Trump may be the perceived leader for the MAGA base, but the real leaders of the far right are the billionaire autocrats who have been planning and funding the takeover of legislatures with gerrymandering, the packing of the courts with ultra-conservative judges, and now with the Project 2025 manifesto to gut and disembowel the executive branch when next they win a Presidential election.
Trump may be the perceived leader for the MAGA base, but the real leaders of the far right are the billionaire autocrats who have been planning and funding the takeover of legislatures with gerrymandering, the packing of the courts with ultra-conservative judges, and now with the Project 2025 manifesto to gut and disembowel the executive branch when next they win a Presidential election.
For instance, Charles Koch funneling funds through his bagman Leonard Leo to the full range of anti-democratic causes. From the Federalist Society to the Teneo Network to the Mercatus Institute. Instituting clerical fascism through the Republican Party.
Completely agree and add that it is a global endeavor often called New World Order. Decades ago, some of those from the global Right were smart enough to realize that they couldn’t make the changes they wanted in one country to stick without getting supporting countries to change as well. So they:
-targeted politicians and groomed like minded people to go into politics, paid Lobbyists, created PAC’s & Super PACs all to influence/affect/remove legislations, which would help bring their plans to fruition.
-bought / consolidated mainstream media companies to help them control the narrative
- recruited greedy corporation owners, Boards of Directors, & CEO choices, who wanted more money & control and less regulations
-used social media companies first for data mining and then to planted influencers and launched mis/disinformation campaigns to affect culture, social cohesion, knowledge, support, turn away focus from a situation, guide people towards something like being in a state of fear, etc.
-worked on religions & religious leaders to gain their acceptance and support of the people running the so-called Conservative Party. The symbiotic relationship between elites & religions have been in practice since antiquity, so their influence cannot be denied in this push to create New World Order.
The New World Order has no place for a true democracy and a government representing and working for all the people because it will affect the socioeconomic hierarchy which prevented anyone but generationally wealthy White males from remaining at the top by themselves, would promote fairness, equality, and protect workers from exploitation, promote education which would make it hard for employers and government to use and abuse people.
Lisa, thank you for the summary. I have copied it to keep in my LFAA folder. It's a good, concise list of what the hell happened to our democracy. Citizens United is poison to our election process and it must go.
Lisa, you have very clearly laid this out. The results of their efforts are plain to see on the world stage, with the rise of autocrats and authoritarian. Do you see this New World Order as having been a coordinated effort, worthy of a plot line in a blockbuster novel, or simply people with power, money and influence working independently towards the same goal?
I suspect both coordinated effort and opportunists capitalizing on the efforts of others. It’s kind of like an avalanche or a dam breaking. People kept chipping away at the dam or manipulating conditions at weak points on snowy mountains. Then once they had enough power over weak areas, others joined the effort.
This post put me in mind of the Gilded Age political cartoons of the octopus, sometimes in the persona of Standard Oil, sometimes Russia, sometimes England - but I'd be willing to bet the current octopus's attempts at destabilizing democracies and democracy itself go far back, to the Gilded Age and before, in other companies, other countries, other rulers, in different places and in different times. The current octopus must be dismembered, member by member.
I don’t know of any. I’m basing my information on what I’ve been reading in HCR’s Letters & her “receipts”, some of the posts HCR shared over the past few years on Twitter, and then making connections
Examples:
I started paying attention to politics when Obama started making media rounds when he planned to run for office in 2008. I watch how he was treated, I saw how people who could have done good things in his Administration chose not to be a part of it. I watched how difficult a time he had with Congress (this is before I understood what the parties seemed to stand for and how the wealthy & corporations stacked the political deck in their favor within both parties.
I joined Twitter in 2011. It was a decent place to connect with & unite people but it devolved gradually over the next 4 years and got downright ugly when Trump announced his intentions to run for office in 2016.
I noticed other countries having similar issues such as Australia and UK with Brexit. I thought then that it didn’t feel like a coincidence.
I watched the who religious angle start to heat up on a much larger scale. Shows like 19 Kids & Counting had a son who was invited to join a Conservative PAC. I saw articles about Dominionists infiltrating politics and stopped thinking it was nonsense. When the religions wingnuts attached themselves to Trump. Why would religious leaders stand with such a sinner? The hypocrisy was overwhelming.
Then the news about FB & Cambridge Analytica and targeted mis/disinformation attacks reached mainstream media. Someone coordinated attacks against multiple countries which divided people and affected politics adversely.
I started to wonder what would happen if USA fractured. A divided America would need to align with other countries, make new agreements which might adversely affect the different factions within the formerly United States. USA wouldn’t be able to stop Russia from marching across Europe or China from taking over Taiwan, Philippines, or from taking Hawaii, etc. This definitely wouldn’t benefit our allies.
