WHICH OF THE BELOW FUCKERS ARE JOE BIDEN'S CRONIES? ALL OF THEM!
According to a Bloomberg analysis of the data, the richest 50 Americans now have as much wealth as the bottom half of the population. The increased concentration of wealth at the top in the course of 2020 is the result of the unprecedented injection of money into the stock market by the Fed, which has led to an explosive growth in the fortunes of moguls such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla chief Elon Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
What the growing class struggle in the US reveals about the pseudo-left
Both in the United States and in other countries, workers are engaging in an upsurge of strikes and militant struggles, seeking to reverse decades of worsening living standards and working conditions. As has often been the case, the development of the class struggle is shedding light on fundamental aspects of contemporary social and political life, putting to the test political programs and tendencies.
Shortly after midnight on Monday, nearly 600 Frito-Lay workers in Topeka, Kansas, walked out in the first strike at the facility since at least the early 1970s, when the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers union (BCTGM) initially established a presence at the plant. Last week, workers at the snack food giant overwhelmingly rejected a fourth contract proposal this year, defying the BCTGM’s efforts to pass a deal that failed to meet workers’ demands for substantial raises to make up for years in which pay has been virtually frozen.
The Frito-Lay strike is the latest in a recent series of rebellions against company-union concessionary agreements. At Volvo Trucks’ New River Valley plant in Virginia, roughly 2,900 workers are entering the second month of their strike after overwhelmingly voting down two contracts pushed by the United Auto Workers. The contracts would have significantly raised health care costs and throttled wage increases. At Warrior Met Coal in Alabama, striking miners rejected a United Mine Workers-backed contract in April by a stunning 1,006 to 45 vote, burning copies of the pro-company agreement outside the union hall.
And beyond the US, nickel miners employed at transnational firm Vale Inco’s northern Ontario operations are continuing their strike after overwhelmingly rejecting a United Steelworkers-backed contract which would have kept raises far below inflation.
In every struggle that is taking place, workers are fighting against appalling conditions of exploitation previously agreed to and enforced by the trade unions, which have spent the last 40 years integrating themselves more and more deeply into management and the capitalist state. As the recent wave of contract rejections shows, workers are now moving into increasingly open conflict with the present joint corporate-union efforts to maintain these conditions and deepen the attacks.
For any genuinely left-wing organization, let alone socialist or Marxist one, such a renewal in the fighting capacity of the working class—and its opposition to the agencies operating on behalf of the corporations—is to be not only welcomed, but aided and encouraged to the maximum degree, which has been the response of the World Socialist Web Site, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties.
But this is the opposite of the reaction of a host of parties and publications that present themselves as left-wing or socialist.
Most striking has been the response—or lack of response—to the strike at Volvo Trucks by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its most prominent media outlet, Jacobin magazine. To date, Jacobin has not published a single article on the struggle at Volvo, which has been ongoing since April, nor has the DSA issued any official statements.
The silence by the DSA and Jacobin on the Volvo strike has been mirrored to one degree or another throughout the entirety of what falsely presents itself as the “left” in the United States, from Socialist Alternative, which has also published zero articles on the strike, to Left Voice and Labor Notes, which have published only cursory reports.
In the little coverage that has appeared in these publications, there is no mention of the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee, which has played a leading role in organizing opposition at the Virginia plant where workers are striking. The one notable exception to the media blackout on the VWRFC was an article that appeared in Counterpunch (“The Volvo Strike,” by Kenneth Surin), which did note that workers at the plant “have a deep distrust of their union, so much so that they formed the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee to counter the UAW’s attempt to isolate striking workers.”
It is worth contrasting the overall reticence on the struggle at Volvo by organizations such as the DSA with the wall-to-wall coverage and support they gave to the unionization drive at Amazon’s facility in Bessemer, Alabama. The drive to bring in a union at Bessemer was a top-down, state-approved effort that received the official blessing of the Biden administration, the Democratic Party, and even sections of the Republican Party, along with substantial portions of the corporate media.
While Jacobin has published nothing on the Volvo strike, it produced close to 50 articles on the drive by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) to unionize Amazon. Socialist Alternative produced 15 articles, Left Voice 10, and Labor Notes eight.
