At the 2024 Paris Olympics, two boxers competing in the female division, Imane Khelif from Algeria and Lin Yu-ting from Taiwan, were suspected of being male. Imane Khelif, representing Algeria in the women’s welterweight (66kg) division at the 2024 Paris Olympics drew the most attention. Italy’s Angela Carini withdrew from her bout with Khelif just 46 seconds in saying she had “never been hit so hard.” In his quarterfinal match, he defeated Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori by unanimous decision, securing at least a bronze medal. In the semifinals, Khelif went on to face Janjaem Suwannapheng of Thailand and won by unanimous decision. Khelif defeated Yang Liu of China in the gold medal match, again by unanimous decision. Lin Yu-ting faired just as well in his matches, also winning the gold media in his division.
Now we learn, thanks to a November 4 article, “Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif has XY Chromosomes and Testicles: French-Algerian Medical Report Admits,” by Anna Slats, writing for Reduxx, that Khelif is indeed a male. A French journalist accessed a medical report revealing that fact. In what follows, I summarize the report (adapted from the Reduxx piece) and provide commentary. Frankly, I am gloating because I called this in the moment, even getting the diagnosis correct. That’s how obvious it all is, thereby demonstrating the degree of rationalization required to justify allowing male athletes to compete against female athletes. (I urge readers to visit and subscribe to Reduxx if they haven’t already.)
The medical report, completed in June 2023, through a collaboration between Paris’ Kremlin-Bicêtre Hospital and Algiers’ Mohamed Lamine Debaghine Hospital, was drafted by endocrinologists Soumaya Fedala and Jacques Young. It details that Khelif has 5-alpha reductase deficiency, or 5-ARD, a rare condition that affects only males. This disorder impacts the typical development of male sexual organs, leading many affected individuals to be mistakenly assigned female at birth due to atypical genitalia.
Readers may recall that I identified this condition in Khelif back in August. On August 10 I wrote, “Standing 5’10”, Khelif is a male with an XY karyotype suffering DSD and likely a 5-ARD case (similar to South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya), meaning that there is endogenous testosterone production (internal testes).” On August 14, I wrote that “Khelif has gone through male puberty. This boxer is a XY (male) with a disorder of sexual development (SDS), i.e., dysfunction of the SRY gene; Khelif has abnormal testosterone levels for a woman, likely a condition known as 5-ARD.” All this has now been confirmed.
I had stopped writing about the matter by the end of August as the media stopped showing any interest in the study having created enough ambiguity as to lead many to assume Khelif’s were wrong. I moved on to other things, especially the 2024 Presidential Elections. In late October, French journalist Djaffar Ait Aoudia obtained a physical examination report on Khelif, which confirms his condition. According to Aoudia, the report indicates that an MRI revealed no uterus but rather internal testicles and an “enlarged clitoris,” i.e., a micropenis. Chromosomal testing confirmed an XY karyotype, while hormone tests showed testosterone levels typical of males. (The report also suggests that Khelif’s parents may be closely related, which is not uncommon in the Islamic world.)
The report recommends that Khelif undergo hormone therapy and surgical correction to better align with his self-identified gender, further noting that psychological support is essential, as the findings have reportedly caused significant neuropsychiatric distress. Those of us who reported on this matter back in August were scolded for supposing initially that Khelif was transgender rather than intersex, a criticism that tacitly admitted Khelif was male. However, if Khelif undergoes “gender affirming surgery,” then we will in indeed have a case of a transgender.
If you recall from my August essays, these revelations align with an earlier statement by Khelif’s coach, Georges Cazorla, who acknowledged that Khelif underwent chromosomal testing after her disqualification from women’s boxing by the International Boxing Association (IBA) in March 2023. Cazorla confirmed that endocrinologists identified a chromosomal issue but argued that Khelif should still be allowed to compete against women. Following this assessment, Khelif reportedly began testosterone-suppressant treatment. This would not impact his performance, so it seems this intervention was to evade testing had that been required.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has not required chromosomal testing for athletes since 1999; in Paris, eligibility for women’s boxing only required a female gender marker on legal documents (in this case, a passport). However, Alan Abrahamson, an Olympic sports specialist at USC, corroborated Khelif’s XY karyotype in an August statement, having reviewed the IBA-ordered chromosomal tests from 2022 and 2023.
Turkey’s Esra Yildiz Kahraman forms the ‘X’ symbol with her two fingers
Again, I am indebted to Reduxx’s reporting on this and grateful for that magazine’s persistence in getting to the bottom of this story. In partnership with the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), Reduxx was the first to report on Khelif’s inclusion in the women’s 66kg boxing category in Paris, raising alarms over her previous IBA disqualification. ICONS co-founder Marshi Smith criticized the IOC and the Algerian Olympic Committee for allowing Khelif to compete, calling it an endorsement of “male violence against women” in the name of public entertainment. Smith urged the IOC to revoke Khelif’s gold medal and demanded accountability, emphasizing the need to protect women’s sports from similar incidents in the future. I concur.
In the fields, the bodies burning As the war machine keeps turning Death and hatred to mankind Poisoning their brainwashed minds
—Black Sabbath
Donald Trump speaking with Tucker Carlson at Glendale’s Desert Diamond Arena October 31, 2024 (source)
Donald Trump did not say last night as a packed Glendale’s Desert Diamond Arena that Liz Cheney should be put before a firing squad or fired upon. The corporate state media is spreading one of its most bald-faced lies ever. They’re doing this in a desperate bid to alter the projected outcome of the 2024 election. Trump is on track to win, and if that happens, the power elite are facing the possibility of a populist regime that would sharply reduce taxpayer subsidies to the oligarchy, especially the military-industrial complex and the medical-industrial complex. Trillions of dollars are at stake, and the new Trump administration will be much better prepared to take on the oligarchy than it was in 2017.
Today’s CNN headline is typical of headlines that are leading today’s news cycle: “Trump says ‘war hawk’ Liz Cheney should be fired upon in escalation of violent rhetoric against his opponents.” The headline doesn’t merely warp the truth. It manufactures a perception that has no basis in what Trump actually said. Here’s what Trump actually said: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Anybody who has any familiarity with antiwar sentiment surely knows that this isn’t violent rhetoric aimed at an individual. This is a sentiment that many of us have voiced over the years when criticizing the was pigs. It calls out the hypocrisy and callousness of the elite. Recall the Black Sabbath lyric, penned by bassist Geezer Butler:
Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor, yeah
We can’t have warmongers like the Cheneys (Liz’s father, the notorious Dick Cheney, authorized and celebrated the torture of captives taken in an unjust war, and his daughter is cut from the same wicked cloth) anywhere near power. These are the truly evil people. As an atheist, I am not one to use that word lightly. This is one of the most important reasons to support the populist-national movement Trump represents—to get and keep the war hawks from power.
Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking ti the nation from the Oval Office January 1961
I his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower observed the importance of the military establishment in keeping the peace. “Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction,” he said. But after noting that the “immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience,” he cautioned us that “we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”
He continued: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Bobby Kennedy, Jr., at Glendale’s Desert Diamond Arena October 31, 2024 (source)
He didn’t stop there. As Bobby Kennedy, Jr. reminded us last night at the Arizona rally (and this is something I have taught my students in my research methods classes for more than two decades), Eisenhower also cautioned against the presence of a scientific-technological elite. “Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades,” he said. “In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. … [T]he free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract [and by extension corporate funding] becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” He warned of the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
This is what makes the corporate state media’s lie this morning so outrageous: it obscures the actual point Trump was making, which is the moral problem of elites putting working class sons and daughters in the line of fire while they remain safe in their homes for the sake of enriching the death merchants. The war pigs need forever wars to feed the death machine with blood and treasure. And the manufactured controversy, if it finds its legs, eclipses Bobby Kennedy’s brilliant critique of the medical-industrial complex and the food industry that are making the people sick for the purpose of amassing profits.
