ALEX BERENSON: Somalia’s clan tradition helps clarify Minnesota’s stunning fraud scandal

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Nairobi, Kenya, December 2011:

I'm in Kenya to analysis my seventh John Wells novel, "The Night time Ranger." Wells is chasing American missionaries taken into the bush by Somali mercenaries. It's a change of tempo for him, decrease stakes than his common work. It's going to change into one among my favourite novels.

I've visited an unlimited Somali refugee camp in northern Kenya and the Indian Ocean coast, the place Somali kidnappers have not too long ago captured and killed a number of Europeans.

Now I'm again in Nairobi, speaking about the issue of Somalia, which Kenyans face up shut. Kenya is generally Christian. Somalis are Muslim — and poor even by African requirements. Kenya wants Western safari tourism for jobs and money. The kidnappings haven't helped. Kenyans would fairly preserve their neighbors out. However the United Nations and worldwide help teams have given them little alternative (oh, the irony; poor international locations hate open borders much more than wealthy ones).

DHS REVIEWS CITIZENSHIP CASES FROM SOMALIA, OTHER HIGH RISK COUNTRIES FOR POSSIBLE FRAUD

Anyway, I'm having drinks at a resort speaking about Somalia with (white) non-governmental help staff — they dwell effectively, these NGO sorts. And one says:

"Right here’s what you want to find out about Somalia. It’s on the ocean, proper? [Somalia has the longest coastline in Africa, almost 2,000 miles.] However most Somalis, they'll’t swim, can’t fish, they've little interest in the water. That’s how inward-facing they're, how tribal."

The phrases caught with me. And 14 years later, they assist clarify the multi-billion greenback Somali corruption scandal in Minnesota, which exploded into one of many greatest tales of 2025.

BESSENT TURNS UP HEAT ON SPRAWLING MINNESOTA FRAUD SCHEMES AS TREASURY PERSONNEL DEPLOY ON THE GROUND

The Somalis are tribal, however they don't seem to be alone.

It's unimaginable to know the huge chunk of the world that runs from Morocco 4,000 miles east to Pakistan and south throughout Africa with out realizing the significance of tribes. This space covers almost two billion folks, largely Muslim — however contains tons of of tens of millions of Christians too. It's largely poor, but it surely additionally has the rich Gulf Arab nations.

What it shares greater than something is a dedication to tribe as the middle of identification. In Arab and Muslim international locations, cousin marriage helps maintain tribal identification; marriages between cousins account for about two-thirds of all marriages in Pakistan and almost as many in some Arab international locations.

LOEFFLER: VAST NETWORK OF SOMALI NONPROFITS RIPPED OFF MINNESOTA’S WELFARE STATE

Charges are considerably decrease in Somalia, as a result of marriages assist bind "clans" — not simply already closely-related households — to one another.

Nonetheless, as a guide on marriage in Arab and African international locations explains:

"General, in the midst of the wedding course of in Somalia and Djibouti, collective pursuits are put earlier than the pursuits of the 2 people getting married."

SOMALI MINNESOTANS BEING 'SCAPEGOATED' IN FRAUD INVESTIGATION, NYT WRITER CLAIMS

I don't assume most Individuals can simply wrap their heads round how international these cultures actually are to our mind-set.

A society that doesn't even permit its members to decide on their husbands or wives has a really completely different construction than Western societies that target particular person rights — and the rule of regulation.

Sure, in each the West and tribal societies, the household is the core unit, which can be why Westerners haven't seen this distinction as clearly as they need to.

ALEX BERENSON: MINNESOTA WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING: NEW YORK'S MEDICAID GRIFT IS FAR WORSE

However within the West, every household is successfully impartial. Extra highly effective groupings are political, not familial, organized by inhabitants measurement and geography — cities, counties, states, nations.

In tribal societies, households stack collectively to achieve energy, which is why cousin marriage issues a lot. Me in opposition to my cousin; me and my cousin in opposition to our second-cousin neighbors; our prolonged household in opposition to yours — all beneath the management of a clan chief. The clans could share territory, however not political management.

Within the West, nation-states collect legitimacy from — a minimum of in idea — offering all residents equal justice beneath the regulation.

MASSIVE MEDICAID FRAUD SCHEME PUTS MINNESOTA’S FEDERAL FUNDING AT RISK — AND FALLOUT COULD WIDEN

Tribal societies do not need an identical overarching philosophical basis. They work in follow as tribes compete and cooperate, generally in comparatively calm equilibrium, generally beneath the autocratic management of the strongest tribe and its chiefs.

And generally in open battle, as much as and together with civil struggle — as within the wars that wracked Somalia for many years.

When particular person households from tribal societies come to Western international locations, they've little alternative however to undertake Western stacking mechanisms — to simply accept the rule of regulation and the authority of impartial political jurisdictions. Loads of particular person Somalis have finished simply that.