Under conditions of a growing movement of the working class against the pro-corporate trade unions, the pseudo-left is moving to shore up the very same trade union apparatus, bitterly opposing any independent initiative and organization of the working class. The DSA has stated that its “highest national priority” is to ensure passage of the Protect the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, a Democratic Party-sponsored bill aimed at bolstering support for the trade unions, in particular their ability to “organize” the growing sections of workers who are not unionized, such as gig workers at Uber, Lyft and Doordash.
The differing responses of the DSA and other pseudo-left groups to every state-backed effort to expand the unions—boundless enthusiasm—versus the rebellion against the UAW at Volvo—frosty silence—is itself an expression of the social basis and political orientation of such organizations, which do not represent the working class, but rather privileged sections of the upper-middle class.
The pseudo-left endlessly insists on the supremacy of the corporate police agencies falsely described as “unions” because of the role they play in disciplining workers and subordinating them to the Democratic Party, which these groups all either operate within or are oriented towards.
Not least among the reasons that the DSA has said nothing about the Volvo strike is the central role played by the WSWS and the Socialist Equality Party, which have assisted workers in forming the VWRFC and found a wide hearing among those opposed to the corporatist UAW. While the DSA routinely denounces the WSWS as “sectarian,” what they really fear is the growth of its influence among the working class and the possibility of a broad movement of workers towards socialism, which would threaten the considerable investment accounts of the upper-middle class layers which the DSA and Jacobin represent.
Their conception of a “labor movement” is one that is thoroughly integrated into the state and corporate management, with sections of the middle class functioning as arbiters. This means, under the present conditions, a “labor movement” that is dedicated above all to the suppression of the class struggle and the imposition of the demands of the ruling class.
An increasing number of members of the pseudo-left organizations have made their way into the union hierarchy and the wealth and privileges offered, with perhaps the most prominent recent example being Jesse Sharkey, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, formerly a long-time leading member of the defunct International Socialist Organization, and now the DSA.
The integration of the pseudo-left into the structure of the unions has coincided with the unions’ own transformation into auxiliaries of the corporations and the state, increasingly unable to conceal their subservience to corporate profits and contempt for workers’ interests.
Beginning in earnest with the defeat of the PATCO air traffic controllers strike nearly 40 years ago, which was deliberately isolated and broken by the AFL-CIO, the unions have worked to ensure a highly regimented and controlled labor force wherever they hold sway, with pay low enough to make US workers “competitive” on an international scale.
The trade unions have hemorrhaged members throughout this time, both through the destruction of large swaths of jobs in the auto, steel and other industries—which the unions suppressed resistance to—and through the increasing rejection of the unions by workers who have witnessed or suffered through their endless betrayals.
The inability of the RWDSU to get more than 13 percent of workers at the Amazon Bessemer plant to vote to bring it in is not an expression of a rightward movement of workers. It is, rather, another expression of the same moods that led to massive repudiations of union-backed contracts at Volvo and Frito-Lay.
The union executives and officials have nonetheless grown rich in the process. Objectively speaking, they have made their way into a different social class than workers, drawing salaries in the low- to mid-hundreds of thousands, placing them in the top 5 or even 1 percent of income earners. They have shifted a growing share of their assets and wealth into the stock market, making them, like their confreres in the pseudo-left, increasingly hostile towards and terrified of any movement of workers that could overturn the low-wage regime on which US corporate profits and inflated share values are based.
The union apparatuses in the US, which for much of their history have been dominated by a ferocious anti-communism and support for capitalism, have shifted even further to the right politically, in line with the change in their material interests, constituting now a hothouse for the most reactionary nationalism, corporatism and even fascistic politics.
While the growing rebellion by workers against the unions runs counter to every position held by the pseudo-left, it vindicates the political prognoses of the WSWS and the ICFI.
At the time of the PATCO strike, the Workers League, predecessor of the SEP in the US, warned that the subservience of the AFL-CIO to capitalism and its main political parties would lead to one defeat after another, stressing that the “struggle against these betrayals cannot be based solely on militancy, but requires a political strategy for the struggle against the government.” Drawing a balance sheet of the defeats of the 1980s, culminating in the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, the ICFI determined that the unions and other national labor bureaucracies were no longer capable, even in a limited capacity, of defending the interests of the working class.
On May Day this year, the ICFI took forward this perspective, issuing a call for the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). The call for the IWA-RFC explained that it would “work to develop the framework for new forms of independent, democratic and militant rank-and-file organizations of workers in factories, schools and workplaces on an international scale,” and would “be a means through which workers throughout the world can share information and organize a united struggle.”
