. Trump and other right-wing figures have propped up their campaign by falsely depicting “Somalian gangs” who are “roving the streets” of Minneapolis and St. Paul, “looking for prey,” the president said on social media.

Even though Shirley’s video claims to have exposed new truths about fraud in Minnesota, the day care facilities highlighted in the video have previously been spotlighted as problematic by local ABC News affiliate, KSTP, as well as the state government, which earlier this year began to increase oversight of funding to day care facilities over similar fraud concerns.

The most effective way to combat fraud is increased oversight, said Pottraz Acosta. The recent crackdown in Minnesota, which has been exacerbated by Shirley’s video, she said, is not the kind of oversight that will prevent bad actors from exploiting public funds. The issue of anti-Somali sentiments is also a problem within Minnesota, she said, with residents facing demeaning stereotypes and unsubstantiated speculation that they are sending money to al-Shabab, the Somali militant group on the U.S foreign terror list.

This narrative, perpetuated locally and nationally, “feeds into larger narratives around certain immigrant communities,” Pottraz Acosta said. “There are bad actors in every community and just because certain people commit fraud, it doesn’t mean that every person who fits that same demographic profile is a bad actor.”

The post Right-Wing YouTuber Behind Viral Minnesota Fraud Video Has Long Anti-Immigrant History appeared first on The Intercept.

More than 1,000 Palestinians seeking food have been killed by Israeli forces in just the last few months, according to the United Nations. Israel’s blockade on aid, ongoing bombardment, and the dismantling of independent relief efforts have pushed Gaza to the brink of mass famine. At least 600,000 people are suffering from severe malnutrition, and aid groups warn of a manufactured humanitarian catastrophe.

“It’s not about the distribution of food, it’s not about humanitarian aid. It’s about creating — luring Palestinians who are desperate into the south, putting them into a closed military zone,” says Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl speaks with Hedges about how we got here and what’s at stake. Hedges spent seven years covering the conflict between Israel and the Palestine, much of that time in Gaza. He’s the author of 14 books, the most recent being “The Greatest Evil Is War” and “A Genocide Foretold.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

TRANSCRIPT

Jordan Uhl: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jordan Uhl.  

More than 1,000 Palestinians seeking food have been killed by Israeli forces in just the last few months, according to the U.N.  

CBS: And as Israel’s military operations ramp up, hunger is at an all time high. 

WTHR: At least 10 people have died from starvation in the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours. 

Al Jazeera: This is what death by forced starvation looks like. 

JU: Famine has persisted throughout the war. But in March, the crisis deepened as Israel imposed a blockade to aid, broke its ceasefire with Hamas, and resumed airstrikes on Gaza. 

By May, a newly formed U.S. contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, had taken over most aid distribution after Israel effectively banned independent and established relief groups, including the U.N. agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA. 

Gaza’s 400 aid sites were reduced to just four.  

Recent Intercept reporting from inside Gaza observed “a famine that is manufactured and an aid distribution system seemingly designed to cause more suffering and death.” 

António Guterres: We need look no further than the horror show in Gaza. With a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times. 

JU: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaking at the Security Council.

AG: Malnourishment is soaring, starvation is knocking on every door, and now we are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles. 

Sky News: [Gunfire] This is what the head of the U.N. is talking about. [Gunfire] The abject chaos and danger Gazans face trying to get food. 

JU: In one of the strongest rebukes of Israel’s actions to date, more than 100 aid and human rights groups issued a joint statement calling on world governments to intervene.

DN!: The NGOs, including Amnesty, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders warned, “Illnesses like acute watery diarrhea are spreading. Markets are empty. Waste is piling up. Adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.” unquote

JU: Gaza is on the brink of mass famine. At least 600,000 people are suffering from severe malnutrition, according to staff at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza.

This is not a tragedy of circumstance. It’s a deliberate campaign of mass starvation, enforced through Israel’s unrelenting bombing and continuous blockade on the flow of aid into Gaza, which is prohibited under international law.

The death toll in Gaza has reached nearly 60,000, officially, but experts and relief workers on the ground expect the actual number of casualties to be significantly higher.

To be clear: This is a genocide.

And Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing wages on, as lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in the Knesset on Wednesday on a non-binding resolution demanding annexation of the West Bank.

To understand how we got here and what this moment most demands, we turn to someone who has spent years reporting on the conflicts: Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times. 

He spent seven years covering the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, much of that time in Gaza. The author of 14 books, his most recent are “The Greatest Evil Is War” and “A Genocide Foretold.” He has taught at Columbia, NYU, Princeton, and the University of Toronto.

Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, Chris. 

Chris Hedges: Thanks, Jordan.

JU: We’re speaking on Tuesday, July 22nd. I’m eager to talk about this book, I finished it recently. But I also want to just first say thank you.

You are somebody who has had an outsized influence on my understanding and views on foreign policy. And I heard you speak at my undergraduate alma mater in Youngstown, Ohio, in the early 2010s, and you were talking about the death of a liberal class and what you said there stuck with me to this day.

And I remember looking around the room and seeing other people being encouraged and stimulated by what you were saying. And I’ve always seen you as somebody who has been able to speak truth to power and distill societal and complex problems in a way that we can all comprehend. And just wanted to say thank you. I’m really excited about this.

CH: Well thanks, that day Staughton Lynd came to that event with his wife Alice. He’s a great hero of mine. 

JU: Yes, Staughton Lynd. He’s the labor attorney who fought to stop steel-mill closures in Youngstown, Ohio, and ultimately the community’s post-industrial decline. 

CH: I remember that event because I speak at places like Skidmore where the children of the one percent are forced to go. They actually have to carry slips that you sign, and most of them probably spent the whole talk on their phones.

But that wasn’t true at Youngstown because I remember they were seated down the aisles because the student body was older, their parents had been laid off. They had felt the effects of de-industrialization in Youngstown, where the closure of the steel mills, and of course they had the capacity because of that experience, to ask the kinds of questions the children of the privileged don’t have to ask or don’t want to ask. So I remember that event very well.

JU: Let’s get into this book. I wanna start though with your 2002 book, “War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning.” In it, you talk about the use of myth to justify or perpetuate war. In one context, you talk about the creation myth of Israel and how Israelis are unwilling to question what they’re conditioned to believe about the state of Israel.

Then you also write about the myth of war and how through the filter of the press, the reality of war is misconstrued or even hidden. People are propagandized into believing the official narrative. In this case, in Gaza right now, it is a war for Israel’s survival. It is one of self-defense and solely against Hamas.

How else do you see the role of myth in Israel’s genocide in Gaza?

CH: Well every country, including our own, has a foundational myth, which is a narrative to essentially hold up national virtue, national courage. And we do it to this day. We’ve never really examined the two foundational institutions that created the United States, slavery and genocide against the Native Americans.

Israel is the same. It has its own creation myth that somehow the Palestinians — who, let’s be clear, had lived in historic Palestine for centuries — did not have an identity as a people, that the land was largely uninhabited. I mean, these were just completely false narratives still propagated by Zionists. And then the myth of war, which you mentioned, is another myth. And that is the myth of glory and honor, and courage and bravery and all the things that after about 30 seconds of combat you will realize are ridiculous.

And it’s very hard to fight that. But you know, speaking about myself, I spent 20 years overseas covering various conflicts, but also veterans who come back and attempt to be honest. You see it with groups like Veterans for Peace or Iraq Veterans Against the War. These people through overcoming a great deal of trauma and essentially being cast aside by the society and certainly their own comrades within the military have attempted to speak truth. 

But that truth is essentially deluged with the propaganda peddled by the news media, the entertainment industry, politicians. The tawdry reality of violence, the sickening reality of violence, the savagery of it, the indiscriminate killing that is emblematic with all kinds of industrial weapons is sanitized and rewritten and it’s extremely hard to counter that myth.

Just as it is extremely hard to counter the national creation myth, and we’re watching the Trump administration roll back those efforts. So whether that’s through teaching about slavery in school, they of course wanna restore the names of Confederate generals to US Army bases. The attack on DEI that perpetuates white supremacy and patriarchy is one that is challenged, I mean throughout our history, is challenged with great expense. 

And you see that in Israel, with these very courageous figures like Gideon Levy who writes for Haaretz and Amira Haas. You had the genocide scholar, Omer Bartov, who was a veteran from the 1973 war — he was a unit commander, he teaches at Brown — coming out and calling what’s happening in Gaza genocide, I would argue it’s a little late, but at least he’s doing it. The great Israeli historian Ilan Pappé or Avi Shlaim. And these people have become pariahs in their own country because what they’re attempting to do is puncture that myth. And people cling to that myth, because at its core it’s really about self adulation.

JU: I’m curious if you could elaborate on that. What makes this so enticing to people? Why is this type of myth-making so effective? In your books, you’ve talked about war specifically and the myth of war as an elixir. And you also point out how it’s a deep level of introspection for anybody really to question their national myth because it’s not just what you’ve learned, it’s also how you identify and how you see yourself.

So what makes it so complicated to challenge it and why is this messaging so effective?

CH: Because to look honestly at who we are, where we come from, and what we’ve done is an existential crisis and it’s extremely disconcerting and uncomfortable — as it should be. And so people prefer to have their egos and their national pride and their sense of self worth massaged and catered to even if that comes through lies.

And that’s why it creates both a societal and a personal crisis because one has to reckon with the darkness that is endemic within white supremacy and patriarchy and empire. And to confront that darkness is painful. It’s hard. And so most people will not only flee from that confrontation, but gravitate towards figures, let’s say like Trump, who essentially perpetuate or trumpet that myth because it’s about feeling good about ourselves.

I mean, James Baldwin writes about this quite eloquently, and he talks about the confusion of ignorance with innocence. That somehow Americans are innocent. Well, they’re innocent in their own eyes because they’re willfully ignorant. They willfully blind themselves to who they are, what they’ve done. Whether it’s in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or Gaza, where this genocide would not be perpetuated but for the stockpiles of munitions that are sent to Israel. 

Israel blew through its stockpiles many months ago. I think up to 80 percent of all munitions that Israel uses come from the United States. And it’s just easier not to look. It’s the old story about the good German, the people who claim that they didn’t know there were concentration camps and they didn’t know that their Jewish neighbors were being disappeared and shoved into crematoriums. But that’s true in every conflict I covered, including in Bosnia. The Serbs in Belgrade really did not want to know and did not know the genocidal campaigns that the Bosnian Serbs were carrying out in Bosnia against the Muslims.

JU: Now this new book, “A Genocide Foretold” is heavy. It’s a depressing read, and at times it made me question humanity. How could so many people stand idly by? But in your conversations, your encounters and your experiences with Palestinians and Gaza, you found glimmers of hope. You witnessed real courage and an unwillingness to accept a terminal fate.

Could you talk about some of the people you talked to for this book and maybe something one of them said or did that you still think about?

CH: Yeah. I opened the book in Ramallah. I was visiting my friend Atef Abu Saif, the great Palestinian novelist. He’s from Gaza. He and his teenage son were in Gaza on October 7. They were stuck in Gaza for 80 days. He wrote a memoir a kind of diary of that experience called “Don’t Look Left,” which I highly recommend. I think that this is true in all [war] — war brings out both the best and the worst in people. 

I mean, let’s look at the gangs that steal food and sell it on the black market. If you wanted to leave Gaza — no one can leave Gaza now, by the way. But before you had to pay Hala, the Egyptian organization, $5,000 in U.S. cash per head to get out. So you have families who don’t have many resources scrambling, contacting relatives and friends abroad to try and raise those funds to escape the hell that Gaza is.

So you have those predators that arise in every war. I remember during the war in Bosnia, one of the most lucrative ways to earn money was — both on the Serb side and on the Bosnian side — when Serb soldiers would be killed, you would have a gang or a mafia that would hold the body and then the Serb Mafia would do the same with Muslim bodies. And at night, for huge sums of money, those bodies would be sold to their families across the river. 

So that’s always true in war. It brings out these predators who see the vulnerability of others [as] a way for personal enrichment and empowerment. But war also brings out, among those who have a conscience and empathy, tremendous acts of self-sacrifice and courage.

And when you confront the radical evil that is war, that self-sacrifice, that courage, that empathy can get you killed. It’s subversive. And so you see these figures of the doctors and medical staff in Gaza, hundreds who’ve been killed. I think the number is 400 [medical staff], over 200 journalists have been murdered.

And let’s be clear — I just came back from Egypt where I’ve been interviewing Palestinians — these are targeted killings. They’re not random killings. For instance, they usually will kill the doctors as they’re either going to their shift at the hospital or returning. And they’ll bring in a quadruped, one of these drones, and you’ll have a multi-story apartment building and the apartment building of that doctor or that journalist often is just attacked and blown up. So it’s clearly targeted or they’re targeted as they’re moving either to and from their work. 

For instance, I was in Qatar. I’ve been to Qatar twice to do broadcasting for Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English. And when you go into the foyer, it’s quite chilling, that just including of course Shireen Abu Akleh who was murdered in the West Bank by an Israeli sniper. Just the number of photographs of the dead. And these people are not naive. They know what it means to be a doctor in Gaza. They know what it means to be a journalist in Gaza. And yet they do it anyway. So that’s classic in terms of my experience in war. 

And on the one hand, of course, it shows the worst aspects of humanity — what human beings are, the atrocities human beings are capable of committing. But then it shows these remarkable figures, who at the risk of their own lives and many of them don’t survive, stand up to do what’s right. And let’s be clear, they’re not usually intellectuals, usually. The intellectual class collapses pretty quickly. Intellectualism is morally neutral and many times the intellectuals are the worst. And I think we see that here. I don’t know of any head of any Holocaust studies department, there may be one, but I haven’t seen one who’s denounced the genocide. You have a handful of genocide scholars like Omer Bartov, for instance, who have. And I would suspect just about every university in this country has, if not a department, certainly a Holocaust studies program — they’ve said nothing. And that’s to ignore the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which is that when you have the capacity to stop genocide and you do not, you’re culpable. And we’re all culpable for what’s happening now in Gaza.

[Break]

JU: I want to pivot to Israel’s pattern of lying, stalling, investigating, and then later, but only sometimes, quietly admitting wrongdoing. You write about the attempts to obfuscate the al-Ahli hospital explosion where a blast took the lives of a few hundred people. And that exact number varies from both al-Shifa Hospital and the Gaza Health Ministry, but it injured over 300 more people.

Could you remind listeners of that tragedy, the spin in the aftermath, and how the response by Israel and its allies is part of a larger, deliberate effort to blur reality?

CH: Well, you know, I spent seven years covering this conflict, and a lot of that time in Gaza, I lived in Gaza at a place called the Marna House, which of course doesn’t exist anymore.

And this is a pattern. So when Israel carries out an atrocity — when I was there they were bombing refugee camps, and they claim that these were, in their words, surgical strikes against a bomb making factory. Well, in fact, when you got to the dense overcrowded alleys, they were just rows of bodies, including children. Whole blocks had been destroyed. 

But Israel dominates the news cycle by perpetuating their version of events, which is almost uniformly untrue. The Israeli government lies like it breathes. For instance, with the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh, they claim that Hamas militants shot her. It turned out that there was footage and B’Tselem, this great Israeli human rights organization, they proved this to be false. But by the time the information comes out and weeks later, as is the pattern, Israel will concede that yes, maybe she was killed accidentally by — but it doesn’t matter, the story is moved on. 

So in the case that you mentioned they claim that these were errant rockets. Actually, the New York Times noticed that the timestamp on the video that Israel released didn’t correspond to, in any way, to when the explosions took place. So we knew it was false, but that’s classic. Israel is very media savvy. When I covered Gaza for instance — and this didn’t happen in any other conflict I covered — I would be interviewing eyewitnesses and victims, and then the Jerusalem Bureau would just be inserting almost every other paragraph statements from the IDF, from the Israeli Defense Forces, countering what these victims and eyewitnesses said. What it does is essentially neutralize the story and by the end of it, you can believe whatever you want to believe.

But that’s been exposed. There’s only so many lies Israel can tell — that hospitals are command and control centers for Hamas, human shields. The irony is that Israel is the one that uses human shields on a regular basis and because Hamas, the resistance fighters, will booby trap buildings. They will take Palestinian prisoners, put them in Israeli army uniforms, not give them a weapon, and sometimes with their hands tied or their handcuffed, and then force them into tunnels or buildings that are potentially booby trapped ahead of Israeli troops. That’s extremely common. 

But I sense that I —I think with almost two years of this live streamed genocide, I don’t sense that Israel’s capacity to fool the public is as deft or as effective as it was when a lot of people weren’t paying close attention. For instance, a few years ago, there was this horrible scene at Netzarim where a father was sheltering his young son. The young son is killed. It’s just the video footage — I can hardly look at the footage anymore from Gaza, it’s just I’ve lost colleagues and friends. Actually, the — it’s not so many, I mean, some of them we know have died, but it’s more that we hear from them sporadically, and then we just stop hearing from them completely. And I assume they’re buried under the rubble.

The numbers of dead are far, far, far above the 50-some-thousand, what is it, 56,000 official death count. I would not be surprised if it’s 100, 200,000. 

Atif’s, my friend’s sister-in-law or family were all killed. Most of them were killed.His niece survived, but lost both her legs and an arm. But they’re not counted in the records because the numbers of death or the official statistics on death are accumulated either in morgues or in hospitals, which are no longer functioning. That is the way Israel operates. 

Here they imposed a blockade on food and humanitarian aid on March 2nd, increasing not only widespread malnutrition, but cases of starvation. Then they have destroyed UNRWA, the UN agency that once had 400 distribution points for food. And turned it over to this probably Mossad-created, but certainly Israeli-backed, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which only opens aid distribution points for an hour, and nobody argues they have anywhere near enough aid to feed a desperate population. 

But they’ve set these up in southern Gaza as kind of traps or bait to lure Palestinians in. And then when people can’t get food and there’s rioting and people will crawl, push their way into these centers desperate to get a food package. Most people are carrying knives either to protect themselves or to steal food packages from others. And then Israeli troops and US mercenaries hired by this agency have killed over 700 Palestinians and wounded thousands. But of course, it’s not about the distribution of food, it’s not about humanitarian aid. It’s about creating — luring Palestinians who are desperate into the south, putting them into a closed military zone. They’re talking about 600,000 to begin with, which is just a gigantic concentration camp. And that is the next step, of course, is expulsion. 

Israel is in conversation with countries like Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, and they don’t really care where they go. I would not put it beyond Israel to breach the fence. There’s a nine mile border between Egypt and Gaza. Parts of that border are literally just a fence. To breach the fence, despite Egyptian objections and pushing Palestinians out. But that’s the next step. It is the complete ethnic cleansing, the complete depopulation of Gaza. 

And that’s why if you look closely at footage, you’ll see, especially in the north, these heavy bulldozers and excavators that are ripping down buildings that are in rubble. They’re clearing it to essentially expand greater Israel, just as they have expanded greater Israel into Lebanon and into Damascus.

JU: You also tackle one of the more challenging and nuanced aspects of this conflict, armed struggle and resistance. In “War As A Force,” you talk about how you’re not a pacifist.

You write “There are times when the force wielded by one immoral faction must be countered by a faction that while never moral is perhaps less immoral. We, in the industrialized world, bear responsibility for the world’s genocides because we had the power to intervene and did not.” 

I raise this because I’m curious how you see this ending. If there’s a pathway to avoid the total erasure and destruction of Gaza and driving out the Palestinians who remain there. Is there a diplomatic solution or is armed resistance or military intervention the only hope they have left?

CH: No, I mean, Hamas has been pretty decimated. And let’s be clear, the Palestinians under international law have a right to use armed force to resist what’s happening to them.

The only solution would be for the United States to suspend or cut all military aid to Israel or a coercive measure taken on the part of countries to create a no-fly zone over Gaza and use naval vessels to break the Israeli blockade to deliver humanitarian aid. I don’t see any of that happening.

Short of either of those two things happening, Israel will probably succeed and its demented vision of depopulating Gaza, driving people off land that they have lived in for centuries. And of course, they’re turning with increasing ferocity on the West Bank. If they get away with Gaza, and I think they will, they’ll try the same thing in the West Bank.

So, as was true in the war in Bosnia, it was clear to — though I was in, based in Sarajevo during the war — it was clear that only a NATO bombing— So we were completely surrounded. Sarajevo was completely surrounded by Serb heavy artillery. They dug in tanks and these 90 millimeter tank rounds were just used as artillery shells. They were firing Katyusha rockets. Those are bursts of rockets that can take — I’ve seen it — take down a four story building in a matter of seconds killing everyone inside, usually. The only way it would stop would be to launch airstrikes. And of course, the Bosnian government didn’t have any heavy weapons, much less air power.

And when that was done, the Serbs were broken. And I supported that action and I support coercive measures to halt the genocide in Gaza. That’s what the United States and NATO allies did in northern Iraq. And I was there when Saddam Hussein carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Kurds, and they were dying in the mountain passes. Well, they forced the Iraqis to withdraw below the 38th parallel of Iraq and created a no-fly zone. That’s exactly what should be done in Gaza. That’s the only way to halt it.

JU: For years, you’ve talked about and written about how war is a stimulant, and it’s used to divert people’s attention away from societal collapse.

What does that collapse look like now? How has the Trump administration’s actions impacted your analysis of American decline?

CH: Trump is, you know, he’s the symptom. He is not the disease. American decline has been long in the making, decades long in the making. Our democratic institutions were eroded and corrupted, and neither of the political parties really function as real political parties.

Even the Democratic voters didn’t have a say in Kamala Harris’s nomination. Ran this vapid issueless, celebrity driven campaign. Which of course failed spectacularly. You know, a figure like Trump arises out of this morass, out of this social decay. It’s what I saw in Yugoslavia.

So the war in Yugoslavia was not caused by ancient ethnic hatreds. It was caused by the economic collapse of Yugoslavia and also hyperinflation. And it vomited up these Trump-like figures, Radovan Karadžić and Slobodan Milošević  and Franjo Tuđman. And these demagogues pedal a hyper-masculinity. They’re cultish figures. They pedal magical thinking. They prey on the despair and desperation of a population that feels completely betrayed. 

As the working class in the United States has been betrayed in particular by the Democratic Party. Since Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA in 1994, we’ve had 30 million mass layoffs. And this has just destroyed— My mother’s family all comes from Maine. The mills are all closed. I am intimately familiar with the psychological, economic, and physical toll that this has taken.

And of course, in desperation, they have turned to a figure like Trump. I think Trump would have been destroyed by a figure, a candidate like Bernie Sanders who talked the language of the New Deal. I think that’s why you’re seeing so much support in the mayoral race in New York for Zohran Mamdani. But the Democrats, they betrayed their own base.

And what Trump is doing, it’s kind of the rule of idiots of late empire. He is accelerating the implosion of empire, the destruction of empire through willfully ignorant and self-serving and counterproductive measures.

I’m no fan of the Voice of America. USAID, I watched it work. It was clearly used to manipulate governments. That’s why Morales threw them out of Bolivia because if there’s a government they don’t like, they’re running all these quote unquote democracy initiatives, which are really just funding and organizing the opposition. They use aid as a weapon. 

For instance, in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian government wanted a new airport. USAID was willing to give them money, but they said you always have to oppose Cuba’s entry into the organization of American states. I mean, so there’s always kind of this quid pro quo, but Trump doesn’t even understand how the empire works. And that’s characteristic of late empire. He’s surrounded himself with sycophants and grifters and con-artists and imbeciles and buffoons.

These people are however dangerous, but they don’t have a clue as to what they’re doing. They have the capacity to destroy, they’re destroying the Department of Education, for instance, or the EPA, but they don’t have the capacity to build anything. And so if you look at late empire— I studied classics. For instance, if you look at the end of the Athenian Empire or you look at the end of the Roman Empire, you had a very similar phenomenon where those people who manage the empire at the end accelerate the collapse. And that’s precisely what Trump is doing.

JU: We’re also starting to see more elected officials, including a handful on the right, criticize the billions in foreign military aid we send to perpetuate and prolong wars and argue we have more pressing domestic needs that affect people’s material conditions. Now, what do you make of this slowly but seemingly growing group of members of Congress? Is there a noticeable shift and what do you think the way forward is?

CH: Well, they’re responding to a widespread feeling among the population that while they’re suffering and while they’re distress is not being addressed, we’re sending billions of dollars to Israel and Ukraine. But the only way to halt this is to severely cut back the one trillion dollars roughly we give to the Pentagon every year. And they’re not going to do that because the military is a state within a state. It can’t be defied in the same way that the CIA can’t be defied.

And that’s why the socialist Karl Liebknecht on the eve of World War I called the German military, the enemy from within. And even Bernie Sanders, if you watch, was loathed to take on the military industrial complex. That was a battle he didn’t wanna fight. They’re not even audited, I don’t think the pentagon’s been audited for a decade. 

So you have half of all discretionary spending being poured down a rat hole. These debacles in the Middle East — Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. Syria, Gaza — Ukraine, and it of course drives up the debt, which is dangerous. But it also diverts money or there is no money for the most basic social services, whether that’s Meals on Wheels or anything else.

So that is — Arnold Toynbee, the historian cites an out of control military, an unregulated, uncontrolled military machine as being the common characteristic of the decline of all empires. And I think that is precisely where we are. So yes, you’re right. People will raise these issues, but unless they’re willing to confront the war industry, and unless they’re willing to seriously curtail the money that — we spend more money on the war industry than, I think it’s the next eight countries combined, including like Russia and China and everywhere else.

So that’s how empires die. And I don’t see many politicians willing to take on that battle because that would implode their political career.

JU: I wanna thank you so much for joining me. “A Genocide Foretold” is available wherever you get your books now. Do you have anything else you’d like to add and where can people find more of your work? I know I follow you on substack, I’ve been a day one subscriber.

CH: Yeah, chrishedges.substack.com. So that has everything. And the only thing I would add is just my deep admiration for the students at these universities who’ve stood up. They’re the nation’s conscience. For these groups, like Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace, I have unbounded admiration for them. As I do for these very lonely figures like Francesca Albanese, the U.N. repertoire. These are real heroes and when the history of this genocide is written, it will condemn most of us, but it won’t condemn them.

It’s because of their work that people like myself who are outspoken about the genocide are able to continue.

JU: Chris, thank you so much for joining us.

CH: Thanks, Jordan.

JU: That does it for this episode of The Intercept Briefing. 

We want to hear from you. 

Share your story with us at 530-POD-CAST. That’s 530-763-2278. You can also email us at podcasts@theintercept.com. 

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow. And transcript by Anya Mehta.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And tell all of your friends about us, better yet, leave us a rating or a review to help other listeners find us.

Until next time, I’m Jordan Uhl. 

Thanks for listening.

The post Starvation as a Weapon: Chris Hedges on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.

The discontent came to a head after Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that Adm. Alvin Holsey would step down at the end of the year, two years ahead of schedule, one government official told The Intercept. “People are angry,” the official said. Another said some in key positions at SOUTHCOM were “disillusioned.” They were among three government officials with knowledge of strife at the combatant command who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity.

Holsey has not commented publicly on the reasons for his premature departure. This has led to speculation by officials at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill that he may have questioned the legality or ethics of Trump’s attacks in the waters near Venezuela; have been upset about being forced into a subservient role in Trump’s war as Special Operations Command usurped his authority; or was pushed out as part of Hegseth’s much-publicized anti-diversity campaign.

“Adm. Holsey is not available for interviews at this time,” Col. Emanuel Ortiz, Southern Command’s chief of public affairs, told The Intercept. In response to questions about Holsey’s impending departure and reports of strife at the command, spokesperson Lt. Col. Dustin Cammack said, “SOUTHCOM has nothing additional to add.” He referred questions about Southern Command to the White House.

The White House did not respond to repeated requests for answers.

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The United States has launched attacks on at least seven boats in the Caribbean since September, reportedly killing 32 people. On Wednesday, Hegseth announced strikes on two boats in the Pacific that left five people dead. The first strike took place on Tuesday and killed two people, he said. A second strike took place on Wednesday, killing three others.

On Wednesday, Trump teased the possibility of similar strikes on land. “We will hit them very hard when they come in by land,” said the president. “We’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when [they] come to the land.”

Although these strikes are being conducted in SOUTHCOM’s area of operations, they have been carried out by elite Special Operations forces from Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, which is headed — as of earlier this month — by U.S. Navy Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley.

The attacks on boats are part of a war being waged by the Trump administration without the consent of Congress, according to a confidential notice that was sent to several congressional committees earlier this month. Legal experts — including former government lawyers who specialized in determinations regarding the laws of war and extrajudicial killings — and lawmakers say the strikes violate U.S. and international law.

Last week, Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., introduced a War Powers Resolution that would block the military from engaging in hostilities within or against Venezuela, after Trump confirmed that he secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in that country and threatened attacks on Venezuelan territory.

“We don’t blow up boats off Miami because 25 percent of the time suspicion is wrong. We shouldn’t do it off Venezuela either. These are small outboards with no fentanyl and no path to Florida,” Paul told The Intercept. “We can’t just kill indiscriminately because we are not at war. It’s summary execution! Everyone gets a trial because sometimes the system gets it wrong. Even the worst of the worst in our country get due process. The bottom line is that execution without process is not justice, and blowing up foreign ships is a recipe for chaos.”

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Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, appealed for a hearing on the attacks. “I call on Speaker Johnson to immediately bring the House back into session to not only work to end the Republican shutdown, but to also enable the committees to conduct critical oversight,” Smith said in a statement Monday. “The House Armed Services Committee must convene a hearing to secure answers to the questions about military operations in the Caribbean and for the SOUTHCOM Commander to testify on these matters.”

The Caribbean campaign began with attacks on supposed Venezuelan “narco-terrorists,” but the attacks have since also killed or injured civilians from Colombia, Ecuador, and Trinidad as well.

An attack on a semi-submersible vessel last week killed at least two people and led to the capture of two others who became the first prisoners of the Trump administration’s undeclared war against undisclosed “narcoterrorist” groups. Trump announced on Saturday that the two men were “being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia.” Asked why the two survivors were not taken to the U.S. to be prosecuted, Vice President JD Vance replied: “What happens to them? I don’t really care, so long as they’re not bringing poison into our country.”

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, questioned the decision at a security conference on Wednesday. “If these are narco-terrorists, as Secretary Hegseth reports, then why did we just repatriate two of them back to their country of origin, if they’re such bad guys?” he asked.

Both Smith and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have drawn attention to the unorthodox nature of Holsey’s impending departure, less than one year into what is typically a three-year job.

“Never before in my over 20 years on the committee can I recall seeing a combatant commander leave their post this early and amid such turmoil,” Smith said on Monday. Reed said Holsey’s “unexpected resignation is troubling.”

“At a moment when U.S. forces are building up across the Caribbean and tensions with Venezuela are at a boiling point, the departure of our top military commander in the region sends an alarming signal of instability within the chain of command,” Reed said in a statement. “Admiral Holsey’s resignation only deepens my concern that this administration is ignoring the hard-earned lessons of previous U.S. military campaigns and the advice of our most experienced warfighters.”

Numerous outlets have reported that Holsey and Hegseth were reportedly at odds. Some have suggested that Holsey objected to the attacks for being extrajudicial killings. The War Department has pushed back hard on these allegations. “This is a total lie. Never happened. There was no hesitation or concerns about this mission,” spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote on X. “Just more Fake News.”

All of the government officials who spoke to The Intercept about SOUTHCOM said that they were unsure if Holsey had any legal, moral, or ethical objections to the attacks, but that the nature of the war, which is being conducted by elite Special Operations forces, made Holsey’s position untenable. They said that the admiral had been effectively sidelined, with Special Operations Command conducting its war in his area of operations. They also said Holsey was read-in late on operations, provided inadequate information, and forced to coordinate with SOCOM on little notice.

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The official who said some key personnel at SOUTHCOM were “disillusioned” spoke in general terms about pressures from outside the command and a lack of confidence in leadership at the Pentagon. “People are trying to keep their heads down,” the official said, while noting that many wish Holsey had been explicit about his reasons for retiring early.

Wes Bryant — who served until earlier this year as the senior analyst and adviser on precision warfare, targeting, and civilian harm mitigation at the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence — said that the chatter about internal dissent at SOUTHCOM raised questions about the reasons behind Holsey’s premature departure. “I can only guess, and frankly hope, that his resignation was in protest,” said Bryant, who also hoped that Holsey might have initiated an investigation by SOUTHCOM’s inspector general into attacks that Bryant called a “blatant violation of not only international law but the Constitution.” He continued, “Time will reveal that, but I find his silence so far even more telling.”

Some SOUTHCOM officials are reportedly unnerved by the strikes and uncertain of their legality, according to the same government officials. Bryant said that Civilian Harm Mitigation Teams — which provided guidance on protecting noncombatants — were mostly dissolved across all combatant commands, including SOUTHCOM, during the first half of the year. “They gave the duty as a secondary duty — at best — to a couple of staff members to basically just be able to say they still have a ‘civharm’ mitigation team,” he told The Intercept.

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Bryant said that SOUTHCOM now lacked a dedicated civilian harm mitigation officer or teams focused on lessening the potential for civilian casualties during the planning and targeting process, as well as mitigating broader harm and potential effects of attacks across the region.

“They would have also been looking at the implications to the local and regional shipping, fishing and other industries,” he said. “They would also have looked at the psychological effects of these strikes on the Venezuelan civilian populace and even the environmental effects of whatever is on board these ships, if they are struck in a fishing region.”

Cammack did not reply to specific questions regarding civilian harm mitigation personnel at SOUTHCOM. Return receipts show that the queries were read by multiple personnel at the command.

Trump and Vance have repeatedly joked about the strikes upending the lives of subsistence fishermen in the Caribbean. Trump noted that the number of vessels on the water had, within weeks, shrunk from “hundreds” to “no boats” during remarks in September. “Nobody wants to go fishing,” said Trump at a White House dinner last week to a chorus of laughs. “They might as well get rid of their boat.”

Holsey revealed his looming retirement on Southern Command’s Facebook page less than a week after Hegseth announced the creation of a new counter-narcotics Joint Task Force in the SOUTHCOM region.

“It’s been an honor to serve our nation, the American people and support and defend our Constitution for over 37 years,” Holsey wrote on Facebook. “The SOUTHCOM team has made lasting contributions to the defense of our nation and will continue to do so. I am confident that you will forge ahead, focused on your mission that strengthens our nation and ensures its longevity as a beacon of freedom around the globe.”

Holsey is not the only senior military leader rumored to have feuded with Hegseth over Trump’s latest undeclared war.

Several government officials suggested to The Intercept that Rear Adm. Milton “Jamie” Sands III, head of Naval Special Warfare Command, was fired by Hegseth in August due to the admiral’s concerns about impending attacks on civilian vessels. Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson denied the officials’ claims. Sands did not respond to repeated requests by The Intercept for an interview.

Holsey, the first Black chief in SOUTHCOM’s 60-year history, is one of several high-ranking minority or female officers to retire early, resign, or be fired since Hegseth took the helm at the Pentagon. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the highest-ranking U.S. military officer and a history-making Black fighter pilot — was fired in February, kicking off a monthslong purge that has remade the upper ranks of the military.

The Trump administration also fired Navy Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, who held a senior position in NATO and was one of only a handful of female Navy three-star officers and the first woman to lead the Naval War College; Adm. Linda Fagan, the first woman to command the Coast Guard; and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to command the Navy.

Holsey — who oversaw the massive military build-up in the Caribbean that has flooded the region with around 10,000 troops, eight surface warships, and a submarine — authored a report about improving diversity and inclusion in the Navy following the 2020 killing of George Floyd. Published the next year, it asserted that “diversity broadens the Navy’s ability to solve complex challenges facing our nation.” And Holsey specifically stated that “when it comes to inclusion and diversity, we can be committed or involved. We choose commitment.”

Hegseth, in an unhinged rant to hundreds of generals and admirals late last month, railed against “identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses,” using the acronym for diversity, equity, and inclusion. “For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas,” he fumed, threatening to fire the officers who balked at his warrior ethos worldview. “If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign,” Hegseth said.

Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary, did not respond to a question about whether Holsey was forced out of his job due to his authorship of the 2021 report.

The post Admiral’s Mystery Retirement Amid Secret War Leaves Key Command in Turmoil appeared first on The Intercept.

Among them was Maha Odah, a Palestinian American activist with Al-Hadaf Kansas City, a Palestinian liberation organization, who had driven more than two hours to be there. When Williams Jr. began to grieve for his son’s stolen opportunity to know his grandfather, Odah thought of her own experience with loss.

Last fall, Odah’s grandfather in Gaza developed a kidney infection and, unable to access medical care because of Israel’s punishing blockade, he died in November. Israeli airstrikes and bulldozers, meanwhile, leveled the home that had housed several generations of her extended family. Odah had just seen her grandfather months before in August during a family trip, the first visit in a decade due to Israel’s policies that restrict movement in and out of the besieged Palestinian territory. Months later, her aunt was killed during the Israeli siege of Nasser Hospital, while her aunt’s son, a surgeon at the hospital, remains imprisoned with his whereabouts unknown to her family.

“I saw a mirror,” Odah said, recalling moments spent with Williams’s family. “A reflection of these two systems that are both upheld by the U.S. that condemn Black and Palestinian men, our fathers, our grandfathers, and the rest of our families, at the mercy of those who continue to find ways to dehumanize us.”  

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Missouri killed Williams, who was 55 years old, for a murder he said he did not commit and even though prosecutors fought to throw his conviction out due to the paucity of the evidence. Gov. Mike Parsons declined to grant Williams clemency, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in. His execution coincided with nationwide protests on Tuesday against Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign in Lebanon that has killed at least 615 people, including more than 50 children. News of the execution reverberated among protesters, who drew connections between Israel’s relentless U.S.-backed war on Gaza and state-sanctioned killing in the United States. In some places, demonstrators recited a poem Williams had written about Palestinian children. 

For young people who have spent the better part of the last year protesting the war on Gaza, Williams’s case further reinforces their lack of agency in the face of state violence, said maya finoh, the political education and research manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The execution “lays bare the ways in which the criminal legal system is designed to still engage in Islamophobic anti-Black violence, and the ways in which the U.S. military-industrial complex’s empire is designed to further violence against Black and brown people abroad.”   

“There’s not enough to prove that he did this crime. People are calling for what should be the stop of an execution, and the state still has the power to say, we don’t care,” finoh added. “Young people have been leading the vanguard of mass movement organizing over the past year. There has been this feeling of despair and hopelessness … in terms of, we should be able to have a say, this country says it’s a representative democracy, but it is not representing my interests or the interests of many, many people in this country.” 

“They Don’t Care About Our Outrage”

In New York, Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of Within Our Lifetime, a Palestinian liberation group, said she learned of Williams’s killing while leading a march to the Israeli consulate in Manhattan. When it was her turn to speak, she also read Williams’s viral poem, “The Perplexing Smiles of the Children of Palestine,” sounding off each line as a call and response with the crowd: “In the face of apex arrogance/ and ethnic cleansing by any definition/ still your laughter can be heard/ and somehow you are able to smile/ O resilient Children of Palestine!” amid “daily terror” and “in the face of … ethnic cleansing.” 

In closing, she referenced Williams’s last official statement before his execution: “All Praise Be To Allah In Every Situation!”

“When it comes to Black and brown people, the state has always executed its violence on our communities, and, of course, within the U.S., we see this play out the most when it comes to Black folks in particular, and then abroad, we’re seeing this in Lebanon, we’re seeing this in Palestine,” Kiswani, who is Palestinian, told The Intercept. “It feels like they don’t care about our outrage anymore. They know they can kill us in every corner of the world and get away with it, and so it’s our responsibility to fight for and stand up for each other.”

She said that throughout the marches she’s helped organize since October 7, she has seen many examples of solidarity between Palestinian and Black communities. An action at the Brooklyn Museum on Friday to push for the museum to divest from Israel, for example, drew participation from Black-led groups such as the Black Alliance for Peace and Equality for Flatbush. Kiswani noted that the solidarity goes back nearly a decade, when Palestinian American activists advised Black protesters in Ferguson on how to survive teargas sprayed by police, drawing on their experience from facing off with Israeli authorities in the West Bank. 

Kiswani said such direct confrontations with law enforcement and state violence have helped activist groups see the intersections between their causes.  

“A lot of folks in this generation — especially with all the protests that we’re seeing nationwide — people are directly interacting with the police state and are directly resisting it,” she said, mentioning the brutal arrest of fellow organizer Abdullah Akl, who was hospitalized after New York Police Department officers tackled him during the Tuesday march.

Williams’s killing was on the minds of organizers at other Palestinian and Lebanese solidarity marches on Tuesday. 

In Los Angeles, while a coalition of Palestinian solidarity groups temporarily shut down Wilshire Boulevard, a main thoroughfare in the city, in front of the Israeli consulate, organizers spoke of Williams’s execution and read his poem on Gaza.

At a march against U.S. complicity in Israel’s bombing of Lebanon in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., one organizer led dozens of protesters in a chant, “Say his name: Marcellus Williams.”  

During a pro-Palestine rally in Houston, Eyad El-Akoum, a local organizer who is Lebanese and Muslim, shared the news of Williams’s execution and invited protesters to say a prayer for him, mentioning Williams’s Muslim faith and role as an imam for those in his prison. 

“I think about the interconnectedness of the Black struggle and Palestinian struggle and Lebanese struggle,” El-Akoum said at the rally, pointing to Israel’s common practice of incarcerating Palestinians indefinitely without charges, which has dramatically increased since October 7. “There are thousands of Palestinians that are sitting in Israeli prisons that have done nothing, that haven’t been charged with a crime, and the same fate can happen to them as it did Marcellus Williams.” 

No Votes

Even as Williams’s execution has hit a nerve with young people, who could play a pivotal role in the upcoming elections, neither major party presidential candidate has released a statement about it. 

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., said that the lack of response from Democratic Party leadership is concerning and that she plans to call on the White House to make an inquiry about the lack of an official statement. 

“The reality is that silence in this precise moment feels like complicity,” she said, arguing that it pushes away voters the party desperately needs. “We’re here not because the people that I’m talking about are becoming Republicans. We are here because apathy in this precise moment is at its highest,” continued Ramirez, who was an early co-sponsor of a congressional resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. 

In addition to Williams’s execution and U.S. policy toward Israel, Ramirez pointed to the Democratic National Committee’s refusal to allow a Palestinian to speak on the main stage of the convention in Chicago last month, as well as a recent smear campaign against Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., as factors that are creating apathy among voters.

“All of that has real consequences, Ramirez said, “and what it ends up becoming is a no vote, which to me, is even far more dangerous.” 

“We’re clearly seeing that some people’s lives, some people’s futures — their security, their liberty, their humanity — are far more valuable than others. I mean, there is a dehumanization of Black and brown Americans in this country, and it’s been allowed to persist, and often it’s actually been perpetrated by the same institutions of our nation who are supposed to be fighting for justice, for our rights. They’re erasing us, they’re making excuses, and they’re harming people,” said Ramirez. “And I think it’s because if they don’t see us as humans, then you’re really not hurting us, right? If you don’t see the right to protect ourselves, if you don’t see us as humans, there’s no remorse.”

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., echoed her colleague’s point, noting that President Joe Biden did not deliver on his 2020 campaign pledge to abolish the death penalty and that Democrats recently dropped opposition to capital punishment from their party platform. And in the case of Gaza, Bush said, the administration has escalated the conflict. 

“For young people especially, these injustices feel personal,” wrote Bush in a statement to The Intercept. “They’ve been raised with the belief that killing innocent people is unequivocally wrong. But as they grow older, they’re faced with the harsh reality that those in power often make exceptions — whether through capital punishment or war, and oftentimes based on racism and prejudice. This hypocrisy is what fuels the anger and sense of responsibility to stand up against such injustices that we are seeing right now.”

That passion was palpable among those gathered in Bush’s home state on Tuesday. Before heading to the Missouri state prison, 25-year-old Odah had joined more than 100 other protesters who marched to Parson’s office in Jefferson City, each carrying a stack of signed petitions, calling to halt Williams’s execution. In all, the group gathered 1.5 million signatures, Odah said.

For the past month, she had been gathering signatures for the petition and emailing and calling Parson’s office to advocate for Williams. Eventually, the office stopped answering the phone. “It was super familiar: It’s the same dehumanizing and denial of existence that politicians and institutions project onto Palestinians. I know that all too well,” Odah said.

Odah began organizing with Al-Hadaf Kansas City in 2021 amid Israel’s bombing of Gaza and ongoing protests against the displacement of Palestinian families from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. She said her own activism for Palestinian liberation and the deep history of solidarity with movements for Black liberation moved her to join the protest at the Capitol. 

“It’s because our communities know what state violence looks like,” Odah said. “It’s because the state is built to maintain itself using death row, the police, and the bombs made in our backyards, because our communities are the victims of the same forces and brutality that trains them to put knees on necks, because our communities know what displacement looks like, from redlining and gentrification to ethnic cleansing. Our communities are not priorities to the systems of white supremacy. It’s horrifically familiar.” 

Correction: September 26, 2024, 9:40 p.m. ET
This article previously stated that Maha Odah’s grandfather was killed in an Israeli airstrike. He died of a kidney infection due to lack of access to medical care.

The post “I Saw a Mirror”: Marcellus Williams’s Execution Enrages Palestine Solidarity Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.

From New York City to Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., a growing list of major cities across the country are escalating a brutal war on their poorest denizens. No policy makes this clearer than the recent and aggressive sweeps of homeless encampments nationwide without any serious options for safe long-term shelter, let alone permanent housing.

In New York City alone, Mayor Eric Adams in March ordered the clearance of hundreds of homeless encampments; he recently announced that 239 of 244 sites had been removed, primarily in Manhattan. With hardly any notice, dozens and dozens of unhoused people saw their tents, mattresses, and makeshift shelters swept into garbage trucks. The mayor’s claim that these sweeps are about moving individuals into safe shelter was immediately belied by the fact that only five people whose encampments were destroyed have accepted a shelter bed.

