In his farewell address, Joe Biden warned that the shadow of oligarchy was falling over the nation: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead”.
Biden’s whole presidency has been defined by the search for monsters at home who allegedly threaten “our entire democracy” or the “soul of the nation.” Two years ago, it was the “MAGA Republicans” who constituted an existential threat to American democracy. Now, it’s apparently oligarchy. Biden’s objection, though, may less be about the concentration of wealth and more about the political allegiance of the ultra-wealthy. After all, he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to progressive billionaire George Soros earlier this month.
The outgoing President’s remarks come at a time of tech realignment. Biden entered office when progressive elites hoped to use Silicon Valley to construct a digital bulwark against populism. Social media companies censored damaging stories about Hunter Biden, for instance, and the Biden administration pushed tech companies to censor certain coronavirus-related posts, as Mark Zuckerberg recently recounted on Joe Rogan’s podcast. But this alliance has now broken down. Some tech titans have soured on the reign of wokeness and have grown frustrated with the policy status quo under Biden. As a result, Donald Trump has found new friends in the digital elite.
Democrats seem as though they would love to tilt against the GOP as the party of plutocrats. But these attacks are in tension with the reality that the Democratic Party is increasingly reliant upon affluent voters, and has billionaire allies of its own (as Scott Bessent pointed out to Bernie Sanders today). While Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan angered much of the business elite with her aggressive approach to antitrust policy, some in Kamala Harris’s inner circle were pushing her to find someone else to head the FTC if she won the presidency. Evidently, there remains a divide between populists like Bernie Sanders and Harris’s boardroom progressivism.
Republicans show their own tensions on tech. Along with other populists, J.D. Vance has praised Lina Khan’s record on antitrust enforcement. In addition, Trump’s new nominee to head the FTC, Andrew Ferguson, has pledged to “repeal burdensome regulations” but also to focus on “antitrust enforcement against Big Tech monopolies.” Mark Meador, another Trump appointee to the FTC, has also called for increased policing of corporate concentration. Trump’s new FTC might be more focused in its antimonopoly efforts than was Khan, but it might not ignore them completely.
This alliance with tech has opportunities and risks for the new Trump administration. Economic vitality and technological innovation — on space exploration, for instance — clearly fit into an American greatness agenda. The unwinding of speech controls recently proposed by Zuckerberg also addresses populist frustrations with the progressive attempt to transform American society through control of the technological commanding heights.
While these tech figures have become important stakeholders in his second presidency, Trump also faces political dangers if he becomes too estranged from his populist roots. A DOGE proposal that calls for a gutting of federal entitlements and subsidies for working-class families could threaten Republican standing with their blue-collar base. The multiple failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017 sent Trump’s approval rating tumbling when he was last president; fears that these reforms would not cover preexisting conditions and make health-care less affordable drove voters away. Populist Republicans can out-box Democrats on social issues, but only when the GOP has taken austerity economics off the table.
Both Republicans and Democrats have their supporters among the wealthy. Yet the populist concern with bigness and concentrated power (a concern seen on both the Left and the Right) taps into a deeper anxiety about a loss of agency. Restoring that sense of agency will be one of Trump’s most important tasks in the days ahead.
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Subscribe“The unwinding of speech controls recently proposed hy Zuckerberg…”, but only to be believed when it actually happens, which is probably never.
Biden was warning about the bad billionaires who got their money by tech, and not the good billionaires who got their money by currency trading.
Right because the first thing I think of when hearing “working class” is a dependence on subsidies and entitlements.
The Charles Beard model of Progressive Historiography had a short shelf life. The US doesn’t group itself into Bourgeois and Proletarian categories. Lower middle class and wealthy people that value work have more in common with each other than anybody in the Anti-Work Solidarity Alliance.
Money is the root of all evil and if anyone knows that it is Joe Biden.
FUN FACT: Biden’s Oligarch warning is ONLY applicable to Democrats and progressives.
Their st00ges in the US intelligence agencies have profiled the American people for well over 10 years – with significant help and funding from progressive Big Tech and Finance Oligarchs – and they have used authoritarian terr0rism to de-bank, smear and destroy the innocent lives and livelihoods of those who hold different opinions than them.
Belated justice will be served, and there will be he|| to pay when all comes to light from the Trump Administration’s investigations. I don’t envy the once-powerful Democrat perpetrators’ bleak futures as they fearfully await news releases to the nation detailing their corruption and the abuses they foisted upon innocent Americans.
Truth matters more than their excuses and tears. And light is the best disinfectant.
Perhaps the day will come when Republicans and conservative-leaning Oligarchs will be guilty of the same abuses of the American people – and I will say the same to them if that day comes – but we have to stretch our memory back 70 years to find a comparable abuse of the system (McCarthy Era) by Republicans. And the abuses of that era are nowhere near comparable to the breadth and depth of Democrats’ abuses of this era.
Thank you. Extremely on target.
These shadowy oligarchs were of course heroes in 2021 after having ‘saved democracy’.
The change in the law on campaign financing (PACs etc) arguably has severely damaged US democracy. Big money has too much influence and the general contention of the Article that this also has a malign impact on the Democrats has validity.
But the Trump/Tech Bros/Billionaires coalition, coupled with the intent to weaponise the AG, FBI and other departments to frighten and weaken opposition, is of a different manifestation.
