Alastair Crooke
\nStrategic Culture Foundation<\/p>\n
The entire American political set-up \u2013 with or without a FARA indictment, and with the 2024 elections looming \u2013 is fragile, Alastair Crooke writes.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n It is getting very messy. Verging on insanity. A new indictment with four charges in respect to the events of 6 Jan has been issued to former President Trump \u2013 who has now been charged with more than 75 crimes. These latest charges however are likely only to further eradicate confidence in the Federal Justice process, and in the integrity of the American political system itself. The indictment is to be heard in the District of Columbia which is notoriously politicised, and unlikely to empanel anything but a wholly hostile jury (the saying in DC is that the Justice Dept could convict a hamburger with a DC jury).<\/p>\n Charging Trump with conspiring to \u2018steal\u2019 the 2020 Presidential election entrenches more deeply than before that the country is headed for a great reckoning \u2013 in the courts and at the ballot box. It poses questions that cannot but further lead to an unravelling of politics in the U.S.<\/p>\n Contrast these two \u2018visions\u2019 of the meaning to this indictment.\u00a0Firstly<\/a>,<\/p>\n \u201cIn straightforward language with mountains of evidence, the 45-page Indictment document explains how Trump, acting with six unnamed co-conspirators, engaged in a scheme to repeatedly make false claims that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged, and to use those false claims as a predicate to try to steal the election: It\u2019s not hyperbole to say that the conduct of this prosecution will greatly influence whether the U.S. remains a thriving democracy after 2024\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now turn to\u00a0another \u2018reading\u2019<\/a>\u00a0of the indictment:<\/p>\n [The DoJ indictment] \u201cis \u2018a declaration of war\u2019 against American voters. It is not about Trump per se. It\u2019s about criminalising dissent and punishing the millions who voted for him. [This week the Justice Department] took the unprecedented step of indicting former President Donald Trump \u2014 Biden\u2019s chief rival in the upcoming 2024 election \u2014 for repeatedly expressing his opinion that the last election was stolen, rigged, and unfair\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s an opinion millions of Americans share, and to which they are unquestionably entitled thanks to the First Amendment. And\u00a0<\/em>t<\/em>hat includes Trump, who has said repeatedly (and recently) that the 2020 election was stolen. He will probably keep saying it until his dying day, and he has every right to do so. The idea that our Justice Department can indict someone, especially the sitting president\u2019s main political rival, over speech that\u2019s protected by the First Amendment is simply insane \u2026 Simply put, this indictment is nothing more than a declaration of war against American voters and their constitutional right to free speech.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cConsider what is alleged and what isn\u2019t: The charges against Trump do not include \u2018incitement to violence\u2019 on Jan. 6, 2021. Critically, The indictment simply\u00a0<\/em>presupposes<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that there was no election fraud. It then characterizes Trump\u2019s contrary assertions from November 14, 2020 through January 20, 2021 as \u201cfalse\u201d \u2013 as though this were self-evident. \u201cTrump\u2019s claims were false and that he knew they were false\u201d.<\/em>\u00a0On this basis, the indictment claims that 6th<\/sup>\u00a0Jan was a \u2018conspiracy\u2019 \u2013 based in deceit \u2013 to prevent Electors\u2019 votes from being appropriately counted\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Tom Fitton, president of the Conservative legal and election watchdog group,\u00a0Judicial Watch,<\/em>\u00a0believes:<\/p>\n \u201cThis indictment is a naked threat and act of intimidation by the Democratic Party against any and all of their political opponents\u2019\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n And\u00a0The Federalist<\/em>\u00a0warns:<\/p>\n \u201cIf the prosecution of Trump succeeds, it means the First Amendment is a dead letter in America. It means you\u2019re not allowed to have opinions that contradict the Justice Department\u2019s official narrative\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n For the sake of clarity, what is being expressed here is that this indictment is part and parcel of the ongoing western \u2018culture war\u2019 \u2013 just as scientists were cancelled, dismissed from their professions and ostracised for expressing a view about mRNA science; just as views on human biology are subject now to official negation; just as \u2018misgendering\u2019 has become a\u00a0potential criminal offence<\/a>\u00a0(hate speech), so ideological and institutional capture is being extended to the political sphere.<\/p>\n This is the issue, amongst others, that is set to unravel America \u2013 and, in unravelling the U.S., will unravel Europe too.<\/p>\n The earlier collapse of the Hunter Biden plea bargain too has left many in Washington shocked. Jonathan Turley, a Constitutional Law Professor at Georgetown wryly\u00a0notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cAfter all, this is a city that knows how to fix a fight [i.e knows how to shut down DoJ investigations upon an appropriate consideration]\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAfter five years, the Biden corruption scandal was supposed to die with a\u00a0<\/em>vacuous plea bargain and no jail time<\/em><\/a>. Most everyone was in on the fix, from members of Congress to the media to the prosecutors. The problem was the one notable omission: Judge Maryellen Noreika. The sentencing hearing was a moment that made the Hindenburg disaster look like a seamless landing. Noreika asked a basic question on the implications of the agreement, and the entire deal immediately collapsed\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cNow the Justice Department is in a bind. It could not admit in the hearing that Hunter Biden could escape future liability for a host of uncharged crimes. Yet, when a defendant backs out of a generous plea deal, federal prosecutors ordinarily will pursue all of the available charges \u2014 and jail time. The Justice Department may now find it has no choice. It could be forced to proceed with a full prosecution.