Trump Pardons Drug Trafficker Who Backed Network State City
On Tuesday, Donald Trump pardoned a convicted drug trafficker who happens to be the former president of Honduras.
There's a Network State angle.
Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of conspiring to smuggle over 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, is the right-wing politician who supported the creation of Prospera, the Network State city on the Honduran island of Roatán.
Hernández, who served two terms as president of Honduras, championed special economic zones where investors could set their own tax, labor and regulatory rules under long-term legal guarantees.
From the Wall Street Journal:
He courted Silicon Valley investors by offering semiautonomous “charter city” zones on the country’s Caribbean coast.
After Hernández left office, his successor started rolling back his illegal reforms, including the special economic zones that he had championed, and which resulted in the creation of Prospera, “a libertarian ‘startup city’ backed by Silicon Valley investors including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen.”
Hernández had made special zones known as ZEDEs—where investors could set their own tax, labor and regulatory rules under long-term legal guarantees—a hallmark of his presidency. Foreign backers embraced the idea, selling Próspera as a “Hong Kong of the Caribbean.”
After Castro [Hernández's successor] came into office and rolled back the ZEDE framework, its developers hired Washington lobbyists to pursue an $11 billion arbitration claim against Honduras—amounting to roughly two-thirds of the country’s annual budget.
The WSJ story reveals that Trump goon Roger Stone explicitly argued pardoning Hernández could “crush socialism and save a freedom city in Honduras,” calling Prospera a project with “major implications for U.S. policy and the future of freedom throughout the world.”
A spokesman for Thiel told the WSJ the billionaire played no role in the pardon. A spokesman for Andreessen did not respond to requests for comment.
Prospera is a flagship project of the Network State cult, which seeks to create billionaire-funded cities around the globe in preparation for an alleged collapse of nation-states in the 21st century. This fact is never mentioned in the WSJ story, in keeping with the mainstream media’s general allergy to acknowledging the existence of the Network State.
But Roger Stone’s decision to refer to Prospera as a “freedom city” is interesting, since Trump has announced plans to build ten so-called freedom cities on federal land in the United States. This confirms that Trump’s call for corporate-run fascist cities is connected to the Network State cult.
Freedom cities = Network State.
Fortunately, Kiera Butler at Mother Jones understands the importance of the Network State connection. She writes:
Próspera is an example of the tech-right concept of the network state, a phrase coined by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Balaji Srinivasan. I wrote about it earlier this year:
In a 2021 essay on his website, Srinivasan laid out his vision for people seeking to build a new utopia or, as he put it, “a fresh start.” Sure, there were conventional ways to do this—forming a new country through revolution or war. But that would be, well, really hard, not to mention unpredictable. A cruise ship or somewhere in space were appealing options, but both presented logistical challenges. Far simpler and more practical was “tech Zionism,” creating an online nation, complete with its own culture, economy, tax structure, and, of course, startup-friendly laws.
Click here to read “Why Did Trump Pardon the Former Honduran President? Follow the Tech Bros” at Mother Jones.
Click here to read “How a Man Convicted of Running a Latin American Narco State Landed a Pardon” in the WSJ (gift link, may require registration)
Phase Out The Billionaires
Trying to talk about what’s happening in US politics today without talking about the Network State cult is like trying to explain 9/11 without mentioning Al Qaeda.
That’s what I said in my recent interview with Rachael Myrow on KQED’s Forum. We also talked about the need to imagine a future without billionaires or fascism.
Click here to listen to our full conversation: “Nerd Reich Author Gil Duran On The Tech Authoritarian Movement.”
Network State 101
We’ve had an influx of new subscribers lately. For our new readers: The first episode of the Nerd Reich podcast provides a basic rundown of the Network State cult and its goals. (See video below.)
And the Network State cult will play a big role in my forthcoming book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. Please pre-order it if you can! We need this book to be a big success so I can keep on doing this work, and pre-orders make a HUGE difference.
- Buy the The Nerd Reich book on Bookshop
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Here’s Episode 1 of the Nerd Reich Podcast: “Tech Billionaires vs. Democracy: Elon Musk and the Rise of Network States.”
