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oligarchs
'Extremely Dangerous Time': Sanders Warns of Oligarchs' War on Working Class
"Does anyone really think that the oligarchs give a damn about ordinary Americans?" the senator asked. "Trust me, they don't."
Feb 11, 2025
As U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday continued their effort to gut the federal government, Sen. Bernie Sanders warned that "the oligarchs, with their unlimited amounts of money, are waging a war on the working class of our country, and it is a war that they are intent on winning."
A week after delivering a speech that sounded the alarm about "America's dangerous movement toward oligarchy, authoritarianism, and kleptocracy," Sanders (I-Vt.) took the Senate floor again to target the world's three richest people—Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—and the politicians who serve them.
"We are living in an extremely dangerous time," the seantor said Tuesday. "Future generations will look back at this moment—what we do right now—and remember whether we had the courage to defend our democracy against the growing threats of oligarchy and authoritarianism."
As chair of Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk's targets have included the U.S. Agency for International Development, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Education, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a critical U.S. Treasury Department payment system. Reporting—and remarks from the billionaire—suggest that the agencies responsible for Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are next.
"As we speak, right now, Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet, is attempting to dismantle major agencies of the federal government which are designed to protect the needs of working families and the disadvantaged," said Sanders. "These agencies were created by the U.S. Congress and it is Congress' responsibility to maintain them, to reform them, or to end them. It is not Mr. Musk’s responsibility. What Mr. Musk is doing is patently illegal and unconstitutional—and must be ended."
Sanders also detailed Trump and his allies' attacks on the federal judiciary, which has delivered a series of blows to the Republican president's agenda since he took office last month.
"Mr. Trump and his friends are not just trying to undermine two of the three pillars of our constitutional government—Congress and the courts—they are also going after the media, in a way that we have never seen in the modern history of this country," the senator said. While recognizing that the media "makes mistakes every day," he added that "I do hope that every member of Congress understands that you cannot have a functioning democracy, you cannot have a free flow of information, you cannot have the pursuit of truth, without an independent press."
The senator also how the top three billionaires impact what information reaches people by buying news outlets and social media platforms—as Musk did with Twitter, which he rebranded X, and Bezos did with The Washington Post and Twitch. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has made his money through Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
"They will use the enormous media operations they own to deflect attention away from the impact of their policies while they 'entertain us to death,'" Sanders warns. "They and their fellow oligarchs will continue within our corrupt campaign finance system to spend huge amounts of money to buy politicians in both major political parties."
"Does anyone really think that the oligarchs give a damn about ordinary Americans?" he asked. "Trust me, they don't."
Sanders warned that "if we do not stop them, they will soon be going after the healthcare, nutrition, housing, and educational programs that protect the most vulnerable people in our country—all so that they can raise they money they need to provide huge tax breaks for themselves and for others billionaires. As modern-day kings who believe they have the absolute right to rule, they will sacrifice, without hesitation, the well-being of working people in order to protect their power and their privileges."
However, he also stressed that "the worst fear of the ruling class of our country is that the American people—whether they are Black or white or Latino, whether they are urban or rural, whether they are young or old, gay or straight, whatever—the fear of the ruling class is that the American people come together to demand a government that represents all of us, not just the people on top."
"The oligarch's nightmare is that we will not allow ourselves to be divided up by race, religion, sexual orientation, or country of origin and will come together and have the courage to take them on," he declared. "If we stand together, we're gonna win this fight, and not only will we save American democracy, we're gonna create the kind of nation that I think most of us know we should become."
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Top Treasury Official Out as Musk Cronies Demand Access to Payment System That Funnels Trillions in US Funds
"Elon Musk, who NO ONE VOTED FOR, wants to mess with our earned benefits," said one advocacy group. "Hell no."
Jan 31, 2025
President Donald Trump has claimed the spending cuts he proposes won't impact Medicare and Social Security, but new reporting on the sudden departure of the U.S. Treasury Department's highest-ranking career official after a dispute over the payment systems that distribute those benefits sparked concern that Trump's billionaire backer, Elon Musk, could have plans for the popular programs relied on by millions of Americans.
The Washington Post reported Friday that David Lebryk, who has served in numerous high-level roles at the Treasury Department since 1989 and was temporarily named acting treasury secretary by Trump before the confirmation this week of his nominee, Scott Bessent, would soon leave the department.
