With the Musk/Trump administration ripping huge holes in America’s social safety net, it is frightening to observe how major media properties have sagged onto bended knees to pay homage to wealth and power. There is a parallel to Germany in the 1930s. There, political leaders took control of media that did not serve the Nazi Party. A cocktail of naked opportunism and misplaced arrogance among the country’s most powerful men facilitated the rise of the Third Reich. With the media silenced or controlled, it was relatively easy for evil men to consolidate power and punish opponents.

During the first weeks of 1933, the Nazi regime deployed the radio, press, and newsreels to stoke fears of a pending “Communist uprising,” then channeled popular anxieties into political measures that eradicated civil liberties and democracy. SA (Storm Troopers) and members of the Nazi elite paramilitary formation, the SS, took to the streets to brutalize or arrest political opponents and incarcerate them in hastily established detention centers and concentration camps. Nazi thugs broke into opposing political party offices, destroying printing presses and newspapers.

Establishing Control of the Press

We have allowed billionaires to control much of what we see and hear. Conservatives threaten public radio and TV in Canada, while Trump/Musk operatives have already moved to control PBS and NPR. Media has changed in recent decades. Ownership of newspapers and broadcast outlets was once diverse but is now concentrated in relatively few hands.

“Whoever controls the media controls the mind.” — Jim Morrison

Online platforms can be breeding grounds for misinformation, and facilitating toxic communities can be highly profitable. Benefits come in the form of dollars and influence. Controlling the flow of information gives a handful of billionaires incredible power. Peter Theil was an early investor in Facebook and a mentor to Zuckerberg. He openly opposes democracy and says governments, like corporations, should be controlled by an all-powerful leader.

Collectively, the multi-billionaires listed below hold wealth measured in the trillions of dollars and they exercise massive control over communications. The list is not exhaustive.

• Faceboook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel);
• X (Elon Musk);
• Parler (Robert and Rebekah Mercer);
• Google and YouTube (Larry Page, Surgey Brin, Stephen Schwarzman, and Larry Fink);
• Reddit (Newhouse Family);
• Snapchat (Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy);
• News Corp, Fox Corp, News UK, Sky plc, The Sun, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Red Seat Ventures, Harper Collins (Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch);
• Discovery, CNN, Liberty Media (John C. Malone)
• Hubbard Broadcasting (Stanley Hubbard);
• Thomson Reuters, Globe and Mail, (David Thomson and Family)
• EchoStar Corporation, Dish Network (Charles Ergen)
• Verizon and Yahoo (Warren Buffett);
• Arista Networks (David Cheriton);
• Rogers Holdings (Rogers Family)
• Washington Post and Amazon Web Services (Jeff Bezos);
• Los Angeles Times (Patrick Soon-Shiong)
• New York Times (Carlos Slim)
• Postmedia and McClatchy Newspapers (Anthony Melchiorre)

Many of the media moguls stand firmly in support of Trump/Musk authoritarianism. It is easy to conclude that North American democracy is at risk, even doomed.

One voice of reason in the USA is Heather Cox Richardson. However, her influence in miniscule compared to any one of the billionaires named above. Boston College Professor Richardson teaches American history at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her work has examined issues of race, economics, and the construction and destruction of the American middle class.

Richardson’s February 15 entry at her Substack account explains the rise of the oligarchs and the impoverishment of the working class.

After World War II, the vast majority of Americans agreed that governments should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. But not everyone was on board. Some big businessmen hated regulations and the taxes necessary for social welfare programs and infrastructure, and racists and religious traditionalists who opposed women’s rights wanted to tear that “liberal consensus” apart…

Americans think the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid because they think it spends about 25% of the federal budget on such aid while they say it should only spend about 10%. In fact, it spends only about 1% on foreign aid. Similarly, while right-wing leaders insist that the government is bloated, in fact, as Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution noted last month, the U.S. population has grown by about 68% in the last 50 years while the size of the federal government’s workforce has actually shrunk…

On Friday, the Republican-dominated House Budget Committee presented its budget proposal to the House. It calls for adding $4.5 trillion to the budget deficit to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. It also calls for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, including cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and supplemental nutrition programs…

Letters from an American

Misinformed voters are inclined to vote against their own interests. The rich and powerful understand that reality and use their wealth to ensure voters stay misinformed.