In Seattle, after a weekslong standoff between police and activists attempting to protect a homeless encampment, cops cleared the space on March 2. Los Angeles has seen multiple sites where unhoused people erected temporary shelters swept away this year in militarized raids. Dozens of encampments have been cleared in Portland. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, at least 65 U.S. cities are criminalizing or sweeping encampments.

Many of the major cities carrying out sweeps are under Democratic leadership — a grim reminder that necropolitical population management is a bipartisan approach. And they have a lot of targets and victims in their war: Over half a million people across the U.S. experience homelessness on any given night. While a number of politicians from the Democratic Party’s left flank, including New York state Sen. Julia Salazar and New York City Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez, have criticized the violent displacement of unhoused communities, the liberal establishment continues to pledge allegiance to market forces.

Meanwhile, policies that criminalize poverty — from the war on drugs to the penalization of panhandling — create a steady flow of bodies into the glutted prison-industrial complex, creating a near-inescapable cycle of immiseration and incarceration.

None of the excuses given for carrying out these cruel policies hold any water. Each and every mayor who has enforced encampment clearance has made claims to public safety, citing upticks in crime and alleged concern for unhoused people themselves.

In New York, Adams’s disdain for the unhoused has been laid bare. “This is the right thing to do because there is no freedom or dignity in living in a cardboard box under an overpass,” he said last week, claiming that it would take time to build trust such that unhoused people would accept shelter beds. Given his already young record, Adams’s remarks about dignity are laughable. He cut $615 million from the city’s homeless services agency — a fifth of its operating budget — while dramatically increasing the policing of homelessness on the subways. He has referred to homelessness as a “cancerous sore.”

Instead of offering dignity, freedom, and resources, here’s what Adams offers unhoused New Yorkers: to be criminalized, forced to choose between street sleeping without the relative security of an encampment and accepting a bed in a shelter system renowned for violence and poor management.

Plans to turn empty hotels into semipermanent housing have stalled and look ever more imperiled as New York’s embattled tourist industry rebounds. Adams announced the creation of hundreds more safe-haven shelter beds, which offer more resources than normal city shelters — a welcome move, but a Band-aid over a bullet wound, which will grow ever more fatal through a budget that prioritizes policing and treats health care and housing with austerity logic.

Where are the unhoused supposed go when their temporary shelters are destroyed? In Los Angeles, city officials are embracing the clearance of encampments deemed eyesores, but homelessness advocates and service providers continuously assert that there is not enough temporary or permanent housing for those displaced by raids. The same is true in every major city.

“The policy of criminalizing homelessness has never worked,” Georgia Berkovich, director of public affairs at the Midnight Mission, which offers emergency and social services to unhoused people in LA, told NBC. “We need more beds. We need more housing.”

There is more than ample evidence that “broken windows” policing, of which encampment sweeps are a part, entrench rather than counter poverty.

The sentiment has been echoed by longtime organizers and homelessness organizations nationwide. “Private rooms and permanent housing. That’s what people want,” Jacquelyn Simone, the policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless, told the New York Times. “You don’t have to do heavy-handed policing to convince someone to come in off the streets if you’re actually offering them an option that is safer and better than the streets.”

Those on the front lines of this work have been unwavering on this line: Carceral approaches and sweeps aiming to remove homelessness from sight — and consistently into jails and prisons — have never worked as solutions to the humanitarian crisis unhoused people face. It would take extraordinary credulity, after decades of war on the poor, to think that city officials choosing these policies again and again have the well-being of the poorest in mind.

There is more than ample evidence that “broken windows” policing, of which encampment sweeps are a part, entrench rather than counter poverty. Where the liberal establishment fails to serve the poor with encampment sweeps, it succeeds in offering cleared space to tourists and real estate interests.

The post With Sweeps of Homeless Encampments, Liberal Cities Wage War on Poorest Residents appeared first on The Intercept.

Starting Tuesday, a U.K. court will review Julian Assange’s appeal against extradition to the United States. At the center of the extradition controversy is concern that Assange will be tortured and put in solitary confinement in what’s known as a CMU — communications management unit — in federal prison. This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim is joined by Martin Gottesfeld, a human rights activist who was formerly imprisoned in two of the nation’s CMUs. Gottesfeld shares his experience incarcerated in CMU facilities, where his access to visitors including his wife were severely restricted.

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed, I’m Ryan Grim.

Later today in the United Kingdom a court will be reviewing, over the span of two days, a high court decision made to extradite Julian Assange to the United States. This could be the final appeal, the final hearing that Julian Assange has before he’s sent over here to the United States.

At the center of the controversy over the extradition in the court proceedings has been whether or not Julian Assange will be tortured, will be mistreated, here in the United States, whether or not he will be put in solitary confinement and, specifically, in what’s known as a CMU, a “communications management unit.”

Now, the Department of Justice sort of pretended to make some kind of offering to the U.K. high court that they would not do this. But then, in the very next sentence of their pleading, they said, unless we decide that we actually would need to do this.

So, to talk today about what a CMU is, and why this has been the focus of human rights advocates who are concerned that he may actually wind up in one of these, we’re going to be joined by Martin Gottesfeld, who himself has spent a significant amount of time in an American CMU.

Marty, thank you so much for joining me on Deconstructed.

Martin Gottesfeld: I’m happy to be here, Ryan.

RG: And so, Marty, before we get to your experience in the CMU, let’s talk about how you wound up in prison in the first place, because I actually think that’s relevant to this conversation. Because it does appear like this is a place where a lot of people who are essentially political prisoners wind up.

MG: Yeah. And I was not the only one, although I do think my case is representative of the larger group, largely representative of the larger group.

So, the government alleges that I am a master hacker with Anonymous. The government also alleges that during a 2014 human rights and child custody matter, I launched one of the largest distributed denial of service —DDoS — attacks that the government had ever seen, to try to free Justina Pelletier, who is being held against her will and against her parents will in a Boston Children’s Hospital psych ward, and then in various residential facilities throughout the state.

The case reached the very highest levels of the political system, with people on both sides, parties on both sides of the aisle commenting on it. Mike Huckabee, Sean Hannity, others on the right, and then the Massachusetts HHS Secretary, uh, Polanowicz; he actually ended up getting involved from the left to eventually send Justina home, which is where most people felt she belonged the entire time.

And before that case, I had been involved — I don’t want to say with, but I guess kind of alongside — Anonymous, protesting the American troubled teen industry, which is also just a political lightning rod, and has been subject to congressional hearings, GAO reports, media exposés, for well over a decade, for the torture and death of American children for profit.

RG: And so, your journey in federal custody actually began in New York. Talk about that a little bit before we get to the CMU, because you actually wrote a piece for us about what it was like in the first jail you were in. And, if I recall correctly, wasn’t Chapo there too? 

MG: So, that wasn’t my first jail. I was arrested in Florida, and then I made a very long extended journey through the federal system to get back to the Northeast. And then I started writing for the Huffington Post, back when you were the D.C. bureau chief. And very shortly after I began writing for the Huffington Post and started a hunger strike seeking pledges from the 2016 election to curtail institutionalized abuse against children and political prosecutions, the Justice Department transferred me to MCC, New York, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York, and it’s 9 South SHU and 10 South Sam’s Unit.

And that is where Chapo was held at the time, and it’s also where Jeffrey Epstein later died. And the communications program they have in those units is kind of connected at the hip to the CMUs. It’s run by the same so-called counterterrorism unit inside the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is part of the Justice Department.

And yeah, I wrote a piece there for the Huffington Post — several pieces, actually — about that facility, calling on public officials to do something to reform the facility, because I foresaw, even in 2016, that people were going to die there. And then, sure enough, a few years later, Jeffrey Epstein died there.

RG: It was my sense that your willingness to write for us — both at The Huffington Post and then later at The Intercept — while you were behind bars was one of the things that led to you eventually getting moved to a full-on CMU. Do you think that that’s accurate? What do you think? What drove the decision making that got you stuck in that hole?

MG: Oh, I definitely think it was the journalism. Twelve days after my first Intercept article was when they transferred me to the CMU. And that Intercept article was about El Chapo, his confinement, the conditions of his confinement, the human rights violations, and that was what directly precipitated the move to the CMU.

And then, on top of that, when they transfer you to a CMU, there’s not really a lot of due process involved in that decision, and the courts have tolerated that, but they do have to give you this one-page paper with the supposed justification, right? And mine just basically said, you’re a member of Anonymous, Anonymous is this group that we have to watch. So, therefore, we’re putting you in a CMU.

The problem with that, of course, is that there were other guys in the federal prison system associated much more with Anonymous than I was who never were placed in the CMU. So, Jeremy Hammond was one… And I’m trying to remember the gentleman’s name, but he wrote for the Intercept a lot, but his articles didn’t really challenge federal judges, challenge federal prosecutorial discretion. He just kind of satirized the whole thing. And they were very good, but they didn’t really make people uncomfortable the way my writing made people uncomfortable. I named names.

RG: Right.

MG: And I named facilities. I named specific human rights violations, and that, I think, made them very uncomfortable.

And I can tell you, too, from how I was treated, and the other cases that were there, which I guess we’ll get into in a little while, it certainly seems that I was placed there to suppress my first amendment-protected conduct.

RG: Right. And so, where were you sent, and what’s the place like as you first get there?

MG: I spent time in both CMUs, there are two in the federal system. I was first sent to Terre Haute, Indiana, and that’s kind of the first, and that’s the harsher of the two CMUs. And then, later, I spent time in the CMU in Marion, Illinois.

When you first walk into the CMU, it’s a relatively small unit, there were only about 30 guys there when I first got there.

RG: This is the Terre Haute one.

MG: Yes, the Terre Haute one. It’s actually the old federal death house. So, they built a new federal death row elsewhere in the compound, and then they put the CMU in the old federal death house. So, like, I’ve been inside Timothy McVeigh’s cell. And there are guys who say they’ve seen the old electric chair in the basement, that they have not moved that.

And you can actually see the new death house. Like, we have a very small quote-unquote “outdoor rec area,” right? Where you can go and get fresh air. But they make sure that, within sharp view of that place, whenever you’re outside, you see the actual building, where in 2020 and 2021 they killed 14 people. 

RG: What is your cell like? Because this is the place that people assume we will send Julian Assange if the U.S. successfully extradites him.

MG: The cells are very small. They were built in a former era — the building itself dates to, like, the 1930s — and they were built, I think, for a single person, even back then. So the cells do not actually meet the minimum square footage that the Bureau of Prisons publishes in its own policies, in terms of the minimum needed for a human being.

And then what they did is they went in, and they retrofitted a bunk bed onto each one, so that they can double up, and they did do that in the time that I was there. It’s a sardine can, and it’s smaller than you would get elsewhere in the Bureau of Prisons. It’s a concrete and brick building without air conditioning so, in the summer, you just bake. And if there’s a lockdown, and you’re not out of your cell for three or four days, they’re just baking you, they’re just cooking you like a turkey.

RG: So, while you are there, there are two of you? How much room is [left] after the bunk beds are put in there?

MG: There’s less than 56 square feet in the whole cell, and a lot less if you don’t count the toilet, the actual bunk. Now, I spent time there both single-celled and with a cellmate, it depends on the number of guys they have in the unit. But when you’re a journalist like I am, you’re one of the first people they double.

When they try to double you up as a journalist, they doubled up… They doubled me up with a guy who was a known informant, who was actually in the law library as an informant, right? And when I reacted negatively to that, they acted like I was the one who was misbehaving, you know?

But, again, these are all political cases. So, to force you to bunk with an informant and risk violence, right? Because that’s something that’s a direct risk of violence. And the Bureau of Prisons does not care. They do not care.

RG: Yeah. In general, do people want to be doubled up or not? 

MG: No. People generally want the single cell. You have no modicum with privacy any other way.

RG: Right. So, you’re doubled up. How often can you get … If there’s not a lockdown, how often are you out of that cell?

MG: So, you’re out, actually, most of the day. They pop the doors around six, seven in the morning. During the weekday schedule you’d be out until just before four, and then there’d be a count, and you’d be released after the count anytime between like 4:30 and 5:30.

Sometimes the guards are lazy, right? And they don’t want to do the count right away, or they don’t want to unlock you right away after the count. So, even though the count’s done, you can be in your cell till 5:30, 6 o’clock. Then you’re out for dinner, and then you stay out until about nine o’clock.

On the weekends, there’s an additional count at 10 o’clock in the morning. And so, you lock in at like 9:45 and be out around 10:30, 11.

RG: And so, what’s the communication management part of it? Like, what’s different about Terre Haute or Marion, compared to a typical federal prison? When it comes to your ability to communicate with the public, with your attorneys, with your family, and so on?

MG: So, the unit is entirely self-contained. It’s part of a larger federal complex, but if you’re a regular prisoner in that complex, those times that you’re out, you’re not stuck in your housing unit. You can go to the athletic facilities, you can go to the sports fields. There’s a lot more to do.

In the CMU, when you’re out, you’re still kind of stuck in this sardine can. And the communications management … So, elsewhere in the federal prison system, you get between 300 and 500 minutes a month of phone time, and that’s kind of in flux now with the First Step Act and all that. And you get in-person contact visits; like, your family can come and hug you.

In the CMU, you get two 15-minute phone calls a week, max. You have no contact visits, you basically never leave the little unit until you’re either released or you’re transferred.

Those phone calls elsewhere in the Bureau, they say they monitor, but there’s so much call volume that they cannot really effectively monitor; they kind of keep recordings for a little while in case they have to go back and do something. But in the CMU, your phone calls are monitored in real time, and they can be cut off in real time. And so, several times I was speaking with journalists, and they would just cut the call off. And they would never provide any justification for that.

After NBC dropped the four-part docuseries on my case, they just deleted my wife from my contact information, never provided me any written justification for that, effectively banned me on the phone without providing any written justification whatsoever. And you get lawyers involved, and nothing really happens. The system is completely unwilling to check their discretion. The judges just don’t want to hear it.

The judges in Terre Haute get spun. They hear that this is the terrorist unit for Al-Qaeda guys, and that whatever they file is frivolous. And these judges are mostly former federal prosecutors. Like, you’re dead on arrival in court.

I have a federal habeas pending now that I’ve been released, but it’s been pending since July, fully briefed, right? And the judge won’t rule on it, just to give you an example. And federal habeas is supposed to jump to the front of the list, it’s the very first thing a federal judge is supposed to rule on. And in Terre Haute, it becomes the very last thing. Especially if it looks like you’ve got a case.

RG: Let’s talk a little bit about who goes out there, because I remember from more than ten years ago, there was a lawsuit, or there were complaints against the CMUs on religious grounds, where the argument was, you’re sticking all of the Muslims in these prisons, and you can’t do that, that is discrimination based on religion. The Bureau of Prison’s response to that was, oh, well, we’ve got a couple people convicted of ecoterrorism here and there. And so, they kind of just threw them into it, and said, well, look, it’s not all Muslims anymore, so you don’t have your case anymore.

When you were there, what’s the kind of demographic, and what’s the profile of the kinds of people that you’re with?

MG: At any given time, it’s between about 30 and 45 percent Muslims, most of them. It tends not to be the big cases that you would actually associate with a unit like that. It tends to be, like, some 20-year-old guy who got indoctrinated over the internet and was trying to fly to Syria, and they catch him at the airport, right? And he’s never actually hurt anybody. In some cases, these people were entrapped, right? And it tends to be those kinds of cases.

These are not really the serious terrorism cases that one would think they are, but these cases are worth a lot of money. The Bureau of Prisons gets a lot in their budget based on building these guys up as some international threat, even though they’ve never hurt anybody, and had no serious potential to hurt anybody. That’s the majority of the Muslim cases there. 

Then you have probably about 15 percent political cases. And then the rest… They actually started changing the demographic after I started complaining that there was a high concentration of political cases, so now they’re running through guys who get caught with a cell phone in federal prison. That was largely a reaction to my coverage.

It’s definitely not what the public is sold. And these CMUs, they cost millions of dollars, they hire dozens of so-called intelligence analysts to review the cases there. My understanding is that the qualifications of these so-called intelligence analysts wouldn’t meet the bar at the state department or anywhere else. A lot of cases, these are just former prison guards who have no special intelligence training that I’ve ever seen, right? But they do get these exorbitant salaries, once the Bureau of Prisons kind of designates them as intelligence analysts.

And the CMUs, they were started during Iraq and Afghanistan, and the idea there was that, by mining the communications of these jihadis, they would come up with actionable intel to use in the war effort. And the one thing that — to my knowledge anyway — the CMU has never, ever produced, is actionable intel to use in any war effort whatsoever.

RG: So, how often would you wind up in solitary? What’s that system there?

MG: So, I started doing the prerequisites to file a lawsuit that they didn’t like, and they called that extortion, and they threw me in solitary.

RG: How long, that first time?

MG: So, that was about a month and a half. And then they celled me up with that informant. And when I started talking to the media saying they celled me up with an informant, they threw me in solitary for another three, four months. Those are the two stints that I did in solitary in the CMU.

And the solitary cells in the CMU, by the way, are even worse than the regular cells. They’re insect infested, cockroaches everywhere. There are serious sewage issues. The water is not really drinkable. And so, they go out of their way to make those solitary cells very, very heinous, and it’s something that Julian, I’m sad to say, can expect to experience himself the first time he reaches out to a journalist, the first time someone tries to file a lawsuit to vindicate his First Amendment rights, you know? It’s hell.

RG: What kind of insect infestation? That sounds utterly terrifying.

MG: Spiders, cockroaches, various other insects that we couldn’t identify. I actually, at one point, got in — it took some effort — but I got in a North American field guide to insects and bugs, just so that we could identify all the various creepy crawlies, and so that we would know what’s potentially venomous and what’s not. Because they don’t provide any training, any safety. There’s nothing to tell you, don’t get stung by that one, don’t get stung by that one, right?

And there’s an insect there that’s called a “cow killer,” OK? And it’s called a cow killer …

RG: That doesn’t sound good.

MG: Yeah, it’s not because its sting is so venomous that it would actually kill a cow, but the sting is so painful that it can cause a stampede. So, one of these things stings one cow, the cow bucks because it’s in so much pain. This causes a stampede, and you end up with a herd of dead cows, right? And that insect was crawling around the rec yard out there. And, again, there’s no signage, no warning, no anything. If you don’t have the knowledge of the guys who are already there to say, hey, don’t get stunned by that guy, you might step right on it.

RG: What’s it like trying to sleep, knowing that the cell’s crawling with bugs?

MG: In my cell I always slept on the top bunk, even when I didn’t have a cellmate, because they’re just less likely to get at you up there. But yeah, I’ve woken up there with a cockroach staring at me, like, on my chest, just staring at me, and I’m like, oh hi. Had to brush him off the bed.

Guys wake up with spider bites, you know? Like, a big rash going all the way down the leg.

Yeah. Just, nothing is done. I filed remedies all the way up to Washington, in the Bureau of Prisons, saying, you guys got to do something about this. And they basically said, we don’t see any bugs, you guys are fine. And they just lie. I mean, they lie, in writing, on federal documents, they sign them … You know, if you see something, anything from the government talking about the conditions in the CMU, from my perspective, they’re just lying.

RG: And this is all related because — as people I’m sure have gathered by this point in the conversation — you’re the kind of person that is going to be a squeaky wheel. Like, they can do whatever they want to you, and you’re not going to stop pushing back and fighting for your rights. That is also the kind of person that they’re going to retaliate against constantly.

MG: Yeah. They’re trying to break you. That’s their goal. Really. I mean, they’ll never admit to it, but there’s a widely known thing among the CMU prisoners that, if you kind of go to them and you say, hey, look, I’ll stop, just get me out of here. And you drop all your lawsuits, and you stop complaining, that’s the one time they’ll let you out.

And no staff ever threatened me, but I’ve talked to a lot of guys who were threatened, who staff told them, if you don’t stop, we’re going to make sure you never see your kids again. If you don’t stop, we’re going to keep you here. Or, complaining is not the way to get out of this unit, right? That’s the one you hear the most, is that complaining is not the way to get out of this unit. 

RG: The way you got into it, and the way you stay in it.

MG: You stay in it. Yeah, exactly. I think that’s the implication.

RG: Right. And Julian Assange is not the kind of person, either, that is just going to just sit back and accept the fate that he’s dealt. He’s somebody that’s always been completely about transparency.

MG: I mean, the only reason they’re prosecuting Julian — let’s just be real here — is because he told the truth about some things that people in power found really embarrassing.

RG: Yes.

MG: Without that, there would be no prosecution. They’re, they’re, they’re grasping at straws to try to make a federal violation out of something that is arguably protected press conduct. And that’s why the Obama administration didn’t prosecute him in the first place. They had the so-called “New York Times problem.” If we prosecute him, how do we justify that we’re not prosecuting the New York Times?

So, I understand he’s become somewhat of a controversial figure because of a lot of the media narrative that has been run against him. But there was a time in this country ten years ago when he was widely perceived as a hero, and very little in terms of his conduct has changed since that time. 

So, his case, my case, many other cases that are at the periphery of prosecutorial discretion, right? Those are the kinds of cases that end up in the CMU. And we as a country, I think, have to ask ourselves an existential question of, can we tolerate these kinds of units?

Because you go to prison, and you’re supposed to keep your first amendment rights, right? There’s no valid, what they call penological reason. There’s nothing relevant to protection of the public, rehabilitation, any of what the supposed goals of prison are that says you shouldn’t be able to speak, you shouldn’t be able to speak to the media, you shouldn’t be able to file in court. But those are the things the CMU exists to curtail, right? That’s why those units are there.

And the actual stated purpose of the unit — keep the public safe, help fight the war on terror — again, the units never produced a single piece of actionable intel for that. And they’ve slept. They’ve missed more than a few of these things.

There was a shootout in Texas where the mass shooter was trying to get a female federal prisoner freed from the female-equivalent of these CMU’s. And there was no intelligence to say that he was going to do that, they didn’t stop that. She was in one of these units, supposedly to stop that very kind of mass killing. And these people missed it, and Americans died.

And had they not put her there in the first place, frankly, it wouldn’t have happened. I’m not saying that justifies the shooting, of course. But if you’re going to put people in these kinds of units to stop terrorist actions, and you’re going to take millions of dollars from taxpayers to do it, then you ought to at least stop the terrorist actions. And they’re not even doing that. They failed at that.

RG: Let’s even grant them, though, in some imaginary world, where they actually managed, at some point, to do that with somebody who was convicted of a charge of terrorism. How do they justify putting Julian Assange or you in a CMU, when there’s not even any claim that you’re even remotely connected, that either of you are remotely connected to terrorism?

MG: We actually had a district court ruling in my case. The federal judge, who’s not a pro-defendant judge, he’s known as a hanging judge, a very harsh sentencing judge, right? He was Aaron Swartz’s judge. And we actually had that judge rule that the government could not say, could not imply that anything I did was terrorism, right? Mine was an activism case. We actually had a ruling from the bench before the trial and sentence, right? That argument would literally be frivolous in my case, because a district court already decided the matter, and the government never appealed it to challenge it, right?

So, the thing is, they don’t really have to justify it at all. That’s, really, the scary thing. The relevant precedent in the Supreme Court is called Sandin v. Conner, OK? And the Supreme Court basically said, unless what the prison is doing is an atypical and significant hardship as compared to the normal hardships of prison life, then the prisoner has no due process to challenge his placement, wherever the system wants to put you.

So, what they do in the CMUs … You asked before, how often are you out of your cell? So, you’re out most of the time. The reason you’re out most of the time is not out of the goodness of their heart. It’s because they have to say we treat them just like any other prisoner. This is a general population unit, they actually try to maintain that the CNUs are a general population unit. But then you look elsewhere in what they say and in what they do, and it becomes very clear that this is not really a general population unit. But, so long as they keep lying and saying it’s general population, and as long as the federal courts continue to credit them that it’s a general population unit, they can really put whoever they want in these CMUs.

RG: And I guess when it comes to the definition of atypical, it’s in the eye of the judge and the prison. Because when I think about what you said about getting just, what, two 15-minute calls a month? That to me feels like an atypical and radical departure.

MG: Yeah. That’s mentioned with no-contact. I wasn’t able to hug my wife for four years.

RG: I feel naïve asking as if they’re going to give some rational answer to it, but what did they say to you when you would challenge them, and say, this is an atypical deviation from the rest of the federal prison system?

MG: No, they just say it’s a general population unit. You have all the same things everyone else on the compound has. It’s because we have to manage your communications to ensure public safety.

RG: They go back to the public safety argument.

MG: Yeah, even though we had a federal judge rule that mine was an activism case with no real public safety ramifications. And the government in my case failed to prove that anything that I did affected a single human individual. They put it before the jury, right? They asked the jury to find that something I did had affected, or even potentially affected a single human being, and the jury would not convict on that.

So, they got me for financial damage to multimillion- and multibillion-dollar institutions that tortured and crippled a human child, but that’s actually what I was convicted of. And when the government sought to convict me for actually being a potential danger to even one human person, they were not able to convict me of that. But they still sent me to a CMU.

RG: What was the time in solitary like for you? What are the phases that you go through?

MG: So the first time I was in solitary I was on a hunger strike, and that actually lasted 42 days; it was the second longest hunger strike I did in federal prison. The longest one, which we covered together at HuffPost, was a hundred days, and that was during the election.

So, after that hundred-day hunger strike, I had lost a lot of muscle mass. I prepared for that hundred-day hunger strike for six months. People ask me all the time, how do you do that, how do you survive a hundred days? And the answer is: you prepare ahead of time. I prepared for nine months to survive that.

So, the second time, I didn’t have that preparation. I had lost a lot of lean body mass. It was actually much more concerning from a health perspective the second time than the first time, but that colored my experience in CMU solitary quite a bit. Because it’s one thing to be in solitary, it’s another thing to be in solitary and reject, I think it was, 105 straight meals where I did not eat.

I was trying to fight my case at that point, I was still up on appeal, I was trying to change attorneys. Your legal calls are pretty much entirely at their discretion. They open your legal mail, they opened and read my legal mail right in front of me when I was in solitary the first time, even though they’re not supposed to do that. Legal mail is supposed to be kind of sacrosanct. Like, they can inspect it for contraband, they can like make sure no drugs fall out when they open the envelope, but they’re not supposed to read it.

But they went through my incoming legal mail, reviewing for content, and actually confiscated things; like, parts of my appellate brief they would not let me have. When I was trying to change lawyers, they made that very, very difficult, and it was something that, had I not had my lovely and talented wife Dana on the outside fighting for me — and that’s something most of these guys do not have, a spouse, a significant other — I wouldn’t have been able to do that.

So, they make it very, very hard to fight your case, and that adds a lot of stress, too. If you feel you have meritorious claims, you want to get these claims heard before the court.

So, the first time I’m in solitary in the CMU, I’m on a hunger strike, I’m trying to change attorneys, they’re interfering with my legal mail. I mean, they’re basically trying to drive you to kill yourself. To me, that seemed like what the goal was. Like, if I had hanged myself in that cell, they would’ve just wiped their hands of it, and they would all consider that, you know, a squeaky wheel, as you put it, had now been silenced.

RG: Right. Do you have books in solitary? Do you get to leave at all to go outdoors, but only by yourself? Like, how does that work?

MG: So, there are books. The Bureau provides, really, kind of shoddy, like, pulp fiction kind of stuff. Thankfully, in the CMU, since you have this concentration of political prisoners, and it’s really a very smart crowd in that unit compared to the rest of federal prisons. So, the books have been interspersed with books that other guys received from their families. So, you actually have really good reading material, it is one of the best libraries in the Bureau of Prisons, is the irony.

But it’s not that way because the Bureau provides good reading materials, it’s that way because they only allow you to keep so many books in your cell. So, you either can donate them or give them away, but what ends up happening is that the library gets filled with really interesting… And a lot of the classics, a lot of the Western canon. I’d say there’s a better selection there than there is in most public high school libraries. So, that’s one of the good things, I did get a lot of good reading.

RG: So, how much time did you spend in both of these CMUs?

MG: So, I was in Terre Haute from April 1st, 2019 through January 21st, 2021, then I was in Marion from January 21st, 2021 to, I think, November 10th, 2022. And then, again, in Terre Haute from November 10th, 2022 till, I think, June 9th of 2023.

RG: What was it like when you finally got out of there? 

MG: Words fail me, because you’re out in public again. Like, they just put you on a greyhound bus; when I was released, it’s like, they just drop you off at the bus station, and you’re out in public again, and you can talk to people.

RG: Like, 24 hours earlier, you’re just…

MG: Yeah, you’re completely cut off, isolated from the world. They blocked Dana, so I couldn’t talk to my wife for seven months, with no kind of process, no official anything ever handed to me to justify it. And you get out, and you get to the Greyhound station, and it’s just … Can I borrow your cell phone, I need to make a call real quick.

And they didn’t want me to leave with my legal work. So, I had 210 pounds of documents about the CMU, and about my case, between the two, right? And I still have them, but they would not allow my lawyer to come to the prison the day before I was released to pick up my legal documents, even though their own regulations kind of specify that they have to allow a prisoner to exchange legal documents with an attorney, and they knew I was being released. They were really hoping that they would make it logistically difficult for me to bring my legal documents with me, and that I would then trust them to mail these documents home. But, having spoken to guys who had been through the CMU program — and some of them, it’s like their 2nd, 3rd, 4th trip through the CMU program — I was not prepared to rely on the Bureau of Prisons to mail these very sensitive, very compromising legal documents home.

So, I actually had to carry, by hand, 210 pounds of legal documents to the Greyhound stop, and then Dana arranged for somebody to meet me there. And I put the legal documents in that person’s car, and then that person — you know, bless her heart — took them to UPS, and had them shipped home for me. And that’s the only way that I have these documents that show, in detail, the kind of thing that Julian can expect. And the writeups, the bogus disciplinary charges that I got for trying to speak to the media, trying to litigate, trying to tell people what’s going on, trying to help other guys who I feel are wrongfully incarcerated in the CMUs, [to] litigate.

And there’s one case in particular that I really want to mention, and that’s Donald Reynolds, Jr. His case is related to Operation Fast and Furious, which was when the Justice Department walked high-powered, fully-automatic, so-called cop-killing firearms to the Mexican drug cartels. You had mentioned Chapo earlier, right? And so, this was when the Justice Department was actually handing those cartels armor piercing firearms.

RG: Yeah. This became a scandal under the Eric Holder Attorney Generalship.

MG: Yeah. So, Donnie was a Black NRA member, firearms collector. He had a lot of historic weapons, like World War II-era firearms, and a lot of high-powered stuff. And they went to him, they asked him to become an informant for them, he refused. They buried him as a first-time nonviolent offender with a life-plus-75-year sentence; so, they actually hit Donnie off with a longer sentence than El Chapo received. And it looks to me and to others like Donnie is wholly innocent, and they basically just did this to keep him quiet.

And we actually had The American Conservative from the other side of the aisle do a months-long investigation into Donnie’s case. And The American Conservative ended up recommending clemency for Donnie, because of the prosecutorial irregularities. And then a different organization — similar name, The American Conservative Union — on the other side of the aisle, not really known for taking a pro-defendant, anti-law enforcement kind of stance, also recommended clemency for Donnie because of these prosecutorial irregularities.

RG: What charges did they end up hitting him with?

MG: Drug trafficking, and using firearms in pursuit of drug trafficking. But here’s the thing: they never found any drugs on Donnie. Never. They searched his house, they searched his parents’ house. They never found anything.

RG: And he was a player in this entire scandal. So, the thinking is, from your perspective, that holing him up somewhere is an effective way to do PR for this scandal. Is that what you’re thinking? Or what’s the rationale for why in particular they would go after him?

MG: I think that, in his case, you have a lot of what are called Brady violations, which are discovery violations. Donnie’s defense was entitled to information about Operation Fast and Furious to prepare his defense, which he never received. And if it comes out that this information was never turned over to his defense attorneys, well, then that’s a big issue. Because then his conviction is going to have to be overturned, and if they choose to continue to prosecute the case, he’s entitled to all this information about Fast and Furious, which the House committees were trying to obtain from the White House, and the Obama White House asserted executive privilege to quash those subpoenas.

Well, you can’t assert executive privilege to quash Brady, right? Donnie’s entitled to that information if they’re coming for his liberty, which they are. And Donnie had no idea that it was Fast and Furious. It took years for information to come out about Fast and Furious for Donnie to put it together that this was likely Fast and Furious.

And then, when these months-long investigations were done, lo and behold, the names involved in his case are some of the same names involved in Fast and Furious. The dates all line up, as one would expect them to line up. It’s really uncanny. So, there’s a piece at The American Conservative about it called “The Knoxville Kingpin Who Wasn’t,” and that has more of the details about it. 

But this is another great example of a CMU case, right? The Obama administration literally asserted executive privilege to stop any investigation into Fast and Furious. Here you have an innocent guy who is being held in a CMU to keep a lid on that, even to this day. And I’m convinced of that, and I think the facts do bear it out, but if people can read the investigation, then they can come to their own conclusions.

RG: What’s he like?

MG: Donnie’s a great guy, he’s a smart guy. He was a businessman. He ran four businesses before they locked him up, he was married before they locked him up, he’s a father. His father worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, had a security clearance. He’s a great friend to have, and he doesn’t deserve at all what’s happening to him, and I really hope someday the truth comes out.

Donnie is one of the many guys who helped keep me safe while I was there. He was also the unit barber, so he cut everyone’s hair. And he’s a funny guy, he’s got a great sense of humor. You’d think after they do all this to you, it’d be very hard to keep your head up, right? And Donnie maintains this sense of humor.

RG: How old is he now?

MG: He’s a few years older than I am, so he’s in his 40s, he’s in his early 40s.

RG: And looking at life.

MG: He’s doing life. He’s been locked up longer than I was. He’s been locked up since, like, 2011 … I might be off by a year or two there. And he’s been in the CMU practically the entire time.

RG: And you mentioned, keeping you safe. What is the violence like there? It’s a small place, and I don’t know if that makes it less or more violent.

MG: Yeah. Six months before I got there, one of the jihadis garroted to death one of the minimum security prisoners there, and stabbed another guy 11 times. And they just completely covered that up. There was a press release that there had been a death at the Terre Haute federal complex, but they did not mention that it was the CMU. There are multiple theories about what predicated that attack, but the one thing that everyone seems to agree, is that the Bureau of Prisons knew ahead of time that it was going to happen, and did nothing to stop it.

There is sectarian violence, but I’m a brown Jew, and they put me in a unit full of radical jihadi Muslims. Like, it’s hard to say that that itself wasn’t an assassination attempt. What they weren’t banking on, though, is that the government’s saying this whole time that I’m a member of Anonymous, right? And Anonymous has a fairly good reputation in the Middle East after the Arab Spring. So, you know, it didn’t work out the way they thought it would.

RG: So, you were cool.

MG: Yeah, I was cool. And I do a lot of legal work for guys. I’m like the resident jailhouse lawyer, anywhere I go. And so, that always keeps you safe. Like, if you’re headed to federal prison through no fault of your own, pick up a Black’s Law Dictionary and get good with the law, because you will become an indispensable person.

But the thing is, about prison, especially about that unit, is it’s never going to be one-on-one. Like, it’s him and his boys versus you and whoever’s going to get your back. And that’s also what is potentially so very dangerous about these units. These units are a powder keg just waiting for a spark to go off. And, in 2018, before I got there, they had that spark go off and, and one person died, and another person was stabbed 11 times. 

RG: And, since you got out, you mentioned all of that information that you were able to take with you. I know you’ve been in touch with Julian Assange’s legal team. I don’t know what you can say about that. How are they feeling about this upcoming hearing? And were they able to make use of any of the insider CMU knowledge that you were able to give them?

MG: So, in terms of their feeling about the hearing, I’m going to defer to them. You’re going to really have to speak to them on that matter.

They were limited. By the time I got out, the lower-court proceedings had already been concluded, and so, they were limited to that record on appeal. So I don’t know that they were able to actually use any of the documents that I got [over] to them, because it was just too late by the time those documents got there.

Now, if the case gets reversed, if he gets to go back to the lower courts, then I think, potentially, some of the documents that I have are really potentially useful. I don’t know what they’ve used and what they haven’t used. Presumably it’s a public docket and we can see.

But I think unfortunately, very unfortunately for Julian, my experience and my records in the legal sense will not really come to bear until the next CMU extradition case. And, at that point, all this stuff can be briefed in the district court, in the lower court, where it’ll become part of the record of the case, and be arguable on appeal, and on appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

RG: I think one thing I just want to leave people with, you know, you’re no fool, you knew what kind of system you were getting into. And the prosecutors offered a plea deal that would’ve given a significant —  because I remember you and I talking about this at the time — would’ve given you a significantly shorter prison sentence. I don’t remember exactly the details now, but I remember you saying, it’s not about that. I am not ashamed of what I did. Like, I was standing up for Justine. I’m going to take this all the way to the jury, and if the jury finds me guilty, then so be it. 

That’s just an unusual amount of courage, I would say, to willingly stare down a much more extended sentence under brutal conditions. And I think that it’s a fact that that is unusual courage, because I think something like 95 percent of federal cases — some extraordinary number of federal cases — end in plea deals. 

MG: Yeah, it’s higher than 95. The trial system is so unfair in the federal system. I mean, it’s not a fair system. And I would invite anyone who finds that shocking, as I did initially… I get that it’s a shocking thing. This is America, you expect the courts to be fair.

Go do a little research on the federal system, look at cases like mine. They would not even let me plead defense of another, right? Like, they wouldn’t let my jury consider it, that I acted to defend a human life, right? They found that defense inconvenient, so they simply prevented the jury from hearing it.

RG: Yeah, I think any system that has a 95-plus percent success rate for the prosecution, you can pretty fairly say is tilted in their favor. And that’s why so many people take deals.

MG: Well, they want you to believe that these prosecutors are just that good, and they’re just that righteous.

RG: Absolute geniuses. Yes.

MG: Yeah. But, again, just look at it, and just look at the cases they’re bringing. Look at the case they’re bringing against Julian. Look at the case they brought against Barrett Brown or Jeremy Hammond.

RG: Now, Barrett Brown, that’s who you were trying to think of earlier.

MG: Yeah, yeah. But just look at the cases they bring, and look at the cases that they do not bring, right? You had the 2008 financial crisis, right? Who went to jail? The whistleblower. You have the Bush torture program, right? Who went to jail? The whistleblower.

RG: Right. And look at the war crimes that Julian Assange exposed, the only people to go to prison, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, right?

MG: Julian, yeah.

RG: Well, Marty, thank you for fighting, and thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

MG: Thank you for having me, Ryan.

RG: That was Marty Gottesfeld, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. Jose Olivares is our lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal Review by David Bralow and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Roger Hodge is The Intercept’s Editor-in-Chief. And I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept.

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Both Israel and the White House, including President Joe Biden personally, have staked their credibility on the claim that there is a massive smoking gun lying below Al-Shifa Hospital. The U.S. said publicly it was not relying exclusively on Israel to back up its own assertions. Leaving aside the fact that both the U.S. and Israel have track records as long as the Gaza Strip of lying about the alleged crimes of their adversaries, the key question is not whether a tunnel or rooms exist under Al-Shifa, but whether they were being used for a clear military or combat purpose by Hamas, as the U.S. and Israel have alleged.

Since the October 7 raids led by Hamas in Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 845 Israeli civilians, along with some 350 soldiers and police, and saw more than 240 people taken as hostages, the IDF has placed an intense focus on Hamas’s underground infrastructure. Israel’s allegation that Hamas’s main headquarters was housed in or under the sprawling Al-Shifa Hospital compound is not new. But the zealous focus on it is an indication that Israel wants to make it the central issue in its case to push back against critics of its indiscriminate campaign of civilian death and destruction in Gaza. Israel has sought to make Al-Shifa a Rorschach test in its narrative war, and Israel has accused journalists, the United Nations, doctors, and nurses of being part of the conspiracy to hide Hamas’s use of the hospital as a military command center from the world.

To date, this propaganda campaign has not gone well.

After initially claiming that Al-Shifa Hospital was effectively Hamas’s Pentagon — a narrative publicly bolstered by the Biden administration — the IDF released its first round of purported evidence, which more or less consisted of a smattering of automatic rifles, some nestled behind an MRI machine, and a conveniently placed combat vest with a Hamas logo on it. With the exception of Israel’s most die-hard supporters, this effort appeared to convince almost no one of the sweeping assertions about Al-Shifa’s importance to Hamas’s current operations. After all, the IDF had already shown the public a slick 3D video model purporting to be a depiction of an advanced underground command and control lair used by Hamas. So Israel’s first effort at selling the case fell flat.

Several other efforts to produce videos of what Israel claimed to be evidence of a significant Hamas base at hospitals have been met with widespread derision and skepticism, including from Western media outlets that historically report Israeli military assertions about its operations against Palestinians as fact. The IDF videos have been mocked across social media and compared to Geraldo Rivera’s much-hyped — and utterly disastrous — live 1986 nationally televised special promising to reveal the secrets hidden in Al Capone’s underground vault.

Al-Shifa staff, as well as a European doctor who worked there for years, vehemently deny that the hospital is used by Hamas for any military purpose. For what it’s worth, Hamas also denies it.

On Sunday, Israel released two new videos that it claimed document a 55-meter fortified tunnel 10 meters below Al-Shifa. The camera footage, presumably filmed using a remotely piloted vehicle, ends with what Israel said is a blast-proof door equipped with a shooting hole allowing Hamas to attack IDF forces should they seek to breach the purported Hamas command and control center. “The findings prove beyond all doubt that buildings in the hospital complex are used as infrastructure for the Hamas terror organization, for terror activity. This is further proof of the cynical use that the Hamas terror organization makes of the residents of the Gaza Strip as a human shield for its murderous terror activities,” the IDF said in a statement.

It’s no secret that Gaza houses extensive underground tunnels. Over the past two decades, Israel has repeatedly conducted operations aimed at destroying parts of the underground tunnel networks and has often boasted of its successes in doing so. Tunnels stretching from southern Gaza into Egypt served as smuggling lines for many years. Israel claimed their primary purpose was to move weapons, while other observers portrayed them as a lifeline to smuggle in food and other supplies to the blockaded population of Gaza. It’s likely that both assertions are true. In recent years, both Israel and Egypt have taken measures to block or flood tunnels that penetrated their territory, and Israel reportedly installed underground concrete walls and subterranean sensors around its border with Gaza to stop Hamas or other militants from using them to enter Israel to conduct operations. In 2006, Hamas operatives used such a tunnel to take IDF soldier Gilad Shalit back to Gaza after capturing him. Shalit was freed as part of a prisoner exchange in 2011.

Al-Shifa’s Tunnels Were Built by Israel

It’s also well known that there are, in fact, tunnels and rooms under Al-Shifa. We know that because Israel admits that it built them in the early 1980s. According to Israeli media reports, the underground facilities were designed by Tel Aviv architects Gershon Zippor and Benjamin Idelson. “Israel renovated and expanded the hospital complex with American assistance, in a project that also included the excavation of an underground concrete floor,” according to Zvi Elhyani, founder of the Israel Architecture Archive, writing in Israel’s Ynetnews.

The underground infrastructure was part of a modernization and expansion effort at Al-Shifa commissioned by Israel’s Public Works Department. “The Israeli civil administration in the territories constructed the hospital complex’s Building Number 2, which has a large cement basement that housed the hospital’s laundry and various administrative services,” according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The room and tunnels under Al-Shifa were reportedly completed in 1983. Tablet magazine described the space as “a secure underground operating room and tunnel network.” Zippor’s son Barak, who began working at his father’s architecture firm in the 1990s, said that during the construction at Al-Shifa in the 1980s, the Israeli construction contractors hired Hamas to provide security guards to prevent attacks on the building site.

“You know, decades ago we were running the place, so we helped them — it was decades, many decades ago, probably four decades ago that we helped them to build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of this compound,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told a visibly stunned CNN host Christiane Amanpour.

Israel has claimed that following Hamas’s consolidation of power in Gaza in 2006, the group took over the Israeli-built facilities beneath Al-Shifa and modernized and expanded them into a full-fledged command and control operations center. During this period, some international journalists have described being called to meetings with Hamas officials on the hospital grounds, and Israel has long referred to it as a vital Hamas headquarters. During the 2014 war in Gaza, the Washington Post’s William Booth asserted that Al-Shifa “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” Assuming these claims are true, it is both shameful and logical that Hamas would choose to meet journalists at a civilian hospital given Israel’s well-known campaign to systematically assassinate them. Shameful as it may be, this is quite different than using a secret facility buried beneath the hospital as a military command and control center.

The fact that Israel built tunnels and rooms under Al-Shifa does not prove anything. Many modern hospitals, especially in war zones, have underground infrastructure, including Israeli hospitals. Nor do past reports about Hamas members being spotted inside the hospital. Israel will need to present much more convincing evidence, particularly to back up its claim that the site was of immense military and operational significance during this specific war.

The standard for such evidence should be extremely high, particularly because of the extent of civilian death and suffering caused by Israel’s operations. The Biden administration made allegations about Al-Shifa Hospital to offer preemptive cover for Israel to raid it, and the onus is on the administration to provide irrefutable, clear evidence to support its specific claims.

Propaganda vs. International Law

As Israel wages its propaganda war over Al-Shifa, it is simultaneously laying siege to yet another medical facility, the Indonesian Hospital, which is now the sole remaining medical facility in northern Gaza. Israeli artillery fire has killed at least 12 people at the hospital, according to local officials. Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, has accused Israel of violating international law. “All countries, especially those that have close relations with Israel, must use all their influence and capabilities to urge Israel to stop its atrocities,” she said Monday.

International humanitarian law is clear that in case of any doubt as to whether the hospital is being used as a party to a conflict to “commit an act harmful to the enemy,” then it remains a protected site. Even if there were clear evidence that the hospital’s protected status had been abused, there are a range of rules governing any military action against the hospital — and the civilian patients would remain protected individuals.

“Even if the building loses its special protection, all the people inside retain theirs,” said Adil Haque, the Judge Jon O. Newman scholar at Rutgers Law School, in an interview with the Washington Post. “Anything that the attacking force can do to allow the humanitarian functions of that hospital to continue, they’re obligated to do, even if there’s some office somewhere in the building where there is maybe a fighter holed up.”

