Chicago (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – At the dawn of Nazi Germany a few weeks after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor, Reichstag president Hermann Göring invited two dozen of Germany’s wealthiest and most influential bankers and industrialists to his home to solicit funds for the upcoming election, according to historian David de Jong in Nazi Billionaires. .
Among them were owners of Germany’s largest corporations, some of whose names are familiar to us even today – Siemens, Krupp, Allianz, and defunct chemical manufacturer and Zyklon B poison gas supplier IG Farben, an antecedent of pharma giant Bayer.
Göring implored the gathering for the money needed to guarantee a favorable climate for business and “get rid of that wishy-washy regime once and for all.” The twenty-four billionaires nodded solemnly. “And if the Nazi Party won the majority,” added Göring, with a laugh, “These would be the last elections for ten years — even for a hundred years.”
“The twenty-four lizards rose to their hind legs and stood stiffly,” as Hitler joined the meeting, Author Eric Vuillard depicted the scene in his history, The Order of the Day. Like Göring, Hitler warned of the communist menace and promised to eliminate trade unions. “We must first gain complete power to crush the other side completely.” He impressed upon them that democracy and private property could not co-exist. Hitler argued that, in supporting his rise as Führer, the moguls would in effect be supporting themselves, their firms, and their fortunes.
“And now, gentlemen, to the cash register!” Right on the spot, the lizards opened their checkbooks and forked over nearly three million Reichsmarks, roughly equivalent to $16 million U.S. dollars today. Much like the black box of hidden donations allowed by Citizens United, the Nazis made sure to cloak the real names of their donors, who Vuillard calls “the clergy of major industry . . . the high priests of Ptah. And there they stand, affectless, like twenty-four calculating machines at the gates of hell.”
Almost a hundred years later, the American donor class is just as affectless, just as calculating, and just as eager to ensure that profits never stop rising. The threat of fascism is still second to the bottom line, while fear-mongering about the “radical left” is as common today as the warnings about communism coming out of Hitler’s mouth.
Ignoring Trump’s promise to turn America into a “unified Reich,” Republican donors have claimed, “the threat to capitalism from the Democrats is more concerning than the threat to democracy from Trump” — an absurd, spurious claim. Indeed, three-and-a-half years into Biden’s term, the U.S. economy is easily the strongest in the world, and international investors are throwing money at American businesses.
In the past month, some of the most insidious billionaires have coalesced like flies behind Trump, threatening to blunt President Biden’s fundraising edge. Most Blue Chip Wall Street CEOs have distanced themselves from the insurrectionist criminal who tried to steal the 2020 election and savaged the judicial system. Although no one among the Fortune 100 CEOs has donated to Trump this time, however, some heads of lesser corporations and many among the unaffiliated, wild-card super-rich, are less responsible. These modern-day lizards are swallowing their gag-inducing qualms about Trump’s campaign of lies, retribution, mindless gibberish, and willingness to bulldoze laws and democracy. They’re focusing instead on issues closer to their ideological and vampiric interests: how he might ease regulations, subvert unions, and cut their taxes.
Trump is auctioning off his potential presidency in a desperate drive to win the election and avoid jail. In a shakedown meeting with oil executives worthy of Hitler and Göring, Trump promised that if elected he would immediately reverse dozens of environmental rules, kill the transition to green energy, and keep us addicted to fossil fuels. In pressing the energy CEOs for donations, he said, “You all are wealthy enough that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House” and that “giving $1 billion would be a ‘deal’ . . . because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid.”
Given this influence peddling, it’s hardly surprising that Trump has outraised Biden in the energy sector. Despite blatant extortion, the media barely raises an eyebrow when Trump incoherently rants about whether sinking electric boats can electrocute sharks — his exceedingly stupid rationale for a policy plan to ban electric vehicles. The proposal is a shameless, open payback for his one billion dollar campaign donation ask from fossil fuel giants.
MSNBC Video: “Joy: ‘Every other billionaire is kissing Trump’s… ring'”
Trump no longer pretends to be the incorruptible swamp drainer with no need of corporate money. Demonstrating that nothing matters to his mindless MAGA drones, he openly grovels like a dog, pleading for money, and saying anything to ingratiate himself with his corporate masters as he tests the boundaries of campaign finance laws.