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cA FARA charge could further expose Hunter\u2019s alleged influence-peddling operations, with what House GOP investigators say were millions in foreign payments from a virtual rogue\u2019s gallery of foreign officials. The Justice Department also would face pressure to seek the same long jail sentence given to Manafort; who was sentenced to 73 months of imprisonment\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBiden could give Hunter a pre-emptive or prospective pardon. That would effectively end any federal investigation, although the pardon would need to cover the full waterfront of possible charges. Of course, there is no guarantee that the congressional investigation would then end. Even if such a move dampened the demand for an impeachment inquiry, it would not likely stop Republicans from pursuing answers about the official handling of this investigation and claims of political interference\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The point here is that the entire American political set-up \u2013 with or without a FARA indictment, and with the 2024 elections looming \u2013 is fragile, and exposes the U.S.\u2019 political future to real jeopardy.<\/p>\n Separately, the allegations of influence-peddling\u00a0inevitably tie<\/a>\u00a0the Biden father and son team \u2013 at the hip \u2013 to \u2018Project Ukraine\u2019. Policy on Ukraine will hinge increasingly on the Biden political future, whatever that may be.<\/p>\n Republicans will not give up on their Congressional investigations. And, to the degree to which President Biden hypes the \u2018success\u2019 of his \u2018war against Russia\u2019 and Ukraine, the more the scope will be for his opponents to raise the spectre of influence peddling in Ukraine, and to ask what \u2018holds\u2019, if any, Zelensky might have over the U.S.<\/p>\n Trump already is linking the Russiagate hoax of interference in the 2016 election to today\u2019s proxy war with Russia \u2013 \u201cfuelled in part by the lingering fumes of Russiagate delirium\u201d. The more Team Biden keeps Ukraine centre-stage in foreign policy terms, the more the scope for his opponents to remind the electorate of Russiagate and the\u00a0Burisma allegations<\/a>.<\/p>\n This might argue for an early exit from Ukraine, or contrarily, the Clinton stratagem in respect to \u2018imploding the Lewinski scandal\u2019 \u2013 war on Serbia.<\/p>\n The reaction against the \u2018politics of negation\u2019 (as Chris Rufo terms it in his book,\u00a0America\u2019s Cultural Revolution<\/em><\/a>) or cancellation in today\u2019s vernacular has come to Europe too. In the UK, the scandal arising from the banking world\u2019s blacklisting of Nigel Farage for his political views (the former leader of a pro-Brexit party),\u00a0revealed the hitherto unknown fact<\/a>\u00a0that more than 1,400 companies are members of a corporate lobby \u2018diversity scheme\u2019 \u2013 one that insists corporate members stand against \u201call forms of oppression\u201d and \u201cdismantle racist systems, policies, practices, and ideologies\u201d, and align with the interests of \u2018wider society\u2019.<\/p>\n Farage\u2019s bank was accredited to the scheme, with the bank citing its \u2018B Corp\u2019<\/em><\/a>\u00a0membership<\/a>\u00a0to contend that pro-Brexit Farage did not conform with the bank\u2019s \u2018diversity commitment\u2019, or those of \u2018wider society\u2019, as cause for closing his account.<\/p>\n Behind the scenes then, it transpires, there is\u00a0B Corp<\/em>\u00a0pursuing diversity correctness, and\u00a0Stonewall<\/em>\u00a0(the LBGTQ charity) overseeing employment guidelines in the UK. With no bank account (as all other banks conformed to the blacklisting), Farage would have been \u2018cancelled\u2019 from society.<\/p>\n The point that Rufo makes in his book is that a political programme rooted in \u201cnegation\u201d can offer no positive programme that won\u2019t swiftly fall victim to its own politics of critique (as the Farage case illustrates). The result, Rufo argues, has not been utopia, but a harvest of \u201cfailure, exhaustion, resentment, and despair, and a proliferating class of peevish bureaucrats bickering about symbols and ephemera\u201d.<\/p>\n What seemingly is happening here, as Nao\u00efse MacSweeney writes in\u00a0The West<\/em><\/a>, is that the \u201corigin myth of the West as a grand narrative that constructs history as a thread running singular and unbroken, from Plato to NATO\u201d is now widely understood across the globe as both factually incorrect \u2013 and ideologically driven.<\/p>\n She asks: \u201cWhere does the West go from here? There are some who would have us go backwards\u201d. Most people, however, she argues, no longer want an origin myth that serves to support either racial oppression or imperial hegemony. She postulates that the original narrative of \u201cthe West\u201d is being replaced by a de-territorialised, structure-fluid western narrative centred around tolerance, rights for minorities, diversity, gender fluidity and \u2018democracy\u2019.<\/p>\n The problem however is that the new \u2018grand narrative\u2019 is as factually incorrect and as ideologically driven as the \u2018from Plato to NATO\u2019 myth. It is the substitution of one flawed repressive narrative by another.<\/p>\n Briefly put, if the traditional western myth \u2018is fallen\u2019 like the ancient city of Troy (in this\u00a0analogy<\/a>), the invaders of Tradition (Troy) are now inside the city walls \u2013 burning and looting.<\/p>\n Rufo\u2019s book describes the modern history of Left-wing radicalism from the Sixties to Black Lives Matter, Mary Harrington\u00a0relates<\/a>; however Rufo seeks rather to offer a more expansive account of the political challenge:<\/p>\n \u201cThe arc of the book describes how the hated victors smuggled themselves into America\u2019s institutions, hidden in [a Trojan] \u2018wooden horse\u2019 of civil rights, only to burst forth \u2013 in an attempt to destroy the founding ideals that granted them entrance\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n America\u2019s Cultural Revolution<\/em>\u00a0is a shot across the bows. The citadel may have fallen, the temples looted. But Rufo challenges:\u00a0\u201cWe are the besiegers now. It\u2019s your turn to try to hold the walls\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n America\u2019s Cultural Revolution<\/em>\u00a0nonetheless reads like a pivot point in American political discourse: Do you know what time it is? (It is eleven minutes after the eleventh hour).<\/p>\n