Lina Khan’s “Mob Bosses” Comment Reveals Her Thuggish Ideology

June 12, 2024

On Tuesday night at TechCrunch’s Strictly VC event in Washington, D.C., Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan described the administration’s antitrust lawsuits against Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta and (soon, it appears) NVidia and Microsoft as part of a larger strategy. She said that “being able to go after the ‘mob boss’ is going to be more effective than going after the henchman at the bottom.”

Mob bosses? And who are the “henchmen at the bottom”?

Politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Matt Gaetz routinely engage in that kind of over-the-top invective. It is deeply inappropriate coming from a regulator who is supposed to be an objective adjudicator making dispassionate decisions.

You might admire – or frankly dislike – some of the tech leaders. But really, where does a recent law school graduate – who has never created a single job, had to sweat a profit from a business started in a garage or dorm room, or had to make payroll – get off calling the leaders of companies that have added trillions of dollars in value to retirement accounts and provided jobs for millions of people as “mob bosses”?

And what does Khan mean by the “henchmen at the bottom” if not small businesses and Main Street? Clearly, from what she said they are her ultimate target.

“Mob bosses” and “henchmen” are also redolent of the kind of dehumanizing language of the old Soviet Union – e.g., “kulak henchmen.” If anything, there is more than a whiff of Critical Legal Studies Marxism wafting off of Khan’s hostility to American business.