Thread by @docrussjackson

One of the scariest things I've read.

Respected historian Nancy MacLean contends that James McGill Buchanan's influential philosophy is behind the dramatic, unnerving & profound changes we're seeing played out in real time.

Please, read the article.

ineteconomics.org/perspectives/b…

If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought & promoted, & how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.

Britain is heading the same way.

MacLean makes her case in a meticulously researched book, 'Democracy in Chains', a finalist for the National Book Award.

While Americans grapple with Trump’s chaos, we may be missing key changes, which once locked into place, there may be no going back.

penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/d…

It's not simply the neoliberalism of outsourcing, privatization and shrinking the state.

The US Libertarian billionaire project - now playing out in the UK as well as the US - is nothing less than a permanent alteration power relations: dismantle democracy & install #oligarchy.

Buchanan thought you best understood humans as individuals seeking personal advantage. In the 50s Americans commonly assumed that elected officials acted in the public interest.

Buchanan wanted to “tear down" this idea: His ideas came to be known as “public choice" theory.

Buchanan influenced the Koch bros. They want a private governing elite of corporate power, wholly released from public accountability. Voter suppression, attacks on the legal system, sowing public distrust of govt institutions were all tactics toward the goal of permanent change.

Shrinking big government is not really the point. The oligarchs require a Govt with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people: this requires greatly expanding police powers “to control the resultant popular anger" & the use of pre-emptive suppression.

“This includes giving them the right to cut off people who don’t—or can’t—pay their bills".

People who “failed to foresee & save money for their future needs” are to be treated, as Buchanan put it, “as subordinate members of the species, akin to…animals who are dependent.’”

Buchanan was not a dystopian novelist. He was a very influential & sinister Nobel Laureate.

I'm not one for conspiracies, but the evidence is clear: Libertarian billionaires are undermining democracy in order to (re)introduce oligarchy.

It's what 'the culture war' is all about.

The odds are stacked against #democracy as we know it surviving.

Any Government will struggle to prevent the return to #oligarchy, well under way in the #USA.

The world's richest 1% have amassed around $158 TRILLION.

The entire US annual budget is $4.4 trillion.

#FightBack

Buchanan was a member of the Board of Advisors of 'The Independent Institute' (free-market think-tank advocating reforms for American healthcare since the early 1990s), the ultra-free-market UK-based IEA, & a member (& for a time President) of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Many scholars see The Mont Pelerin Society - founded in 1947 by elites 'worried about the dangers faced by civilization' - as the foundational organisation of #neoliberalism & their ideas contained the seeds of the contemporary 'Culture War', first manifested in 1990s America.

The #MPS 'Statement of Aims' makes explicit key Libertarian free-market concerns coming to the fore in the last five years, & seen in groups as diverse as the ERG, Spiked, free-market think-tanks, Toby Young's 'Free Speech Union' & most recently, Laurence Fox's 'Reclaim Party':

Buchanan was also a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the influential US Libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute (who Liz Truss met with in 2018) - a Board Director of which is billionaire John Malone, linked with new UK Fox News style channel GB News.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1299842…

The Cato Institute was founded as the Charles Koch Foundation & advocates low taxes, individual liberty, limited govt, free markets, privatization of govt services & institutions, & opposes minimum wage laws which 'violate the freedom of contract'.

Can you see what it is yet?

So what shaped Buchanan's views?

People are complex, dynamic creatures & so I want to avoid being either overly conspiratorial or absurdly reductionist. For example, Buchanan correctly identified that many politicians & 'public servants' are indeed Machiavellian & self-serving.

Buchanan's original political & economic views were heavily socialist, & were reinforced by his stint spent in the US Navy. While serving in the military, he felt soldiers from the south & west regions were discriminated against in favor of soldiers from the New England region.

He believed soldiers from some universities were promoted because they were seen as a part of the establishment, which he loathed. This formative experience could have led him, like Rupert Murdoch (despite the widely held mischaracterisation) to be fiercely 'anti-establishment'.

Buchanan said in an interview that “Out of the 20 boys from the establishment universities, 12 or 13 were picked, against a background of a total of 600. It was overtly discriminatory towards those of us who were not members of the establishment".

Buchanan went so far as to say he would have become a communist had he been approached by a recruiter, & said his socialist views were less "pro-government" & more "anti-big business". His ideology changed at The University of Chicago, where he began studying under Frank Knight.

Imho there's a popular misunderstanding about the rich Libertarian Right among many on the Left: they see themselves not as an 'elite' intent on undermining democracy, but like Farage, Rees-Mogg, Banks, Fox etc, as 'anti-establishment' figures, intent on securing radical freedom.

We saw this play out in Brexit & Trump: characterising them as the elite or establishment is of limited benefit.

People❤️the concept of freedom & the Libertarian Right have mobilised it far more effectively than the Left - as freedom FROM the EU & 'Leftist ideological tyranny':

The Right provokes the Left with deliberately offensive rhetoric; the Left responds in a way which makes us seem intolerant of free speech; the Right say this PROVES the Left's 'ideological tyranny' which threatens EVERYONE'S freedom, positioning themselves as freedom-fighters!

We ALL get angry, but ALL of us on the Left need to recognise this process & accept that responding to their trap with increasingly angry & intolerant responses is an ineffective strategy (it doesn't reduce the offensive provocation, it increases it) & counterproductive strategy.

In writing this thread, hopefully I'm putting out information which is useful in identifying the strategies & motives of the grotesquely wealthy individuals who are a threat to the objective of a fairer, greener & more inclusive society, with much less polarisation.

Identifying potential weaknesses in our strategies is not capitulation!

We must continue to resist hyper-corporatism, exploitation, environmental harm & brutal reductions in basic welfare with everything we've got!

I just feel we need to formulate & share better strategies.