Alex Pretti, center, kneels on the ground, to help a woman who had fallen down, his back to the half dozen stormtroopers approaching to execute him.
A doctor who attended the public execution offered this perspective to the court:
The physician said their view “was partially obstructed,” but that they’d seen ICE agents shoot the 37-year-old ICU nurse multiple times.
…I informed the ICE agents that I am a physician, and I asked to assess the victim,” the witness said.
The doctor also alleged the agents wouldn’t let them through at first and had “repeatedly asked” for a physician’s license.
“None of the ICE agents who were near the victim were performing CPR, and I could tell that the victim was in critical condition,” the physician added in the court papers.
[…]
“Checking for a pulse and administering CPR is standard practice,” they continued. “Instead of doing either of those things, the ICE agents appeared to be counting his bullet wounds. I asked the ICE agents if the victim had a pulse, and they said they did not know.”
The physician said the victim had “at least three bullet wounds in his back.”
Have you heard of Keith “Hope You Die…Faggot” Rabois?
Never accountable.
Not for $2.3 billion in losses. Not for a 95% value wipeout. Not for shouting death threats. Not for harassment. Not for backing a fraud-adjacent sports league.
Does this Silicon Valley elite operate above the law? In practice, yes.
Not because laws don’t apply, but because the “mafia” network he operates in doesn’t require law to function. Peter Thiel, Vinod Khosla, Founders Fund… it’s clear how certain Americans use a path to replace rules by sponging investor money. Failure is absorbed. Consequences are only for founders without elitist-welfare networks, employees denied power, and citizens who lack the “right white” friends.
Is American law relevant for Rabois? His track record says… not yet, and maybe never.
1992 Stanford University. Keith Rabois attacked a lecturer’s residence at midnight, screaming “Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!” and “Can’t wait until you die, faggot!” He framed intentional “outrage” in hate-based terror campaigns as necessary thought.
The intention was for the speech to be outrageous enough to provoke a thought.
Get it? He’s claiming thought by being thoughtless, while accusing victims of being dumb. He faced what consequences from then to now? He has been rewarded by a particular group. Peter Thiel, who later was outed as gay, wrote a book to describe the homophobic terror incident as necessary and wanted. Rabois banked on it, earning a law school degree from Harvard.
2026, Minneapolis. Alex Pretti is executed and video evidence from every angle makes it clear he was innocent. Keith Rabois outrageously rants that sudden public execution is always justified:
No law enforcement has shot an innocent person.
The structure of Rabois appears identical across 34 years: I define harm, always, for my benefit. If I cause or want it, then it is good. If you are harmed, your fault.
None. Thiel writes book promoting him. Harvard gives him a law degree.
2013
Left Square after harassment accusations
“Consensual relationship”
Offered managing director role at Khosla.
2018
Alliance of American Football investment
[Silence]
League collapses 8 weeks in; fraud by co-investor; players abandoned
2021-25
OpenStore: $1B to $50M (95% loss)
“Not a failure, a 10x focus on what is anomalously great”
Remains Khosla managing director
2021-24
Opendoor: $18B to <$1B, $2.3B cumulative losses
Says of own staff “I don’t know what most of them do”
Returns as Chairman
2024
Dismissed Palestinian lives, ignores Israeli military crimes
IDF is “most ethical military in world history”
None
2026
Promotes the execution of an innocent American as self-justifying
“No law enforcement has shot an innocent person”
Partners don’t act
The pattern emerging from this billionaire’s success strategy: He fails while on the attack, he blames others, he gets promoted.
The Illogic of Tautology
“No law enforcement has shot an innocent person” is deadly disinformation. This Harvard elitist is intentionally violating centuries-old logic, spreading toxic language that will get innocent people killed.
It’s invoking lawless domestic terrorism by unqualified, untrained violent Trump stormtroopers, by definition.
It says: being shot by law enforcement is proof you were not innocent, where law enforcement is suddenly defined by an unpopular unitary executive. The shooting creates the guilt that justifies the shooting. There is no possible counterexample because Rabois defines the category of “innocent dead person” as inherently empty.
