“Hiding in Plain Sight” (2020), by US journalist and scholar Sarah Kendzior, is the untold story of the US from 1980 to 2019. In grad school Kendzior studied the autocratic regime of Uzbekistan – and then, to her horror, saw the same sorts of things taking place in the US in the 2010s.
She has been called an alarmist. Only time will tell whether she is.
Ferguson: In August 2014, while covering the Ferguson protests (just miles from her house), her journalist friend Umar Lee warned:
“You know what’s going to happen? Write this down, to remember I said this, because no one is going to believe me. People don’t know how this shit works. I guarantee you that in 2016, you are going to see the return of Richard Nixon. Not just in Missouri, but on a national level. You are going to see a hard move to the right, and a Nixon-style presidential candidate come out, only slicker, more of a demagogue, someone who can work the media, and we will be living in a new kind of hell. The people who vote for whoever it is, they’ll be living in hell too, only they won’t even know it. The rest of us? We’ll know it. We’ll know it every fucking day.”
Which is a fair summary of the past six years in the US.
The Russian mafia: But as bad as that is, it is even worse than that. Donald Trump is not merely some blowhard billionaire turned demagogue. Trump is a front man for an international crime ring led by the Russian mafia. The Russian mob became hugely rich and powerful after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It is not just Trump. Putin in Russia, Netanyahu in Israel and MBS in Saudi Arabia are all in on it. All are bent on autocracy so they can rob their countries blind and hide their crimes.
The US government stood up to the Russian mafia back in the 1990s. No more. It is not just Trump. They have infiltrated the US Treasury Department and, given the actions of James Comey and Robert Mueller, have apparently cowed the FBI.
As seen on Twitter in 2020.
But this is where she descends into conspiracy theory. What she says might be perfectly true, but she presents no hard proof. She fills in the blanks of what we do not know, and may never know. Did the FBI, for example, back off from investigating the Russian mafia because it was cowed – or because it is not the serious threat she says it is?
She links Trump to the Russian mafia mainly by way of Felix Sater and Trump Soho. Sater comes from a mob family. Much of Trump Soho was sold to Russians in cash – a common money laundering practice. But again, the case is circumstantial.
Follow the money: To prove her case you would have to follow the money, but hardly anyone is following the money. Mueller cetainly did not. Why? Insert conspiracy theory here.
– Abagond, 2020.
See also:
- books – books I read in 2020
- If Trump steals the 2020 election – based on an interview with Kendzior
- conspiracy theory
- Ferguson
- The Southern strategy
- The Mueller Report
- autocracy
- Autocracy: Rules for Survival
- Trump 2020 – autocratic at least in style
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