If you haven’t seen the new ad, it’s here:
Spoiler: It’s all about race.
It’s also about economics and power, but race underlies it all.
Some background: Oligarchy isn’t new in the US. In fact, this is our third slide into oligarchy.
Our first oligarchy was slavery: A few white men had disproportionate wealth and power in the South.
The electoral college and other advantages gave the South disproportionate power over the nation.
The slave-owning oligarchy was anti-federal government and anti-industry. The wealthy and powerful slaveowners knew if the North got too strong, it would outlaw slavery, thereby robbing them of their place atop the hierarchy. So they nixed the federal programs and infrastructure (roads, canals, etc.) that would enable industry to flourish.
This also kept the poor poor, which further strengthened the oligarchy.
The South embraced a patriarchy (a kind of hierarchy) with white men at the top and black women at the bottom. (Example: Even after the Civil war, rape of a black woman wasn’t recognized as a crime.)
During the Civil War, the interests of industry were aligned with the abolitionists. So the party of Lincoln was both pro-civil rights and pro-industry.
When the South lost, the North quickly moved to strengthen industry and infrastructure. There were almost no federal regulations limiting industrialists, so many cheated. They manipulated markets and fixed prices. There were no labor protections, no social security, no 40 hour work week.
This brings us to the second oligarchy, the age of robber barons. The rich were rich. The poor had no hope of advancement.
The New Deal reversed this and gave us a strong middle class.
From about 1900 until 1955, the two parties were in relative harmony. They compromised. They worked together.
This was because in the early 20th century, the Republican Party abandoned civil rights as an agenda. For the first half of the 20th century, neither party embraced civil rights or black rights. So the parties were in relative harmony because they weren’t that different: both were run almost exclusively by white men.
So the period of relative harmony (early 20th century) happened on the backs of African Americans—just like old South.
We’re still riding the backlash from the women’s rights and civil rights movements. In the 1960s and 1970s the Democrats embraced Civil Rights, and the white Southerners migrated to the GOP.
The federal government enforced civil rights.
These groups aligned to dismantle the federal government:
- Industries that wanted to get rid of regulations and taxes
- White supremacists
- and Evangelicals who wanted the church to govern, not the state.
We’re now tipping toward a third oligarchy which (if we get there) will be best described as a Post-Communist Mafia State.
The term from Hungarian scholar Bálint Magyar.
I’ve written about Magyar’ mafia states elsewhere. For example, see this NBC News Op Ed I wrote a few months ago.
A mafia state is when a few wealthy people control the government and essentially own and control the nation’s industries.
This brings us to Putin, a creator of the modern mafia state.
White supremacists love Putin. For what I mean, see this post.
Each oligarchy we’ve been through has been outwardly different, but each was fueled by racism.
According to political psychologists some people will never live comfortably in a liberal democracy. They’ll hate it. They’ll fight it.
Democracy is chaotic and messy. Autocracy is streamlined and efficient (none of those checks and balances to slow things down).
People who tend toward fascism believe that nature forms a hierarchy. They don’t believe true equality is possible.
This brings us to Biden’s ad. From the ad:
“The fight we have fought before”
“I wonder if were in 1920”
“Hate never goes away. It just hides”
Also from Biden’s ad, the positive: “Sometimes those who fan the flames of hate end up drawing forth the next wave of progress.”
From me: The fight never ends. We push toward liberal democracy. They push toward autocracy. It only ends when we give up.
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This post draws on many sources, including Heather Richardson’s work on oligarchies, and political psychologists like Richard Hofstadter, Theodor W. Adorno, and Karen Stenner.
Most recently I researched and wrote a biography on Thurgood Marshall (to be published in April) so I’ve gone over the history.
