When a political movement ostracizes most of the population for not being 100% in agreement with everything that the big donors support, then we should wonder: Has that political movement been captured specifically to render them toothless by keeping them without a lot of support? Historically speaking that has a precedent in the American political past.
In the early days after the fall of the Russian nobility to the communists, there was a lot of excitement in left wing politics in western society. The movie Reds with Warren Beatty shows some of that history. Socialism and Marxism was a hot commodity among the intelligentsia and even among government bureaucrats. So much so that there was a major backlash famously known as The Red Scare. Political and cultural leaders were convinced that there was a communist infiltration scheme to literally take over America. Then all of a sudden in the 1950s, the dangerous communist plot stopped being a big concern and was relegated to the fringes of the right like the John Birch Society. What happened?
We need to go back to the 1920s to understand. The banking and industrial empire of JP Morgan along with their main competitor the Rockefeller oil and financial empire, had been the biggest financial underwriters of the politics of the early 20th century. It was commonly understood that the Republican party was the rich man’s party, the party of big business, while the Democrats were seen as the party for everyone else. But among the Democrats there were also very rich leading bankers and industrialists from the Morgan and Rockefeller empires. While most of the money donated to politicians from the corporate and Wall St. rich went to Republicans, they were also financing Democrats to a lesser degree. What is interesting for us here is how they were also financing the socialists and communists in America.
The long time standard bearer for the left, the magazine The New Republic, was financed by a Standard Oil (Rockefeller) heiress and run by Wall St. connected relatives. Many leftist and socialist/communist organizations of any stature were also getting a lot of their funding from the very rich banking elite. It was not that the upper-class Wall St. bankers were communist or even leftist in their politics, what they were doing as explained by Georgetown University Prof. Carroll Quigley in Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time (1966), was that they were trying to control all major political organizations and movements by financing them as they believed necessary:
More than fifty years ago the Morgan firm decided to infiltrate the Left-wing political movements in the United States. This was relatively easy to do, since these groups were starved for funds and eager for a voice to reach the people. Wall Street supplied both. The purpose was not to destroy … or take over but was really threefold: (1) to keep informed about the thinking of Left-wing or liberal groups; (2) to provide them with a mouthpiece so that they could “blow off steam,” and (3) to have a final veto on their publicity and possibly on their actions, if they ever went “radical.”
There was nothing really new about this decision, since other financiers had talked about it and even attempted it earlier. What made it decisively important this time was the combination of its adoption by the dominant Wall Street financier, at a time when tax policy was driving all financiers to seek tax-exempt refuges for their fortunes, and at a time when the ultimate in Left-wing radicalism was about to appear under the banner of the Third International.
The best example of this alliance of Wall Street and Left-wing publication was The New Republic, a magazine founded by Willard Straight, using Payne Whitney money, in 1914. Straight, who had been assistant to Sir Robert Hart (Director of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service and the head of the European imperialist penetration of China) and had remained in the Far East from 1901 to 1912, became a Morgan partner and the firm’s chief expert on the Far East. He married Dorothy Payne Whitney whose names indicate the family alliance of two of America’s greatest fortunes.
She was the daughter of William C. Whitney, New York utility millionaire and the sister and co-heiress of Oliver Payne, of the Standard Oil “trust.” One of her brothers married Gertrude Vanderbilt, while the other, Payne Whitney, married the daughter of Secretary of State John Hay, who enunciated the American policy of the “Open Door” in China. In the next generation, three first cousins, John Hay (“Jock”) Whitney, Cornelius Vanderbilt (“Sonny”) Whitney, and Michael Whitney (“Mike”) Straight, were allied in numerous public policy enterprises of a propagandist nature, and all three served in varied roles in the late New Deal and Truman administrations.
In these they were closely allied with other “Wall Street liberals,” such as Nelson Rockefeller. The New Republic was founded by Willard and Dorothy Straight, using her money, in 1914, and continued to be supported by her financial contributions until March 23, 1953. The original purpose for establishing the paper was to provide an outlet for the progressive Left and to guide it quietly in an Anglophile direction.
The first editor of The New Republic, the well-known “liberal” Herbert Croly, was always aware of the situation. After ten years in the job, he explained the relationship in the “official” biography of Willard Straight which he wrote for a payment of $25,000. “Of course they [the Straights] could always withdraw their financial support if they ceased to approve of the policy of the paper; and, in that event, it would go out of existence as a consequence of their disapproval.”
