Billionaire financiers of MAGA
Krugman talks about Billionaires that will still back Trump when they stand to lose their investments with Trump’s 2024 defeat but very likely his conviction, dismissal and imprisonment even before that. Why do Plutocrats and Oligarchs support Trump and MAGA? You can’t find a logic behind this from a normal perspective. After all, the thinking of plutocrats is different from rest of 99.99% of people.
Krugman makes a valid and important point that Billionaires like Tech Brothers are isolated/detached from objective reality. They live in their very small social bubbles and have no connection outside of it. Many of these tech brothers are also contrarians who have made their wealth through not-conventional thinking in market economy (and with a lot of luck really). So it’s not surprising to see that tech brothers incline towards “unconventional paradigm” even in politics like the platform of RFK Jr and Donald Trump.
I would add a critical point to Krugman’s take. Much of the Tech brothers and Plutocrats in general are arrogant scoundrels. They think that they can control political landscape and sociopolitical discourse of country if they finance certain politicians. They are right to an extent on this because they have been reaping the rewards of their political investments with policy favors from Congress and govt. But Trump is different.
When billionaire rescue a politician like Trump, they are betting heavily on political investments. It’s very likely that Trump has already promised variety of policy favors to his plutocratic backers. In fact, Trump may have sold out his office in advance to the dirtiest plutocratic forces of America - “Finance me and i will give you whatever you want when i am in the White House”. The legal troubles of Trump, all his dirty secrets and past scams of his business career makes him very vulnerable.
Trump may appear as a political candidate who his backers think they can manage and easily control. So all of Trump’s tantrums and demagogy doesn’t really bother the billionaires. Once Trump is in office, he will do their bidding as the billionaires think they own him lock, stock and barrel. Right? Not necessarily.
Here, we rewind history to pre-Nazi Germany. The big businesses held their nose and decided to support Hitler. Hitler was an outrageous clown and was thought of as a political imbecile. The plutocrats thought he could be controlled, managed and can become an instrument for their nefarious goals. The so called bourgeoisie politicians of Weimar republic thought that once Hitler is in office, he will be tamed by norms, laws, legal constraints of the state. Hitler will thus become a tool that will be controlled by various plutocratic actors. This is a great article by Adam Gopnik in New Yorker which explains this phenomenon behind Hitler’s rise and present similarity to Trump in America. Daniel Guerin has made same analysis in his book ‘Fascism and Big Business’.
Even comrade Stalin in Russia saw Hitler as someone he can use. The communist forces had some influence over German politics but they did not fought Hitler with real spirit. Stalin envisioned Hitler starting the war and ravaging the Europe, and Russia later coming to the theater to roll over the weakened and ravaged Europe. Ultimately, Russia will be the real benefactor of imbecilic decisions of Hitler.
How did reality turned out? At first, the German businesses were happy as Hitler gave them full state backing and massive orders to German heavy industry (for defense production). The profits of German industrialists rose handsomely while the labor unions were crushed and German plutocratic empires expanded. But then the war created an Autarky of strange kind (Geurin explains all this in his book). This ended up severally constraining German Businesses as they went under state control to support the War economy. And as tide of war turned, the fortunes of German plutocrats also became ruined.
Stalin secretly created Pact with Hitler (Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) to attack and divide Europe. The Europe would be divided as per spheres of influence of Hitler and Stalin. This was going fine up to the point when Hitler trampled on the agreement and unleashed the largest attack against Russia. Russia came near to collapse at the peak of German aggression. The consequences, the destruction and price of war which Russia then had to bear is all documented history.
Coming back to MAGA and Trump. All the billionaire actors who’re supporting Trump for various reasons think they will be able to manage Trump. Trump is in fact considered to be an imbecile, a moron, an outrageous clown. Someone who can be made a puppet and used for variety of plutocratic goals. But this can turn out to be very bad, even dangerous miscalculation on part of American plutocrats.