PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT FOR KENTUCKY

US Congress candidate Geoff Young: Abolish CIA, stop arming Nazis, end drug war

US Congress candidate Geoff Young, who is running in Kentucky on an anti-war platform, explains why he wants to abolish the CIA, dismantle AFRICOM, end the war on drugs, and stop arming Nazis in Ukraine.

By Benjamin Norton
Published 2022-06-04


Multipolarista host Benjamin Norton interviewed US Congress candidate Geoff Young, who is running in Kentucky’s 6th district on an anti-war platform calling for abolishing the CIA.

We discussed Young’s 12-point program, which also seeks to “End the failed ‘War on Drugs,'” prevent nuclear war, establish a Medicare-for-All system of universal healthcare, dismantle the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), increase taxes on billionaires and millionaires, and “Get Big Money out of politics.”

Young won Kentucky’s Democratic primary election on May 17. But he explained that the state’s Democratic Party branch has refused to support him against incumbent Republican Congressman Andy Barr.

Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, has in fact publicly criticized Young over his opposition to the proxy war in Ukraine.

Young said he is “probably the only anti-war Democrat” running for Congress.

Preventing nuclear war “is my main concern. That’s been my main concern for 40, 45 years,” he explained.

And “it’s most likely to happen, looking at today’s situation, when there is a tense, perhaps a war going on, such as Ukraine. And that’s where the chances of an accidental nuclear war are the highest,” he warned.

Young criticized the US government for sending weapons to Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Avoz Regiment, which has officially been part of the country’s National Guard since a 2014 Washington-sponsored coup.

At the top of his campaign website, young4ky.com, Young has a promise: “Unlike Andy Barr, I will never vote to send weapons to Nazis.”

In the interview with Multipolarista, Young stressed that Nazis “are enemies of humanity.”

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“I thought Americans were against Nazis in general, you know, since World War II,” he added.

Young noted that sitting congressmen like Barr “can’t acknowledge the fact that the federal government, both parties, have been sending weapons to Nazis since 2014, in Ukraine.”

“One of my objectives during the next five months is to inform every voter in the sixth district, regardless of what party they are registered as, that Andy Barr knew about it since 2014 or 2015, and he never objected, and now he wants President Biden to do it even more,” Young explained.

When asked why he wants to abolish the CIA, Young said, “Since it was founded in 1947, right after World War II, the CIA has been the worst, most well-funded, most powerful, most dangerous, most deadly terrorist organization in the world. It still is today.”

“We’ve got 16 other intelligence agencies. Let’s get rid of the worst one and save some money,” he added.

Young also condemned the US government’s so-called war on drugs, arguing “it has never been effective at fighting addiction. It has always been a bonanza for drug smuggling, you know, organized crime. The CIA has made a whole lot, billions of dollars on the Afghan opium and heroin trade, for example.”

“The war on drugs is just wrong-headed from the start,” he continued. “It should be treated as a public health issue, as an addiction treatment issue, and not as a criminal issue, where people get thrown in prison.”

Young stressed that the drug war has hurt his state in particular. “The overdose problem in Kentucky has been horrible for years. We’ve been losing thousands of people a year, because they get poisoned by the stuff they buy on the street.”

“And the harm reduction approach, the public health approach, would reduce all of that,” he argued.