Recall Walter Benjamin’s identification of the inevitability of war under fascist condition and associated culture industry sublimations in his brilliant essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”: “All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system. This is the political formula for the situation. The technological formula may be stated as follows: Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the property system.”
My vote on November 5 will be, among many other things (freedom of conscience and speech, privacy, the right to keep and bear arms, equity in gender relations, deconstructing the administrative and regulatory apparatus, restoring the integrity of the founding federal arrangements, return to evidence-based science and medicine, strong borders, the deportation of criminal migrants), a vote for world peace and negation of the incentives that move the military-industrial complex.
For the first time in my lifetime, voters actually have a choice between the power elite that C. Wright Mills describes in his landmark 1956 book by the same title and a social movement rooted in popular concerns and interests that cut across social class and other (many manufactured) divisions. The Arizona rally last night was amazing, inspirational. That’s why, as with the Madison Square Rally, the corporate state media is working desperately to obscure the message.
I will let the brilliant words of Geezer Butler close out this essay and end on a hopeful note:
Now in darkness, world stops turning Ashes where their bodies burning No more war pigs have the power Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling On their knees, the war pigs crawling Begging mercy for their sins Satan laughing, spreads his wings
I am hearing a lot of talk these days about how—along with charts and graphs showing that—the Democrats have become more leftwing over time, while the Republicans have become more rightwing, hence the increasingly polarization of the political landscape, with the poles identified as “liberal” and “conservative” respectively.
But the reality is that Democrats have not become more liberal. On the contrary, they have become profoundly illiberal, which is to say that they have become progressive, the projection of authoritarianism inherent in corporate statism. At the same time, Republicans—albeit not the establishment McConnell types—have become more liberal. Trump is now allied with liberals— Bobby Kennedy, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Elon Musk.
How it’s possible to substitute the good name of liberalism for the term progressive is their repetitive pairing by New Deal Democrats in a propaganda campaign designed to dress big intrusive government in the rhetoric of civil rights. But it’s a lie. Put simply, it is an instantiation of type of linguistic trick George Orwell identified in his writings. If we fall for it, the trick robs liberals of the term that describes their beliefs.
Ironically, “conservative” has become something of the substitute term for liberal ideas. Not merely a substitute, I hasten to clarify, but a fusion of ideas and principles drawn from both standpoints. Thus, what is often framed as the liberal-conservative dynamic is revealed as the progressive-conservative oppositional, with liberalism switching from left to right. The principled liberal, therefore, has to switch sides, even if the left-right continuum makes little sense anymore.
Orwell warned about the dangers of imprecise or manipulative language as a tool of propaganda in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” He argued there (and elsewhere) that vague and misleading language is often used by political actors to obscure meaning, mislead the public, and advance agendas without scrutiny. Orwell was particularly concerned with how political language becomes detached from concrete reality, allowing for concepts like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “justice” to be twisted to mean their opposite or nothing at all. In the case of the word “liberal,” current political language has turned it into its opposite—not left to right, as implied above, but libertarian to authoritarian.
In the present context—liberalism used to label both progressive and illiberal tendencies, while conservatism increasingly linked to classical liberalism—the imprecision of terminology serves as propaganda for the corporate state. When language becomes fuzzy, it becomes easier to manipulate public perception. By labeling policies that may be authoritarian or illiberal as “liberal,” those in power obscure the true nature of their designs.
Similarly, by conflating “conservatism” with rigid tradition or resistance to change, the classical liberal principles of individual freedom and limited government associated with those politics are overlooked, even when they are actively promoted by modern conservatives (e.g., Tucker Carlson), something those of us on the (authentic) left should encourage—something corporate state propaganda makes strange to the left. The manufacture of this estrangement is intentional.
I don’t want to speak for ghosts, but I’m confident that Orwell would argue that this trick of language is not accidental but a deliberate attempt to shape thought by controlling the terms of the debate by setting the frame for discourse formation. When political parties or movements co-opt terms like “liberal” or “conservative” to mean whatever is convenient for their narrative, they influence how people think about policy without engaging in substantive debate. Words used this way function as thought-stopping clichés. This is why Orwell emphasized the importance of clear, precise language to ensure that political ideas and debates remain grounded in reality, rather than becoming tools of manipulation.
In the case I’m analyzing in this essay, where the Democratic Party’s increasing authoritarianism or illiberal tendencies are still identified as liberal, and the Republican Party’s shift toward classical liberalism remains obscured by their conservative label, it is instructive to examine how elites manipulate language to obscure economic and political, even moral realities. We can apply Orwell’s critique to show how language is being manipulated to distort public understanding, turning complex political realities into easily digestible but misleading labels, thereby limiting the public’s ability to critically engage with the actual policies and ideologies at play.
* * *
John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Paine, among others of their time, are foundational figures in the development of liberal thought, particularly in the context of classical liberalism. In their writings, they emphasize economic freedom, individual liberty, limited government, and private property, principles that shaped modern Western political philosophy. They expressed the principle that, to be free to act on one’s desire, one must be free from the desires of others. The principle can be expressed this way: human agency is only limited by the rights that inhere in the human animal. Those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Liberal all
Locke, known as the “father of liberalism,” argued for natural rights, including life, liberty, and property, his ideas profoundly influencing the American Revolution. Adam Smith, through his seminal work The Wealth of Nations, championed free markets and the idea of the “invisible hand” guiding economic prosperity. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison played crucial roles in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution, including its Bill of Rights, respectively and promoting limited government and the protection of individual freedoms. Thomas Paine, in works like Common Sense, advocated for democratic governance and human rights, further reinforcing these liberal ideals and inspiring millions to take them up. While their opinions vary, the common thread among them is a commitment to individualism and skepticism of concentrated power, be it in the hands of monopolistic entities, religious institutions, and the state.
Over time, these liberal principles have been incorporated into modern conservative platforms, especially in economic policy. Modern conservatives frequently advocate for free market capitalism, deregulation, and individual responsibility, reflecting the classical liberal emphasis on economic freedom. Thus, modern conservatism, especially in the US, has absorbed many liberal principles, particularly from classical liberalism. This makes it distinct from traditional conservatism, which emphasized hierarchy, social stability, and the preservation of long-standing institutions and norms.
Edmund Burke, often seen as the father of traditional conservatism, emphasized the importance of community, continuity, and moral restraint. In contrast to liberalism’s more optimistic view of human nature and progress, traditional conservatism took a cautious approach to social change, advocating for gradual evolution rather than radical reform. In the modern era, conservatism retains elements of its traditional foundation, such as a focus on law and order, national sovereignty, and moral values, but it also embraces the liberal values of individual autonomy and market-driven economics, which makes it more liberal in comparison to its earlier, more communitarian form (which isn’t to say that communitarianism lacks virtue, but that there is danger in allowing communication sentiment to overwhelm individual liberty—the problem of majoritarianism). This fusion of liberal economic policies with conservative social values is often referred to as “fusionism” and characterizes much of today’s mainstream conservative ideology.
