The conspicuous presence of the three American tycoons – Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos – in the forefront of the ceremony installing the new US President Donald Trump 20 January for the second time is no coincidence. It is a clear signal of the birth of a new American oligarchy under the stewardship of Trump against which the outgoing President Joe Biden had warned in his parting words from the Oval Office. Political power mostly gets an underpinning of economic power everywhere and the US is no exception. Yet, at times the relationship between the two powers becomes too glaring and threatening for the common man and democracy itself.
To sound the alarm bells about the advent of oligarchs hanging on to the coattails of Trump, in his farewell speech Biden evoked the 19th-century Gilded Age and the robber barons, who destroyed competitors, exploited workers, bought judges and politicians and paraded wealth. Biden has hardly any listener now in his own country or elsewhere even though he had strengthened the economy with green investment, massive healthcare expansion and managed reasonably well the post CoVID crisis that he had inherited from Trump. He seems to have wasted the goodwill for his pathetic handling of the war in Gaza and his reluctance to bring peace in the Middle East. What resonated, however, was his alarm call warning of the “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people.” In almost prophetic words he iterated: “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms.” This was unexpected and rather ominous given the fact that the top 0.1 per cent of the US population holds nearly six times as much total wealth as the bottom 50 per cent. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have profited from the super-rich.
At least 83 billionaires backed Kamala Harris’ campaign. It would be straining credulity if one claims they all did so from disinterested concern for their nation. Rarely has the marriage of politics and riches been so unabashedly naked as in the case of Trump who rages against elites, but has formed a cabinet with 13 billionaires. Elon Musk, the first person whose net worth has exceeded $400 billion, has even gone on spinning his economic theory that citizens will face “temporary hardship” as his department of government efficiency slashes public spending. Zuckerberg, the boss of Meta, and Bezos, the owner of Amazon and the Washington Post, seen in the company of Trump at the swearing-in ceremony, have their own plans to mix economic power with political power. Other “oligarchs” are already benefiting from backing fossil-fuel-friendly Trump. In this inner circle at the centre of which is Trump himself, new figures have emerged during the past months. Musk has been promoted to a position that will make him the de facto heart of power. The other two tech billionaires, Zuckerberg and Bezos, form a formidable group. Made up of media and social media platform owners, this oligarchy also represents a global threat to free access to reliable information.
In the name of freedom of speech and expression these tycoons, it is feared, would seek to control the minds of the global population with narratives that blur the borders of fact and fiction, so as to strengthen their own private interests of remaining super-rich. Trump has already articulated his imperialist ambition to grab land and natural resources with his plan to “buy” Greenland and bring Canada and Mexico to heel. A new world order is being sought to be shaped not for the benefit of the poor and the downtrodden, but for the super-affluent. Undoubtedly now, in these changed circumstances, the super-rich not only from America but from across the world would like to align with this new and yet to emerge oligarchy for reasons known to all. The world is aware this is not some event that would complete a cycle in the next four years of the Trump administration but, instead, these four years will provide the impetus to kick start a new ‘global order of the affluent’.