The staff at Al-Shifa have directly accused Israel of causing the deaths of civilians at the hospital, including several babies in the neonatal intensive care unit whose incubators were rendered useless after electricity was severely restricted as a result of the Israeli siege. On November 18, a U.N. humanitarian team led by the World Health Organization visited Al-Shifa. According to the WHO, its staff on the delegation described the hospital as a “death zone,” saying in a statement, “Signs of shelling and gunfire were evident. The team saw a mass grave at the entrance of the hospital and were told more than 80 people were buried there.”

Israel has also released what it says is CCTV footage from within Al-Shifa recorded in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas raid into Israel. It claims that the video depicts armed fighters entering the hospital with two international hostages, one Thai and one Nepali. The footage shows one of the alleged hostages injured on a stretcher.

Assuming that this footage is genuine and armed Hamas militants brought a wounded hostage in for treatment, what does Israel believe the hospital staff should have done in this case? Doctors have an ethical obligation to treat all wounded individuals, and it is not their job to serve as police or intelligence operatives.

“Given what the Israeli occupation reported, this confirms that the hospitals of the Ministry of Health provide their medical services to everyone who deserves them, regardless of their gender and race,” Gaza’s Ministry of Health said in a statement after the videos were released. The ministry added that it could not verify the videos. Hamas spokesperson Izzat Al-Rishq said that Hamas had previously acknowledged that it had taken wounded hostages to Al-Shifa on October 7. “We have released images of all that and the [Israeli] army spokesman is acting as if he has discovered something incredible,” he said. Rishq also claimed some of the hostages Hamas took to Al-Shifa had been wounded in Israeli strikes. Israel has also claimed, without evidence, that some hostages were murdered by Hamas inside the hospital grounds, though the IDF’s own maps indicate their bodies were recovered from locations outside Al-Shifa’s campus.

The onus is on both the Israeli government and its sponsors in the Biden administration to prove the sweeping claims about Hamas’s alleged use of Al-Shifa Hospital. This evidence should be strong enough to irrefutably prove that all of the suffering and death inflicted on the patients, doctors, and nurses at Al-Shifa was justifiable under the law, as well as basic principles of proportionality and morality. Such a conclusion is unfathomable when placed in the context of the civilian suffering caused by Israel’s siege on the hospital.

If Hamas is decisively proven to have intentionally abused the hospital’s protected status and did, in fact, actively operate a command center hidden beneath it, then it should face war crimes charges for having done so. Hamas, not innocent civilians, should be held accountable for these actions.

At the same time, if it is proven that Israel perpetrated fraud in its relentless campaign to portray the most important hospital in Gaza as a secret Hamas military base, then the world should hold Israeli officials accountable for this grave and lethal propaganda. So, too, should the Biden administration — including the president himself — be made to answer for the U.S. role.

Israel is seeking to justify its industrial-scale killing of civilians in Gaza with accusations that Hamas is hiding among civilians and using them as shields. Yet Israel’s leading human rights group B’Tselem has documented how the IDF has engaged in this very activity for decades. “Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, Israeli security forces have repeatedly used Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip as human shields, ordering them to perform military tasks that risked their lives,” according to a 2017 report. 

In the bigger picture, the controversy around Hamas and Al-Shifa has served mostly as a distraction from the overarching, indisputable facts about Israel’s war against Gaza: Using U.S. weapons, financing, and political support, Israel has waged a campaign of violent collective punishment against the civilians of Gaza.

The post Al-Shifa Hospital, Hamas’s Tunnels, and Israeli Propaganda appeared first on The Intercept.

On June 28, 2009, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted by a military coup. In response to Zelaya’s push for a poll to gauge public interest in constitutional changes, the Honduran Supreme Court ordered the military to arrest him. He was then sent to Costa Rica in his pajamas.

The coup led to nearly 13 years of right-wing rule, marked by collusion with drug trafficking organizations, widespread privatization, violence, repression, and a significant migrant exodus. During this period, the Honduran left organized a strong resistance movement. In 2022, Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife and a leader of the anti-coup resistance, was elected president, signaling a major shift in the country’s history.

In this episode of Deconstructed, Zelaya sits down for an exclusive interview with journalist José Olivares to discuss the 15th anniversary of the coup, the ensuing resistance movement, the right-wing and drug trafficking organizations’ control, and the U.S. government’s role and influence. Host Ryan Grim and Olivares delve into Zelaya’s interview, recent developments in Honduran history, and present the full Spanish-language interview with Zelaya.

Deconstructed is a production of Drop Site News. This program was brought to you by a grant from The Intercept.

Transcript

Ryan Grim: Welcome back to Deconstructed.

I’m Ryan Grim and, as I mentioned in the last two podcast episodes, Jeremy Scahill and I have left The Intercept, and have launched a new independent news organization with some support from The Intercept called dropsitenews.com.

I’m joined today by former Deconstructed producer José Olivares, who is now working with us over at Drop Site News. He’s going to be talking to me today about a fascinating interview that he was able to land down in Honduras with the former Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya — Who, as some of you may recall, was ousted In a 2009 military coup, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time immediately recognizing the new military government, or at least recognizing the pathway to keep that military government in power until there were new elections put into place. It is often referred to — and, I think, accurately — as a U.S.-backed coup, though it is still quite murky how much involvement the U.S. itself directly had, and whether it was purely driven by the right-wing in Honduras, which then took power for the next 12 years.

Since then, Zelaya’s wife Xiomara Castro has come back to power on a democratic socialist platform, bringing Zelaya kind of back into the presidential fold. The left in Honduras is still surging and is likely to maintain the presidency in the next election.

Recently in Honduras there was a celebration of the reconquest of power by the left in Honduras 15 years after the coup; it was a ceremony to mark the 15th anniversary of that coup. José Olivares was in Honduras for it, and there he was able to interview former president Zelaya.

So, José, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this interview, and we’re going to play a whole bunch of clips from it.

José Olivares: Awesome, thanks for having me.

RG: So, José, tell us a little bit about this celebration. Why was it held, and who was there?

JO: Right. So, the celebration was held in Tegucigalpa, which is the capital of Honduras, and it was commemorating the 15-year anniversary of the 2009 coup. There were government officials from Cuba, from Venezuela, from Mexico, as well as social activists, trade union activists, trade union leaders, activist leaders from around Latin America, as well from Argentina to Mexico, all over Honduras. And it was organized by the party, by Libre, it was a select social event, but the event really was commemorating the 15-year anniversary of the coup — and not just the anniversary of the coup, but also the years of struggle that the Honduran people were engaged in, in response to the right-wing kind of reaction that came out of the 2009 coup.

I think what’s important to recognize here is that during these 13 years that the right wing was in power, they were fully supported by the U.S. government. There was a lot of repression, a lot of reaction that came from the government. There were killings of activists and land defenders throughout the country. Also, a lot of right-wing neoliberal policies that were put in place. Essentially, the country was sold off; I think, about a year after the coup happened, they even had an event that essentially was saying, hey, all these international companies, come on in, Honduras is for sale. [It] really ended up putting a lot of secretive policies in place, a lot of right-wing privatization policies in place, in tandem with the reaction, with the repression against the activists and the resistance movement.

So, this event, this 15-year anniversary was a really, really fascinating event. I mean, you could really feel the energy when you were walking through the halls of the hotels where the events were held, and even at the event itself, which was commemorated in the space where the resistance movement was organized — you know, the same day that President Zelaya was taken to Costa Rica by the Honduran military. That space, that event, the energy was electric. There were people chanting and yelling, chanting and saying, “they’re never going to return, these coup-plotters, these right-wing coup-plotters, they’re never going to return,” and really just kind of recognizing the sacrifices that the Honduran left was engaged in during these 13 years of struggle before Xiomara Castro was elected in 2021.

RG: Before we get into some more of the interview, he talks to you about the way that narcotraffickers effectively took over significant parts of the state. And so, from an American perspective, I see at least two obvious ways that what the U.S. has been doing to support the kind of right-wing elements of Honduras have directly blown back to the United States. One of them is, of course, with the rise of narcotrafficking there, and then the other is the complete collapse of the Honduran economy, which resulted in surges of migrants streaming north, from Honduras through Mexico, then down to the southern border, and further then kind of polarizing and radicalizing our own politics around immigration.

What was the overall posture that the people there had towards either Democrats, or Republicans, or the U S. government? Do they feel like they have anybody that they can potentially work with? Or do they see themselves in a straight up adversarial situation with the U.S. administration, no matter who’s in power?

JO: I think, publicly, the Libre party very much express that they’re willing to work with the U.S. government. And still, to this day, there still are some links that were established from these 13 years of the right-wing governments with the U.S. government that still continue to this day.

You know, Xiomara Castro has only been in power for two years now, and a lot of what members of Libra say, they say, a lot of these right-wing policies, right-wing links, we’re not able to get rid of them as easily, especially [with] 13 years of right-wing policies and this relationship with the U.S. government. We’re not able to do away with them, just in two years.

And the relationship with the U.S. really does go back for decades, over a century. In the late 1800s, the U.S. government started getting involved in mining, and then, in the 20th century, the U.S. government was getting involved in banana farming and agriculture, and that’s where the term “Banana Republic” comes from, right? That’s what Honduras was called, because, essentially, Honduras was the staging ground, the U.S. government’s main location for their influence in Central America.

After World War II, when the U.S. government is really railing against the threat of communism spreading throughout Latin America, Honduras was the main place, the main location where right-wing paramilitaries were trained, where right wing armies were trained, in order to combat these revolutionary movements, or to fight alongside in these civil wars, to try to root out any sort of leftist opposition that was spreading in Central America.

Honduras was so much of a place where the U.S. government could really just go in and rely on it. Some government officials back in the day even called it “U.S.S. Honduras,” right? It was essentially what they called the country.

So, there’s a long history of the U.S. government being involved in Honduras’ internal affairs. Even though Honduras never really had a revolutionary movement or a civil war, in the 80s there was a dirty war. There was a lot of repression, a lot of funding from the U.S. government, and a lot of repression against left-wing activists, trade unionists, etc., that were either disappeared or killed by the armed forces that were trained by the U.S. government.

So, now we’re looking at the 21st century and, in an interview, you’ll hear Zelaya essentially say, the Democrats and the Republicans, they’re essentially both the same, right? They both serve the same imperialist interests for the transactional companies, just looking out for their own interests. And so, to us, it doesn’t really matter who is in office, whether it’s a Republican president or a Democratic president. Essentially, they both are looking out for U.S. corporate interests and transnational company interests, so they’re going to do whatever they want in order to maintain that power and maintain that hold.

He makes an appeal to the working class in the U.S., essentially, saying, it’s up to you. It’s up to the working class in the U.S. to really put up a struggle and put up a fight against these pro-capitalist, pro-corporates politicians.

RG: I noticed he did say that the one exception to that would be, he’d actually be happy if Bernie Sanders or Noam Chomsky were elected president of the United States. Not much risk of that happening anytime soon, so I think his answer probably stands.

But there’s also an interesting phenomenon that Central and South America have a significant Palestinian population. And so, you asked Manuel Zelaya what the progressive Honduran government’s posture toward the ongoing slaughter in Gaza was, and what did you make of his answer?

And what we’re going to do here, by the way, because the interview was conducted in Spanish, we will post a full English language translation of the interview over at The Intercept, and also over at Drop Site. We’ll go through the questions and answers here. You can highlight some of the most interesting parts of at the end. For listeners who do speak Spanish, we’ll play the entire thing so you can hear Zelaya. It’s a rare interview, and I think it’s a fascinating one, but if you want the English language version, you can pop over to either one of those websites to get it.

So, what did he have to say about the war in Gaza?

JO: I can read some excerpts from his answer. When I asked him about the his perspectives on Palestine, essentially, he condemned the genocide, and he said, “We consider, and Xiomara,” who is his wife, and the current president of Honduras herself, “And Xiomara herself has said that, in international forums, that this is a truly unprecedented fact that in the 21st century, it is incredible that, in the eyes of the world, without respecting international law, by violating all treaties and all concepts about peace and coexistence between nations, and about respecting the United Nations’ resolutions, Israel carries out a ground invasion with tanks, with bombs, with the effects of violence on the civilian population of Palestine. Because when an army fights an army, that is a war. But this is not a war, this is a genocide, because of the extreme brutal response from Israel that is exceeding all limits, even those of the laws of war.”

And then he goes on and continues, and says, “The first condemnation that the Xiomara Castro government made was against the bombing that affected Israel, which caused deaths within Israel. People were killed within Israel.” He’s talking, of course, about the October 7 attacks. That was condemned. That was the government’s first action. “But then the terrible response from Israel is one that totally exceeds any limits and has the world outraged. Do you know who has lost a lot of prestige? The United Nations Security Council. I mean, you see the Security Council of the United Nations, it’s remained simply a rhetorical representation of the interests of the powerful. They’ve not been able to stop this aggression, they’ve not been able to achieve a permanent ceasefire. They have not been able to recognize the two states — the Palestinian and Israeli states — which was one of our main positions.”

And then he goes on to say, “To solve this problem, because the problem must be solved, we cannot live under the crushing boot of fascism which, in this case, is being imposed on the Palestinian people.”

RG: And so, how big a topic was Palestine at the conference?

JO: It was quite big. Most government officials who got up and gave speeches were speaking about it, were denouncing the genocide. There were people walking around wearing keffiyehs. And then, if you exited, and went around to the downtown area and kind of walked around the town a little bit — which we were able to kind of see a little bit — you did see graffiti and spray-painting along the walls, essentially calling for a ceasefire, calling for Israel to stop the genocide.

During this whole process, because of the political context that a lot of Latin America finds itself in, some of the more left-wing officials that were there were also pointing the finger at the U.S. government, at the Biden administration, for arming Israel and for perpetuating the genocide.

So, even though it wasn’t the central question there, obviously it was very much present there during a lot of these conversations and a lot of speeches that were being given at this event.

RG: You mentioned at the top that he said that, in general, Honduran government doesn’t see much difference between Republicans, Democrats. But you asked him about the upcoming election and politics in the United States, and I thought his answer was interesting. It’s interesting to hear how a kind of leftist leader in Central America views our two-party system. Do you mind reading a little bit of that?

JO: Of course. So, he says, “We have no preference in these elections between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. We believe that, in the end, they act the same. They act in the interest of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the interest of a global elite that, through capitalism, has already taken over all the assets of wealth: the rivers, the seas, the forests, oil. The world elite manages it all through their speculative financial system. The planet’s main resources of raw economic goods are those that influence the U.S. government.

“So, in the end, you can vote for a democratic president. We would have preferred — we would have wanted Bernie Sanders to be president, for example, or Noam Chomsky to be president, for example — but the people in the U.S., they organize their own parties, and the parties choose their candidates. So, that’s important to point out.

“And we would like the North American people first to make clear that the U.S. government should not be an aggressor empire against other societies, regardless of who takes office. The North American people should make clear that the U.S. should not have intelligence agencies planning coups or interfere in other countries, and that should be clear. That we must at least respect — and listen carefully — the planet, so that we all have air, to ensure that climate change does not continue to be as aggressive as it is now.”

And then he goes on to say, “What people want is to eat, what people want is to be clothed, to quench their thirst, to have a roof over their heads, and shelter, and warmth. What kind of a crime is that for human beings? And to think that the great powers, once they solve their problems, they forget about the suffering in Africa, in Latin America, and in many countries in Asia, as well.”

Then he goes on to say, “So, we must demand humanity in the face of the world order. And the United States is co-responsible for the current world order. Therefore, we must call on them, the American people, to reflect on that.”

RG: Yeah. So, you can see in that answer, I think, both why the Honduran people elected him president and, also, why he was couped as president. And you asked him about that coup 15 years ago, and he gave a rather, I thought, striking answer that still resonates quite deeply with him.

Why did he get couped out of office? And what had he been able to accomplish before that happened?

JO: So, Zelaya is a really fascinating character in Honduran history, he’s a bit of a contradictory character as well. When he was elected in 2005 — he entered office in 2006 — but he kind of came in and he would campaign on this almost center-right campaign, a very liberal politician. But, once he was in office, he began shifting to the left.

Now, he wasn’t calling for the nationalization of industries or anything like that, but he did raise the minimum wage, he did implement some modest land reform. Extreme poverty, he did kind of reduce a little bit. But what really upset the right-wing in Honduras and the U.S. government was that he joined ALBA, which is the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America, which is a trade and intergovernmental organization that was organized and founded by Cuba and by Venezuela. So, the fact that he was growing closer to Cuba and Venezuela and that he was putting forward some modest reforms really started shaking up the political situation in Honduras.

In 2009, we had elections in Honduras — or elections were slated to take place — and in the Honduran constitution, which was written in 1982; again, going back to 1982, this constitution was written partly with the help of the U.S. government. It is a pretty right-wing, pro-military constitution that was written amid this context of military disappearances, killing left-wing activists, etc.

In the lead up to the 2009 elections —presidents were only, at the time, allowed to run, to be in office for one term — the 2009 elections, Zelaya started considering and started listening to calls for establishing a constituent assembly which would rewrite the 1982 constitution, but he began receiving some pushback from the right. So, what he did is, in early/mid-2009, he proposed, let’s have a poll. A poll that would say whether the Honduran people wanted to include a referendum or a new ballot measure in the 2009 fall elections. And then, that ballot measure would be to see if people wanted a constituent assembly to write a new constitution.

So, it was several steps away from actually writing a new constitution. He wouldn’t be the president of Honduras when that new constitution was written but, because he was pushing for this constituent assembly, the U.S. government and the right-wing in Honduras, they accused him of trying to write a new constitution so that he could consolidate his power and stay in office, and be able to be reelected in those 2009 elections, which logistically [just] wasn’t true, right?

RG: Right. It’s hard to see how you could do both of those at once.

JO: Exactly. Exactly. He forcibly tried to push forward the poll for Hondurans to vote to see whether they wanted this ballot measure in the elections later that year. And, on the morning of that poll when that poll was supposed to be introduced, military officers stormed into the presidential palace. They arrested him while he was still in his pajamas, they put him on a plane, and they sent him to Costa Rica while still in his pajamas.

Now, at this time, the U.S. government was slow to denounce the coup, but the Organization of American States, the United Nations, they very much denounced the coup, and said, this is not allowed, Zelaya needs to come back into office. And then, the Obama administration finally said, OK, well, this coup is not right.

But, behind the scenes, they were working with the coup-plotters and the right-wing opposition that organized the coup to make way for the 2009 fall elections, so that the question of Zelaya’s coup would just be moot, right? And this is something that is not just speculated, but this is something that Hillary Clinton — who was Secretary of State at the time — she writes about it in her autobiography, “Hard Choices.” She talks about how they were really trying to make way for those fall 2009 elections so that the coup would just be a moot point. And then they have this veneer of, oh, we’re going back to democracy, we had these elections, we’re good to go.

In 2009, the elections take place, the fall elections take place, and a right-wing president, Porfirio Lobo, was elected. He took office in January 2010, and then the right-wing reaction came.

So, when I asked Zelaya about the coup, he gave almost a bit of an emotional response, right? I mean, it’s been 15 years since the coup but, obviously, it’s very much present, it’s front of mind. He’s asked about it almost everywhere that he goes; not just by journalists, but also by his friends, by his family members.

And then, this is what he said to me, he said, “A coup is violent; well, the way that it was here in Honduras was violent. Because this was not a soft coup, it was a military coup d’état. The human heart hurts so much and bleeds so much that many decades will pass and people will continue to talk about it. For me, logically, my heart breaks talking about the topic, because there’s pain, there’s suffering, there’s tragedy, and I never thought that in the 21st century — and in Honduras, which is a neighboring country to the United States — they could plan an attack to break the country’s institutions.”

Then he goes on to say, “A coup is a war. It is a breaking of a social contract. It is the breaking of the established order for the coup-plotters to prevail. And you see in Honduras who prevailed: the elites that already existed. But they became organized, and it was organized into a mafia. They became gangsters, they destroyed the state’s finances.”

Then he goes on to say, “Those governments enriched themselves. They plundered, they stripped the country of its wealth. That was the result of the coup. Who benefited? The transnational companies, the elites. So now,” and then he goes on to talk about his wife Xiomara Castro’s presidency, “So, now a progressive government has arrived, a democratic socialist government. We have found that the elite is protected by constitutional laws, by free trade agreements, they’re protected by everything. So we have a bourgeois state facing demands from a democratic socialist state. That’s what we have here. That is the result, the disastrous result, of a blow to the heart of the Honduran people. Shameless murderers, reactionaries whose crimes have still gone unpunished.

“Here, the coup-plotters don’t even get a traffic ticket, not even a slap on the wrist. Instead, they’re offered political parties, as if they are a democratic option. It’s so absurd, the Honduran rights, which put the generals in office who carried out the coup, proclaimed themselves to be a democratic alternative. Those who murdered, those who looted, are democratic alternatives. It’s totally absurd.

“But that is what I can tell you in a few words about the tragedy that we experienced, something that Xiomara, with her popularity, with Libre, with the resistance reversed. But the body of the dictatorship continues to be here. It is alive. As they say, ‘The head of the dictatorship may be gone, but his body, with death rattles, is still kicking and shooting.’”

RG: So — and we’ve covered this here before — what policies the right-wing government was able to put into place, and the way that they were kind of able to link them to treaties, particularly with the United States, has left their dead hand still hanging over the new democratic socialist government in Honduras? That, even though it has a mandate from the people, it’s difficult for them to accomplish as much as they would be able to otherwise.

And what’s so remarkable — and people would think we were making this up if they haven’t been following this closely — is that the president that wound up eventually getting into office, he was president of the National Assembly when Lobo was first elected and then became president, Juan Orlando Hernández, is now sitting in federal prison in the United States for his role in narcotrafficking. A role that you asked Zelaya about, because we now know, because the U.S. prosecutors have said so and have admitted publicly, that the United States had knowledge of his role in drug trafficking, going back many, many years.

So, what was your conversation about Juan Orlando Hernández like with Zelaya?

JO: You know, the question of Juan Orlando Hernández is one that continues to kind of linger, and it was very much present there in this event in Honduras. The day before, the day that we were all flying into Honduras for this event, he was sentenced in a New York federal court to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking.

Going back to 2013 when Orlando was elected, he was elected under questionable circumstances. I mean, there were a lot of allegations that that the elections were fraudulent. And then, once he was in office, he continued the far-right policies, the privatization policies, but he continued to consolidate power to an even more extreme degree.

He had his own police force and he engaged in intense repression, but he was also able to consolidate power within the government. He was able to restructure the supreme court and put his own friendly Supreme Court justices in power. And then, what he did, which is a very hypocritical move, in 2016, he was able to change the constitution to allow him to run again.

RG: Isn’t that nice? Gee, I thought that was the whole thing that the U.S. and the Honduran right were so concerned about with Zelaya.

JO: Exactly.

RG: How nice.

JO: How nice, how nice. Yeah.

So, in 2017, he runs again for office, he moves the non-reelection clause from the constitution, and then he wins, right? But these 2017 elections—

RG: And “wins” is in quotes. Right.

JO: They were extremely, extremely difficult. What was interesting is, the day that the election was taking place, the computer systems were showing that the opposition candidates — who were linked to Xiomara Castro and Zelaya — they were in the lead, they were slated to win. But then, mysteriously, the computer system shut down. Then, when the computers come back up, Juan Orlando Hernández is in the lead.

RG: The words that news outlets use for the election is “marred by irregularities.”

JO: Marred by irregularities.

RG: Ah, well, nevertheless.

JO: Nevertheless, reelected.

But what is interesting is that, days after the election, the United States’ State Department, they came out and they said, you know, we respect the elections, we recognize Hernández’s election. He wins. Please stop the demonstrations.

RG: And this was the Trump administration, which was really feeling its oats when it came to boosting the right throughout Latin America.

So, for all the folks who say that, hey, “Trump may be awful but, at least he’s kind of non-interventionist and isolationist around the world,” certainly, that was not the case for the Trump administration in Central and South America, where they did a lot to intervene in the politics of most of those Latin American countries to elevate the right.

JO: Absolutely. And so, after the state department, they say, we respect the elections, we recognize Hernández’s election, years later, when Orlando Hernández is extradited to the U.S. for drug trafficking — this was a couple of years after his brother was convicted of drug trafficking — and then the United States justice department years later say that the 2017 elections were fraudulent.

And, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read an excerpt from one of the filings from the Justice Department. This is what the U. S. prosecutors from the Justice Department write in one of their documents, they say: “In 2017 during Juan Orlando’s reelection campaign, Juan Orlando’s drug trafficking coconspirators again provided millions of dollars of drug money to Juan Orlando’s campaign, to ensure that Juan Orlando would remain in power, and their massive cocaine operation would remain protected, just like in 2013, Juan Orlando used that drug money to bribe election officials and manipulate the vote count to fraudulently win the election, including by shutting down the computer system of the agency responsible for counting votes.”

So, this is an election that the U.S. State Department said they respected, that they recognized. And then, years later, the Justice Department comes out and says, no, these elections were fraudulent, Hernández’s win was due to drug trafficking money and corruption.

RG: And not that many years later, we still talk a lot about the open questions about the U.S. government role in drug trafficking in the 1980s, and supporting governments that were linked with drug trafficking, or supporting rebel groups that were linked with drug trafficking. Here we are in 2017, with the U.S. administration basically solidifying an obviously stolen election that puts into power or reelects a narco-president.

So, just to underscore, we’re not talking about ancient times here.

JO: Yeah, this was very, very recent. I mean, 2017. And, obviously, the effects of it are still being felt today in Honduras.

And I asked Zelaya about the 45-year sentence that Orlando Hernández received — you know, he was convicted, and then he was sentenced to 45 years in prison — and I asked him, because I said, you know, in one of these Justice Department documents, prosecutors claim that Juan Orlando Hernández was receiving bribes from organized crime since back in 2005, but the U.S. still continues to support Hernández. And I asked him what the role of the U.S. in Latin America was, with this context. And this is what he answered.

He said, “History always repeats itself if conditions don’t change.” And then he goes on to say, “How did they get here? How did drug trafficking enter? Noriega, for example was a CIA collaborator.”

Noriega was the dictator of Panama, who was a CIA asset. Later, he was trafficking tons and tons and tons of cocaine through Central America. But he says, “Noriega, for example, was a CIA collaborator. And then the United States — after they were Noriega’s main ally — brought in 20,000, 30,000 Marines, helicopters, and they overthrew the government and tried him.”

“Then he goes on to say, “So, who understands them? That’s why I’m telling you, who understands these North American policies? Juan Orlando was their main ally, but not since 2005; according to these investigations by the DEA, the Hernández cartel begins in 2002.” Then he goes on to say, “And there are reports that the DEA itself has published where the drug traffickers say that, and they’ve said this in their statements. I don’t have to believe them. Why believe them? But they’ve clearly stated that they financed my overthrow, and that they gave money to my adversaries to contribute to my overthrow.

“Because they didn’t let me finish my presidency; I had seven months left. And when the national party takes power, they made a statement there in that trial in New York saying, ‘we will never again leave power,’ and they practically swear an oath. So, of course, perhaps what your underlying question is, a cartel was formed. Not just bribes, but they formed a cartel within the state itself. And they remained in power for 12 years and seven months until the people united. They consciously, responsibly, placed Xiomara — a leader who emerges from the resistance — and makes her president.”

Then he goes on to say, “I should say he was convicted, but the sentence downplays his conviction. Because he was convicted for three crimes, and the prosecution asked for the maximum sentence for those crimes, and he was given the minimum sentence for those crimes. For me, I mean, as politicians, we’re not worried about that. Absolutely not at all. Because we believe that justice should be applied in our countries.”

Then he goes on to say something interesting. He says, “As a politician, I’ve said it before, we’re not worried about Juan Orlando being punished. I want them to take more time away from his sentence, so that he can return to Honduras soon, and we can defeat him again in the polls. Because the people no longer want that type of sickly, harsh sectarianism, of dictatorship, of repression, that has subjected Honduras to 12 years and seven months of dictatorship. The people no longer want it, so we’re not worried.”

RG: So, there you have one more moment of the way that the Latin American right, the U.S. government, and drug trafficking, just have gone hand in hand, policy-wise. And then, we wonder later, why do we have this drug problem and why do we have this migration problem? Never once wondering, well, maybe it has something to do with the constant destabilization and allying with narcotraffickers that we’ve done.

Now, obviously, the critics of the left throughout Latin America will say, it’s not just the right that traffics and drugs. And that’s certainly true, and there have certainly been some left-wing organizations, particularly in Colombia, who evolved, basically, into narcotraffickers.

What’s your overall analysis of how the narcotraffickers fit politically into the political economy of Latin America?

JO: That’s an excellent question. And I think we have to recognize that, yes, of course. Especially in Colombia, we see the FARC, right? The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, right? This left-wing guerrilla movement that kind of began in the ’60s.

When the DEA and when the U.S. government and the Colombian military took out the major cartels in the ’90s in Colombia, there was a vacuum, and the demand for cocaine still was high. And who filled that vacuum? Well, the FARC, and the right-wing paramilitaries, right? And so, it’s an extremely profitable venture, it’s an extremely profitable business, and that’s how the FARC was able to finance a lot of their operations, was through drug trafficking.

But I think what’s important here is that these organized crime groups and cartels, they behave like businesses, right? And so, they’ll work with whichever politician is going to help them, regardless of political party, right? If we see the history of drug trafficking throughout Southern America, Central America, and Mexico, we see how drug traffickers were collaborating with the military, regardless of political party, with federal police, regardless of political party. And, essentially, they act like businesses. They have their own lawyers, their own lobbyists, etc., that are able to kind of work with politicians in order to finance their own operations, and just make as much money as possible, right?

And I think that’s an important context, that’s an important way of thinking about narcotrafficking, is that this is a business, you know? And, like every business within the capitalist system, they’re going to be appealing to certain politicians, it doesn’t matter if they’re right-wing or left-wing, in order to just try to make as much money as possible, as any business would within a capitalist economy.

RG: And, finally, you asked him about what his sense was about the kind of political direction of Latin America. You’ve always got Javier Milei with his upset in Argentina, the eccentric libertarian. But then you have the left holding on to power and maintaining dominance, really, in Mexico, Gustavo Petro in Colombia.

And it led to some flowing, flowery rhetoric, that was actually, I thought, pretty impressive at times. We don’t need to go through the whole thing; he gets into Hegel and Jose Marti, and you can check that out over at either The Intercept or Drop Site, if you want to read that.

But there was a fun part that he ended with that involved Mike Tyson. Was curious if you’d be able to read that.

JO: Yes, of course. He says, “Look, I’ve always placed a lot of trust in people’s common sense. You may have an illiterate person who is unable to read or write, but he will have a greater sense of justice than the most intellectually developed person. He has more of a sense of power. Power is a human instinct. Power is like food. People can be peasants and know what power is for, and how power is used. That is something in a person’s mind. Power, will, justice, and the most sacred thing: freedom.

“But it’s not the freedom of Mike Tyson, and I admire Mike Tyson. It’s not the freedom of a boxer like Mike Tyson, who gets in the ring and challenges you, and you know he’s going to kill you with one punch. That’s not the type of freedom I’m talking about, that we are all equal. We are all equal according to our capabilities and according to our needs. To create fair governments in a better world, that is still possible. We have not lost our faith. And I think that’s what keeps us standing.”

RG: Any final thoughts on President Zelaya? What did you make of him as a person?

JO: Yeah, I thought it was a really interesting interview. I was kind of nervous. You know, he’s, I want to say, maybe six-two and six-six? He’s a very tall, towering figure, with this kind of booming voice, and this very thick mustache. And he walks very slowly, and he has just this presence around him. And maybe it was the context — you know, he was surrounded by his supporters, etc., that was really interesting — but he was kind of a bit of an intimidating figure. But he was very relaxed, very calm. He came in, and he was eating an empanada. I think we had kind of taken him from his lunch when he came in to do this interview — but he did express a lot of hope in the people. In the power of the people. And a lot of hope, obviously, in his wife’s government.

What’s important to mention is that Xiomara Castro’s government is not quite perfect, right? There are still a lot of links and a lot of training from the U.S. government that is flowing into the armed forces in Honduras. And, you know, you ask Hondurans and you ask people within the Libre party, you say, “hey, what about some of these policies? Or what about some of the criticisms?”

There’s a lot of criticism coming from land defenders and from indigenous groups throughout the country, saying that not enough has been done in order to protect them, in order to protect their lands. And you ask members of the Libre party, what do you make of these criticisms? And they say, well, it was 13 years of a narco-dictatorship, is what they say. We’re not going to solve the damage that was done within those 13 years in only two years of Xiomara Castro being in office, right?

There are elections coming up next year, so we’ll see how those go.

RG: And she’s back to not being able to run. How did that happen?

JO: That’s a good question, that’s a good question. We’ll have to ask the Juan Orlando Supreme Court about that.

RG: Term limits for the left, but not for the right, is the basic policy, it seems like.

JO: Exactly, that’s exactly it. What’s interesting is that her government, they have put forward also some modest reforms. You know, they’re not nationalizing industries or nationalizing land or anything like that, they’re putting forward some modest reforms.

But what’s interesting to see is that — and they highlight highlighted this during the 15-years commemorative event — a lot of members of her cabinet were activists, and they’re very young people who were active during the resistance movement after the 2009 coup. And they put up this video where it shows young student leaders and activists getting beaten by the police. And then, right next to it, they show an image of that same student leader, who is now the secretary of immigration, for example, or different cabinet positions.

So, it’s really interesting. It’s a very young government, who are literally young. I mean, they’re very young people who are in the cabinet. And I think they’re still trying to get their bearings and figure out what to do after 13 years of this right-wing reactionary period.

RG: All right. Well, thank you so much for that, Jose. I wish I could have been there, but glad that you could make it, and thanks for doing this for us.

JO: Yeah, thanks so much, Ryan. And next time we’ll be in Honduras together.

RG: All right. And then, here is Jose’s entire interview, unedited in Spanish, with former president Manuel Zelaya.

Translated Interview with Manuel Zelaya

José Olivares: Thank you very much. Well, to start — you have spoken publicly about the conflict in Palestine, with the war that continues today in Gaza.

There are almost 40,000 dead in Israel’s war. There are people who say it is a genocide against the Palestinians. Can you give us your opinion on how Hondurans see this conflict, and how the international community should respond to this conflict, and the massacre we are seeing in Palestine?

Manuel Zelaya: Look in Honduras, a large part of the ruling class was originally from Palestine. So you have to imagine that there is discomfort, even among the Honduran elite, about the crimes that Israel’s military invasion is causing within Palestine.

We consider, and Xiomara herself has said this in international forums, that it is truly an unprecedented fact in the 21st century, it is incredible that, in the eyes of the world, without respecting international law, by violating all treaties and all concepts about peace and coexistence between nations and about respecting the United Nations’ resolutions, Israel carries out a ground invasion, with tanks with bombs with the effects of violence on the civilian population of Palestine. Because, when an army fights against an army, that is a war. But this is not a war. That is a genocide, because the extreme brutal response from Israel exceeded all limits, even of those of the laws of war.

We have strongly condemned it. We believe that Palestinian children, young people, women, the elderly, should be treated responsibly, in the way— Look, the blockade against the Gaza Strip has already exceeded the limits of the global community’s humane consciousness. It stretches decades, it is a prolonged blockade, the one at the Gaza Strip. And now with this terrible aggression, solidarity with Palestine, from different sectors and different countries, is immense.

We have condemned terrorism. We condemn terrorism of any form, because terrorism violates all types of legal rules and social agreements. However, we are not limited to only condemning terrorism. The first condemnation that the Xiomara [Castro] government made, was against the bombing that affected Israel, which caused deaths within Israel, people were killed inside Israel. That was condemned — that was the government’s first action. But then the terrible response from Israel is one that totally exceeds any limit, and has the world outraged.

Do you know who has lost a lot of prestige? The United Nations Security Council. I mean, you see the Security Council of the United Nations; it has remained simply a rhetorical representation for the interests of the powerful. They have not been able to stop this aggression. They have not been able to achieve a permanent ceasefire. They have not been able to recognize the two states, the Palestinian and the Israeli states — that was one of our main positions.

So, not only are the people of Palestine directly affected, but also our entire global conscience. It is affected by this type of aggression, and the United Nations Security Council has been terribly discredited by its inability— Well, not even to respond to the resolutions of the assembly, because there have already been more than, I think, three resolutions of the assembly to demand a ceasefire. And that’s where the collateral effects come from, because the bombing leads to displaced people, it produces orphans, it produces widows, it produces abandoned people, children who are being raised in shelters, who are in camps, who do not have enough food. There is also a humanitarian tragedy there.

And where is the world’s conscience? Where is the conscience of Europe, the conscience of civilized countries? The conscience of the American people? I have seen that they have protested, but to solve the problem — because the problem must be solved — we cannot live under the crushing boot of fascism, which, in this case, is imposed on the Palestinian people.

JO: Thank you very much, President. The U.S. elections are coming this year. Polls indicate that Trump may return to the presidency. What do you think of the upcoming elections? What do you think of what we are seeing right now, in the country with the most powerful army in the world? What do you think about what’s coming this year?

MZ: Well, we believe in the democratic system, and we believe that elections are an instrument — they are not the end-all-be-all of democracy. Democracy is the power of the people. People have the power. And the people should have a holistic vision, beyond elections. I hope the people start practicing the concept of plural, solidarity-driven, humane democracy in the United States, with whichever government is in power.

We have no preference in these elections, between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party — we believe that, in the end, they act the same. They act in the interest of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the interest of a global elite that, through capitalism, has already taken over all the assets of wealth: the rivers, the seas, the forests, oil — the world elite manages it all through the speculative financial system. The planet’s main resources, of raw economic goods, are those that influence the United States’ government.

So, in the end, you can vote for a Democratic president. We would have wanted Bernie Sanders to be president, for example, or Noam Chomsky to be president, for example. But the people, in the U.S., organize their parties, and the parties choose their candidates.

So that is important to point out, and we would like the North American people, first, to make clear that the United States should not be an aggressor empire against other societies, regardless of who takes office. [The North American people should make clear] that the United States should not have intelligence agencies planning coups, or interfere in our countries, and that that should be clear, that we must at least respect — listen carefully — the planet, so that we all have air; to ensure that climate change does not be as aggressive as it is now.

First of all, we should agree with the United States on that. The second thing is in the concept of humanism, because people don’t ask for much. What people want is to eat. What people want is to be clothed, to quench their thirst, to have a roof over their heads, and shelter and warmth. What kind of a crime is that, for human beings? And to think that the great powers, once they solve their problems, forget about the suffering in Africa, in Latin America, and in many countries in Asia as well.

So, we must demand humanity, in the face of the world order. And the United States is co-responsible for the current world order. Therefore, we must call on them (the American people) to reflect on that.

JO: Fifteen years ago, the Honduran military launched a coup here in Honduras. Soldiers entered your bedroom. They took you, while you were in your pajamas, to a military base, then to Costa Rica.

Tell us a little about what happened in that coup d’état, how the Honduran people responded to the coup, and what has happened in these last 15 years.

MZ: Look, it’s really been 15 years, as you say, and every day, that question arises. Not only from journalists, but in my house, during our after-dinner conversations, during meals, when we go out on the street with the people. That question is a constant.

A coup d’état is violent — well, the way it was here in Honduras — because this was not a soft coup. It was a military coup d’état. The human heart hurts so much and bleeds so much, that many decades will pass, and people will continue to talk about it. For me, logically, my heart breaks talking about that topic, because there is pain, there is suffering, there is tragedy. And I never thought that in the 21st century and in Honduras, which is a neighboring country to the United States — Did you know that in an hour and fifteen minutes, you can be in Miami? — they could plan an attack to break the country’s institutions.

When you break with institutions, what you do is throw out the social contract, and return to a rule by force. Because [in a social contract], by living under institutions, humans relinquish the use of force to defend ourselves. So, with these institutions, you forfeit your right [of using force] and say: well, now you defend me, and I subject to you. But when you destroy institutions that are supposed to be the “rule of law,” when you destroy the structure of the state — which they call a coup d’état — when one of those powers falls, then the people, citizens, everyone — including business owners — are left defenseless, they are subject to whoever has the most— There’s a Sandinista expression, because “pinol” is used a lot in Nicaragua: “He with the biggest throat, swallows more pinol.” That’s what awaits when the force arrives. And brute force, eh?

Well, the history of humanity — if you study the history of humanity — the history of humanity is the history of war. And the history of war is the history of religious conflicts and of conflict for the nationhood, for land, for goods.

Now they fight for other resources: for technology, for oil, but it is the same history. A coup is a war, it is the breaking of a social contract. It is the breaking of the established order, for them [coup plotters] to prevail. And you see in Honduras who prevailed: the elite, that already existed, became organized. And it was organized into a mafia. They became gangsters. They destroyed the state’s finances. They created 80 government entities in different bank trusts — 80 small governments. They destroyed the single treasury account, which is a reserve. In the constitution, there is a law that no state income can go to different sources, but rather to a single treasury account, and then the state distributes from there. They made 80 unique boxes, and, paradoxically enough, 80 governments.

And those governments enriched themselves. They plundered, they stripped the country of its wealth. That was the result of the coup. Who benefited? The transnational companies, the elite. Exonerations, concessions — the rivers, the sea, forests — they have it all. So now, a progressive government has arrived, a democratic socialist government, and we have found that the elite is protected by constitutional laws, by free trade agreements. They are protected by everything.

So, we have a bourgeois state facing demands from a democratic socialist state. That’s what we have here. That is the result —the disastrous result — of a blow to the heart of the Honduran people. Shameless murderers, reactionaries, whose crimes have still gone unpunished.

Here, the coup plotters don’t even get a traffic ticket — not even a slap on the wrist. Instead, they are offered political parties as if they are a democratic option. It is so absurd: the Honduran right, which put the generals in office who carried out the coup, proclaim themselves to be a democratic alternative. Those who murdered, those who looted, are democratic alternatives — totally absurd.

But that is what I can tell you, in a few words, about the tragedy that we experienced — something that Xiomara, with her popularity, with Libre, with the resistance, reversed. But the body of the dictatorship continues to be here. It is alive. As they say, the head of the dictatorship may be gone. But his body, with death rattles, is still kicking and shooting.

JO: Thank you so much. This week, a federal court in the United States sentenced Juan Orlando Hernández to 45 years in prison. In a document that I reviewed, U.S. prosecutors stated that Juan Orlando Hernández was receiving bribes from organized crime since back in 2005. Regardless, the United States supported the Juan Orlando Hernández government.

What does this tell us about the role of the United States in Latin America, in our countries, and during this period of — as Honduran companions here call it — the “narco-dictatorship?”

MZ:  History always repeats itself if conditions don’t change.

What happened, for example in ’54 with the invasion — listen to me, it was launched from here, in Honduras — to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, because he had started an agrarian process in Guatemala? 1954. The CIA directs — those are public documents, you can see them in all the archives, on the entire internet or on Wikileaks, they are public documents.

The CIA planned a coup against Jacob Arbenz. A reformer, military man. Reformist because at that time, when that wave came — listen to me — ’54 was before the Cuban revolution. And before the Cuban revolution, before Jacobo Arbenz, a Nicaraguan military sergeant had already been protesting. Protesting against imperialism, protesting against the invasion of Nicaragua, protesting against the oppression by the system. That was Augusto Cesar Sandino. And listen closely — that was in the first half of the 20th century. There was already the example of the Bolshevik Revolution. The October revolution, of the Soviet Union, had already taken place. And there were demonstrations, rebellions, protests in all countries. It was a very dark, very terrible time that I remember that in Argentina they trained the military to apply the national security doctrine. They instigated the types of situations, that in all honesty, generated an entire process that we can’t ignore, just as we cannot ignore what has been happening in Honduras, with the repercussions that this process has had.

You told me that — in this question, there was a detail that caught my attention. What happened, what were you telling me in this question?

JO: That since 2005, U.S. prosecutors—

MZ: How did they get here? How did drug trafficking enter?

Noriega, for example, was a CIA collaborator. And then, the United States, after Noriega’s main ally, brought in 20,000, 30,000 marines, helicopters, and they overthrew the government, and tried him. He spent 20 years in a prison in Miami, then another year, a couple of years in France, and then they sent him to die in Panama. They sent him the last year of his life, just so he could die in Panama. And he was convicted of drug trafficking. Pay attention, I’m only giving you general information. But you asked me something specific.

Here in the, in the first years of this century, in the, more or less, in the second decade of the 21st century, a Honduran Air Force general shot down two unidentified planes that carried drugs. They sanctioned and fired him, precisely at the request of the United States, because they said that two infiltrated DEA agents were there. And the general was violently removed. No, not with weapons and not as an impeachment, but it was a violent action, performed through a resolution.

So, who understands them? That’s why I’m telling you — who understands these North American policies? Juan Orlando was their main ally. Not since 2005. According to these investigations by the DEA, the Hernández cartel begins in 2002, when— Look, I’m going to give you the facts.

Ricardo Maduro from the National Party won the election, following the government of Carlos Flores from the Liberal Party. And the president of Congress started a political campaign, and his congressional secretary, and his campaign coordinator, is Juan Orlando. Essentially, I am going to specify that— If Flores enters in ’97 in ’98, ’99— OK, Ricardo Maduro’s government is here. And according to the DEA, that’s where the cartel begins to form. Of course, when Juan Orlando is the congressional secretary.

That time is when I also began my political fight for the presidency, during the government of Ricardo Maduro. Then, I replaced Ricardo Maduro. I replaced him as President of the republic. And there are the reports that the DEA itself has published, where the drug traffickers say that — they have specifically said it in their statements – I don’t have to believe them, why believe them? But they have clearly stated that they financed my overthrow. And that they gave money to my adversaries to contribute to my overthrow. Because they didn’t let me finish my presidency, I had seven months left. And when the National Party takes power — they made a statement there, in that trial in New York, saying: “We will never again leave power.” And they practically swear an oath.