Progressivism and classical liberalism diverge in significant ways, especially when it comes to views on government intervention, the role of markets, and individual freedoms. Classical liberalism operates on the belief that society thrives when individuals are left to pursue their own interests within a framework of rule of law and minimal state interference. Smith’s famous metaphor of the “invisible hand” (which inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection) nicely captures this idea.
Progressivism, on the other hand, advocates for greater government intervention to address social inequalities and to promote collective welfare. Progressives are inclined to describe unregulated markets as inherently unjust, benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the marginalized. They argue that without government intervention economic inequality, environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and systemic discrimination will persist.
This is what they say, anyway. In truth, progressives tell the people that they need big government to protect them from corporate power, but in reality corporations need big government to protect them from the people.
* * *
The Democratic Party has indeed moved further to the left in recent years, if by “left” one means policies associated with progressivism. Meanwhile, as noted above, the Republican Party has largely fused classical liberal principles, particularly around free market capitalism and limited government, with elements of modern conservatism, which emphasizes traditional values, national sovereignty, and skepticism of state overreach in cultural or moral issues.
This development makes the GOP economically liberal in the classical sense, but socially conservative. The modern conservative focuses on issues like family values and national integrity, which align with the party’s traditionalist base. In this sense, I argue that we should describe the Democratic Party as progressive rather than liberal and the Republican Party as a fusion of classical liberalism and modern conservatism. This better captures the complexity of current political ideologies in the United States.
The dynamic I’m describing extends to a range of issues, such as free speech, gun rights, privacy, and religious liberty, where the traditional ideological lines between left and right have shifted. Historically, liberalism emphasized free speech, individual rights, and limited government, aligning with protections for civil liberties like free expression, religious freedom, and privacy. However, in recent years, progressives in the Democratic Party have become more willing to accept restrictions on speech and other rights in the interest of protecting marginalized groups from harm, reducing hate speech, or addressing systemic discrimination. This has created tensions between traditional liberal free speech advocates and progressives who prioritize social justice and equality. This tension cannot be concealed by conflating terms.
On the other side, and frankly I did not see this coming, modern conservatives, particularly within the Republican Party, have taken up the mantle of defending free speech and religious liberty. Indeed, these have become cornerstones of conservative rhetoric, especially as they relate to resisting government intrusion and promoting individual autonomy. For example, conservatives often argue that religious liberty must be protected against perceived overreach from progressive social policies, like anti-discrimination laws or healthcare mandates. To be sure, gun rights are seen as a conservative position, but as a symbol of individual freedom, the right to keep and bear arms expresses the classical liberal belief in the right to self-defense and the necessity of a bulwark against excessive government interference.
Traditionally, liberals were strong defenders of privacy rights, but in recent years, Republicans have voiced concerns about government overreach, especially in areas like mass surveillance and technology, while progressives have embraced the censorship-industrial complex. This development in the Republican Party reflects the classical liberal concern with government intrusion into private life, a stance that has become more associated with modern conservatism, particularly in debates about the national security state and privacy in the digital age. Progressive measures, even when seeking social justice and systemic reform, prioritize collective well-being and social goals over individual liberties. Here authoritarianism arises, especially when restrictions on free speech, personal choices (e.g., in healthcare or education), and religious expression are imposed.
* * *
My analysis thus draws a clear distinction between classical liberalism and progressivism, emphasizing their fundamental differences regarding liberty and the role of government. Insisting on the classical definition of liberalism can indeed help clarify these distinctions, especially in discussions about personal autonomy and the relationship between individuals and the state.
Classical liberalism, with its focus on negative liberty, promotes the idea that freedom is fundamentally about being free from interference by the government or others. This understanding of liberty is grounded in the protection of individual rights, limited government, and personal autonomy. A minimal state allows individuals to pursue their own goals and make choices without coercion, promoting independence and personal responsibility.
In contrast, progressivism, which emphasizes positive liberty, ostensibly seeks to create conditions that enable individuals to realize their potential and improve their social circumstances, presuming that they are unable to accomplish this on their own, thus infantilizing citizens. Positive liberty, as articulated by thinkers like Isaiah Berlin, enables individuals to achieve their potential and pursue their own goals, often necessitating some form of collective action or state intervention to remove barriers to opportunity.
Positive liberty can be viewed as somewhat aligning with socialist ideals, at least in its positivist French sense, which advocate for systemic changes to redistribute power and resources to promote equality in a society run by administrative rule. The ostensive aim is to create conditions that allow individuals to thrive, rather than merely being free from interference; freedom may require not just the absence of constraints, but also the presence of conditions—like education, healthcare, and economic security—that empower individuals, which is certainly true in many respects.
However, even if we were to assume that this aim is rooted in the belief that equality and social justice can enhance individual freedom, law and policy based on these goals necessitates greater government intervention, which in turn restricts freedom of conscience and individual liberty, as the historical record attests to.
The progressive pursuit of social justice—through frameworks like DEI—leads to technocratic control over society, where individual choices are subordinated to collective standards determined by the state or expert managers. Moreover, government intervention leads to increased dependence of citizens on the state, undermining individual initiative and personal autonomy. The effect of Great Society programs on the fate of black urban dwellers testifies to this fact.
To be sure, there is a tension between individual rights and collective welfare. However, by framing social justice initiatives as necessary for promoting equality of outcome, and elevating equality of outcome to a virtue (and misdescribing it as equity), progressive law and policy limit the very freedoms they at least claim they want to enhance. The push for adherence to progressive norms creates an environment where, for example, dissenting opinions are censored or marginalized undermining the foundational liberal commitment to free expression.
Emphasizing the classical definitions of liberalism sharpens the conversation around the implications of progressive policies and their impact on individual liberties. By clearly distinguishing between negative and positive liberty, it becomes easier to critique the potential authoritarian tendencies in progressive thought, especially when these are framed as necessary for achieving social justice.
This distinction clarifies the stakes in contemporary political debates about the role of government, individual rights, and the nature of freedom itself. To wit, if positive liberty becomes synonymous with increased government control, within a democratic restructuring of the mode of production, it risk authoritarian practices, particularly if the state assumes a paternalistic role in determining what constitutes a “good life” or “realization of potential.” This is where the tension between the ideals of positive liberty and individual freedom becomes pronounced.
Thus, while positive liberty can align with socialist ideas about emancipation from oppressive structures, in the corporatist context, it produces dependency on government and reduces personal autonomy.
* * *
An overdeveloped progressivism resembles a form of “soft fascism,” which raises important concerns about the potential for authoritarianism within movements that prioritize collective goals over individual liberties.
As noted, on its extreme forms, progressivism leads to a prioritization of group identity and collective norms over individual rights, where dissenting voices or alternative viewpoints are marginalized or silenced in the name of social cohesion or justice. This development creates an environment where adherence to progressive ideology is enforced, often through social pressure or institutional mandates, rather than through open debate and democratic processes. In this way, the emphasis on social justice morphs into a form of social control that echoes authoritarian tendencies.
By the term “soft fascism” I mean to evoke the idea of an authoritarian regime that maintains the veneer of democracy and individual rights while enforcing conformity through state mechanisms, social norms, or cultural hegemony. In such contexts, individuals may feel compelled to align with progressive ideals or risk censorship, ostracization, shaming, or other forms of coercion and manipulation. This can undermine the foundational liberal principles of free expression, dissent, and personal autonomy.
