Alan Dershowitz—Is He a Spreader of ‘Trump Contagion’?

How Fascism Expands

Last week, I wrote a newsletter titled: “Alan Dershowitz—Is He ‘Insane’, or Just ‘Out of His Mind’?”  Even before that, I responded to Dershowitz’s “tweet”, “Why a cease fire will cause more civilian deaths,” with: “Why Dershowitz continuing to speak will cause more innocent deaths.”

I have never suggested that I am professionally “diagnosing” Alan Dershowitz, but continuing to warn of his serious and growing threat to the public’s mental health and welfare. 

I remind readers that there is a big difference between “diagnosing” (done in a private setting, upon agreement) and “warning” of danger to the public (done publicly, as a medical, ethical, and civic obligation that supersedes all other obligations).  Both the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and Yale chose to misguide and mislead, rather than to educate, the public.  This choice has served them well financially and politically, but has become the source of major public mental health emergencies—including mental pathology in politics.

Years ago, when Dershowitz, sometimes known as Dersh, became Donald Trump’s greatest celebrity lawyer, defending him in the first Senate impeachment trial, I commented that Dersh exemplified what may be the spread of “shared psychosis.”

As a result, Dershowitz pressured Yale to fire me, and to my astonishment was successful.  I asked Yale, where I only received awards and accolades during seventeen years, for a full hearing on the issues involved—including the roles of the APA and persons, including Dershowitz, associated with Donald Trump.  But fearful and cowering, Yale refused all proceedings and used its stable of lawyers to ensure that the Court of Appeals would not allow my case to go forward, by declaring that the University had no commitment to academic freedom and no obligation to due process in my case.

Now, Dershowitz has become a favorite on-air commentator and cheerleader on Donald Trump’s primary media outlet, Newsmax, where he constantly promotes his turn-things-upside-down books, Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitution Rule of Law, and War Against the Jews, recently rushed into print.  In this context, I feel an obligation to note the many more things about Dershowitz that others have brought to my attention.  

Dersh was very close friends with the notorious sex predator and blackmailer, Jeffrey Epstein.  For more than twenty years, Dersh helped Epstein infiltrate and ingratiate himself into the most senior circles at Harvard.  In turn, Epstein’s primary financial backer, Leslie Wexner of Victoria’s Secret, arranged multimillion-dollar financing for a new Harvard Center and provided more than 40 million dollars to the Harvard Kennedy School.  Recently, we have learned that all this money had a primary purpose: the support for Israel and the undermining of any opposition.

When major prosecutions against Epstein were underway in Florida, much like those that put Harvey Weinstein in prison for life, Dersh arranged a “deal of a lifetime” for Epstein.  Thanks to Dersh’s crafty legal maneuvers, rather than being met with Weinstein’s fate—even though he preyed upon underage, not adult, women—Epstein got a “no further prosecution” agreement in exchange for a little time in “jail”, where he was allowed to go home daily to his Palm Beach mansion.  Dersh’s plot immunized Epstein from any further accountability in Florida for all of his notorious sex crimes—which Dersh should have been well aware of, if not participated in.

When, convinced of his Dersh-designed immunity, Epstein cavalierly landed his plane in New York, he was, shockingly to him, arrested.  It was considered critical to many powerful people, probably Dersh included, that Epstein never be brought to public trial.  As a result, even though he was under maximum-security surveillance, Epstein was likely killed under guise of suicide.  Also, Dersh was a major part of a vicious smear, intimidation, and serious threat campaign to discredit the women, families, and prosecutors who were involved in trying to get Epstein properly charged and imprisoned.

Over the years, Dersh flew many times on Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed “the Lolita Express.”  He himself was credibly accused of having sex with teen and underage girls Epstein “gave” him, though he vociferously denied everything and counter-sued that, like Donald Trump and his “perfect phone calls,” he always had a “perfect sex life.”  In her filings with the court, Virginia Giuffre specifically testified that she was forced to have sex with Dershowitz, “at least six times,” starting when she was “about 16.”  She added: “I called Dershowitz ‘Alan.’  I knew he was a famous professor.  He is lying by denying that he had sex with me.”

Curiously, in the context of my researching Family Courts’ involvement in child sex trafficking and child pornography, Dersh’s name has come up repeatedly—implicating him in much more extreme exploitations of minors.  Family Court helped him steal two sons from his first wife and drove her to suicide—but these would only be the first.  I hope someday that discovery happens somewhere, since Yale’s extraordinary comportment—denouncing even its obligation to academic freedom—to deflect a discovery that would have exposed Dershowitz, makes his “secrets” highly suspect.

Dersh told Yale Daily News that I do “not belong in a university setting, teaching children.”  My students were adults, college or professional-school age.  He, on the other hand, doubled down on his belief that children aged 15 or even 14 could legally consent to sex with adults of any age!  One must wonder about this man….

The real reason for raising these issues about Alan Dershowitz is his role as a primary spreader of “Trump Contagion.”  His rhetoric will not stop at stoking polarization, hatred, and violence. He is only one step away from Donald Trump, who has proposed the imprisonment of political opponents, has built concentration camps, and has dehumanized millions as “vermin”, deriving language directly from Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. I have continually emphasized that fascism is not a political ideology but mental pathology in politics.  This is how Trump, a fascist by every psychological disposition, leaves a trail of destruction, spreading his influence not by rational persuasion or informed choice, but through the “contagion” of his symptoms.  This phenomenon is a uniquely dangerous psychosocial and political disease that has already caused much death and suffering, and still threatens even worse results ahead.