Does America Have Death Squads Now? Or, Geopolitics, Macroeconomics, Finance, and Fascist Collapse

What’s happening to America? A nurse at a hospital for veterans. An American citizen. A decent man. Killed. In cold blood. By masked, armed “agents.” 

We’re going to discuss what it means, and its implications for geopolitics, macroeconomics, and high finance. But I want you to start with me at the proper beginning, otherwise you will not understand where it all ends, either.

As I used to warn you, America’s having a fascist collapse. Do you agree yet? Are we still going to “debate” it?  I implore you not to nitpick now. The model that is the most accurate is the one that you see before your eyes. There’s no need to reach further and overthink it. This isn’t a foolish intellectual game anymore, and it never was.

Fascist collapses. What are they made of? Expansionism—lebensraum. For the Nazis, it was the Sudetenland, then Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, and beyond, to the lights of Paris. And it’s made of domestic horrors, too, of course, repression, state terror, violence, the erasure of not just the hated subhumans, but even those among the “true Volk” who dare to take their side, which is the side of decency. Such an offense is punishable by disappearance or death. Death squads—another hallmark of fascism and authoritarianism.

This is what’s happening to America. Let me make it brutally clear, because I think some people still think all this is some kind of analogy, or exaggeration, or wild claim. Are we to continue debating if this is “really” fascism and collapse while everyday Americans are now being killed by masked men on the streets? America now appears to have just such emerging death squads. That is a critical, grime milestone, as we’ll discuss. First, some history.

When a state claims that authoritarian enforcers are to enjoy “absolute immunity,” then this is the literal road fascism took. It is actually and precisely what the Nazis did, too. 

You must now begin to understand where we really are. If you doubt me, consider the following, which is just from Google AI. 

In Nazi Germany, the Gestapo was effectively immune to judicial review. A 1936 decree formally exempted the Secret State Police from oversight by administrative courts, meaning their actions (torture, summary execution, arbitrary detention) were technically "legal" as long as they served the Führer's will.

Or try this interpretation, from Wikipedia.

The basic Gestapo law passed by the government in 1936 gave the Gestapo carte blanche to operate without judicial review—in effect, putting it above the law. The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws.

The point is very simple. Critical to what “The Gestapo”, and is, which is a phrase and thing that fills any civilized person with disgust and horror, was that it operated beyond judicial oversight. It, too, enjoyed “absolute immunity.” Maybe if you were Franz Gestapo, some average officer, then if you did something too shocking and disgusting and evil, Himmler might get mad at you. Or he might not, and applaud you. 

That example matters, by the way, because here we’re discussing the construction of a shadow institution. Democratic institution—police, law enforcement. Shadow institution, authoritarian, fascist—secret police, with “absolute immunity,” or judiciary-shattering powers. Like over life and death. This isn’t just really an extrajudicial power, but the power to shatter justice.

In the case of the man who was just killed, videos and eyewitnesses both appear to precisely tell the story above. When a masked, armed, authoritarian paramilitary is given utterly abnormal and extraordinary powers, those of life and death, it operates not just “above the law,” but pierces its heart with a bullet, rendering it impotent and inoperable. 

Shadow institutions have patterns. You know the chief pattern already: they descend down a very icy slope, all the way down to the abyss. That is because dictators tend to recruit the most violent, amoral, and psychopathic true believers to lead them. They, in turn, tend to recruit the kinds of people who are willing to do things that shock and repel the moral conscience of a person who has developed a soul and an intelligence, whether from religion, education, spirituality, or community. Kidnapping children, destroying families, killing in the name of.

A secret police is a shadow institution. Its pattern is to become a death squad. It has happened in more countries than I care to name, history is replete with examples, from South America to Africa and beyond. Asia’s became especially notorious, as did the Soviet Union’s.

To see shadow institutions reach the threshold where death squads are emerging is true milestone in fascist collapse. It is among the most alarming danger signals there can be. It tells us that the collapse a society is undergoing is reaching the most severe levels.

Please consider the following, which I sourced simply from Quora. I think it will illuminate the questions that are being asked a great deal. It is an excellent summary.

I used to work as a guide in Germany and this question actually came up a lot.

“GEheime STAatsPOlizei”. Secret StatePolice.

You find “Secret Polices” like Gestapo in dictatorships and authoritarian states. They are responsible for “protecting the Regime”. Secret police investigate crimes of a political nature. They search for dissidents, revolutionaries, spies, assassins, and other “subversive elements”.