Nonetheless presciently the Founding Fathers predicted this sort of scenario and the US Constitution has some important guard-rails. These are not unbreachable but they would take much more control of Congress to allow the Trump/Musk project to throttle these completely. They are way short of the numbers for fundamental Constitutional change.
And then of course there is ‘Third Estate’, the ‘commonality’. Some already well knew the direction the Trump/Billionaires coalition would take things, but more will now awaken. If significant elements of MAGA are now grasped they’ve been jilted the Billionaires coalition is going to need alot of red meat chucked in it’s direction to silence them. And moving from ‘red meat’ rhetoric to actual Policy implementation is a big leap which the majority of Populists have proven themselves unable, and insufficiently competent, to navigate.
j watson presents the case for how unselfawareness and the ability to make cringe bs correlate perfectly. The deep state was weaponized against Trump and America since 2016, peaking with his attorneys being disbarred, open flagrant massive election corruption, anti-scientific covid policies, hundreds of political prisoners held for years, massive censorship, two-tier justice, and ridiculous wars. Frankly j watson can ….
The United States was founded by “Oligarchs”.
That pathetic, demented, corrupt aparatchik is only complaining that his oligarchy failed…so far.
It’s a bit rich to hear Joe Biden complaining about the threat to democracy from billionaire oligarchs the week after he put a medal around George Soros’ neck.
Yes the USA is an oligarchy and has been for some time. That is why Biden gave Soros the Freedom Medal.
Biden has no credibility to speak about the military industrial complex given the legislation he proposed might as well have come straight from the desk of the Pentagon, which I suppose isn’t the worst thing in the world. The military is still probably the least incompetent government agency though that’s not a high bar to clear. He has no credibility to speak about oligarchy given that oligarchs like Soros, and quite a few former Republican never Trumpers, lined up behind Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024. Who does he think actually believes that nonsense? It’s sort of insulting that he thinks Americans can’t draw a logical link between billionaires overwhelmingly supporting one candidate over another and the policies that promote and maintain the global oligarchy, but then it’s not really him, is it? His capacity is greatly diminished so I can’t lay it all at his feet. I think that if Biden weren’t so addled by age, he’d probably be aware enough to realize how it would play to the people and he wouldn’t have said it. He’s always said stupid things, but usually off the cuff and usually not intentionally. Biden had faults as a politician but he always had a good understanding of the political climate and an awareness of the mood of the voters and the nation in general. It’s what defined his career. He managed to triangulate his positions over time to mostly match up with what the average American would agree with or at least accept. It’s sad to see that age has rendered him so addled that all he can do is just read whatever his clueless echo chamber liberal advisors wrote for him. I’ll grant that Trump is not at all likely to really challenge the international oligarchs beyond immigration and protectionism, but Harris or whatever empty suit the other side puts forth won’t challenge them at all beyond the incremental step towards economic nationalism in the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act, which was quite likely done at the behest of the Pentagon and the MIC, so it counts for them as much as for him.
Fortunately for all of us, the oligarchy is no more unified than any other group of people would be. They can and should be played off against each other when possible, and the feud between the tech bros who have embraced populism and the old money Wall Street types that still consider Trump a threat to what they call democracy will be interesting to watch going forward. Behind the scenes, what I suspect has actually happened is that the tech companies have realized that the CCP will never allow their apps into the Chinese market and continue to steal whatever technology they can. Because of that, they will be at a severe disadvantage versus their state supported Chinese competition in the international marketplace. Allying themselves with the military industrial complex and keeping the Chinese apps and tech out of the US and possibly its closest allies is the counter punch. If your government isn’t going to let us play in your backyard, we can ask our government to keep you out of ours, t*t for tat. If you’re going to steal our IP for your state supported companies, we’ll just cut you out of the loop entirely. This represents a significant shift towards the multipolar world order. The tech sector is now on board with the MIC in pursuing Cold War 2.0, a conflict where regardless of remaining trading relationships, the relationship is likely to be defined by a zero-sum technology arms race. Elon and company intend to win this race one way or another and it has changed the political balance in favor of nationalist/populist narratives and politicians. It will be increasingly difficult to resist the combined momentum of a popular movement now supported significantly by an influential part of the elite class.
The Wall Street bankers and financiers are finding themselves in the awkward position of no longer controlling a commanding majority of their fellow oligarchs. Corporate America is no longer a unified front supporting the globalist system. It is now contested ground, and there will be opportunities for nationalist leaning business leaders in many industries to take the lead and win government support. What will be interesting to see now is how the Democrats respond in 2026 and 2028. Will they finally shift their strategy or just double down on identity politics, open borders, and the other positions and tactics that got them soundly defeated. If current trends continue and Republicans keep picking up minority votes, the Democrats won’t be viable in most of the nation, and that’s a serious problem. I would say it’s insane to keep using the same strategy given the trends, but hearing Biden rail about the evils of oligarchy and the MIC suggests that somehow they still haven’t gotten the message that they have lost the narrative and very few people believe their nonsense. Whoever is running the Democratic Party has somehow managed to learn absolutely nothing in over eight years of populist uproar. That level of incompetence can’t possibly go unpunished. If they refuse to change their strategy, then their only hope is that the other side immolates itself through internal conflict, which is possible, but one should never rest their strategy on the implosion of their opponents. Hope is not a strategy, not a good strategy at any rate.