Billionaire “philanthropy” is and always has been about manufacturing consent for an oligarchy. All those “awards” have come at a devastating price for society.

Historically, #fascism happens like an avalanche. You start to hear a few disperse cracks, and then more of them closer and closer together as the tension reaches a breaking point. Then all hell breaks loose. If you wait for the avalanche to call it fascism, you’re too late.

New post! open.substack.com/pub/etienner...

A consolidated #oligarchy is pretty much a mafia. Mafias are built as a pyramid scheme of extortion and extraction. Not only is there no trickle-down of the economy, it’s trickle-up. The higher in the pyramid you are the more you get, and how high depends on loyalty rather than competence.

Bernie Sanders’ continued relevance is a sign of the potency of the progressive platform. They say there’s nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come. Turning out 30k+ people on a non-election year to a rally against the oligarchy is a clear manifestation of that rising power.

If the government does not regulate corporations to protect public interests, corporations will regulate the government to protect private interests.

Musk wants people to think empathy is a weakness because it is the basis of social solidarity and cooperation. Like every authoritarian, he is terrified of the unified masses. He wants you to think that others like you are your adversaries instead of your allies.

Democratic Party “leaders” find themselves unable to meet this critical moment because that would require them to look inward and address their own complicity in the institutional corruption that propels the far right. Instead, their central argument since 2016 has been “at least we’re not Trump”.

What Trump/Musk are doing has a name: economic shock therapy. It was used during the Cold War to project corporate elite power and consolidate “US-friendly” mafia-like structures abroad. Features: austerity, manufactured crisis, mass privatization, authoritarian crackdowns, trickle-up economics, etc

Lesson no. 248 from election: Social progressivism must be accompanied by economic progressivism to be sustained. Otherwise, it can and will be used as a wedge between the middle/working class by conservative elites.