Midterm Money: Who’s Funding Aspiring American Fascists?

By Jim Miller

As we close in on the midterms, the Republicans are seeking to ride back into control of at least one legislative body by nursing economic anxiety, white grievance, and a resurgent ethno-nationalism.  

To counter this, the Democratic Party has chosen to emphasize the threat to abortion rights and democracy, a strategy that side-steps the economy.  The idea is, apparently, that a majority of voters will both understand and coherently respond to anti-democratic forces by holding the line at the ballot box.  

Unfortunately, despite some polling still offering hope for the Democrats retaining control of the Senate, the devastating headline of the New York Times story on their survey showing a renewed Republican advantage puts it bluntly, “Voters See Democracy in Peril, but Saving It Isn’t a Priority.”   

Beyond the political positioning and horse race news, however, the momentum of anti-democratic forces is not just the result of clever, opportunistic campaigning.  It is a well-funded effort backed by a good segment of the billionaire class and an odd bedfellow or two.  

For instance, plutocrat PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is pouring $30 million into the midterms to promote his agenda. Why?  

As the Guardian recently reported:

• Thiel sat out the 2020 election but appears to have been re-energized by the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump’s claims of a stolen presidential election and the January 6 insurrection. Addressing a NatCon convention this time last year, he denounced the “incredible derangement of various forms of thought, political life, scientific life and the sense-making machinery generally in this country”.

• Liberal democracy, in his view, had turned the United States government into a dissent-squashing Ministry of Truth working toward a “homogenizing, brain-dead, one-world state” – a problem to which only rightwing nationalism could provide an “all-important corrective”.

• “We’re close to a Toto moment, a little dog pulling aside the curtain on the holy of holies only to find there’s nobody there,” he told the crowd. “We always think of democracy as a good thing. But … where do you shift from the wisdom of crowds to the madness of crowds? When does it become a mob, a racket, a totalitarian lie?”

Thiel is not alone in his efforts as the Guardian also notes: 

• [S]hipping products tycoon Richard Uihlein ($53m to Republicans) and hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin ($50m to Republicans). And Thiel has some way to go to match the consistent giving, cycle after cycle, of the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, the late Las Vegas casino magnate.

• Many experts also believe the attack on democracy began long before it became as explicit as Thiel has made it, because the whole point of funneling large amounts of money into the political system is to sway policy away from the will of the majority to the narrow interests of the donors and their friends.

Thus, just as a rogues’ gallery of robber barons were early supporters of fascism in the 1930s, a key segment of today’s billionaire class is also keen on using their skills as Silicon Valley “disrupters” to undermine democracy.  

Ironically, they are being joined by the good folks at AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) who are happily pouring millions of dollars into campaigns to elect racists, bigots, and election deniers as long as they show their undying support of Israel.  Perhaps AIPAC has forgotten that the same folks who they now support are, if history is a guide, precisely the kind of politicians who will seamlessly pivot to antisemitism at home if it suits them.  

It's also odd to consider that Thiel, who is a big funder of hard-right nationalist Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, is himself a holder of multiple passports so he can nation hop when it suits his interests.  As Jonah Goldberg wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

• Yet there’s just something weird about a billionaire libertarian with multiple passports — and a work-in-progress billet on a floating city — who made his money in Big Tech funding “nationalist” candidates who rail against globalist elites . . . He sees politics — and even nationality — as an engineering puzzle that can be solved with clever hacks. Specifically, all you have to do is fuel populist hysteria on the right.

And if Thiel’s political “hack” of American democracy fails him, he can always pop over to Malta or New Zealand or invest in a floating city free from the mob he so despises. 

The rest of the little people?  Sucks to be us.