It's Not the Militias, It's The Billionaires

 

It is convenient to some that the public consider groups like the bumbling Michigan militia to represent right wing authoritarianism in the United States.  As long as the majority of Americans are focused on the behavior of fringe groups like these, we won't be looking at the real fascists in our country.  We'll ignore the "libertarian" think tanks, corporate trade associations and media conglomerates that are the real source of authoritarian thinking in the United States.  

Today, the Trump White House jumped on board with a call for the US to forget about trying to mitigate the impact of the pandemic through public health measures and instead focus on the development of "herd immunity" by allowing business as usual, except for high risk and the elderly.  

Today's White House embrace of herd immunity comes as a sort of endorsement of a declaration from a group of scientists who are proponents of just turning the virus loose on healthy younger Americans.  Legitimate scientists and public health experts believe that this approach would lead to a massive death toll in the US.   So, who are the herd immunity advocates?  One group at the center of this movement is American Institute for Economic Research, a far right "think tank" that is part of the Koch network of intellectually bankrupt organizations tasked with the goal of masking libertarian/anti-democratic initiatives with pseudo-intellectual camouflage.  

Corporate records filed with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) confirm that the AIER operates as part of a Koch-funded network of climate science deniers who see environmental regulation as a threat to its vision of unfettered, deregulated markets....

... the AIER is not just a free-market think-tank. It receives a large bulk of its funding from its own investment activities, not least in fossil fuels, energy utilities, tobacco, technology and consumer goods. AIER owns a major investment firm, American Investment Services Inc., which harnesses the think-tank’s research to help inform investment advice. Security Exchange Commission filings seen by Byline Times confirm that AIER’s American Investment Services Inc. runs a private fund valued at $284,492,000.

The real authoritarian threat to our country isn't the right wing militias, it's the well funded, fascist leaning far right billionaires and their fellow travelers who pose the real danger.  Those militia freedom fighters are just a pale imitation of Hitler's Sturmabteilung.  The right wing billionaires realize that they can take over our country without violence.  Control the media, control the courts and own enough legislators and you control the country.