So, of course, perhaps what your underlying question is: A cartel was formed. Not just bribes. They formed a cartel within the state itself. But there is an interruption for the cartel: They are in government, they lose the elections, and from there they overthrow me, and then they take over again. And they remained in power for 12 years and seven months until the people, united they consciously, responsibly, placed Xiomara — a leader who emerges from the resistance — and made her president. So yes, it began a little further back than 2005. It was a process.

Today, the United States, which supported them the most — the ones who supported the execution of electoral fraud, the ones that remained silent — the State Department, never made a statement regarding human rights, against an allied government like [Juan Orlando’s]. Simply because the Honduran government supported Juan Guaidó. If this Honduran government supported Juan Guaidó — who is a spurious president; who is not a president, he emerged from the street and proclaimed himself the only president. So, the United States did not touch the government. Under this concept, Honduras did suffer a blow to its economy, to its public finances. Debt, misery, poverty, violence and, therefore, corruption, increased. How can you judge the behavior of the United States with this sentence?

I should say — he was convicted, but the sentence downplays his conviction. Because he was convicted for three crimes, and the prosecution asked for the maximum sentence for those crimes — and he was given the minimum sentence for the crimes. For me, I mean, as politicians, we are not worried about that, absolutely not at all. Because we believe that justice should be applied in our countries. We shouldn’t try to influence the American justice system, in any way. They have their own way of acting.

They recently freed General Cienfuegos, from Mexico. They arrested him, then the State Department released a statement and the prosecutor’s office withdrew the accusations and said our relationship with a brother country like Mexico is more important than capturing General Cienfuegos. So there is your general. And they returned him to them. So, what is our perspective, at these heights, as Honduras, a small country, which is not nearly the size of a small city in the United States? What is our perspective? We see that there are agreements that allow this, according to the laws of the United States, negotiations. And that is, as a politician, I said it before, we are not worried about Juan Orlando being punished. I want them to take more time away from his sentence, so that he can return to Honduras, soon, and defeat him again at the polls. Because the people no longer want that type of sickly, harsh sectarianism, of dictatorship, of repression, that has subjected Honduras to 12 years and seven months of dictatorship. The people no longer want it. So we are not worried.

And now they sentenced him to 45 years. I already said that the sooner they bring him back, the sooner the United States, itself, will realize that there is a people here, empowered by their independence and their sovereignty, who are willing to seek compromises, because we are peaceful. We do not carry out clandestine or subversive acts, nor do we use weapons, much less do we use terrorist activities. We are a peaceful people who want to defend ourselves at the polls, but we want the United States to respect us, just as we have to respect them.

JO: Thank you so much. Can we do one more? One last question?

MZ: Yes Yes.

JO: Well, this year, in 2024, Latin America is a state of many contradictions: We have several progressive presidents in Latin America — Gustavo Petro in Colombia, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the election of Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico — several countries with progressive leaders. But we also have the threat from the right: Javier Millei in Argentina, perhaps Trump’s return to the presidency in the United States. And, at the same time, there is also the power of multinational companies, and the threat of American imperialism.

What is your perspective, personally, about the future of Honduras, the future of Latin America? How do you see the future of our countries?

MZ: One thing is to have hope. And another thing are the challenges you have to confront, in order to not lose hope. We have faith in ourselves, in humanity. One honest person can save many others who could be destroyed. That’s biblical. When the Lord in the Bible appears to the one who asks him to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and says:‘Look, these cities are rotten, there is corruption here, there is selfishness, vanity; you must destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

And is there anyone honest?’ The man asks him. ‘Is there anyone?

Yes, there is one.

Well, that’s why the others should be saved. That’s why I shouldn’t destroy it, then. 

There are honest people in the world —  there are honest people, who have hope to find solutions.

We are not concerned about the coming and going of history, which swings to the right then left. People react based to the type of government, or circumstances, that afflict them. When progressive parties govern and continue to maintain the neoliberal model, then people go against the progressive party and get rid of them at the polls and remove them.

Now, when you have parties, mind you, from the right, as in this case — you are mentioning to me the various right-wing phenomena that exist in Europe and here; the emergence of fascism is evident. But those parties come to power, and what do they do? Instead of giving the people what belongs to the people, instead of respecting Lincoln’s great slogan that democracy should prevail on this earth, what does the right do? They worsen their extreme measures of exploitation and cruelty of the people, of the working class.

Then the people take them down again. So it is a dialectical cycle, as Hegel said; there is the idea that contradicts the other idea [thesis and antithesis]. And, as José Martí said: “the trenches of ideas are stronger than the trenches of weapons.” So, we don’t have to be afraid of what is happening. Those of us who believe that we must defend justice, and the integrity of people — to not let them die, and to alleviate suffering, give them the greatest degree of happiness — we believe in that. Every day we are stronger, because our martyrs fuel our forces. If someone is able to sacrifice themselves and give their life, then why can’t I do it? We are only in the world temporarily.

Other generations will raise those flags, and they will do it with closed fists; a sign that their collective consciousness will strengthen. Life is an accident. You must give it meaning, and the meaning has to nourish you; you don’t have to serve it. Otherwise what use would it be, then? That is, you have to think that we are beings with emotions, we are not stones. Nature and the creator of the universe managed to form this entity of cells that suffers, that cries, that laughs, that enjoys, that can enjoy music, enjoy the chirping of a bird, the sound of the waves — this state of being, we must preserve it. And this being, of course, there are two perspectives: The first is that we must preserve the human being and humanity. And for that, we have to develop science and technology. We agree that’s the way to preserve it. But not by creating an apocalyptic system, like libertarian neoliberalism, that they are sustaining in this moment. This is an apocalyptic system. That is not going to solve humanity’s problems.

We need, above all, consciousness and to agree on the value of life, not the value of material items. We believe there is a significant development in the ideas that have been developed this past century. The 20th century was the century of enlightenment. But in the 21st century, in the century of communication through the internet, consciousness is spreading to the last corner of the earth, about what is happening. Today we are the global village, which was spoken of at the end of the century. Today, yes, we feel that unity is becoming stronger. So I have faith in that.

Look, I have always placed a lot of trust in people’s common sense. You may have an illiterate person – unable to read or write. But he will have a greater sense of justice, than the most intellectually developed person. He has more of a sense of power. Power is a human instinct. Power is like food. People can be peasants and know what power is for, and how power is used. That is something in a person’s mind: Power, will, justice and the most sacred thing, freedom.

But it is not the freedom of Mike Tyson, and I admire Mike Tyson — it is not the freedom of a boxer like Mike Tyson, who gets in the ring and challenges you, and you know he is going to kill you with one punch. That is not the type of freedom I am talking about, “that we are all equal,” no. We are all equal according to our capabilities and according to our needs. To create fair governments in a better world, that is still possible. We have not lost our faith. And I think that’s what keeps us standing.

JO: President Zelaya, thank you very much for your time.
MZ: Well, same, same. Thank you for coming here. Thank you so much.

Credits

RG: That was Manuel Zelaya, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of Drop Site. This program was supported by a grant from The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn and José Olivares. The show is mixed by William Stanton. This episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And I’m Ryan Grim, cofounder of Drop Site.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Deconstructed wherever you listen to podcasts, and please leave us a rating and a review, it helps people find the show. Also, check out our other podcast, Intercepted.

Thanks for listening and I’ll see you soon.

The post Honduras, 15 Years After the Coup: An Interview With Ousted President Manuel Zelaya appeared first on The Intercept.

One misconception about Guantánamo was cleared up before I ever got off the plane. In my mind, everything was the prison. For so long, I associated this place with concertina wire, guard towers, and orange-clad anonymous detainees. In recent years, I’d reported on some of those same detainees, now liberated, and I learned that my prejudices and fears about the vast majority of these men had been unfounded. They welcomed me into the community of brotherhood they had forged, and I was now visiting the place where so much of their lives had been stolen. I pressed my face to the window to see the prison where people I consider friends were tortured.

From the air, I saw security posts along what seemed to be the perimeter of the base, but it obviously wasn’t the prison. “Where the fuck is it?” I thought with increasingly desperate glances out the window of the mostly empty chartered flight. I had a three-seat row to myself, television screens, pillows, blankets, and a full in-flight lunch service. Hundreds of Muslim men had arrived by air decades before to this very airstrip, beaten, shackled, hooded, and pissing all over themselves.

“Just landed,” I texted Mohamedou Ould Salahi on my T-Mobile burner smartphone. “It’s Swain.” A few hours later, Salahi, or “The Mauritanian,” shot back, “Hi. Did they put you in prison?”

I soon learned that just about anything with photojournalistic value was off limits. As Guantánamo has aged, a shift has occurred in what the military wants journalists to cover. Under the current rules, members of the media are brought here to focus on the military commission proceedings at “Camp Justice,” where a very large, very cold, and very classified courtroom has been constructed to deal with the few remaining detainees who were ever charged with decades-old crimes against the United States. Press access to anything outside the court is described as a “courtesy” and subject to arbitrary restrictions.

Salahi, my unofficial tour guide, had always been hooded when taken outside the prison. He had accurately predicted the first day of my trip that my military handler would placate us with little tourist excursions to various parts of the bay, as if we had sailed in on a Disney cruise. “They want you to see McDonald’s and, like, the beach. That’s not where the detainees were held,” he said as we passed voice notes back and forth. “[It’s where] the detainees were held [that] you need to take photos of.”

Over the course of my visit, I checked in with at least five former detainees who collectively spent lifetimes imprisoned here. Most didn’t know about the novel media restrictions. “Did you go to Camp Echo?” Yemeni Sabri al-Qurashi texted me from Kazakhstan. Al-Qurashi has always maintained that he was arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. After 12 years at Guantánamo, he was relocated to a country that has continued to treat him like a “terrorist” and where he has not been granted asylum, despite assurances from the State Department that he would be treated well.

“Ask them to see Camp Delta 2, 3, 4, and Camp 5, and Camp Echo, and Camp 6, and Camp Platinum,” Salahi urged from his new home in Amsterdam.

“You can take pictures of the detainees, but not the face,” said Sufiyan Barhoumi, who was eligible for release from Guantánamo under the Obama administration after all charges against him were dropped but had to wait five more years because Donald Trump halted transfers. He has been struggling to adjust to life as a free man back home in Algeria since April 2022.

“Take pictures of what you can!”

Iguanas fight at the Navy Gateway Inns and Suites hotel.

As recently as 2018, reporters and photographers were allowed into the prison itself. Now, though, media isn’t brought anywhere close to the permanent prison complex that houses the remaining 30 detainees. I was informed that members of the media would not be allowed to photograph even the old Camp X-Ray, the long-abandoned outdoor prison that held the very first detainees. I was shocked, since Camp X-Ray was listed as an approved location under the 2023 media guidelines. This took all locations that were even remotely related to the base’s role as a detention site completely out of play. Denying any new visual documentation of the defunct former facility seemed egregious and irrational, especially following the unprecedented access given to the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, in early 2023. The Biden administration had permitted her to tour the site and interview detainees as an independent investigator, and her findings were published two days after I had arrived at the base.

“This is just another indication that the most consistent thing about Guantánamo is inconsistency,” said former detainee Moazzam Begg, a British citizen who was released from Guantánamo without charge in 2005. Begg is the current director of CAGE, a U.K.-based advocacy group for other victims of the war on terror. “It seems that rules change and guidelines change according to who happens to be in charge. So your frustration as a journalist, I can see — imagine, as a prisoner, where you have to live in that kind of environment, where you can quote the standard operating procedure better than the staff sergeant, but he’ll say, ‘Well, no, we just changed that.’”

“I really don’t understand this treatment,” Salahi fumed over WhatsApp. “If they don’t let you go and see what went on, or at least the place where the torture took place, what do they want? This is complete stonewalling; this makes me really very upset as a victim of that place.”

Salahi wasn’t wrong. The locations I was allowed to photograph were of little journalistic value, and many had been recently documented by a behemoth in the news industry: the New York Times. That photo essay, titled “Guantánamo Bay: Beyond the Prison,” had garnered fervent criticism on social media, in part because it seemed to take a page out of the military’s playbook by ignoring Guantánamo’s sordid, torturous past to focus instead on the similarities between the base and a college campus. Mark Fallon, a former Naval Criminal Investigative Service counterterrorism special agent, explained why the little transparency that had once existed has dwindled to no access at all.

The U.S. government is “hoping to control the narrative about what the American public knows or believes about the prisoners here at Guantánamo Bay, the global war on terror, and some of the war crimes that we committed in the name of the American people, specifically torturing prisoners in violation of U.S. code and international law,” Fallon, the author of “Unjustifiable Means,” told me over a neat whiskey in the courtyard of the Navy Gateway Inns and Suites hotel one evening. He was the testifying witness that week in pretrial proceedings against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the detainee charged in the USS Cole bombing case. Fallon had helmed the original investigation into the Cole bombing, the attack on a U.S. naval ship in the port of Aden, Yemen, in 2000 that killed 17 Americans. Fallon later worked as an investigator at Guantánamo before the CIA’s “Rendition, Detention and Interrogation” program began torturing men with “enhanced interrogation techniques” across black sites — including at Guantánamo — beginning in August 2002. A few months later, Fallon, then deputy commander of the Criminal Investigation Task Force, warned his leadership at the Pentagon that the new behavior he was starting to see at Guantánamo was “the kind of stuff Congressional hearings are made of.”

“What they try to do is ensure that what is going on here does not impact the contemporary conscience of the American public,” Fallon continued. “Because if it does, there may be greater calls for accountability against those that tortured in our name. And the longer that you can keep that from occurring, the safer, not just [for] the torturers but [for] the torture advocates, the torture lobby. Those who believe that torture should be used as an instrument of national policy are in jeopardy. Their legacies are in jeopardy.”

In truth, I had already started photographing out of spite. The prison might not exist here, but the ugly, cheaply manufactured urban sprawl of late-capitalist America did. Anything especially hideous and uncanny became a target for my lens. “Free candy” written in dust on the back of a white transport van. Dead crabs. A lone foldable chair inside an empty concrete room in the hotel. A grimy carpeted bathroom. Random graffiti tags of the logo of the infamous mercenary company Blackwater. Feral cats.

The tropical heat and general pro-war crime vibes were getting to me, so I started following Salahi’s advice: “Just write about the hotel. Concentrate on that. And eating from McDonald’s. If I was you, I would just do my whole article about the lifestyle. The staff. Just write about that because that’s where you have access.”

There was only one truly American way to forget the crime scene underfoot at Guantánamo Bay and that was to drink. At the Tiki Bar, armed military police stood in pairs while young soldiers, support staff, and visitors to the base all converged under multicolored lights and neon signs to fuel their historical amnesia and try to find someone to go home with. One young man was so wasted that I had to push him off me. Another member of the military, seeing my must-be-displayed-at-all-times press badge, told me he was a “dolphin trainer.” After confiding that he wasn’t allowed to speak to me, he added a gentle reminder that journalists weren’t welcome: “Fuck the media!”

Later in the week, a Navy ship docked at the port, and the sprawling military base was suddenly overrun with sailors looking for something to do on their one night off. That afternoon, our military media escort gave three hitchhikers a ride in our white transport van. I climbed into the middle row of the van as they quietly offered me a “juice” from the backseat. The orange juice bottle contained a mixed Disaronno cocktail. “Oh, y’all have nutcrackers out here?!” I said, reminded of the fruit punch drinks illegally sold at beaches in New York City. No one understood what I was talking about. Still, they asked me to come to the beach with them, and I agreed. They let me keep the secret drink.

We climbed boulders and called insults to each other while swimming in the warm water. That evening, I went to dinner with a colleague at O’Kelly’s, an Irish pub run by Jamaican staff where the best thing on the menu is fajitas. There, I ran into the three men again. The group swelled, and more men gathered around our table, ordering an obscene number of Jell-O shots. As the only age-appropriate and single woman in the entire bar, I was assailed with brazen pickup lines. One man offered to go in the bathroom and take an unsolicited “dick pic” to send me. I tried to make a joke out of it: He didn’t need to go all the way to the bathroom since I had a disposable flash film camera I had bought at Guantánamo’s only store. To my horror, he snatched the camera, held my gaze, and shoved it down his pants. The flash went off. The entire table erupted with howls of laughter. Suddenly, the 21+ wristband I’d been given at the door, with the sexual assault hotline number printed on it, made more sense.

The constant humidity reminded me of my childhood in Sarasota, Florida, only 700 miles across the Caribbean from Camp Delta. Consumed with anxiety, I was barely sleeping. Court started early each morning. The defendant, al-Nashiri, opted out of attending the pretrial arguments all week, so we never saw him in person. The sleep deprivation, and the disconnect between physically being at Guantánamo but not seeing any prisoners or prison cells, was slowly chipping away at my sense of reality.

But I still had a job to do. I was reduced to begging the public affairs officer, Lt. Cmdr. Adam Cole, to at least take me on a drive-by of the detention center and Camp X-Ray. After spending countless hours together, he seemed committed to letting me photograph as much as possible, as I had arrived with a large DSLR and the job title of “photo editor.” While I was ostensibly there only to cover the al-Nashiri pretrial hearings, Cole recognized that journalists have other interests, especially if it’s the first time they’ve come to the base. I wanted to photograph as many of the permissible “b-roll” locations as possible.

All my photography had to be completed before Thursday afternoon, when we had our operational security, or OPSEC, review. An extensive list of “protected information” meant that my extremely tightly cropped photographs had to be viewed by various military public affairs officers, or PAOs, and security officials prior to publication.

An Army military police soldier allows a photograph while questioning me outside Camp Justice at Guantánamo Bay on June 27, 2023.

By now, I had already experienced how quickly photographing at Guantánamo could go south. Forgetting myself in the intense midday sun outside the media center, I grabbed my Canon and pointed it straight up at the sky. I wanted to get a silly photo of a familiar raptor — a turkey vulture — soaring overhead. As I lowered the lens, remembering where I was, it was already too late. Men, one with a gun strapped across his chest, had quickly closed in, surrounding me, to ask where my PAO was — I shouldn’t have been using my camera without him there. Stunned, I asked, “Can I take a photo of the gun?” before confessing I had been a bad girl and pleading with them to not tell my new friend Cole that I’d unwittingly broken the rules.

With the OPSEC review looming and my sanity slipping, I climbed into Cole’s transport van for one last photo excursion. We would drive by Camp X-Ray on our way to the Skyline overlook, which offered a scenic view over the sprawling base below. “No photos,” Cole reminded.

I could barely see anything. It was far below us, and the van climbed steadily, hardly slowing down. “There it is,” Cole said. A few minutes later, we stood high above the bay at dusk. Dark clouds swirled like smoke overhead as a gentle rain began. Unable to see through my drenched glasses, I took them off and the landscape blurred even more. I felt myself starting to cry. I had come all this way to see the reality of Guantánamo Bay, only to find myself blocked at every turn.

It’s always embarrassing to be in tears as a woman in a professional setting. I tried to regain my composure, overwhelmed and frustrated to be denied a true view of a place that defined my country’s abject moral failure. I thought I understood a little of how slowly the years had gone for the prisoners. A week here was an eternity, but two decades wasn’t long enough for the military to come to grips with what it had done. There was Guantánamo, still open, still making the same mistakes. Defeated and demoralized, I’d never been more professionally disappointed. Standing atop that hill, I felt as if I were watching Sisyphus’s boulder — the journalist’s goal of getting the American public to care about Guantánamo — roll back down to the bottom. 

Cole had explained that it wasn’t his decision to nix Camp X-Ray, but rather the Naval Station Guantánamo Bay PAO Joycelyn Biggs who had decided it was off limits. Biggs was stressed. “The entire Navy is short staffed,” she told me on a phone call when I asked her about it. “Every single photo that you take, someone in my office has to look at it and vet it. That is work hours. That is resources that are being diverted from my office.” She wanted me to understand that I wasn’t her problem, that I was there to cover the court: “Anything that you do outside of [military commission] trials is a courtesy.”

For all of Biggs’s concerns that allowing photos of Camp X-Ray would lengthen the OPSEC review, I had to laugh when the entire process for all three journalists visiting that week took just over 10 minutes. What a strain on resources. Everyone crowded around as Biggs’s deputy flipped through my photos.

“What is this?!” Cole asked about a clear plastic tube.

“It was in the lighthouse bathroom,” I replied.

“And you just took a picture of it?”

“Of course.”

“And you wanna publish it? And you’re gonna be like ‘They use this [to] torture people?’” Cole asked. It did remind me of the painful nasogastric tubes they had used to force-feed hunger striking detainees. But I laughed and said that he had just given me a perfect quote for the photo’s caption.

“I hate you,” Cole said.

Despite my irritations, a kind of nostalgia emerged when I described the sights, sounds, smells, and frustrations of this visit to my formerly imprisoned friends.

“When you describe to me every corner, all the details of GTMO, I feel like I am with you,” Barhoumi said in a voice memo. “I feel like I never left this place.” When I complained about the lack of access and general censorship, he could relate. “I feel you,” he told me. “It depends on who is in charge, that’s my experience. You have to have a big heart because they will piss you off. Just use your wisdom and keep going.”

After only a week, I was ready to leave. The constant monitoring and prescreening of my images had been invasive. To decompress, I sat at the marina near the hotel at sunset and watched the sky fade from blue to black as the eerie red glow of the dock’s flood lights spilled into the green water like blood.

I tried to imagine a distant future when former detainees could visit this place as free men and when, perhaps, Guantánamo would become a monument for national reflection. I hoped that they, too, would one day watch the sun slowly sink beneath the wide-open sky and make peace with the place that had permanently derailed their lives. “I would love the place to be converted to a museum, just like Robben Island. I would volunteer and work sometime,” Salahi told me. “I think the former detainees should run it.”

My plane back to Washington, D.C., took off late one afternoon from the empty Guantánamo runway. I looked out the window for a final chance to see the prison. I thought about the remaining 16 men there who have been cleared for release but are still waiting for their own liftoff. I wondered what the rest of their lives would look like. I thought again of al-Qurashi and the paintings he’d made while imprisoned here. His painting of a wooden ship fighting to stay afloat in rough seas stuck me as a metaphor for this place.

What an injustice it was, I thought, that so many of the men who had suffered needlessly here still weren’t truly free. In a perfect world, former detainees would see this prison close. They would be exonerated, get an apology, receive reparations, and find help with rehabilitation. They would be allowed to visit the McDonald’s and the beaches and watch the dusk settle over the crystalline water that teemed with life.

Cuba faded into the distance through the small window. I never did see the prison, just as those detained there had never seen anything of Guantánamo beyond their bars. And apart from the handful of obscure photos that manage to survive OPSEC review, they probably never will.

The post Censorship Has Never Been Worse at Guantánamo Bay appeared first on The Intercept.

As a teenager, Dr. Susan Walsh loved the TV show “The X-Files.” She was particularly drawn to the character of Dana Scully, a hyper-rational doctor-cum-FBI agent who brought a scientist’s skepticism to investigations of paranormal phenomena and deployed her medical training to determine cause of death for the show’s victims.

The fact that Scully used science to solve problems and pursue justice intrigued Walsh. She wanted to explore a career in forensics but was on the fence about how to do it. Should she go into law enforcement? Become a scientist? The show helped her to decide. She loved the science. “It did start with Scully, if I’m being honest,” she said.

Walsh studied biochemistry and, while working on her master’s degree in DNA profiling, she happened onto a research paper that caught her attention. Australian scientists had found DNA markers corresponding to eye color, and Walsh began to wonder whether those techniques could be applied to criminal investigations. If crime-scene DNA could be analyzed for markers that relate to physical appearance, Walsh suspected that could help investigators identify suspects — and take crime fighting to a new level.

“Oh wow, that’s so cool that we’ll one day be able to predict what people look like,” using DNA, she thought. “In an application of a forensic setting, that’s amazing.”

That was 2005. Today, Walsh is at the top of her field. An assistant professor in the School of Science at Indiana University Indianapolis, she runs a lab researching what is now known as forensic DNA phenotyping, or FDP. Walsh has worked on locating genes related to eye, hair, and skin color and has built an open-source tool for people, including in law enforcement, who want to use DNA to predict those traits. She has also investigated connections between DNA markers and the appearance of various facial features, known as facial morphology.

Through her research, she came to learn that FDP works as she imagined it could: An unknown DNA sample can be parsed for genetic markers related to various traits, like hair or eye color, offering criminal investigators a glimpse into what the owner of the DNA might look like. That, in turn, could be useful information for prioritizing suspects to investigate. If the DNA says a person is likely to have red hair, for example, detectives could bump redheads to the top of their suspect list.

Still, Walsh remains cautious about how she describes what DNA can and cannot tell us about what a person might look like. At present, the idea that DNA can be used to predict facial structure — for example, what a person’s chin might look like — is more science fiction, like her beloved “X-Files,” and less science fact. The human face is a complicated structure defined by both nature (so, DNA) and nurture (like, if you’ve had your nose broken). Like others in her field, Walsh is unsure that research into morphology will ever bear reliable fruit. “We can’t even do a nose right now,” she said.

Walsh is adamant: It’s scientifically premature to deploy these methods to predict a person’s face, especially when their life and liberty is at stake. Not everyone in the field has been as chary.

“The Science Isn’t There”

A private company based in Reston, Virginia, Parabon NanoLabs was founded in 2008 with the mission of creating “breakthrough products” using DNA, with an initial focus on developing cancer therapies. It has since evolved into a prominent purveyor of forensic products, including DNA phenotyping, to police agencies. Though it’s well known among forensic scientists, it maintains a fairly low public profile and publishes few details about its operation online.

According to Parabon, its Snapshot FDP System “accurately” predicts not only eye, hair, and skin color, but also face shape. For a fee, the company will provide law enforcement agencies with a rendering of its predictions in the form of a color composite sketch, along with a “corresponding measure of confidence” in the predicted traits. The company says it has worked with hundreds of police agencies in the nine years it’s been doing this work.

As Parabon’s foothold in the world of forensics deepened, so did the concern among scientists and legal experts, who warn that the company’s sketches are, at best, misleading. Leading experts agree the science has not evolved enough to accurately and reliably provide the kind of singular image Parabon produces for police investigations. Even a scientist who helped develop the technology says it’s not ready for real-world use.

Parabon’s methodology for generating its phenotype predictions is a closely guarded secret; its system has not faced independent scientific verification and validation — the gold standard among scientists for vetting the efficacy of computer-based programs — nor has it been peer reviewed. Still, Parabon insists that its phenotyping work is based on good science. While it acknowledges that its program has not gone through traditional scientific review processes, it says the proof of Snapshot’s ability and value is in the number of law enforcement agencies that use it and say it has helped them solve cases.

For years, Walsh privately pressed the company to explain its work and grew frustrated by Parabon’s refusal to engage with her questions. Her concerns were not just hypothetical: In a criminal legal system rife with wrongful convictions and racial bias, there are countless ways using an unproven tool to solve crimes can, and does, go wrong.

Those frustrations came to a head during a March 2024 workshop at the National Academy of Sciences covering the good and bad of several next-generation forensic tools used by law enforcement, where Walsh and others sharply criticized Parabon. Selling these singular images to police is “detrimental to the field and something we need to stop,” Walsh said.

Police pay hundreds per case for appearance prediction, yet “how these tools function remains shrouded in secrecy,” noted Rebecca Brown, the former policy director for the Innocence Project and the founder of Maat Strategies, a criminal legal policy consulting firm. Speaking at the workshop, Brown cautioned against the use of FDP and other novel disciplines absent robust validation and regulation. There are “too many examples of investigative tools that become runaway trains,” she said.

Parabon’s FDP service follows a predictable pattern in forensic science: Novel techniques are developed, often by private industry, and pressed into service for law enforcement purposes before their limitations have been fully assessed and addressed.

As with other forensic innovations, like forensic genetic genealogy or facial recognition, FDP is sold as an “investigative tool” — that is, a product not intended for use as evidence in a criminal proceeding, but as a behind-the-scenes aide to police searching for perpetrators. But selling a scientifically questionable product as a mere investigative tool can have real-world consequences.

For FDP in particular, experts warn that the composite images can reinforce racial stereotypes, encourage the over-surveillance of marginalized communities, and deny criminal defendants important information about how they became a target of an investigation, which raises serious implications for Fourth Amendment privacy rights. Composites like those Parabon sells could also inadvertently taint the memories of eyewitnesses to a crime, risking potentially valuable evidence.

Paula Armentrout, Parabon’s co-founder, provided written responses to questions from The Intercept about the company’s Snapshot program. In part, the company said that The Intercept “should not quote any of the presenters” at the NAS workshop, who it claims “made many false, uninformed, and misleading statements that were not based on evidence or facts, but on misinformation propagated by inaccurate media articles, hearsay, and their own personal and political agendas.”

Walsh insists her criticisms are motivated solely by her fidelity to the science and to ensuring the transparency and accuracy of forensic tools used in the criminal legal system. To that end, she was emphatic during the workshop: Law enforcement should not be allowed to purchase phenotyping composites. “The science isn’t there. We shouldn’t be doing it,” she said. At this juncture, she said, those sketches are about as scientific as “my son drawing them.”

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Marketing a DNA Blueprint

Parabon’s foray into forensics began in 2009, when the company secured the first of several contracts with the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which was looking for a way to identify individuals in combat zones responsible for building improvised explosive devices. Parabon proposed extracting physical traits from DNA collected from the weapons to get the job done, and a subsequent 2012 contract led to the development of the Snapshot system. “Traditional DNA analysis treats DNA like a fingerprint, useful for identification,” Parabon co-founder and CEO Steven Armentrout told the military’s Success Stories publication in 2022. “But Snapshot treats it like a blueprint for how to build a human.”

The company began marketing the service to police agencies in 2015, an effort that has been “extremely successful,” Ellen McRae Greytak, the company’s director of bioinformatics, said during a webinar for a military organization in 2020. In her presentation, Greytak briefly outlined Parabon’s work to create Snapshot: how researchers collected existing DNA information for individuals across the world to home in not only on markers for hair, skin and eye color, but also for specific geographic ancestry information; how they used machine learning to create the algorithm that generates predictions; and how, at the time, the company was developing a phone app to help gather three-dimensional images of faces to aid its morphology work. 

Once the software makes a phenotype prediction, a forensic artist steps in to shade the composite. Of course, the process has its limitations, Greytak acknowledged. It can’t predict hairstyle, for example, or any other form of non-genetic modification — like scarring, tattoos, or dyed hair — and it can’t discern a person’s weight. Parabon’s composites are developed for what a person would look like as “a young adult at a normal body weight,” she said, which the company defines as a body mass index of 22.

Parabon had already worked on “hundreds of cases,” Greytak said during the webinar, sharing a couple of alleged success stories. In 2016, Massachusetts police investigating the 24-year-old cold-case murder of Lisa Ziegert used crime-scene DNA to obtain a Parabon sketch of her possible murderer.

Detectives used the composite information to narrow down the pool of “thousands” of people who, over the years, had been noted in the case file, Greytak said. There “were maybe five guys who closely matched the predictions we made,” she said, so the cops went knocking on their doors. Gary Schara wasn’t home when the police arrived at his place, so they told Schara’s roommate to pass on the message that “we’d like to speak to him,” Greytak explained. “When Gary hears that, he flees.” Police were eventually able to track Schara down and to match his DNA to the crime, she said, prompting him to confess. “They were finally able to close this homicide case.”

According to news reports, Schara was more than just a note in the case file. In fact, he had long been a suspect: His wife gave him up to police in 1993, and he was subsequently interviewed multiple times by investigators, including from the FBI.

After police received the Parabon phenotyping report and returned once again, talking to his roommate, Schara penned a confession and tried to kill himself. Police found him the next day in a Connecticut hospital. Schara ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

It is unclear why detectives were unable to close the case years earlier. The Hampden district attorney’s office did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment, but in 2019, MassLive reported that District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said the “embrace of new technology” had helped to solve the case. Still, it appears the most Parabon can claim credit for is reminding cops of at least one of their top suspects.

A Singular Image

Susan Walsh had been working on FDP for nearly a decade when Parabon’s service debuted for law enforcement agencies. Back then, Walsh was mostly curious. She started asking Parabon questions. “I was saying, ‘Oh, what [DNA] markers are you using? And where’s your paper? Where can I read it? And what data set are you working with? And what’s your algorithm?’” she recalled. “And I was just getting nothing back.”

She approached company representatives at conferences and asked how the program worked. “They just didn’t answer my questions,” she said. “And then I was like, ‘OK. Well, I don’t think that you should be allowed in the field if you’re not going to answer the questions a scientist asks you.’” Scientists should be open to having their work scrutinized by peers, she said; they should be forthcoming about what parameters they’re using, about what their tool does well — and where it fails. “I was a bit curious at first and then kind of a little bit angry.” It felt to her like snake oil, selling hope in the form of a tool that could provide answers in cases that had long gone cold.

Walsh repeatedly tried to raise the alarm within the forensics community, but “it still wasn’t working.” By the time the NAS workshop rolled around in March, she did not mince words. Parabon’s sketches are “detrimental,” she said to the the scientists, legal scholars, academics, and advocates gathered at the National Academies’ headquarters in Washington, D.C., for the two-day event. “I was just sick of saying it all the time — that we need science,” she later told The Intercept. “We need publications. We need peer review.”

Walsh emphasized that she believes selling composite images is scientifically indefensible. Experts agree that the most accurate way to describe phenotypic predictions is individually — the likelihood of brown eyes or blonde hair, for example — which offers police solid and actionable intelligence without tipping into science fiction, she said. Currently, each of the three predictions available via Walsh’s tool, which has been validated and peer reviewed, are reported to be approximately 80 percent accurate.

Although Walsh’s tool is available to law enforcement agencies free of charge, she said she doesn’t get that many cases. She suspects that’s because she won’t offer the cops a composite. “They go off and they pay because they want that singular image.”

For that, they can turn to Parabon.

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Proprietary Methods

For Parabon, independent verification and peer review are superfluous pursuits. In response to a series of questions from The Intercept, the company said its program can’t be externally vetted because the code is “proprietary.” As for peer review, while it is a “valuable process for academic research because it allows researchers to contribute to the broader body of knowledge,” the company said, Parabon instead focuses on “delivering actionable results” to law enforcement customers.

“Unlike academics, whose primary goal is to contribute to scientific literature and educate, our priority is to serve the immediate needs of our clients,” the company wrote. Peer review can “sometimes become bogged down in theoretical debates,” it opined, noting that if Parabon had gone that route and hadn’t started selling its system to police, the service “would still not be available to them.”

The proof that Parabon’s system works is in the real-world validation the company has received from law enforcement agencies that have hired it to help solve cases. The 70 composites the company has posted online “from actual cases where identifications were later made,” it wrote, “represent the most stringent and authentic performance evaluation possible.” Many of those cases “would not have been solved without Snapshot phenotyping,” the company insists, “a fact to which the involved agencies can attest.”

The company sidestepped specific questions about how it is able to predict facial characteristics when other scientists say that isn’t currently possible. Instead, the company said it approaches things differently than the “academic literature,” using what’s known as principal component analysis — a statistical method that essentially sorts and makes sense of complex, noisy data — to fuel its predictions.

The company said its predictions are based on data collected from more than 1,000, mostly young-adult volunteers, 37 percent of whom “self-identify as White.” Although asked twice to do so, Parabon did not supply the total number of volunteers or a detailed breakdown of the population. Instead, it said the entire sample is “diverse and balanced,” including individuals from various ethnic backgrounds, “such as African, Asian, European, Hispanic/Latino, and Middle Eastern,” as well as individuals with mixed heritage. “This diversity helps ensure the robustness and applicability of our predictions.”

Parabon also provided two diagrams that purport to show how its Snapshot system sorts data to predict face shape, using DNA from Greytak and co-founder Paula Armentrout as an example. The first diagram features a star-like array of blank, gray faces, which Greytak said represent the five main face shapes deduced through principal component analysis. To the side is a heat map of those five faces, which supposedly shows which portions of each face is fueling the ultimate prediction. The second is a more sparse but similar diagram showing the two women’s faces alongside the face shapes the program predicted.

The company declined to say which DNA markers it uses in this process, saying the specific genetic markers were “chosen based on our proprietary analysis.”

Mark Shriver, a geneticist and professor of anthropology at Penn State University who is a leading expert on phenotyping, reviewed the diagrams and relevant portions of the responses that Parabon provided to The Intercept. He said they are fundamentally flawed. “If you want to study variation within a population, then you need a large sample from just that population,” he said. “If you want to distinguish the two white women like they were doing in their example figure … then you need 1,000 white people.”

Garbage In/Garbage Out

Shriver knows better than most how Parabon’s model works. More than a decade ago, Shriver collaborated with the company on its Pentagon contract. He and a colleague conducted the research that now underpins the Snapshot system, he said, including the information from the 1,000 or so volunteers. It was designed more as proof of concept, and in need of significantly more time, research, and work to transform into a truly predictive model. But Parabon was not interested in doing that work, Shriver said, which led him and his colleague to part ways with the company. “It became clear they just wanted to take it to market immediately,” he said.

In Parabon’s telling, its relationship with Shriver “ended without acrimony” at the conclusion of his subcontract. His “concerns … were never communicated to us,” Paula Armentrout wrote to The Intercept in an email.

Shriver told The Intercept that Parabon’s data set is far too small to support the kind of individualizing predictions the company sells to police. “And this was one of the points I made clear to them from the start,” Shriver said.

“One of the phrases that goes way back in computer science is ‘garbage in, garbage out,’” he said. “The input data is fundamental to any kind of analysis, any kind of conclusions, any kind of predictions you’re going to be able to do from it.” A thousand volunteers from one population could, “perhaps, start to get you some information about what’s going on within that population,” he said. But the sample Parabon is working with was selected to cover a “bunch of populations.” Meaning, the system is primed for drawing general conclusions, but not for making detailed predictions about individuals.

The company pursued an approach that differs from the “methods being explored in academia,” Armentrout reiterated in response to questions about Shriver. “Dr. Shriver was developing his own face prediction methods for casework, although we’re not aware if they have ever been used in a forensic case.”

Armentrout is right that Shriver hasn’t deployed his research forensically in the way Parabon has — with good reason. Though his research now includes data from tens of thousands of people — from both diverse populations and within closed groups, including families — he cautions that there is still more to be done to develop an effective, predictive tool. He won’t put it to work until it has been tested, validated, and peer reviewed.

“It really isn’t science until it’s been looked at by somebody who could understand what you did wrong and what you did right,” Shriver said. “And not just one person, but the whole community has to be able to review what you’ve done if you want to call it science.”

“Otherwise,” he said, “you’re just playing games in the closet.”

“That Could Be the Guy”

Investigators at the Edmonton Police Service in Alberta, Canada, were desperate to solve the violent rape of a young woman in March 2019. The man who attacked her was a stranger and had been bundled up against the cold, leaving her with few details about his appearance. There was no CCTV footage or other witnesses, save for DNA left behind.

Three years later, the department turned to Parabon for help. The company used the DNA to generate a sketch of a nondescript Black man. According to Parabon, the suspect is of East African descent — as well as part South and West African — and likely has dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, and no freckles. The police department posted the generic image online, including to its social media accounts.

The backlash was fierce. The image did little more than implicate nearly every Black man in Edmonton, critics noted, essentially encouraging racial profiling and the continued over-surveillance of minority and other marginalized communities. “If they’re generating an image of a face of a Black person, like what happened in Canada, and then releasing that image to the general public … then you have a bunch of white people who are looking at Black people around them and thinking, ‘Oh, well, that could be the guy,’ and then they just report on that person,” Jennifer Lynch, general counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Intercept.

“It obviously doesn’t help the investigation in any sense,” Lynch continued, “because it’s not a real image of a person, certainly not the real image of the perpetrator, and it can only harm both the investigation and communities of color, because it puts them at greater risk of arrest for things that they didn’t do.”

Two days after posting the image, the Edmonton police pulled it offline and issued a statement. “The potential that a visual profile can provide far too broad a characterization from within a racialized community and in this case, Edmonton’s Black community, was not something I adequately considered,” Enyinnah Okere, the agency’s chief operating officer said.

Despite the police department’s actions, Parabon kept the image on its website. The sketch merely reported “what the signals in the DNA” indicated about the perpetrator’s “traits and biogeographic ancestry,” the company told The Intercept. It was “unfortunate the community misunderstood the purpose of the composite and reacted the way it did.” Besides, Parabon added, it had been told an arrest was made in the case and that “our prediction was accurate.”

That was news to the Edmonton police. In emails to The Intercept, spokesperson Sgt. Dan Tames said no suspect has been arrested in the case. He also said that after receiving The Intercept’s inquiry, the agency asked Parabon to remove the image from its website. Nearly two years after it was posted, the image was finally removed. Parabon did not respond to an additional request for comment.

The case is a potent example of the way that FDP, and Parabon’s composites in particular, can perpetuate other harmful practices within the criminal legal system. Faulty eyewitness identifications are a leading cause of wrongful convictions, and science has repeatedly demonstrated that people have a harder time correctly identifying people of a different race.

Research has also shown that introducing a composite image to a witness can reshape their memory, potentially corrupting their initial recollection. “The presentation of a single photograph explicitly to ask about whether or not that person is maybe who the witness saw commit the crime has been found to be really suggestive,” said Dr. Kara Moore, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah.

And if police were to tell a witness that a composite is based on DNA phenotyping, that could be even more suggestive, Moore said. “People find DNA evidence to be really persuasive. So this idea that this facial composite was based on DNA may have some implications for accuracy in the person’s mind,” she said. “People might truly believe this is really what the person who committed the crime looks like.”

“The accuracy of the composite is an interesting component too,” she added. “If it’s wrong, you’re negatively contaminating the eyewitness’s memory and really harming your eyewitness. But even if it’s right, you might be artificially inflating the person’s memory and confidence for the face.”

For Walsh, the potential conflating of ancestry with appearance is another cause for concern. While DNA can offer ancestral information, that intel cannot be cribbed into assumptions about what a person looks like, including about facial features and skin color. “Some individuals can be biased by skin pigmentation to infer ancestry, or ancestry to infer pigmentation,” she wrote in an email. “Unless you actually test for the specific trait … you cannot assume either.” Cautioning that she doesn’t know how Parabon’s system works, she said she worries that using ancestral data to produce an image could cause police to “focus on a particular population without foundation.”

In a January 2024 story in Wired, Greytak seemed to suggest that Parabon’s system does take ancestry into account when making some phenotypic predictions. “What we are predicting is more like — given this person’s sex and ancestry, will they have wider-set eyes than average,” she said. But, she said, “there’s no way you can get individual identifications from that.”

Parabon did not directly address The Intercept’s question about Greytak’s comments to Wired, but insisted that it does not use ancestry categories to inform its morphology predictions. “Categorical divisions are artificial and not reflective of the continuous nature of human genetic variation across the globe,” it said.

Either way, critics say current science does not support Parabon’s individualizing composites. As Rebecca Brown, the policy consultant at Maat Strategies, put it, the automated facial composites are “putting a veneer of science on an already problematic identification procedure.”

4

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Behind the Scenes

Parabon markets its Snapshot phenotyping service not as a tool for positive identification, but a tool to generate investigative leads. The company stressed this in its responses to The Intercept. “It’s crucial to understand that the DNA phenotyping information we provide to agencies is not used for definitive identification or conviction,” it wrote. That is, the phenotyping is only intended for use in developing suspects; from there, law enforcement agencies would try to use traditional forensic DNA testing to see if the suspect can be linked to crime-scene evidence. “Our work does not change this process in any way,” the company insisted.

But using such a program merely to generate leads is itself questionable. Parabon told The Intercept that it does “not have an exact count” of all the law enforcement agencies that have purchased its phenotyping services but said that “hundreds of agencies” have used Snapshot for casework. Of those, the company only posts to its website images that its client police agencies have already made public.

To date, Parabon has published only 70 composites. That means there are potentially hundreds of cases where law enforcement has used a composite behind the scenes to inform an investigation — information that almost certainly has not, or will not, be made available to the defense in a criminal prosecution, even if it did help to narrow the cops’ focus onto a particular individual.

That’s because the tools police use to generate investigative leads are generally not considered evidence in criminal cases, meaning the state is not required to share information about those tools or the leads they generate with defense lawyers. So, for example, if police use a Snapshot composite to lead them to a suspect who they then charge with a crime, the defense will likely never know unless the police choose to publicize it.

The lack of transparency is alarming to defense attorneys and civil libertarians. “I would say, if there’s a single biggest issue here, it’s that,” said Clare Garvie, a lawyer with the Fourth Amendment Center at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Garvie is an expert on the use of face recognition, another tool whose outputs are often hidden from scrutiny during criminal prosecutions. “The logic behind asserting that it’s an investigative lead only, is, in theory, to protect people from having adverse action taken against them based on unreliable methods,” she said. “But what it has functionally meant is that — in the face recognition context, but very, very likely in other investigative contexts — the defense never finds out that these searches are run.”

Back in 2016, for example, Garvie discovered that police in Pinellas County, Florida, who had been using facial recognition technology since 2001, were using it, “on average, 8,000 times a month.” But at the same time, she noted, the public defender’s office there “had never had a single case in which it had been disclosed.”

Ensnared in a Dragnet

Where FDP is concerned, there is at least one current case where police use of Parabon’s work to identify a suspect is being challenged in court. After the 2016 murder of Karina Vetrano, who was killed while jogging near her family home in Queens, the New York Police Department hired Parabon to do phenotyping. The results reportedly came back that the suspect was of African descent, which the NYPD apparently took to mean the person was Black, subsequently undertaking a vast DNA dragnet of hundreds of Black men in the area. Ultimately, the cops landed on a young, developmentally delayed man named Chanel Lewis, who could not be excluded as a source of a trace amount of DNA found at the crime scene.

The fact that the police had used Parabon’s service at all contradicted their public stance about the case — the official line was that a policeman’s hunch and shoe-leather investigation had cracked it — and the prosecution failed to tell Lewis’s defense the whole story. Eventually the fact that the NYPD had employed Parabon was leaked to Lewis’s trial attorneys by a department insider. After a hung jury during his first trial, Lewis was found guilty in 2019. He has appealed his conviction, which his lawyers argue was tainted by the state’s failure to disclose its questionable use of phenotyping to target their client.

