I will preface this comment by saying that due to my ethnic background and atheism, I would probably be one of the first in line for a theocratic equivalent of the gulag. I will also add I am not American, but I have lived and traveled in North America, Europe and Asia for many years.

The functional outcomes derived from the actions of US oligarchs and Osama Bin Laden are largely identical. Mass suffering, mass death, condemning many millions of people to a life of misery. If anything US oligarchs have an edge on Bin Laden due to the scale inherent to operating in the US and protection provided by the local judicial system and social attitudes.

Consider Zuckerberg’s involvement in the Rohingya genocide.

Now I don’t think Zuckerberg had any direct malicious intent here (unlike say Osama Bin Laden, in a different context of course), but what does it matter? His actions, callousness and supremacist attitude led to a large number of people getting killed and many more getting their lives ruined. But because of the compromised nature of the local judicial system, not only did he not have to take responsibility for this actions, but he even had the gal to claim that this was an example of how effective FB was. Do you think we would see a similar reaction if FB was used in hypothetical ethno-religious mass killings (e.g. US Catholics vs Protestants) in the continental US? I think not.

Zuckerberg knowingly enabling the Rohingya genocide could be seen as a controversial argument. I do not. I think any real judicial authority should have seized all his assets (every last cent) and sent him for mandatory community service work for two decades as a junior latrine janitor on the island of Bhasan Char. What about a less “controversial” case?

My favourite oligarch gang in the US are the Sacklers. These thugs set up what is essentially a massive drug cartel peddling one of the most deadly drug substance (we are not talking about LSD or MDMA). And yet all they got was a somewhat larger fine than usual that still allowed them to keep billions. Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is got be pissed. 😆

Now where does Bin Laden play into this? Both Bin Laden and US oligarchs do horrible things. But unlike US oligarchs, Bin Laden was quiet open about his intentions and did not try to hide behind PR or state that some court in Texas leveraged the 69th amendment of the US constitution to prove that his actions were legal and were about “fighting for freedom”. On the contrary, he could have just been doing blow, driving fast cars, chilling on yachts, like all the other elite princes in Saudi Arabia, but instead he gave up that life to fight for something he believed in.

It was wrong, he was a bad person. I am not arguing against that. But how many US oligarchs have the guts to do something like that?

And if the outcomes of the actions of US oligarchs are actually worse than Bin Laden, is it a stretch to say they are worse than Bin Laden?