This is why history is so important to know. Progressivism emerged alongside the rise of corporate power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which significantly influenced its development and the political landscape in the United States. The interplay between progressivism and corporatism highlights a complex relationship that shaped both movements.
At the same time, progressivism is an expression of corporate statism. As the industrial revolution progressed, large corporations came to dominate the economy. This era was marked by rapid urbanization, the rise of monopolies, and increasing economic inequality. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few corporate elites prompted widespread concerns about the impacts of unregulated capitalism on society. Socialism emerged as a response to these developments. To blunt the socialist challenge to class power, progressivism emerged as an alternative response, advocating for reforms to address the excesses of industrial capitalism and the injustices faced by workers and marginalized groups.
For the sake of the corporate class, progressives sought to mitigate the negative consequences of corporate capitalism through a variety of means, including antitrust laws, limited labor rights, regulatory reforms, and social welfare programs. Progressives created the illusion of a more equitable society by appearing to curb the influence of corporations on politics and advocating for the public interest.
However, these efforts led to an over-reliance on government intervention and regulation, which paved the way for a form of corporatism, where government and corporate interests become intertwined. In this context, corporatism, which refers to a system in which the state, corporations, and other interest groups collaborate to manage the economy and society, became a competing form of government within the constitutional republican form (see my recent essay).
The mechanisms progressives employed—such as regulation and oversight—also create opportunities for corporate influence within government. This has resulted in a situation where government interventions meant to safeguard against corporate abuses strengthened corporate power through regulatory capture, where industries exert significant influence over the very regulations designed to control them.
* * *
As I have done in several other essays, I find history usefully organized by a theoretical framework. Here I will provide a synthesis of a dispute that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s, the debate within Marxism between “instrumentalist” and “structuralist” interpretations of the relationship between the base and superstructure. Both sides agreed that the state serves the interests of capitalism, but they differed on the mechanisms and agency behind this.
Ralph Miliband (left) and Nicos Poulantzas (right)
Instrumentalists, most famously represented by Ralph Miliband, argued that the state is an instrument directly controlled by capitalist interests. In this view, key state actors are often members of the capitalist class or deeply aligned with its interests, so policy outcomes reflect the interests of capitalists. This position emphasizes that the ruling class uses the state to pursue its own economic and political interests, often through lobbying, campaign contributions, and other direct influences. According to instrumentalists, the capitalists don’t necessarily need to conspire, as their shared class position aligns their interests in a way that drives state action in their favor.
In contrast, structuralists, led by Nicos Poulantzas, argued that the state serves capitalist interests, not through direct manipulation by individuals, but because it is structurally organized to reproduce capitalism. Poulantzas contended that the state’s policies align with capitalist interests because of its inherent organization within a capitalist society. According to structuralists, the state maintains the social conditions necessary for capitalism (like law and order and private property rights) as a matter of systemic function rather than collusion. Poulantzas argued that the state does not need direct intervention from capitalists because its very structure compels it to act in ways that stabilize and support capitalist society, even when individual actors are unaware of these dynamics.
Poulantzas was significantly influenced by the work of Louis Althusser, particularly by Althusser’s structural Marxism and ideas around the state, ideology, and class relations. Poulantzas’ work, especially in Political Power and Social Classes and State, Power, Socialism, develops a structuralist theory of the state that resonates with Althusser’s concepts. He uses Althusser’s idea of the “relative autonomy” of the state, arguing that the state is not simply an instrument of the ruling class but has its own structures and functions that maintain the capitalist system by managing class conflicts.
The regulation and control of corporations is certainly part of a corporate strategy to secure hegemony over governance in place of democratic government. Corporations seek to shape regulatory frameworks in ways that ultimately serve their interests, allowing them to exert influence over public policy and governance without directly engaging in democratic processes.
In this view, corporations advocate for regulations that seem beneficial to the public or aimed at protecting consumers and the environment but that also serve to entrench their power and market positions. For instance, regulations that require significant compliance costs can disproportionately impact smaller competitors, consolidating the market power of larger corporations. Moreover, by engaging in the regulatory process, corporations can help craft rules that favor their interests while creating barriers to entry for new or smaller firms, which can limit competition and innovation.
This dynamic leads to what we might call “governance capture,” where corporate interests shape policy decisions, creating an environment where regulatory bodies serve more as facilitators of corporate agendas rather than independent guardians of the public interest.
In this context, the regulation of corporations can become a means of maintaining the status quo, reinforcing existing power structures rather than challenging them. Additionally, the language of regulation and oversight can provide a veneer of legitimacy to corporate actions, framing them as accountable and responsible while diverting attention from deeper systemic issues, such as inequality and the concentration of power. This creates an illusion of democratic governance, where decisions are made under the guise of regulation, but the influence of corporate interests ultimately shapes the outcomes.
The instrumentalist-structuralist debate highlighted crucial questions about agency and class in Marxist theory. Instrumentalists raised the importance of elite control and direct influence over the state, while structuralists emphasized the systemic logic of capitalist societies that shapes state actions. This tension contributed to later debates on hegemony, ideology, and the relative autonomy of the state within capitalist societies, influencing subsequent Marxist theorists, including those exploring Gramscian ideas on consent and coercion in maintaining capitalist order, which I have covered extensively on Freedom and Reason.
Thus, while progressivism emerged in part as a response to the challenges posed by corporate power, its relationship with that power is complex, reflecting a tension between the desire to regulate and control corporations for the public good and the potential for government action to reinforce existing power structures. This dynamic raises important questions about how to balance the need for regulation with the risks of creating a corporatist society, where corporate interests continue to shape policy and governance. It also asks us to consider whether we can restore capitalism to its liberal form, which would make it compatible with republican principles and individual freedoms, on the one hand, or whether the tendency towards authoritarianism is backed into the capitalist mode of production.
* * *
A note is needed here about the populist-nationalist movement led by Trump and its views on tariffs, since neoliberal propagandists have endeavored to portray protectionism as detrimental to economic growth and itself an illiberal intervention. While Locke’s work suggests that he might have been wary of tariffs that interfere with individual rights to trade and market autonomy (his focus on natural rights and the limitations on government power implied skepticism toward state-imposed restrictions on commerce, as tariffs were often perceived), and Smith argued strongly against tariffs and other forms of protectionism, which he saw as violations of the free-market principles, in particular the distorting the natural allocation of resources by encouraging unproductive industries and raising prices, experiencing the disruptive effects of dependence on foreign imports and witnessing the economic instability in the United States, both Jefferson and Madison came to believe that tariffs were necessary to encourage American manufacturing and economic independence. Both sought tariffs to strengthen national economic security. They saw strategic tariffs as promoting self-reliant while still upholding free-market principles in a national context. I agree.
Have you considered the fact that when the federal government ended Jim Crow in 1964 they opened the borders the following year? Have you considered that the Great Society destroyed the black family? Did you ever notice that when the government passed The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, it vastly expanded policing and incarceration the following year? Democrats were the majority party in Washington in all these instances (albeit it took Republicans to force the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through the Senate over a filibustering Democrats, and many Republicans resisted the 1994 Crime Bill).
Bill Clinton at Madison Square Gardens. July 1992
Did you notice when, in 2018, Donald Trump pushed through Congress the First Step Act, which was the first major prison reform bill in history? You would have to have been paying attention. Even if you were paying attention, you probably missed the fact that Biden-Harris never put the First Step Act into practice. It wasn’t just because they didn’t want to give Trump a major win. It was because of what the previous paragraph more than suggests about the goal of Democrats. Joe Biden authored the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Serving as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden also backed NAFTA and helped rally support for it among his colleagues.