The struggle of workers at Volvo and elsewhere provide further confirmation that this perspective and these organizations are the road on which the class struggle will develop.
Report: Joe Biden Promises Wall Street Donors the Status Quo in Private Calls
OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images
8 Sep 2020343
3:50
Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden is promising Wall Street donors the economic status quo that they became used to before President Donald Trump’s administration, according to a report.
An investment banker on Wall Street told the Washington Post that in private calls with financial executives two months ago, Biden’s campaign assured them that talk of populist reforms on the campaign trail was nothing more than talking points.
The Post reports:
When Joe Biden released economic recommendations two months ago, they included a few ideas that worried some powerful bankers: allowing banking at the post office, for example, and having the Federal Reserve guarantee all Americans a bank account. [Emphasis added]
But in private calls with Wall Street leaders, the Biden campaign made it clear those proposals would not be central to Biden’s agenda. [Emphasis added]
“They basically said, ‘Listen, this is just an exercise to keep the Warren people happy, and don’t read too much into it,’” said one investment banker, referring to liberal supporters of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The banker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks, said that message was conveyed on multiple calls. [Emphasis added]
In a statement to the Post, Biden’s campaign downplayed the influence of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — left populists on trade and economic policy — on the former vice president’s agenda.
“The Biden-Sanders task forces made recommendations to Vice President Biden and to the [Democrat National Committee] platform drafting committee,” Biden spokesperson TJ Ducklo said. “This anonymous source appears to be confused and uninformed about this very basic distinction.”
The report comes as Biden told AFL-CIO members on Labor Day that he will be the “strongest labor president” union workers “have ever had.”
“You can be sure you’ll be hearing that word, ‘union,’ plenty of times when I’m in the White House,” Biden pitched. “The words of a president matter. Union. We’re going to empower workers and empower unions.”
In the Democrat presidential primary, Biden told a group of rich Manhattan donors at a private fundraiser that “nothing would change” for them or their wealthy lifestyles if elected.
“I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money,” Biden said at the June 2019 fundraiser.
“The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished,” Biden said. “No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.”
Like failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Biden has enjoyed a cozy relationship with Wall Street executives, along with his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).
Most recently, Biden touted Wall Street’s support for his plan to abolish America’s suburbs by seizing control of local zoning laws to construct housing developments and multi-family buildings in neighborhoods. Likewise, Wall Street is fully behind Biden’s plan to hugely expand legal immigration levels, beyond already historical highs at 1.2 million green cards and 1.4 million visa workers a year.
The Biden-Harris ticket has elated Wall Street so much that for the first time in a decade, more financial executives are donating to the Democrat candidates than Republicans, the latest Center for Responsive Politics analysis reveals.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Biden’s Billionaires
By Steve McCann
Many years ago, while participating in a voter registration drive, I came upon a grizzled and disheveled old man sitting in the overgrown and weed-infested yard of his paint-starved house calming smoking his pipe. Despite his gruff demeanor, Ully (Ulysses) was very pleasant and loquacious as we talked for over an hour on topics ranging from the weather to the innate foibles of mankind. It turned out that he had to leave school after the fourth grade in order to work in the fields to help support his family and had toiled in a variety of menial and labor-intensive jobs ever since. Yet, he had a deep and thorough insight into human nature. Among his comments about the rich and ostensibly well-educated was: “All the money in the world cain’t buy a fool a lick of common sense.”
I was reminded of that observation after reading an article describing the 131 billionaires who are pouring millions into the coffers of the Democrat party and Joe Biden’s campaign in their mindless obsession to defeat President Trump in November. Among the prominent names are Jeff Skoll, a founder of eBay who has contributed $4.5 million; Laurene Powell Jobs of Apple and owner of The Atlantic magazine has donated $1.2 million, and Josh Bekenstein, Chairman of Bain Capital (co-founded by Mitt Romney), $5 million.
Far more Wall Street financers have also jumped on the Biden/Democrat party bandwagon than are supporting Donald Trump, whose policies have overwhelmingly revived the economy after the stagnation of the Obama-Biden years. The tech billionaires, not content to simply cough up untold millions in direct political contributions, are also funding massive voter drives, promoting mail-in balloting, creating divisive partisan news sites, aiding and designing the Democrat party’s digital campaigns and unabashedly censoring the social media accounts of the Trump campaign and innumerable conservatives.
