Late Capitalism Turns to Fascism
Late Capitalism Turns to Fascism
The rich are looking for a bailout
On Wednesday David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said the quiet part out loud. Asked about the coming election, he was honest, very honest. The millionaire media CEO said the result didn’t really matter, as long as the next president is friendly to business. He went on, “We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to be even better.”
There are layers to this comment. For one, business in this country, and his business in particular, has already consolidated quite a bit. Warner Bros. Discovery got its name from the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery two short years ago. That giant merger put Fandango, DC Studios, New Line Cinema, Cartoon Network, WBTV, TBS, TNT, Animal Planet, HGTV, HBO, and about 100 other media entities, channels, and companies under one roof. Oh, and CNN. David runs them all. The only possible further consolidation would lead to complete monopoly control, which in fairness is most likely exactly what he wants.
And when it comes to being “even better” the board and shareholders that a man like David Zaslav is accountable to probably do want the company to improve. Because, despite Mr. CEO receiving $50 million in compensation last year, and being worth about $400 million now, Warner Bros. Discovery lost $3 billion last year. So he might be concerned that unless some massive deregulation allows him to screw over customers in a new way, he could lose his cushy seat at the top. Fascinatingly, it doesn’t occur to the man who said he was worried his company might be “overpaying” writers not long after the Hollywood strikes concluded last year that there might be a path other than exploitation and corporate greed, and that it might even be beneficial to his industry.
But no, as the industry titan spoke from the billionaire camp in Sun Valley, Idaho (a real, annual phenomenon) he was revealing both his ideology, and that of capitalists more broadly. I want to be clear here that when I say capitalists I mean the people with capital, the people who own and control corporations and vast stock portfolios, not people making $45,000 who spend their time defending billionaires online. We’ll get back to those folks in a minute, but for now we should be clear about what men like David reveal to us. In their actions, and at times in their words, they reveal that they have no allegiance other than profit, and that in this willingness to sacrifice people and the planet at the altar of money they will ally with fascists and even fund the fascist movement.
For Zaslav specifically, deregulation and consolidation are dog whistles for Trump. The current heads of the FTC, Department of Labor, and other appointees have blocked mergers, supported worker organizing, and been generally pro-regulation. The right wing of this country, sponsored by big business, has attacked regulation, appointed judges who are pro-corporate and anti-labor, and most notably stacked the Supreme Court so that it aligns with these “values.” We’ve seen the painful results over the past two weeks, where the federal ability to regulate has been dealt multiple massive blows.
Fascism is in part the willingness to back up capitalism with increasing violence. That violence obviously includes street gangs and coup attempts, but it also includes deregulation, which hurts millions of people in the service of corporate profits. The working class suffers most from the pollution of the water, the poisoning of the air, the destruction of labor regulations and more. And that’s what Zaslav is advocating for, that’s what a whole host of billionaires backing Trump are advocating for, and what the former President himself is open and adamant about.
In this period where the left has begun to rise, sentiments about socialism and capitalism are shifting dramatically, and the motive for extracting ever-more profit is running up against its limits, the super-rich are eager for this country to look more like 1890, and less like the 21st century. They don’t always say it out loud, but their actions, from trying to sue the National Labor Relations Board and Consumer Financial Protect Bureau out of existence, to their political donations, to their increasing willingness to overtly undermine voting itself, show this class of billionaires and mega-millionaires making their loyalties clear. They would rather back fascism than see this country move one inch to the left.
But who else wants this? Who is willing to eagerly go along with the deeply unpleasant Mark Zuckerburgs and Jeff Bezoses and Elon Musks of the world and descend into full fascism? There are people filled with hatred, and who have been taught hatred, of course. We unfortunately don’t lack for them in the United States. But why would any normal person want deregulation, or love big business consolidation?
There’s a few reasons, but what I would argue it comes down to is a libertarianism of U.S. extraction. There is a set of beliefs here that say a man (almost always a man) can make it on his own if he’s just badass enough and smart enough and better than everyone else. It’s a hyper-individualism that tells us we won’t need anybody else, hell those communist collectivist types are all weak anyway. Never mind that the super-rich preaching this line at folks nowadays have a veritable army of people at their disposal because of the wealth they’ve hoarded, and never mind that they earned that wealth off the work of thousands of workers. Let’s get rid of this big government (at least the good parts that help people) and see who can really hack it on their own.
I was listening to an excellent podcast the other day that perfectly explained how this type of thinking is playing out in 2024. Kelly Hayes was talking to Brian Merchant on her great Truthout Movement Memos pod. Brian has written a fantastic book about the Luddites called Blood in the Machine, and he writes about technology more broadly as well. In discussing the people who have become fans of Tesla, crypto, the Metaverse and more, they explained how one through-line is the idea of “winning dystopia.” In other words, for a whole bnuch of people, often tech bros, rather than focusing their efforts and energy on trying to stop the collapse they fantasize about being a survivor, profiting during the downfall of society, and being the exception while others struggle to survive.
We see this idea crop up in a lot of the ways people talk about prepping for the apoclypse by hoarding guns and canned good instead of building any sort of community. The sentiment that surviving is somehow the result of heroic individualism has deep roots, and it manifests itself all over, deadly and dishonest though it may be. The mentality that “I’m out for me, I’m only looking out for number one, and fuck you if you get in my way” is everywhere in this country. Well, almost everywhere. There is a growing counter-balance of people who understand that humans survive together, not alone. People who know that caring about one another isn’t only vital to get through these times we live in, and the times to come, but also vital to our happiness throughout. This latter group is focused on community organizing, mutual aid, and care for one another.
But the super-rich have every incentive to encourage the former, to encourage ordinary people to think of ourselves as isolated entities who must hack it alone, even as the billionaires work together to further thier own interests. When the wealthy and powerful are saying we just need fewer government protections so that we can be even better at doing business, alarms should go off. A path to prosperity that allows for rivers to catch fire again and smog to cloud our skies isn’t a path to prosperity at all. It’s a path to exploitation and destruction, where businesses don’t have to pay the true cost of what they make because they externalize those costs onto us and onto this planet. And when these capitalists are willing and even eager to ally with fascists to reach those goals, we have to take note. We’re expendable in their eyes, and democracy is too. Their preference is for our workplaces to be completely authoritarian, with workers having no say and no ability to organize. Their preference when it comes to forms of government is much the same.
Don’t be fooled. Turning this country, this world, into an ever more dog-eat-dog society because you might win the lottery and come out on top isn’t a gamble worth taking. A better bet, for all of us, is that by learning how to work together, by learning how to support one another, and by casting off the outdated ideas that tell us cooperation is weak and rugged independence is strong, we can achieve incredible things. Humans have always been interdependent, and ideally the cornerstone of our society would be us helping one another – it would be baked into our culture, our form of governance, and our lives. To get there we have to see how we’ve been lied to, and who is doing the lying. Then, we can work towards something better with clear eyes.
P.S. Kelly Hayes, whose podcast I mentioned above, also has a great newsletter Called “Organizing My Thoughts” which can be found here: https://organizingmythoughts.org/
And Brian, her guest referenced above, has a great newsletters with the same title as his book (which some of you might remember from the piece it inspired my to write): www.bloodinthemachine.com