At specific issue is whether police violated Lewis’s Fourth Amendment rights when they collected his DNA as part of the dragnet — a question that largely turns on what police had in mind when they approached Lewis. Did they have a reasonable and individualized suspicion that Lewis might be Vetrano’s killer? And, importantly, what was it that made them suspicious of him? Was it solely the phenotyping prediction that the killer was a Black male?

“If you’re getting a phenotyping conclusion that says, it was a Black man, and then you have an investigative strategy where you only take DNA samples from Black men,” then you are using the phenotyping not just to eliminate people, but to target them, said Rhidaya Trivedi, one of Lewis’s attorneys. “Then the scientific integrity of phenotyping enters that Fourth Amendment inquiry: Was it reasonable that they thought [the suspect] was a Black man?”

None of the questions about the scientific integrity of Parabon’s phenotyping have been answered in court. “It’s a huge question, an unanswered question: Can police use phenotyping to affirmatively generate suspicion?” Trivedi asks. “And if so, under what circumstances? Because I doubt that Chanel’s case is the only one where this happened.”

In an expert affidavit filed with Lewis’s appeal, Shriver, the Penn State geneticist, detailed at length the kinds of questions that law enforcement agencies and courts should be asking of any phenotyping service before it is deployed. That includes whether and how the program has been validated, how any results were explained to police, and whether a distinction between geographic ancestry and any facial trait predictions were “communicated and understood.”

Silencing Critics

Jeanna Matthews is something of an evangelist for verification and validation of computer programs used in the criminal legal system. A professor of computer science at Clarkson University, she is also the vice chair of the AI Policy Committee at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, known as the IEEE, which has long promulgated standards for ensuring the scientific integrity of computer-based systems.

For Matthews, the issue is straightforward: Forensic tools like Parabon’s phenotyping program need to be independently verified and validated against accepted scientific standards, like those developed by the IEEE, if they’re going to be deployed in the criminal legal system. Put simply, the tools need to be fully reviewed from code to output to determine whether they are built and function as intended.

This kind of detailed, ground-up review is common in mission-critical fields — like with medical devices or air traffic control systems — but it has not been implemented in the criminal legal system. The verification and validation process, known as V&V, “is pretty much ubiquitous when we all agree that it’s important that the software be accurate,” Matthews said. “Why isn’t it done for criminal justice software? We don’t all seem to agree it’s important enough to do it carefully.”

In part, the problem is that many newer forensic tools are developed by private companies that, like Parabon, say their system is “proprietary” or make claims of trade secrets to keep outsiders from looking closely at the tools they’re selling. And that, experts say, should be unacceptable for a system that routinely locks people up or kills them.

“The idea that anyone is hiding behind trade secrets when life and liberty is at stake, we have to ask ourselves some serious questions about what we’re about,” said Rebecca Wexler, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, “if we’re sort of like, ‘Nope, that profit motive must transcend this person’s ability to prove their innocence.’”

Parabon, it seems, is not only uninterested in having its phenotyping program externally vetted, but also is not too keen on hearing any criticisms of its work.

In addition to admonishing The Intercept not to quote from the NAS workshop in which its Snapshot system was discussed, Parabon said that it had approached the organization about the workshop and was “pleased to report that after an internal review,” the NAS had removed video recording of the event from its website.

An NAS spokesperson acknowledged that the videos were removed but did not respond to repeated questions about the specific reason. “Concerns were raised about comments made at the workshop,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept. “Although any statements made at the workshop solely reflect the personal opinions of individual presenters and not the views of all workshop participants or the National Academies, we decided to remove the videos of the workshop from our website.”

Though it may no longer be accessible online, the workshop had a lasting impact on Walsh. She said it helped her to think about her work — and its implications — in new ways. In particular, she more seriously ponders how her work could be misused, and about how she can counteract that possibility. She wants to be sure her predictions are made based on robust population samples and that her tools are described openly, and accurately, so that anyone can understand what they can and cannot do.

“I think along the lines of, ‘How can I protect people more?’” she said. “‘How can I make sure that there is no way this can be used badly?’”

The post A Forensics Company Tells Cops It Can Use DNA to Predict a Suspect’s Face. Scientists Worry the Tool Will Deepen Racial Bias. appeared first on The Intercept.

The amendments, submitted to the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, need approval from the House Rules Committee before they can be considered for a vote. The Rules Committee has 13 members, four of whom are Democrats and three of whom are Freedom Caucus Republicans, enough to approve an amendment acting in coalition. 

One of the most direct challenges to the Biden administration is a bill led by Democratic Reps. Sara Jacobs and Ilhan Omar which would block the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine and all other countries. On Monday afternoon, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said he would sign on as a co-sponsor to the bill, championing it in the Rules Committee and giving it a stronger shot of making it to the floor for a vote. On Tuesday, Rep. Paulina Luna, R-Fla., co-sponsored the legislation, raising expectations among its backers that Rules Committee member Thomas Massie, R-Ky., will advocate for it to be ruled in order, which allows it a vote on the House floor.

Other amendments in search of a floor vote or inclusion in the underlying bill restrict military cooperation with a variety of governments accused of human rights abuses, order the declassification of information about past U.S. participation in coups or the operation of death squads, or shift spending from weapons systems toward social programs for troops.

This week’s NDAA fight in the Rules Committee and later on the House floor will be a fresh test for the new populist right — which has taken an isolationist turn away from the neoconservatism that previously dominated Republican orthodoxy — of whether their opposition to the global war machine is talk on a podcast or something capable of marshaling enough support to be a real threat to the military-industrial complex. Still, even with all three Freedom Caucus members on board, amendments hostile to American war policy would still likely need full Democratic support to get a floor vote, a difficult task in a divided party. Last week, 19 Democrats sent a letter to Biden objecting to the cluster munitions transfer, arguably the most significant objection from House Democrats to Biden’s Ukraine policy. But while it was a high number relative to previous efforts, 19 still represents less than one in 10 members of the House Democratic caucus.

“During this year’s NDAA process we’ve seen broad bipartisan coalitions come together around a variety of policies challenging the Executive Branch’s expansive military and surveillance overreach — from preventing the transfer of cluster bombs and demanding war powers votes for Yemen and Syria to oversight over irregular warfare authorities, to limiting government purchases of data about Americans,” said Cavan Kharrazian, foreign policy adviser at Demand Progress, a progressive policy organization. “While we’re dismayed that many good amendments will likely not get floor votes, we are encouraged about the growing cross-ideological base challenging concerning national security policies.”

In the past week, multiple U.S. allies including the United Kingdom and Spain have voiced opposition to the Biden administration’s support for sending cluster bombs to Ukraine. As The Intercept previously reported, these weapons are banned by over 100 countries and have already killed civilians when deployed by the Ukrainian military, which has obtained some cluster munitions from Turkey. Despite initial promises that only munitions with a low dud rate would be sent to Ukraine, subsequent statements suggest that some weapons being lined up for transfer could have a dud rate as high as 14.5 percent, leaving thousands of explosives primed and unexploded on battlefields across Ukraine. Russia has also used cluster munitions during its invasion — an act that former White House press secretary Jen Psaki suggested last year was a potential war crime.

Jacobs and Omar’s amendment orders that “no military assistance shall be furnished for cluster munitions, no defense export license for cluster munitions may be issued, and no cluster munitions or cluster munitions technology shall be sold or transferred.” Gaetz, in declaring his support for the amendment on his podcast “Firebrand with Matt Gaetz,” said, “We have an opportunity with bipartisanship to stand against the warmongering Bidens. These cluster bombs will not end the war in Ukraine.”

In a statement released last week, Jacobs wrote, “Our international coalition is strong because we’re united together and because we’re living up to our values — but sending cluster munitions defies these two tenets. Many of our partners don’t support this move with many having already banned cluster munitions from their stockpiles. We’ve seen Russia’s horrific use of cluster munitions in Ukraine — and we shouldn’t cede the moral high ground by criticizing their actions and then deciding to send cluster munitions ourselves.”

Reining in U.S. Funding of Human Rights Abusers

In another direct shot at U.S. war making capacity, Omar introduced legislation to repeal the Pentagon’s 127e program, which The Intercept previously exposed as a route by which the U.S. wages proxy war, sponsoring death squads or other irregular partner forces with hideous human rights records. While Omar’s legislation would ban the program, Jacobs has introduced a separate measure to curtail it by requiring the Pentagon to vet the groups it sponsors for credible allegations of human rights abuses and consider whether the alliance may damage U.S. interests. 

Other efforts to amend the NDAA to rein in foreign military cooperation would curb assistance to countries accused of ongoing human rights abuses. These include a prohibition on military aid and security assistance to Azerbaijan offered by Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., proposed a narrower measure that restricts weapons transfers in order to put pressure on Azerbaijan to end its siege of Nagorno-Karabakh. Schiff is running for Senate in California, where the state’s Armenian American population wields substantial clout.

Rep. Greg Casar, a first-term legislator who represents Austin, Texas, has quickly carved out space as a leading voice on foreign affairs; he introduced an NDAA amendment to instruct the State Department to examine and report on the democratic backsliding underway in Pakistan, as the country’s military establishment targets former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

A measure by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., requires the Pentagon to report back on human rights abuses carried out by its allies before continuing certain military partnerships in Peru, where a left-wing populist president was recently forced out by the right-wing opposition.

Ocasio-Cortez also introduced a measure requiring the CIA, Pentagon, and State Department to declassify information related to the U.S. government’s role in the Chilean coup that brought dictator Augusto Pinochet to power. 

She also introduced a separate amendment that makes a similar demand related to the 1964 military coup in Brazil, additionally requiring the Pentagon to explain to Congress what its role there was, and what types of cooperation it offered the resulting dictatorship over the next two decades. Her third historical amendment orders the Pentagon to produce a report on its involvement with Colombian military repression from 1980 to 2000. Legislation from Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., orders the Pentagon to report back on any U.S.-funded foreign security services that have killed journalists in the last five years, an expansion of her probe into the killing of reporter Shireen Abu Akleh by U.S.-funded Israeli forces.

Congressional Democrats have also proposed a number of Haiti-related NDAA amendments, with one, led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., ordering the Pentagon to submit a new report on its knowledge of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. Another measure from Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., blocks any funds from being used to support military intervention on the island, which the U.S.-installed de facto prime minister Ariel Henry has called for.

An amendment from Reps. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., and Chuy Garcia, D-Ill., would block the use of military force in or against Mexico. 

Reps. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., and Becca Balint, D-Vt., are attempting to amend the NDAA with conditional restriction on military aid to Uganda, a measure responding to a draconian new LGBTQ+ human rights law that punishes same-sex relationships with life in prison. Two different amendments offered by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., seek to end military assistance to Guatemala and Honduras over human rights abuses, following a similar amendment from Bush that attempts to limit financial assistance to Cameroon’s military and law enforcement over related concerns. 

Targeting the yet-to-be-settled war in Yemen, Reps. Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, and Val Hoyle have all come out in support of a measure blocking the U.S. from assisting the Saudi war effort if it resumes hostilities against the Houthis. The amendment follows a related push from Reps. Ted Lieu, Gregory Meeks, and Dina Titus attempting to extend a moratorium on refueling aircraft participating in the war. Meeks is the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and Mark Pocan, D-Wis., are scrutinizing the accelerating violence taking place in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in an amendment seeking a report from the Defense and State departments on the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank. 

Shifting Pentagon Funds to Social Programs

Central to the populist critique of the U.S. military budget is the argument that needs at home are being sacrificed for the war effort. Several amendments flow directly from that sentiment. Casar and Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, are seeking to use excess funds from the enormous military budget to fund child care for active military personnel at home. Like families all across America, active duty military are facing an acute child care crisis, spurred by a lack of affordability and adequate funding for military daycare facilities.

Even U.S special forces members struggle to find adequate family care as they balance rigorous training and dangerous deployments. If passed, the amendment would open up funds beyond the president’s budget request “to fund universal pre-kindergarten programs in schools operated by the Department of Defense Education Activity.”

Another set of amendments seeks to use the NDAA to redirect military spending toward domestic programs under the auspices of national security. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., introduced an amendment that would authorize the defense secretary to allocate tens of billions into public education and pre-K programs. “It is the sense of Congress that providing high quality public education for all is essential to national security and the ability of the United States to respond to major global challenges,” his legislation reads. Bowman also proposed an amendment scrutinizing military recruitment practices by requiring a report on how Defense Department agencies target students in high school. 

Bush, meanwhile, has introduced an NDAA amendment that calls on the secretary of defense “to protect the future national security of the United States by investing in the housing system of the United States.”

Correction: July 11, 2023, 6:28 p.m. ET
A previous version of this article misattributed a statement to Rep. Ilhan Omar. The statement was in fact issued by Rep. Sara Jacobs.

The post The Military-Industrial Complex Is Finally Facing Intense Bipartisan Scrutiny appeared first on The Intercept.

The Republican Party’s full embrace of the culture war as a political tactic — from drag queen story hour to critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives — has been chiefly guided by activist and polemicist Christopher Rufo, author of the new book “America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.” But is the effort fundamentally nihilistic? And is it overly obsessed with sex while claiming to uncover pedophiles everywhere in our midst? This week on Deconstructed, Rufo joins Ryan Grim to defend his approach and his philosophy.

[Deconstructed intro theme music.]

Ryan Grim: I’m Ryan Grim. Welcome to Deconstructed.

We are joined today by Christopher Rufo, who is the author of the new book, “America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.” I know that a ton of our readers — a ton of my listeners, I should say — will be very excited to hear that the left has conquered everything. So, congratulations to us, but Christopher …

Christopher Rufo: Well done, chaps. Well done.

RG: There we go. Nothing to it. We’ll teach you how we did it.

For people who don’t know, Chris is a conservative activist. Bari Weiss, in fact, on the back of this book, calls him “the most important and effective conservative activist in the country.” The Atlantic calls him “one of the most gifted conservative polemicists of his generation.” We got The New York Times on here calling him “the country’s preeminent critic of critical race theory.”

But you also have a bit of an unusual backstory. It’s not like you kind of came out of college and got a Koch Fellowship, and then worked for a House Republican, and have been an operative ever since; you kind of had a winding path here. I think a lot of our readers, probably — or listeners, probably — understand, know you as the guy who made critical race theory a household name. The guy who’s really gotten drag queen story hour into the news over the last couple years …

CR: Yup.

RG: But who are you before that? How’d you wind up in this place?

CR: Yeah. Before that I was probably a more typical kind of The Intercept listener-type. I think that I was on the hard left growing up in my teenage years. I come from a long family of Italian communists, so my aunts and uncles in Italy are still card-carrying unreconstructed communists to this day.

Some of my formative political memories are visiting my family and then seeing my aunt — my favorite aunt, actually still my favorite aunt — her complete collection of the works of Lenin. Totally unironically, I mean really, truly, the Lenin, and they gifted me the Che Guevara flags as a kid.

So that was kind of my formative political thinking.

RG: A lefty friend of mine that read your book said he feels like a right-wing Gramsci. Were you kind of brought up around Gramscian thinking?

CR: Very much so and, actually, very directly, not even just derivatively. My father was born and raised in a small town in Italy called San Donato Val di Comino, and I used to grow up going back into the town in long summers. I spent a year there when I took some time off of college, and I’ve spent years and years there collectively over my lifetime.

In the main town square, for a number of years — although the last time I was there just after Covid, it had closed down — was the Antonio Gramsci cultural center. So it’s a very left-wing town.

My grandmother used to tell the story of — the fascists were running after World War II, they were seeking votes and they were giving out blankets, they were giving, essentially, material goods to bribe people.

Then the organizer, the party organizer came after the elections and said, you didn’t vote for us, you said you’d vote for us after we gave you all this stuff. And she says, “What do you mean? I voted for you.” He said, “No, we didn’t get one single vote in this entire town, so I know for sure you did not vote for us.” And she was embarrassed, and she was mad, she would tell that story. She was mad at everyone else. She was like, “at least one person should have voted for them to save me the embarrassment.”

So, yeah. I think it’s possible, and maybe your friend who read the book sensed it a little bit. I think, in a way, it’s part of the way I’ve been able to kind of flummox some of my critics, and some of my opponents. In a lot of ways, I know their own language better than they do, and so I bring a different sensibility. I think that even readers on the left that would disagree with me or, obviously, not reach the same conclusions, I think could appreciate the text, because it’s not the kind of condescending … It’s not the, look at all these awful people, conservative, you know, polemical book. I’ve read a ton of those books over the years, I don’t like them either. I just think that they do a total disservice, they underestimate what’s happening.

And so, it’s a different feel, and I have a different experience than, yeah, most of the college-republican-to-RNC pipeline kind of kids.

RG: No, I think that’s true. I think you do treat these kind of left-wing authors and thinkers that you write about with more care than in a typical kind of RNC-pipeline-type-produced book.

But, before we get to the flummoxing, I do want to ask you: what happened? Like, where did you go wrong? How did you go from the path of light to the one that you’re on?

CR: That’s right. Well, I’ll take that comment ironically, and I’ll say a couple of things. One is that I went to Georgetown, that was my top pick. I wanted to go to Georgetown to get involved in politics. That’s where I felt like the energy was.

I was a California public school kid, and so, I land in Georgetown, I got involved and got organized. I joined, at the time, the marches against the Iraq war, which I still feel like was the right decision, the right position on my part. But the more I got involved with the organized left, the campus left, institutional left, I just had had such a process of disillusionment, and I felt as if the people who were working on this project were totally inauthentic, in the sense that they were the sons and daughters of America’s elites, they were pushing a left-wing ideological or intellectual line but, really, it was always an attempt to bolster their own status and position, and actually offered very little for people whom they were claiming to be helping.

And so, it felt very phony, it felt very self-serving. Having entered that period of my life as a kind of political radical, I was disgusted by it. In a sense, the — I don’t know how you would term it. You would know better, you live in D.C. right now. But it’s the folks who kind of land at Georgetown, they come from their nice fancy boarding school. They’re wearing their pink shorts and the popped collars, and they’re going to get the jobs eventually. After they go through their fun phase in college, they’re going to be investment bankers and senior advisors to their dad’s office.

I just said, this is not an actual left that has any claim on authenticity, any claim on actual care for what they say that they are caring for. And so, I just took off. I took off, and I became a documentary filmmaker, I traveled around the world and, at first, tried to get away from politics altogether.

RG: I totally understand that sentiment. There is for sure an element of the left that is inauthentic in that way, that sees leftism as social branding, and then ends up kind of weaponizing it in defense, ironically, of the very privilege that they come from, but they say that they are kind of fighting against. There’s no question about that, I’ve seen plenty of that, and I think that people who have the most intimate experience with the deepest and most grassroots elements of the left sometimes come away from it and recoil. I’ve always wondered if Kyrsten Sinema, because she was so deeply involved with the left, that’s partly why she hates the left so much. Like, she might have much less animosity for the left if she had just come up through the typical kind of democratic pipeline, and might just be a normal center-left. Instead she’s —

CR: Why? What is her background? I’m not aware. She was a grassroots-organizer type?

RG: She was black bloc, she was Code Pink.

CR: Was she really?

RG: She was an anarchist protesting the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

CR: No way. 

RG: Yeah, yeah. She was a serious radical for several years and was a Green Party member for a while. And then she’s just been on the greased skids from left to right ever since then.

But so, that’s one response to it. The other response is, screw this, I’m getting out of politics, I’m going to do documentary filmmaking. The other response is somebody like me who says, I think this element of the left is wrong, and I’m going to argue with them, but I’m going to stay positioned over here on the left until I’m just completely beaten down and driven out.

But then, how did you go from, OK, I’m in documentary filmmaking, I’m out of politics, to being not just somebody with kind of conservative sensibilities, but an actual on-the-team conservative activist.

CR: Yeah, that’s an interesting institutional shift, for sure. It happened gradually and then suddenly.

And so, I was making films around the world, I directed documentaries for PBS, I sold a film to Netflix, I did some international television projects, I traveled all over. And, simultaneously, as I was working and doing that, I was reading a lot, just feeding my appetite for reading, and learning, and studying. And I still had the passion for politics. I think when you have a love for politics, it really never leaves you. There’s something that grips you and won’t let you go.

And so, it turned into this kind of invisible and silent period of study. And as I was reading all of these books, I started reading some conservative books, they started making more sense to me. I was always comparing my experience on the ground, whether it was in Europe, or Asia, or Africa, or Latin America, or the United States, I was always comparing my observations on the ground to what I was reading. And the conservative philosophy, and then my ground level observations started to really move very closely together, and it seemed as if they were more accurate reflections of one another.

And then I decided that I wanted to shift my filmmaking practice a little bit. I had kind of a rough patch in my mid-to-late twenties, very difficult. You know, the documentary business is brutal. I was kind of getting tired of it, getting a bit burned out. And so, I said, oh, you know, I’m going to make a film on social and political issues. And so, I directed this film called “America Lost.”

I highlighted and spent, really, three years of production in three of America’s poorest cities. Conducting interviews, talking to experts in the communities, flying all around the country, interviewing some of the top scholars, left, right, and center on these issues, and burrowing into the lives of these families in these extremely distressed cities.

Youngstown, Ohio, Memphis, Tennessee, and Stockton, California. So, a kind of predominantly white working-class, or white formerly working-class industrial city in the north. Memphis, obviously, it’s kind of the tip of the Mississippi Delta, kind of Black inner city community. And then Stockton, which is Latino, multiracial, out west.

And so I had this, this incredible education talking to scholars, reading dozens and dozens of books, spending years on the ground. And the process of making that film convinced me of the accuracy, the correctness, and the utility of these conservative scholars and thinkers.

And then, what happened is, I’m in a pickle, right? So, I’m in a pickle because the documentary world is very far left. I mean, it is a left-wing cultural institution that has one set of priorities, and that’s it. It’s a small business, so there’s a lot of people that are hungry for the grants, and film festival slots, and fellowships, and broadcast deals.

And so, as people were whispering that Rufo has kind of gone rogue, politically, I just lost all of my business, my documentary business. PBS ended up airing the film after kind of delaying and fighting with me for a number of months, but it was very clear that that was going to be my last documentary.

And so I was, I don’t know, 30? Early 30s? You know, married, child. My career is kind of winding down in the documentary world, and so I decided, I’m going to try to see if there’s other opportunities to get back into politics; full circle. I applied for a Claremont fellowship, just out of the blue, not even really being extremely familiar with Claremont Institute, and I got a call from the president, Ryan Williams, and he says, “Hey, we’re interested. You’re a very unconventional candidate for a fellowship. You don’t have any track record in conservative politics, and I’m going to be very frank, you seem like a plant. I need you to look me in the eye and promise me that you’re not going to do a James O’Keefe-style send up of Claremont Institute, you know?” And I laughed. I said, “Oh man, I didn’t even think about that.”

And that actually happened to me a number of times. I got accused of being a plant probably two or three times as I was first getting into it, which is funny, now. And then I was really embraced and welcomed into this world, and made great friends, and had opportunities provided to me. I had some great mentors. George Gilder was an early mentor, and Bruce Chapman, and [they] really supported what I was doing and helped me open up this new field of work that has been just so rewarding.

And so, now it’s kind of odd. I identify, I tell people, hey, I’m a conservative activist, I’m fine with that, that label doesn’t bother me, but it’s not exactly the whole truth either, whatever my image might be in some of the press. It’s a little more complex than that.

RG: So, in hearing that story, the place where I would think that you went wrong is this.

CR: Tell me.

RG: So, you go to Stockton, you go to Memphis, you go to Youngstown, in these places that are blighted. And you’re seeing that they’re having a hard time turning themselves around because of the collapse of cultural values in these areas. And you’re seeing that the conservative movement is the one that’s taking that seriously and is willing to address that, whereas liberals are just kind of looking the other way, and offering some small amount of subsidies for people, and just hoping that they get back on their feet.

But what you’re also seeing is the result of neoliberalism, of deindustrialization, of the breaking of unions, of the offshoring of jobs, and the collapse of the economic base that allowed for the cultural strength that had kept those cities together before. And so, you then kind of paradoxically wind up aligning with the right, which really fueled — And it was a bipartisan effort, but the right is really driving this kind of Milton Friedman-style neoliberalism that is gutting these communities.

And so, it would be sort of like arriving at the scene of an Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and seeing the hospitals, and blaming the hospitals for how bad they are, rather than saying, well, what happened before that?

CR: Yeah. I mean, it’s an interesting point of view, and there’s some places with which I agree, some things with which I disagree. But I took that question very seriously, I actually spent most of my time thinking about that exact question.

And so, you’re left with this idea where — let’s trace the process of decline, and the story that you’re telling, I think there’s a lot of truth to it, in the sense that the flood grates of free trade were open, these industries were no longer competitive. But, actually, when you scrutinize it, it doesn’t hold up as well as you would think, for a couple of reasons.

One is that, I talked to a lot of these guys who were longtime Youngstown people, political observers — again, left, right, and center, actually mostly left in Youngstown — you know, old timers that worked in the industry. And the story that they told when you really pick it apart is something actually very different.

The problem in Youngstown was, in the sense that it was gifted this really rare and one-time position after World War II. Europe was devastated, Japan was devastated, China was still a kind of backwards economy. There was no industrial base in the entire world — Africa and Latin America had virtually nothing. The United States was the only industrial country, more or less, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, especially in the non-Soviet sphere.

We had a virtual monopoly over industrial production and, for Youngstown, steel production. We were producing steel for the whole planet, but that was never going to last forever. The Europeans started building factories, and then the Japanese started building factories, and the Japanese factories, for example, — and they lost a lot of business to these Japanese factories — it wasn’t necessarily because of trade liberalization, although that, certainly, you could have had more protectionist measures.

It was, in large part, because the Japanese were building their steel industry from scratch in the 50s and 60s, really taking off in the 1960s, getting government support, using really advanced modern Japanese engineering and production techniques. And then, by the 70s, these brand new, incredible Japanese steel factories are competing against these steel mills that were built 70, 80 years ago — they weren’t running very well, they weren’t efficient, they weren’t cost effective — and then you have this global competition that is entering after recovery from World War II.

And then, domestically, the story that they tell is also a little more complicated. You had extreme mafia activity that was smothering and really harming the steel industry in places like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Youngstown in the middle. And, at first, they actually started losing business to the bigger cities in the United States. And then it was the mafia, the unions were also an immense drag on their productivity, plus all of this new competition from new factories overseas.

The story that people tell when they’re honing in on the honesty is, yes, the free trade, especially in 1999, 2000, was the final blow. I mean, then the industry is done. But the industry was doomed decades earlier than that, and we were living off of the capital accumulation, we were living off the heyday, but we had significant problems that could not be resolved domestically and locally, really, as soon as the global recovery from World War II.

RG: Although, you also have, at the time, a revolution in tax policy going on, the biggest marginal tax rates being brought down. And even as you have productivity continuing to increase throughout the 80s and 90s. Despite everything you’re saying, because I think that’s true, America was in this unique place of being the only one that wasn’t completely destroyed by World War II. But you do have a situation where the economy’s still moving along, but all of the gains, all of a sudden, are now, instead of being spread around, are flowing up to the top. Which I think produces its own cultural rot, no?

CR: In a sense, you could maybe make that argument, but I would say that the standard of living for the median income household is still rising during that period. Yes, you have a more winner-take-all economy, but I don’t think that’s actually due to tax policy so much as it’s due to the nature of post-industrial and especially high-tech industries that are not capital intensive, they’re not resource intensive, and they are this kind of technological, creative and venture-backed industries that are winner-take-all, and they have global markets. Sometimes not China, etc., but more or less they have global markets.

And so, Tyler Cowen has written about this, and his idea is that we’ve transitioned to a winner-take-all economy. And yes, would I agree that that is, in some senses, not ideal? Does it create antagonisms and resentments?

But I don’t think that it is the case. The old Margaret Thatcher line is still somewhat true, even though I’m a critic of Thatcherism and Reaganism. But the old Margaret Thatcherism is true. Yes, the income for the top 1 percent has gone up, but the income for the median family has also gone up, if not in an identical proportion. And so, she asked very famously in a question time session, would you rather have everyone be poorer so that there’s more equality, or everyone be wealthier but having larger inequality at the top end?

And my view is that these are all tradeoffs, there’s no perfect system. But I would rather have, given the winner-take-all economy, I’d rather have everyone be better off. The paradox that you see in Youngstown and in Stockton and Memphis is, actually, the poorest people have a remarkable material standard of living. I mean, remarkable. The poorest people in Youngstown have larger houses, more cars, better appliances, and more disposable income than middle class people in Europe, for example, and certainly middle class people in any of the developing world.

And so, it isn’t simply the case that it is Great Depression-style poverty. It’s actually a very bizarre confluence of contradiction, really. It’s that this is material abundance relative to historical standards, and relative to even peer countries, but it is a poverty that is immiserating, and devastating, and horrifying, in a sense, beyond the Great Depression.

I talked to my grandfather about the Great Depression, and it was awful. I mean, like, your ribs are sticking out, you’re running low on basic necessities. But, in a sense, I would rather be in that condition under the cultural arrangements, and beliefs, and patterns, than being poor in Youngstown today, even if you have an old Cadillac, and a 2,000-square-foot house, and spending money.

I talked to one guy and his mother, and he’s back in prison, and another prisoner had sliced open his genitals and put a domino inside of it for some weird prison ritual. It’s like, the stuff happening today in the underclass and places like Youngstown is so horrifying that I think that, in some ways, you look at it, and you have to analyze it separate from a material analysis because, materially, you actually have abundance in any kind of historical context.

RG: Relative to the Great Depression. Right, for sure.

CR: No, I mean relative even to two generations prior. Relative to 1950. That’s the irony. Youngstown was one of the wealthiest cities in the world in 1950 but, even adjusted for inflation, the per capita or household income among poor Youngstowners is still higher than it was among middle class families in 1950.

And yes, of course, everywhere else it’s gone up much more, obviously. But you can’t simply say that this is a kind of dust bowl tragedy. That is an unselfconscious poverty. It’s a poverty where there was still a sense of nobility of spirit. The poverty in Youngstown is this just devastating poverty, in which people have all the material preconditions for human happiness but are racked with addiction, overdoses, prostitution, mental illness, anxiety and depression, family atomization.

If you really spend time, I think that you can’t simply say, well, if we got the old steel mill fired back up, everything would be fine. We’re beyond the point of no return on that kind of solution.

[Deconstructed mid-show theme music.]

RG: So, I didn’t mean to go this long without talking about the book, so let me get into that.

CR: Good. Yeah, sure.

RG: So, how does Herbert Marcuse fit into this? And give people a kind of quick thumbnail sketch of what the argument you’re making in this book is.

I said on the show, and I’ll say it again: I think it’s a well-written, well-researched, kind of well-crafted book. You know, I obviously disagree with its conclusion. We’ve talked about, and can talk more about, why I think some of it is nihilistic. While talking about the nihilism on the left, it has some of its own. But a very well done project overall.

But so, why is Herbert Marcuse kind of relevant here?

CR: The main narrative arc of the book, it tells the story of the so-called “long march through the institutions.”

So, this was the strategy adopted by the radical left theorists and activists that moved from the period of excitement in the late 1960s to a period of disillusionment in the early 1970s, and they concluded that their violent Marxist-Leninist revolution against the state had failed. It had been disrupted by Nixon, by J. Edgar Hoover. It had turned public opinion against them. Even The New York Times op ed page had really started just violently attacking or, rather, strenuously attacking the radical left at the time.

And so, they said the way forward for the left is to burrow within the established institutions, to bring our ideology in from the outside, and then slowly start to conquer these institutions from within, and bring our ideas, bring our theories, bring our values and principles into them. And so, I trace the origins; the book begins in 1968, to the conclusion, which is the summer of 2020.

The story is really how these fringe and radical ideas of the left wing at the time, with Marcuse, Angela Davis, Paulo Freire, and then, a little bit later Derrick Bell. [They] were outsider ideas that then became the conventional wisdom of all of America’s cultural institutions.

Not to say that the radical left — as you were joking in the beginning — well, we conquered everything. Great, we won. Of course, that’s not true, but the subtitle, “How the Radical Left Conquered Everything,” must be read in light of the title, “America’s Cultural Revolution,” and the cultural revolution is the left’s lowering of ambitions in some ways.

Well, we don’t want to take over the steel mills in Youngstown, but we do want to take over the HR department at the Steel Corp U.S.A., and then bring our ideas there with the hopes that it could soften the grounds culturally for an eventual total revolution, or economic revolution.

And so I really just trace the history of ideas, I tell the story of some of the key personalities, and then the argument is all implicit. And some of my left-wing critics have said, you’re not making an argument, you’re not making a logical case. And I kind of laughed at that critique, because it’s like, yes, this is a narrative nonfiction. The argument is implicit in the story and how I’m telling the story, which I think probably makes it more palatable to an audience. You know, except for analytical egghead types that might be looking for the logical proof in all of these things.

RG: To me, the hole in it comes — and we talked about this a little bit last week, but just to go over it again real quickly — let me read one piece from your book here.

You write, “The New Left’s language of subversion, which was authentically transgressive at its point of origin has created its own conformist and corrupted universe of political language,” un-quote. It was hardened into the new, “…armor of the establishment, defending the left-wing orthodoxy of the new elite, while exempting itself from the radical criticism of its own concepts, language, and power.”

And you talk elsewhere in the book about how corporations opportunistically use DEI and CRT, and public statements of allegiance to whatever cause to get themselves out of having to do anything of substance about those issues, to kind of let off some of that steam.

But so, rather than a kind of success, rather than the left conquering everything, that to me feels like the durability of capitalism and the capitalist class. That evidence of their ability to take challenges to them, and adapt them in ways that leave the status quo in place, much more than it’s evidence of a successful Marxist revolution.

Why should the left be satisfied with corporations adopting their language if nothing fundamentally has changed about the power structure?

CR: Yeah. I would agree with your analysis, and I think in the penultimate chapter, that’s really where the story ends.

And, certainly, I’m not suggesting that Fortune 100 companies have DEI, therefore this is communism, and you get some right-wing commentators that are saying these are all communist companies. I mean, that’s ridiculous, that is a total overdrawn conclusion. I don’t make that at all.

But the book to me ends, maybe, in this contradiction that I imagine you would agree with. It’s that: Because it’s America’s cultural revolution, the radical left conquered everything in the sense. That it has conquered the cultural language, symbolism, and principles, in that sense, in that cultural sense, so that every corporation is pledging loyalty to BLM. You know, you have DEI in every company in the United States. You have affirmative action policies that openly discriminate against disfavored groups according to the intersectional hierarchy.

You have all of these cultural practices, and yet, the basic economic function of these corporations is relatively undisturbed, let’s say. They’re still highly profitable, they’re still very innovative, they still control the commanding heights of the economy. Thank God, from my perspective.

So, what you have, and why I think the story of America’s cultural revolution is so interesting, is that you have to revive some classic Marxist terminology. The radical left has conquered the superstructure, so it has conquered the means of ideological and knowledge production. In the universities, in the K-12 schools, in the HR departments, in the federal bureaucracy, etc., etc. But it has not conquered, and really has no ambition of conquering anymore, the economic base.

And so, you have a revolution, in part, that has been completed, but cannot ultimately satisfy its Marxist ambitions. You have Marxism without Marx. There’s a certain hollowness and emptiness.

And so, as I conclude with the critical race theorists, my point is, critical race theorists have absolutely nothing to offer working class people of any racial background. They have absolutely nothing to offer poor inner city Black communities, like the one in Memphis, Tennessee, where I spent some time. And, in fact, their revolution is a revolution that is wholly cynical and self-serving, just like the people that I met in college.

They play the affirmative action game to gain prestigious academic positions. They play-act as revolutionaries to burnish their credential at dinner parties and lecture circuits and academic conferences. But, ultimately, they are not revolutionaries, they are not courageous figures of the left. And, in fact, when I went after the critical race theorists by name, and identified their discipline, and just launched artillery shells at them, rhetorically, they didn’t even defend their own ideas. They denied that they were calling themselves Marxists in the 1990s, they ran away from that. And, in fact, they denied that their theories were even influential at all.

And so, as I’m looking at the original theorists here — the Marcuses and Angela Davis, and Paulo Freire, even Derrick Bell, to a lesser extent — I circle all the way back with a begrudging but real respect for them. Because they had an authenticity, they had a desire, they had an idealism, that has really now just become kind of last-man style status seeking. Revolution, but a cynical revolution, that has no real ambitions.

It’s kind of a cheeky title, but the story as it unfolds, I think, should be very disillusioning for the left, but also very concerning for the right. I think, in a sense, no one is happy, right? You have a partial revolution, and neither side is quite satisfied.

RG: So, when it moves out of the academy and into pop culture, it becomes much more dumbed down, and you’re seeing, I think, a kind of dumbed-down version of it playing out in Florida right now.

You know, Ron DeSantis has been kind of the chief popularizer, I would say, and I think you would agree with that, of your theories of cultural counter revolution.

CR: Yes.

RG: And what’s big in the news lately is his new curriculum that Florida rolled out around African American history.

CR: Sure.

RG: The thing that the media has really fixated on is, teachers are supposed to instruct kids that slaves learned skills, that some slaves learned some skills that they could potentially use in other aspects of their life.

Setting that aside, I feel like that’s better understood in the broader way that the curriculum approaches the history, which is, it felt to me like some dorm room arguments I’d heard from conservatives back in college in the ‘90s. Like, you hear things like, well, look, you know, they had slavery in Africa, also, before they had — And then, well, look, actually slavery was worse in the Caribbean. Which, true, it was. And well, look, being a serf in Europe, that was really, really bad, too.

And like, all of it, coupled with the slaves learned some skills that they could use later, all of it brought together feels like saying, yes, obviously slavery was bad but, relatively speaking, maybe it wasn’t as bad as people say.

So like, is that where the conservative embrace of CRT ends up going? And why?

CR: I don’t think so. I mean, you still hear those arguments today, right? You’ve heard them, I’ve heard them. And many of them are based in facts, as you say, but I think they’re ultimately not —

RG: And that’s all in the curriculum. Those things that I heard in the dorm room, all of these things. Like, oh, there was slavery in Africa. It’s all true, but it’s like, why?

CR: But I think that, to take the point of this line that has caused controversy — And really, I think, you and I would both agree that the left-wing critique is that, oh, DeSantis is saying that slaves benefited from slavery.  It’s like, no, that’s not what it means.

And so, what I think the point is, and this is actually has a long lineage in African American, it’s really the kind of — Within American Black philosophy, and political theory, and activism, there is a strand of thinking that says, the solution, — and Thomas Sowell, you can bring it back to Booker T. Washington — but there is a strand of thinking that says, the attitude that should be prioritized is one of resiliency, is one of hope, is one of triumph over adversity. And yes, when you oversimplify it, it can be kind of a ridiculous Horatio Alger story. It can minimize some of the historical inequities, truly, really and truly.

But I think that that line was basically to say, these people who suffered under unimaginable brutality and evil conditions were resilient, they had capacities, they had talents. And even though they were smothered and held back under the system of slavery, which was evil and wrong, they were able to emerge from those immense difficulties and actually have capacities that they could realize once slavery was over.

I traveled in the deep south as I was making the film, and one of the things that really shocked me and was really quite inspiring was, in the Mississippi Delta, there was these free cities that were all Black, small cities and towns that were established by freed slaves. They had their own kind of thriving industries and economies in, still, some very difficult conditions. They had businesspeople, they had civic leaders, you can see all the old history, and I talked to folks about the history of these places.

And, to me, that was a triumph of spirit, and of ingenuity, and of resilience, and in courage. And I think that you can’t tell a story that is only that, right? You can’t minimize what these people faced, and we should confront it honestly and totally. But, also, you should not minimize these accomplishments, which are not trivial by any measure, and should not be covered over by people today, who see them as an impediment to their own left-wing politics. I mean, I think that that’s so — I mean, in the textbooks in places, even in the Deep South, those stories should also be highlighted. I think those stories are quite effective.

My opposition to, let’s say, on these issues, right? Race issues. My opposition to critical race theory, it’s been hashed out, anyone can go see my opposition. But for something kind of new: the opposition to, let’s say, even something like reparations, or something like affirmative action, stems from my observations in a place like Memphis, where I really saw [that] the more that the government and the state seeks to engineer social outcomes and on these crude measures, actually, the worse things get.

For me, after that long observation, I just feel very skeptical that these social engineering projects — You know, the government can do pretty good physical engineering, the New Deal taught us that. I mean, some of those bridges are still American landmarks. But social engineering is something quite different, and we’ve never been able to do it successfully. And so, I’m quite skeptical in that regard.

RG: If you’re still helping with the curriculum, if they’re still working on it, I’d suggest adding in something on Robert Smalls or, in general, talking about slave uprisings and resistance. To couple it with, OK, good that somebody became a blacksmith. But also talk about the kind of way that there was constant effort to overthrow slavery, you know? From the enslaved people themselves. Which I think is also I would …

CR: I would totally support that. I think that those stories are also very important.

RG: Picking up on DeSantis real quick, because I know you’ve got to go soon.  The fact that he is getting so rinsed in this Republican primary, you know, he had to reset his campaign.

In 2022, Republicans really adopted a lot of this drag queen stuff, a lot of the CRT narrative and, instead, Democrats picked up a seat in the Senate, did better than expected in the House. Like, there’s a disconnect somewhere, and I want to get your take on it.

My take on the disconnect: I think there’s a lot in the culture wars that you guys could argue and have 80 percent support and everybody being with you, for the most part, except, like, the most extreme elements of somewhere on campus. But you guys don’t stop there.

I think Roe being overturned kind of laid bare the broader kind of cultural agenda at work here. And so, you wind up having, you wind up going to the extreme so quickly, and you have so many people in the mainstream of the Republican Party just quickly calling Democrats pedophiles that I feel like you kind of lose credibility. And you guys start to seem like the ones that are obsessed with sex and bringing it into the culture war.

But I’m curious for your take. As you look back at 2022, and as you look at Ron DeSantis’ campaign, why has there been so much success, say, in state legislatures, and in dominating the cultural conversation, yet it’s not translating electorally?

CR: Well, I would dispute that. I don’t think that that is a fact.

RG: Which part?

CR: Governor DeSantis won by just a handful of votes in 2018. I mean, really, truly, less than 1 percent. And then he translated that into a 20-point blowout, winning all racial demographics, winning women by a huge margin, and even winning Miami Dade County, the urban county, the largest urban county in the state.

And so DeSantis is the example of taking these courageous positions, fighting very intelligently in the media, and then translating that into electoral rewards. I mean, a huge shift in his favor. I think that if you look at the other congressional candidates and the congressional races, I think you’re probably right, I think Roe had a drag on it. But I also think that President Trump, you know, the left made this all about Trump, and then Trump obliged, and said, yeah, let’s make it about President Trump. And I think that that was, obviously, it was also a drag.

But the governors that did quite well, even those who banned CRT, who fought on some of these issues, and Governor DeWine, and governors in Georgia and other states, they also won big 15-point victories, or more.

And so, the primary question is, I think, actually the same phenomenon. I think that Republicans love DeSantis. If you ask Republicans, they’ll say he’s the best governor. But Trump, again, is the dominant force in conservative politics. I mean, he really is, whether you would like that to be the truth or not. And I think that the flagging support for DeSantis so far in the primary is really just a strong, and loyal, and passionate base of support for President Trump, much more than it’s against DeSantis, which I don’t think it is.

And so, that’s the challenge. But even Trump, I mean, you know, Trump, of course, made CRT a big issue. I worked with him on CRT. And then, if you look at his video statements, the kind of scripted policy statements that he’s been doing. I mean, they’re very fire and brimstone cultural commentary.

And so, I think that if you look at it in this way, the top three candidates right now in the polling are Trump, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy. All of them are totally aligned with the narrative and program that I outline in the book, and they have 90+ percent of the market share. So, I think the best way to look at it is, actually,  the new right and the new culture war right currently now has a 90 percent market share, and the Reaganite or neoliberal right has found itself, I think, hopefully, in a generational position where they’re now being, uh, shuffled out.

RG: Last question, then, because I know you’ve got to go.

I think in the general election what you’re going to wind up with — I’m curious for your take on this — is a messenger problem. I mean, setting aside not just Speaker of the House Denny Hastert, who had his own pedophilia issues, you’ve got Donald Trump who bought Miss Teen U.S.A., and he’d saunter around the locker room and be gross. One of the heroes on the right today is Andrew Tate, whose literal business model is grooming.

CR: Oh, it’s horrible.

RG: I mean, if you go online, everybody is constantly defending the guy as this beacon of —

CR: That’s horrible. It’s such a mistake. I mean, I find him so disgusting. Yeah, so — Yeah. That shouldn’t be, and I’ll work on it. I’ll work on it, Ryan.

RG: Finally, the Catholic Church. Like, every state that probes, whose attorney general probes the Catholic Church history finds just horrifying levels of abuse. And so, when you see so much focus on one side, but not the other, it feels like a messenger issue. Like, how serious is this?

So, do you agree? Do Republicans have some cleaning up to do here?

CR: Of course. And, obviously, any kind of abuse should be condemned and rectified and prosecuted.

And something like an Andrew Tate: I mean, Andrew Tate is not a hero or a model, or should get any support from the right. I think it’s a reaction, where, oh, the left hates Andrew Tate, therefore conservatives like Andrew Tate. That kind of thinking is a total disaster, and so, you’ll find no support from me for anything like that.

RG: Alright. Christopher Rufo is the author of “America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.” Thanks for joining me on Deconstructed.

CR: Thank you.

[Deconstructed end-show theme music.]

RG: That was Christopher Rufo, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. Our producer is José Olivares. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. The episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Roger Hodge is The Intercept’s editor-in-chief, and I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept.

If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week, and please go and leave us a rating or review, it helps people find the show. Go ahead and rate any episode that you want, even if you rated one already.

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Thanks so much, and I’ll see you soon.

The post Meet the Man Driving the Right’s Culture War Panic appeared first on The Intercept.

The people of Iran are in the midst of one of the country’s biggest uprisings — and harshest government crackdowns — since the Iranian Revolution. 