The convicted felon’s fire sale on his future presidency will involve totally capitulating to Israeli billionaire and radical Zionist Miriam Adelson, who is worth $30 billion. Trump, who bribed Adelson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, met with her multiple times in recent months. After hesitating and letting him squirm and beg, Adelson committed more than $100 million to Trump’s campaign.
Adelson demands no criticism of Israel or Netanyahu, who she has backed since the early 1990s.
Trump psychotically detests Netanyahu — not for slaughtering more than 30,000 Palestinians, but for recognizing Biden’s 2020 victory. But he has stopped sniping at the Israeli authoritarian.
Beyond this, Adelson also expects Trump to unconditionally support Israel’s war, support Israeli annexation of the West Bank, and recognize its sovereignty there. Adelson has never embraced what she called the “useless mold of the so-called peace process.” Trump‘s re-election will make a horrible situation unfathomably worse.
Adelson is not the only rich, pro-Israeli Trump donor. He met with a group, which he said included “98 percent of my Jewish friends.” In response to a question about anti-genocide protestors, Trump said, “Any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.” Trump called the demonstrators part of a “radical revolution” that he vowed to defeat. “If you get me elected, and you should really be doing this . . . we’re going to set that pro-Palestinian movement back 25 or 30 years.”
If Trump gets re-elected, it will set the world back 25 or 30 years, yet billionaires continue to rally behind him. David Sacks — a grotesquely pro-Trump Silicon Valley investor, and his tech associate Elon Musk reportedly held a secret dinner party of billionaires and millionaires in Hollywood last month. Its purpose: to defeat Joe Biden and re-install Trump in the White House. The guest list included Peter Thiel — tech billionaire and ultra-conservative, Rupert Murdoch — owner of the Foxbot propaganda network, and Steven Mnuchin — Trump’s ultra-rich, corrupt treasury secretary. These oligarchs aren’t just hostile to progressivism. They’re hostile to American democracy itself.
Thiel once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He donated $15 million to the successful Republican senatorial campaign of J.D. Vance, who alleged that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy meant “more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” A dangerously converted former Trump hater, Vance is high on the list of Trump vice-presidential possibilities.
Musk posts frequently in support of Trump while amplifying the volume of his anti-Biden harangues on Twitter/X, the platform he owns. According to a New York Times analysis, Musk has posted Biden criticism at least seven times a month this year. Vilifying the president on issues ranging from his age to his policies on health and immigration, he called Biden “a tragic front for a far left political machine.”
This is no small matter. Musk has 187 million followers on X, and because he owns the platform he’s able to manipulate the algorithm to maximize the number of people who see his posts. Serving his business interests and reactionary politics, Musk promotes other autocrats around the world. In addition to Trump, Musk has used X to bolster India’s Narendra Modi, Argentina’s Javier Milei, and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.
When asked if he was becoming more political, Musk admitted on Lex Fridman’s podcast, “If you consider fighting the woke mind virus, which I consider to be a civilizational threat, to be political, then yes. The woke mind virus is communism rebranded.” Musk reverts back to the 1930s for this Hitlerian threat.
Thiel regresses even further, writing: “The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”
If “capitalist democracy” is a contradiction, it’s not because of public assistance or because women got the right to vote. It’s because billionaire capitalists like Musk and Thiel are intent on killing democracy by supporting mob boss Trump and the neo-fascists surrounding him.
As for the threat of communism, many investors and executives in the tech sector are currently doing very well. According to a Silicon Valley research group, the market capitalization of Valley companies reached $14.3 trillion last year, and “venture capital funding reached an astounding $30 billion.” Big banks, hedge funds, and private-equity funds have all made bumper profits. The Financial Times recently reported that “founders and top executives of the largest private equity groups in the U.S. have seen the value of their shares rise by more than $40 billion since the beginning of 2023.”
