So who are the corporations and billionaires funding the American far right?
A lot of the discourse around the US far right, on both the left and the right, has presented it as being essentially a working class movement.
White working class Southerners (perhaps with some manipulation from Russia) advocating for their prejudiced world view, the narrative goes.
But what if that's not the situation? What if the rise of the far right has been funded with millions of dollars from extremely wealthy individuals?
Where are the resources coming from?
You probably already know about Rupert Murdoch with Fox News and Elon at Twitter, but there's a few others...
"Two billionaire Texas brothers whose fortunes derive from oil and gas fracking have pumped millions of dollars into rightwing media outfits that have promoted climate-crisis denialism.
...
"Farris and Dan Wilks have each doled out millions of dollars through separate foundations over the last decade to a number of high-profile conservative and religious groups including the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.
"The Wilks brothers, for instance, have poured millions of dollars into PragerU and the Daily Wire
...
"In 2015, Farris Wilks gave $4.7m to help launch the Daily Wire and remains an owner of the media company, whose founding editor and co-owner Ben Shapiro has forged ties with Dennis Prager, the PragerU founder and talkshow host. Shapiro and Prager are slated to attend a PragerU “founders’ retreat” in September for donors who give at least $100,000 a year."
"[One America News] founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives.
"AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms ... according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant."
"[Robert] Mercer is a Christian conservative, gun enthusiast, a climate change denier, religious, small-government proponent and a man who despises the political establishment as incompetent and corrupt. He has donated over $100 million (€84 million) to various right-wing candidates and think-tanks. Most of that money has gone through the Mercer Family Foundation, run by Robert Mercer's daughter Rebekah.
"The Mercers hold a major stake in a company called Cambridge Analytica, which uses digital data to tailor election propaganda to voters.
"The Mercers first met Andrew Breitbart, the founder of what is now Breitbart News Network in 2011 ... The Mercers also invested $10 million in Breitbart and gained a large stake in the nascent company."
"Rebekah Mercer, the 47-year-old daughter of major Republican donor Robert Mercer, is a founding investor of Parler. She increasingly pulls the strings at the company, according to people familiar with the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private business matters. She holds the majority stake in Parler and controlled two of three board seats as of early February — a board to which she recently appointed allies."
"Prominent conservative venture capitalists including Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance are investing in free speech-oriented video streaming site Rumble Video, the company said Wednesday.
"The deal, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, marks PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel’s first investment in a social media company since he bought a large stake of Facebook as an early investor in 2004. It also means that Thiel is supporting a competitor to Facebook while he sits on Facebook’s board.
"That represents a major boost for Rumble, which aims to challenge the dominance of platforms that conservatives claim unfairly restrict free speech, including YouTube and Facebook.
"Rumble’s users include popular right-wing internet personalities like Donald Trump Jr., former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, commentator Dan Bongino and writer Dinesh D’Souza."
"Last year, Rumble received a major investment from a venture capital firm co-founded by J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio. The firm, Narya Capital, got a seat on Rumble’s board, and its more than seven million shares place it among the company’s top 10 shareholders, according to securities filings. Mr. Vance also took a personal Rumble stake worth between $100,000 and $250,000, his financial disclosures show.
"Narya is backed by the prime patron of Mr. Vance’s Senate campaign, the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. And it was Mr. Thiel who played a leading role in Narya’s Rumble investment last year, becoming what the platform’s chief executive described as its first outside investor.
"The investment fits into an enduring narrative of Mr. Thiel, who has expressed skepticism of democracy and advocated keeping the airwaves open for hard-right voices since his student days at Stanford."
"Peter Thiel didn't just wake up one day with a net worth of roughly $4.9 billion.
"His claims to fame largely start as the don of the PayPal Mafia — a nickname embraced by PayPal's slate of co-founders, which also included Elon Musk. Though the digital banking service raised just $3 million in venture capital on its launch in 1999, PayPal was ultimately sold in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Thiel's 3.5% stake brought him an estimated $55 million which he used to start his empire.
"Then there was the $500,000 "angel investment" he gave Mark Zuckerberg in 2005. That 10.2% stake in Facebook turned into more than $1 billion in 2012."
You need to read a lot more closely. You missed some important details.
One thing that was not mentioned in that was the fact that Joe Lieberman was an independent that leaned very much Republican. So he does not count towards the majority. So that's even one less.
Oh! How convenient. Democrats, that ran as Democrats, are referred to as Democrats, and are funded by various "Democrat" funding orgs such as the DNC or the DCCC, are suddenly not Democrats when it comes to actions in congress that might matter.
Maybe we shouldn't vote for people just because they have a D next to their name?