We should all have been working to improve things for regular people, working together to improve the economy since we’re all so interconnected, but instead, countries got distracted by internal strife.
What tools did they use to get to this point? Money from the wealthy & corporations in multiple countries. Mainstream media, movies & tv, social media, the educational system (they didn’t just start messing with public education in America when Trump took office, they started after the Baby Boomers and their activism scared Conservatives), and religion because a liberal society with a good social safety net is not as inclined to need it or it’s steadfast loyalty to the social framework which benefits the elites.
I think they used religion because they understand human psychology very well. As William James already wrote: rationalism only ever stays superficial. It never “hits really deeply” like instincts, intuition and emotions do. Religion caters to these three, whereas rationalism and science don’t. Putin, Leo and the other neo-fascists understand this, and have played this card very well.
Right on the spot, Georgia, as made clear in Thomas Frank's book, "What's the Matter with Kansas," and Hearther Cox Richardson's "How the South Won the Civil War." the billionaires are manipulating the white Protestants.
I think it's important to distinguish between white evangelical Protestants and more mainstream Protestants, who are not immune to those politics but less likely to be manipulated by them. I regularly sign petitions by Faithful America, which is anti-Fascist.
Something that has always intrigued and puzzled me is how the slaves adopted "the white man's" religion. My guess was that their the slaves') condition was so miserable that it at least gave them hope that there would be a better place for them after death.
Well, at first the colonists wanted to "Christianize" Africans, although they were not usually welcome in white churches. It never seems to have dawned upon slaveholders that they might identify with the Hebrews held in bondage in Egypt. No accident that a famous spiritual is, "Let My People Go."
“There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
This, or any of several variants, is generally attributed to Alexandre Ledru-Rollin. As he was French, any English rendering would be approximate. Also, the quote or its attribution is likely apocryphal. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Auguste_Ledru-Rollin
Trump may be the perceived leader for the MAGA base, but the real leaders of the far right are the billionaire autocrats who have been planning and funding the takeover of legislatures with gerrymandering, the packing of the courts with ultra-conservative judges, and now with the Project 2025 manifesto to gut and disembowel the executive branch when next they win a Presidential election.
Let's put names on it.
For instance, Charles Koch funneling funds through his bagman Leonard Leo to the full range of anti-democratic causes. From the Federalist Society to the Teneo Network to the Mercatus Institute. Instituting clerical fascism through the Republican Party.
Yes, lin•, and don't leave out the Alliance Defending Freedom, who were behind the lawsuits that outlawed abortion, and canceled the abortion pill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_Defending_Freedom
The Heritage Society and its 40 smaller operating firms are funneling. We have to get Gen Z on this.
Also funds the antigovernment extremist Moms for Liberty who are assaulting libraries.
the creatures writing state laws and ordinances: ALEC.
Completely agree and add that it is a global endeavor often called New World Order. Decades ago, some of those from the global Right were smart enough to realize that they couldn’t make the changes they wanted in one country to stick without getting supporting countries to change as well. So they:
-targeted politicians and groomed like minded people to go into politics, paid Lobbyists, created PAC’s & Super PACs all to influence/affect/remove legislations, which would help bring their plans to fruition.
-bought / consolidated mainstream media companies to help them control the narrative
- recruited greedy corporation owners, Boards of Directors, & CEO choices, who wanted more money & control and less regulations
-used social media companies first for data mining and then to planted influencers and launched mis/disinformation campaigns to affect culture, social cohesion, knowledge, support, turn away focus from a situation, guide people towards something like being in a state of fear, etc.
-worked on religions & religious leaders to gain their acceptance and support of the people running the so-called Conservative Party. The symbiotic relationship between elites & religions have been in practice since antiquity, so their influence cannot be denied in this push to create New World Order.
The New World Order has no place for a true democracy and a government representing and working for all the people because it will affect the socioeconomic hierarchy which prevented anyone but generationally wealthy White males from remaining at the top by themselves, would promote fairness, equality, and protect workers from exploitation, promote education which would make it hard for employers and government to use and abuse people.
Yes. It’s not just T. It’s the billionaires backing the Repubs that speak T’s language. T. is just the front man puppet.
Lisa, thank you for the summary. I have copied it to keep in my LFAA folder. It's a good, concise list of what the hell happened to our democracy. Citizens United is poison to our election process and it must go.
Citizens United is only one aspect.
-We need to coordinate efforts to end media manipulation
-Fix our broken public education system
-Figure out how to have freedom of speech while minimizing harm
-End or adjust legislations & Supreme Court decisions which damage democracy
-Make voting mandatory, convenient, & have easy access to accurate data about those running for office
-Get rid of corruption in government - or at minimize it.
-Drastically reduce the wealth gap
-Address our past wrongs & teach truth in history classes.
Only we need to do this on a global scale. Joe Biden is doing his part in uniting other countries, but his efforts must continue long into the future.