Take a longer view of history. Did you note in your history class that Democrats were the party of the slavocracy? It’s true, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Democratic Party represented the interests of Southern slaveholding states, where slavery was integral to the economy. It was the Republican Party that led the nation in abolishing slavery. After the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan was the domestic terrorist arm of the Democratic Party. Where did lynching mostly occur and what was the party affiliation of those who perpetrated these atrocities? Yep, Democrats. Who established Jim Crow, of de jure segregation? Democrats. Who is the party of the black-majority ghetto? Democrats.
How is it possible that all this is true but that the perception of Democrats is that they are champions of minority rights while the Republicans are the racists? How did the Party of Lincoln come to be effectively portrayed as the party of fascism? Because the corporatocracy that arose from the ashes of slavocracy, and the party of the corporate state control the administrative apparatus, academia, culture, and the mass media, that’s the Democratic Party and its neoconservative and neoliberal allies in the Republican Party, has bamboozled millions of Americans into believing an inverted version of history.
To be sure, there are many people who are truly oblivious to the truth of history. But I am sure you ave noted how hard it is to awaken people who are only pretending to be asleep?
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This is one of the most cogent explanations of the current crisis with respect to working class conditions and wages that I have heard in a long time. Steve Bannon is the principal theorist of the populist-nationalist movement. Several minutes in, I turned to my wife and said, “This dude is a stealth Marxist.” I would show this press conference in my criminal justice classes but for the controversy it would generate and the grief I’d suffer on account of it; because Bannon is a partisan, and Trump hysteria is peaking, showing this in a university setting might very likely lead to another call to the principal’s office.
Racism (or racialism) is the belief in the inherent inferiority or superiority of particular racial groups, sometimes grounded in pseudoscientific theories about grouped human differences. Noting grouped human differences is not racism (there are obvious phenotypic differences across human populations). Nor is ranking cultures in terms of their relative adequacy in meeting human needs racist (see A Case of Superexploitation: Racism and the Split Labor Market in Springfield, Ohio for an embedded analysis of the difference between culture and race).
Insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe
Racism is more than prejudice. Racists posit a hierarchical view of humanity based on supposed constitutional or innate differences, seen as fixed and determinative of behavioral, cognitive, and moral capacities. Racism is used to justify the unequal treatment and social stratification of groups. Racism was institutionalized for a time in American history and legitimized by both academic and popular discourse, playing a significant role in justifying slavery, eugenics, and segregation. Those institutions were dismantled more than half a century ago. Today, there are very few racists, and those who harbor racist thoughts tend not to express them in public. However, across the span of these changes, ethnic and racial humor was used to cut the tension of intergroup antagonisms.
A joke about New Jersey is not an example of racism. Neither are jokes about Haiti or Puerto Rico. Branding jokes “racist” is a paradigm of how progressives weaponize language to demonize their enemies. Progressives substitute for comedy what we might term “clapter” (as opposed to laughter) around politically-correct statements. What comedy is allowed should target those perceived to be at the top of the intersectional hierarchy of power, not those at the bottom of the hierarchy. Thus only progressives, i.e., those who manufactured the hierarchy and presume to speak for the downtrodden and powerless, are allowed to poke fun at people over identity. Progressives call this “punching up.”
Cheech (right) and Chong (left)
That there are rules to comedy at all—beyond making people laugh—is why I call progressives “joyeaters” and “buzzkills.” I have asked this question of many of my friends from back in the day (the 1970s): could Cheech and Chong even be possible today? Perhaps if they focused their humor exclusively on making fun of straight white Christian men and women. If that were the case I wouldn’t buy any of their records.
Sadly, the Trump campaign is distancing itself from Tony Hinchcliffe, the comedian who spoke last night at Trump’s Madison Square Garden “Nazi” rally. (Never mind that FDR, JFK, Carter, and Clinton also held rallies there—remember the double standard!) “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said in a statement. Lame. (“Ableist!”)
It’s not Hinchcliffe who’s the problem. The Trump campaign shouldn’t apologize. It’s the offense-takers and the speech police who are the problem. If someone is offended by a joke about New Jersey, his offense-taking stems from an aspect of group or place-based identity, where the person feels a connection to New Jersey and perceives the joke as a slight to that identity. Slights are felt by the overly sensitive. That’s on the overly sensitive.
Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog
In social science, we can explain this over-sensitivity using social identity theory, where people derive part of their self-esteem and sense of belonging from the groups they identify with—whether that’s based on culture, place, or other affiliations or associations. For those who take things personally, or who want to make a molehill into a mountain, a joke about New Jersey triggers a defensive reaction because it touches on a significant facet of how they see themselves or where they feel a sense of pride.
The jokes told by Hinchcliffe, a stand-up comic who regularly perform on roasts—he has written eight Comedy Central Roasts—and is known for his Kill Tony podcast, are not examples of racism. Hinchcliffe works in the vein of Don Rickles. This is the work of the insult comic. Remember when Rickles performed for Ronald Reagan at Reagan’s second inaugural ball, held at the Washington Convention Center in 1985. Rickles made his career performing ethnic humor, insulting people over their race and religion. Rickles was also a regular on roasts. Remember Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog on Conan? Remember Triumph’s joke about Koreans and dogs at the Star Wars convention?
Would Rickles even be allowed to perform given today’s climate of progressive hegemony over culture industry and legacy media content? No, things have not gotten better since then. It is never better when a small group of extremists who control culture and media smear comedians as “racist” and multiracial/ethnic political rallies as “fascist.” Read this morning’s news coverage to see how much worse things have become. From The New York Times on down, Trump is a candidate whose “rhetoric has grown darker and more menacing.” Here’s the hyperbolic NYTimes piece from which that quote is drawn: “Trump at the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism.” The progressive bubble constitutes an alternate universe.
We also have to consider that the Trump-Vance campaign picked Tony Hinchcliffe to trick Democrats into leaning into their bogus fascism and racism narratives as their closing arguments down the stretch. Calling Trump a fascist and a racist is one of the reason why he has closed the gap on Harris. The Harris campaign and corporate media and culture industry allies look like woke scolds. Americans hate woke scolds.
Finally, you will enjoy this. Here’s Hinchcliffe and Roseanne Barr promoting a Puerto Rican comedian. Enjoy. Oh, and see the next video, too. It’s a comedian opening for the Harris-Walz campaign slamming Mexicans.
Incorrect. A LOT of Puerto Ricans watch this comedian (K*llTony) and are fans. He spends a lot of time there. Here's a video of him flying a Puerto Rican across the country for free to be in his show, paying all her expenses, to help her launch her own career as a comedian. pic.twitter.com/rj32Q5vA1d
This essay follows up on last Monday’s essay on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) phenomenon. After rereading that essay, I felt it might be useful to apply some theory to more fully explain the dynamic the evidence indicates. Sheldon Wolin’s idea of managed democracy (also known as directed or guided democracy) highlights how corporate power shapes not only governance but also the nature of political dissent, ensuring that social movements remain within boundaries that reinforce rather than challenge the norms of neoliberal capitalism. This dynamic of co-optation transforms genuine populist resistance into commodified expressions of dissent that serve elite interests. Wolin’s theory is a useful frame in which to explain corporate co-optation and astroturf manufacture of (faux)social movements.
