The Oligarch Chronicles Part 6

The religion-corporate hybrid

Iran’s oligarchy operates through a fusion of military, religious, and economic elites.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is both a military force and a vast economic empire, controlling construction, telecoms, oil, and smuggling networks.

The Bonyad, outwardly a charitable trusts, function as opaque economic entities that siphon wealth to clerical elites.

Khatam al-Anbiya is the IRGC’s engineering and industrial arm. Setad (Execution of Imam Khomeini’s order) is one of the largest conglomerates under Supreme Leader control.

Iran’s repressive apparatus, including the Basij militia, serves as the street-level enforcer of this oligarch system, violently crushing protest movements and policing ideological dissent.

The regime’s ultra conservatism uses moral panic and national security narratives to suppress populist demands and safeguard the wealthy few.

In the US, the invented prosperity doctrine of far-right Christian nationalists has gained enormous power.

Trump has installed white Christian nationalists and prosperity doctrine preachers in key government roles. Trump was prayed over in the White House by a group of Christian nationalists.

Emblematic of the far-right part is the promotion of hatred and fear against 2SLGBTQIA+ and transgendered people.

Anti-immigration policies and opposition to any efforts to ensure racial equality also figure prominently. The example is Trump’s efforts to ban Diversity, Equality and Inclusiveness, everywhere in the US.

These far-right Christian nationalists strongly believe that America was founded as a white Christian nation and are pushing hard to make the US a Christian theocracy with no separation between church and state. Alarmingly their main organizing tools are hate and fear.

Trump has created an anti-Christian task force where we will see more bible messaging in classrooms and public places. Louisiana has already mandated that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom.

There is no formal agreement to be seen between US oligarchs and Christian nationalists, however, both oligarchs and Christian nationalists have the same goals opposing government intervention in the economy, tax cuts, deregulation and eliminating social safety nets.

In Russia, the oligarchs are forging closer ties with the Russian Orthodox church. They are providing financial support and Trump like public displays of religious affiliation, attempting to gain more legitimacy for state leaders. Russian money held in Cyprus looks to be linked to religious institutions and foundations.

Indonesia appears to be using religion to influence political and economic reform in favor of the wealthy. In both Africa and Latin America, the rise of Pentecostalism is linked to reforms that favor the wealthy. In some European countries, Christian democrats have long played a role in implementing economic reforms that favor the wealthy.

In Egypt, Islamic principles are used to support faith-based development and promote volunteerism that benefits the wealthy’s ideals.

The religions of the world that were initially created to deal with social injustice, the sick and the poor, particularly Christianity in the US once a religion based upon the principle of love thy neighbor, have now have been subverted to be used as a tool to gain power and control for the wealthy. Using fear and intolerance as their main organizing tools.

Tariffs benefit Trump’s billionaire oligarchs

In April, Trump declared a national emergency because foreign trade and economic practices were a threat to national security. Trump ordered massive tariffs to protect American workers and strengthen the economy.

To justify tariffs on Canada Trump claimed the fentanyl and illegal aliens coming into the US from Canada was “massive”. Even though the amount was and still is miniscule Trump continues to repeat the lie over and over.

Henry Kissinger, the political scientist who served as the 56^th US Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977 once said, “The US has no permanent friends and no permanent enemies it only has permanent interests.”

Trump who is far more zealous than his predecessors is just the current mouthpiece for those billionaire interests. Those interests have been casting a covetous eye over Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada. This is why Trump has been so relentless in pushing tariffs, so those interests can gain power, control and sovereignty over our country.

Tariffs are a factory floor wealth machine pointed straight at President Trump’s rolodex. When you increase the border tax, domestic sticker prices on steel, copper, semiconductors and anything that crosses a dock rise in lockstep. Consumers and downstream manufacturers swallow the hike, while US producers pocket the spread. That is why stock traders swarmed names like Freeport McMoRan, Southern Copper, Intel, and Texas Instruments the moment the 25 percent wall went up. Their cost barely moved, but the price of their products did, and the extra margin fell straight to the bottom line.

The carve-outs are even more telling. The formal exclusion program from Trump 1.0 vanished, and exemptions now float out of a back room. One glaring example is polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resin, hardly a “critical mineral”, slipped onto the exempt list.

The biggest winner is Reyes Holdings, the Coke-bottling empire run by two billionaire brothers who have written seven figure cheques to GOP coffers and keep Ballard Partners the same lobby shop that once kept the Trump Organization on retainer. When an everyday import dodges a 25 per cent duty while your competitors still pay, that is free money.

Wilbur Ross, the steel magnate who ran the US Department Commerce, has been candid that tariffs serve a two for one purpose, squeeze trading partners and raise cash to fund fresh tax cuts. In practice it is a loop, transfer revenue from every importer to the Treasury, then channel the savings back to the same shareholder class through the tax code. There is a longer tale too.

Once a tariff props an industry up, bankers and analysts start modeling the new price deck as a permanent base case, inflating valuations and lending capacity even if the duty melts away later. Coal barons did the same trick in 1890 under the McKinley Tariff: bake the higher price into the capital structure, then lobby like mad to keep it.

Trump’s rhetoric justifying tariffs is often appealing to working class concerns and national strength however, the material benefits only flow upward. What is presented as a policy of national revival is often a sophisticated method of redistributing economic advantage toward the top.

Tariffs can function as policy instruments that appear populist in tone but deliver the goods to Trump’s billionaire supporters. The deeper structural advantages granted to a narrow tier of wealthy industrialists often escape serious scrutiny.

Finally, because the White House can dial duties up or down case by case, Canada catches 35 per cent across the board this time. China only pays 10 per cent on a narrower basket every exemption becomes political currency.

If your factory sits in the right district, you are suddenly indispensable at budget and election time. Add it up and the tariff regime looks less like border security than a tailored surtax on everyone else’s supply chain. The money is routed to a small circle of domestic balance sheets, all comfortably inside Trump’s donor galaxy.

These billionaires are like children who want ALL the marbles, except these children have become very dangerous. With such enormous wealth comes enormous power and control. This is the number one reason fueling the rise of authoritarianism around the world. They have also bought up and control much of the media controlling the narrative,

US democracy is being dismantled by a group of billionaires, Conservative ideologues and Christian nationalists who aim to permanently change the US in their interests.

In part seven: It Does Not Have to Be This Way. What Does a Successful Campaign of Opposition Look Like?

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