LIZ PEEK: MINNESOTA’S FRAUD SCANDAL EXPOSES DEMOCRATS’ INDIFFERENCE TO THE NEEDY

However once they come en masse, because the Somali immigrants of Minnesota did, they might attempt to preserve their tribal buildings a minimum of partly intact.

In November, the impartial newspaper County Freeway ran a rare piece in regards to the Somali fraud in Minnesota explaining how simply the neighborhood had reestablished itself alongside clan strains:

"The neighborhood is the end result not of a voluntary motion of formidable folks looking for a brand new life in America, however of the US-government’s mass resettlement of total households directly…

"The Somalis introduced the language, tradition, and sophisticated clan system of their shattered homeland to Minnesota… the cultural forces that allowed Somalis to renew a model of their prior lives additionally had the impact of walling them off from different Minnesotans."

IT'S NOT JUST MINNESOTA. DEMOCRATS HAVE CREATED WELFARE FRAUD EVERYWHERE

"The historic Somali society is a form of Janus-faced society," defined Ahmed Samatar, a political scientist at Macalester School in Saint Paul and the founding editor-in-chief of Bildhaan: An Worldwide Journal of Somali Research, talking from his skylit campus workplace.

"On one facet there may be the intimacy of the area people, the household subgroup and kin group. Right here there may be mutuality and accountability and respect… However the civic tradition was not a part of that custom."

MEDIA ‘COMPLICITY’ BLAMED AS FEDS SAY MINNESOTA FRAUD CRISIS COULD REACH $9B: 'SHOWN THEIR TRUE COLORS'

In different phrases, many Somalis consider they owe their tribes onerous work, integrity, and honesty.

Their tribes — and nobody else.

So, when Minnesota’s Democrats determined to drop any guiderails and successfully open federally financed applications to mass looting — a choice each overtly cynical and weirdly naive — a surprising variety of Somalis took benefit.

SENATE PRESSURE MOUNTS AS MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL CONTINUES TO UNFOLD

As County Freeway defined:

"The fraud unfold so extensively and rapidly that it appeared to don't have any actual architect… gallop[ing] by way of the Somali neighborhood, which saved the key from non-Somali Minnesota with ironclad self-discipline. The clan system acted as each pathway and safety for the fraud…"

By each fraud case, the Somali neighborhood displayed what Professor Samatar described as "the solidarity of thieves." Dangerous actors throughout the neighborhood would strategy potential coconspirators with none worry of betrayal.

MINNESOTA’S FRAUD SCANDAL WAS ‘SHOCKINGLY EASY’ TO PULL OFF, IS LIKELY WORSE THAN REPORTED: EX PROSECUTOR

Honor amongst thieves!

No, not each Somali in Minnesota can or needs to be blamed for this fraud.

However that doesn’t imply that the choice to simply accept massive numbers of immigrants en masse from a tribal society didn’t set the stage for it.

MINNESOTA’S SOMALI FRAUD SCANDAL EXPOSES THE HIDDEN COST OF IMMIGRATION

Europe has seen an identical disaster with Syrian and Afghan refugees within the final decade, although Europe has confronted extra violence as a result of it has taken in so many younger, single males.

In 2025 it turned clear that the post-1965 wave of immigration to the US has now ended.

President Donald Trump has confirmed the Democratic argument that the US couldn't preserve its borders was a lie. He has confirmed that with affordable and politically tolerable steps, new unlawful immigration may be diminished almost to zero.

WHISTLEBLOWER WARNS MASSIVE FRAUD IS HAPPENING IN OHIO SOMALI COMMUNITY, MINNESOTA ‘JUST TIP OF THE SPEAR’

For a minimum of a few presidential cycles, I doubt any critical Democratic Celebration candidate will name for permitting mass waves of unskilled migrants (whether or not unlawful or by way of doubtful applications like those the Biden administration concocted).

In some unspecified time in the future, although — perhaps in a decade, perhaps a era — the pendulum will swing once more, and the US will probably be prepared to simply accept massive numbers of immigrants as soon as extra.

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When it does, I hope it remembers the teachings of the final decade — and doesn't let in massive teams from tribal societies, encouraging them to recreate their clans en masse on American soil.

We can't be sure all our new immigrants will settle for the best of America.

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However we will do our greatest to make sure they don't arrive with fragmented allegiances.

Editor's notice: This column first appeared on the creator's Substack, "Unreported Truths."

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM ALEX BERENSON

Alex Berenson is a former New York Occasions reporter and the creator of 13 novels, three non-fiction books, and the "Unreported Truths" Substack.

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ALEX BERENSON: Somalia’s clan tradition helps clarify Minnesota’s stunning fraud scandal

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