‘Off Leash’: The Crypto-Fascist Group Influencing Global Right Wing Politics
As political tribalism takes front and center in the lead up to the 2024 election, behind the scenes a shadowy network of elitist hardliners are hoping to influence the outcome.
Don Via Jr.
The Conscious resistance
10/30/2024
In the lead up to the November 2024 US (s)election the fervor around identity politics has become more polarized than ever. Both sides of the false left versus right dichotomy have become more vitriolic than ever in their respective echo chambers. Like rival gangs warring over a particular street corner neither with any regard for the common people, they objectify their opponents and cajole their constituents into further perpetuating the statist charade that is political theater.
Over the last few years as we have witnessed The Great Inversion take its hold on the minds of the masses within the right wing side of the spectrum, we have watched rise of what can generally be referred to as “The New Right”. This inversion is akin to a controlled opposition psychological operation, particularly in regard to the prevailing narratives of the Trump deception, i.e. the illusion that Trump is saving the people from the so-called “Deep State”.
This illusion is being peddled by this New Right, an uber-authoritarian, ultra-nationalist, neoconservative sector of the political sphere maintaining themselves as faux populists while retaining all of the inherent systemic supremacies of the typical US oligarchy. They are a branch of that same oligarchy, draping themselves in a pax-Americana to be presented as a bulwark against the “woke left”; seemingly preserving traditional American values against the encroaching dregs of Marxism through a veil of pseudo-patriotism. A new polarity in the old paradigm.
This polarity has contributed to the political rise of figures already entrenched in the orbit of the likes of Peter Thiel, and pervasive agendas such as Project 2025.
Thiel, founder of the CIA cut out surveillance technology corporation Palantir, has been a darling of the military industrial complex, member of the steering committee for the Bilderberg Group, and since 2016 one of the primary donors for the Trump campaign, as well as maintaining significant influence over the current campaign through his bankrolling of J.D. Vance.
While this New Right promotes Project 2025, a road map to radically reshape the federal government during the next Republican presidency that is reviled by the left as an existential threat to human rights and civil liberties, it reads more like a reboot of Reagan era neocon policy with a MAGA twist. Not exactly the boogieman it’s been made out to be but still a boon for centralizing even more power into the hands of the state.
Amid this rise of the new right overlapping with the great inversion is a group of figures already deeply entrenched within right-wing circles both in the open and behind the scenes who wish to influence the direction of policy.
The group has privately dubbed themselves “Off Leash”.
Earlier this year, the New Republic ran an in depth exposé of the group, revealing details of private messages obtained via leaks from the groups WhatsApp group chat. The views espoused by some of the group’s members are nothing short of shocking, even when compared to contemporary hardline right wing talking points
Established by former Navy SEAL and founder of the mercenary group Blackwater USA, Erik Prince, the group’s members are a who’s who of far-right personalities, many with their own sordid track record.
In addition to the war criminal Prince, several notable figures among the groups approximately 400 members are as follows —
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson;
Michael Yudelson, partner of Erik Prince and co-founder of Unplugged Inc. A digital security and privacy company with ties to Israeli intelligence;
Yoav Goldhorn, a former Israeli intelligence officer;
Former CBS News correspondent and Fox News host Lara Logan;
Saghar Erica Kasraie, an anti-Iranian activist and self styled “human rights advocate” working for the National Iranian Congress, a Washington DC nonprofit which promotes regime change in Iran. She also formally worked as a lobbyist on behalf of the militia of the US backed Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar;
Former Blackwater executive John LeDelfa;
Horatiu Porta, founder of the Romanian private military contractor (PMC) company Asociatia RALF;
Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancé of Donald Trump Jr. Although its noted in the report that she did not actively participate in the group;
General Michael Flynn, former National Security advisor for the Trump administration;
Tennessee congressman Mark Green;
Former Virginia congressman Tom Garrett;
Vish Burra, a political strategist and director of operations for disgraced former New York republican representative George Santos. Burra now works as a political operative recruiting for the MAGA cause;
Stuart Seldowitz, a former security advisor for President Barack Obama, Seldowitz also served as a diplomat for the US State Department in the office of Israel and Palestinian affairs;
Jeff Sloat, a former Reagan-era cold warrior with the U.S. Army 7th Special Forces Group tasked with running psychological operations in Latin America;
Omer Laviv, top executive for the MER Group;
Moti Kahana, founder of Global Development Corporation (GDC);
Tzvi Lev, former Economic Affairs Officer for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs;
Emma Priestley, CEO and Executive Director of Goldstone Resources Ltd;
Randy Couture, former UFC World Heavyweight Champion;
Montana congressman Ryan Zinke, Zinke formerly served as Secretary of the Interior for the Trump Administration;
Gabriel “Kaz” Kazerooni, former US Special Operations intelligence officer and Blackwater contractor;
Mark Farage, owner if the Virginia-based firearms and ammunition manufacturer Farage Precision;
Nathan Jacobson, Canadian Israeli businessman with close ties to Conservative Canadian politics and Benjamin Netanyahu;
Scott Taylor, former Navy SEAL and former member of the Virginia House of Representatives;
Scott Freeman, CEO of Virginia-based International Preparedness Associates;
Sven von Storch, close affiliate of the Alternative für Deutschland, Germany’s far-right nationalist populist party.
