Theory Blog: Fascism For Profit

NinaIllingworth March 12, 2025April 27, 2025 abolition, Amerikan Musik, Big Tech, billionaires, CA4, capitalism, Christian nationalism, Curtis Yarvin, Donald Trump, donor class, Elon Musk, FA1, fascism, genocide, Gestapo, GOP, ICE, JA5, longtermism, Marc Andreessen, Mini Theory Blog, Network States, Nina Illingworth, oligarchy, Peter Thiel, police state, private prisons, Republican Party, ST2, Theory

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Police States and Free Market Fundamentalism Brought Us Here

I’m posting this old infographic as an excuse to talk to people who despite all the evidence available, are still having a hard time believing that a bunch of rich politicians and billionaire donors really are just hateful fascists willing to spend infinite amounts of money on policing, persecuting, and even eliminating people they don’t like for wholly arbitrary (white supremacy, xenophobia, anti-LGBTQ animus, ableism, misogyny, etc), irrational, or conspiratorial reasons. Even in a society that rewards sociopathic levels of greed with adulation, wealth, and power, it’s very hard to accept that the people who own everything, including our governments, are terrible human beings who’d happily embrace a fascist dictator to keep profiting from capitalism on a boiling planet; that is objectively the reality we’re faced with today however, and it’s important that everyone who isn’t a rich reactionary murderbot accept that. This is my attempt to help you understand why the wealthy and powerful people in America are gleefully installing fascism for material reasons that look logical to someone who has more money than they can ever spend, is terrified the people they stole it from will seek reprisal, and hates anyone who isn’t rich like they are.

First of all let me assure you that they really are just a bunch of fundamentalists, hatemongers, and fascists. In terms of the political arm of this fascist movement, I don’t think this position is controversial; the larger establishment right in America and the fascist Trump political machine have been caught saying the quiet parts out loud repeatedly when they think nobody is listening or has the courage to hold them to account. What’s probably more controversial in American discourse, is discussing the reality that the uber-wealthy donor class that paid to have Trump elected is arguably more reactionary, fascist, and genocidal than the political apparatus they’ve bought. Guys like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen are openly praising “neo-reactionary prophet” Curtivs Yarvin and talking about a clearly racialized clash of civilizations, why it was a bad idea to let women vote, and breaking nation states apart to create techno-feudalist city state dictatorships. Absolutely none of this is a secret; all of this is documented heavily in even mainstream media sources and then instantly memory-holed by the “Very Serious People TM” in American public discourse. If you’re still struggling to comprehend how hate could be such a powerful motivating factor even for a class of people with enough “fuck you” money to last for generations, it’s probably just because you’re not a literal goddamn nazi; and that’s objectively a good thing.

Setting that aside however, I need you to understand that operating a militarized fascist police state is a highly-lucrative endeavor for some people. Naturally I don’t mean its profitable for you or even the larger society you live in; in fact you’ll effectively be billed for all this fascist repression in the form of taxes. But someone gets paid to install and operate the mass surveillance panopticon. Someone gets paid to violently disrupt legally-protected protests. Someone gets paid to arm and train the murderpigs. Yet another someone gets paid to build the prisons and guard the incarcerated. Hell, a bunch of besuited minions even get paid to catalogue all of this and write glowing reports about what an effective expenditure it is. There’s so much money flowing through the U.S. carceral state that the larger industry that exists to serve it is a whole plank in the modern capitalist economy. Furthermore the people getting rich off a fascist police state have more than enough money and power to bribe politicians to expand that fascist police state; which is why doing so has largely been a bipartisan position in American politics for decades and decades now. Even though he’s using it in horrifying ways, it’s important to remember that Trump did not build the already massive fascist police state he inherited when he became president; it was built by generations of American politicians before him, both Republican and Democrat, many of whom were trying to secure donor money or make a quick buck regardless of who that ultimately harmed.

All of which brings us to Trump and the rapid expansion of the carceral complex necessary to enact his fascist agenda. When Downmarket Mussolini moves to conduct the mass deportation of millions of people, that creates an enormous pot of money that can be looted by his rich donors in various ways. Are these folks motivated by white supremacy? Yes, definitely. But even if they weren’t we’re talking about billions, if not trillions of dollars worth of government contracts at stake here; a whole lot of people are going to get very rich off Trump’s ethno-nationalist policies regardless of what they believe in their hearts. To varying degrees the same logic holds true for surveilling, suppressing, and hunting down anti-genocide protestors, conducting a pogrom against trans people as part of a made up “war on gender ideology,” spying on every woman in America to make sure she’s not trying to get an abortion and so forth. Maybe I won’t ever be able to convince you that the establishment fascists doing fascism, have hate and fear in their hearts, but surely you’re already familiar with some of the awful, inhumane, and tyrannical shit rich people and the politicians they own are already willing to do for fuck-piles of money in our society, right? As far as the donors behind Trump are concerned, a rapid expansion in the number of state “enemies” and targets for repression along with the corresponding expansion of the apparatus necessary to conduct that repression, is potentially one of the most profitable business opportunities in American history.

Quite frankly we could take this discussion a lot further; for example I could point out that capitalism itself is dependent on the marginalization, otherization, and dehumanization of minority or out groups in our society to create whole classes of people it’s legally acceptable to ruthlessly exploit. I could also explain that we live on a boiling planet and billions of people are going to die unless humanity gives up capitalism and the fossil fuels that drive it. If you’re going to keep capitalism while conducting a climate genocide, you’re going to need a political order that looks a lot more like a fascist police state than a democracy. Which makes it all the more telling that our wholly bought and paid for political establishment is doing precisely nothing about climate crisis, but actively building police states, curtailing civil rights, and hardening borders all over the Pig Empire. For now however let’s just keep in mind that there’s potentially trillions of dollars available for folks who want to help transform Trump’s fascist vision for America into reality, and for that reason (among many others) it doesn’t actually matter what’s in the hearts of billionaire donors and an American establishment collaborating with his Christian Nationalist regime.