Political satirist Stephen Colbert called it out like this:
Obey or die, and if you’re dead you didn’t obey.
Harvard law apparently hands out degrees to students who construct deadly impunity for “success” in the world. Not by arguing the facts, just their authority to make facts irrelevant and cancel the voices of targets. Show your Harvard credentials or off with your head.
Disinformation Analysis of Rabois Tweets
“No law enforcement has shot an innocent person”
Definitional fiat
Makes innocence impossible once shot
“Illegals are committing violent crimes every day”
Red herring
Pretti was American; changes subject to different people
“He unequivocally attempted to draw his weapon”
Counterfactual assertion
Video shows phone; creates alternate reality
“Not a failure—10x focus”
Redefinition
95% loss becomes strategic pivot
“I don’t know what most of them do”
Blame transfer
$2.3B in losses becomes employee problem
The same operation in 1992: I wasn’t terrorizing, I was testing speech codes. The victim’s experience—terror at midnight, death wishes shouted at his home—disappears inside the frame. What remains is only Rabois’s intention, which he alone defines at his whimsy.
The Business Record
Rabois is celebrated as a top-tier insider, getting help from his friends who give him access. Forbes Midas List. DoorDash, Affirm, Stripe. The welfare of elite club membership is real.
So the way I differentiate is I personally aspire to increase the probabilities of success for any founder and any company I work with. That is my goal when I wake up in the morning: How do I make this company more successful?
His differentiation is… success? That’s defining success as whatever he does that’s different. Eat shit and die? Success. Just look at ventures he actually led. His track record is a complete disaster, destroying lives:
OpenStore (co-founded 2021): Raised at $1 billion valuation. Acquired 40+ Shopify brands. Promised to acquire “a business a day,” eventually “one an hour.” Result: drove a 95% valuation collapse to $50 million. Shuttered nearly all stores. Liquidated inventory. Rabois’s self-assessment:
Not a failure.
Opendoor (co-founded 2014): Went public at $18 billion. Lost $662 million in 2021. Lost $1.4 billion in 2022. Lost $275 million in 2023. Stock crashed 97%. Nearly delisted. Rabois returns as Chairman in 2025, announces his own ignorance and intention to fire 85% of workforce to make himself look better:
There’s 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don’t know what most of them do. We don’t need more than 200 of them.
Alliance of American Football (investor, board member 2018): Collapsed eight weeks into inaugural season. Chapter 7 bankruptcy. $48 million in liabilities against $11 million in assets. Players left paying their own way home. Original investor later sentenced to 75 months for cryptocurrency fraud.
The proof is unmistakable. The evidence of his outcomes, compared to his “intentions”, is a clear warning. Combined losses in the billions. And then no consequence to Rabois’s position, compensation, or reputation. Opposite, he gets rewarded by his circle of jerks to do ever more unhinged harms.
Who Uses Tautology to Justify State Violence?
Rabois announcing his “if the state killed you, you deserved it, fuck you” intentions has obvious historical precedents:
Totalitarian regimes: Stalin’s show trials operated on this exact logic. Being accused was proof of guilt. Just like Rabois the NKVD didn’t make mistakes, by definition.
Colonial powers: British rule in India, Belgian Congo. Violence against natives was inherently civilizing; resistance only proved a need for more violence.
Apartheid states: South Africa, Jim Crow. If you were killed by authorities, you were defined as doing something wrong. Your presence became the crime, literally what Rabois has been saying.
Fascist movements: The core move: the in-group cannot commit crimes against the out-group because the out-group’s existence is the crime.
The tautology of Rabois functions as immunity laundering. It conveniently makes power-hungry acts of abuse their own justification.
The Network as Insulation
Why does this work? Why has the rabid Rabois seen no consequences across three decades?