It started with shopkeepers in bazaars closing their doors at the end of December in protest of the plummeting Iranian rial and economic distress. But demonstrations soon spread to universities and across the country to every single province. Working-class Iranians wanted relief — both from the inflation crisis and U.S sanctions.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks with Hooman Majd, an Iranian American writer and journalist, who explains what sparked the protests and the government’s brutal response. 

“I don’t think in the history of Iran, even during the Islamic Revolution, have we seen this number of fatalities.” says Majd. “The death toll is staggering. Really, because that death toll is staggering, what’s happened is there are no more protests. And that’s where we are right now. No more protest, heavy security on the streets. Massive security on the streets, on every corner. It isn’t martial law. But it feels like martial law to people living there.”

The path forward is unclear, Majd says. But a few things are certain. “The idea is no to shah, no to an ayatollah, no to theocracy. Let’s just, finally, after 120 years of demonstrating — which is what the Iranians have been doing since 1906 — after 120 years of looking for democracy, can we just do that? Can we just get a democracy? That is probably the biggest sentiment in Iran: wanting a democratic rule, wanting the repression to end, wanting better relations with the rest of the world so these sanctions can be lifted.”

Some people inside and outside Iran have called on President Donald Trump to intervene. The idea that the U.S. should — or could — impose regime change militarily is folly, Majd says. “Sure, we were able to impose a regime change in Iraq militarily. They can do that again in Iran, possibly with the help of Israel or even without the help of Israel. But then what do you have? Do you have another basically authoritarian, autocratic government? That’s not what, I would argue, most people would want. And then there’s a whole other group of people in Iran, I think, who would say, ‘Anything is better than this.’” 

Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to intervene in another international arena. He has set his sights on taking over Greenland. 

Despite walking back his statements pledging to do so by force, Trump has now said he’s forming a plan with the secretary general of NATO for Greenland’s future. We’re joined by independent investigative journalist Lois Parshley, who explains the financial interests behind Trump’s obsession with the Arctic island, the billionaires and tech moguls plotting to exploit Greenland’s natural resources, and how the people of Greenland have responded to the president’s pledge to violate their sovereignty.

Shortly before Trump first expressed an interest in Greenland during his first term, his ambassador to Denmark and Greenland visited a major rare earth mining project on the island, Parshley reported last year.  

“More recently, The Guardian reported that it was Ronald Lauder, heir to the global cosmetics brand [Estée Lauder] who was also a longtime friend of Trump’s, who first suggested buying Greenland. He has acquired commercial holdings there and is also part of a consortium who want to access Ukrainian minerals. I should also say here, it’s probably important to note that blowing up NATO relationships and severing ties with longtime allies and fellow nuclear powers does not increase U.S. national security.”

Fresh off the invasion of Venezuela, the idea that Trump wants to take over Greenland is even more alarming, Parshley says. 

“I’m not the first person to report on these kinds of major tech interests in things like crypto states or special economic zones. People have been pointing this stuff out for a long time, but it’s not until President Trump started saying the quiet part out loud that people have really been registering some of these absurd concepts that seem to now be creeping toward reality.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. 

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy. 

In late December, people in Iran took to the streets to protest the worsening economy as the country’s currency plunged to a record low. As protests grew, the government opened fire on civilians and implemented an internet blackout. 

Leila: We tried to overcome the regime, but every night, when it got late, about midnight, they attacked with their guns and they wiped out the streets from the living people. They killed everybody, almost everybody. If you got injured and you tried to run, they kill you. 

AL: We have obtained an exclusive and rare firsthand eyewitness account from one of the protesters who took to the streets of Tehran over the past few weeks. She wishes to remain anonymous, so for her safety, we’ll call her “Leila.”

Leila:  I’m sorry that I’m alive. I feel guilty that I’m not dead. And the others are.

AL: It’s been difficult to confirm the current death toll, and estimates range from the low thousands to over ten thousand. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has threatened to intervene, while Iran has blamed the U.S. and Israel for the protests.

To understand what’s happening, I’m joined by Hooman Majd, an Iranian American writer, and the author of numerous books, including most recently, “Minister Without Portfolio.” Majd has written for The Intercept, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Foreign Affairs, among many others, and is a contributor to NBC News.

Welcome back to the show, Hooman Majd.

Hooman Majd: Thank you very much, Akela.

AL: To start, Hooman, can you give us a brief recap of what’s happening in Iran? What sparked the protest, what’s driving people to the streets, and how has the Iranian government responded?

HM: Yeah. The timeline is that the end of December, 28th or 29th, baazaris — people in the bazaar — in Tehran went basically on strike, closed their shops, and started protesting because of the incredible drop in the value of the national currency, the rial. The purchasing power of ordinary people has been decimated. And for baazaris who sell goods, often imported goods, it became an untenable situation with the currency fluctuation. So they were like, “Well, we can’t afford to sell things today at this price, because tomorrow we’re going to have to import them at a higher price.” So that was the beginning of the protest. 

Other people then took up the protests, as it were, and went out and protested. Some of them were also protesting about the economy and the terrible situation, living standard, reduction in living standards. Others wanted the regime to go completely.

So it started out really as an economic protest, and other people joined in, especially young people joined in, and demanded an end to the regime altogether. And the reason they did that is because they just didn’t buy it that the regime could, that the system — if you want to call it the government — could do anything about the collapse of the economy in the way that it has been collapsing.

And they also didn’t think the government or the regime could protect them after the 12-day war in June, the decimation of — the obliteration, as Donald Trump calls it — of the nuclear program. And so they’re like, “OK, what are you guys going to do to make things better?” No sanctions relief, no negotiations with the U.S. on the immediate horizon. So people were very angry. So apart from the actual economic protest, it’s like OK, time for change. We want serious change. 

The government actually responded and said, “OK, you guys are right.” Even the supreme leader responded on those initial couple of days. “You’re right, people have a right to protest. They have a right to be upset. We have to fix this.” The government said it was going to implement the equivalent of $7 [monthly] credit into everybody’s account so they could buy goods like eggs and stuff like that — but that really isn’t enough. Seven dollars in Iran basically will buy you the equivalent of a Happy Meal. They don’t have McDonald’s there, but that would be the equivalent. For a family, once a month? That’s nothing. That’s not really a solution. So the protests continued, and people weren’t satisfied. They weren’t going home. 

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Then former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi in Washington — the shah’s son — became the self-appointed leader of the opposition, leader of a transition to a new Iran, and told people in Iran to go out on the streets en masse — huge numbers — and chant slogans against the government, whatever. And they did.

And whether they did it because they are big fans of Pahlavi, or because it was just an opportunity to continue the protest in the name of someone — not everybody was chanting his name, but certainly huge numbers were, and that, I think, rattled the government. That night is when they cut off the internet, to stop people from being able to communicate and continue these protests.

That’s when the government said that infiltrators came in and started shooting and killing people and killing security officials and killing police. Up until then, it had been mostly peaceful, and the police had actually not interfered in any big way. But videos emerged, even despite the internet shutdown, videos of people attacking, burning buildings, attacking policemen. There’s one horrific video of a security officer — half-naked — being beaten almost to death. And then there are also videos of security officials firing into the crowd. 

There were riots, I should say. And it became a really, really scary situation for almost every Iranian, certainly the ones on the streets. But the terror that was happening on the streets, whether it was 100 percent on the side of the Iranian government shooting people and killing people, or whether it was some rioters killing some of the security people, setting fire to mosques, buses, cars, things like that.

And the crackdown continued and became even more severe. I don’t think in the history of Iran, even during the Islamic Revolution, have we seen this number of fatalities — deaths. This is where we are now. The amount of people having been killed and the number of people injured with all the videos that have emerged out of Iran through Starlink, or at various times when the internet does actually switch on for five minutes and then switches back off, is staggering. The death toll is staggering, really.

Because that death toll is staggering, what’s happened is there are no more protests. And that’s where we are right now. No more protest, heavy security on the streets. Massive security on the streets, on every corner. It isn’t martial law. But it feels like martial law to people living there.

I’ve been able to communicate with family briefly, very briefly, but I’ve been able to communicate video-wise. It certainly feels like martial law. People don’t want to go out at night. If they do venture out at night, they are told to stay off the streets by the security forces. But there isn’t really any shooting or protesting at this time.

The government is putting out that everything’s over and we’re going back to normal. I wouldn’t say it’s back to normal, go that far, but certainly there aren’t any protests at this time.

AL: A couple things you mentioned that I just want to pick up on. One, we’re talking about the death toll, and we actually were discussing this in a meeting with colleagues last week, and it was right when CBS had published the story that the death toll had risen over 12,000.

And we were discussing this along with my other colleagues, and we were like, that seems wrong. Because the numbers that had been coming out in the days prior to that were in the hundreds, or like some estimates in the low thousands, and then all of a sudden, it shot up.

But this is the result of there being an internet blackout, not being able to get accurate information out of Iran. And now it’s apparent that the death toll is well above 10,000. And so I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about the effect that this is having on how the world is interpreting these events as far as what we’re actually able to confirm.

HM: The government will eventually put out numbers — which will either be believed or not believed. And certainly, it’s been admitted, even by the supreme leader, “thousands” — that’s the word he used. He didn’t say how many thousand, but thousands.

AL: Yeah.

HM: Now, let’s remember these protests were not just in Tehran, and we’re getting most of our videos out of Tehran or Mashhad, these two big cities. But there were protests in the entire country, in almost every town, small towns. And yes, the number is horrific, but it’s not just in Tehran. They didn’t mow down 12,000 – 20,000 people just on the streets of Tehran, but they did mow down people. There’s no question there. People have been killed.

The internet shutdown is, the argument has been to prevent terrorists, as they say. The government says terrorists or infiltrators, Mossad agents, CIA agents, whatever you want to say, whatever you want to call them — and by the way, also the MEK, the other opposition group that actually is armed and does have people inside Iran — from communicating and stirring up trouble and taking over government buildings. 

You actually had Reza Pahlavi telling people to go out and take over government buildings. And then he also said to Norah O’Donnell on CBS News that this is war.

Norah O’Donnell: Is it responsible to be sending citizens in Iran to their deaths? Do you bear some responsibility?

Reza Pahlavi: As I said, as I said, as I said, this is a war, and war has casualties.

In fact, in order to preserve and protect and minimize the death toll, minimize innocent victims yet again be killed by this regime, action is needed.

HM: It also seems like people inside Iran who have communicated say, “We weren’t starting a war. That wasn’t our intention, to start a war.” They certainly weren’t starting a war because they were unarmed. Why would they start a war unarmed? 

But the internet shutdown is not just to stop people from communicating, which that’s one, obviously, one obvious element of it. The other element is because they’re turning it on and off right now and only in certain neighborhoods. Go from one neighborhood and it’ll be on for an hour, full 5G internet on your phone. And then it will be off. And then it’ll go to another neighborhood or another part of town, and it’ll be on and then off again.

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And this is my own suspicion, is that they are trying to identify — they’re trying to monitor internet usage and find out where the organizers of any rioting and/or terrorist and/or Mossad agents are. And the way they can do that by having it come on so they communicate, because not everybody’s communicating by Starlink. There aren’t that many terminals in Iran. And they’ve been successfully jamming the Starlink communication. So occasionally it works, occasionally it doesn’t.

AL: I just want to mention for our listeners, people have been smuggling Starlink terminals into Iran in order to prop up the internet. That’s what we’re referring to. So we’re talking a little bit about Pahlavi, too. I want to play another clip from Leila, who we heard at the top, who is one of the protesters who is supportive of Pahlavi. Let’s hear her again.

Leila: We are here, and 90 percent purely looking for a better future with our king. We chant for our beloved king, Mr. Reza Pahlavi. And we chanted for our hero. He is going to do something, I know. I believe in him. And we listened to him. We listened to every order he gave.

AL: So this is one perspective from a protester who supports the son of the shah, Reza Pahlavi, and we’ve heard him a lot in recent media as you’ve mentioned.

Can you describe the complexities involved in the types of people who have been protesting, who they support? Obviously, this is not a monolith. They don’t all support Pahlavi. Can you expand on that?

HM: Yeah, I can. Well, I think I can, it’s complicated because the opposition to the Islamic regime has been there from the day the Islamic regime was created.

The initial opposition was the MEK, the Mojahedin-e Khalq, under Massoud Rajavi, who was hoping that he’d become prime minister. Khomeini and the Islamic regime set him aside. The people who had supported him, this was the MEK, the Mojahedin who had been a terror group on the American terror list because they had killed American citizens during the shah’s reign.

They fled after committing some terror acts against the Islamic regime, hoping to overthrow it and then take over. This is in 1980. They fled mostly to Iraq and then joined Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran. Which is why nowadays most Iranians, the vast majority of Iranians, do not consider them a viable opposition group, partly because they supported the enemy against their people and more than half a million Iranian boys basically died in that war.

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And secondly, because they’re considered to be somewhat cultish, if not an actual cult, the way that they operate. So that’s one opposition group, and they’re still very active, and they still do have people inside Iran. They commit assassinations from time to time, so on and so forth. 

Reza Pahlavi, who is the shah’s son, initially, when his father died in 1980, declared himself king in exile. And then subsequent to that, for many years, has been relatively quiet. The time that he really came out and started taking on this mantle of being a leader of an opposition was during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement; a little bit during the Green Movement, but not really because the Green Movement wasn’t against the regime, it was very much a civil rights movement. It was very much in favor of Mousavi who was actually part of the regime, who had, they claimed had lost the election to Ahmadinejad.

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So this is going back a little bit into history in 2009, but in 2022 during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, when Mahsa Amini was killed by the morality police, it was claimed that she was killed by the morality police, and there’s video to show her dying in the hospital. There was a real genuine uprising in Iran against the system that produced this kind of result: that a woman with a “bad” hijab, as it were, not quite covering all her hair, could end up dead, a young woman at that. That uprising caused people in the diaspora to believe that the regime was very weak and could be potentially overthrown. Reza Pahlavi took on the mantle of being the leader of that. And then it fizzled again his attempts to become an opposition leader, who had a viable chance — a real chance — to go back to Iran and lead a transition to a new regime, if not actual monarchy.

And then he was promoted by Israel and went to Israel in 2023, met with Netanyahu and began a campaign against, once again, against the Islamic Republic and himself as the leader of an opposition. And during this period, from 2022 to 2025, now 2026, his visibility has grown. His reputation has grown. Some people do see him as a potential liberator as it were. And during these protests, he really took on a very, very public role. Coming out, issuing videos, issuing proclamations: Go out, take out government buildings, the revolution is nigh; I’ll be there; I’m joining you soon. But he’s still in Washington and then obviously hasn’t made that move yet.

The second week of January, I believe, he was in another interview asking President Trump and/or Israel to strike, in his words, strike Iran, to finish off this regime. That has made him, among some people who are against the regime, not as popular as he could be. Siding with the enemy, Israel, which killed 1,000 Iranians in their bombing campaign in June, that’s one aspect that makes some people uncomfortable with him. There’s another aspect of just not wanting to bring back another authoritarian regime after this one.

Certainly, if not he himself, his supporters in the diaspora, at least in the West and especially in England and America, have shown themselves to be very undemocratic — attacking the Iranian Embassy in London, for example, and then injuring a bunch of policemen, attacking them physically, the police and having some of them ending up in hospital, and getting arrested. Giving speeches where, “we don’t want to talk about democracy, only the shah.” Some people saying, “Let’s make SAVAK great again” — SAVAK was the shah’s secret police that tortured people in jail.

So some of that just turns other people off. And the idea is like, no to shah, no to an ayatollah, no to a theocracy. Let’s just finally, after 120 years of demonstrating — which is what the Iranians have been doing since 1906 — after 120 years of looking for democracy, can we just do that? Can we just get a democracy? 

That is probably the biggest sentiment in Iran wanting a democratic rule, wanting the repression to end, wanting better relations with the rest of the world so these sanctions can be lifted. I think that’s the greater goal. I think some people will use Reza Pahlavi to try to force that to happen in a way, if not being an actual supporter. And yes, there are people like Leila, who you’ve just mentioned or just played her tape who definitely are very much in favor of him as a leader and as even an autocrat.

A famous Iranian economist, Saeed Laylaz, who’s been very critical of the regime — he lives in Iran — has said Iran’s waiting for a Bonaparte. They want a Napoleon to come in and rescue everyone and fix the system — sort of like Reza Shah, the previous shah’s father, who came in and dragged Iran into the 20th century in the 1920s, and declared himself king overthrowing, the previous very, very, very weak Qajar kings who had sold off parts of the Iranian economy to various interests — British tobacco, British petroleum, so on and so forth. And he brought that together.

And then they demonstrated again in 1953, as we know, democracy under Prime Minister Mossadegh. And then again in the revolution in 1979. It’s always been for democracy, but the result has never been democracy. So some people would recognize that. Some protesters would recognize that, oh, if Reza Pahlavi comes here, either by being helicoptered in by Israel or the United States, it’s possible. Sure. We were able to impose a regime change in Iraq militarily. The U.S. can do that again in Iran, possibly with the help of Israel or even without the help of Israel. But then what do you have? Do you have another basically authoritarian, autocratic government? That’s not what, I would argue, most people would want.

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And then there’s a whole other group of people in Iran I think, who would say, “Anything is better than this. So if it means having Reza Pahlavi — great, fine. That’s better. That’s going to be better because at least the bars will be open. We’re going to have sanctions relief because he’s half American, basically. So the sanctions will be off, and the economy will improve. And who cares if he loves Israel?” So there’ll be those people, too. 

AL: I just want to mention, there was a clip going around on social media of the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying, openly, that the goal of these sanctions is to push the Iranian people so far that they rise up and overthrow the regime.

MH: Yeah.

Scott Bessent: I said that I believe the Iranian currency was on the verge of collapse, that if I were an Iranian citizen, I would take my money out. President Trump ordered Treasury and our OFAC division — Office of Foreign Asset Control — to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked. Because in December, their economy collapsed.

AL: I also want to talk about the geopolitics here, and then I want to go back to Pahlavi, but particularly these allegations by the Iranian government that Israel has been involved in fueling the protests. Israel has admitted to being part of this. Can you walk us through what happened there? The impact both inside and outside of Iran, and, you’ve alluded a little bit to this, but if at all how that might discredit Pahlavi in the eyes of some of his would-be supporters.

HM: He was discredited by going to Israel first, praying at the Western Wall, but not visiting a mosque, not going into the West Bank. So going to Israel, and especially with this particular government in Israel, I think did leave a bad taste in Iranian’s mouths.

And then to top it all off, when Israel attacked Iran and didn’t just attack the nuclear sites — was blowing up buildings, children were being killed in apartment buildings where they weren’t the target, admittedly, but if you were targeting a general in the IRGC in a multistory building, you’re killing a lot of innocent people. Or a scientist, I should say, for example. There’s video, which was verified, of bombs falling on a square in north Tehran, and cars being thrown into the sky. When he then refused to even condemn the attack on his own people, that also lost him some support. 

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And when he said, “This is [our] Berlin Wall movement” as his message to the Iranian people to rise up, it was a miscalculation because Iranians weren’t going to rise up as they were being attacked by a foreign country. They just weren’t. They were actually, I wouldn’t say they rallied around the flag, but they definitely rallied — not in support of the regime necessarily, but in support of the nation, as it were, that was being attacked by a foreign country. It doesn’t matter what the foreign country is, Iraq or Israel. So he did lose support there.

Israelis aren’t particularly interested in human rights in Iran; they don’t care about the freedom of the Iranian people. If they don’t care about the freedom of the Palestinian people, how are they going to care about the freedom of the Iranian people? It’s a very cynical view. The goal of Israel, especially the Netanyahu government, is and the Likud party is to make Iran as weak as possible so that it’s no longer a threat to them and no longer a challenge, not just as a threat, but a challenge to their hegemonic behavior in the neighborhood.

Right now, Israel has complete freedom to bomb any country in the neighborhood, and nobody can react. I think Iran is the only one that can react and has proven that it was able to react in the 12-Day War and actually got missiles through to Tel Aviv and other cities and killed innocent Israelis.

AL: If Pahlavi isn’t a realistic alternative, who or what do you think is the most appropriate or likely, rather, solution?

HM: The honest truth? It’s impossible to predict. What we should remember is that in these protests, which were large and very pointedly anti-regime in many cases, not in all cases, but in many cases, the security forces — the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards, the actual army itself, which are made up mostly of conscripts — none of them fractured. There were no defections. There was no sense that any of the security officials were going to not follow the orders and do the crackdown and bring about order. Not one that we know of, at least not one serious one. 

There may have been occasional cops or Basij or even IRGC members, younger ones, who wouldn’t fire on anyone but would just patrol. But they didn’t come out and say, we’re defecting to the side of the opposition.

And the other thing to remember is that Pahlavi, back in 2025, after the 12-Day War in June, set up a system where people could defect anonymously through a web portal. And he claimed at one point, within a month, that he had 50,000 armed people from the armed forces in Iran, various armed forces, ready to defect at the right time. If there was a right time, this was the right time. Not only did not 50,000 defect to his side, but not even one came out, or at least publicly, and defect to his side. So that’s not happening in terms of the regime crumbling, cracking in that way with the security services so far. That’s not happened.

So in terms of what is in the future, I think in the immediate future, the regime survives. And people are terrified. They’re shocked, they’re in trauma. People in Iran, I’d say even people outside Iran who have family in Iran, are shocked and traumatized. Not being able to reach our families is tough.

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I think that for the immediate future — short of an interference or intervention by Donald Trump or Israel — I think the regime survives in the short term. In the long term, we have to remember that the supreme leader is going to be 87 years old this year, I think, and he’s had cancer, probably not in the best of health. So far, people have remained loyal to him. Whether that continues over the longer term is questionable. Whether Trump decides to pull a Venezuela and then decide that he can work with, or the U.S. can work with, one of the Revolutionary Guards generals, or the president of Iran, or the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council is very powerful, Ali Larijani — who knows?

Who knows what options, because it was just announced, I think, this last week that options are being presented to Trump by the military, by the, I assume, the intelligence agency, as to what options he has vis-à-vis Iran, in terms of what kind of blow he can do on Iran, or what kind of attack/strike was it were he could make on Iran, or what kind of blow it could be to the regime.

It does seem that he wants to do something to Iran because he said he was going to. It’ll be far, far too late to help the protesters, which he initially claimed he was doing.

AL: Right. 

MH: And now the argument is that [Trump says,] well, I saved 837 people from being executed. So that’s how I helped the protesters. Which may or may not be true, but it’s irrelevant. He hasn’t refuted that he believes it’s time for new leadership in Iran. Now what that leadership is, he certainly hasn’t met with the shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, and hasn’t indicated that he believes he’s a viable option. So we don’t know. 

Again, prediction is impossible, but there are various scenarios. It’s not what I would want to happen. I’m living in America. I don’t have a right to say what I would — I would like Iranians to be happy. I would like Iranians to have the government that they want. I would like Iranians to have democratic rule. I would like Iranians inside Iran to have an economy that works for them and have jobs and be able to spend money and have disposable income and travel. All the things that we take for granted in the West, I would want my fellow Iranians inside Iran to have. How they bring that about, it’s not my place to make the prescription.

AL: You mentioned the 837 people, you’re referring to the protesters that Iran has backed off from hanging now, as a result, ostensibly, of Trump’s comments. 

HM: Yes. 

AL: I want to turn back to this question of a targeted strike from the United States. We have another clip from Leila.

Leila: We are hopeful that Mr. Trump can help us because as long as we are not armed, we are only a bunch of meat in front of the bullets.

AL: What do you make of this kind of sentiment, asking Trump for help? And the idea of a targeted strike, what would that actually do? Does anyone think that striking a government from afar will remove that government? What are you hearing?

HM: I mean, certainly people like Leila, who you just played the tape of, certainly she’s not armed and I think most of the young people are not armed. But there have been armed people in Iran in these protests. We have verified videos of armed people, especially in Kurdish areas, in Baluchestan and in certain parts of the country, there have been armed clashes. 

It is hard to get guns in Iran. It’s not a gun-friendly country. I think people are desperate, and I think a lot of the protesters who either witnessed some killings or mass killings probably feel that there has to be some kind of strike to stop the government from behaving the way it does and or to potentially bring about regime change.

Now, striking the leadership, for example, if President Trump decides to do that — it’s very unlikely to bring about regime change because what’s behind that strike? We saw that in Venezuela. He wasn’t going to helicopter [María Corina] Machado into Caracas because he had no idea if the military would support her. You just don’t have any idea, and you don’t want a war.

Again, going back to 2003, George Bush did want a war. He was happy to have a war. But we know what that was. And as we know, Trump has, on his own personal level, always been against those kinds of foreign interventions. He likes the one-and-dones, as it were, one and done, I’m in and out. Same thing with Iran in June, when he in a space of a couple of hours, he, as he says, obliterated the Iranian nuclear program without killing anybody on the ground, without any American servicemen losing their lives. What appears to be his notion of doing something of striking Iran or some kind of strike on Iran would be to take out some of the top leaders but leave the regime in place and hope that someone powerful takes over, whether it’s, as I pointed out, Ali Larijani or Mohammad Bagher, who’s the speaker of Parliament. These are former IRGC generals who are in politics now. That’s a possibility. I don’t know if that’s something that he’s considering.

But regime change in a big way means what? The only way that can be accomplished by force is to land American troops. And go to war with basically the people who are going to fight to the death.

We have to remember that Iran isn’t a situation where 99 percent of the people are against the regime. Even if the regime only has 10 to 20 million supporters out of 90 million people — I’m not going to count the children, obviously — but it has shown to have had more than 10 million supporters.

In the last presidential election where the reform president won, Pezeshkian won, 13 million people voted for Saeed Jalili, who’s probably the most hard line of the hard-liners, who has zero relations with the West, an absolute hard line. His Ph.D. thesis was the foreign policy of the prophet. This is how deeply, Islamically theological he is. And he got 13 million votes. The fact that he lost but with 13 million votes should indicate something. Let’s say even the 13 million was exaggerated, 10 million people, and they’re the ones with guns and they’re not going anywhere. And they have no escape to go anywhere. 

Right now, people like Reza Pahlavi, or at least his people, not himself directly, are claiming that they will seek revenge for these people who have blood on their hands. And they’re going to basically do what the Islamic regime did to the shah’s closest allies and execute them the first day they take over. These people, they don’t have an escape route. Most of them, the vast majority of them, don’t have big bank accounts overseas that they can access. Most of them don’t have family overseas or places they can escape to. If you thought at one point that if there’s a revolution and these, the ones who are the diehard religious, diehard theocratic supporters, theocracy supporters would go to Damascus, that’s no longer possible. If you thought they would go to Beirut, that’s not possible. If you thought they’d go to Caracas, that’s not possible anymore. There aren’t a lot of places they can go, if there is a regime change. So they’re going to fight. If there’s a war, they’re going to fight. They’re going to fight. 

One of the potential problems with regime change attempts, at least by outsiders, is that we end up in a civil war like Syria. Because if there’s a decapitation at the top of the leadership, then there are Kurdish armed groups who are separatists. You’ve got Azeri separatists, you’ve got Baloch separatists down in the Southeast, you’ve got the Arab separatist in the Southwest — many of them armed, separatist groups, I mean — who could break up the country. You could have a civil war going on.

The MEK is not going to stand by and allow Reza Pahlavi to take over. Reza Pahlavi supporters aren’t going to allow the MEK to take over. So you’re going to see those clashes. So it could be very, very messy. And I have to believe that the U.S. intelligence community is laying all this out for President Trump as he makes a decision. In fact, I’m sure they are. It would be crazy, and I’m sure the Mossad has been laying it out for Benjamin Netanyahu as well.

AL: I do want to ask one more question about the weakening of Iran’s regional allies in recent months: Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. How has that affected the regime’s power and stability?

HM: No question it’s affected its power. It’s power projection, for sure. In terms of stability, yes, it’s one of the complaints of people who protest against the regime — that we spent all this money, all this effort to become this power in the region, and it’s all gone in the space of two years. We spent all this money which we could have spent inside Iran on people. Billions and billions of dollars on Hezbollah decimated, if not, it’s not gone completely, but still, the leadership is decimated. The power of Hezbollah has been weakened to the point where they’re not a threat to anybody really anymore, or certainly not to Israel in any significant way. Hamas decimated, certainly not a threat anymore to Israel.

Caracas is problematic only because that was their springboard to this continent, the South American continent. And so that’s no longer good. Syria, of course, not a threat to anyone. And the hundreds of billions of dollars spent keeping [Bashar al] Assad in power. So when you look at that and you look at Iranians saying, what about us? These are all countries that supposedly were going to end up being our protector in a way, so that if we were attacked, they would be on the forefront of attacking our attacker. And that didn’t happen. What was all that money spent for? 

The one thing it does have are ballistic missiles and the capability to produce ballistic missiles accurately — accurate ballistic missiles, I should say. And it does have drone technology that even the U.S. is reverse-engineered and is starting to use suicide drones that Iranians invented and can produce in huge numbers, which they also then sold the technology to the Russians, who now make them domestically in Russia.

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But weakened? Yeah, it’s been significantly. There was always this sense that Iran had surrounded itself with these, if you want to call them proxies, they weren’t exactly proxies because they weren’t doing everything that Iran wanted. At one point Hamas, they were actually against Hamas because Hamas was for the rebels in Syria, and Iran was killing the rebels in Syria. So they had Hamas, they had the Iraqi Shia groups in Iraq right across the border. They had, as you pointed out, they had Islamic Jihad, they had Hezbollah, they had Damascus. So all that power is now basically gone, and it’s now down to just Iran really.

And the Houthis are still, yes, allies, if not proxies, and can cause some damage if Donald Trump decides to take out the supreme leader and kill him — the Houthis would react very negatively to that. The Shias in Yemen would react very negatively to that. And in fact, it’s quite possible that Shias in other parts of the Middle East, such as in Iraq and in Bahrain and places like that, even in Saudi Arabia, there might be some unrest for taking out an ayatollah at the end of the day, whether you like him or dislike him. For a lot of Shia faithful, he’s an ayatollah. It’s like, do you take out a cardinal that you don’t like in the Catholic church? I’m sure that the Pope would have an issue with that.

AL: Thank you so much, Hooman, for this conversation and for your insights. We’re going to leave it there.

HM: My pleasure, Akela. Thank you.

[Break] 

AL: In other news, President Donald Trump is making good on his threats to — for some reason — try to take over Greenland. And his efforts reached new levels of absurdity when the self-proclaimed “president of peace” texted Norway’s prime minister “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.” Setting aside the highly questionable “8 wars” claim — Trump went on to say, “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.” 

So why is Trump so obsessed with Greenland? Joining us to explain what’s behind Trump’s attempted land grab is investigative journalist Lois Parshley. 

Welcome to the show, Lois.

Lois Parshley: Thank you for having me.

AL: So Trump has repeatedly claimed an interest in taking over Greenland, though on Wednesday he walked back his comments about doing so by force. He’s been claiming that this is in the national security interest of the U.S., notwithstanding the blatant violations of sovereignty here fresh off the U.S. invasion of Venezuela. What is Trump actually interested in?

LP: That is a great question and one that I started to ask last year. As Trump took office, I thought it was really important to understand who is benefiting from his policy decisions.

So I started asking questions about the wealthy donors in his orbit and their personal financial interests. We still likely don’t have the full picture, but last January I found that shortly before Trump first expressed an interest in Greenland during his first administration, so back in 2019, his ambassador to Denmark and Greenland visited a major rare earth mining project on the island.

Now, more recently, The Guardian reported that it was Ronald Lauder, heir to the global cosmetics brand [Estée Lauder], who was also a longtime friend of Trump’s, who first suggested buying Greenland. He has acquired commercial holdings there and is also part of a consortium who want to access Ukrainian minerals. I should also say here, it’s probably important to note that blowing up NATO relationships, and severing ties with longtime allies and fellow nuclear powers does not increase U.S. national security.

AL: As you mentioned, Trump started talking about this after Ronald Lauder first brought up the idea, and last year you wrote about the tech moguls who’ve also taken an interest in Greenland. Can you tell us more about the specific interests that they have in the island and the resources that are at stake?

LP: Many of the tech moguls who are sitting in the front row of Trump’s inauguration, people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, are investors in a startup called KoBold Metals. They are aiming to mine in western Greenland for minerals crucial to the artificial intelligence boom and used in data centers. Opposition to some of this mining actually ushered a new party into power in Greenland in 2021. They slowed some of the rare earth minerals development that was currently in explorations phases and banned all future oil development. But just two weeks before Trump came into office – so in 2025 — KoBold medals raised $537 million in a funding round, bringing its valuation to almost $3 billion. So we’re talking about a lot of money here.

AL: What does it say that these elite financial interests are so explicitly driving the U.S. to pursue this really anachronistic imperialism?

LP: That is a great question. How anachronistic that actually is, is another one? But I would say that overall —

AL: Fair enough.

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LP: One of the things that just seems abundantly true here is that I’m not the first person to report on these kinds of major tech interests in things like crypto states or special economic zones. People have been pointing this stuff out for a long time, but it’s not until President Trump started saying the quiet part out loud that people have really been registering some of these absurd concepts that seem to now be creeping toward reality.

AL: I want to talk a little bit about Marc Andreessen, who has also taken a particular interest in the island. What can you tell us about his investments targeting Greenland?

LP: So among the contributors to KoBold’s funding is a leading venture capital firm, founded by Marc Andreessen, who has also helped shape the administration’s technology policies. A general partner at his venture capital firm was also listed as a KoBold director at one point on a company SEC filing.

Andreessen has been funding startups hoping to build experimental enclaves around the world. These are sometimes called network states. And sometimes they’re called crypto states, sometimes they’re called special economic zones.

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Often they involve the promise of freedom from the constraints of government. And proposals for these libertarian freeholds have sprung up in Honduras, Nigeria, the Marshall Islands, Panama — which by the way, Trump also proposed taking over by military force. 

AL: Lest we forget. 

LP: And while it looks a little different in each location, the sales pitch usually includes replacing taxes and regulations with things like cryptocurrency and blockchain to enable things like biomedical experiments on human subjects.

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Trump also recently issued a full and unconditional pardon for former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been serving a 45 year prison sentence in the U.S. for drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy charges. During his time in office, Hernández and his administration consistently backed the legal framework that enabled Honduras’s special economic zone called Próspera, which was also funded by Andreessen, including submitting legislation to grant them tax exemptions and regulatory privileges. So this is not just an issue around Greenland.

AL: Greenland was ruled by Denmark from 1721 to 1979, but Denmark continued to control its foreign policy and defense after that. In 2008, Greenlanders voted for greater independence. You write, “The president’s renewed intention to take over Greenland has reignited debates over its sovereignty, as the country grapples with the trade-offs between economic opportunity and independence from Denmark. As the country’s glaciers recede, it’s also facing sweeping climate-driven transformations, threatening traditional industries like fishing and hunting and exposing valuable mineral resources.”

Can you tell us a little bit more about this tension? I’m really curious also about the movements that you alluded to earlier within Greenland to slow this development.

LP: The fight over Greenland’s resources has extended for centuries. As you noted, Greenlanders voted for greater independence in 2008, taking control of their natural resources along with other state functions.

There are abundant oil reserves around Greenland, but producing oil in those conditions has been historically very difficult and expensive. There are high transportation costs and infrastructure limitations, and how much to develop its abundant natural resources has been a debate within Greenland. Some of their politicians have supported development, particularly as a means to fund greater autonomy from Denmark.

Siumut, a pro-independence political party who was in power in the early aughts, declared that mineral extraction could help the country transition away from Denmark because it would need to find new sources of income. However, many residents still rely on traditional ways of life, including fishing, hunting for food security, living closely on the land. And development would impact all of those things, which are also under pressure from rapidly changing climate conditions, including warming temperatures and extreme weather.

AL: In response to Trump’s threats, Greenland has also seen some of its biggest protests in history. Can you tell us more about how the people of Greenland, the Greenlandic Inuit, have been responding to this tension and now the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts?

LP: I certainly don’t want to speak for any Greenland residents. I’m not a resident, but from the people I spoke to a year ago, the general vibe seemed to be more bemusement. Obviously, as tensions have escalated since then, it seems like far less of a joke today. 

All of this unwelcome attention has succeeded in delivering one change. Some of the residents I spoke to said the country is now more unified and wanting to find a path to independence from Denmark, although it is challenging to figure out a way to do so. He told me, “You can’t put a name on land. Land belongs to the people.” It’s not something they feel like can be sold.

Frankly, I think a lot of the news conversation around “Can Donald Trump buy Greenland?” overlooks the fact that no one in Greenland is interested in selling. More bluntly, as a Danish politician said, at one European Parliament meeting last week, “Let me put this in words you might understand: Mr. President, fuck off.”

But as you noted, at Davos President Trump reiterated that he wants to acquire Greenland, but said, “I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.” Certainly our allies hope that that is true.

AL: We’re going to leave it there. Thank you so much, Lois, for joining us on The Intercept Briefing.

LP: Thank you for having me.

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While Threatening Greenland, Trump Also Threatens Iceland

AL: On Wednesday at Davos as Trump rambled on about why he believes the U.S. is entitled to take Greenland, he repeatedly confused the island for Iceland. He would then later announce that he had a productive meeting with the secretary general of NATO, and they reached a “framework” of a deal over Greenland’s future.

That does it for this episode of The Intercept Briefing. 

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn and Desiree Addib, who is also our booking producer. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And tell all of your friends about us. Better yet, leave us a rating or a review to help other listeners find us.

Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy. 

Thanks for listening.

The post Protests and Power Plays: From Tehran to the Arctic Circle appeared first on The Intercept.

It was May 20, 2020, at the height of the pandemic, and an FBI SWAT team had raided the house Jason Fong shared with his parents in Orange County, California. Fong, a 24-year-old Chinese American who, until recently, had been a U.S. Marine Corps reservist, sat handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser outside.

“Just a couple of chairs at the back table,” he told the Irvine police detective and FBI agent questioning him.

Fong led the two lawmen to the backyard, where all three sat at a table near the pool. A body camera worn by FBI Special Agent Thuan Ngo recorded the conversation. Fong, still handcuffed, wore a blue button-down shirt and a white face mask. The family dog wandered around, happily wagging its tail.

“How long have you had this dog?” the detective, Michael Moore, asked.

“Since I was 16,” Fong answered.

Moore read Fong his Miranda rights; Ngo advised him that making a false statement to a federal agent is a felony.

“Let’s back up a little bit,” Moore said. “What are some big changes that have occurred in your life? You converted to Islam?”

“Yeah,” Fong answered.

The detective asked Fong how he became a Muslim, how many guns he owned, and how he used social media.

“I followed a couple of pages that were just mainly Muslim, like, shitposting, kinda just like —”

“Muslim what?” Ngo interrupted, apparently stumped by the word “shitposting.” “I’m sorry?”

“Kind of just, like, meme pages,” Fong answered. “A lot of them make jokes about stupid stuff, like extremism and all that stuff — things I do not condone. … They make memes about extremism in a joking manner.”

Fong described how he communicated with like-minded people on the internet, mostly in the joking or ironic ways of the extremely online. “It’s just satire,” he said, adding that he tried to dissuade anyone who appeared to take a genuine interest in extremist ideologies and groups.

But the federal agent kept pushing. He asked if anyone Fong knew via the chat group claimed to support terrorists. He asked for usernames.

“You’re saying you don’t support any of these groups, right?” Ngo asked.

“I do not,” Fong said.

“You don’t believe in any of these groups at all?”

“I don’t.”

Fong’s case represents a new and increasingly common form of terrorism sting conducted primarily online, in which federal investigators and prosecutors must navigate the often obscure boundary between protected speech and evidence of crime.

The detective and the FBI agent knew more than they were letting on that day in 2020. Hundreds of pages of New York Police Department and FBI internal reports, months’ worth of chat logs, and hours of recordings obtained by The Intercept reveal how the investigation of Fong began thousands of miles away in an NYPD intelligence unit. These internal documents and recordings also demonstrate how the FBI is coopting local law enforcement resources in its ever-expanding search for potential terrorists. Neither the NYPD nor the FBI responded to a list of questions from The Intercept.

Since February 2020, when the NYPD first introduced an undercover employee to Fong in a private group chat, the FBI had been secretly monitoring his online activity. Fong’s supposed chat group friends included at least two government agents — one from the NYPD and another from the FBI. As violent crime spiked in New York City during the pandemic, a division of America’s largest and oldest municipal police department was catfishing a California man who had no connections to New York and no plans to travel there.

Following the backyard interrogation, the Justice Department charged Fong with four counts of providing material support to terrorists, alleging that he shared in the group chat military training documents he’d found online and believed could be used to aid Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a Syrian militant group, and that he tried to raise money for Hamas by sharing a website for Al Qassam Brigades, the Hamas militant wing responsible for the October 7 attack in Israel. 

“This looks pretty terrible because it’s in a group full of Muslims,” Fong said of the evidence in his case. “Muslims, guns, bombs — automatically you have the word-picture association of terrorists, right? But go on an average Discord Christian server and see how many people justify the carpet-bombing of Gaza. Or go and look at any pro-Zionist group chat and see all the heinous things they say about people there. I’m sure that most of them are not serious.”

A Secret Life Online

Fong had been interested in firearms and military techniques since he was a teenager. He joined the Marine Corps as a reservist in 2014, right out of high school, signing his papers at a strip mall military recruiting office in Santa Ana, California.

His job assignment in the Marine Corps found him. Based on aptitude tests, Fong became an avionics maintenance technician for unmanned aerial vehicles, “UAVs” in military parlance — or drones. “I didn’t exactly hate my job as a UAV avionics maintenance technician, but I just didn’t really have much passion for it,” Fong told The Intercept, sitting in the living room of the house the FBI had raided three years earlier. “I didn’t feel like I joined the military to do this.”

As a sergeant, Fong applied multiple times to join the ranks of counterintelligence officers. He didn’t get the jobs because of background check concerns, he was told. “For some undisclosed reason, I could not actually be qualified for the job,” Fong said. He applied for other positions: Marine reconnaissance, Special Operations Command, anything that could be considered, in his words, “hardcore stuff.” Denied, denied, denied. The Marines appeared to want Fong where he was: fixing drones.

Diagnosed with autism, Fong has an impressive knack for languages. He grew up speaking English and Mandarin Chinese, and he began learning Russian on his own time while in the Marines, with the help of a pen pal in the predominantly Muslim region of Tatarstan. He’d visited her in 2017, to practice his Russian and see the country, and to this day, he wonders whether that compromised his military background checks.

By 2019, Fong wanted out of the Marines. “I pretty much spent my time just looking for civilian work,” he said. Fong had worked various jobs — as a personal trainer, an unarmed security guard, and a safety official at a shooting range — while he continued to live in his parents’ home in Orange County. And no matter where he was, he was always online, exploring his various curiosities.

“I spent a lot of time on social media, very mobile online life,” Fong said. “And that’s when I kind of got acquainted with people of the boogaloo movement. And these people, they started out as libertarians, and then they kind of degenerated into anti-state anarchy. But, I mean, we had a lot of things in common: [strong feelings about] constitutional rights, firearms especially, free speech, and fighting against tyranny.”

The so-called boogaloo movement refers to a loosely linked group of people who subscribe to an antigovernment ideology heavily invested in memes, guns, and the prospect of imminent civil war. In headline-grabbing cases, some adherents have been involved in murder, illegal firearms possession, violent plots, and even an FBI sting centering on a supposed conspiracy to support Hamas. But most so-called boogaloo boys are preppers with unimpressive levels of ambition, juvenile senses of humor, and fast internet connections.

Fong was intrigued by the boogaloo, whose members he followed on Instagram, but he struggled to take them seriously. “It’s just an online community of gun enthusiasts,” Fong said. “I wouldn’t really even describe them as an organized movement.”

The boogaloo followers Fong met online encouraged him not to reenlist in the Marine Corps: Don’t support the military-industrial complex, they told him. And Fong agreed. He knew he needed a change. “My life was rinse, wash, repeat,” he said. But the boogaloo boys couldn’t constrain Fong’s intellectual wanderings. “I dissociated, unfollowed all the pages,” he said.

Meme Streak

As 2019 gave way to 2020, and the coronavirus began to spread globally, Fong was spending even more time online, including following Russian-language accounts. He started noticing Instagram accounts that promoted Islam but had the same meme-oriented humor he’d enjoyed in the boogaloo movement. “It’s the same kind of humor but just different audiences, different subjects,” he said. The memes on the Instagram accounts had a common theme: poking fun at the idea that all Muslims are terrorists.

Fong had been raised in Chinese Christian churches, but he’d long been curious about Islam, and in January 2020, he converted and began attending a mosque in Southern California — a decision his parents couldn’t understand.

After interacting with the commentators on Islam-focused Instagram pages, Fong received an invitation to a private group of about 30 people; he was then invited into a subset of that group, which operated on WhatsApp. “So what happened was, a disagreement occurred,” Fong recalled. The more moderate members of the group, including Fong, were apoplectic that other members had shared in the chat propaganda videos from the Islamic State group, or ISIS.

The disagreements turned into arguments. Fong told the group that he was enlisted as a reservist in the Marines, prompting others to say that he couldn’t be a true Muslim. “They were calling me a heretic just for having served,” he said. Eventually, the group disbanded.

Fong focused his energies on a new meme-oriented Instagram page about Islam, which eventually birthed a new chat group on Signal. Fong, the administrator of this new group, called it “Mujahideen in America.” He wanted the group’s discussions to involve Islam, guns, and training.

“We’re going to go over here to talk about self-defense,” Fong, who went by the username asian_ghazi, said, describing what he viewed as topics for the group chat. “Boogaloo stuff, like kind of guerrilla tactics, but mostly for hypothetical scenarios, mostly self-defense, weapons safety, firearms.”

Fong had curated the group’s membership. There was Daniel, a Russian speaker Fong first met in the WhatsApp group that had fractured. There was also James, a teenager and recent convert to Islam who shared Fong’s ironic sense of humor. James had brought someone named Moussa into the group.

Moussa, pushy and boisterous, started to bring up terrorist groups in the chat. Daniel joined in, giving his opinions about Islamist movements in Chechnya and other parts of Russia.