As to be expected, most of the group’s conversations centered around right wing talking points, including glowing endorsements of Donald Trump. Much of the groups core ideology is the epitome of the false awakening / great inversion mindset, proving that rather than just being a psychological operation on the general public that it is one of a more sophisticated variety deeply ingrained in the minds of even wealthy and powerful, and notably intelligent, figures.
Among themselves they rile against the existence of a so-called “globalist deep state”, acknowledging the very real reality of a shadowy global regime but seemingly completely unaware that they themselves exist as cogs in the machine of the very establishment system they supposedly oppose. Instead taking the logically inconsistent and polarized stance that it is only the “Marxists” and the “left” whom they oppose that pose a threat to freedom.
As far as the embattled current state of American politics is concerned, the group consensus is resolute that “it’s Trump or revolution!”
Or as some members opined, “Trump AND revolution”…
During such conversations many of the groups members fully leaned into their authoritarian worldview, bemoaning the supposed pitfalls of democratic process, essentially viewing the average American as little more than plebeians. With former Virginia Congressman Tom Garrett quoting in full the passage from Robert Heinlein’s 1987 To Sail Beyond the Sunset —
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
Some would take it a step further, advocating for the use of full scale military violence against those who stand in their way. A particularly concerning sentiment given the recent Department of Defense directive targeting American citizens and Donald Trump’s suggestion of using the military domestically to deal with the “enemy from within”.
“Apply all tenets of warfare internally against the many enemies living among us. America is capable of being fully capable again. Do we have the will to levy the toll?”, says Scott Freeman.
Notably, one of the group’s most outspoken and warmly embraced members is Sven von Storch. Described as a “pedigree fascist”, he is a prominent figure among Germany’s far right AFD along with his wife Beatrix von Storch, the granddaughter of Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Nazi Germany’s finance minister from 1933 to 1945 and final head of state in April of that year.
When discussing what political strategies should be adopted to meet their goals in other parts of the world, it is apparent that Off Leash’s worldview is a harshly Islamophobic pro-Zionist ideology. It should come as no surprise then to the keen observer that a remarkable portion of the group’s members have close ties to the Israeli government.
While the group’s discussions of other “problematic” regions spanned across much of the world, specifically mentioning Africa and China, on issues such as Iran and the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Off Leash members pulled no punches.
In a number of tirades the demonizing and dehumanizing of Palestinians was rampant with members’ disdain for the people of Gaza painfully palpable. For example, many lamented that the actions of the Israeli government amid the ongoing genocide did not go far enough. Some advocated for the flooding of Hamas tunnels with napalm, whereas others openly called for wiping out the entirety of the enclave with nuclear weapons (apparently ignorant of the fact that the fallout of such an action would have devastating consequences for all the people in Israel as well.)
On Iran too, the sentiment was derisive. With conversations between the groups members openly discussing regime change, the toppling of the Iranian government in order to “cut the head off the snake”, crippling bombing campaigns on Iranian infrastructure, and calls for the assassination of multiple political figures using drone strikes to “take them out like flies”, among several conversations mentioning various figures who should be targeted for assassination, including the recently killed head of Hamas Mohammed Deif.
The rhetoric for the total annihilation of Iran was so vitriolic that when two members of the group, including a retired Navy SEAL, voiced their dissension on the basis that such a bombardment would have catastrophic consequences they were immediately lambasted for their “cowardice”.
Readers are encouraged to read the full report here.
While the group discussions detailed within the New Republic report likely consist of only a fraction of the alarming sentiments shared in private among the rich and influential within the global right-wing sphere, it is demonstrative of a concerning mindset growing ever more prominent seeping into establishment circles.
With the overt authoritarianism of the “left” increasingly pitted against the somewhat covert authoritarianism of the “right”; with both sides marching in lockstep towards the technocratic state, with religious intolerance on the rise as the pervasiveness of Zionism influences the overlap of evangelical nationalism on the backdrop of imperialist jingoism setting the stage for global conflict, Americans would be wise to be wary of the slow creep of encroaching despotism from all sides. Indeed, if the American people — and all people — truly wish to be free from these machinations of madness and other such agendas of the powers that shouldn’t be, the time is now to reject these insane systems and begin to exit and build towards a better society.