The political party they are gleefully underwriting in order to oust Trump is no longer the party of the middle and working class (which is now one and the same) but a two-tier assemblage in which the prey is sleeping with the predator. The witless wealthy and socially aware are in bed with the avowed socialists and militant Marxists. What is holding this marriage of convenience together is a mutual hatred of Donald Trump and the undoable promises made by Joe Biden and the Democrat party hierarchy.
In a 2019 meeting with 100 super-wealthy potential donors, Biden assured the gathering that he would not demonize the rich and would only increase their taxes slightly while ensuring that their standard of living would not be affected by any of his policies. He also stated: “I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 Billionaires are the reason why we are in trouble”. Further, he unabashedly emphasized that the wealthy are not the reason for income inequality and “If I win this nomination. I won’t let you down. I promise you.”
Further, the dubious choice of Kamala Harris as the vice presidential nominee was made solely to placate and reassure Wall Street and the wealthy, as she was viewed by them as being very deferential to the mega-rich class based on her days in California.
When the time came to deal with the Marxist/socialist wing of the Democrat party’s anti-Trump coalition, policy commitments, many diametrically opposite of what was promised the wealthy donors, were also guaranteed with a non-verbal pledge of we won’t let you down.
The first step was a de facto party platform. The 110-page Biden-Sanders Manifesto which includes, among other commitments, a massive job killing $2+ trillion climate agenda to phase out fossil fuel usage within 15 years, the elimination of cash bail, redirecting (i.e. cutting) funding for the police, dismantling all border protections, legalizing virtually all illegal immigrants and massively raising corporate and individual tax rates on the wealthy. This manifesto is a socialist screed that would destroy the middle class and permanently neuter the economy and nation.
An effusive Bernie Sanders proclaimed to the world that Biden and the Democrats have embraced his socialist agenda and that Biden would be the most progressive president since FDR. Sanders exposed not only the behind the scenes reality of today’s Democrat party but Biden’s figurehead role.
Further confirmation of the radicalization of the Party came about unexpectedly as the militant Marxist faction of the Sanders coalition forced the issue. Impatient and unwilling to wait until after the 3rd of November, Antifa and Black Lives Matter used the death of George Floyd as a pretext to take to the streets and begin their long-hoped for revolution. They claimed that rioting, looting, committing arson and attacking law enforcement was a necessity as this was a systemically racist country. Yet, they openly demanded immediate changes rooted in their radical Marxist ideology of class warfare not so-called systemic racism. As two of their preferred chants and graffiti slogans “eat the rich” and “abolish capitalism now” confirms.
Biden, the Democrat party hierarchy as well as virtually all Democrat elected officials refused to address the violence and those responsible. Thus, they tacitly approved of the lawlessness and by doing so flashed a green light to continue the riots. When forced to acknowledge the reality on the streets of the nation’s cities, they instead blamed Trump, the police, white supremacists and even the Russians. Due to their spinelessness, the armies of anarchy and revolution Biden and the Democrats unleashed will never be defeated or mollified by them.
Considering the vast dichotomy in the litany of promises made and actions taken, it is inevitable that either the moneyed elite or the mob of passionate true believers will be betrayed. There is no middle ground. Who will prevail?
Will it be the elites whose only weapon is money and fleeting political influence or the passionate mob whose weapons are unconstrained violence and intimidation? Will it be those who believe a revolution could never happen here or those who are currently inciting revolution with the implicit blessing of a major political party? Will it be those who believe that Biden and the Democrats, if elected, will be able to forcefully deal with the insurgents or the insurgents who now know that riots and extortion causes Democrat politicians to cower in the corner?
Beginning with the French Revolution and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, history has recorded that passionate mobs always prevail when dealing with a feckless ruling class or party. And the first casualties have inevitably been the wealthy elites.
I can envision sitting with my old friend, Ully, and asking him if he thought the wealthy elites, indiscriminately tossing money at the Democrats for the sole purpose of defeating President Trump, understood the pitfalls involved. He would lean back, slowly exhale a puff of smoke from his well-worn pipe and with uncontrollable anger in his eyes would say: “Nope. Those damn fools ain’t got a lick of common sense.”