The answer is structural. He operates inside a club of elites that funds themselves to deny external assessments:
1992: Thiel writes a book celebrating his efforts at domestic terrorism
2013: Khosla Ventures rewards him within months of Square departure on harassment allegations
2018: Altman officiates his wedding, because, you know, buddies
2024: Khosla again rewards him as managing director after OpenStore collapse
2025: Promoted to Opendoor Chairman after $2.3 billion in losses
2026: Khosla and partner Choi falsely claim “distance” from his comments while sticking close to him (no action)
Even now, Vinod Khosla’s reward structure for Rabois is instructive. He posted:
I agree with @EthanChoi7. Macho ICE vigilantes running amuck empowered by a conscious-less administration.
Imagine Khosla in 1933. This is like him saying “I agree with Ford. Hitler is very anti-semitic and nobody can stop him killing all the Jews.” My dude. Are you criticizing mass executions or promoting them? Because it’s not clear enough.
Note what’s missing: Keith is wrong and he will face consequences.
Can you imagine that?
The network composts the failure to grow another bigger round of it, and repeat. The reputation is laundered through the next venture of disasters. The externalized abuse pattern continues.
Accountability as a Class Marker
The through-line across three decades of Rabois is this: Accountability is for other people, because they lack his privilege markers.
Pretti is at fault for being shot in the back by Trump stormtroopers aiming for random public executions
1,200 Opendoor staff are accountable and should suffer for their top executive’s failures, as he gets promoted
Local law enforcement are the cause of “treacherous conditions” from lawless threats, just like how fire fighters are the cause of damage from arson
Palestinians are accountable for the radical right-wing Israeli politicians mass murdering them
The Stanford lecturer was accountable for Rabois’s hateful “speech experiment” to see what he could get away with, or even profit from
But Keith Rabois? Never accountable. He told Fortune, in an obvious reference to history:
I like to crack the whip.
He likes to cause pain.
He called Stanford grads “like the Navy” and said “you need pirates.” Cracking a whip on pirates? Nope. That isn’t how piracy worked. Pirates would throw him overboard instantly. He obviously means you need servants to whip, minions who can’t or won’t protest. The question of whether he is justified seems to be settled in his mind by pain from his whip.
In venture capital, this obviously fueled his rise to the top of a self-described “mafia” that he operates within. The investors define their own value. Enough conviction, enough network, and reality is simply the whip of assertion. Crack it to make it so.
FTX was supposed to be the same playbook: assert confidence, redefine failure, let the network absorb the damage. SBF had every credential—Stanford parents, MIT degree, Sequoia hagiography, Michael Lewis book deal. More pedigree than Rabois ever had. But he made a mistake that Rabois never made: prosecutable fraud. Lose investor money? Business. Lose customer deposits? Federal crime. Rabois knows exactly where the line is. He can use his investor network to destroy people, shout death wishes and call for execution of innocent Americans. All legal. SBF stole from his customers. That’s the only takedown allowed of these elites.
Rabois just elevated himself from destroying the value of a startup to being the one who decides who dies or lives in America. The “mafia” of Silicon Valley wants to be in charge of the killing fields. Also known as Palantir’s entire value proposition.
The Facts on the Ground
Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA. He cared for veterans. He broke no laws and threatened no one. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2011.
Video shows him holding a phone, and stepping in to help a woman shoved to the ground by one of Trump’s stormtroopers. Multiple angles, multiple witnesses. Phone clearly visible in his right hand. Nothing in his left.
It was this act of kindness that caused a half a dozen Trump stormtroopers to swarm him and punch him in the head and back for a minute before they took steps back and publicly executed him.
Alex Pretti kneels on the ground, helping a woman who had fallen down, his back to the half dozen stormtroopers approaching to execute him.
Shot a defenseless innocent man in the back. Ten times.
The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, let alone the NRA, has called out “misinformation” being spread about Pretti. Top politicians in Oklahoma and Texas… are outraged.
Keith Rabois looked at the execution of Pretti, started ranting how Trump stormtroopers are never wrong to shoot, and joined the ICE attack. He wrote boldly, like it was 1992 for him again, that more Americans should be outrageously executed under a platform he calls:
fuck you
The Question
Rabois learned in 1992 that you can shout death wishes at someone you hate and use it as a trajectory when you know Peter Thiel. Nothing since has taught him otherwise.