How grateful is the capitalist class to Biden for presiding over this swelling tide of riches? Not very. Stephen Schwarzman, billionaire CEO of the private-equity Blackstone Group, had previously denounced the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as “appalling and an affront to the democratic values we hold dear as Americans.” Yet last month, the sycophantic Schwarzman issued a statement: “I am planning to vote for change and support Donald Trump for president” because “our economic, immigration, and foreign policies are taking the country in the wrong direction.”
The Business Roundtable — a powerful Washington lobbying group whose CEO members include Apple’s Tim Cook, General Motors’ Mary Barra and JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon — led a chorus of condemnation after the January 6 insurrection. “The chaos unfolding in the nation’s capital is the result of unlawful efforts to overturn the legitimate results of a democratic election. The country deserves better,” the Business Roundtable said in a statement.
Recently, the same CEOs met privately with Trump. Despite being shocked by his incoherence and his nonsensical meandering, CEOs are flocking back to Trump,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Though the WSJ is an unreliable narrator, this opinion rings true because Biden-supporting CEOs are not publicly voicing their support for him nor are they criticizing Trump’s litany of failures as president and as a human being. These money men are not even mocking Trump’s current policy proposal of a 10 percent tariff on imports — a “terrible” plan that economic journalist Matt Yglesias called “cartoonishly evil” because it would “raise taxes on the poor and the middle class in order to finance yet another tax cut for rich people.”
Speaking in January from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jamie Dimon – one of the most influential CEOs in the world – heaped praise on the former president who he earlier castigated for trying to overthrow American democracy. “Take a step back, be honest,” Dimon said. “Trump grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked.”
No, not for most people. The tax cuts benefited wealthy families and corporations.
Trump has repeatedly promised to extend many of the giveaways that the 2017 GOP tax bill bestowed on corporations and high earners. When Republicans passed the tax cuts six years ago, they set much of it to expire in 2025 — a budget gimmick to mask the cost in lost revenue.
Biden has pledged to let the 2017 tax handouts lapse for the ultra-rich. His 2025 budget proposes raising the corporate tax rate and requiring billionaires to pay at least twenty-five per cent of their income in federal taxes. Further, the Biden Administration’s long-overdue effort to enforce antitrust laws more aggressively has enraged some Republican corporate leaders and financiers.
So it’s no surprise that some of the opportunistic vultures of corporate America are swarming around Trump even though the loser president still has not accepted the results of the 2020 election, nor has he committed to accepting the 2024 outcome. He even vows to pardon insurrectionist criminals sentenced to jail.
Not satisfied with their vast, obscene wealth, the MAGA idle rich overlook the felon’s criminality, his profound ignorance, his pathological indifference to reality, and his anti-American tirades so they might reap yet more benefits — from lucrative tax breaks to sweeping rollbacks of Biden’s efforts to strengthen worker power. American oligarchs want a useful idiot running the U.S. government, even if he is a fascist mob boss surrounded by a criminal cartel.
Last year, the rightwing Heritage Foundation published “Project 2025,” a 900 page policy-by-policy, agency-by-agency roadmap to “dismantle the administrative state,” as the organization’s president described it. Many of the recommendations align with positions that corporate interests have already taken. If Trump wins through mass psychosis, the implementation of Project 2025 is a blueprint for an authoritarian take-over, giving Trump and his stooges total control over the entire federal apparatus.
Trump has been able to fill his campaign coffers by undertaking one of the most nakedly corrupt fundraising tours in the history of presidential campaigns, promising his well-heeled benefactors a generous return on their investment. In addition to financing his circus show campaign, he requires a enormous amount of money to pay the legal fees that have helped him delay three other court cases against him — with the help of an incompetent Florida judge and the MAGA-majority Supreme Court‘s super-slow motion ruling on his absurd claim of total immunity from prosecution.
The cynical billionaires who support Trump — whether feverishly with piles of ill-gotten wealth or passively by not using their wealth and influence to try to stop the fascist train — are the enemy within. These MAGA bankrollers believe that great individual wealth is a sign of the holder’s innate superiority, not the lucky fallout of nepotism, whiteness, a privileged childhood, and access to education. They are the 21st Century American version of the German industrialists, bankers, and rich families who bankrolled Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s, similarly fanatical about expanding their already-vast wealth and willing to ignore the consequences of the creeping fascism that they are enabling.
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