Croly’s biography of Straight, published in 1924, makes perfectly clear that Straight was in no sense a liberal or a progressive, but was, indeed, a typical international banker and that The New Republic was simply a medium for advancing certain designs of such international bankers, notably to blunt the isolationism and anti-British sentiments so prevalent among many America progressives, while providing them with a vehicle for expression of their progressive views in literature, art, music, social reform, and even domestic politics.
The associations between Wall Street and the Left, of which Mike Straight is a fair example, are really survivals of the associations between the Morgan Bank and the Left. To Morgan all political parties were simply organizations to be used, and the firm always was careful to keep a foot in all camps. Morgan himself, Dwight Morrow, and other partners were allied with Republicans; Russell C. Leffingwell was allied with the Democrats; Grayson Murphy was allied with the extreme Right; and Thomas W. Lamont was allied with the Left.
Like the Morgan interest in libraries, museums, and art, its inability to distinguish between loyalty to the United States and loyalty to England, its recognition of the need for social work among the poor, the multi-partisan political views of the Morgan firm in domestic politics went back to the original founder of the firm, George Peabody (1795–1869).
To this same seminal figure may be attributed the use of tax-exempt foundations for controlling these activities, as may be observed in many parts of America to this day, in the use of Peabody foundations to support Peabody libraries and museums. Unfortunately, we do not have space here for this great and untold story, but it must be remembered that what we do say is part of a much larger picture.
Prof. Quigley goes into a lot of detail nevertheless, much more than quoted here, especially in ch. 17 where he explains how the communist organizations of the past were made dependent, secretly, on Wall St. money and leadership through family members. And when they had become too much of a bother by the anti-communist political attacks in Congress, they simply pulled the plug on their funding. The socialist and communist movement in America then fell apart and became a shadow of its former self:
It was this group of people, whose wealth and influence so exceeded their experience and understanding, who provided much of the framework of influence which the Communist sympathizers and fellow travelers took over in the United States in the 1930’s. It must be recognized that the power that these energetic Left-wingers exercised was never their own power or Communist power but was ultimately the power of the international financial coterie, and, once the anger and suspicions of the American people were aroused, as they were by 1950, it was a fairly simple matter to get rid of the Red sympathizers.
This is also what has happened to the left in the west today. I have heard for some time from many people wondering “What happened to the Left? Why do they support war, why are they aligned with big business, why are they openly disdainful of the working class?”
After Occupy Wall Street became a big deal some years back, the financial elite class became fearful of the new hatred they felt coming their way as the newly despised “One Percent.” They felt they were being blamed for all the problems in society, they were very upset, not being used to such vitriol and anger coming directly towards them and their businesses. Traditionally many in the upper-class corporate world have felt that the public, if organized and angry enough, could lead to new government regulations interfering with their plans. They believed that the public, when organized, could inspire politicians seeking to appease the crowd, or to win office, to come after them through regulations and investigations. In a decision that would lead to the situation we are in today, they decided to return to the corporate establishment’s political policy of the early 20th century: They would once again try to secretly gain influence over the left.
I hear people wonder all the time: How have social norms transformed so fast? Practically overnight it has been made socially and politically dangerous to not fully support any aspect of identity politics. It is now dangerous to criticize any of the various “progressive” ideas (except anti-war and pro-working class) that were only supported on the political fringes just a handful of years ago. It was Barack Obama who said he did not support gay marriage when he first ran for president. Can you imagine any Democrat saying that just a few years later?
That cultural transformation and its political support from Democrats was not by accident, nor did it organically move outwards from liberal college campuses as many believe. All evidence instead suggests that it was a carefully thought-out plan to counter the threat of the militant Occupy Wall Street movement in late 2011, which the elite corporate world saw as a real threat — by infiltrating and co-opting the progressive label (remember how Hillary Clinton called herself a progressive?) — and then turning the progressives and liberals, through money and propaganda, into a base of support for Wall St. agendas.
What is the left known for today? Mostly for Identity politics and climate change activism. What happened to the anti-Wall St and anti-War left? Were they bought out, transformed, defanged, and purposefully refocused for the benefit of the corporate world — by changing their driving ideology into being singularly concerned about racial and ethnic issues, cultural issues, sexual and gender issues, and climate?
The above charts show how right after Occupy Wall St. in late 2011 we saw a sudden priority-shift in the corporate controlled media.
Identity Politics serves the corporate world in 2 ways.
