Democracy in Chains-The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (Nancy MacLean):

The “campaign for the courts,” as a critical organization dubbed it, sought “to mold a new jurisprudence” that would radically change, “the way justice is dispensed in our society.” In particular, those waging the campaign sought “to make the protection and enhancement of corporate profits and private wealth the cornerstones of our legal system.

do yourself a favour, if you are even remotely concerned about your world, future, survival, species, politics or political system – make sure that you own, read & study this book. Without exaggeration, it really is one of the most crucial for understanding exactly how & who has led us to such an obsessively negative, rigged & doom worshiping corruptocracy.

Charles & David Koch – “a “private governing elite” of corporate power freed from accountability.”


None of it was natural, none of it was necessary & none of it was normal. A very small group of ginormously affluent, incomparably twisted, “crusader” extremists needed to foment – under the cover of darkness – a long-term, relentless, high-stakes, ultra-furtive strategy of derailment & stealth takeover. It had to be conducted in rigorously-engineered secrecy, as no one, least of all the public, would ever back such an extreme, ultra-harmful, exterminatory, despotic & dystopic vision. Indeed, the very nature of the ideology/movement/conspiracy & it’s objective outcomes would be considered criminal, unconstitutional & undemocratic in-extremis.
Secrecy was paramount, & the true intentions of the cabal had to be concealed & even denied publicly. Detection was death.

This is among the most profound shifts in our legal history,” warns a Reagan-appointed federal judge. His words bear slow reading: “Ominously, business has a good chance of opting out of the legal system altogether and misbehaving without reproach.” A subsequent headline noted that it amounts to a “Privatization of the justice system.”

Everything would be bent & contorted to suit & serve the private, monied & corporate – against the interests, will, safety, welfare, health, choice, sovereignty & protection of the people, public, populace & even the very nation itself (a voracious global incursion is also well under way beyond American borders).
A take over. An unannounced replacement. Regime change.
But the replacement would be undeclared & as illusory as possible, operating as much as possible beyond the visible field…undeclared & unannounced.
The facade & falsity of free choice, “functioning democracy” & the government operating in the publics interest, & for the publics safety & protection, would be maintained as tightly as possible.

Property rights, company rights, individualist/personal fortunes protections & a dramatically reduced/stripped/scuppered state that is reformatted to serve private, corporate & extreme wealth interests – a sort of plutocratic protection service from an increasingly suffocated & decimated public. Feudalism. Corporatocracy. Freemarket absolutism. Slavery. Economic terrorism. They call it “libertarianism”. They also call it, with supreme cynicism & sleight of tongue, “freedom”.

Robber barons, disaster capitalism, carrion feeders, asset strippers, slavers & kleptocrats, wealth negators, economic terrorists, extinction advocates.

Charles Koch of Koch Industries – “The ever strategic Koch grantee Grover Norquist equates the cause’s expanding chokehold over the states with a Roman pilum – a spear powerful enough to penetrate any shield, and barbed, so it “could not be pulled out.

A parallel state, a shadow executive committee, operating primarily through think tanks & lobbyist groups.

The Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth, the Mont Pelerin Society, the Tea Party, FreedomWorks, the American Legislation Exchange Council, the Tax Foundation, the Reason Foundation, the Leadership Institute, State Policy Network, the Club for Growth, the Independent Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the John Birch Society, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Center for Study of Public Choice & of course – Charles Koch Foundation, to name a few.

beneath the radar

This does not include the multitude of appendage target-organizations & there specialist functions – the Industrial Prison Complex, School privatization, polluter privilege etc etc.

an army of largely invisible, politicized saboteurs, funded by obscene wealth – eroding, corrupting, infiltrating, suborning, rewiring – all under a meticulously engineered cloak of secrecy & stealth.

what is government (at least in theory)?
Clearly you have a shadow government here. A usurper, interloper, a mime – at least in terms of power, course, execution & policy. An imposter entity – operating incognito – & deceptively – on behalf of the maddest & most sociopathic & megalomanic of the ultra-wealthy of the 1% – completely & utterly & unswervingly against the public interest in every imaginable facet, application & reality.