If you are unfamiliar with Wolin’s work, see Democracy, Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. I highly recommend the book to you, but I hope that my application of his theory will be clear enough that you won’t have to read that book first to understand the analysis presented here. The core idea I am conveying is that, by absorbing the energy of movements seeking equality and justice, the system of inverted totalitarianism efficiently undermines the possibility of transformative change, leaving the structures of corporate control intact under the guise of supporting progressive causes.
To illustrate, before coming to more recent examples, we can apply the concept of managed democracy to understand the co-optation of organized labor under the New Deal, where corporate interests and a government that advanced those interests worked to redirect labor movements away from more radical aims and towards a controlled form of participation within the system. Under the New Deal, labor unions like the AFL and CIO were granted legal recognition and protections through legislation such as the Wagner Act, which guaranteed collective bargaining rights. However, the state, while seemingly empowering labor, contained it within the parameters of industrial capitalism, ensuring that workers’ demands would not challenge the broader structures of ownership and power. After the war, the CIA even used the unions to undermine popular democratic movements in Europe.
Thus the New Deal represents a moment where genuine labor resistance was transformed into a guided or managed force, one that ultimately stabilized and legitimized rather than threatened the capitalist order. By integrating labor unions into the system through institutionalized bargaining processes, the government effectively channeled labor’s potential revolutionary energy into reformist goals that aligned with the interests of corporate state power. This form of co-optation ensured that labor movements would focus on wage and benefit improvements within the existing system, rather than advocating for more transformative changes that could disrupt capitalist property relations or significantly alter the balance of power between capital and labor. This is the raison d’etre of progressive law and policy.
The appearance of democratic participation masked the underlying reality that corporate power remained more than intact but strengthened, as well as the administrative apparatus that advanced its interests. The labor movement’s co-optation under the New Deal effectively neutralized its more radical elements, turning the movement into a regulated entity whose influence was channeled through legal and political frameworks that benefitted elite interests, particularly those of large corporations. Instead of fostering a workers’ revolution or a movement toward socialism, organized labor became a tool for managing dissent, reinforcing neoliberal capitalism by containing labor’s aspirations within a system designed to maintain corporate dominance. To put this in a straightforward manner, the corporate state sucked the energy out of labor. This put the private sector union movement on a path to its present state—union density today stands at only six percent. At the same time, unions density among public sector employees, those who manage the affairs of the corporate state, stands today at 32.5 percent.
The corporate statism of the initial progressive period and the emergence of the United States as world hegemon laid the foundation for the emergence of neoliberalism in which individuals were reconfigured primarily as consumers rather than citizens, shifting focus from civic engagement to market participation. Under the New Deal, the federal government took on a central role in regulating markets, providing social safety nets, and promoting labor rights in response to the economic crisis of the Great Depression. This marked a significant departure from laissez-faire capitalism, as the state ostensibly sought to balance corporate power with social welfare through initiatives like Social Security, labor protections, and public works programs. The purpose of this intervention was to save capitalism and thwart socialism.
New Deal interventions entrenched the idea that economic growth and stability could be achieved through technocratic management of markets. As the state became deeply involved in regulating capitalism for the sake of the system itself, it also contributed to the commodification of everyday life, creating conditions where market logic could eventually permeate ever deeper into society. The individual was reimagined not as a citizen actively participating in civic life and democratic governance, but primarily as a consumer whose power lay in their purchasing decisions within the marketplace. This shift, the shift towards mass consumption to reproduce the circuit of capital represented a profound transformation in the role of individuals in society.
Neoliberalism, while criticizing state intervention in order to invert the hierarchy of power, built on the corporate-statist foundation of the New Deal to promote an economy dominated by large corporate entities. Under neoliberalism, the state’s role became one of facilitating market efficiency and protecting corporate interests rather than directly managing social welfare. Civic engagement, which was central to the New Deal’s progressive vision of democratic participation, i.e., a mechanism for integrating the individuals into the extended state apparatus, was replaced by a focus on individual market participation as the primary means of societal influence. It thus functioned to depoliticize the individual.
This shift from a citizen to a consumer orientation had far-reaching consequences. While individuals became masses trained and directed by the hegemonic apparatus, neoliberalism downplayed the importance of collective political action. The idea of freedom was redefined in market terms—freedom became the freedom to choose between products and services rather than the freedom to influence public policy or hold corporations accountable. This consumerist reconfiguration of American society eroded the public sphere, weakening civic institutions and undermining democratic participation. As individuals became more focused on their role in the economy as consumers, they disengaged from politics, which became increasingly dominated by corporate interests. This not only led to greater economic inequality but also to a more passive populace, less inclined to challenge corporate power or advocate for structural change in light of their own interests, while more easily mobilized for the interests of the corporate overlords.
As neoliberalism entrenched, public goods and services became increasingly privatized, and governance shaped by corporate interests, leading to a dominance of corporate logic in decision-making, transferring power that properly belongs to government and the people to corporations and financial institutions that prioritize profit over social well-being. Under these arrangements, the state becomes an instrument of corporate governance. Thus the corporatization of BLM described in my previous essays reflects how ostensibly radical or left-wing causes are negated by corporate interests. As I showed there, while BLM may have begun as a grassroots movement protesting police violence and systemic racism, it has received financial backing from large corporations and foundations. These endorsements align with corporate branding strategies that seek to appeal to social justice causes, enhancing their market appeal while avoiding substantive challenges to capitalism or structural inequality. This corporate support dilute a movement’s radical potential, steering its activism toward symbolic gestures or performative allyship rather than systemic change.
Other left-wing movements have faced similar trajectories, where their alignment with corporate and political elites in service to concentrated power compromises their ability to challenge the deeper roots of exploitation or inequality. Corporations embrace these movements not because of genuine solidarity with their aims, but because it allows them to harness activist energy to deflect criticism and bolster their own power within the capitalist system. In this way, what appears to be anti-capitalist or revolutionary rhetoric is absorbed and neutralized, serving the interests of those it ostensibly opposes. In addition to BLM, other movements that have been corporatized or coopted by corporate and political interests include the Women’s March, Pride, environmentalism, and the Me Too movement. I will briefly survey some of those cases so the reader can get a sense of the pattern.
The Women’s March was initially a grassroots protest against the inauguration of Donald Trump, the Women’s March received endorsements from major corporations and became entangled in mainstream political frameworks. The pussy hat, a pink, hand-knitted hat with cat-ear shapes on either side, became a symbol during the Women’s March, which began on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump’s inauguration. The hats were a protest of Trump’s remarks in a 2005 Access Hollywood recording, in which Trump referred to the way some women throw themselves at celebrities. The hats were an instantiation of defiant reclamation of a derogatory term in the same way that some blacks and gays reclaimed slurs used against them. Reclamation of derogatory terms referring to women express empowerment, resistance, and solidarity among those opposing misogyny and sexism. As the leadership of the Women’s March engaged with Democratic Party elites, it became clear that the movement focused on symbolic actions rather than challenging deeper systemic issues like class inequality and the globalization project which harms the material interests of women. (See The Appeal to Identity: Bad Politics and the Fallacy of Standpoint Epistemology.)