According to the newspaper, Lebryk has clashed with allies of Musk, whom Trump has named to lead his new Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), over access to payment systems that the agency uses to distribute more than $6 trillion annually to households and businesses.
Social Security and Medicare benefits, paychecks for federal employees, and payments to government contractors and grant recipients all flow through the payment systems run by the Bureau of Fiscal Service, among thousands of other functions.
Since Trump won the election in November, officials Musk has named as DOGE staffers have been asking for access to the payment systems, and the demands have been reiterated since the president took office last week, the Post reported.
Mark Mazur, who served in the department under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said the push for access to the systems from an advisory committee aligned with a partisan agenda suggests "bad intentions" from Musk and his allies.
"This is a mechanical job—they pay Social Security benefits, they pay vendors, whatever," said Mazur. "It's not one where there's a role for nonmechanical things, at least from the career standpoint. Your whole job is to pay the bills as they're due. It's never been used in a way to execute a partisan agenda."
Since Trump's inauguration, the new administration has signaled its desire to disrupt government funding of long-established programs, most notably when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo directing federal agencies to "pause all activities related to obligations or disbursement of all federal financial assistance."
That memo, which was later rescinded, raised alarm about a freeze on the funding of programs like Head Start, Meals on Wheels, and Medicaid.
The executive order that created DOGE last week ordered agencies to ensure the advisory body has "full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems." DOGE's push for access to the Bureau of Fiscal Services payment systems suggests that it also wants control of those mechanisms.
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative, said the dispute that led to Lebryk's imminent departure showed that "the Trump administration's claims that they won't touch Social Security and Medicare are obviously lies."
"Musk and his DOGE cronies are already demanding unprecedented access to the payment system that distributes these funds and are ousting any civil servant who gets in their way," said Owens. "It's barely been two weeks and Musk has already caused a level of chaos and inefficiency we've never before seen in government."
The idea that "good government technocrats could work with Musk and DOGE to improve technology and services" has been proven to be "all grift," added Owens in a post on Musk's social media platform, X.
While advocates and lawmakers have said DOGE could work to reduce military spending, which has risen by 50% since the beginning of the 21st century and hit $820 billion in 2023 despite the Pentagon failing seven consecutive audits, the Trump administration has appeared laser-focused in its first weeks on addressing spending that impacts millions of low-income and working Americans.
"Elon Musk, who NO ONE VOTED FOR, wants to mess with our earned benefits," said Social Security Works, an advocacy group that works to protect the benefit for retired Americans. "Hell no."
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Oligarchs and Strongmen: the Difference and Why It Matters
Trump is both a master oligarch and a strongman; his ruthlessness and that of other oligarchs in his orbit reflect in part a self-confidence founded on their wealth.
Jan 26, 2025
Since we published The Oligarchs’ Grip: Fusing Wealth and Power in 2023, the question we get asked most often is: What’s the difference between an oligarch and a strongman? Instead of strongmen, some interlocutors use adjacent words like autocrat, authoritarian, dictator, or tyrant. That question is of great relevance now that Donald Trump has become the 47th U.S. president.
In part, the question reflects confusion about what an oligarch is. To paraphrase Aristotle, oligarchs are the wealthy few who govern us. Or, to put it slightly more formally, oligarchs secure and reproduce wealth and power, then use one to acquire the other. The key word in these definitions is wealth.
Oligarchs acquire their wealth in three ways. They can be self-made through entrepreneurial ventures, such as Elon Musk. They can inherit their wealth, such as Tung Chee-hwa did. Or they can use their connections to generate wealth. Vladimir Putin is a good example. Trump’s wealth came from all three sources.
All of these oligarchs have options, no matter how things work out for them. Their wealth is the ultimate insurance policy.
Oligarchs also possess three types of power. The power generated from holding a decision-making role, such as head of state or government. The power to set agendas through media ownership or political campaign contributions. Or the power to shape the way we think and act, as Google has done so effectively. Trump’s power comes from all three types.
Strongmen focus on the consolidation and centralization of decision-making power. They have little or no accountability. They control key institutions such as the legislature, judiciary, military, and the media. They suppress dissent. They often rely on a personality cult. They also seek to remain in power for long periods. Note the key word here: power.
