Erik Prince has been many things in his 54 years on Earth: the wealthy heir to an auto supply company; a Navy SEAL; the founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater, which conducted a notorious 2007 massacre in the middle of Baghdad; the brother of Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s secretary of education; a shadow adviser to Trump; and the plaintiff in a lawsuit against The Intercept.

Last November, Prince started a podcast called “Off LeashOpens in a new tab,” which in its promotional copy says he “brings a unique and invaluable perspective to today’s increasingly volatile world.” On an episode last Tuesday, his unique and invaluable perspective turned out to be that the U.S. should “put the imperial hat back on” and take over and directly run huge swaths of the globe.

read more: https://theintercept.com/2024/02/10/erik-prince-off-leash-imperialism-colonialism/

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Hi, American here. All I want is decent bike lanes and affordable rent, but we can’t have that because guys like this just cannot mind their own goddamn business. I’m going to dig a hole and scream into it.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      I’m with you, but I also want my area to finally build a commuter rail line on the tracks that already exist and connect to another popular commuter rail line. It’s a single track, but most of the way has no impediments to double tracking (plenty of land next to it), and we honestly don’t need to double track at first, just 3-4 stations at popular stops and run the line during commute hours (rest of the line runs all day).

    • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      He’s a war profiteer and he knows there would be massive contacts for his mercenary firm if we went back to colonialism.

  • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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    10 months ago

    “Unique and Invaluable perspective”

    My man, being a disney villain and having the idea to “takeover the world” isn’t unique nor invaluable.

  • hydroptic
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    10 months ago

    Reich-winger having a normal one. I’m honestly glad I don’t have kids, the political climate of the near future isn’t looking too great; right-wing extremism is becoming the norm

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Has been the norm. We’re just acutely more aware of it. Had this ghoul said such things 25 to 30 years ago. No one would have blinked.

      • hydroptic
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        10 months ago

        Objectively not true, considering the skyrocketing popularity of extremist right-wing parties and movements in the past 5 – 10 years. Italy got a literal fucking neofascist government for chrissakes; if you think things have always been the same, you really haven’t been paying attention

        • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Objectively true. 2020 wasn’t even the first coup plot by Republicans and the wealthy. Fascism has been an unaddressed issue in the United States since at least the 1930s. Technically the actions of the United States over the last century play a significant part in why fascism is resurgent throughout Europe. The United States overthrew democratic governments in the middle east and south America. Replacing them with fascistic dictators throughout the mid 20th century. The fascists in the federalist society, senate, house, supreme court and the rest of the judiciary. Didn’t just pop into existence randomly.

          They all have roots that go back decades and decades. Long before Trump. Or any Bushes. Before Reagan or Nixon. This shit festered in the open. But at the time, most Americans were too content to care. Giving up hard won victories and rights all on specious fascist promises.

          Between the internet and things finally getting bad enough that people couldn’t ignore it anymore. People are finally starting to pay attention and realize what’s been happening all this time. But literally no things didn’t. All the sudden get so much worse. Trump was just the final turd that broke the camel’s back.

  • riodoro1@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The US cant fucking take care of it’s own infrastructure. It’s the same kind of strawman “empire” as russia but they had actual money pumped into their military instead of only oligarchs pockets. Nothing is functioning right in this country and spreading the resources even thinner would mean the US would sooner match Africa quality of life than the other way around.

  • lobut@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    I sound brutal saying this but there are some people that deserve death and it’s these high level death merchants.

  • MonsiuerPatEBrown@reddthat.com
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    10 months ago

    We already did Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama. Now we are gonna nuke Mexico because CARTELs or whatever.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Erik Prince has been many things in his 54 years on Earth: the wealthy heir to an auto supply company; a Navy SEAL; the founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater, which conducted a notorious 2007 massacre in the middle of Baghdad; the brother of Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s secretary of education; a shadow adviser to Trump; and the plaintiff in a lawsuit against The Intercept.

    Prince and Serrano either do not know or do not care that previous bouts of the European flavor of colonialism led to the deaths of tens of millions of people around the world.

    The book’s narrator, Charles Marlow, describes his voyage up a river into the interior of an unnamed African country that is obviously Congo in the process of being colonized by Belgium.

    March 27: “I ask Mississippians of all faiths to pray for all our coalition forces and the Iraqi people as they engage in an intense but noble battle against what is nothing but sheer evil.”

    Serrano at least is more in touch with the grimy reality of what they’re talking about, and he excitedly mentions how America could bring lesser nations “the professionalism they need to capitalize on their natural resources.”

    In any case, Prince’s words illustrate that we are living in a time in which many of humanity’s worst ideas, ones we thought were long dead and buried, have risen from the grave and are now staggering about again.


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