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Boring politicians are brought down in boring ways. But for spectacular politicians, only spectacular attacks will do. And Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz is nothing if not spectacular. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Gaetz is under investigation for a possible sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl. To make the claims even spicier, the Times threw in words like “human trafficking.”

Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida and a close ally of former President Donald J. Trump, is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Investigators are examining whether Mr. Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, the people said. A variety of federal statutes make it illegal to induce someone under 18 to travel over state lines to engage in sex in exchange for money or something of value. The Justice Department regularly prosecutes such cases, and offenders often receive severe sentences.

It was not clear how Mr. Gaetz met the girl, believed to be 17 at the time of encounters about two years ago that investigators are scrutinizing, according to two of the people.

The investigation was opened in the final months of the Trump administration under Attorney General William P. Barr, the two people said. Given Mr. Gaetz’s national profile, senior Justice Department officials in Washington — including some appointed by Mr. Trump — were notified of the investigation, the people said.

The three people said that the examination of Mr. Gaetz, 38, is part of a broader investigation into a political ally of his, a local official in Florida named Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on an array of charges, including sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, at least one of whom was an underage girl.

Weaker politicians might meekly put out a statement disputing the Times’s reporting. But Gaetz did more. He counterattacked, confirming the investigation while categorically denying any wrongdoing on national television just hours later. Instead of going silent in apparent shame, Gaetz vigorously defended himself online. Not only did Gaetz deny all criminal wrongdoing, but he countered that the leak was an effort to sidetrack a separate investigation into a $25 million extortion attempt against his family. And to prove it, Gaetz produced photos and text messages to support his story:

 

Is Gaetz guilty of a crime? Right now, nobody has produced any evidence of one. On the other hand, there is ample evidence the story is more complicated than the Times originally reported. It’s also possible that, like with the Russian collusion hoax, these spectacular allegations are just an excuse for an all-purpose fishing expedition, which could be used to justify a politically-motivated prosecution for “lying to federal investigators.”

But another possibility exists: The attack against Gaetz is an act of “Zersetzung,” a tactic for crushing dissent invented by the East German Stasi secret police.

Twitter user Heywood Floyd recently described the meaning of “Zersetzung,” variously translated as “disintegration” or “decomposition” in a wildly popular twitter thread. He compares the East German Stasi tactic with modern-day cancel culture.

A 1976 Stasi directive describes distintegration tactics as follows:

a systematic degradation of reputation, image, and prestige on the basis of true, verifiable and discrediting information together with untrue, credible, irrefutable, and thus also discrediting information; a systematic engineering of social and professional failures to undermine the self-confidence of individuals; … engendering of doubts regarding future prospects; engendering of mistrust and mutual suspicion within groups …; interrupting respectively impeding the mutual relations within a group in space or time …, for example by … assigning geographically distant workplaces.

[Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Siegfried Suckut, Thomas Großbölting (Hrsg.): Anatomie der Staatssicherheit: Geschichte, Struktur und Methoden. MfS-Handbuch.]

Is Gaetz being hit with a disintegration attack? At the bare minimum, this is exactly what it would look like if he was. 

Just as the Stasi itself advised, the attack is based on a kernel of truth. Gaetz is a known associate of Joel Greenberg, a Florida politician and activist who has been indicted on more than a dozen charges from sex trafficking to stalking to manufacturing fake IDs. From that known association, the Times is inviting readers to consider extreme allegations about Gaetz himself. The attack itself is so salacious that it hardly even matters if it is true. Planting the seed of doubt is intended to damage Gaetz for life. The whole point of such attacks is to end his potential political future, and prevent him from ever working again.

Just hours before this story broke, Axios reported that Gaetz was considering leaving Congress to host a show on Newsmax. Now, that’s less likely, even if Gaetz is never convicted of a single charge. Unlike a more mundane campaign finance probe, this investigation could damage Gaetz’s closest relationships. And that of course would be the entire point.

What must be understood about such political prosecutions is that the charges are always beside the point. The Deep State authorities of the national security state don’t care about prostitution, they care about people who pose a threat to their power. That is Gaetz’s real crime and that is why this conversation is taking place at all.

In just four years in Washington, Gaetz has distinguished himself as one of the most effective proponents of Donald Trump’s ideological realignment. While most of the GOP continues to embrace unlimited military spending and disastrous foreign interventions, Gaetz has been one of the most outspoken antiwar, anti-intervention Republicans.

As his attacks on arch warmonger Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney show, he’s also willing to attack Republicans who want to drag the party back to the George W. Bush era of “lose gracefully and get paid” conservatism.

And Gaetz was totally supportive of the president’s immigration efforts.

But it’s about more than the issues. Matt Gaetz has been one of the most steadfast Republicans in refusing to submit to left-wing moral imperialism.

Other Republicans might condemn cancel culture, but Gaetz took actual risks to resist it. He even defended Democratic Rep. Katie Hill when she was forced from office over an extramarital affair. When Democrats whipped up a fake scandal over President Trump privately labeling impoverished hellholes as “shithole countries,” dozens of Republicans attacked the president. Not Gaetz. Gaetz pointed out that the entire scandal was fake, countries like Haiti are awful, and everybody knows it.

Gaetz, in short, is a rising Republican star, and a valuable asset in Washington. It makes perfect sense that the press would want him not only gone from office, but gone from public life.

So, recognizing the left’s tactics for what they are, what is the solution? The most useful thing Americans can do is to deny the corrupt institutions of the Globalist American Empire the illusion of legitimacy that they depend on. Institutions like the DOJ, FBI, CIA rely on a false sense of legitimacy to maintain their psychological power. The bureaucracies of the Globalist American Empire, along with their subservient cocktail waitresses in the mainstream media, have the power to set narratives, and shape people’s very thoughts about what is good, what is normal, and what is abnormal. They can impose a reality where Ted Kennedy holds office for decades after killing a young woman, but Matt Gaetz is anathematized based on unverified innuendo.

No more. Let them produce irrefutable proof that Gaetz committed the outlandish crime he’s charged with. Until then, evidence-free allegations of wild impropriety should be dismissed, lest we allow the corrupt globalist press to dishonestly tear down one of the few politicians who represents a genuine threat to our evil, corrupt, dysfunctional, and illegitimate system.

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