The LGBTQ+ rights establishment, particularly around Pride celebrations, has been heavily corporatized in recent years. Many large companies now sponsor Pride events and publicly support LGBTQ+ rights at the expense of gays and lesbians, as well as women and children. Corporate involvement sidelines demands for women’s rights in favor of marketable notions such as diversity and inclusion, reinforcing the neoliberal status quo without addressing the struggles of those who founded the movement and those who are affected by its corruption at the hands of gender ideology. As I have noted in the past (see The Function of Woke Sloganeering; Is the Madness Unraveling?), one reason corporations align with LGBTQ+ activism (aside from the growth industry of gender affirming care) is the rise of a social credit system that rewards companies for promoting gender ideology. Corporate rankings are influenced by the Corporate Equality Index (CEI), managed by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group globally. HRC issues “report cards” for America’s top corporations based on how closely they adhere to the CEI’s guidelines, and companies that earn the maximum points are recognized as the “Best Place To Work For LGBTQ Equality.”
Beyond these incentives, other factors bring these entities together and intertwine them. Organizations like the Open Society Foundation and the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) contribute significant funding. ESG (environmental, social, and governance scores), a grading system that ranks entities from corporations to governments on their “social responsibility,” plays a powerful role here. Major investment firms like BlackRock back ESG, while groups like the World Economic Forum foster corporate alliances with organizations such as the HRC. The aim is to establish a social credit system that promotes transgressive ideologies like queer theory, creating niche markets around constructed identities and moving Western societies toward a global corporate governance model.
Global movements, such Fridays for Future climate strikes, inspired by Greta Thunberg, have seen corporate and institutional endorsement. Some environmental NGOs and campaigns have aligned themselves with major corporations that engage in greenwashing, i.e., promoting sustainability rhetoric while continuing environmentally harmful practices. Corporate support often shifts the focus from systemic critiques of capitalism’s role in environmental degradation and resource depletion to consumer-driven solutions like “green” products that don’t actually challenge the larger structures of exploitation and environmental destruction. (See my essay and talk The Anti-Environmental Countermovement. See also my award winning article “Advancing Accumulation and Managing its Discontents: The U.S. Antienvironmental Countermovement,” published in The Sociological Spectrum, as well as “The Neoconservative Assault on the Earth: The Environmental Imperialism of the Bush administration,” in Capitalism, Nature, Socialism.)
Initially a grassroots effort to highlight sexual harassment and assault, the Me Too movement was immediately embraced by Hollywood elites and corporate media. The pattern was highly similar to the BLM phenomenon I have described While it successfully brought attention to issues of gender-based exploitation and violence, its alignment with corporate media narratives depoliticized the movement, focusing on individual cases and high-profile abusers while avoiding systemic critiques of the industries that exploit labor and women’s bodies, especially in lower-income contexts. These movements, while powerful in their inception, often face the tension between maintaining their radical demands and the incentives offered by corporate and political alignment, which can steer them away from deeper systemic change.
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Sheldon Wolin argues that in modern liberal democracies like the United States, a form of totalitarianism has emerged that operates differently from historical fascism. Instead of the state controlling corporations and society, with a dictatorial figure in command, corporate power subtly dominates and influences the state, leading to a more dispersed form of control that lacks the centralized authoritarianism seen in historical fascism. Wolin’s “inverted totalitarianism” describes a system where the state and corporate interests are deeply intertwined with the state functioning as a facilitator of corporate power rather than its master. Unlike fascist regimes where the state coerces corporate actors to serve its agenda, in this system, corporations and financial institutions shape and limit government policies. Political leaders and institutions increasingly serve corporate interests, and democratic processes are hollowed out, becoming mere rituals that disguise the reality of elite domination.
Wolin critique of the neoliberal order, where the market, media, and political systems operate in such a way that they perpetuate corporate control without overt authoritarianism, is an analysis for our time. This form of governance allows for significant corporate influence over public policy, including deregulation, privatization, and the weakening of democratic accountability, while maintaining the facade of democracy. A subtle form of domination, inverted totalitarianism avoids the visible repression associated with fascism, relying instead on economic coercion, media manipulation, and consumer culture to depoliticize the citizenry. In short, while classical fascism saw corporations working under a strong, centralized state, Wolin’s analysis inverts this relationship: corporations lead and the state follows, undermining democratic institutions and public accountability in a way that is more diffuse but equally dangerous. His interpretation reflects the rise of corporate oligarchy and technocratic governance, where the lines between public and private power blur, producing a system that serves corporate interests over those of the people.
Using Sheldon Wolin’s concept of inverted totalitarianism, the corporatization of social movements like BLM, Pride, and environmental activism can be seen as an extension of the neoliberal order’s ability to co-opt potential threats to its hegemony. These movements, which begin as grassroots calls for radical reform, are absorbed into the fabric of managed democracy, where dissent is neutralized through corporate sponsorship and alignment with political elites. Rather than suppressing opposition outright, the system co-opts it, turning once radical critiques into market-friendly slogans that leave the deeper structures of inequality untouched. As we approach the November 5 presidential election, it is important to carry this critique into the ballot box when making one’s decision. The Democratic Party is the party of inverted totalitarianism. (See Defending the American Creed.)
Mass immigration has displaced millions of native-born black and Latino workers. That was the point of it all. It was engineered by corporations to displace native-born labor to drive down wages. I have watched over the course of my lifetime (62 years) black workers in agriculture, cafeteria work, custodial services, food production, groundskeeping, housecleaning, and labor-intensive construction and manufacturing replaced by cheap foreign labor. The number of idled black and Latino workers in the projects has swelled over the last several decades while foreign-born labor has progressively replaced them. This development has resulted in family disintegration and extreme child poverty, especially in the black population.
The attitude of progressives tells me that I’m confronting a privileged standpoint that treats black Americans as lazy bodies who don’t want to work. This is the progressive attitude in a nutshell. Rather than having blacks work, progressives have engineered mass dependency in the southern projects and the northeastern and midwestern ghettos to get blacks as far away from white populations as they can get them. It’s no accident that what came on the heels of Civil Rights Act was the Great Society and globalization projects of offshoring and open borders. The legislation passed during that period functioned to relegate primarily black families to disorganized inner-city enclaves while cheap foreign labor replaced them across America. This is no accident.
This rhetoric about how there are no Americans who would do these jobs is designed to obscure the reality that progressive Democrats are behind the oppression and impoverishment of black Americans—first the slavocracy, then Jim Crow segregation, and now ghettoization. It is very wrong that black Americans should have to continue to suffer so that privileged white Americans can have cheap consumer goods. This is the result of Democratic Party law and policies. We won’t turn this around until we get these actors out of power.
I have studied the same things Bobby Kennedy, Jr., has. I know he’s right and I trust his judgment. If he is standing with Trump then how is Trump a fascist? Same with Tulsi Gabbard. Same with Elon Musk. These individuals are libertarian. They believe in the American Republic. They believe in the Constitution.
If that’s not enough, consider that those who are calling Trump a fascist are representatives of the military-industrial complex and the censorship-industrial complex. They are the ones who oppose the freedom to speak and publish. They are the stormbringers. Harris has the security state and the warmongers at her back. These same forces are telling you to fear Trump. Put it together and you can see that the reality the MSN is projecting is the inverse of reality. (See Harris-Walz and the Corporate State)
Karl Marx told us that ideology is a camera obscura (Inverting the Inversions of the Camera Obscura). The image is upside when it’s projected onto the retina. The brain naturally sets right the image. But, with ideology, the brain has to learn to set the picture right. If the structure of reality was immediately evident in the appearance of things then reason would be superfluous. But it’s not, so you have to do the work. Flip the image the MSM is projecting over in your mind and the picture becomes clear. The structure of reality is the opposite of the appearance manufactured by the propagandist.
Learn what fascism actually is—the corporate state
Consider what they have in store for us if they will lie this big.