Lisa, you have very clearly laid this out. The results of their efforts are plain to see on the world stage, with the rise of autocrats and authoritarian. Do you see this New World Order as having been a coordinated effort, worthy of a plot line in a blockbuster novel, or simply people with power, money and influence working independently towards the same goal?
I suspect both coordinated effort and opportunists capitalizing on the efforts of others. It’s kind of like an avalanche or a dam breaking. People kept chipping away at the dam or manipulating conditions at weak points on snowy mountains. Then once they had enough power over weak areas, others joined the effort.
This post put me in mind of the Gilded Age political cartoons of the octopus, sometimes in the persona of Standard Oil, sometimes Russia, sometimes England - but I'd be willing to bet the current octopus's attempts at destabilizing democracies and democracy itself go far back, to the Gilded Age and before, in other companies, other countries, other rulers, in different places and in different times. The current octopus must be dismembered, member by member.
Same old battle, different day.
Thank you, Lisa, for spelling it out so well. Can you suggest a book that can lay this out in more detail that would be understandable by the layman?
I don’t know of any. I’m basing my information on what I’ve been reading in HCR’s Letters & her “receipts”, some of the posts HCR shared over the past few years on Twitter, and then making connections
Examples:
I started paying attention to politics when Obama started making media rounds when he planned to run for office in 2008. I watch how he was treated, I saw how people who could have done good things in his Administration chose not to be a part of it. I watched how difficult a time he had with Congress (this is before I understood what the parties seemed to stand for and how the wealthy & corporations stacked the political deck in their favor within both parties.
I joined Twitter in 2011. It was a decent place to connect with & unite people but it devolved gradually over the next 4 years and got downright ugly when Trump announced his intentions to run for office in 2016.
I noticed other countries having similar issues such as Australia and UK with Brexit. I thought then that it didn’t feel like a coincidence.
I watched the who religious angle start to heat up on a much larger scale. Shows like 19 Kids & Counting had a son who was invited to join a Conservative PAC. I saw articles about Dominionists infiltrating politics and stopped thinking it was nonsense. When the religions wingnuts attached themselves to Trump. Why would religious leaders stand with such a sinner? The hypocrisy was overwhelming.
Then the news about FB & Cambridge Analytica and targeted mis/disinformation attacks reached mainstream media. Someone coordinated attacks against multiple countries which divided people and affected politics adversely.
I started to wonder what would happen if USA fractured. A divided America would need to align with other countries, make new agreements which might adversely affect the different factions within the formerly United States. USA wouldn’t be able to stop Russia from marching across Europe or China from taking over Taiwan, Philippines, or from taking Hawaii, etc. This definitely wouldn’t benefit our allies.
We should all have been working to improve things for regular people, working together to improve the economy since we’re all so interconnected, but instead, countries got distracted by internal strife.
What tools did they use to get to this point? Money from the wealthy & corporations in multiple countries. Mainstream media, movies & tv, social media, the educational system (they didn’t just start messing with public education in America when Trump took office, they started after the Baby Boomers and their activism scared Conservatives), and religion because a liberal society with a good social safety net is not as inclined to need it or it’s steadfast loyalty to the social framework which benefits the elites.
I think they used religion because they understand human psychology very well. As William James already wrote: rationalism only ever stays superficial. It never “hits really deeply” like instincts, intuition and emotions do. Religion caters to these three, whereas rationalism and science don’t. Putin, Leo and the other neo-fascists understand this, and have played this card very well.
Well said. That sounds correct.
Right on the spot, Georgia, as made clear in Thomas Frank's book, "What's the Matter with Kansas," and Hearther Cox Richardson's "How the South Won the Civil War." the billionaires are manipulating the white Protestants.
I think it's important to distinguish between white evangelical Protestants and more mainstream Protestants, who are not immune to those politics but less likely to be manipulated by them. I regularly sign petitions by Faithful America, which is anti-Fascist.
I looked them up: https://www.faithfulamerica.org/
Something that has always intrigued and puzzled me is how the slaves adopted "the white man's" religion. My guess was that their the slaves') condition was so miserable that it at least gave them hope that there would be a better place for them after death.
Well, at first the colonists wanted to "Christianize" Africans, although they were not usually welcome in white churches. It never seems to have dawned upon slaveholders that they might identify with the Hebrews held in bondage in Egypt. No accident that a famous spiritual is, "Let My People Go."
Excellent point.
Where did I see something like this. There go my followers, I need to see where they are going.
“There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
This, or any of several variants, is generally attributed to Alexandre Ledru-Rollin. As he was French, any English rendering would be approximate. Also, the quote or its attribution is likely apocryphal. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Auguste_Ledru-Rollin
Well, it fits the magat puppets; but then there is the behind the scenes money (puppeteers)
As with many apocryphal quotations, it does seem like the kind of thing someone somewhere ought to have said!