Simply put, oligarchs have two mechanisms of control: wealth and power. Strongmen have only one: power. And this matters a lot in the era of growing uncertainty in which we live. Think of it this way. Oligarchs have diversified their resources across two control mechanisms, much as we diversify our investment portfolios. If one resource becomes diminished, oligarchs can fall back on the other.
Thaksin Shinawatra is a good example of why this matters. Deposed as Thailand’s prime minister in a 2005 military coup, Thaksin had sufficient wealth to flee the country and comfortably re-establish himself in exile in Dubai. From there, he continued to help set Thailand’s political agenda, and, after returning this year, caused a change in government favorable to his political party.
Oligarchs and strongmen are different categories of economic and political actors. But the lines between these categories are not always sharp. One way to understand this better is by dividing oligarchs and strongmen into three different categories. We identified 40 oligarchs and strongmen over the period from the 1930s to the present and categorized them this way:
Oligarchs Who Are Strongmen | Oligarchs Who Are Not Strongmen | Strongmen Who Are Not Oligarchs |
Idi Amin | Mohammed bin Laden | Abiy Ahmed |
Mohamed Siad Barre | Isabel Dos Santos | |
Silvio Berlusconi | Mikhail Fridman | Rodrigo Duterte |
Nayib Bukele | Al Gore | Boris Johnson |
Alejandro Char | Rafic Hariri | Jaroslaw Kaczynski |
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | Charles Koch | Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) |
Francisco Franco Bahamonde | Larry Page | Narendra Modi |
Muammar Gaddafi | Sebastian Piñera | Benito Mussolini |
Adolf Hitler | Cyril Ramaphosa | Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu |
Saddam Hussein | Thaksin Shinawatra | Augusto Pinochet Ugarte |
Mobutu Sese Seko | Tung Chee-hwa | |
Elon Musk | Yulia Tymoshenko | |
Victor Orbán | Asif Ali Zardari | |
Vladimir Putin | ||
Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) | ||
Donald Trump | ||
Xi Jinping |
As depicted in the first column, in 42% of these cases, oligarchs are also strongmen, consolidating power and growing more wealthy in sequence or sometimes at the same time. Silvio Berlusconi was an oligarch before becoming Italy’s prime minister three times, using his media ownership to reshape public opinion. Once in office, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat notes, he projected a nationalist cult of virility and mainstreamed the far-right. All while maintaining and growing his wealth. He admired other oligarchs who were strongmen, such as Vladimir Putin.
But, as shown in column two, 32% of the cases involve oligarchs who are NOT strongmen. In some instances, they’re not strongmen, because they don't hold the decision-making power needed to become strongmen. For example, Larry Page and Charles Koch, who have substantial ideological and agenda-setting power, respectively, haven’t served in political office and thus lack the decision-making power needed to become strongmen. Other oligarchs in this category have held decision-making positions, but were constrained from becoming strongmen by their country’s constitutional orders. Rafic Hariri served two terms in office as Lebanon’s prime minister, and his power was limited by its confessional system of political power distribution.
As shown in the third column, 28% of the cases we examined are strongmen who are not oligarchs. They lack the wealth to become one. In some instances, they may not care. For example, AMLO is likely to continue as an important figure in Mexican politics after completing his term in office, regardless of whether he has wealth or not. But, for others, wealth could have made a difference. Mussolini must have dreamed of having the wealth to buy himself out of his ignominious death. Bolsonaro must have wished for the wealth that would make his post-presidency more comforable. Strongmen have incentives to become oligarchs.
Why does the distinction between oligarchs and strongmen matter? We can see why in the new Trump regime that is emerging in the United States. Trump is both a master oligarch and a strongman. His ruthlessness and that of other oligarchs in his orbit reflect in part a self-confidence founded on their wealth. Elon Musk, currently the world’s wealthiest person, with a net worth we estimate at $440 billion by Forbes, is one of the most powerful people in Trumpworld now. Timothy Mellon, whose family is worth $14.1 billion, is one of the top contributors to Trump’s campaign. Peter Thiel, worth $15.5 billion, is JD Vance’s benefactor. And of course Trump, worth $6.3B. This is just a partial list.
All of these oligarchs have options, no matter how things work out for them. Their wealth is the ultimate insurance policy. In an uncertain world, two control mechanisms—wealth and power—are always better than one.
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