Trump had low inflation. Harris, high inflation. Harris is telling you that Trump will bring high inflation. Does that make any sense to you?
Trump believes in free speech. Harris does not believe in free speech. Harris is telling you that Trump is an authoritarian. Does that make any sense to you?
Trump did not wage lawfare against his enemies. Harris weaponized the federal government against her enemies. Harris tells you Trump will use the government against his enemies. Does that make any sense to you?
Trump’s presidency was remarkable for the relative absence of war. The government under Harris is associated with major wars in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. Harris is telling you that Trump’s foreign policy is dangerous. Does that make any sense to you?
Trump left office voluntarily. Harris says Trump will be a dictator? Does that make any sense to you?
You are being told that Trump is everything Harris is not and that this should worry you. But the opposite is true. Harris should worry you. A lot.
Our Counterrevolutionary Duty: Defending the Old Society
“In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.”—Karl Marx
Here’s where we are. Two forms of government are competing for dominance in the United States. Both are operational in the present space but in contradiction to the other. They cannot be synthesized; their incompatibility means that one will have to win out over the other—that is, if we wish to truly free as a people. That makes this a pivotal moment in our nation’s history, indeed in world history. The dialectic will either be resolved with a preservation of the higher unity our nation achieved at its founding—a once-in-a-millennial moment—or result in a New Dark Ages of corporate neo-feudalism. As Theodor Adorno warned us in Negative Dialectics, contradictions do not always resolve in a higher unity.
Old Glory
One form of government in the current context is the aforementioned historic achievement of the constitutional republic founded on the classical liberal values and principles of humanism, individualism, rationalism, and secularism. This is the rights-based basis of the American system of government. This is why our forefathers risked everything to rebel against the British Crown. This is why brother killed brother during the Civil War. This was why millions of young men put their lives on the line to repel the fascist threat to the Enlightenment project. We had one shot at this. We won’t have another moment to make a nation as great as this one. If we lose this, it’s gone forever.
This is the American Creed: “The United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, a democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.” Our freedom requires our dedication to the Creed. You may have your own personal creed, but you also have this one—if you are a patriotic American.
A New World Order
The other form of government is the corporate state and progressive ideology, the praxis of a soft fascism waiting for the Creed to be overthrown in order to establish a hard New Fascism, a system that moves beyond the liberal world order of nation-states to make a global system of authoritarian governance. This New Fascism, what Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism,” in its best moments operates through managed democracy, a fake democracy; in its worst moments, it’s a police state that resorts to selective mob rule (which we witnessed in the summer months of 2020 and may soon witness again if Trump is elected).
If the people (or the system) elect (or install) Kamala Harris, and when the latter form of government is entrenched and the constitutional republic negated, this will fix the totalitarian system over us. History will be erased and revised (it already has to an alarming extent) and we will become a population under transnational corporate rule. Democrats, profoundly illiberal and itching to fully institutionalize technocratic controls over the people, are the party of that class power. They see the working class as the deplorables, the hobbits, the proles. It will be Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four come to life disguised as Huxley’s Brave New World. This monster is already stomping around in its adolescent form.
Not all the people who will vote Republican this cycle have awaken to these facts intellectually, but their common sense (for those for whom common sense still works) is telling them that the Republican Party under Trump has become the party of populist-nationalism, which is what we were at our founding, an identity reaffirmed by the Party of Lincoln in overthrowing the slavocracy, the regime of unfreedom represented by the Democrats and the landed aristocracy that rebelled against the American republic to preserve the feudal way of life (and that established Jim Crow after Reconstruction—and the ghetto after that). This is why patriots like Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard have left the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans. They know what time it is.
They know that the future under Democrats is a neo-feudalism, organized by the corporatocracy that rose from the ashes of the slavocracy, where the people are subject populations interred on high-tech estates governed by technocrats in the service of transnational power. The Democrats are open about the plans they have for us. When they say in the above video (please watch it) that they mean to extinguish freedom of speech, they mean it. They mean to take aways your guns and privacy, too. They mean to weaponize the government and the law against their enemies (lawfare). They’re telling you what they want to do to you—you can see it in their actions—and there are tens of millions of functionally un-American citizens who want to do this to you, too—the academic, the culture industry manager, and the propagandist who go by the name “journalist.” They’re the people with or who speak for the people with the signs in their front yards that begin “In this house….”
The future under Republicans is a restoration of the democratic-republican principles that underpin our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, that express the spirit of our Declaration of our Independence. When we say that the goal of populist-nationalism is to deconstruct the administrative state—the unconstitutional, unelected, and unaccountable federal bureaucracy and its army of technocrats—this is what we mean: taking the country back to the three branches, separation of powers, and the federal system that defend individual rights and the relative autonomy of the fifty states. In a word, the Creed. When we say this is the most important election in our lifetime, that’s not that throwaway line. It has never been the case—not in our lifetimes—that we have this stark a choice before us, the choice between Americanism, on the one hand, and anti-Americanism, on the other.
This is why the Democrats run down our founders and demonize our culture, smearing the white majority as racist and ignoring the plight of black Americans they caused, while elevating backward Third World cultures and hateful ideologies and religions, opening our borders to the barbarians they wield to disorder our communities and derail our spirit (the sociopathic overlords are executing the same plan in Europe). They do not believe in the Creed and they will, if they win, snuff it out. It will be a New Dark Ages.
The Democrats are neither socialists nor communists. They are corporatists. We need not argue about which form of authoritarian is more dangerous—corporatism is bad enough. We fought this evil in another guise in the Second World War. We don’t need to guess at this. They’re telling us who they are. Harris has been endorsed by the war machine. Harris has been endorsed by the censorship-industrial complex. Harris has been endorsed by the medical-industrial complex. This is the same person who legitimized the color revolution in 2020. Her party is the party of lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandates. Her party is the party of NATO and the provocation of war in Eastern Europe, actions that have brought to the threshold of WWIII. This is the party that enabled the Islamists who terrorize Israel. Her party is the party of the PATRIOT Act and the forever wars.
As readers of Freedom and Reason know, I am no longer a socialist. This is because every real-world instantiation of socialism has been totalitarian, and I am a libertarian. At the same time, just as I am a Darwinist because I recognize natural selection is the logic of the natural world, I am a Marxist because Karl Marx saw clearly the logic of the social world. Marx never personally saw really-existing socialism on the societal level, and he would, like me, have been appalled to see how it turns out. For Marx was at heart a liberal man. With this clarification in mind, I want to close with this observation from Marx’s 1859 AnIntroduction to a Critique of Political Economy.
“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”
This is the materialist conception of history. It is a predictive model: “At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”
We can see the dynamic Marx’s identifies working itself out before our very eyes. At this stage of development, the corporate state’s rise reflects a conflict between the material productive forces of global capitalism and the existing relations of production grounded in the nation-state system and liberal constitutionalism. What once served to advance economic growth and individual freedoms now threatens to become a fetter on further development of corporate control. The relations that once nurtured capitalism’s expansion are transforming into barriers, as corporate power increasingly undermines the constitutional order, shifting towards a technocratic collectivism. This systemic tension signals the revolutionary moment, as changes in the economic base reshape the entire political and legal superstructure, pressing for a fundamental transformation of society. The role of patriots in this moment is to be the counterrevolutionaries.
Trumps rise continues. Here are the latest from FiveThirtyEight. The media line is that it’s a dead heat. For reasons I explained yesterday, probably not.
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