\n<\/p>\n
After some long gaps in their relationship, Chambers and Schnabel had recently \u201cstarted to coalesce nicely,\u201d he said. She was on her way to meet us after seeing the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along<\/em> with her Saint Ann\u2019s classmate Zac Posen, the fashion designer who once described her as his muse. \u201cHe dressed up as the pope for graduation,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cHe\u2019s a very nice guy. Not a politically serious person.\u201d<\/p>\n He seemed to have come to terms with his girlfriend\u2019s world, stressing again that it wasn\u2019t really one that he had known prior\u2014she was the \u201cfirst rich person I\u2019ve ever been close to.\u201d \u201cEven Stella\u2019s brothers are chill,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cWhatever.\u201d Still, as he saw it, Schnabel long \u201chad some inkling that there was something very fucked up about the ideology of the place she came from\u201d even if she wouldn\u2019t have known \u201chow to articulate that\u201d\u2014but \u201cshe would put it better than I would.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was living here,\u201d Schnabel said after she arrived, \u201cI was constantly trying to get out.\u201d<\/p>\n She was wearing fuchsia snakeskin-print pants and a beige coat, and Chambers gleefully relayed what had happened earlier. \u201cI almost got into a physical fight with a cop on the street,\u201d he told her. \u201cWe were up in each other\u2019s face.\u201d<\/p>\n A couple of days later, passing through the neighborhood again, Chambers posted a selfie wearing a Stalin T-shirt on X, writing, \u201cGreetings, Manhattan\u2019s Ukrainian Village! I heard there might be some crop-hoarding going on?\u201d There were new swaths of observers to note that an heir to the Cox fortune was cheekily commemorating the man-made famine that killed millions in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s.<\/p>\n Chambers had already told me in person that gestures like his police run-in weren\u2019t ultimately principled or important, and that he had outgrown thinking of such a skirmish as an accomplishment. He didn\u2019t betray much anxiety about this at the time, but he texted the next day to say, \u201cStill embarrassed about the cop lol.\u201d<\/p>\n Growing up, Chambers<\/strong> thought of his father as a radical\u2014he learned early on to hate the police\u2014and they bonded around politics and sports. \u201cI really loved my dad,\u201d he said, and in his 20s, as he dealt with his first divorce or had a bad trip, he called him for help. But he came to resent how Jim\u2019s politics never \u201ccrossed the line of class struggle\u201d as his had, and how he softened on his principles while \u201cgetting tired and old.\u201d Jim\u2019s new wife, Nabila Khashoggi, was another child of immense wealth and a former actor who once professed her devotion to Scientology to a British tabloid. In 2013, as part of the family\u2019s new estate planning strategy, Anne transferred almost all of her 49 percent share in Cox Enterprises in equal parts to her three children. Jim became a billionaire, and \u201che\u2019s the one getting phone calls from Rahm Emanuel,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cHe\u2019s the one that has access to the NBA ownership group.\u201d<\/p>\n Chambers doubted that his father would speak to him again, and he didn\u2019t \u201cespecially want\u201d Jim to have a relationship with his kids. \u201cI don\u2019t know what it was that made me feel confident enough to not really fuck with really anyone in my family anymore,\u201d he said. He wasn\u2019t as certain of his mother\u2019s attitude toward having a relationship with him but guessed she would like to maintain one. He wasn\u2019t interested.<\/p>\n In the fall of 2021, he said, while he and Schnabel were in a protracted fight and when a friend had recently died, his mother called her on the day of the funeral and told her he was bipolar and needed medication. He wrote to his mother.<\/p>\n \u201cI sent her the most scathing note,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cIt said something like, I\u2019ll see you at my grandmother\u2019s funeral, not before or after.\u201d<\/p>\n (Hamilton didn\u2019t return requests for comment. Reached by text, Schnabel first said Hamilton never called that day or told her that; a few minutes later, she said Hamilton had called her a few days after the funeral; then she said, \u201cI have no comment about his mother.\u201d)<\/p>\n Chambers and Schnabel reunited a few weeks later when he went to the Hamptons for an \u201cawful\u201d Thanksgiving with her family. \u201cThey would probably both hate to hear this,\u201d Chambers said, \u201cbut I think my father has plenty in common with someone like Julian.\u201d Chambers stayed with Schnabel for a few weeks with her mother and the baby, and they started to work it out. They went to meet her sister in Sicily for Christmas and extended their trip while Chambers tried to \u201cfigure out what the makeup of the European communist movement looked like, just for fun.\u201d He was continuing to finance the Massachusetts land project, with stipended workers now living on it, but he thought about moving to Long Island to be closer to Schnabel when she wanted to be near her mother.<\/p>\n In recent months, Schnabel has become increasingly vocal on Instagram\u2014her bio reads \u201canti racist anti fascist\u201d\u2014and both she and Chambers have turned their ire toward the classes of New York wealth in which they grew up. There are rumors and jokes among her friends about some sort of cult taking place on the land project, though the reality may be closer to a state of perpetual disorganization. One woman in downtown circles went to work there, but it seemed to end poorly. Schnabel bemoaned \u201cevil hoarding bitches\u201d on Instagram and wrote that the woman was \u201cthat stupid you don\u2019t know when you miss out on a great opportunity.\u201d (Schnabel later described her to me as a \u201cgreat friend\u201d and a \u201cgreat part of the collective\u201d who didn\u2019t want to stay in the country.)<\/p>\n \u201cAre they still together?\u201d a friend of Schnabel\u2019s asked me. \u201cHe\u2019s a pathological narcissist.\u201d<\/p>\n But \u201ceveryone knows that,\u201d the friend went on. Their deeper breakthrough took more observation. \u201cI\u2019m a communist, I don\u2019t want it,\u201d they imagined Chambers boasting. \u201cIt\u2019s his way of letting you know he\u2019s got lots of money.\u201d<\/p>\n To get to<\/strong> Ukraine in 2022, Chambers had to go to Russia first. He called and emailed embassies throughout Europe, with flights already canceled and sanctions underway. He rented a car in Sicily and drove to Tuscany, and then Florence, and then to Moldova and Romania, where he tried to get a visa. After living in St. Petersburg and purchasing an apartment where his first wife\u2019s uncle now lives, he had some advantages.<\/p>\n His mission was to write the story of the Russian invasion from his perspective. Given his resources and the prevailing Western sentiment, it felt to him like an obligation. A representative for the Luhansk People\u2019s Republic\u2019s Federation of Trade Unions helped him get press accreditation for the separatist regions, and the consulate in Moldova eventually supplied a visa. He headed to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and then Rostov, close enough to the war that he took a taxi to the Donbas border.<\/p>\n Chambers said he saw shelled neighborhoods and a recently bombed market, where he came across the body of an elderly woman on the ground in pieces. \u201cThe only thing anyone\u2019s angry at Putin about there,\u201d he claimed, \u201cis that he didn\u2019t intervene sooner.\u201d He believes that the US sending weapons is the largest impediment to peace in the area, and, like his former gym employee Greene, that the Ukrainian government and military contain significant Nazi elements.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n