So many of us have been despairing of the world lately. We’ve been saying things like: “What the Hell is going on?!” “How the Hell can this be happening?!” and “Stop the world; I want to get off!”
As I’m sure Dorset Eye readers know, Trump and Johnson’s electoral victories are not at all unrelated. There is Trump, Johnson, Bolsanaro, Morrison, Mohdi, Netanyahu, Oban, Morawiecki (all in power) and Le Penn, Salvini, Wilders and so many others. What we’ve seen is an extreme right wing/Neoliberal power grab across the globe (as well as the abhorrent resurgence of Far Right and Neo-Nazi ideology).
Clearly, those leaders and parties have shared their winning formula – both legal and illegal. This has included employing populist/Nationalist propaganda, secretive campaign financing (including corporate and dark money), electoral fraud, data-harvesting and micro-targeting, racism/xenophobia and strongly anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. It has also included the exact same methods and rhetoric employed to denigrate and destroy political opponents. This ‘winning formula’, this script, has been shared and learned well! Full training has been provided!
I strongly believe that this has been a plan long in the making. The abundant right wing think tanks and organisations (especially in the US but elsewhere) combined with the vast financial support of vested interests/corporations and the full support of the propaganda machinery of the mass media have conspired to create our current global situation…. and it has taken them a decade or more to reach this capitalist/Neoliberal utopia (some might argue it has taken decades of planning, trialling and refining).
As well as these right wing think tanks and organisations, I strongly believe that billionaire hedge fund managers like Robert Mercer (in the US) have been at the centre of this long-term plan for global Neoliberal utopia. They have invested large sums supporting right wing candidates, employing and deploying right wing ‘strategists’ like Bannon and financing electoral fraud through Cambridge Analytica, AIQ and their more recent variants (some, we have yet to know about).
They have done this because the rewards massively outweigh the costs. I read an article about Mercer a couple of years ago which stated that people like him see the large sums that they invest in getting their preferred candidates elected as far outweighed by the returns – the vast financial benefits brought about via tax breaks for corporations, tax avoidance enabling, the privatisation of public services, deregulation, direct stock market influence and hedge fund profitability etc. The article said that people like Mercer see the large financial costs they incur through their political involvement as an investment….. and they fully expect massive returns (not in every instance, but definitely overall!)
Mercer (who donated large sums to the Trump campaign as well as bankrolling Cambridge Analytica and employing Bannon) runs one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. Before the 2016 US Election, his hedge fund invested heavily in private prison companies in the US. Trump was elected and almost immediately reversed Obama-era restrictions on the running of prisons by private companies! Boom! Mercer made a killing! A huge return on investment! Then Trump started locking up migrants and their families/children in concentration camps (‘Immigrant Detention Centres’) run by private companies. Boom! Yet more return on investment for Mercer! Coupled with the huge corporation tax cuts, getting Trump elected has been incredibly lucrative for Mercer and others like him.
And of course, it is well-known how hedge fund manager/investor Crispin Odey donated significant sums to promote Brexit and simultaneously won massive sums by ‘shorting the pound’ (betting against our currency) and betting that the markets would collapse. Having made £220 Million overnight on the night of the Referendum, Odey-the-Odious gloated: “There’s that Italian expression, ‘Al mattino ha l’oro in bocca’ – the morning has gold in its mouth – and never has one felt so much that idea as this morning really.”
It appears that, for the obscenely wealthy global elite, every morning has gold in its mouth.
And, as I’m increasingly convinced…. “It’s all about the hedge funds, baby!”
Tom Lane