Richest 50 Americans now have as much wealth as bottom 165 million
The Federal Reserve released data this week on US household wealth that documents the acceleration of wealth inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the second quarter of 2020, the bottom 50 percent of households—some 165 million people—held $2.08 trillion, or $12,600 per person, while the richest one percent of the population controlled $34.2 trillion, i.e., over $10.4 million per person. In percentile terms, the top one percent of the population held 30.5 percent of all wealth, while the bottom 50 percent controlled only 1.9 percent.
According to a Bloomberg analysis of the data, the richest 50 Americans now have as much wealth as the bottom half of the population. The increased concentration of wealth at the top in the course of 2020 is the result of the unprecedented injection of money into the stock market by the Fed, which has led to an explosive growth in the fortunes of moguls such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla chief Elon Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The divide in wealth appears even more gigantic when one looks at the top 10 percent of the population as a whole. Combined, the top one percent and next nine percent held 69 percent of the nation’s wealth at the end of the second quarter of 2020, a total of $77.32 trillion.
Between the first and second quarter of 2020, the top one percent of the population increased its share of the country’s wealth from 30 percent to 30.5 percent. The biggest losers were those in the 50 to 90 percentile range of wealth holders, who saw their overall share shrink from 29.7 percent to 29.1 percent. The 90 to 99 percentile and the bottom half remained largely unchanged.
While these changes may appear slight, they actually represent a substantial shift in a short period of time. The top one percent of the population substantially increased its share of the country’s wealth as the Fed effectively printed over $3 trillion and injected it into the financial markets. Better-off sections of workers, who, unlike the bottom half of the working class, have some level of savings, retirement funds or other assets, saw their wealth share decline, as they were forced to draw on savings amidst the global downturn.
One explanation for this sharpening division between, roughly, the top 10 percent of the population and the bottom 90 percent of the population is the disproportionate ownership of stocks and mutual funds. The top one percent of the population owns 52.4 percent of all corporate equities (stocks) and mutual funds, the next nine percent owns 35.8 percent.
Combined, 88.2 percent of the US economy, as represented in corporate equities and mutual funds, is owned by just 10 percent of the population.
While the bottom half of the population has for the last several decades held only one percent of the nation’s stocks, better-off sections of the working class, the 50th to 90th percentiles, held 21.4 percent of this wealth in the early 2000s. However, today this share has fallen to just 11.2 percent. In other words, better-off sections of the working class, less connected to the financial markets, have seen their fortunes move in an opposite direction to those in the top 10 percent of the population.
Another interesting feature of the Fed data is its breakdown by age group. The Millennial group—those born between 1981 and 1996—is today the largest share of the American workforce, accounting for 72 million workers. However, Millennials own just 4.6 percent of US wealth.
In contrast, the data shows that in 1989, when the typical member of the Baby Boomer generation was 34, that generation controlled about 21 percent of wealth.
This contrast between the wealth of Millennials and that of Boomers at similar times in their life cycles reflects the incredible difficulty that young people today face in landing a decent-paying job, paying for college and paying for health care, let alone taking out a mortgage, raising a family and saving for retirement.
The Fed data comes on top of several other recent reports and announcements about social inequality, including:
· A UBS report showing that the world’s billionaires have increased their wealth by over $1.3 trillion, more than 10 percent, in just three years.
· An announcement by the World Bank that the fallout from COVID-19 will push as many as 150 million people into what it classifies as extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90 per day) by 2021. This is the first time the number of people in extreme poverty has increased since 1998.
· A Wall Street Journal report that, using Labor Department data, demonstrated the divergence of fortunes for educated and noneducated workers amid the pandemic. The Journal found that, while those with college degrees have nearly recovered from COVID-19 job losses (which were smaller), high school dropouts still have 18 percent fewer jobs.
· A RAND report that found the bottom 90 percent of Americans would be making 67 percent more without last four decades of deepening inequality.
The ever-growing concentration of wealth at the top of the population weighs like a malignant tumor over society. No social problem, whether it be inequality, global warming, education, health care, retirement or the pandemic, can be solved without mobilizing these vast fortunes at the top and placing them under the democratic control of the broad majority of the population.
The process of extreme class restructuring, and the decimation of the ranks of the better-off, “middle-class” workers depicted in the Fed data, has been underway for at least 40 years. Under Democratic no less than Republican leadership, president after president, Congress after Congress, policies have been carried out that inflated the wealth of the ultra-rich while degrading the conditions of the working class.