Not the harassment accusations. Not billions in losses. Not the sports league collapsed in fraud. Not promotion of suffering in Gaza. Not promotion of public executions of innocent Americans.
The pathology isn’t about whether he believes these things. The pathology is that he’s rewarded for saying he believes them—for three decades, by the most sophisticated networks in American capitalism. Scream “fuck you” at Pretti and unload a clip into his back, get funded by Thiel and a plumb job from Khosla.
This goes far beyond a Keith Rabois. He’s just one of the most obvious examples today.
The question is why Harvard saw the terror campaign of a man screaming “Hope you die of AIDS” at midnight and said that’s the guy we want practicing law. The question is who saw investment wreckage and thought this is managing director material for a top venture firm.
The question is what it means that this strategy can be called “success” in Peter Thiel’s takeover of America.
The question is who today (or what, in the age of AI) learns to do more of this, faster and larger.
Opendoor’s revenue collapsed 33.6% year-over-year in Q3 2025. The company posted a $90 million net loss that quarter and has burned cash in seven consecutive years. That 378% stock surge? It’s driven by Trump’s proposed $200 billion mortgage bond purchase plan and a single Reddit post celebrating $27,000 in realized gains. […] Opendoor’s gross margin sits at 8%, capturing razor-thin spreads on transactions while carrying massive balance sheet risk. One inventory mispricing cycle and the whole model collapses, exactly like Zillow in 2021.
Stock pump scandal by Trump? No wonder Rabois is backing Trump violence. The cheerleading isn’t ideological, it’s transactional. Trump pumps his stock, he pumps Trump’s execution of innocent citizens.
The courts have not been defeated. They have been bypassed. In 1933, this distinction did not matter. There is no evidence it matters now.
A federal judge wrote Sunday that the Trump administration is attempting to “coerce perpetual, infinite detention” by defying court orders. Three hundred forty-seven district court judges have ruled against the administration’s detention policies. Twenty have ruled in favor.
Does a 95% win ratio sound good? It’s not enough, in a system designed to operate faster than judicial review. It is documentation of abuse, executive power operating without check.
The win ratio is both damning and the kind of success that failed to stop Hitler.
This requires explanation.
The Schutzhaft Mechanism
On February 28, 1933, Germany’s Reichstag Fire Decree suspended constitutional protections including habeas corpus. The decree enabled Schutzhaft (“protective custody”): administrative detention without judicial warrant or review. As the infamous saying went:
If you cannot recognise the will of the Fuhrer as a source of law, then you cannot remain a judge
Schutzhaft had three structural features:
Administrative classification. Detention was ordered by police, not courts. No judicial finding was required.
Speed. Detainees were moved to camps before legal challenges could be filed. Within two months, 25,000 people were detained in Prussia alone.
Parallel track. Regular courts continued to function for ordinary matters. Schutzhaft operated outside their jurisdiction entirely.
German courts were not abolished, packed, or corrupted. They became irrelevant to the detention system. Judges continued to rule. The camps continued to fill. These two facts did not contradict each other.
A “Vorbeugungshaftbefehl” (preventive arrest warrant) issued by Berlin criminal police’s “Kriminalinspektion Vorbeugung” (Criminal Inspectorate Prevention) on May 18th 1942. The subject was arrested and deported to a concentration camp without a court order and for an indefinite period of time, then murdered by the SS. Source: Educat Kollektiv
The Trump Version
The American detention apparatus today shares the exact same three features.
Administrative classification. In July 2025, DHS issued an internal memo reinterpreting existing law to classify most undocumented immigrants as “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention. No legislation. No judicial approval. A memo.
Speed. The administration provides detainees 12-24 hours to express intent to challenge detention. Physical removal frequently occurs before judicial review. When Judge Boasberg issued a restraining order halting deportation flights to El Salvador, the planes had already departed. The detainees are now in CECOT prison. DHS officials transfer Minnesota detainees to Texas within days of arrest, removing them from the jurisdiction of Minnesota courts before cases can be heard.
