INTERVIEW. With Greg OLEAR. About Russian nouveaux riches and corruption. Magnitsky Act and the importance to include corrupt officials. ‘Dirty rubles’, Russian kingpins, and ‘golden passports’. Who could be a perfect leader right now for GOP and how deep is the rabbit hole between Russians and the GOP treason.. Kompromat on GOP? Why hackers and hoax callers are the tool to destabilize America. Paul Manafort, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and many more…
Greg OLEAR is an American novelist, journalist, and author. He is the founding editor of The Weeklings and the author of the novels Totally Killer and Fathermucker, an LA Times bestseller, in 2018 he published the book Dirty Rubles: An Introduction to Trump/Russia. The French-language edition of Totally Killer was published in 2011 by Editions Gallmeister, and has received favorable notices in L’Express and Rolling Stone. Olear taught creative writing at Manhattanville College. He was the senior editor of Brad Listi’s online literary magazine The Nervous Breakdown. His work has also appeared in The Huffington Post, Babble.com, The Rumpus, The Millions, Chronogram, and Hudson Valley.
The journalist Sofia TERESHCHENKO took an exclusive interview with one of the prominent novelists of America, Greg OLEAR, and shares his New York stories too.
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‘Magnitsky Act’. The law is set to target human rights abusers. Under this new system similar to the US Magnitsky Act, the EU has now more power to punish individuals involved in human rights violations. The new rules will make it easier to ban them from entering the bloc. The EU foreign ministers approved a new mechanism that would allow the bloc to impose sanctions on individuals and organizations responsible for human rights abusers anywhere in the world: ban targeted individuals from traveling into Europe, freeze their assets of both officials and “entities” like organizations, companies or banks; outlaw Europeans from making funds available to those engaged in serious human rights violations. But little have said about corruptioners. We all know that Russian neooligarchs and some officials have a tendency to cover up their money origins, so some of them, who have never, for example, officially participated in one way or another in human rights violations; though they’re all engaged with each other; and we all know who gives them money or allows to steal…, yet they still travel, live and buy properties abroad, buy passports and obtain bank accounts in the EU and US. Isn’t it a little bit naive from our side not to mention the word “corruptioners” and “corruption” when imposing such Acts and laws upon them? Isn’t this our main responsibility and ethical obligation to totally ban them after everything that’s been done to our politics, cybersecurity, economy, to how they use their aggressive strategy, violate our borders, and sometimes express opened and obvious hatred and disrespect towards Western civilization and our values?
First off, thanks so much for having me.
I’m not an attorney, so I don’t want to be too critical here, but let me play devil’s advocate: Perhaps including a vague, subjective term like “corrupt” might lead to the law being exploited by the bad guys. Bill Browder is forever having red notices submitted to INTERPOL by Russia. That’s even the title of his book! Maybe this is a way to prevent bad actors from perverting what will be, I hope, a great start to take down transnational organized crime. The more transparency we have, the better.
Is it worth it to totally ban Russian oligarchs and nouveaux riches from buying real estate and citizenships of America and the European Union (after all, they are all somehow involved in the current illegal actions and therefore they’re part of the political and economic schemes, corruption, and war crimes)?
For individuals, I think it has to be on a case-by-case basis. It’s fair to say that a Russian national who is pals with Putin and suddenly owns controlling interest in, say, all the natural gas in that country might not be entirely on the up-and-up. But not everyone is as obvious. We can’t assume guilt. With that said, I strongly favor sanctions against individuals, which, as you know, are extremely effective. What’s the use in having such a vast fortune if you can’t spend it outside of Moscow, St. Petersburg, or Vladivostok?
What other actions would you recommend to be done if you were an adviser to the President of the United States, maybe a complete freeze of the assets of Russian “kingpins”, deportation, and arrest of their foreign properties, deprivation of Western “golden passports” as an expedient and wise way to get rid of the pernicious influence on the West and western civilization from them and their ‘dirty rubles’?
It will be fascinating to see what happens next with Putin. There were reports out of Russia that he has Parkinson’s. That may just be the usual deza, but it may not. If I’m Russia, I’m terrified of what Biden and Harris might do. Remember, with Biden, they went after his son; this is personal for him. I was talking to a friend of mine, an American attorney who worked in Russia for years, and who uses the pseudonym Moscow Never Sleeps, about this. He thinks the Russians will remove Putin from an obvious leadership position, blame him for all the hacking and election hijinks, and try to “reset” with a new leader.
What Biden needs to do, first and foremost, is expose the crimes of Donald John Trump, and show conclusively how Russia helped him. He needs to make the case to the American people for why this is important. Which is: The Russian mafiya basically steals money from all of us. It’s not stealing directly, but by running their schemes, they make everything more expensive–from gasoline to healthcare. We need to go after organized crime, and go hard.
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Who do you see as a perfect leader, right now, for the Republican party and why? And why do you think GOP was such an easy target for the Russian influence and scams? In fact, how deep do you think this rabbit hole with Russia’s passive aggression is?
For the federal government of the United States to properly function, we need two robust parties. That is baked into our founding documents. For the last quarter century, we’ve had one party that has a vision, and another that only exists to obstruct. That is not sustainable. We need to get back to having arguments about policy: Should the government provide healthcare to its citizens? Is national security more important than privacy? How big a role on the international stage should the U.S. play? There are good arguments on both sides, and we need two engaged parties to do the arguing. Whether that means the GOP evolves, or it goes away and the Democratic Party splits, I don’t know. But the current GOP is honeycombed with traitors. Some have clearly been compromised by the Russians. Some are opportunistic Fascists. But we need the rational members of that party–Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Liz Cheney, and so forth–to re-define what the Party of Lincoln stands for. Including more women and people of color, and repudiating white supremacy, would be a good place to start.