This process was sped up by the 2008 financial crisis, in which the Obama administration took measures to gut autoworkers’ pay while funneling trillions of dollars to Wall Street.
Now, a similar but even more drastic social restructuring is underway in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions have been thrown into long-term joblessness and poverty, while $3 trillion have been injected into the financial markets and hundreds of billions of dollars given out to major corporations under the bipartisan CARES Act.
The needs of the working class—the broad majority of the population—stand in direct conflict with the interests of the parasitic financial elite. The major banks and corporations, which control nearly every aspect of global life today, must be placed under the democratic ownership and supervision of the working class so that that the needs of the population can be met.
Joel Kotkin: U.S. Elites Want Mussolini-Style Corporatism
3:16 U.S. economic elites are reincarnating “Mussolini-style fascism,” says author Joel Kotkin, who has spotlighted the political and economic dominance of the Silicon Valley elites.
Socialist Benito Mussolini allied with corporations to take control of Italy in 1922 after the trauma of World War I. He replaced its raucous, chaotic democracy with his idea of “corporatism,” where the society and economy would supposedly be centrally planned by rational interest groups of business leaders, unions, and farmers.
In the United States, corporations are now in the driving seat, Kotkin wrote July 7 for Unherd.com:
Mussolini’s idea of an economy controlled from above, with generous benefits but dominated by large business interests, is gradually supplanting the old liberal capitalist model. In the West, for example, the “Great Reset,” introduced by the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab, proposes an expanded welfare state and an economy that transcends the market for the greater goal of serving racial and gender “equity”, as well as saving the planet.
Mussolini’s corporatist government was initially popular among some U.S. elites in the 1930s. But it was disavowed as “right-wing Fascism” when Mussolini and his National Fascist Party allied with Adolf Hitler’s anti-semitic, Aryan-only socialist party, and then joined Hitler’s racial war against Russians.
Mussolini’s party got its name from his use of the Roman-era “fasces” symbol of authority.
The Democrats, and their myriad corporate-funded activists, are signing up for this bleak future, Kotkin writes:
This parallels with the alarming transformation of the US Democratic Party, the putative “party of the people” , now increasingly a subsidiary of the corporate elite. Among financial firms, communications companies and lawyers, [Joe] Biden outraised [Donald] Trump by five-to-one or more. Today’s oligarchs are particularly keen on the progressive non-profit sector, which provides important support for their political and social advocacy — a means for them to make politically correct statements about climate change, gender and race, while still obtaining enormous profit margins and unprecedented wealth.
Kotkin works at Chapman University and is the executive director of the Urban Reform Institute.
There is little support among Americans for the centralization of wealth and power sought by the emerging oligarchy of major corporations and their activist allies, Kotkin argues:
The tired capitalism of our corporate elite — who seem to have given up on broad-based economic growth — seems increasingly detached from the interests and aspirations of their own citizens’ needs … But building a coalition against the new fascism requires avoiding destructive nativism and instead focusing on how to restore competition and protect consumers from the overweening power, and vast wealth of the corporate elites.
Breitbart News has closely tracked the increasing consolidation of political power, wealth, and media control in the United States.
U.S. economic elites are reincarnating “Mussolini-style fascism,” says author Joel Kotkin, who has spotlighted the political and economic dominance of the Silicon Valley elites.
Socialist Benito Mussolini allied with corporations to take control of Italy in 1922 after the trauma of World War I. He replaced its raucous, chaotic democracy with his idea of “corporatism,” where the society and economy would supposedly be centrally planned by rational interest groups of business leaders, unions, and farmers.
In the United States, corporations are now in the driving seat, Kotkin wrote July 7 for Unherd.com:
Mussolini’s idea of an economy controlled from above, with generous benefits but dominated by large business interests, is gradually supplanting the old liberal capitalist model. In the West, for example, the “Great Reset,” introduced by the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab, proposes an expanded welfare state and an economy that transcends the market for the greater goal of serving racial and gender “equity”, as well as saving the planet.
Mussolini’s corporatist government was initially popular among some U.S. elites in the 1930s. But it was disavowed as “right-wing Fascism” when Mussolini and his National Fascist Party allied with Adolf Hitler’s anti-semitic, Aryan-only socialist party, and then joined Hitler’s racial war against Russians.
Mussolini’s party got its name from his use of the Roman-era “fasces” symbol of authority.
