Do very wealthy people tend to be Fascists ?

What Can’t Be Said: Billionaires Are the Biggest Threat (11/3/2024)

Republicans have always been a right wing party with a fringe group of fascists who admired Hitler. Fast forward to today, the GOP has become a full-on fascist party following a demagogue of low character who appears to follow Hitler’s playbook, much like a cult.

Republicans who don’t follow Trump are unceremoniously evicted from the party as were Liz Cheney. Mitt Romney, and many others. Indeed those no longer following fear for their own safety and that of their families. Violent retribution is apparently an attribute of the far right aimed at racial minorities, gays, judges, prosecutors, poll workers, health workers, or opposing politicians.

Trump badly needs to win the Presidency to stay out of jail and avoid being prosecuted for the more serious federal crimes that he has been able to stall with the help of the GOP owned Supreme Court. So do the Congressional insurrectionists that now control the House. Trump has to win election to keep his freedom, we need him to lose to keep ours.

The right always wants to concentrate power into a small number, which, long run is a very bad idea. Government is as good as the decisions it makes. Hitler, for example, brought devastation to his people and to Germany.

Donald Trump claims to be one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Many of the wealthiest support him, including tech, corporate, and religious oligarchs.

It is baffling to me how supporters of President Trump can claim anti-elitism as a reason for voting for him. The combined wealth of the Trump family and administration cabinet members (Perdue, Ross, Chao, DeVos, Mnuchin, Carson, for example) is staggering. These are the people who make decisions that affect us every day, yet their wealth and elite status do not seem to concern Trump followers. Do these voters ever question the motives and actions of that elite group? Gail Minthorn, Wilton, Conn. (letter to the New York Times)

When wealth inequality becomes extreme, oligarchs become powerful and increasingly interfere in policy or government. When the market overpowers democracy that is fascism.

As more and more wealth concentrates at the top, the moneyed interests rationally fear that democratic majorities will take it away through higher taxes, stricter regulations (on everything from trade to climate change), enforcement of anti-monopoly laws, pro-union initiatives and price controls. So they’re sinking ever more of their wealth into anti-democracy candidates. Donald Trump is going full fascist these days and gaining the backing of prominent billionaires.
Billionaires are lining up to fund Donald Trump’s anti-democratic agenda (11/21/2023)
Timothy Snyder

The Republican party has always been home for fascists, but now they have taken over. In order to extract wealth they keep people down. Trickle down never did. It was Niagara up. They exploit the culture war, use the well known authoritarian playbook,

The very wealthiest are also most dependent on government contracts (Tesla, SpaceX, Amazon, Putin, etc.) and aim to have a head of state who can be bought to do their bidding. They don't care that it will end the republic.

How does a program with is so clearly pro-rich and antisocial succeed in appealing to a majority of Americans as it did in 1980 and again in 2015 ? ... the skill of Republicans in using nationalistic rhetoric in cultivating a degree of anti-intellectualism, and above all, in dividing the working classes by exacerbating ethnic, cultural, and religious divisions. Thomas Piketty: Time for Socialism, Dispatches From a World on Fire, 2016-2021
Trump explained to the poorer whites, the losers in globalization, that their enemy is the poor black, the immigrant, the Mexican, or the Muslim and that things will get better if the big white millionaire gets rid of all of them."
Thomas Piketty (2016)

Links

Republicans play a long game, and have enabled a massive transfer of wealth to a tiny group of individuals. With great wealth comes great power. They have taken over the Supreme Court, SCOTUS, which for a long time has been eroding democracy, so they don’t need the popular vote.

SCOTUS degraded elections by overturning the Voting Rights Act, allowed gerrymandering, blocked campaign finance, ruled Citizens United, enlarged gun rights, loosened the law on corruption, and actually was corrupted itself. SCOTUS is broken.

SCOTUS ruled that corporations are people beholden to their investors, were hostile to unions, consumer rights, and regulatory agencies.

Republicans keep people down by shrinking social programs, suppressing wages, empowering corporations, and corrupting politics. They game the system to provide tax cuts for the wealthy, but shrink social programs. They attempted many times to revoke the Affordable Care Act, are scheming to weaken Social Security. It takes sociopaths to do that.

U.S. "has no functioning democracy": Jimmy Carter (7/18/2013)

Republicans have been enhancing the power of the Presidency so he can be bought or otherwise manipulated by market forces. The Supreme Court decided he is above the law. Trump appears to be for sale to the highest bidder, whether it is Putin, MBS, oil companies, or evangelicals. He viewed NATO as a protection racket, not a mutual defense treaty. Even his associates think he looks like Hitler. His first wife said he had Hitler’s most energizing speeches on his nightstand. He panders to evangelicals, his followers are like a cult.

This is the GOP

This is the GOP

Republicans suppress unwelcome media including higher education by threatening, buying it off, censoring, book bans, privatizing schools. Religion is media. Media influences politics, democracy, and sanity.

Many Republicans would install a theocracy, direct taxpayer money to religious groups, The most backward countries in the world are theocracys.

Republicans not only distrust experts, they reject them to install loyalists, a prescription for bad government.

the worst kind of one-party state "invariably replaces all first-rate talent, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty." Hannah Arendt wrote in the 1940's. The American Crisis, What Went Wrong, How We Recover P150

Republicans think short term, but deny longer term problems until they are out of control. They dismissed the team that was designed to respond to the pandemic. They deny climate threat even as storm damage has made the South uninsurable. Forest fires burn out of control. Glacier melt diminishing causing crop loss. Oceans acidifying, warming, and over fished.

Republicans do not vote in their own self interest. One of their many big lies is that they are better for the economy. Their talent is extracting wealth for a very small number of oligarchs.

The US was great when it fought fascism, now the republic is on the verge of collapse into authoritarianism, poised to install a violent dictator. Remember what happened to Germany.

If Republicans win the 2024, as Trump remarked, it may be the last election, we may lose WWII, and the republic. Trump has to win election to keep his freedom, we need him to lose to keep ours.

Bibliography