Is it possible that Putin’s administration might have a heavy kompromat on GOP and blackmail the current administration, due to the hacking attacks they made on US state computers, hoax calls by Russian so-called ‘pranksters’, and therefore leaked informations that compromise members of the GOP, Donald Trump, and administration itself? Let’s call this openly, could GOP and Administration be both compromised and blackmailed?
Yes. In some cases, this seems pretty obvious. If you look at Rand Paul, for example…he started off hating Trump, insulting him all the time, and then, suddenly, being his biggest cheerleader. His ties to Moscow are so deep and longstanding that John McCain accused him, on the Senate floor, of working for Putin. Lindsey Graham is another turncoat. Ron Johnson and the other Fourth of July Traitors. I can’t say for sure, of course, but they all behave like they are being blackmailed.
Donald Trump’s latest pardons including Paul Manafort. What do you think was it all about? And what’s gonna happen to the Manafort case in the near future? Will he be held accountable?
Manafort is one of the most egregious traitors. Trump pardoned him because he felt like he had to, probably–not out of the goodness of his heart. Andrew Cuomo, our governor here in New York, just signed a law that allows New York State to indict Manafort for state crimes, for what he already pleaded guilty to federally. So, yes, he’s going back to prison.
Let’s talk about New York. A city of roaring nights and sophisticated elegant daytimes. Tell us a little bit about New York. What does this place mean to you? What this wonderful city is about?
I grew up in New Jersey, in the suburbs. My parents were mostly afraid of New York. I moved there after college and lived in the city for ten years. I love the frenetic pace, I love the energy, I love the street vendor coffee and the bars in the East Village and how you can get anything you want at any time. But mostly I love New Yorkers. They are often portrayed in the popular culture as gruff and heartless. That’s not true. I was there on 9/11, and the love was evident everywhere that day and in the weeks that followed. Beneath its hard shell, the Big Apple is mushy.
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Coronavirus in New York city. A dark and tragic page in the history of the United States. How did you spend the time during horrific mass casualties and chaos? What were you doing? And if being honest, did you feel that it was a war attack on the United States and on the American people precisely?…
I’m fortunate that I now live upstate, and not in the city proper. I have friends there who basically stayed in their apartments for weeks. Even riding in an elevator was dicey, so it’s not like it was easy to even go outside–and even if you can, where do you go? Eight million people live there. I credit Cuomo with handling the pandemic with aplomb. He really rose to the occasion. His decision to shut down the state university system in early March absolutely saved my part of the state from outbreaks.
Are there any outstanding literature and actors hubs you could name in NY? And if not, do you think there should be more meeting spots for actors, film industries and book authors for communication and collaborations?
I always found the city to be kind of cold, in that respect. In Brooklyn, every third person you encounter is a novelist or a poet or has a screenplay or whatever. There’s a lot of competition that, at least for me, overwhelmed any sense of community. With that said, I’ll always love the reading series at KGB Bar. They’ve been good to me at that place.
Will Julian Assange eventually be extradited and brought to court as he deserves to be? He’s literally a black mark for all journalistic society and a national threat to the Democracy of the United States.
Wikileaks is my best-ever Twitter block. Why would a journalistic outfit block little ol’ me? Julian Assange is not a journalist. He’s a cut-out for Russian intelligence. You know how he wants to just leak everything indiscriminately, and calls that journalism? That’s what the Bolsheviks did when they took over the Russian government: they released all the tsar’s diplomatic cables. At best, that’s anarchy. At best. I expect that, after Biden takes over, we will revisit the subject of Assange’s extradition with our friends across the pond, and they might sing a different tune.
Photo credits: @gregolear Twitter
Edward Snowden. Another one biggest traitor with an enormous unimaginable ego. What was on your opinion a mistake made by the CIA and NSA for not seeing him through from the beginning and actually hiring him, what kind of reforms or changes would you propose to be made in CIA and NSA human resources management since the Snowden phenomenon? Do you think he will ever be extradited and brought to court to the United States from Russia?
I hope Trump doesn’t pardon him. There are still a lot of otherwise good-intentioned people who think this turncoat is some sort of hero. He is NOT a whistleblower. He is a spy and a traitor. The way you can tell he was spying for the Russians is that HE WOUND UP IN RUSSIA. I’m sure the NSA has already done a thorough review after l’affaire Snowden. It would be helpful to demand extradition for him, too…a trial would go a long way toward showing people that he is, in fact, a traitor.
Who are your favorite authors and what books do you recommend to read in 2021?
My favorite novel of the last 10 or so years is Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. It takes place in the United States after the “Georgian Flu” wipes out 99% of the population–but I read it before covid-19. It’s a celebration of life, basically; of high art and low; of how awesome human beings really are. I love it so much. For nonfiction, I recommend Jennifer Taub’s Big Dirty Money, a perfect primer on money laundering and white-collar crime.
What piece of advice would you like to give to President-elect of the United States Joe Biden?
Investigate the traitors who tried to attack our republic, and bring them to justice. Make that a priority. There is no path forward without justice.
You can purchase Greg OLEAR’s book “Dirty Rubles: An introduction to Trump/Russia” on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3q6I0Va
Also visit Greg’s website: https://gregolear.substack.com/