Japanese meteorologist Sakuhei Fujiwhara in 1921 described a weather phenomenon in which two tropical cyclones begin to interact with each other with the potential to produce an unpredictable megacyclone.
This “Fujiwhara Effect” is an apt metaphor for how the future of our democracy is threatened by the confluence of power wielded by billionaires with the populism stoked by Donald Trump’s fanboy adoration of authoritarians. A potential hookup of these forces could devastate our political landscape.
The ultra-rich trying to control governments is nothing new. We saw it in America’s so-called “Gilded Age”—lasting from the end of the 19th century into the early 20th century—when business tycoons like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and J.P. Morgan shaped U.S. industry.
The rise of these “robber barons” gave them enormous influence over politics—often through outright bribery—in a time when “the gap between the rich and poor in America reached astronomical levels… anti-immigrant sentiment raged, leading to enactment of racist laws to restrict immigration… and voter suppression, largely aimed at Black men who had recently won the right to vote, was rampant.”
Sound familiar? As noted by former Commerce Secretary Robert Reich, “America has entered a second Gilded Age.”
The old system of backroom political bosses has become supplanted by the outsize political influence of today’s ultra-wealthy. Jamie Dimon, the current chairman of JPMorgan Chase, made headlines recently by speaking with Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley even as billionaire industrialist Charles Koch endorsed her.
Jamie Dimon.
This political power was created, in large part, by the U.S. Supreme Court gutting of campaign finance controls in the Citizens United case, which gave rise to the campaign entities known today as super PACs, “typically backed by billionaires and multimillionaires, including “dark money” groups which do not report the names of their contributors.”
But it’s the power of the mega-rich over speech that I find most worrisome, because the distribution of speech today is very different than in the 19th and most of the 20th century.
Back then, speech to the masses flowed through a narrow conduit of media controlled through newspapers and eventually broadcast networks. There was an inherent scarcity to the flow of information due, in large part, to technological limitations. Airwave access, for example, was limited by the physical limitations of the broadcast spectrum.
Today, however, the internet and fiber optics make for nearly limitless channels of communication. And while anyone can now “self-publish” online, the power of social media tycoons like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk is essentially unchecked in their ability to influence speech on platforms like Twitter (now known as “X”) and Facebook (owned by Meta).
Nor is the effort by billionaires to control speech limited to social media. The recent university campus controversies over the Hamas-Israel conflict is one example.
Billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman demanded—on social media—that Harvard release the names of students who had signed a pro-Palestine letter so that he could make sure to punish them by not hiring them. No doubt Ackman’s status as a wealthy donor and alum made him especially confident of his ability to instruct Harvard how to manage the free expression of its students. Ackman has been joined by many other rich donors—all wanting universities to listen to the power of their wallets and do their bidding or risk losing their benefactors.
Bill Ackman.
On a bigger scale than universities, tech billionaire Elon Musk whose satellite system and rocket business has made him indispensable to the U.S. government, not only sues his detractors in court—as in his suit against Media Matters (the advocacy group that outed the placement of ads on “X” with hateful speech causing the exodus of ad revenue from the platform)—but also appears to “influence” right-wing state attorney generals to bring the power of the government against his critics.
What this boils down to is one of the basic tenets of authoritarian control, which is to control speech and information.
These titans of free enterprise seem to miss the irony in believing that their wealth entitles them to control other people’s free speech and expression. It’s a perverse form of populism, where those with the most money get to make their own views sound loudest and fuel “populist” sentiments that they favor. Might makes right and wealth makes might.
Coinciding perfectly with this perspective is the loud and popular voice of billionaire former President Donald J. Trump. The leading contender to become the Republican presidential nominee makes no secret of his crush on dictators like Kim Jong Un (remember Trump’s self-described “love letters” from Kim) and Vladimir Putin.
Trump has lost all inhibition in his embrace of his “inner dictator” as he wows his supporters with promises to have shoplifters shot, suggests former Army General Mark Milley deserved the death penalty for standing up to him, and gives campaign speeches short on policy but full of the promise of revenge and retribution.
Trump emulators like Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) Florida echo these violent visions, as DeSantis promises if he is elected president that drug smugglers will be shot on sight at the border, declaring: “We’re going to shoot them stone cold dead.”
Ron DeSantis.
As historian Heather Cox Richardson put it, “part of the attraction of right-wing figures is they offer easy solutions to the complicated issues of the modern world.”
But such seductive simplistic views are abhorrent to democracy. As one democracy expert described to The New York Times, the prospect of Trump being re-elected could be “an existential crisis that the U.S. would face.”
Small wonder that commentators like Ian Bassin, executive director of the NGO Protect Democracy, suggest that the U.S. “is exporting deeply anti-democratic influences” and the respected publication The Economist considers the U.S. a “flawed democracy” along with Greece, Israel, Poland and Brazil.”
The excesses of the Gilded Age led to the emergence of reform—and that is exactly what is needed now.
America is in a moment of crisis where all three branches of government must act to protect democracy. The executive branch, acting through the Justice Department, needs to be unafraid to prosecute all those who support authoritarianism without regard to their former office—other countries are unafraid to prosecute and imprison former leaders and we should do the same.
Such restrictions as DOJ’s policy against taking action too close to an election should be discarded.
The judicial branch needs to treat such former officeholders as they do other defendants and hold them accountable for defying court orders. The legislative branch needs to pass laws to reform the flaws shown by the stress test of Trump’s efforts to steal the election. Chief among those reforms would be to rein in the power granted to the president through the Insurrection Act to use the military to quell domestic disturbances at the president’s discretion.
During Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Trump lackey Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ official, specifically referenced the use of the Insurrection Act to help Trump stay in power.
The Fujiwhara Effect describes the destruction wrought by weather patterns which can be identified and tracked but whose paths cannot be altered. Unlike the weather, however, the looming political crises can not only be identified and tracked but their courses can be altered.
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