Parallel track. Immigration courts are executive branch entities under the Department of Justice, not Article III courts. The administration has fired immigration judges and is replacing them with military lawyers. Cases pending in immigration court are dismissed; detainees are immediately re-arrested and placed in expedited removal, an administrative process with minimal judicial oversight.
The Relevant Numbers
District court rulings on detention policy: 347 against the administration, 20 in favor.
Supreme Court emergency stays of district court orders: 17 granted to the administration, 1 denied.
ICE detainees as of December 2025: 66,000, a record.
Deaths in ICE custody, fiscal year 2025: 23. Previous four years combined: 24.
The Logic
District courts rule against detention policy. The administration appeals. The Supreme Court grants emergency stays. Policy continues during appeal. Appeals take months. Deportations take days.
The 347 district court rulings create a record yet do not prevent detention. The detainees those rulings concern have frequently been transferred out of jurisdiction or removed from the country before the ruling issues.
A system in which courts rule correctly but after the fact is a system in which executive action goes unconstrained.
The Nazi Schutzhaft of 1933 is the entire Trump bypass story of 2026.
Judge Davis, in his Sunday ruling, identified the mechanism: the administration is “stretch[ing] the legal process to the breaking point in an attempt to deny noncitizens their due process rights.”
Stretching the process to the breaking point is not the same as violating the process. The process continues. The detentions will ramp even faster.
The 2026 Reality
The German legal profession in 1933 observed that courts were still functioning. This was true. Cases were heard. Rulings were issued. The Schutzhaft system was not subject to those rulings. We know how the concentration camps evolved after that.
The question is not whether American courts are ruling correctly. They are. The question is whether those rulings have any hope of constraining the American detention system tomorrow if not today.
Current evidence, based on Nazi history, indicates they do not.
A reporter in 1930s Berlin who treated the rise of fascism as political drama to narrate from a ringside seat would be culpable — not for being a Nazi, but for professional choices that served Nazi ends.
Who remembers how unpopular both Ford and Hitler were? Being unpopular, like Trump, was the point because it enabled violent paramilitary groups (e.g. SS/SA -> BP/ICE) to consolidate power by force.
Stephen Collinson is CNN’s senior White House reporter. His value proposition depends on complexity. Simple moral clarity — “this is a crime” or “he is replacing democracy with dictatorship” — doesn’t require interpretation.
It doesn’t require him.
So he provides muddied, abuse-enabling drama headlines instead.
Europe may need to adopt Trump’s brass-knuckle methods to save Greenland
And even worse:
Trump’s Davos hosts might abhor him — but he’s worth listening to
Worth what? Threat detection?
Hey assault victims, from women who had your pussy grabbed to innocent citizens being publicly executed by stormtroopers, did you see the “worth” of listening to Trump?
The Subject
Collinson spent 17 years at AFP before joining CNN in 2014. British expat. Covers the White House. His byline appears on CNN’s daily political analysis.
His headlines from the past month read like episode teasers: “Will Trump push the world to breaking point?” “What Donald Trump has learned about imposing global power.” “America’s strongman places a huge Venezuela wager.”
The pattern is consistent: Trump is the actor, others only react. Trump is the driving protagonist learning and growing. Everyone else is passive, faces, grapples, and struggles to respond.
The Receipts
Date
Collinson Headline
The Problem
Factual Alternative
Jan 21
“Trump’s Davos hosts might abhor him — but he’s worth listening to”
Grants epistemic authority to fabricated pretexts for illegal action
“Trump repeats discredited justifications for territorial threats”
Jan 21
“The populist storming the elite citadel”
Trump inherited wealth, governs with billionaires, is deeply unpopular. He is elite.
“Billionaire president addresses fellow billionaires at Davos”
Jan 21
“Europe may need to adopt Trump’s brass-knuckle methods”
Advises victims to emulate their abuser’s illegal tactics
“International community confronts illegal territorial demands”
Jan 19
“Who can save NATO from Trump?”
