Authleft: The Rise of the Influence-Industrial Complex

During President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address he warned us of the military-industrial complex, which is a “network of institutions involved in the production of weapons and military technologies.”

Over the last few years, I’ve been warning people about the influence-industrial complex, which I define as a “network of major institutions involved in the production of influence and influence technologies.”

Hand grenades and handguns vs. hard drives and hard drugs.

We must be on guard against the influence-industrial complex — Big Media, Big Tech, Big Finance, Big Education, Big Healthcare, Big Government — because much like the military-industrial complex it’s a fear-mongering power-generation machine.

In the 21st century, hard power is much less powerful than soft power.

Due to technological advancements, the influence-industrial complex has been able to centralize control like never before in American history. Their soft power has made us softer and therefore even more reliant on them to think, move, and feel.

When a company is small it’s all about offering better products at lower prices, but as its market share grows then its modus operandi starts to shift from seeking growth to imposing control, innovating to regulating, climbing higher to kicking down.

For this reason, big business loves big government (and vice versa).

The influence-industrial complex has no individual leader, but it’s just an assortment of individuals in a wide variety of fields who use their high-level positions as CEO, journalist, investor, educator, union leader, etc. to then advocate & lobby for the federal government to help them concentrate power of, by, and for each other. In God blue checkmarks we trust.

Oligarchists are going to oligarchy.

Oligarchy: is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people.

Oligarchists support both Republicans and Democrats because they’re primarily driven by control, not ideology.

Today, it’s ostensibly about combating inequality and protecting public health, but tomorrow it could be more about “order,” “religion,” “purity,” “victory,” “security,” “unity,” and/or “patriotism.”

The influence-industrial complex has concentrated power under Republican and Democratic Administrations whereby every year federal taxes, bureaucracy, spending, and regulations continue to grow like a parasite on the free market.

Under a bipartisan coalition, the federal government shut down the US economy and spent $5 trillion, which means the sovereign debt acquired per American was $15,200. Most of that went to overhead and our overlords.

But the case I’d like to make here is that oligarchists are increasingly Democrats.

Over time as the political parties have become more polarized and more hateful of each other one of the consequences is that rank-and-file Republicans have become even more distrustful of authority whereas Democrats have cozied to it.

So yes there are a lot of Republican politicians, especially those who’ve been in the swamp for decades, who’ve voted for bigger budgets, but overall Republicans want to reduce the federal government’s power whereas Democrats want to increase it for the benefit of their greatest donor: the influence-industrial complex.

Big Tech

• In 2020, Silicon Valley overwhelmingly donated to the Democratic Party: Netflix 98%, Twitter 98%, Google 80%, Facebook 80%, Apple 80%, Microsoft 75%, Amazon 75%. President Trump was banned by Big Tech for “inciting violence” even though there obviously isn’t a court in America that concluded such. Big Tech has donated millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ organizations who push an anti-conservative agenda (not injecting my opinion, but just stating a fact). Speaking of facts, their “fact-checkers” are exclusively liberal organizations who enforce a fill-in-the-blank terms of service on “hate speech” and “misinformation,” which conveniently go unenforced when hating on conservatives or spreading misinformation about “Russian collusion” or Kyle Rittenhouse.

Big Media

• Virtually every single actor is a Democrat. Most of them are on the far-left. The only “Republican” actor I’m aware of is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, but even he endorsed Joe Biden. In 2018, of the more than $4 million in federal donations made by the top Hollywood executives and entertainers, 99.7% went to Democrats and Democratic-leaning PACs. And virtually every single mainstream news network is leftwing (except Fox News) and every single mainstream news publication is leftwing (except The New York Post). According to FEC data, 88% of journalists and 91% of editors are Democrats.

Big Finance

• The top 5 financial-sector donors to Democratic campaigns had given nearly twice as much as the top 5 donors of Republicans for the 2020 campaign cycle. Biden’s campaign has pulled in roughly $3 million from commercial banks, compared with $1.4 million for Trump. The next top recipient was Bernie Sanders at $831K. In 2018, Senate Democrats received three times more contributions from donors associated with the big four financial companies (JMP, BAC, C, WFC) than Senate Republicans.

Big Education

• According to The Washington Post who used FEC data, 90% of professors are Democrats (Harvard faculty 97%) and 79% of teachers are Democrats (87% high school, 69% music, 97% English, 99% health). 83% of academic administrators are Democrats. In 2020, teachers set a new record in their political donations by donating $150 million. Over 90% ($129.6 million) of their donations went to Democrats. Since 1980, the NEA and AFT have contributed nearly $57.4 million to federal campaigns, an amount that is about 30% higher than any other single corporation or union. About 95% of political donations from teachers unions have gone to Democrats.

Big Healthcare

• Surgeons and dentists tend to be more Republican, physicians evenly split, but 62% healthcare administrators, 66% nurses, 69% of physician executives, 90% physician-scientists, and 90% of mental health professionals are Democrats. In 2020, the American Medical Association (AMA), which is the largest doctor organization, donated 54% to Democrats. In 2021, they embraced a new “anti-racist equity plan” committed to utilizing leftist critical race theory. The National Nurses United (NNU), which is the largest nurse organization, actively lobbies for Medicare for All. Big Pharma has contributed $975K to the Biden campaign while they gave $360K to Trump’s campaign. According to Open Secrets, in 2020, healthcare professionals gave $286 million to Democrats and $167 million to Republicans.

Big Government

• Studies show that the longer one works in the government the more pro-government they become. This makes rational sense because it’s in their self-interest to want to grow their own department’s budget & power. Federal employees donated at least $1.8 million to the major candidates for president in 2020 with nearly 60% of that total going to Joe Biden, which is down from 2016 when Hillary Clinton received 95%. The one leg Republicans have traditionally had in the influence-industrial complex is the military-industrial complex, but even the Defense Department seems to be moving Left with its increasingly woke policies.

In addition, billionaires and millionaires tend to be leftwing. Even the supposedly right-wing billionaires like the Koch Brothers have some left-wing social views such as on gay marriage. 134 billionaires donated to Biden vs. 101 for Trump even though the latter is a billionaire, was the incumbent and had been fundraising for his reelection since 2017. Overall in 2020, Joe Biden won the poor vote and the rich vote whereas Trump won the middle-class vote. This is to be expected because oligarchs pray on “the masses” whereas as Aristotle pointed out — lowercase republicans derive their power from “the middle.”

The church has traditionally been an influential conservative force, but the influence-industrial complex has eroded its influence because it threatens their power by preaching “the one” over “the few,” and where religious people offer an alternative in what it means to “connect,” “tune in,” “educate,” “heal,” and “help.”

In the end, regardless of your political persuasion, it should be obvious to you that the “influence-industrial complex” is a powerful phenomenon aimed at empowering itself and the Democratic Party at the expense of We the People. The Left and Right must unite if we’re going to take power back from the top.