1. It divides people. It tries to change the working class from seeing themselves as a member of the working class with the concomitant class-based concerns about wages, health care, housing costs, etc., which had unified their class in the past through unions and political activism, into seeing themselves as belonging to separate and atomized tribal group identities based on race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. Divide and conquer is the idea behind corporate support for Identity Politics. They are literally paying woke ideologues to promote separatism between different racial, sexual, and ethnic identities, and even hatred towards people of a different race or sexuality — through decrees on corporate HR policies. And of course by changing what is taught in school as well. Divide and conquer — it’s the oldest trick in the book.
2. Identity politics promotes the idea that all you have to do to be a good person is to say that you support all the various racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender tribal agendas. Being an “ally” is all it takes to be considered a member of good standing from the new progressive worldview. A corporation may have terrible policies against unions, workers health and safety, and workers rights in general, but now they can be given a pass by the liberal new progressives by simply being “an ally” to the various identity groups. What does being an ally entail? Not much. Simply voicing your support, and if you have big money, by giving money which is tax deductible to various identity based organizations and leaders. Then you are good to go with “progressives” and all who consider liberalism a virtue.
We see this play out all the time. People say something that some tribal member believes is not 100% supportive of their tribal belief system, they then start a campaign to have that person or group censored by mass reporting. High profile business people, journalists, corporations, celebrities, and politicians then see a chance to prove they are good people and therefore should not be criticized. They then join the mob attack making it much bigger in order to cancel the chosen target by trying to make them unemployable, branding them as a publicly outed poisonous person.
Identity tribe members are constantly being mentally conditioned by repetitious messaging from media, politicians, ideologues, journalists, schools and celebrities to see themselves as under constant attack. The idea is to convince them they are constantly being threatened from all sides. The worst types of corporate criminals and politicians will then say they love those besieged tribes, saying they are their loyal allies and will fight their enemies. Those politicians and corporations can support exploitation of poor people, they can send billions of tax dollars to wars for profit—but if they claim to be identity tribal allies then they are good people and therefore should not be criticized — for anything.
Their not-so-subtle message is that they are essential because they are the protectors of the fragile, helpless, guileless and innocent identity tribes — whose very existence is under constant attack and threat by evil non-ally people everywhere. In return those hero protectors should themselves be protected from all criticism — they are beyond reproach due to their hero status.
That is the essence of the New Progressive World Order. You see that messaging everywhere, it’s become an essential part of western political propaganda. You see this type of messaging at all the big economic and security conferences for the power elite at Davos, Aspen, etc:
War is needed because the enemy is not an ally. If not defeated, they will target the entire world. No tribe will be safe. Anyone who is anti-war is by definition not an ally, they are poisonous people out to make you feel unsafe, out to harm you. Support your local pro-war politician and corporate leader/ally/hero.
The new version of the “progressive left” has been cultivated over a number of years by the careful doling out of money and positions in the NGO and corporate world. How was the transformation from being political progressives into identity progressives achieved? The leading activist organizations of the traditional left who were focused on worker’s rights, anti-war activism, and human rights in general — were seeing what and who was being funded by the big donors and foundations — and so were coerced to learn the new language and agendas of the identity based “progressive” activism. It was made very clear that the new left is to be aligned with the new corporate and political elite establishment because they have transformed into supporting identity causes and are therefore “allies” i.e., progressives, like…Hillary Clinton.
Which means being anti-Wall St., being against the exploitation of workers, being anti-War, being against the agendas of the “allies” who control the corporate and political “space” — that is not going to win you friends and funding from the big donors bankrolling the new identity based progressive left — because that is them. The corporate and political elites who have traditionally gained wealth and power from greed and exploitation—have become, like the JP Morgan and Rockefeller financial empires of the past, the main funders of the new so-called progressive left.
Corporate employees and university personnel who questioned the New Party Line now did so at risk of being fired or punished. All of this happened just between 2012 and 2016, with no public debate or discussion within the progressive camp, and no attempts to persuade conservatives, libertarians, liberals, or even pre-2012 progressives — only a sudden diktat from above, accompanied by contemptuous threats of punishment. In 2012, progressives were allowed to agree with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at the time that marriage should be between a biological man and a biological woman.
Who decides what is and is not permissible for American progressives to think or discuss or support? The answer is the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Omidyar Network, and other donor foundations, an increasing number of which are funded by fortunes rooted in Silicon Valley. It is this donor elite, bound together by a set of common class prejudices and economic interests, on which most progressive media, think tanks, and advocacy groups depend for funding.