NATO will save itself. The question is who saves America from Trump.
“Will American institutions hold president accountable?”
Jan 16
“Minneapolis is becoming a critical testing ground for Trump’s strongman project”
“Testing ground” and “project” — policy language for public killings
“Federal agents kill American citizen in Minneapolis”
Jan 15
“Inside Trump’s ‘crazy world’ of milk bottles, sled dogs and threats to bomb Iran”
Quirky color story framing for war threats
“Trump threatens military strike on Iran”
Jan 12
“Will Trump push the US and the world to breaking point?”
Teaser, not journalism
“Trump policies destabilize international order”
Jan 9
“What Donald Trump has learned about imposing global power”
Character development arc for the protagonist
“Trump expands unilateral actions against allies”
Jan 6
“Trump’s new US mission statement: Strength, force, power”
Amplifies brand message as news
“Trump speech emphasizes military force”
Jan 5
“The surprising US plan in Venezuela comes with huge risks for Trump”
Risks for Trump, not for Venezuelans or international law
“US military action in Venezuela raises legal concerns”
Jan 4
“America’s strongman places a huge Venezuela wager”
Casino language for military intervention
“Trump orders military action in sovereign nation”
Nov 2020
“People on both sides fear the country they love will be lost”
Equates documented threats with fabricated ones
“Trump’s fraud claims threaten peaceful transfer”
The Techniques
Nine patterns appear consistently:
Protagonist framing. Trump acts; others react. He imposes, wagers, learns. Resistance becomes reactive rather than principled.
Brand amplification. “Strongman,” “populist,” “brass-knuckle” appear critical but function as the branding Trump’s team would choose.
Stakes displacement. Consequences attach to Trump’s political fortunes, not affected populations. Venezuela is his “wager.” Greenland tests his leverage.
False equivalence. “Both sides fear” treats documented institutional threats and fabricated propaganda as symmetrical.
Spectacle framing. “Will Trump push the world to breaking point?” is promotional copy, not inquiry.
Responsibility externalization. American authoritarianism becomes something that happens TO others — NATO, Europe, Greenland — rather than something Americans must stop.
Vocabulary adoption. “Globalist” has specific far-right genealogy. Deploying it as neutral description normalizes the frame.
Escalation incentive. Advising victims to “adopt brass-knuckle methods” generates more dramatic copy. Conflict sells.
Pretext laundering. Treating fabricated justifications as “burning questions that timid politicians won’t address” grants authoritarians the frame they need: brave truth-teller rather than liar seizing power. Hitler was “worth listening to” about Versailles. Mussolini about Italian restoration. Every authoritarian manufactures grievances. The question is whether journalists treat pretexts as legitimate inquiry.
The Business Model
“He’s worth listening to” isn’t just normalizing Trump. It’s selling Collinson as essential interpreter.
The structure:
Get proximity to power
Sell that proximity as insight
The “insight” tells audiences to pay more attention to the powerful
Which increases demand for proximity-based interpretation
Which requires maintaining access
Which requires never framing power as criminal
“Trump lies about Greenland to justify illegal threats” doesn’t need an interpreter. Simple truth doesn’t need a broker.
What’s Absent
Words that never appear in Collinson’s framing: violates, breaks, illegal, criminal.
Perspectives that never appear: consequences for affected populations, institutional obligations, moral clarity.
A journalist covering 1930s Germany who avoided “persecution” in favor of “the Jewish question” wasn’t being neutral. He was choosing a side through omission.
The Game
Collinson is a product of incentives. Wire service training optimizes for speed and “balance.” Access journalism requires narrating power on its terms. Career advancement depends on not alienating sources.
Understanding this doesn’t excuse the output. Every framing choice is a choice.
The truth is simple: an American president is threatening to attack an ally. That’s a crime. It requires accountability, not interpretation.
Simple truth doesn’t sell subscriptions. It doesn’t require… him.
So the game continues.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
