On December 31, 2025, we published the article, “European Values” – The strange case of Jacques Baud
Little did we know that rather than relent and roll back, the Collective West, those eager teachers who give unsolicited lectures on commodities that are in short supply at home, will escalate
This time, a US bank hit a US citizen with “debanking,” a word as sterile and bloodless as the bureaucratic soul that coined it. It is a term purposely designed to anesthetize the public to the economic strangulation of a modern heretic. It is deplartforming on steroids.
Of course, there was no trial, no charge, and no inconvenient evidence was required. There is only the quiet, procedural closing of accounts, zeroing the victims’ hard-earned income. All delivered with the smug, corporate assurance that “terms and conditions were violated.”
As several analysts warned, this is not a failure of the system; it is the system working precisely as intended.
Debanking is a brutal, almost banal display of power by an increasingly authoritarian West.
The victim, Scott Ritter’s, crime is not a transgression of the law. It’s neither the fraud nor the terrorism that the West claims to fight, even though it remains the biggest sponsor.
His offense is far more grievous to the self-anointed custodians of the Western narrative: he speaks plainly and bluntly from a position of lived experience, and outside the approved script.
Scott Ritter refuses to outsource his intellect to NATO press releases, EU proclamations, or his countr’s State Department’s mendacious talking points.
He commits the unforgivable crime of having the audacity to insist that facts still matter, even when they inconvenience the Empire.
Citizen Bank did not close Scott Ritter’s account because he broke the law. They closed it because he broke a spell.
They call it “debanking,” a bloodless euphemism minted by men who have never known hunger, fear, or the humiliation of being erased by a keystroke.
“Debanking” sounds administrative and hygienic, something done by neutral systems, not by human hands with political intent.
But political intent was behind this economic assassination of Scott Ritter. And it was carried out quietly, efficiently, and without appeal.
In various articles and interviews, Scott Ritter related the trauma debanking caused in his family.
First, it was Jacques Baud. Now, it is Scott Ritter. Anyone who pretends that this is a coincidence is either stupid or lying.
When Citizen Bank shut Scott Ritter out of the financial system, it did not accuse him of fraud. In this case, contrary to what we were told, that a person is innocent until proven guilty, there was no indictment, no court date, and no evidence presented. No judgment was delivered.
There was only the corporate shrug: terms and conditions, the modern equivalent of because we said so.
Ritter’s crime was to speak as a man who had been inside the machine and lived to tell the truth about its rusted gears.
Check his weighty bio online.
Possessing an independent mond is now the unforgivable sin in the West today.
Jacques Baud committed the same heresy. A former intelligence professional, methodical, unexcitable, and devastatingly factual, Baud dared to insist that wars have causes, not just villains. Ukraine did not begin in 2022. That NATO is not a benevolent charity. He presciently predicted that Europe, in its infantile obedience to Washington, was marching itself into economic, political, and geopolitical ruin.
For Baud’s refusal to scream on cue, he was financially excommunicated. But, unlike in the Dark Ages, they didn’t give him a chance to pay penance.
This is what Alistair Crooke and others have been warning about for years: the transformation of Western power from persuasive hegemony to coercive management. No one wants to have debates or discussions; it is only insults and the wielding of coercive forces – sanctions, and now debanking.
The collapse of narratives only begat the weaponization of systems, with banks becoming battlegrounds, payment and social media platforms becoming tribunals, and algorithms becoming judges.
Twitter (X) simply wiped me off the slate without warning.
Sanctions, once sold to the public as tools of moral righteousness against distant “rogue states,” have, like chickens, come home to roost. What was once consigned to foreign policy is now a tool of domestic discipline. The Empire, bloated and frightened, has begun to eat its own. The same financial weapons that the West used to starve Iran, suffocate Venezuela, and crippled Zimbabwe are now being redeployed internally.
