Garry Kasparov details Russian plots, then blames the left
By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit ·
Garry Kasparov bravely exposes Vladimir Putin's foreign assassination plots, but his lazy crusade against progressive youth ignores the corporate greed and inequality that actually broke American democracy.
A federal indictment alleging a Russian murder-for-hire network operating on American soil ought to jolt anyone out of their complacency. On the latest episode of the podcast "The Free Press," former world chess champion and Russian dissident Garry Kasparov sat down to recount how the FBI warned him. He and an associate in Vilnius were the likely targets of a Kremlin-directed assassination plot contracted through recruits in the United States. It is a chilling reminder of how far Vladimir Putin will reach to eliminate his critics.
Yet as Kasparov laid out the machinations of the Russian state, the conversation quickly veered from the terrifying reality of autocracy abroad to a familiar, exhausted American playbook at home.
The Cost of Corporate Appeasement
When Kasparov analyzes the Kremlin, his moral clarity cuts deep. On the podcast, Kasparov argued that Western leaders spent decades enabling Putin because European business interests could not bear to walk away from cheap Russian energy. He pointed to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline after the annexation of Crimea. He condemned former President Barack Obama for toothless sanctions while European leaders carried on with business as usual.
Kasparov is entirely right that autocrats thrive on commercial appeasement. Dictators do not hide their ambitions. They advertise them while multinational boardrooms calculate their quarterly earnings. When power goes unchecked, whether in Moscow or in Western capitals, ordinary people bear the carnage. In Ukraine, that carnage takes the shape of devastating bombardment. Working families see their neighborhoods bombed while Western capitals deliberate over the exact boundaries of their military aid.
Blaming the Left for Capital's Rot
The wheels come off Kasparov's argument, however, the second he pivots to American domestic politics through his organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative. On the podcast, Kasparov argued that American democracy is collapsing because it is being squeezed by fringes on both sides. He equated Donald Trump's authoritarian movement with the progressive left, claiming that President Joe Biden's administration alienated the middle by moving too far left on "woke" policies. He went on to lecture young Americans who view socialism favorably, telling them to read history books and insisting that America remains a pure meritocracy.
To give Kasparov his strongest hearing: having grown up in the Soviet Union and faced state terror firsthand, he understands the genuine horror of totalitarian censorship and ideological dogma. He fears that when citizens lose faith in democratic institutions, they open the door to demagogues who turn mutual distrust into absolute power.
That defense, however, misunderstands why Americans are furious. American democracy did not fracture because young people marched against war in Gaza or because twenty-somethings drowning in student loans asked why one union paycheck cannot buy a house anymore. It fractured because years of bipartisan corporate deregulation stripped working towns of their dignity, handed healthcare to private equity, and left an entire generation holding the bag for the 2008 financial crash. Blaming the left's desire for basic public goods for the rise of Trump is historical malpractice.
The Center Cannot Hold on Empty Promises
History shows that authoritarianism does not take root because working people demand too much justice. It festers when a comfortable political center fails to deliver basic economic security. When a political class protects corporate tax dodgers while families drink poisoned tap water, voters naturally abandon faith in the status quo. Lecturing young voters about the virtues of a meritocracy they have never experienced will not save this country at the ballot box. If defending democracy only means preserving an economic order that starves public services to pamper oligarchs, then the center Kasparov longs to rebuild is already built on sand.