They report on and suppress internal dissent. They carry out “special plans” of the State. They use any method imaginable. Surveillance, blackmail, extortion. Torture. Murder. No “human rights” argument can be used against them; They enjoy total power.

Gestapo agents were infamous for arresting people from their homes in the middle of the night and leaving no trace of their fate to friends and relatives.

This is an explosive milestone. Does America have death squads? I think that question begins to answer itself.

Yet the deeper one is what I want you to see. When shadow institutions gain extraordinary powers that shatter judicial oversight, then they will almost always become death squads, because the only reason we would ever give anyone those powers is precisely for authoritarian reasons, violent ones, never peaceful or civilized ones.

Now. What all this means, and here at Havens, I discuss finance, economics, and wealth with you, is very simple. I don’t want to boil it down to money. It is eminently not just about that, it’s about life and death, honor and justice, obscenity and horror. Yet the consequences for America will be severe.

America lives off the world’s credit, investment, and trade. How long do you think the world will want to fund an aspiring dictatorship to the degree that it has death squads?

Your finance guys aren’t really part of the world of serious, high international finance. Sorry. They’re just like mechanics, and that’s OK, nothing wrong with it, but they’re way, way out of their depth now. I’ve been there, heading one of the world’s largest corporations, I grew up in that world, in fact, and I know it intimately. Warning signs like this are exactlywhat the smart money runs away from. Smart money, international capital, looks intently at a nation’s political stability, and there are red lines, which force it to walk away. Death squads, for heaven’s sake, are obviously one.

Let me make that clearer to you.

There you are, with a very large pool of capital to invest. You are not even really thinking of “companies”—that’s just mom and pop level investors. You are looking at trajectories, paths, futures, of regions, countries, and the paradigms they employ.

There is a country, which was recently a democracy. Perhaps it didn’t always make the right decisions—nobody does. But now it has fallen into dictatorship. It’s threatening its friends and allies and neighbors, including, probably, you. It’s abusing its finances so badly that it’s adding explosively to its already tremendous debt pile. But this time, it’s not just with “poor fiscal management” of some everyday kind. Corruption or sinecures or mistakes. Now, it’s taking your hard-won capital, and wasting it on things like death squads.

Would you invest in such a country? A dictatorship, violently threatening the world, with no plan or agenda or vision for the future, at least not a peaceful cooperative, democratic one, which tells you that this nation’s economy will probably slide into ruin, because are there any rich fascist nations, and on top of that, now, it’s malinvesting all the capital it receives into shadow institutions, which serve no productive purpose whatsoever—only a destructive one. And now, that destructive purpose is growing absolute—the taking of lives, which proves that the rule of law, justice, sanity, none of these operate, and so…is your investment safe to begin with, even if you’re foolish enough to make it?

The world of high finance and international economics runs away from nations like the one America is becoming.It is why so many poor countries have stayed poor, for so long because they can’t raise investment until they pass a threshold into peaceful, consensual democracy, but passing that threshold is nearly impossible without capital—catch-22. Do you see the world’s smart money obsessed with, say, pouring its capital into Rwanda or Somalia or North Korea? Isn’t the reason pretty obvious?

Who’s going to give Trump a credit card for death squads? Anyone but the kinds of fellow dictators he looks up to? Reality check: they’re poor, in global terms, and can hardly fund America for a week, let alone forever. 

So the consequences of what is happening in America now stretch far beyond today. These are historical turning points for a nation. It is becoming something obscene and monstrous, and I salute all the good and decent people who are pushing against that, by the way. The consequences of this will be lasting, and disastrous. They will involve everything from the loss of faith, to that of trust, to credit, to investment, to people itself

Do not think for a moment that I am minimizing the extent of the obscenity facing America now. I am helping you understand it. Because when a nation becomes an isolated, pariah state, then another phase change ensues: the dictator hardens, because now, having withdrawn from it, the world is no longer there to check what abuses he can make people suffer. A vicious cycle ensues. The challenge for Americans now is not to let it get there.

Please understand how finance, economics, history, and morality intersect, especially at moments like these. See how grave this situation truly is. Learn from all those who are trying to teach you, and have been. We have never been saying what we say lightly. For us who knew, the consequences were already playing out, in lurid detail, in our minds. Now you see them on your screens. This is as real as it gets. And the patterns of history are, too.

Love, with sadness,

Umair (and Snowy!)

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