Of course, the West still maintains the fiction that it has some worthy values. But instead of uniformed Gestapo knocking or breaking down doors, they just locked your account and plunged you and your family into financial uncertainties.
What the faceless bureaucrats fear the most are voices that can’t be bought. They are afraid of men with integrity who speak without scripts.
Scott Ritter broke a spell. Jacques Baud did the same.
The spell is the lie that the West still stands for free inquiry, pluralism, and democratic debate. That lie cannot survive contact with men who know the facts and refuse to distort them for career safety or monetary gains.
So the system does what all declining systems do: it closes ranks and lashes out.
The illusion the West continues to peddle through outlets such as the BBC is that Speech is still “free,” so long as it is economically harmless. You may speak, but you may not eat. You may analyze, but you may not transact. You may dissent, but your life will be made unlivable.
This is why debanking matters more than social media censorship. You can ignore a man on YouTube. You can shadowban him, smear him, call him names. But when you cut him off from the financial bloodstream of modern life, you are issuing a warning shot to everyone else. This is not about silencing one voice. It is about disciplining a class of thinkers.
The same Westerners who clapped as Russian assets were frozen now pretend to be shocked that banks have become political weapons in their own countries. The same Western establishment that normalized collective punishment through sanctions now plays innocent when those tools are turned inward.
Westerners did not raise a voice of protest when innocent Russian athletes were banned by the same people who told us not to mix sports with politics over apartheid South Africa.
We should think of these not as contradictions but as continuities. For Africans who have read Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon, this should feel painfully familiar. We in Africa have lived through this before under colonial administrations that understood power perfectly. Banning of newspapers, freezing accounts, and the revocation of passports destroyed the livelihood of activists and militants.
These were not done because a law was broken, but because an idea was dangerous. Control the economy, and you control the man. The uniforms have changed. The logic has not.
Those Africans cheering today because the targets are Western dissidents are fools of the highest order. What begins in New York and Brussels always arrives in Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra, repackaged as “best practices,” exported as “counter-disinformation,” enforced in the name of “stability.” The plantation managers we call presidents will lap them up with gusto.
Globalism, in its late and decaying phase, has shed all pretense of pluralism. It no longer even bothers to argue that dissent is wrong. It simply declares it unsafe. And fascism, in every era, has always begun with that word.
This is not about Scott Ritter as a person – I greatly respect his intellect, but I don’t necessarily agree with him. It is about whether truth is permitted to exist outside officially sanctioned institutions. Whether banks must first approve our analyses.
The men being debanked today are not extremists. They are the early warning system. They are targeted precisely because they are independent, not programmable, and cannot be relied upon to repeat lies on command.
They represent a potent threat to a dying narrative. Steve Bantu Biko told us that the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
First, Jacques Baud. Now, Scott Ritter.
The list will grow. The methods will become cleaner, quieter, and more sophisticated. And the lies will multiply, because lies always do when power feels cornered.
If you value independent thought and claim to despise propaganda, if you insist that Africa must think for itself in a world drowning in manufactured consensus, then neutrality is no longer an option. Silence is collaboration, and indifference is consent.
Support alternative voices now, while you still can. The truth itself will soon be declared a financial crime.
Mark my words.
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀ (1st Dan)
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Geopolitical Analyst.)
My Mission: Ignorantia et stultitia delendae sunt / Ignorance and stupidity must be destroyed.
I am an unapologetic Pan-Africanist who is unconditionally opposed to any form or manifestation of racism, fascism, and discrimination.
I thank you for reading my articles and watching my podcasts. I will continue to make them free, and I will not accept advertisements. But you can show your appreciation by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless you enable payments.
Your support is invaluable. If you enjoy my articles and podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it if you would subscribe to my Blog: https://femiakogun.substack.com to support my work and help me continue providing you with detailed, well-researched, and thought-provoking content like this. Help post URLs to my articles in the comment sections of your favorite YouTube channels, podcasts, and blogs.
Read more on Modern Ghana Media Communication Ltd.
