On his podcast “Off Leash,” Erik Prince said the U.S. should “put the imperial hat back on” and take over and directly run huge swaths of the globe.

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
    36·
    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
      12·
      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.worldEnglish
      5·
      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
    21·
    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@sopuli.xyz
    162·
    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

  • riodoro1@lemmy.world
    8·
    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.

  • MonsiuerPatEBrown@reddthat.comEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

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

  • mindbleach
    4·
    10 months ago

    But if I suggest colonizing his house - one guy! - I have to worry about legal consequences.

  • lobut@lemmy.ca
    3·
    10 months ago

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

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    1·
    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.

    The original article contains 857 words, the summary contains 239 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!