The Democrats, and their myriad corporate-funded activists, are signing up for this bleak future, Kotkin writes:
This parallels with the alarming transformation of the US Democratic Party, the putative “party of the people” , now increasingly a subsidiary of the corporate elite. Among financial firms, communications companies and lawyers, [Joe] Biden outraised [Donald] Trump by five-to-one or more. Today’s oligarchs are particularly keen on the progressive non-profit sector, which provides important support for their political and social advocacy — a means for them to make politically correct statements about climate change, gender and race, while still obtaining enormous profit margins and unprecedented wealth.
Kotkin works at Chapman University and is the executive director of the Urban Reform Institute.
There is little support among Americans for the centralization of wealth and power sought by the emerging oligarchy of major corporations and their activist allies, Kotkin argues:
The tired capitalism of our corporate elite — who seem to have given up on broad-based economic growth — seems increasingly detached from the interests and aspirations of their own citizens’ needs … But building a coalition against the new fascism requires avoiding destructive nativism and instead focusing on how to restore competition and protect consumers from the overweening power, and vast wealth of the corporate elites.
Breitbart News has closely tracked the increasing consolidation of political power, wealth, and media control in the United States.
Tech and Media Moguls Arrive at Sun Valley for ‘Billionaire Summer Camp’
An elite annual invite-only conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, organized by the investment bank Allen & Company is taking place this week, with the guest list including billionaires and powerbrokers from the Big Tech Masters of the Universe and the media such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Disney CEO Bob Iger, CNN host Anderson Cooper, Patriots Owner Robert Kraft, and possibly Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The estimated wealth of attendees tops $588 billion this year.
The Daily Mail reports that key tech and media industry players are arriving in Sun Valley in Idaho this week for the start of the annual “billionaire summer camp” hosted by the investment bank Allen & company. It is estimated that the wealth of attendees is in excess of $588 billion.
The five-day conference runs from July 6 to 10 and is held at the edge of Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest in a small town of 1,500 people. Guests in attendance at the event include New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft; Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg; Netflix Co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos; CBS News’ Gayle King; CNN’s Anderson Cooper; Nike CEO John Donahoe; former Disney CEO Michael Eisner; Shari Redstone chairwoman of ViacomCBS, and Stacey Bendet CEO of fashion company Alice + Olivia.
A plane belonging to Jeff Bezos arrived at the local airport in nearby Hailey, but the Amazon co-founder who recently stepped down as company CEO is yet to make a pubic appearance at the event.
Attendees at the last conference in 2019 included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg; 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki; Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan Murdoch, who is the CEO of Fox Corporation; PayPal CEO Dan Schulman; Instagram COO Marne Levine; McDonald’s chief Steve Easterbrook and billionaire media executive Shari Redstone.
Read more at the Daily Mail here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
Tech and Media Moguls Arrive at Sun Valley for ‘Billionaire Summer Camp’
An elite annual invite-only conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, organized by the investment bank Allen & Company is taking place this week, with the guest list including billionaires and powerbrokers from the Big Tech Masters of the Universe and the media such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Disney CEO Bob Iger, CNN host Anderson Cooper, Patriots Owner Robert Kraft, and possibly Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The estimated wealth of attendees tops $588 billion this year.
The Daily Mail reports that key tech and media industry players are arriving in Sun Valley in Idaho this week for the start of the annual “billionaire summer camp” hosted by the investment bank Allen & company. It is estimated that the wealth of attendees is in excess of $588 billion.
The five-day conference runs from July 6 to 10 and is held at the edge of Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest in a small town of 1,500 people. Guests in attendance at the event include New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft; Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg; Netflix Co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos; CBS News’ Gayle King; CNN’s Anderson Cooper; Nike CEO John Donahoe; former Disney CEO Michael Eisner; Shari Redstone chairwoman of ViacomCBS, and Stacey Bendet CEO of fashion company Alice + Olivia.
A plane belonging to Jeff Bezos arrived at the local airport in nearby Hailey, but the Amazon co-founder who recently stepped down as company CEO is yet to make a pubic appearance at the event.
Attendees at the last conference in 2019 included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg; 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki; Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan Murdoch, who is the CEO of Fox Corporation; PayPal CEO Dan Schulman; Instagram COO Marne Levine; McDonald’s chief Steve Easterbrook and billionaire media executive Shari Redstone.
Read more at the Daily Mail here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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