“Their talks about this kind of stuff would be here and there,” Fong said.

Fong didn’t know what to do. Should he kick these guys out? He’d already seen one internet group fall apart. But he struggled to tell if this discussion went beyond harmless intellectual curiosity and debate.

Daniel and Moussa weren’t who they claimed to be. Daniel was working undercover for the NYPD. Moussa was an FBI informant, known in the bureau’s parlance as a “confidential human source.” They’d been tasked to find and secretly investigate potential terrorists online.

“Online Covert Employee”

Terrorism stings in the post-9/11 era, intended to catch would-be violent actors before they harm anyone, once played out exclusively in the real world: An FBI informant would meet a loudmouth at a mosque and offer that person a bomb, resulting in a high-profile arrest and raising questions about whether the FBI had manufactured the crime.

As the world moved online, so did sting operations. Instead of finding targets at mosques and engaging in conversations at coffee shops, counterterrorism agents now often pose as extremists online to lure in their targets. It’s catfishing, but under the color of law.

In 2018, a Tennessee woman named Georgianna Giampietro chatted online with two undercover FBI agents who claimed to be a married couple looking for help traveling to Syria to join a terrorist group. Giampietro offered instructions on how to avoid law enforcement detection and provided a Telegram username for an alleged contact in Syria. She pleaded guilty to material support charges and is serving a five-and-a-half-year sentence, even though the agents never intended to travel to Syria. Cases like Giampietro’s are increasingly common, with examples of FBI agents and informants posing online as supporters or members of ISIS and other terrorist groups.

But the FBI isn’t the only agency trying to catfish terrorists. The NYPD’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau, which earned a reputation as one of the most aggressive and wide-ranging law enforcement agencies of the post-9/11 era, has also evolved from crawling mosques to crawling the internet.

In early 2016, the NYPD launched an online investigation of Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal, who was living more than 1,500 miles away in Jamaica. A detective sent Faisal a flattering message. That message blossomed into an online relationship, spanning nearly two years, which resulted in Faisal sharing ISIS propaganda and encouraging the undercover detective to travel to Syria. Faisal was extradited from Jamaica, convicted at trial in New York state court, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The NYPD has also monitored the online activities of Muslim organizations in the northeastern U.S. and built online cases for the Justice Department against terrorism suspects in the U.S. as well as militants based overseas, such as a former Brooklynite who went to Syria to be a weapons trainer for ISIS.

The NYPD’s online activities are as much about capturing federal funding as they are about netting alleged terrorists. The department’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau receives more than $160 million annually from the federal government, most of it in the form of Department of Homeland Security grants. This partnership is part of the decadeslong, nationwide effort to expand collaboration and intelligence-sharing among law enforcement agencies. “Law enforcement in this country can no longer be content with merely focusing on activity in their own jurisdictions,” John Miller, then the NYPD’s deputy commissioner, told a House committee in 2019.

The NYPD’s online activities are as much about capturing federal funding as they are about netting alleged terrorists.

The investigation of Fong began on February 24, 2020, with a memo that circulated in the NYPD’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. The memo described how an NYPD officer known as “OCE 1,” for “online covert employee 1,” had been added to Fong’s chat group. OCE 1 was “Daniel,” who spoke Russian like a native, according to NYPD recordings, but who had little trace of an accent when he spoke English.

Within days, according to reports obtained by The Intercept, the NYPD told the FBI about its nascent online investigation. The bureau promptly opened its own case, using Daniel, the NYPD undercover employee, as a proxy. NYPD and FBI records show the information went one way: from the NYPD to the FBI.

The FBI reports include screenshots of messages and pictures that Fong had sent to the private Signal group, including from his trip to Tatarstan in 2017. In one picture, Fong stands on a snow-covered street wearing a black ushanka, a Russian fur hat, with a Soviet-style red star.

From the outside, Fong appeared to fit a profile that has long concerned FBI counterterrorism officials: U.S. military service members drifting toward extremism. When the FBI first acknowledged this concern in 2009, officials said they viewed the military as a potential pipeline to far-right violent extremist groups. But the bureau didn’t exclude the prospect that U.S.-trained service members could become Islamist extremists, like Nidal Hassan, a U.S. Army major who killed 13 and injured more than 30 others in the Fort Hood mass shooting, also in 2009.

Fong had used guns since his teens, knew how to modify firearms, and had recently converted to Islam. The messages Daniel was providing to the NYPD, and Moussa to the FBI, also appeared to suggest that Fong had an anti-government ideology. In a screenshot of messages included in one FBI report obtained by The Intercept, Fong wrote:

Fuck getting [a gun] registered

Fuck the government

Fuck President Trump

Fuck the Feds

Fong also posted audio and video recordings to the group. Some were ordinary, such as complaints about being stuck at work. “I’m really, really ticked off because I couldn’t pray salah at all today,” Fong said in one recording, referring to the obligatory five daily prayers performed by Muslims.

Other recordings reviewed by The Intercept appeared potentially ominous. In one video, Fong set up his phone to record in his messy bedroom. “So, this is an AR-15-pattern rifle,” he said, showing his firearm to the camera. Fong had built the rifle himself, using individual parts to create a “ghost gun” that wasn’t legally registered. He had two magazines taped together in a so-called jungle clip, a military-style setup that speeds reloading. “So, the first lesson we’re going to learn is, how exactly do we clear a weapon?” Fong said. He then provided a one-minute tutorial on the proper handling of a rifle.

As with the meaning of a meme, Fong’s motivations were often hard to pinpoint. Was the video meant to be a useful tutorial, like hundreds of others available on YouTube? Or was it intended as training for people Fong believed to be violent extremists?

Many of Fong’s messages to the group were ambiguous in this way. In the group chat, for example, someone wrote: “Some dude got drunk last night and went on a bender and tried to kill cops …”

Fong replied: “I mean, I’d rather kill cops while I’m sober.”

In another instance, Fong included in the group chat instructions for making explosives with nitric acid that he’d copied from a website. “I really want to experiment with this without 1. Getting arrested 2. Getting my arms blown off,” Fong wrote.

On a different day, Fong posted: “I planned on dying here violently initially.” But then he followed that message immediately with: “Still not opposed to it lmao.”

Laughing my ass off — was it all just a joke to Fong? Or was the ambiguity an intentional cover for violent aspirations?

“No Need to Blow Them Up”

In March 2020, two months before the FBI and local police showed up at Fong’s house, James, the other young convert in the group, appeared to post a joking message of his own: “Me and the boys blowing up Keesler AFB near me,” he wrote, followed by a black flag emoji. Keesler Air Force Base is in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Fong replied to the message with another joke. “No need to blow them up,” he wrote. “Just yank the nerds off their computers and they’ll die of anxiety.”

Despite Fong’s reply, the FBI and NYPD assumed that Fong was somehow trying to aid extremists and terrorist groups. That assumption was bolstered, in the government’s view, by documents Fong shared with the group, including tactical instruction manuals that could be found online. “Take it, save it, study it,” he told the group, referring to military tactical instructions for entering a building.

Fong sent various other documents he found online, including a tutorial on how to make bombs. He never specifically plotted or encouraged violence, but Moussa had previously told Fong in the chat that he aspired to join the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham terrorist group in Syria. Moussa then introduced into the group a man who claimed to be a Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham representative. This fictional terrorist, who was an undercover FBI agent, asked Fong for help in putting together a bomb. Instead of helping with the bomb, Fong removed Moussa and his friend from the group.

But some of Fong’s other actions weren’t as exculpatory.

In one message, Fong posted a link to a website run by Al Qassam Brigades, the militant Hamas wing. “This is a cause I am sure we can all get behind,” he wrote. Fong also posted a video tutorial showing how to donate to Al Qassam Brigades using bitcoin. Fong wrote in a message that he thought the group should learn about cryptocurrencies so as to “potentially give [donations] to groups we support anonymously.” But there is no evidence that Fong gave money to Hamas or explicitly encouraged donations from members of the group.

In April 2020, Daniel, the NYPD employee, flew to California. He told Fong that he was traveling on business, which was true. The investigators were taking their online probe into the real world, trying to position Fong to say something less ambiguous about supporting terrorists.

Fong met Daniel in his hotel room, since much of California was shut down during the pandemic. They prayed together in the room and ate takeout as a hidden camera recorded the meeting. Fong wore a long-sleeved shirt and skullcap. Daniel, his face blurred in the video, wore a black T-shirt and tracksuit pants. Their conversation went back and forth between Russian and English. They talked about the pandemic, Bill Gates, the economy, the Chechen war, and the Prophet Muhammed’s teachings about diet and exercise. Fong told Daniel that he admired Ibn al-Khattab, a well-known Salafi jihadist who’d fought in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Dagestan, and Chechnya until he was murdered by Russian security services in 2002.

Their conversation then turned to going overseas. Fong told Daniel that he was interested in learning more about Malhama Tactical, a private military contractor that became known as the “Blackwater of the Syrian jihad.”

“Well, first of all, Moussa is the one who told me about Malhama, you know?” Fong said, referring to the FBI’s informant. “I didn’t really know much about them.”

Malhama Tactical supported forces opposed to both the Syrian government and ISIS. While not a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, the military contractor was closely aligned with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which is designated as a terrorist group. Fong expressed interest in working with Malhama Tactical.

“You will train Malhama brothers?” Daniel asked Fong, according to a transcript translated from Russian by the FBI and obtained by The Intercept.

“I would want to work with Malhama, I think, and then fight with the group Ajnad al-Kavkaz,” Fong said, referring to a Chechen group active in Syria and Ukraine. “That’s what I would, like, ideally do if I go there.” Fong said he was particularly interested in fighting with the Chechen group in Ukraine, against the Russians.

“If I go there” — that was the context of Fong’s conversations with the undercover NYPD employee. It was a lot of talk and speculation. And it was as far as investigators could entice Fong to go.

The next month, the FBI and local police arrived at Fong’s parents’ home. The FBI agent asked Fong if he knew anyone who’d expressed interest in joining a terrorist group. Fong said that he didn’t. He also asked Fong if he’d ever met in person with anyone from the chat group. Fong claimed he hadn’t.

The FBI knew those claims weren’t true.

False Statements

Fong’s arrest in 2020 was big news in Southern California, where the press reported breathlessly on an FBI raid involving confiscated guns and allegations that a U.S. Marine had supported terrorists. The government claimed Fong had aided Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham by uploading documents about military tactics and bombmaking to the group chat and accused him of supporting Hamas by sharing a link to a website for the Al Qassam Brigades.

That the apparent “terrorists” Fong allegedly aided were government agents — Daniel with the NYPD and Moussa with the FBI — was irrelevant, according to the government. Under federal conspiracy laws, defendants need only believe that the person with whom they are conspiring is affiliated with a terrorist group.

But how much of Fong’s online activity could be considered First Amendment-protected speech remains an open question. The materials he shared with the group were available elsewhere online, and his precise purpose for sharing them was unclear. What’s more, while he’d appeared to suggest that he supported Hamas, he didn’t take any specific actions beyond sharing a website and a video tutorial.

Fong’s criminal trial began in January and quickly veered into the absurd. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter allowed Moussa, the FBI informant, who was paid $46,000 for his work on the case, to alter his appearance when he testified. Prosecutors had asked for what they termed “light disguise (such as changing their facial hair, hairstyle, or dress style),” to protect his identity. In addition, the judge ordered that the public be removed from the courtroom while the informant was on the stand. The jury was not supposed to know about the disguise or that the public was not allowed into the courtroom.

In the middle of the informant’s testimony, Los Angeles billionaire Isaac Larian — whose company developed Bratz dolls — wandered into the courtroom unmolested to say hello to Carter, who had presided over a 2011 trade secrets trial involving Bratz dolls and Mattel’s Barbies. Larian’s entrance startled Carter, who exclaimed that the courtroom should have been closed — exactly what the jury wasn’t supposed to know. Carter granted defense lawyers’ request for a mistrial.

Rather than retry the case, the Justice Department offered Fong a deal: Prosecutors would drop the material support charges if he’d plead guilty to a single count of making false statements to a federal agent. That charge had not been part of the Justice Department’s original indictment, and Fong knew that his panicked statements in his parents’ backyard had been recorded. “I couldn’t beat that charge,” Fong said. “They had me.”

Fong agreed to plead guilty, admitting that he’d failed to snitch to the FBI on Moussa, the bureau’s own informant.

In November, Fong was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison — the net result of a four-month partnership between the FBI and the NYPD to nab a young man in California who, as even he admits, was guilty of an increasingly common offense: being a jackass on the internet.

The post The Hamas Terrorist Who Wasn’t appeared first on The Intercept.

Naomi Klein, author, professor, journalist, and contributing editor at The Intercept, has ventured into the far-right “mirror world,” exploring the movements and figures promoting conspiracy theories, misinformation, and its hold on large segments of society. This week on Deconstructed, we bring you a live conversation between Ryan Grim and Klein at the George Washington University Amphitheater, organized by Politics and Prose. Klein and Grim discuss Klein’s newest book, “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.” They discuss the labyrinthine world of conspiracy theories and how the right has effectively sowed confusion and capitalized on issues abandoned by the left.

[Deconstructed intro theme music.]

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim.

On Wednesday of this week, I interviewed Naomi Klein about her new book, “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World,” which begins with Naomi following her doppelganger, other Naomi — that’s the feminist-turned-Steve-Bannon-ally, Naomi Wolf — down a series of rabbit holes.

Describing her journey to these shadowlands, she also looks into the mirror, and asks all of us to look in the mirror as well, and ask what role we’ve played in ceding turf to the right, or abandoning principles — like skepticism of corporate greed and big pharma, opposition to censorship and mass surveillance, and so on — that have long been the domain of the left. By abandoning that territory, did we play a part in clearing the ground for the mirror world? And how can we reclaim our confidence and our voices in such disorienting times?

We spoke at George Washington University at an event hosted by Politics and Prose. That independent bookstore, by the way, will also be hosting a reading for my own forthcoming book, “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.” I’ll be in conversation there with my Breaking Points colleague Krystal Ball on November 27th.

Now, here’s Naomi Klein with a brief reading from her new book, followed by our conversation.

[Deconstructed intro theme, continued.]

Presenter: Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in giving a warm and enthusiastic welcome to Naomi Klein and Ryan Grim.

Naomi Klein (Reading from “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World”): In my defense, it was never my intent to write this book. I did not have time, no one asked me to, and several people cautioned against it. Not now, not with the literal and figurative fires roiling our planet, and certainly not about this.

“Other Naomi,” that is how I refer to her now; this person with whom I have been chronically confused for over a decade. My big-haired doppelganger. A person whom so many others appear to find indistinguishable from me. A person who does many extreme things that cause strangers to chastise me, or thank me, or express their pity for me. The very fact that I referred to her with any kind of code speaks to the absurdity of my situation.

For a quarter of a century, I have been a person who writes about corporate power and its ravages. I sneak into abusive factories in faraway countries and across borders to military occupations. I report in the aftermath of oil spills and Category 5 hurricanes. I write books of big ideas about serious subjects.

And yet, in the months and years during which this text came into being, a time when cemeteries ran out of space and billionaires blasted themselves into outer space, everything else that I might have written appeared only as an unwanted intrusion, a rude interruption. In June 2021, as this project began to truly spiral out of my control, a strange new weather event, dubbed a “heat dome,” descended on the southern coast of British Columbia, the part of Canada where I now live with my family.

The thick air felt like a snarling, invasive entity with malevolent intent. More than 600 people died, most of them elderly. An estimated 10 billion marine creatures were cooked alive on our shores. An entire town went up in flames. It’s rare for this out-of-the-way sparsely populated spot to make international headlines, but the heat dome made us briefly famous.

An editor asked if I, as someone engaged in the climate fight for 15 years, would file a report about what it was like to live through this unprecedented climate event.

“I’m working on something else,” I told him, the stench of death filling my nostrils.

“Can I ask what?”

“You cannot.”

There were plenty of other important things I neglected during this time of feverish subterfuge. That summer, I allowed my nine-year-old to spend so many hours watching a gory nature series called Animal Fight Club that he began to ram me at my desk like a great white shark. I engaged in all of this neglect so that I could, what? Check her serially suspended Twitter account? Study her appearances on Steve Bannon’s live streams for insights into their electric chemistry? Read or listen to yet another of her warnings that basic health measures were actually a covert plot orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party, Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, and the World Economic Forum, to sow mass death on such a scale, it could only be the work of the devil himself?

My deepest shame rests with the unspeakable number of podcasts I mainlined, the sheer volume of hours lost that I will never get back. A master’s degree worth of hours. I told myself it was research. That, if I was going to understand her and her fellow travelers who are now in open warfare against objective reality, I had to immerse myself in the archive of several extremely prolific and editing-averse weekly and twice-weekly shows, with names like “Q Anon Anonymous” and “Conspirituality,” that unpack and deconstruct the co-mingling worlds of conspiracy theories. wellness hucksters, and their various intersections with COVID 19 denial, anti-vaccine hysteria, and rising fascism.

This, on top of keeping up with the daily output from Bannon and Tucker Carlson, on whose shows Other Naomi had become a regular guest. “I feel closer to the hosts of Conspirituality than to you,” I whimpered one night into my best friend’s voicemail.

I told myself I had no choice. That this was not, in fact, an epically frivolous and narcissistic waste of my compressed writing time, or of the compressed writing time on the clock of our fast-warming planet. I rationalized that Other Naomi, as one of the most effective creators and disseminators of misinformation and disinformation about many of our most urgent crises — and as someone who has seemingly helped inspire large numbers of people to take to the streets in rebellion against an almost wholly hallucinated tyranny — is at the nexus of several forces that, while ridiculous in the extreme, are nonetheless important, since the confusion they sow and the oxygen they absorb increasingly stand in the way of pretty much anything helpful or healthful that we humans might at some point decide to do together.

Thank you.

[Audience clapping.]

RG: So, Naomi, you talked about all of the podcasts that you mainlined, and I’m curious what … And so, for background, I think you know this, for the last two years I’ve been doing a show where the co-host is a right-winger, which means I’ve been mainlining this stuff, also.

NK: Yeah.

RG: Forced to engage with it on a regular basis. And so, I’m curious, from your perspective, how did your understanding of the right change from before you started mainlining it? And the right itself has obviously been changing enormously.

NK: Yeah. I think it definitely did change. You know, I thought I knew who Steve Bannon was, because I would see the Media Matters clips, or I would see him being dragged away in handcuffs, you know? And what you realize as a longitudinal Bannon listener, he does put out 17 hours a week, around.

RG: It’s an enormous output.

NK: And I did listen to hundreds of hours. There is this, really, there’s a real other side to him. I’m interested in the things he does well, because I think he is a dangerous figure. I take him seriously as somebody who takes internationalism, in some ways, more seriously than a lot of the left. You know, he is building an international nationalist alliance, authoritarian alliance.

When Giorgia Meloni was elected prime minister of Italy in April 2022. I mean, he was like a proud papa. That’s part of his project. He’s been weaving together the farthest-right political parties across Europe, South America. I think it’s a deeply nefarious project.

So, I wasn’t surprised by the nefarious things he was saying. The points where I felt real vertigo… And, you know, this book is not about my doppelganger, it’s really about this vertiginous moment, and it is very unsettling to lose control over oneself in the ether. And so, that kind of became a metaphor for this, I think, collective unsettling, where so many of us have had this feeling of, like, what is this world, you know? How people are behaving so strangely. I thought I knew who this person was, they’re now acting really, really differently. I can’t talk to my grandma anymore, my uncle, you know… I hear this from my students a lot.

So, it’s really just a literary device, to use that sort of identity-unsettling to get into that world, and my most vertiginous moments listening to Bannon were, honestly, when he sounded a little like me. When he would do these — I’m sure you’ve heard this — but these audio montages of the big cable news shows on MSNBC and CNN brought to you by Pfizer, brought to you by Moderna. And it sounds like the media education 101 that we did in the alter globalization movement in the late nineties, where we were like, okay, there’s just a few companies that own the whole thing.

What worried me about it was not that he was doing it; it was that we weren’t doing it anymore. Or when he talks about transhumanism — that’s a big hobby horse, right? — and he talks a lot about how tech is replacing the human. I wonder if we are, right? I wonder if we’re speaking to those fears.

One of the things I write in the book is, conspiracy culture — and I call it conspiracy culture, not conspiracy theories, because it really is conspiracy without a theory, it’s throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, seeing what sticks — it gets the facts wrong a lot of the time, but gets the feelings right a lot of the time. So, a feeling of being surveilled, a feeling of being left behind. I take that really seriously, and a lot of it I see as a failure of our side. You can’t blame a strategist for being strategic, and it’s very strategic to pick up the issues your opponents have carelessly left unattended.

RG: Yeah, and he’ll say Elizabeth Warren had a terrific framing of this particular gripe. He’ll talk about Ro Khanna as somebody that he thinks is, like, as a Democrat, framing things the way … If Democrats would do that more, that he’d be nervous.

NK: Right. Or he would say, I would have been nervous if Trump was running against Bernie. He’s been open about that,

RG: Yeah, he said that. And you’ll hear his riffs, and 90 percent of them, you’re like, actually, okay. All of that’s right. And then he veers off into —

NK: Not 90. No, not 90, Ryan. Not 90.

RG: Okay, 90 within a riff of the show. So, within a show, let’s say it’s a two hour show. Like, an hour and a half of that is complete nonsense. But then you’ll get a 20-second riff, and in that 20-second riff, he’ll go for 15 seconds. You’re like, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right. And then at the end…

NK: Military industrial complex, endless wars. Yeah.

RG: And then at the very end, it just crashes into a wall of xenophobia, or…

NK: Well, because it’s a bait and switch. I mean, it’s not like there’s an actual plan to do anything. Take the military spending. He is rabidly anti-China. The theme song — which got stuck in my head for a while — is this incredibly weird song.

RG: Not the CCP …

NK: About the CCP, let’s take down the CCP. It’s sung by the billionaire, Guo, with a lot of autotune, the billionaire whose yacht he was on when he was arrested … Anyway, it’s a deep Bannon cut. But I was like, what is this song? And I looked into it, and Guo wrote the song, and he got this whole vanity project. He’s like, a rapper on his yacht singing it. Oh man.

Yeah. So, if you’re against the military industrial complex, why are you trying to start a war with China? Like, that’s World War 3. So, he’s not to be taken seriously, except as a strategist, I think. I don’t think that it is really about ending the wars, and I don’t think it was ever really about bringing the jobs home. I don’t buy it. I think he, I think he saw issues that a lot of people who had voted for Democrats multiple times, promising to do something about free trade, and he saw a fertile issue. He’s a market researcher more than anything else, I think.

RG: Yes. Today, for instance, he’s going off about spending, so it all comes back to Paul Ryan-style old-school Republican stuff, worried about the deficit and spending.

NK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And transphobia and white supremacy. And he’s most passionate about the border war. So, he capitalizes on these issues like anger at big tech, anger at big pharma, anger at the endless wars, the military spending, but it doesn’t actually ever reach those targets. That’s what I’m struck by. It pivots very, very quickly. And the project is — he says it very plainly — it’s to gain power for a hundred years. Take him seriously.

RG: And you talk about the legal concept of abandonment in the book, which goes to your point that you were just making, about Democrats kind of ceding all of this turf.

NK: I mean, the legal concept of brand. Like, copyright. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Under copyright law, you lose control over your trademark if you’re not using it. That’s just a joke about branding, because I have a branding crisis, which is ironic, if you know anything about the things I’ve written over the years.

RG: How hard was it for you to write about that? To just go directly at your own brand and say, you know what? Okay, fine. You know what? I do have a brand, and the brand is in crisis.

NK: I had so much fun writing this book.

RG: It comes through.

NK: It was not hard. In fact, it was really joyful. I remembered why I wanted to be a writer. I used to be a lot funnier when I first started writing and no one knew who I was. I had this weird thing happen where … You know, my first book “No Logo” was much more playful and self-deprecating. It’s a book about the colonization of so many aspects of our lives by the logic of corporate branding. Little did I know what was ahead — you know, I wrote it in the 90s — but I talked a lot about how I was drawn to the shiny world of logos, and it was a critique written from inside of what I was critiquing, not from the outside wagging my fingers. I get the appeal. I’m drawn to it. I also wanted to climb inside my television set and live there.

I think what happened, because that book sort of put me in this position of being a face of a certain kind of left, at a certain moment when a new movement was emerging, I sort of felt the weight of that, and my writing got a lot more serious and straight up. And I’m proud of the work I did in “The Shock Doctrine” and “This Changes Everything,” and I still do more conventional academic research on climate justice, as you heard in the intro.  But I felt a little speechless during the pandemic, that’s the truth. I felt like I lost faith in the ability to move the needle just by making that same argument again around the climate crisis.

And so, I actually went back to school… You know, we’re here at a school. I never studied creative writing. As an undergrad, I studied English literature and philosophy, and then I started just working in journalism. I got hired before I graduated, and just kept doing journalism, kept writing. And so, I thought, when I was kind of grounded because of the pandemic, maybe I would take a writing course, and that’s what I did.

I worked with a writing teacher and just went back to school and started playing. And then I had this weird concept of using my own doppelganger to look at the doppelganger world that we’re living in, and that felt really fun.

RG: That shows, too. And don’t take this the wrong way, but I was reading it, and thinking, I didn’t know Naomi was so funny, and such a good writer. I mean, the other books are well written, but that’s not what you’re there for. This book, it really sings. And you’re laughing halfway through it.

NK: Laugh-crying. The laugh-cry emoji. Frozen.

RG: And while, in some ways, it’s a departure from your earlier books, I think — and I’m curious for your take on this — I think it also fits in with them as well, in the sense that a lot of your previous books were at once kind of an intervention in a particular moment, but also building a new framework for how to then think about that moment going forward. And I think this is both of those.

So, if that’s right, what kind of intervention did you want this to be, and what are you hoping comes out of it?

NK: Yeah. Thanks for that, Ryan. It’s definitely a weirder book, but it’s definitely a weirder time. I mean, this was a very different writing process in the sense that [in] all my other books, I had a full outline of what I was going to write before I wrote it, I had a book publishing deal. It was like, lay out the thesis, say what you’re going to do, do it. Say you did it. You know, that’s the structure of the books.

With this book, I really found it through writing it. I knew that the device of the narrow aperture of the double, of the doppelganger, was going to help me get back into branding, was going to help me get into AI, was going to help me get into data mining, but was also going to help me get into the way the right, and the sort of liberal center, and, to a degree, also, the left, were kind of in this mirror war with each other, where whatever they said, we can’t say. So, if they’re now talking about big pharma, we are cheering big pharma. Get your… You know, that’s our whole thing.

And so, I was really interested in that reactivity, but also, the final third of the book is about, what are we not looking at, when we’re looking at ourselves as brands, as perfected beings, or when we’re just reacting with one another? And the final third of the book is called “The Shadowlands.” And that’s, I think, as James Baldwin said: what are we not looking at? We’re not willing to look at death, we’re not willing to look at trouble, we’re not willing to look at history. And I think this is such a moment of wild distraction, and it makes sense.

Like, this is a hard moment to hold. COVID was this reckoning, this unveiling of so many preexisting injustices and inequalities that became unignorable, because the people who were in the shadows holding the world up, highly racialized, were the COVID hotspots. I mean, it was the meatpacking plants, it was the Amazon warehouses. And here’s an airborne virus that forces us to think about who else breathes this air, you know? Did could they call in sick? Did they have any rights? It is an absolute frontal confrontation with the logic at the heart of capitalism that tells you you’re on your own. You are an island. All of your successes are yours alone, and people who don’t have them, it’s their fault. And, suddenly, no. We are enmeshed. And that was a very hard reckoning to hold when you’ve been told your whole life that you make yourself, you know? And your only duty is to yourself and your family and, if you are successful, then you’ve won the prize, right?

And now, suddenly, you have to think about vulnerable people, you have to think about workers, you have to think about racialized workers? That was not the bargain that a lot of people signed up for, and I don’t think it should be a surprise that a lot of people rebelled against that and said, no way, you know? I’m going to shout freedom in the freezing cold, and that’s what happened in my country. Honk your air horn.

I think it’s equally interesting that a lot of people who grew up in that same individualistic culture welcomed the emergence of a social state that put an eviction moratorium, paid people to stay home, set up mutual aid networks, and said, yeah, we want to show up for each other. And then there’s a racial justice reckoning in the middle of that, and it deepens, and there’s a vision for another kind of society with radically different spending priorities.

So, I think we’re in this moment where you’ve got a reckoning with our present incredibly unjust economic order, which you can no longer unsee on some level, especially if you’re part of the lockdown class, because you know that you are being supported by all these other people who bore so much more risk unequally. You’ve got a reckoning with the very creation of settler colonial states, and then you’ve got a reckoning with the future, right? Which is, the climate crisis is here, and we are all implicated in it.

I think there’s all kinds of distractions being thrown up right now, and that’s what this book is trying to do, is map the weirdness of now. Arundhati Roy said to us early on in this pandemic that it was going to be a portal, that we were going to go somewhere new, and it could have been better, and it could be worse, but it was not going to be the same.

This was too cataclysmic to not bring us somewhere, and I don’t think we know where that somewhere is yet.

RG: Yeah. We’re still figuring that out. And you write that the mirror world has to be understood through the prism of the doppelganger, and through the framework of the doppelganger, and so, therefore, can’t be understood without reference to ourselves as well. And you go into a number of different areas where you changed your own mind, and you’re self-critical. For people who haven’t read the book, there’s a lot of self-criticism of things that you wish you had given more thought to early on in the pandemic. Some of them — COVID origin, you write about the vaccine and complications around pregnancy, and some other warnings that could have been given.

Let’s go through some of those. Which ones do you want to start with that were the ones that you…

NK: I just want to point out that I’m in a particularly awkward situation here, because there is this thing where I did write a book called “The Shock Doctrine.” It is about how large-scale emergencies are exploited by elites to push through a preexisting wish list. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s all proven, it’s real, it’s still happening. It’s happening in Hawaii right now, happening under cover of COVID. It’s not a conspiracy, but it is true that, for instance, the U.K. government has used the fact that hospitals were over capacity to attack the NHS, to attack their much-loved National Health Service. Different right-wing-run Canadian provinces have done the same thing.

I think a lot of the attacks on schools around COVID policies were actually just attacks on public schools, and part of that preexisting pattern of, whatever the disaster, let’s use it to have vouchers and charters. The same thing that happened after Katrina and Maria, and again, and again, and again.

But this was awkward for me, and I did write a lot about that in the early stage of the pandemic. But then, all of a sudden, there was this kind of doppelganger version of “The Shock Doctrine,” which was this Great Reset conspiracy theory that was coursing through the world, which was like “The Shock Doctrine” with all the facts and evidence removed in order to expose a conspiracy that actually had a website and a marketing firm. Which was that the world economic forum said, yes, we want a great reset. It wasn’t hidden, but somehow it got recast as if it was some great feat of investigative journalism to find this website where…

RG: And watch a couple of YouTube videos that they made.

NK: Right. Which included people like King Charles, right? So, it’s like, if you were trying to hide something, you wouldn’t get him involved, you know? That left me speechless. Like, I didn’t know what to do.

RG: You wrote one very helpful piece for us, I remember, about The Conspiracy Smoothie. Then I could send the link to all my friends who would be asking about The Great Reset.

NK: I want to tell you an interesting story related to that before we go down the list. because there are real things, there were true things, and things that were abandoned. But some of this is just about clout chasing, and the reason I know that is because… So, Russell Brand read that article on his show. He would often just read articles of mine on, anyone who’s listened to his podcast knows that a lot of what he does is just sort of read articles written by other people with feeling.

RG: Yeah. And an accent.

NK: Yeah. And so, he does this show where he says, Naomi Klein’s written this really interesting article, I know a lot of people are talking about the Great Reset. It explains what it is, it’s nothing to get excited about, and he reads the article and says, you know, this is all true.

And he puts “Great Reset” as one of the tags — you know about all this — and then all of a sudden he gets a lot more views than he had been getting before. Because, of course, all the people who believe in The Great Reset find it, and they watch it. And, suddenly, Russell Brand has a whole bunch of new followers. And then he goes back to The Great Reset about 20 times, except for, now, it’s audience capture, and he’s giving them what they want, which is a much more conspiratorial take on it.

So I just sort of watched that happening with great fascination. Just interesting. It’s a clout mine.

RG: Yes. But YouTube does that to a lot of its content creators, it will pull them into conspiracy land further and further by funneling more and more traffic to them And then they’ll cross an arbitrary line, and they’ll nuke their channel. It’s a bizarre thing where they’re feeding the very thing that they then nuke.

Let me ask you about… you hinted at censorship a couple times, and the whole big tech… It used to be a thing of the left, that you don’t want big tech telling people what they can and can’t say. That’s become a right-wing thing.

NK: Right.

RG: And, looking back with Facebook, for instance, [it] wouldn’t let you post anything that’s speculated about the Wuhan lab being the origin of COVID. Like, you would lose your account. I think Twitter had some penalties, but it wasn’t as draconian as Facebook.

NK: That’s terrifying.

RG: That’s a real, terrifying thing that actually happened.

NK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s also not the first time. I think that this idea that this is a right-wing concern is a very specifically American phenomenon. If you ask folks in Turkey or India, they will most certainly say that it is their extreme right-wing governments that are working with these same tech companies to deplatform dissidents and toe the government line.

RG: Right. Because the right is doing that here as well, including buying the platform, and directing it their way.

So, the book also feels like it’s trying to give people permission to kind of look back at where they were the last couple years, and allow for more uncertainty, while also not wallowing in complete nihilism or pretending that nothing is true.

If you could go back and talk to yourself in, like, 2020, what would you say to help you think your way through the next couple years?

NK: Yeah. I would say that just be… There were certain points where, I think, in the early stages of the pandemic, there was a lot of really great political organizing on the left that was not just supporting the… Like, yes, supporting masks and, eventually, vaccination programs, but being much more ambitious than that. For instance, we knew from the Scandinavian countries that you keep schools open if you had small enough classrooms, right? And so, that’s a pretty good argument for something that we need anyway. We need smaller classrooms for our kids. More outdoor education is also a great way to keep your kids safe from an airborne virus. The right to good indoor air is another one.

And I think what started to happen is, there was a lot of this more ambitious — I mean, you know this, Ryan — there were a lot of groups here that were collaborating across different kind of issue silos to envision what rebuilding from the pandemic could be, learning from the lessons of who had been most impacted, taking in the lessons of the racial justice uprisings of 2020. And there was the [Red, Black & Green New Deal], , there were all these sort of platform experiments happening.

And I think, then, for a variety of reasons, a lot of them got derailed. And, for me, that was what made me most speechless, was watching us go from these really, really high highs. You know, I was part of the Bernie campaign, I was still living in the states when the racial justice uprisings happened. I remember being in New Jersey, and just that kind of amazing moment where you realize that all of your neighbors are out. And it was, like, the opposite of every zombie movie plot right, where there’s an apocalypse and people come out to eat each other’s brains, except there’s an apocalypse, and people come out and they just are expressing solidarity. That was an amazing turn of events.

And then things… You wrote the piece, The Elephant in the Zoom. But I do think Zoom organizing around this was very hard. I think it was hard to sustain solidarity virtually. I think it was one of the issues, losing those sort of interstitial moments that, I think, nourish folks in movements, and just having the hard meetings is really, really difficult. A lot of things got confused when Democrats were in power as well, right? Where I was just like, okay, well, how against things can we be, when we don’t have Trump to clearly all be against? Things got a little mixed up.

But what would I say to myself? I would say, we were on the right track! I think we were on the right track. There was a good piece on that [that] David Wallace Wells did recently, about COVID revisionism, and the COVID revisionism I’m most interested in is the revisionism that kind of erases all that early solidarity, is almost kind of embarrassed by it. And I think we need more stamina, frankly, to see things through, and I think we need that horizon of where we’re moving towards, precisely because these kinds of unveilings and reckonings are really difficult. And if there isn’t a vision of a world where nobody is sacrificial, where everyone has a place, which is somewhere where we all might want to go, I think that the hard work of actually seeing where we are becomes almost impossible, right?

Yeah. So, I would say: keep at it. You were on the right track, don’t get derailed. What would you say?

RG: Uh … Oh God, I don’t know.

[Deconstructed mid-show theme music.]

RG: Which direction do you think things are going, the last year or so? You write about the difficulty that, in 2021/2022, on the progressive left, people were just having open debate. That everybody was nervous, everybody was … And you talk about the distrust that was producing just people who were out for themselves, and collapsing organizations, which goes to the thing that you were mentioning that I wrote about later.

NK: Yeah.

RG: Do you feel like it’s still headed in that direction? Or do you think it’s swinging back a little bit, and there’s more trust and more willingness to disagree?

NK: I’ve been struck with this book, that I think there are peaks and valleys in social movements, and I think we’re in a valley. And I think, because of that, there’s less defensiveness. I’m finding less defensiveness where, I think with … Maybe when things are going a little better, people are more inclined to be like, no, don’t criticize us, we know what we’re doing. But I don’t know a single person who’s happy with the trajectory of how social movements have gone.

You know, we’ve had these high-high highs, right? I mean, the climate strikes, that wasn’t so long ago. Millions and millions of people around the world. Or the energy around the Green New Deal in 2019. So, given that in our recent memories we’ve experienced these kind of effervescent political moments when a lot seemed possible … I was in Nevada when Bernie swept the strip. You know, I’ve never seen so many happy leftists. It was just, hugging total strangers, right?

And so, yeah. I think that I’m noticing a non-defensiveness. It’s never easy to do this work, but I think it’s incredibly important for social movements to be able to do self-criticism. And most, frankly, non-North-American countries are better at it than we are. They do the autocritica in Latin America, it’s just like, part of organizing. What did we do wrong, how do we learn from that?

I quote in the book Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who is one of the amazing Egyptian revolutionaries who led the 2011 revolution [and] has been in prison now for 12 years. And he’s sitting there writing essays about what they did wrong, you know? And he knows they did it wrong, because he’s in jail, and so are tens of thousands of other political prisoners in Egypt. And he’s not saying it’s all their fault; it’s obviously a murderous military dictatorship’s fault. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t still have a responsibility to try to metabolize. How do we do it better, right? Because everything’s on the line here.

So, yeah. So far so good, Ryan. I mean, everything could go south really quickly, but …

RG: What do you think that we could acknowledge that we did wrong in the last couple of years in general? Particularly when it comes to COVID.

NK: Who’s the “we?”

RG: Who’s the “we…” The “we” would be the kind of broad, progressive left.

NK: I think we should have got all-in for lifting the patents on the vaccines. I think there should have been just really militant internationalism. Like, I won’t get my third shot until everybody on this planet gets their first one. That was one of the moments where we had this big trucker convoy in Canada that shut down Ottawa for three weeks. And it was weird, because I was like, well, what if we’d shut down Ottawa for three weeks, actually, with some real demands for justice?

So, you know, I think that’s one. I think that it has to be a … If you’re going to ask individuals to do hard things, it has to be fair. This is the lesson of the mobilizations during the Second World War, where people did a lot of hard things for the war effort, but it was incredibly important that it be perceived by the public to apply to everyone. So I think that we should have gone after COVID profiteering hammer and tongs. Like, nobody should have been allowed to get rich, let alone have these billionaires double their already obscene wealth. It’s so demoralizing.

And when you have systems that are allowing that to happen, and then are saying, close down your small business, close down your small job. Come on, that is not going to work, right? And then turning around and saying, oh, those people are jerks. It doesn’t hold, it really, really doesn’t hold.

So, I think that that’s where the energy should have gone. And it still can, it still can. We can take these issues back.

RG: So, we’ve got some audience questions we’ve got to get to here. So, here’s one: In a world and a future where human history is being collected as data by wealthy companies and then repurposed by AI, what do you see as the role of a writer? How do you compete, and ensure your words are portrayed as they should be? That’s from Natasha.

NK: Oh, hi Natasha. Where are you? Oh, that’s a great question. Yeah.

I mean, it’s funny, I quoted Arundhati Roy, who I’m lucky to call a friend, and she said to me 20 years ago, you can’t control what happens to your ideas once you release them. And that was before AI and social media. It was just, you know, the thing she was saying is, for better and for worse. People do awful things with one’s ideas, and they also do wonderful things, and you actually can’t take credit for either of them.

So, I think to write is to be misunderstood, but it’s also to have this amazing experience of having your words meet other brains, and have them add all kinds of things that never occurred to you. I’ve talked about this project as being a kind of first attempt at a weird little map of what I see through the portal, but I’m just one set of eyes seeing it, you know? And the fun part is the part I’m in right now, where people are going like, you missed a whole mountain range over there, you know?

And what about this path? Writing is such collective work. Even when you’re all by yourself, you’re hearing this cacophony of voices that are influencing you, that are your sources, that are your references, that are the other writers that made you. And then the work goes into the world, and then you do it all over again.

And that’s actually been the funnest part about this particular book, is that, because it doesn’t make any pretext of being definitive about anything — it’s very personal, it’s very quirky, it’s very particular — it has inspired, already, some incredibly wonderful writing in other writers.

So, we can’t control it, but I think there’s a lot of beauty in it.

RG: Would you clone yourself if you could? No name on this one.

NK: I would absolutely not. No.

RG: It doesn’t work out in any of the stories that you write about in your book.

NK: No. No.

RG: Never a good ending.

NK: There’s an under underappreciated doppelganger film called Dual — I think it’s a made-for-Netflix film — where the main character played by Karen Gillan gets a terminal diagnosis, and she lives in a world where you can create a clone, so that your friends and family don’t have to feel grief. It’s more a metaphor for how bad we are at grief, right? And how much the culture we’re in tends to not feel, and numb. And so, yeah, how about having a technology where nobody has to feel sad things?

Yeah. There’s a line in it, where it turns out that she was misdiagnosed and she’s going to live, and that means she has to fight her clone to the death. And they say, we can’t have two of you walking around, that would be ridiculous! Tell me about it.

RG: As a college student and climate activist, I’m inspired constantly by your work. What advice do you have for people like me who want to do the kind of writing and research you do?

NK: Well, I think one of the things we really need now are some success story writings. We’ve got plenty of reasons to feel down. There was just a great piece that came out — I just tweeted it — by Liza Featherstone in In These Times about the story of how New York State won a really fantastic energy democracy piece of legislation. And it’s a great pincer of climate justice organizing and DSA folks in office who are able to receive that pressure. And it’s a wonderful kind of success story that I think we need to spread.

You know, right now in Brazil, there’s a celebration going on because they beat back Bolsonaro, and they’re starting to be some really progressive policies about the Amazon enacted. And some indigenous ecofeminists have been elected into the Brazilian cabinet. It’s exciting. We don’t think about that enough.

So, yeah. I would say, tell those stories. And, as a writer and as a researcher, figure out how we can crack this, and spread the good news if you can.

RG: Last question for me, and then, if you want to read a little bit more …

So, one of the main things I took away from your book is how much fear of the mirror world shapes our own approach to truth and to our own politics — justified, I think, fear — which then ends up linking the things that we believe, with our tribe, with our partisan politics. And you become unable, then … You end up with a situation where things that don’t have any obvious partisan valence take one on.

Like, I understand why most progressives say the minimum wage should be higher, and conservatives say there should be no minimum wage. Like, that makes ideological sense. It doesn’t make ideological sense to talk about COVID origins. That doesn’t fit into a partisan [valence]. Or what you wrote about with potential complications that the virus produces during pregnancy or during a menstrual cycle. Like, that shouldn’t have anything to do with partisan politics. Yet, it did.

On the vaccine, for instance, as it became increasingly clear that it wasn’t stopping the spread, it was impossible for Democrats to talk about that. And I feel like the fear that you write about in your book, it helps to explain that. So, how can people break out of that, so that they don’t continue to produce the monsters in the mirror world?

NK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that what’s really dangerous about these figures, to me — Bannon, Malone — is the way they’re kind of mixing and matching these very, very dangerous scapegoat policies of various kinds with these issues that are not, traditionally, issues for the right, and that have a lot of potency. And so, I think the most important thing we can do is reclaim those issues, because they’re only available to be picked up if we’re not using them to full effect, right? I mean they can use them but it won’t have the same kind of power of truth-telling that it’s having at the moment. So, I think that is incredibly important work.

I think, as a journalist, there just needs to be a little bit of just doing our jobs, right? I think people can handle more complexity than we sometimes give them credit for. So, you can say that there are some adverse reactions to vaccines, and people can still make an educated decision about it. And if you don’t, then they’re going to go do their own research, and they’re going to end up in the arms of some people who are really, really untrustworthy.

What you were referencing around vaccines and pregnancy, it’s incredibly important for pregnant women to be vaccinated, because your immune system is suppressed when you are pregnant, because your body needs not to reject the fetus. And so, if you get COVID when you’re pregnant, there’s a really good chance you’ll get quite sick. This was not really explained, it was just sort of treated like, “oh, what a ridiculous idea, people…” You know?

And so, I think just doing some basic education and also explaining … And also just treating people a little more kindly. Like, that’s a really legitimate question. I was afraid of everything when I was pregnant. I was afraid of eating soft cheese when I was pregnant, so I can understand why people were afraid of these vaccines. And I think it was honestly a failure of scientific communication that that sort of simple fact was not explained properly, but I just saw a lot of mocking of people who had those concerns, and I think a lot of people were pushed into… They were suddenly getting their advice from Instagram momfluencers, and that was super bad, you know?

RG: Do you want to finish with a [reading]?

NK: I’ll do one last reading. Maybe I’ll just stay here if that’s okay. Storytime. Doppelganger storytime.

So, a lot of the book is about the way we avoid looking at the shadowlands, because we’re implicated in them. And I quote this wonderful British writer named Daisy Hillyard, who has a different kind of take on doppelgangers. And she talks about something called “the second body.” And what she says is that we all have two bodies. We have the body that we’re in right now, which we’re aware of, right? But there is also another body that is out there in the world doing our bidding, and that body is implicated in oil wars, and drone warfare, and extinctions, just because we are all in this system. Not because we like it, but because we are just all in it.