This is made very clear by the foundations and other funding sources ultimately controlled by the corporate world: The Democrats are your allies, the Republicans are your white supremacist enemies. You either go along with the Democrats in all they want, or you are no longer considered a member of good standing on the new progressive left. Which means no more funding. And even having your job and lifestyle threatened depending on how much you want to fight against “the new progressive world order.” Which btw is pro-War aka against “authoritarians,” and against the needs of the working class aka “white supremacists.”
Whomever challenges the new Corporate and Democrat party identity based corporate/political agendas and decrees — they are now treated as a de facto part of the worst identity group of all: white supremacist authoritarian extremists. Even if you are not white. You may hold traditional leftist views, you may work to help the needy and downtrodden, you may call yourself a socialist or even a communist, but if you challenge the “Good Ally” people and agendas of the Corporate world/Democrat Party — you are a white supremacist nazi extremist who must be stopped by any and all methods.
What to speak of if your political and cultural sensibilities are on the conservative end of the spectrum. Then you are their declared super-enemy, whom they will seek to destroy no matter what — because they need to prove that they are really and truly “progressives and allies” to all the identity-based tribes. Of course, they are no such thing, and their persecution of conservatives has nothing to do with being against conservative views. They just believe they have to convince the new identity based “progressive” tribes who are not in their social class (rich and powerful) that they are truly “an ally.” So, they fight the perceived enemies of the identity ideologues to prove their mettle as really on their side.
Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF, thought he could buy status as a “progressive” hero in just that way. And he was right. He went from being an ordinary stock trader to hanging out with the rich and famous because he gave lots of money and said the right things about identity politics. He was celebrated as the face of the now supposed “good” and “progressive” financial elites. FTX made him one of the richest people in the world. It was also supposedly the progressive model for a new capitalism “that cared for the systemically oppressed.”
Sam Bankman-Fried revealed the mentality behind the corporate elite support of “progressive” agendas.
Wall St. and their liberal political lackeys have devised a war on the traditional progressive left by co-opting, buying out, and transforming that identity into the farcical circus tent full of clowns (see FTX) that it has become — where being pro-war and anti-working class is a mandatory tribal badge of authenticity so that the traditional left no longer poses a threat to corporate profiteering and war agendas.
The so-called allies in corporate and political “spaces” are not socialists, not communists, nor anything like that, like many on the right believe them to be. They are the political disciples of the Wall St. titans of the early 20th century who funded the communist and left liberal organizations of that time. The new progressive identity based left of today is nothing more than tools of the upper-class corporate and political elites who are using them, confusing them, and ultimately abusing them. This can be seen most vividly in the attempt to prove their allyship to the black and brown “communities” by “reimagining” criminal justice and policing.
In order to prove their allyship they have supported new anti-enforcement policies, new anti-bail policies, and new short-term sentencing policies. That along with the constant promotion of self-promoting ideologues and journalists who constantly claim that everything and everyone in America is anti-minority and racist — is inspiring and inciting anger and resentment among young people who grow up hearing that day in and day out. That is creating a perception among young people that the rules of society do not apply to them.
If America and everyone is so racist, terrible, and evil — as the ideologues, politicians, journalists, podcasters, teachers, and celebrities say it is — then it is perfectly alright to treat society with a total disrespect and disregard for any and all past social norms. That new attitude of being justified to not care about law and order, combined with the new lax criminal justice policies — has led to a massive increase of crime and suffering in minority communities. Which is leading to more and more store closures in those communities. That is what the new progressive/corporate identity based alliance has wrought. Ideologues are motivated to engender hate towards America by being rewarded with funding and high paying jobs by inspiring hatred among young people of America through teaching “anti-racism.”
A young generation is being inspired to hate and anger towards society as a whole, thereby seeing it as their right to steal, rob, attack, and even kill — because America is so terribly racist and evil. They are being indoctrinated into seeing other people and American society in general as deserving no respect and no mercy — because they have become convinced by day in and day out propaganda, funded by corporate money, that America and its people do not deserve any respect because they are all racist and evil. That worldview is reinforced constantly by politicians, journalists, celebrities, teachers, corporations, and ideologues.
The attempt to corral the traditional left, to defang it, to transform it, has led to the newer and much more serious and dangerous problems of a massive increase of violence and crime — in the very minority communities they supposedly support. They have betrayed them by their scheming to use them to fulfill their own corporate and political agenda to destroy the left.
