"Oligarch" shouldn't be a partisan term

When liberals pretend their billionaire supporters are philanthropists, not oligarchs, Trump gains power

“Today an oligarchy is taking shape in America,” President Joe Biden warned in his farewell speech.

Over the last month, the meaning of the word ‘oligarch’ has suddenly changed in the United States. Whereas it once was narrowly reserved for Russian billionaires wielding undemocratic power, the word now—-according to Joe Biden, the New York Times, and other liberal mouthpieces—applies to American billionaires.

Some American billionaires.

The liberal-centrist New York Times, for example, recently issued a critical piece on right-wing 'oligarchs' flooding into DC, buying up expensive properties.

Just days after President Joe Biden warned of an incoming “oligarchy,” the New York Times took the critique and ran with it.

However the Times wasn’t particularly thoughtful about the full political spectrum of extreme wealth in Washington. Billionaire Jeff Bezos bought his extravagant DC mansion during Obama’s presidency. And the Obamas, who today enjoy an estimated fortune of $70 million, later moved into a home just a few blocks away. Who else moved to the same Kalorama neighborhood? Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Meanwhile, Bill and Hillary Clinton, reportedly worth $250 million, have their own mansion on Embassy Row.

Literally and figuratively, the super-rich operate from the same place, and the same place of privilege. They belong in a category of their own, and they live categorically different lives than the rest of us.

Yet liberals are now going to irrational lengths to insist that is not true, creating an alternate reality in which some billionaires are down-to-Earth do-gooders, acting in entirely selfless manner. Democrat mega-donor Bill Gates, who gave a $50-million dark-money donation to Kamala Harris’s campaign, has received a hero’s welcome from the media in recent weeks, for example, celebrated for his philanthropy.

The New York Times’s partisan narratives appear to be straight out of the playbook of the Democratic National Committee. As Ken Martin, newly appointed head of the DNC recently explained, “There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with Democrats, who share our values. And we will take their money. But we’re not taking money from those bad billionaires.”

In the lead up to the election, USAToday profiled the billionaires pouring money into both presidential campaigns, showing that extreme wealth underwrites both major American political parties.

The DNC’s self-serving sentiment says a lot. And it helps explain the success of Donald Trump. Kamala Harris appears to have raised far more money than Trump did, with plenty of support from billionaires. Yet she still lost the election. Is more money—and more billionaires —really the right strategy to beat the political right going forward?

Why not, instead, try to galvanize voters by creating an intelligible, coherent political platform? Why not address the grotesque economic inequalities that allow a few people to become multi-billionaires while billions of people around the globe struggle to provide the basics for their families?

The new, partisan use of “oligarch”—-by liberals to describe right-wing billionaires—-appears to have started with Joe Biden’s farewell speech, in which he used the word to describe Trump’s incoming administration. Biden is right. Men like Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, played an instrumental role in electing Trump. And Musk is now is working closely with Trump to govern the United States. This model of power, where the wealthiest people having the loudest voice, is undemocratic. It can be fairly called oligarchy. And it should be aggressively challenged.

But Musk is only expanding the oligarchical power that liberals have long embraced, supported and defended. During the Obama administration, for example, Bill Gates exercised so much power and influence over the Department of Education that he became colloquially known as “the real Secretary of Education.” Working hand-in-glove with the Obama administration, and buying political support through philanthropic giving, Gates sought change U.S. public education in radical ways.

Gates’s money-in-politics brand of philanthropy was met with democratic resistance by teachers, parents and unions. And Gates’s grand reform plan failed, causing great harm to the public. But liberal news outlets were not calling him an oligarch. They could have been—and should have been. Anthony Cody did in his excellent book from 2014, “The Educator and The Oligarch.”

It’s painful and demoralizing to see liberals still clinging to the institution of billionaires, refusing to acknowledge that extreme wealth—in all of its forms, under any name—threatens democracy. But this behavior is maybe not surprising, if you follow the money.

Should we count on the “democracy-dies-in-darkness” Washington Post to squarely call its owner Jeff Bezos an oligarch? Would the New York Times, financed by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, label him an oligarch? Ditto for Time magazine and Marc Benioff, or the LA Times and Patrick Soon-Shiong. Or what about the dozens of news outlets—-NPR, CNN, The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel—-that take massive donations from the Gates Foundation? Are they going to call Bill Gates an oligarch?

The simple truth is that many Democrats, and many of the outlets politically aligned with them, think they have a self-interest in the preservation of billionaires. And this has been the case for so long as to become the water they swim in, the air they breathe. These liberal institutions operate from the unshakable dogma that billionaires must exist. That was, essentially, the closing argument of the New York Times’s critical review of my book, “The Bill Gates Problem.” As David Enrich wrote, “Billionaires exist. Absent viable alternatives, isn’t it better for the world if they give away their money rather than hoard it?”

This fatalism, and complete disconnect from reality, is unfortunately commonplace among liberals, who simply cannot imagine a world without billionaires, who confuse ‘giving away money’ with buying influence, who cannot see the obvious, viable alternatives right in front of them. What about growing political support for tax reform, including a wealth tax? Why not return the United States to the high tax rates imposed on the super rich just 70 years ago? Why not regulate tech companies before they become monopolies, before they start minting multi-billionaires? Why not work on campaign finance reform, to limit money-in-politics? Why not strengthen and expand the labor movement to give workers a fair share of the pie?

One can argue that a given billionaire is less destructive, or less brazen, than another. There are, perhaps, times and places where that matters. But most of the time, this parsing completely misses the point. The problem isn’t about specific individuals or personalities. It’s not about this billionaire or that billionaire. The problem is structural in nature.

Anytime we allow one person to become obscenely wealthy, we should know that they will, invariably, use this money to buy political influence—-if not through campaign contributions or lobbying, then through philanthropy or political appointments. Rich guys think they know how the world should work. And history shows they’re pretty good at making their voices heard. Extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a few necessarily translates into extreme concentration of power. Billionaires are bad for democracy because they breed oligarchy. And the solution is to dismantle extreme wealth.

The good news is that the new, mainstream use of the word ‘oligarch’ to describe American billionaires—-however partisan—-is a big step in the right direction. We just need to push liberals to take another big step, understanding that their own billionaire supporters are part of the same problem, and a major political liability. That there is no such thing as a good billionaire.