Dmitri Mehlhorn: The Man Financing a Political Counterrevolution | Ryan Grim - The Intercept |

DM: [Laughs.] I'm not sure I'm at the center of it. My background: my parents met at U.C. Berkeley. My mom was a great-granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who had come to New York to flee the pogroms of late-1800s Russia and Ukraine. And she shows up in Los Angeles at UCLA., gets her graduate degree at UC Berkeley, and meets my father, who is a non-Jewish German war refugee who was bombed out of his home before he turned two, who eventually made his way out to California. And even though his aunts and uncles were members of the Nazi party, and thus had some culpability in slaughtering the other half of my family, when they met in Berkeley, they fell in love, and they had a child: me.

And because of that history and because of the way it was shared with me, I've been very alert my whole life to the potential threat of somebody like Trump. I believe his example is a very common phenomenon in human history. And so, when he came along in 2015, I became quite alarmed. At the time, I was an early-stage angel investor, investing in a variety of small technology and data startups. And I began working, to the extent that I could, to get others to share my fear about Mr. Trump. And when he actually won the election, I realized that I could not do anything else other than try to get him to not win another election. And when I say could not do anything else, I meant, literally, I've tried to concentrate on something else, I couldn't concentrate, because I had so much fear about what a second Trump term would do.

So, I became active in that, and through social networks was reengaged with my former college classmate, who I'd known lightly over the years -- Reid Hoffman -- who shared my views of Mr. Trump, but had a great deal -- a great deal -- more money to fight. And so, he and I partnered up, and we have been active in anti-fascist politics ever since.

LinkedIn co-founder's PAC may challenge Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush`| Fox Business |

Progressive lawmakers Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush could face primaries from a PAC funded by Reid Hoffman

A Democrat-aligned political action committee (PAC) largely funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman could fund primary challenges against progressive Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Cori Bush, D-Mo., who have sparked controversy with their criticism of Israel in the wake of Hamas' terror attack.

Dmitri Mehlhorn, Hoffman's longtime political adviser, reached out to the Mainstream Democrats PAC to gauge a potential primary challenge from more moderate candidates capable of defeating Tlaib and Bush in their deep blue districts. The news was first reported by CNBC, and Mehlhorn later confirmed his thinking to Forbes and Jewish Insider.

"One of the very, very small silver linings of this horrible moment is that it does modestly increase the likelihood that we can remove some of these members of Congress," Mehlhorn told Jewish Insider.

He told the outlet that like-minded donors have since reached out to him in support of the effort, saying that he believes there's "a winning electoral coalition, a large governing majority of Americans who want their leaders to be able to condemn violent atrocities and mass rape."

A Big-Money Operation Purged Critics of Israel From the Democratic Party | The Intercept - 27 Nov 2023 |

How the Israel lobby moved to quash rising dissent in Congress against Israel's apartheid regime.

'Sapere aude'