And that second body, that reality, that is us, too. Like, that is our tax dollars, that is our purchasing decisions, that’s us. It’s so, so hard to hold, and we throw up all of these projections and distractions, including putting so much work into perfecting ourselves, our brands, our bodies, our families, that we don’t really have much time left for the collective work that really is our only hope.

So, the last chapter is called “Unselfing.”

NK (Reading from “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World”): James Baldwin, speaking about the double projected onto him as a Black man in the United States observed that it had everything to do with a person doing the projecting. What was a white man seeing when he saw Baldwin? It wasn’t me, he said. It was something he didn’t want to see. And do you know what that was? It was, ultimately, yes, his own death, or call it, trouble. Trouble is an excellent metaphor for death.

So many forms of doubling are ways of not looking at death or trouble, and death feels awfully close these days. As close as a fentanyl-laced pill, a heat dome, a hate crime, an intake of virally loaded breath. Much closer for some than for others, as usual, but not far enough, I suspect, for anyone’s comfort.

So how do we stop averting our gaze? How do we face our second bodies and our mortal bodies in a sustained way, rather than throwing up partitions, performances, and projections to hide from them? What would it take to stop running? To know, really know, what we already know.

Some of the climate scientists whose work I most respect have come around to an understanding that there is an intimate relationship between our overinflated selves and our under-cared-for planet. Charlie Varon, a legendary coral scientist who has spent a lifetime studying the Great Barrier Reef, now in its death throes, describes the journey of his life as one of decentering himself so that he has the headspace to truly see other life forms, human and non-human alike.

It was a hard-won lesson, which began with losing his young daughter, Fiona Ornone, to drowning. Leveled by personal and ecological grief, he aspires now to dissolve into the reef he studies, to, quote, “Feel like coral, or a fish.” This recalls the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch’s description of observing something beautiful, whether a bird or a painting, as an occasion for unselfing.

Varon’s humbling journey to unselfing may well hold a key to our collective survival, because it means that our role here on Earth is not simply to maximize the advantage of our lives, it’s to maximize, protect, regenerate all of life. We are here not just to make sure we as individuals survive, but to make sure that life survives. Not to chase clout, but to chase life.

This is something else we might choose to learn from our double walkers. The idea that each one of us has a lookalike walking around somewhere means that no one is quite as special or unique as we might have imagined ourselves to be. Within capitalism’s hall of mirrors, this revelation tends to be told as a horror story, as embodied by Jesse Eisenberg’s character in The Double, the one who whimpers, “I’d like to think I’m pretty unique.” This is the must-kill, must-stab, must-be-the-last-me-standing response to doppelgangers that threads its way through Western literature, film, and monotheistic religion. But there is also the option of viewing our doubles the way fake Philip Roth does in “Operation Shylock.” Hooray! I’m not alone in this cruel world.

Because we are not alone, at least not as alone as it can feel. Connections and solidarities and kinships are available to all of us should we choose to guard the boundaries of ourselves less jealously. We have kin everywhere. Some of them look like us, lots of them look nothing like us, and we are still connected to them. Some aren’t even human. Some are coral, some are whales, and they are there to connect with, if we can get out of our own way for long enough.

To be clear, I’m not planning to embrace my doppelganger as a long-lost relative. But doppelgangers, by messing with our heads and our illusions of sovereignty, can help teach us this lesson, that we are not as separate from one another as we might think. Not as individuals, and perhaps not even as groups of individuals who have been born into various kinds of seemingly eternal fratricidal duels.

It’s the same lesson the pandemic tried to teach us in those early days. No one makes themselves; we all make and unmake one another. Self-involvement, however it manifests — my doppelganger’s megalomania, my various neuroses, your fill-in-the-blanks — is a story in which the self takes up too much space, just as the story of Judeo Christian Western civilization puts the human, (read: white male powerful human) at the center of the story of life on this planet, with all of it created for our species.

None of it is true. Whether we are loving ourselves too much or loathing ourselves too much, or, more likely, doing both, we’re still at the center of every story, we’re still blotting out the sun. All of which is why, over the course of this now-concluding journey, I have come to embrace Naomi confusion as an unconventional Buddhist exercise. I could never quite get the hang of non-attachment before this but, I think, thanks to her, I have.

[Audience clapping.]

NK: Thank you, Ryan.

RG: Thank you, Naomi.

NK: That was fun. Thank you so much. Thanks, everybody.

RG: Thank you so much for doing this, and congratulations on the book.

NK: Thank you so much, Ryan. It was so fun. Listen to Deconstructed!

[Deconstructed end-show theme music.]

RG: That was Naomi Klein, and that’s our show. Her latest book is Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. Our producer is José Olivares. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. This episode was engineered by Lena Moreno, and technical coordination by Cory Choy of Silver Sound. And special thanks to Politics and Prose in GW. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Roger Hodge is The Intercept’s Editor-in-Chief, and I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept.

If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or review, it helps people find the show.

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Thanks so much, and I’ll see you soon.

The post Naomi Klein on Conspiracy Culture and “the Mirror World” appeared first on The Intercept.

The U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza is entering its fifth month. As the brutal siege and bombing continues, the United Nations and other international organizations are warning of famine and the outbreak of diseases. Powerful nations around the world, led by the U.S., are not just supplying weapons and political support for Israel, but also have now joined in the campaign to further restrict vital humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Biden administration has led the charge to suspend funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the most important aid organization operating in Gaza. Israel has waged a smear campaign against UNRWA, baselessly characterizing the whole organization as a front group for Hamas. What began as an accusation that a few UNRWA employees may have participated in the October 7 attacks has now become a sweeping attack against the organization’s very existence.

This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill is joined by Mohammed Elnaiem, a political educator and director of the Decolonial Centre in London. Elnaiem discusses the ways pro-colonial narratives provide support to Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, despite people around the world watching a “livestreamed genocide.” He also breaks down the major imperial powers’ role in the conflict, connecting the historical thread of colonialism to the current war.

Jeremy Scahill: This is Intercepted.

Welcome to Intercepted. I’m Jeremy Scahill.

The U.S.-backed Israeli war against Gaza is now entering its fifth month. It would be impossible to overstate the horrifying destruction that has been unleashed on the people of Gaza. More than 27,000 have been killed. The vast majority — 70 percent of them — are women and children. More than 66,000 others are injured. And these statistics are likely a dramatic undercount; thousands of people remain missing, many of them are lying dead under the rubble of what was once their homes.

More than 80% of Gaza’s Palestinians are now internally displaced, and are being corralled under threat of bombing into an ever-shrinking killing cage, as the Israelis begin to lay siege to Rafah, along the Egyptian border.

Hani Mahmoud, Reporter, Al Jazeera English: Overnight — when, in fact, it started in the early hours of last night — in the evening hours, with the heavy artillery shelling of the eastern part of Rafah City, and finishing at about midnight, with massive airstrikes on both different locations, in eastern Rafah and in the central part of Rafah city. Very crowded and densely populated, two areas. The one in eastern Rafah, a residential home full of displaced Palestinians…

JS: Two-thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have now been rendered entirely inoperable. Famine is spreading, clean water is scarce. Doctors are performing limb amputations on children with no anesthesia. Some patients are dying from the shock of the excruciating pain. Women are having C-sections with no anesthetics.

Israel has enforced a wartime blockade on the entry of aid. That’s resulted in only a tiny fraction of what the U.N. and other organizations say would be necessary to even begin to address the horrifying reality. 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO: First, to Gaza, where WHO continues to face extreme challenges in supporting the health system and health workers. As of today, over 100,000 Gazans are either dead, injured, or missing and presumed dead. WHO has faced great difficulty, even to reach hospitals in southern Gaza.

Heavy fighting has been reported in the hospitals in Khan Yunis, severely impaired access to health facilities for patients, health workers, and supplies.

JS: The World Food Program has for weeks been warning that Gaza is facing catastrophic hunger and starvation. People in Gaza have on average just one-and-a-half liters of water per day; that’s to drink, to wash with, to cook with. Chronic diarrhea is rampant among children; there has been a 2,000 percent increase since Israel launched its invasion and bombing in October. Milk and formula are now scarce, newborns are having to eat solid foods long before their bodies are ready for it, causing other health issues. There is an average of one toilet per 480 people in shelters in Gaza.

Steve Inskeep, Host, NPR: As they respond to the October 7th attack by Hamas, the Israeli forces have destroyed many Palestinian schools and universities. The places flattened include Israa University in Gaza City.

Reporter, France 24 English: With no shelter and limited supplies, these displaced Gazans have been living on the streets in Khan Younis. Some have seen their homes demolished by Israeli airstrikes, and fear that nowhere in the enclave is safe.

Anchorperson, Al Jazeera English: Well, we begin in Gaza, where Israeli forces are showing no signs of slowing their attacks. The main building of Nasr Hospital in Khan Yunis is amongst the latest targets. Troops are surrounding the facility and intense bombing has been taking place around it overnight. Gaza’s health ministry says no one has been able to enter or exit the hospital, which was already struggling to treat the wounded.

JS: Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza’s universities and schools, its healthcare centers, its archives and libraries. It is engaging in controlled demolitions of entire neighborhoods, blowing up apartment complexes, destroying farms and other agricultural areas. More than 60 percent of Gaza’s homes have been destroyed or significantly damaged. There are reports of mass executions of prisoners and the widespread torture of other Palestinians. And, at every turn, Netanyahu and his henchmen have made clear they intend to continue their campaign indefinitely, even as their military forces face a quagmire in their military battle against the Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian fighters.

And Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, he’s back in the Middle East, and continues to reiterate that the U.S. opposes a permanent ceasefire.

U.S. House: On this vote, the yeas are 226, the nays are 196. The bill is passed.

Reporter, Reuters: The U.S. House passed a bill to provide almost $15 billion in aid to Israel on Thursday.

JS: The U.S. continues to rush weapons and ammunition to Israel to continue this slaughter. And, at the same time, the Biden administration has led the charge to cut funding to UNRWA, perhaps the most important international organization operating on the ground in Gaza. The U.S. and other nations have accepted, without any actual concrete evidence, Israel’s accusation that a tiny number of UNRWA staff participated in the October 7th attacks.

This is an organization with 30,000 employees, more than 12,000 of them inside Gaza itself, and the U.S. has admitted it has not even bothered to check the facts on its own, and yet, has now allowed the Israeli government’s propaganda to replace any sort of independent U.S. policy.

The U.S. is outsourcing even the minimal semblance of independence to an extreme Israeli agenda against the most important aid organization in Gaza. That’s the fact.

Catherine Byaruhanga, BBC News: The U.N.’s Humanitarian Coordinator for Gaza said it was vital for UNRWA to be able to continue with its work.

Sigrid Kaag, Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza, U.N.: There’s no substitution for the humanitarian role that is played in Gaza. We need to all ramp up, given the totality of needs, and the scale, and the complexity of the crises. There is no substitution.

JS: And all of this comes as Biden is pushing for an additional $14 billion of new cash to Tel Aviv for Israel’s war against the people of Gaza.

This is all happening as the International Court of Justice ruled that South Africa’s genocide case against Israel can proceed. The court explicitly ordered Israel to allow with immediate effect the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The main U.N. humanitarian organization OCHA says that, in January, Israel blocked 66 percent of its planned missions to deliver aid to Gaza. Israel has intensified its attacks against UNRWA and the U.N. were a clear attempt to distract from the ICJ ruling. It also happens at a time when a federal judge in California has ruled that the Biden administration is plausibly supporting genocidal actions by continuing to arm and back Israel.

The U.S. is not some outside observer. It is complicit in all of this. It’s an active partner in the carnage, the bombings, the attacks against defenseless civilians. And it’s leading the international charge to defund the most important aid organization operating in Gaza. And yet, we are told that Biden — who apparently spends his mornings watching Morning Joe on MSNBC — is losing patience with Netanyahu.

This apparently is the Democrats emerging strategy for 2024: blame the war all on Bibi’s extremism, and gaslight everyone by claiming that Joe Biden was somehow a voice of moderation. Well, in the real world, Biden almost cannot give a speech anywhere now without it being disrupted by protesters confronting him for his support of the scorched-earth war.

And the White House says it doesn’t want a wider war in the Middle East, and yet its expanding its bombing campaigns in Yemen, in Iraq, in Syria, and says it will continue indefinitely.

Keir Simmons, NBC News: The bodies of Iraqis killed in this weekend’s airstrikes were buried today. With speeches from pro-Iranian leaders calling for America to be clean from the country.

Iraq’s prime minister visited the wounded in the hospital. The strikes, aiming to punish Iran and Iranian-backed groups for the attack that killed three U.S. soldiers. But the Pentagon admitted today, there are no reports of Iranians killed or injured.

JS: None of this is going to be neatly wrapped up in time for the 2024 election, and the White House knows it, because they are fueling it. They are hoping that Trump’s insanity is going to somehow save Biden, that people will let him off the hook for supporting and facilitating this genocidal war because they are terrified of Trump.

But the indications — at least right now — is that this is far from a guarantee. Biden’s ratings are in the toilet, and he has made clear he doesn’t care about the concerns of so many voters in the U.S. who are appalled at what he is doing right now to the people of Gaza. This isn’t just Israel’s war; it’s a joint US-Israeli war, and no amount of spin is going to wipe the blood off the hands of the U.S. officials who waged it.

But it’s not just the U.S. that has steadfastly backed the scorched-earth war; it’s virtually the entire Western establishment, with a few notable exceptions. Canada, they’re all-in. Britain, all-in. France, all-in. Germany, enthusiastically all-in. It is this coalition of the killing, and what motivates these nations to support Israel’s war of annihilation, that we are going to focus on on today’s program.

Our guest is Mohammed Elnaiem, a political educator, and Director of the Decolonial Centre in London. He is an advocate of anti-colonial politics and works with his colleagues to amplify anti-colonial work and activism.

Mohammed, thanks so much for being with us. Welcome to Intercepted. 

Mohammed Elnaiem: Thank you. 

JS: Mohammed, I want to begin with narrative. The narrative that has been deployed by… Not just by Israel, but by the United States, and the European countries that are supporting Israel’s war against Gaza. First of all, just start off by giving your broad reflections on the story of this war. How it began, how it’s been waged, what that has looked like from the United States and European capitals.

ME: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, first of all.

One of the things that has been horrific for a lot of us to see is the ways in which a certain kind of narrative, a European exceptionalist narrative — and I say “Europe and its offshoots,” in the sense that the United States is an offshoot of it, it’s part of the same global political culture — of almost needing to be entirely uncritical of Israel, and the way in which Israel is waging what’s effectively — and, even by the ICJ, potentially — a genocidal war against the people of Gaza.

For the longest time, when you’re looking at the media in general and other topics, Noam Chomsky’s idea that the role of the media is just to manufacture consent for everybody to fall in line with the foreign policy of the United States and Europe seems to be a bit over-simplistic. But then, all of a sudden, you’re watching the media, and this is a livestreamed genocide. The evidence is irrefutable, it’s publicly available. And the way in which the media kind of tiptoes around it, both-sides it, makes it seem as if it’s not important that a genocide is taking place, or sometimes just by omission, just pretends that this isn’t happening… I mean, you start to really buy into the idea that Chomsky had, which is that the role of the media is to manufacture consent.

And I think, one of the things is that this is a ripe moment for the far-right to recruit, because this is also a moment where it becomes very easy to buy into conspiracy theories which are antisemitic, that the reason why we’re seeing this is because there must be a conspiracy, Israel’s controlling the media, etc.

And so, for me, it’s like, I’m obviously someone of colonized descent — my dad was born during the time when Britain had still colonized Sudan — and I’m watching the media, and I’m watching, for example, the right-wing media. And they’re just sitting down there discussing — Julia Hartley Brewer had a guest on, just casually discussing if ethnic cleansing is a potential solution to the Gaza question. Or when you watch a person who maybe has had tens of their family members killed in Israeli airstrikes, and they’re asked to condemn Hamas.

The lack of shame, the lack of empathy. You have to try to understand, where is this coming from? And if you reject the conspiratorial antisemitic account, then you’re probably going to come to the conclusion that there’s something, culturally. What’s the cultural reason for how, in the name of anti-antisemitism, which generally means in the name of being against genocide, people are being actively complicit in genocide.

And so, for me, a part of the way in which I’m seeing the narrative is, where is that coming from? And I think, for me, the diagnosis to that problem is quite simply that all of these people in the cultural industry, the curators, the journalists, there’s no malign intent, there’s no need to engage in some kind of double standard. There’s a cultural problem here which is making them complicit in genocide, and that’s kind of what I’ve been interested in when it comes to the narratives.

JS: A lot of times people focus on the fact that the United States, because it’s the greatest bankroller of Israel in general, and the biggest sponsor of Israel specifically in this war of annihilation in Gaza, and, to a lesser extent, of course, the British government, which also is a very steadfast supporter of Israel, including when it’s at its most violent. But what we’re seeing is other European nations becoming very, very outspoken. Not just in their defense of Israel, but their specific defense of Israel’s tactics in Gaza.

I’m speaking specifically of the German government, certainly its spending on weapons. We’ve seen that on full display in the NATO/Ukraine-Russia conflict, but also, now, Germany is talking about actually exporting offensive weaponry to Israel.

And, in fact, you received, Mohamed, a lot of attention for a series of posts that you made on social media. When the German government chose to announce its support for Israel as it faced its genocide allegations at the International Court of Justice brought by South Africa, Germany announced that it was supporting Israel in its case at the ICJ on the very day that, in Namibia, people were marking the 100th anniversary of the German genocide in Namibia.

I’d like for you to tell that story and offer your reflections on it, but also, to speak specifically to how you see Germany … Which, of course, murdered 6 million Jews in World War II — and not just Jews, [but] also communists, Roma people, Slavic people, gay people, etc. — but the country that waged this genocidal war in World War II is now taking the side of the Israeli state, which was created in the aftermath of that genocide in Europe, at the expense of the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now forcefully defending what many in the world believe is an ongoing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza.

ME: The honest truth is that when we’re hearing what’s happening to Palestinian and a lot of brown activists of diaspora descent who are fighting for Palestine in Germany, let’s just talk about that. And, more broadly, the decisions that Germany’s made on the international stage.

And you’re hearing stories of police officers coming in and destroying candlelight vigils for Shireen Abu Akleh, or police officers engaging in coordinated campaigns in seven different states, going into offices and making sure people don’t have the wrong literature and that they’re not Hamas supporters.

When you’re seeing these stories of peaceful protests happening in the area of New Köln in Berlin, and then the police just coming in and rampaging. I mean, these are moments and kinds of images which should make Germany ashamed, but also should give them pause, as to not reenact the historic crime which they committed upon the Jewish people and many others, which was the Holocaust.

And then, on the international stage, to see Germany supporting Israel unconditionally, even as Israel is potentially waging a genocide. And, on the day of the anniversary of the Nama and Herero genocide, these are all moments where you’d think … This is, again, it’s one of those moments where, don’t they get it? And, for me, the question is, why don’t they get it?

And so, the series of tweets that I wrote was an attempt to try to understand that question. And my conclusion is, is that a lot of people will claim that drawing any comparison of the Holocaust with another event is a form of relativizing the Holocaust. Whereas, for me, I think that one of the biggest problems for Europe, actually, and it’s part of why they don’t get it, in Europe and its offshoots, is actually exceptionalizing the Holocaust. In the sense that, of course, in many ways, the Holocaust was exceptionally brutal, a unique event, and one of the most horrific events to have ever happened; it’s a stain on the history of humanity. But, at the same time, the logic which went into the Holocaust preceded the Holocaust, and it succeeded the Holocaust.

What I mean by this is, in the 1940s, Aimé Césaire, who was from Martinique, wrote this book called “Discourse on Colonialism.” And he made the claim that, actually, the thing that upset Europe the most about the Holocaust wasn’t the techniques, he said it was the fact that those techniques were reserved solely for the people in the colonies, for African slaves, for what he called the Indian coolies, and that they were now coming to the soil of Europe. And he called it a boomerang effect.

And, a century prior to that, Amy Ashwood Garvey, who was an incredible thinker, and an anticolonialist who was a mentor to some of the first leaders of African independent countries … When fascist Italy had invaded Ethiopia, went to Trafalgar Square, and stood on the stage and said, the only thing in between you and fascism is us, the anticolonialists. And the reason was quite simple, that, for example, just to take the case of the Holocaust and how it connects directly to the Nama and Herero genocide, a lot of the key ideas of Nazi ideology were formulated in response to the conquest of what’s present-day Namibia.

And even the concept of a Lebensraum — and I may be pronouncing that wrong, and I’m sorry if I am — but the idea that there needs to be fertile land for the ills of industrialization, for Germany, the Volk, to be revitalized, which was an idea that made its way into “Mein Kampf,” was an idea that was developed by Ratzel in response to the Nama and Herero genocide, and in encouragement of it. But, more importantly, the Nama and Herero genocide was the first genocide that Germany committed in the 20th century. And it committed that genocide, obviously it developed a whole repertoire of ideas and techniques and ways of corralling people, concentrating them in certain places, killing them, depriving them of the their rights, and then eventually exterminating them. And, obviously, that went into German statecraft and informed the Holocaust.

But it’s much deeper than that, because we’re not just talking about the Nama and Herero genocide. We’re talking about the techniques that the British used in Kenya, in the Mau Mau emergency, and also in the Boer War. We’re talking about what the Italians did in Libya, we’re talking about what the Italians did in Ethiopia. And, just to show you the difference between the case of the Nama and Herero genocide … Germany only recognized and apologized for it a few years ago, and the amount of money that they sent as reparations — or so-called reparations — was a pittance, compared to the amount of money that the German state gave on the founding of Israel in the claims conference. And we’re talking about something like what, three billion dollars?

Most German kids don’t know about the Nama and Herero genocide. But so, then why is there this exceptionalizing narrative? Scholars have described many reasons for why, but I think one of the most important things is a form of self-identity, right? That, to be a person of a civilized country in Europe and Europe’s offshoots, whether we’re talking about the United States, etc., is to understand that, post-1945, this was an era where fascism was an aberration. It had nothing to do with, we are actually heirs of the Enlightenment. And we promised to say “never again,” and part of saying never again means unconditionally supporting Israel, because Israel is the incarnation of Jewish self-determination. I mean, this is the rationale, right?

But, for me, it’s the main problem, and the reason why maybe Europe and its offshoots are doomed to constantly be complicit in genocide — and here we’re talking about a difference of magnitude only — is because of the exceptionalizing narrative. It claims to seek penance for Jewish people, but it’s actually about trying to absolve oneself, in order to continue a system which claims to be predicated on ideals of the Enlightenment — like humanism and freedom and liberty — but which actually, by necessity, has to desecrate all of those values. And the only way in which you can continue with a system like that is to tell yourself a nice, soothing story that you are post-Holocaust, that you’ve learned from that, and that proof of that is unconditional support for Israel.

And I think this is damaging, because what it means is that we’re going to have to continue to see genocide as a permanent fixture of society, and we’ve got to push back against that. And so, that, for me, is one of the most horrifying aspects of the narrative which Europe tries to tell itself, and so-called “Global North” countries.

JS: I want to just read from the post from the Namibian president — who, by the way, just passed away this past weekend — but, on the day that the German government announced, on the 13th of January, 2024, that it was going to be supporting Israel at the International Court of Justice, the president of Namibia posted on social media, “Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention Against Genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza.”

Various international organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have chillingly concluded that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, and the President of Namibia said that he was “appealing to the German government to reconsider its untimely decision to intervene as a third-party in defense and support of the genocidal acts of Israel before the International Court of Justice.”

Now, that’s the Namibian president, but the overarching narrative that Israel promoted about South Africa taking it to the International Court of Justice on charges that it was violating the Genocide Convention, was that South Africa itself is the problem. That South Africa is a corrupt government, that South Africa has no moral standing to bring such charges against Israel, and that, in fact, it’s a complete atrocity that South Africa would dare to use the term genocide against the Israeli state, which was established in the aftermath of the genocide of World War II.

A lot of what happened was this attempt to say, don’t look at the 84-page filing, nine pages of which consisted of statements from Israeli officials clearly making statements that could be interpreted as genocidal intent. Instead, look at South Africa’s problem.

What the Israelis also rejected was a notion that there was any historical significance to South Africa, a nation that suffered under an apartheid system that was backed by Western countries led by the United States for decades, that that had no relevance whatsoever to the proceedings in court.

ME: I mean, you just hit the nail on the head. One of the things about the narrative which I’m talking about right now is the fact that Netanyahu himself has said that this is a struggle between light and darkness, right? This is a struggle between civilization and animals. At the Decolonial Center we hold that, actually, the main ideas which made colonialism possible and justified continued until the present, and I think that this is a perfect example of that.

First of all, I am extremely critical of the current government of South Africa, right? The current government of South Africa has a lot to answer to its people. But the way to delegitimize that is actually also tapping into a part of the psyche which sees these countries as S-hole countries, like what Trump said. That these are corrupt, backwater countries. You can’t trust them, and what do they know about genocide?

So that’s one where it’s basically a reiteration of, OK, if they’re so uncivilized, how can you expect them to say anything? And if you look on social media, especially Israeli social media, and far-right Israeli social media, you’ll see a lot more overt expressions of what I’m trying to explain.

But it’s also this kind of moment, with Namibia challenging Germany, and it’s kind of like we’re seeing this rise, again, of a kind of spirit that’s always been latent since the era of decolonization, but I would say even much earlier than that. Which is basically to say, you claim to stand with these concepts of international law, and international human rights, and rules-based order, etc. Why aren’t you?

And the first challenge to this, or the first challenge to, for example, the principles of the French Revolution, came from Haiti. C.L.R. James, who wrote this book on “The Black Jacobins,” on the Haitian Revolution, said that, when the challenge came from Haiti, people in the National Assembly would shove the rights of man deep into their pockets. You know, they don’t want to make this appeal.

And this is kind of what’s at stake here, when South Africa comes up, and Namibia comes up, and all of these countries, regardless of whether or not whether it will actually prevent a genocide. The fact that it’s happening is, I think, something that caught the Western world and Israel off guard. But it’s also, again, part of that same tradition, third-world anticolonial tradition of saying, “We believe in these concepts which you claim to profess more than you believe in these concepts, and we’re here to rescue them from you.”

And I think that that’s why the default position to try to push back against that has to be that these people are uncivilized, these people are corrupt, these people can’t be trusted. And I think that that’s really what’s at stake with these challenges.

JS: I want to ask you about the United Nations. Of course, the secretary general of the U.N. has been quite forceful in denouncing the record number of killings of U.N. personnel. And, of course, many United Nations officials have been very bluntly outspoken about the nature of the war that Israel is waging.

But, when it comes to what can the United Nations actually do, it’s become more clear during these past four months, than I think ever in history, that the United States governs over a system where it alone decides who the bad guys are in the world, where it alone will decide whether bombs are dropped or cease to be falling. And you have this dance that plays out where nations of the world make their arguments, oftentimes based on legal precedent and the precedent of international law in the United Nations, as to why Israel must cease its operations against Gaza.

And, on the other side, you have the United States treating it as basically just a discussion society that the U.S. is forced to sit through. And then, at the end of the day, whoever happens to be sitting in the chair of the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. vetoes what the vast majority of nations and people of the world have made clear that they believe is a just course.

I want you to talk, though, about the role of the United Nations in everything that we’re witnessing, and the message that is sent when, at the end of the day, the Secretary General of the U.N. can basically be begging for an end to this war, and yet the United States says, no, no, no, it doesn’t work that way. It works this way. We say when things end, we say when the burning fire is put out.

ME: Actually, this is really interesting, Jeremy, because when I first learned about the Hague Act, that was actually from you, during the times when you wrote Drone Wars, and it just blew my mind that there was a law which said that if the United States is ever taken to the ICC that it could invade The Hague, and the diplomatic spat that happened afterwards.

I think what’s more worrying is, for the longest time we’ve already known, and I think it’s clear to everybody now, that international law is a tool that’s wielded by the powerful, [the] former colonizing countries, and also the new empires of the world. But I think what’s more terrifying is that now we almost feel like we also have to be on the defensive [to] the U.N.

Because after decolonization happened, there was a moment of hope that the U.N. General Assembly could be this place, one person, one vote. And you have, all of a sudden, for the first time in the world it’s not just a few countries — Spain, France, Britain, and the United States, etc. — who are deciding the agenda on the world stage, but it’s the entire world. And there were even hopes, when there was a proposal by Algeria in the early 1970s for a new international economic order, for the U.N. General Assembly to kind of be a legislative body of a world republic, for example.

Of course, that didn’t happen, and the Security Council system happened instead, and that was a way in which the hegemony of the United States came into full gear. And then, of course, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has been virtually unchallenged when it comes to these kinds of things.

And so, right now, the best way to look at the U.N. is to see it as both an extension of Western power … For example, we’re talking about debt, global debt. The ability to forgive global debt would be so easy if the United States said [something], but it doesn’t. When it comes to all sorts of things related to, for example, dealing with the biggest threat to the entire species right now — which is the life-supporting systems of our planet, which is climate change, and facilitation of loss and damages, and all of that stuff — obviously, the U.N. is an obstacle.

At the same time, the U.N.’s humanitarian organizations are the last lifeline for people in Gaza, for example, right now: UNRWA. And what we’re actually seeing, which is even regardless of the fact that the United States and Western countries profess and claim to be standing for the rules-based order, we’re seeing that the biggest assault against that rules-based order is being waged by the West.

It’s no small thing right now, the pulling out of funding of UNRWA. It’s no small thing that the heads of states of Western powers … And it’s even divided the West. I haven’t seen something like this in a long time, where you have, for example, Norway and Ireland and Spain saying that it’s a bad idea, what are we doing? Like, it’s to that level.

And so, all of a sudden, for the first time, I’m even finding myself in a position where, on the one side, the U.N. legitimates and, like you said, it becomes a discussion room for all these countries. On the other side, I feel that the only groups of people — and this is one of the things that it’s been a surprising turn — the only people who are defending the idea that there should be international norms and rules, and that you shouldn’t be openly attacking the only thing that represents that aspiration, seems to be the Global South, you know?

And, whereas the biggest group to kind of attack the U.N. as biased… Israel is openly, openly hostile towards the United Nations, but the way in which people have fallen in line after this investigation on the… And not even an investigation; after the claims of the Israeli government on the UNRWA staff being involved in Hamas attack. And that’s been really, really horrifying to watch.

JS: And you also had Israel first saying that 12 UNRWA staffers were involved in some capacity directly in the attacks of October 7th. And then you had Israel giving its so-called dossier to a number of news organizations, and the first news organization to do a significant report about this was the Wall Street Journal, and they sort of elevated it even higher, and said that a full 10 percent of the local staff — UNRWA is a 30,000-employee organization, 12,000 or so of its employees are Gaza-based — and so, the Wall Street Journal does this big story where they say, ah, it’s not just 12 bad apples it’s that 10 percent of the organization is in some way linked to Hamas. Which, in and of itself, is a risible thing to say, because Hamas is the governing authority in Gaza, and simply saying that someone is linked to Hamas without defining it means absolutely nothing.

But also, you had Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, saying publicly that the United States had not even done its own investigation into the veracity of the claims before very publicly vowing to suspend its funding to UNRWA, which then created a domino effect, and you had, then, other powerful wealthy nations say, we’re going to do the same thing.

But then, you had the Financial Times, and Sky News, and some other media outlets, also review this dossier — and these are not exactly leftist publications — but they said that what Israel is alleging is not substantiated, even in the documents that Israel is providing. And now, you have a walk back where they appear to be saying, “Oh, well, four members of UNRWA were involved in some capacity in the events of October 7th.”

So, this is just the latest episode in Israel’s campaign to bombard the marketplace of ideas with propaganda, with lies, with disinformation, misinformation. And, time and time again, we have seen the United States in particular not just repeat Israel’s allegations, but often say, we actually have other intelligence to indicate that this is true. They did that with al-Shifa hospital, for example.

But, on this issue, I also wanted to transfer to asking you about the way that armed resistance is talked about, partially in this conflict, but in general, when you’re talking about people who are facing down against oppression from either powerful nations or allies of powerful nations, as in the case of Israel. Now, we can talk specifically about the events of October 7th, and I think that we should separate the attacks that Hamas launched against military facilities.

I mean, Hamas has its own narrative, and it published its multipage defense of its actions. And it stated that its intent was to go after military targets, and they have their own definition of who’s a civilian and who’s not, that we don’t need to get into. It’s clear that there were war crimes committed by Hamas on October 7th. I don’t think anyone reasonable could deny that. You don’t kidnap children, you don’t kidnap elderly people, you don’t shoot unarmed people who are trying to surrender. This isn’t a political thing I’m saying, it’s a legal thing. These are war crimes.

At the same time, the overarching narrative about Palestinians in general — and we’ve seen it in a very acute way here — is that they are not allowed to have any form of resistance that Israel does not permit. And even when they’ve demonstrated nonviolently, they’ve been gunned down. But this notion that is being drilled into the public mind, that the mere notion that Palestinians would take up arms against what the United Nations continues to maintain is an occupation — not just in the West Bank, but in Gaza as well — is rooted in a very long history of criminalizing all forms of unsanctioned defense of populations that are the victims of colonialism; or, in this case, violent settler colonialism and an apartheid state.

ME: Yeah, that’s entirely correct, and that’s actually something that a lot of third-world countries in the 20th century tried to push for, to be recognized in international law. And, actually, the right to armed resistance against colonial occupation is a right that is actually protected under international law; many people don’t know that.

But I think one of the things that makes this so much more complicated is that we now live also in an era of the war on terror. And one of the key ideas is that, because of the fact that so many countries went through these phases of national liberation — which may be some of the last key national liberation movements in the early 1990s, but generally the majority of it being the 70s and the 60s, whether we’re talking about Algeria, talking about Mozambique, etc. — a lot of attempts to try to resist colonial occupations, which continue to exist today, are easily branded as terrorism.

And one of the reasons for that is because there’s a template, which the United States has set, which equates resistance with terrorism, and which then plays into the geopolitical interests of that country. There’s all sorts of discourses and ideas, in the media, in movies, on TV, television shows, which makes it very difficult today for any group to be legible as being a group that’s legitimately fighting for its national liberation.

One of the things that the United States is very known for is that it is a country which sees its own war of independence as a canonical event in its history in order to have existed. And there was a really interesting conversation that Huey Newton had, I think, with William Buckley, where the first thing [is], Huey Newton catches William Buckley off guard, and he says, you know, would have you joined the revolutionary war? And William Buckley didn’t know how to respond, and he waffled a bit.

And that’s the thing. It’s like, if you’re going to condemn a country’s ability to come out of a war, or an armed resistance, or an armed struggle, then the United States must condemn itself. And it does, it does, and it regularly does, because it’s kind of like, we got here first, and closed the door behind us.

And that’s kind of how Palestinian… But the thing is, is that we saw through the Oslo Accords. There was an attempt to go through the peaceful route, and the Oslo Accords ended up just providing a rubber stamp to the Palestinian Authority working with the Israelis as kind of like a proxy force for the occupation.

We saw just last year, when there [were] the peaceful marches and people were just getting sniped, one after the other. They tried the peaceful march approach, they tried the international law approach, they tried through the ICC. And then, of course, they’ve also tried, and there’s been a history of trying armed resistance.

But I think this kind of ties in again with the UNRWA defunding. In this sense, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what they try because, at the end of the day, Israel civil society, very unfortunate for me to say, basically, the narrative is that Palestinian people, especially the people in Gaza, are, to use the language that has been popularized as of late, the civil wing of Hamas, actually, they are Hamas. They hide Hamas in their doors, in their homes. They sympathize with Hamas secretly. They’re raising their kids to become Hamas. And so, it’s fair game.

Yeah, it’s fair game to deprive them of their rights, to deprive them of humanitarian assistance. Because, as far as the people who wrote that dossier are concerned, this is a formality for them. It doesn’t matter. There’s no need to prove UNRWA is Hamas; UNRWA is Hamas for the fact that it employs Palestinian people.

Obviously, this attack against UNRWA has …. We saw it. We saw it in the Trump administration. It’s not new, you know? What’s worse is that, effectively, because of what we talked about, about the flaws of the U.N. system, the way that the ICJ report was written — and this was the argument that South Africa made — it was written in such a way where the only way in which you could bring in humanitarian assistance to the people, which was one of the demands of the court, is for a ceasefire.

How Israel responded to that, the response was quite simply that, we will outsource the potential genocide which we’re engaging in Gaza to our allies. And the allies, they joined in. And so, what ends up happening now is that those war crimes are being outsourced using the same discourses, which prevent Palestinians from even resisting. Which is basically that they deserve it. They deserve to not have aid, they’re complicit in the attack. And if you do it, it’s more like, they did it, not us. That’s their crime, not mine.

I think that that’s really what is at the heart of all of this.

JS: How has the war against Gaza been received in other countries that have been subjected to violent colonialism or apartheid? Maybe you can walk through a couple of notable examples.

ME: I think the best example, obviously, is South Africa, because I think South Africa, Namibia [much] of the entire world was just colonized, basically. Again, it’s this opportunity to confront the West with the hypocrisy, but also, it really is about seeing the higher ideals that are actually a positive contribution of the West, for example, to the world. The ideals of human rights, the ideals of human liberty, and to confront that head on with a system which desecrates that. And Israel is a perfect opportunity for this.

I was watching COP28, and I saw all of the heads of states, and a huge amount of them condemned what was going on in Gaza in the first international meeting after the attack. And so, you saw [that] it was very clear. And you saw Gustavo Petro in Colombia, who has been very outspoken, and has even suggested that South Africa be given the Nobel Peace Prize. But you also saw Chile, which has a huge population of the Palestinian diaspora, the biggest outside of the Middle East. You saw Honduras. In general, it became a rallying cry for a host of other issues, because a lot of these countries were also fighting for loss and damages on climate reparations.

Basically, what Israel has done to Gaza has had reverberations, basically, on the multilateral level of a division that’s happened since maybe the Bandung Conference, which is basically that you have a lot of these formerly colonized countries, third-world countries, saying that they’re not interested in being pawns of a cold war, and that they’re nonaligned, and that what they want is a complete redrawing of the architecture of the global economy, and the global systems of international law. And that’s why it has been an event which has brought people back together, and reignited that spirit, and I think that that’s why it’s not just about what’s going on in Gaza.

Gustavo Petro made the connection. For example, he said that Gaza is kind of like the future, and that in a world where the vast majority of the world’s population is becoming redundant, and we are not prepared to tackle the risk of climate-induced disaster, there will be more Gazas. And that Europe will respond — this is what he said — to these waves of migration, etc., with the same doctrine of extermination which it is imposing on Gaza.

And so, in many ways, it’s not just about the legacies of colonialism and existing colonialism, but it’s about trying to create the new order, a new international order where everybody is seen as equal, and trying to use this as an opportunity to not just defend Gaza, but to defend the idea that every state and every person is equal, and that there are no hierarchies of who deserves justice and who doesn’t. And to push back against the idea that the only people who should face justice are those who are geopolitically convenient to the United States.

JS: Just to clarify for people that might not be familiar with that history, when you mentioned the Bandung Conference of 1955, it was one of the most important early meetings of what would become known as the Non-aligned Movement. Yugoslavia was part of it, India was part of it, Egypt was part of it, Kwame Nkrumah and other revolutionary leaders were part of it. And the notion was that most of the world’s people in what is now referred to as the Global South should not cast their lot with either the United States or the Soviet Union in an exclusive manner. Instead, they should develop a third way of functioning in international relations where you didn’t become either a puppet for or a slave to either of these dominant spheres of influence that emerged in the aftermath of World War II.

But, speaking of colonialism, I wanted to ask you about Britain and its position on Palestine, and how the British government has proceeded over these past four months. Because it’s not just the governing right-wing conservative government in Britain, but also the leader of the so-called Opposition Labour in Britain, and his full-throttled support for Israel.

Talk a bit about how this war has played out on a domestic level in the U.K..

ME: So, on the one side in the U.K., it’s been a moment of radicalization for a lot of youth; and I say that in a positive sense of the word, radicalization in the sense that people are now understanding that there’s a root cause problem in the way that the world order is structured, and they’re ready to fight for what’s right, and to fight for legitimate humanist ideals. On the other side, there’s been a huge disenfranchisement, especially of Muslim communities.

There was just a poll that was released yesterday, which showed a dramatic drop in support for the Labour Party since Keir Starmer publicly said that he thought that cutting off water, food, and electricity to the people of Gaza is Israel’s right. And the Labour Party tries to resolve its bad rep now with progressives and with a lot of Muslims by claiming that it supports a Palestinian state, but this is obviously a ruse. Because the illegal settlements continue to expand, the siege is never lifted on Gaza, but we support the idea of a Palestinian state. But then, when the Palestinian authority tries to lobby for one in the international sphere, they’ll support [vetoing] it, or they’ll abstain. Things like that. People are not buying it, right?

But there was one story which I found really horrific. There was a man who had lost lots of his family members in Gaza. He’d met Angela Rayner, who’s a key figure in the Labour Party opposition, and he protested against her. And then, I think there was an interview with Sky News or something with Angela Rayner, and they asked, how do you feel? You know, did it remind you of the time when … There was another politician called Joe Cox who was killed by a far-right person? Did it remind you of that? And she made herself out to be as if she’s the victim of, again, the same tropes, you know: this brute Palestinian man.

And I think one of the things that I’ve also been really surprised with, and it’s one of those things, again, it’s part of the same episode, principle, dynamics. There’s been this interesting thing about the criminalization of the Palestinian flag; it’s something that’s happening in Germany as well. And in the U.K. we have this non-binding definition by the IHRA of antisemitism, which says that attacking the state of Israel is a form of antisemitism, etc. And one of the things, also, is denying the right for Israel to exist.

But, for Palestinians, denying the right, the existence of a Palestinian people, is something which is socially acceptable and even encouraged. One of the things that’s really interesting is that people say that waving a Palestinian flag is a provocation against Jews. And I think that that’s very telling, in the sense that the existence of a flag, [which] symbolizes a peoplehood, it symbolizes the existence of a nation, the existence of a people, and to say that waving their flag is a provocation means that the existence of those very people is seen as a provocation.

And that should show you, more generally, that the existence of the Palestinian people is seen as an inconvenience, and that’s why it’s become morally and socially acceptable to speak of them, to speak of ethnic cleansing as a solution to the Gaza question, you know? I mean, that’s kind of how they see it, that this is perfectly acceptable.

And so, there’s this huge distance, and I think this is something you could probably relate to in the United States, between the commentariat, between the press, and the people who are on their social media, on Twitter, etc., and they’re seeing this potential genocide being livestreamed on their phones. It’s a livestreamed genocide.

And the Labour Party is just completely out of touch. I am someone who has been committed to the Labour Party. I’m not going to vote for the Labour Party in the next general election, and I think there are many people who feel the same. Because, if this is not a red line, then what is?

I think that this is a turning point for a lot of people, in the sense that the status quo in Palestine is being rejected and renounced. And if, in just a year, with all of the normalization agreements that were happening between Israel and the countries around it … I mean, the fact that we passed the threshold where people said that Gaza would be an unlivable place by 2020, it almost felt hopeless.

But I think one of the bright things about this, regardless of the awful position of the Labour Party, one of the really great things that’s come out of this is the fact that people are now demanding an end to that status quo. And I’m seeing that at least among young people here in Britain, and I think that also kind of contributes to why someone like Nikki Haley is saying that every 15 minutes someone spends on TikTok, they become antisemitic, or something silly like that.

JS: As we wrap up, I wanted to ask you about the movement for decolonization.

Now, of course, part of your work is dealing with resurrecting stories from history and making them current, but also addressing current manifestations of colonialism. Talk for a moment, as we wrap up, about your work on decolonization.

ME: Yeah. I’m part of a project called Decolonial Centre, which is a project of the Pluto Educational Trust here in the U.K. We started this project, and we have a team that’s across the world, with some members in Brazil and Sudan.

In general, the main idea is that colonialism never came to an end, and that coloniality or the legacies of colonialism continue to inform present-day politics. There are some countries which are still under colonial occupation; Palestine being one, but there’s a lot of other places, like Western Sahara, Puerto Rico, Hawai’i, etc. There’s many, [as] colonialism still exists.

And so, what we need to do is, we’re a political education outfit which tries to inform people about not just about colonialism — I think there’s been great work already that’s been done lately on colonialism — but, more importantly, on traditions of anticolonialism, and traditions of decolonization. And what we’re trying to do, ultimately, is to inspire people to coalesce.

We don’t claim to lead any decolonial movement, but we know that there are already movements working on decolonization in various ways. And what we want to do is we want to produce a space for them, as a forum for debate, for discussion, and to reignite that same spirit of Bandung, which you talked about, Jeremy.

Let’s see where it goes. Right now we’re going to launch our newscast soon, we’ve got a mini encyclopedia where people can learn about colonialism, and we’ve also got those videos which you’re talking about.

So, we’ll see where it goes, but I just want to take this opportunity to really thank The Intercept for being one of the few places and spaces to tell the truth. And there are consequences for telling the truth, there are lots of consequences, but that’s the duty that a journalist makes. And so, I just wanted to thank The Intercept for constantly telling the truth.

JS: Well, thank you as well, Mohamed Elnaiem. We really appreciate you being with us here on Intercepted. We’ll make sure to put links up to your organization and your work. Thanks so much for being with us on the show.

ME: Thank you.

JS: That was Mohamed Elnaiem, the Director of the Decolonial Centre.

You can find them at decolonialcentre.org. That’s “centre,” spelled the British way: C-E-N-T-R-E, decolonialcentre.org.

And that does it for this episode of Intercepted.

Intercepted is a production of The Intercept. José Olivares is the lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. Roger Hodge is Editor-in-Chief of The Intercept. Rick Kwan mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow and Elizabeth Sanchez. This episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music, as always, was composed by DJ Spooky.

If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter what the size, makes a real difference. And, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to Intercepted, and do leave us a rating or a review wherever you find our podcasts. It helps other people to find us as well.

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Thank you so much for joining us. Until next time, I’m Jeremy Scahill.

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