ICYMI: Shameful Opportunists - Why Big Business Backs Fascists
Originally published December 7, 2022, Jason Stanley explains why big business supports authoritarians and why that’s bad business
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“When fascism wins it does so by co-opting the business elite.”—Jason Stanley on RadPod
Author’s note: As we watch people fall into line and obey in advance under the US regime, I am republishing this brief explainer from December 7, 2022.
As Jason Stanley told RadPod, Big Business may back fascism, but fascism doesn’t back Big Business. So for new members and as a refresher for veteran members, here is Jason Stanley with an explainer on Bad Business.—hsc
Shameful Opportunists - Why Big Business Backs Fascists
Originally published in Bette Dangerous December 7, 2022
Imagine my surprise all those years ago when I was investigating Trump funder Robert Mercer’s myriad ties to Russia, and I learned his hedge fund profited from Trump’s immigration policies. Renaissance Technologies purchased millions of dollars worth of shares in immigrant detention centers, and watched their stock prices soar.
I recall how I wrongly assumed when Trump was installed in 2016 with the help of the Russian military that business leaders who had criticized him on the campaign trail would exert effort ousting him.
I was such a sweet, naive kid back then.
They all lined up to kiss the ring, while we gals marched in the streets.
When I interviewed Jason Stanley, the author of How Fascism Works, with the RadPod team a few weeks ago, Stanley laid it out in brass tacks:
“When fascism wins it does so by co-opting the business elite,” he said. “Fascism allies with the business elite against the cultural and intellectual elite.
“You appeal to the billionaire class by saying, ‘We’re gonna cut your taxes. We’re gonna make sure regulations don’t apply to you. We’re gonna take care of the labor movement so you don’t need to worry about that.’ That’s why big business got behind the Nazis.”
Hitler claimed trade unions “hinder efficiency in business and in the life of the whole nation.” But the true point is ensuring stark economic inequality.
Stanley said it’s important to explain to the business elite that fascism isn’t good for them.
“It’s not a good business environment, because it’s just about the loyalists. Are you sure you’re not going to have a business that the leader and his party are going to covet? In a country like Hungary, if Orban’s friends want your property, the courts will start going after you. It’s obviously much worse in Russia.”
The author of Catch-22, Joseph Heller, wrote: “It was almost no trick at all..to turn vice into virtue, slander into truth..arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, sadism into justice..It merely required no character.”
I often think of those words as I investigate the times in which we live. In Catch-22, Heller illustrates the greed of war, and I worried how long it would take for Trump to drop bombs on Americans and call it patriotism. I got my answer on January 6, 2021.
In the film version of Catch-22, a “shameful opportunist” explains his ideology: “I was a Fascist when Mussolini was on top. Now that he has been deposed, I am anti-Fascist. When the Germans were here, I was fanatically pro-German. Now I'm pro-America! You'll find no more loyal partisan..than myself.”
I learned from Democracy In Chains author Nancy MacLean that far-right extremists are trying to “save” capitalism from democracy.
It needs to be the other way around. We need democracy to save us from far-right extremists, and we need business leaders to be called out for supporting a party of insurrectionists.
They’re not going to like fascism either.—Heidi Siegmund Cuda, December 7, 2022, for Bette Dangerous
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Thank you for posting these clear and plain language dynamics that often confuse the general public.