(Photo illustration by Chantal Jahchan)
If America was a comic book and the majority of us were trying to combine our respective powers as The Avengers to save democracy, freedom, and our social services, then billionaire supervillains would be our Oscorp foes.
Unfortunately, America is a real country that just elected a corrupt, criminal vulgarian who has outsourced the Oval Office to an incestuous cadre of real-life racist billionaires who want to dismantle our democracy and replace it with a technocracy where they will assume leadership as our not-so-benevolent overlords.
Let me bring in another pop culture metaphor. I realize this sounds like an absurd, fantastical plot concocted by a screenwriter of an 80’s Bond movie, but this is where we are right now with Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, effectively leading the GOP and using his obscene wealth to influence elections both in America and Europe. On Friday, Musk, who grew up in South Africa, tweeted in support of the extremist AfD Party in Germany which is the modern successor of the Nazi movement. This was two days after he torpedoed a bipartisan spending deal on Twitter and used his social media platform to threaten and target any Republican who would dare defy his command.
Author Jonathan Taplin, a prescient critic of the broligarchy, has long warned about how Silicon Valley titans have taken over our culture through their social media empires and attempted to undermine our democracy through monopolistic power, disinformation, and an obscene amount of wealth lining the pockets of both Democrats and Republicans.
In his book, The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto, he cites Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreeseen as the primary architects of this racist, disruptive movement whose capitalist desires and insatiable lust for power is incompatible with our modern democratic institutions.
In this topical and important Chai Talk, Taplin explains the perverse ideologies of this broligarchy, which they openly promote, and reveals their end game. Taplin warns that the American people must wake up, confront, and resist their efforts as a multi-racial renaissance that seeks to reform a broken system which is increasingly being abused and exploited by the 1%.
Grab a chai and give us a listen.
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