Thom Hartmann wrote an important article recently on the occasion of the far-right election win in what was formerly East Germany. It is called: “Germany’s Far-Right and Trump’s Billionaires Are Proving FDR’s Darkest Warning Was Right.”
He reminded us what FDR’s “New Deal” accomplished in creating the largest middle class in American history—over 50% of the population—by taking on “his generation’s oligarchs” in the midst of the Great Depression. In a speech in 1936, FDR talked of the “privileged princes of these new economic dynasties thirsting for power, reaching out for control over government itself.”
FDR’s warning sounds spot on today in light of what is going on in our post Citizens United world where, thanks to John Roberts’ SCOTUS, billionaires can buy politicians and judicial nominees with impunity.
Said FDR: “These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.” The flag and the Constitution, he insisted, “stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.”
The Great Depression gave birth to fascism that swept across Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain and birthed WWII. Hartmann concludes: History tells us that when ordinary people are forced to watch the rich buy their government, and that government then fails to sustain them, they lose faith in democracy long before they realize it was actually unregulated capitalism that screwed them. Invariably, that’s when a strongman shows up promising to ‘take their country back,’ and they cheer.
Roosevelt made democracy work for working people and made “the morbidly rich pay for it” with 90% taxes. This worked for forty years when “America boasted the largest middle class the world had ever seen.” Republicans then, as now, complained of “socialism,” but the oligarchs of the time “pulled out of politics and went back to just doing business and getting rich.”
Nixon’s Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell began the process we are witnessing today of “turning America into a full-blown oligarchy.” SCOTUS’s Citizens United decision declared corporations are people, and they and billionaires can spend untold amounts to buy elections. Reagan set the tone by saying government (and regulations) were the problem, and the middle class should declare war on the poorest and least powerful among us. Today, the government is pouring “trillions into the money bins of Zuch, Musk, Trump, and Bezos.”
Musk’s investment of $278 million in the 2024 election bought him relief from investigations into himself and his businesses. It gave him the power to employ DOGE to dismantle many government agencies originally designed to make government work as well as assist the poor in America, Africa, and elsewhere.
Peter Thiel, sugar daddy to the current vice president and a big winner in defense department and ICE sweepstakes, declared back in 2009 that freedom and democracy were no longer compatible.
Eastern Germany felt that their government, committed to deregulation and privatization, had forgotten them and voted for a Kremlin-linked AfD party.
Hartmann’s medicine for this democratic debacle is two-fold: Achieve a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. And to vote and get out the vote in this year’s national election.
His agenda? Real antitrust enforcement, free or low-cost healthcare and college for the middle class, more widespread unionization, rational immigration reforms, and a return to high taxes on the morbidly rich: all programs the billionaires and their lickspittle elected Republicans oppose. (And label as “socialist” as they did to FDR’s reforms in the 1930s.)
Journalist Gil Duran’s book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, complements Hartmann’s important analysis while sounding the alarm on AI billionaires busy determining our and democracy’s futures. We will discuss it on Monday.
To be continued.
*Thom Hartmann, “Germany’s Far-Right and Trump’s Billionaires Are Proving FDR’s Darkest Warning Was Right.” The Hartmann Report, September 8, 2026.
Banner Image: Creeping fascism: tracking the steady rise of the far-right AfD party in Saxony-Anhalt state election polls since 2022. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
What warnings do you sense in FDR’s vision that apply to today’s politics? Do you agree with Hartmann’s solutions? What others would you suggest?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Sins of the Spirit, Blessing of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society
TRUMP AND THE MAGA MOVEMENT AS ANTICHRIST: Recognizing the Archetype of Evil in Our Time
The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors for Awakening the Sacred Masculine
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug: Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