It cannot be disputed. The results, the intentions, the money trail, the legacy, the exposed aims, ambitions, targets & ideology – it is what it is, hook & line. Indisputable. Definitive. Absolute.

the excrescent Peter Thiel of Palantir – a self-confessed libertarian.

How this has been allowed to happen – & continue, indeed, exacerbate – is one of the greatest crimes & atrocities of the 20th century. Period. It also definitely & consummately constitutes a crime against humanity….it is a lot more, & a lot worse, & a lot more devastating than just an act of singular, supremely-profound corruption, & the wars, death, human misery, sickness, waste, mass contamination, ruin, robbery, destabilization & ecclectic-extermination that have billowed out of this nihilist-black-hole of premeditated downfall – elevate this atrocity to a kind of rare historical evil.

Charles Koch, David Koch & James M. Buchanon.

raw evil – James M Buchanon – “his was a cynicism so toxic, that, if widely believed, it could eat like acid at the foundations of civic life.”

The Republican party was dissatisfactory to the libertarian extremists. It simply was not fanatic/extreme enough for their radical fundamentalist zealotry, which is really, really, really saying something (David Koch had run for the Libertarian Party in 1980 but been annihilated by voters for showing such an extremist agenda). Although the Republican Party has now been fully hijacked, commandeered & subverted by this fifth-column maniac entryism, it was not initially supportive of the insanely harmful virulence that the libertarian cult’s jackals were attempting to introduce. Thus the corrupting, infiltration & external-proscription & navigation-setting interventions (by stealth) became the preferred strategy. If you can’t beat em’ – corrupt em’. It has worked fantastically. as the current Republican Party catastrophe-cum-fiasco-cum-fuck-up so neatly clarifies.

James McGill Buchanon

These papers revealed something else as well: how stealth became so intrinsic to this movement. Buchanon had realized the value of stealth long ago, while still trying to influence the Virginia politicians. But it was Koch who institutionzed the policy. In his first big gift to Buchanon’s program, Charles Koch signalled his desire for the work he funded to be conducted behind the backs of the majority. “Since we are greatly outnumbered,” Koch conceded to the assembled team, the movement could not win simply by persuasion. Instead, the cause’s insiders had to use their knowledge of “the rules of the game” to – that game being how modern democratic governance works, – “to create winning strategies.” A brilliant engineer with three degrees from MIT, Koch warned, “The failure to use our superior technology ensures failure.” Translation: the American people would not support their plans, so to win they had to work behind the scenes, using a covert strategy instead of an open declaration of what they really wanted.

our purpose was indeed subversive” “why must the rich be made to suffer?” “each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves” generalized rewriting of the social contract” constitutional revolution” “Despotism may be the only organizational alternative to the political structure that we observe.” – James McGill Buchanon

“These people are not conservatives. Their not Republicans. They’re radical libertarians….I despise these people.” – former Reagan Republican & six-term senator of Utah Orrin Hatch.

“Even as Charles Koch was assembling scholars and underwriting think tanks on two coasts, he was also testing electoral politics. Neither of the two main parties was demolition-minded enough for his tastes. He seemed to hold the Republican Party in greater contempt, though, because of what he took to be its leaders’ dishonesty. Their claim to stand for free markets was manifestly fraud: the GOP was the party “of business accommodation and partnership with government” sneered Koch. “if this is our only hope then we are doomed.”

conspirational secrecy is at all times essential.” – James M. Buchanon

you have heard of religious extremism. Probably also islamic fundamentalism. & also I expect narcoterrorism. Koch, Murdoch, Buchanon, Kissinger, Thiel & their subhuman & demonic ilk of ultra-extremist shadow plotters, are economic terrorists, free market fundamentalist & wealth terrorists. They are, very literally, without a jot of hyperbole, a planetary threat. A global security threat. It is not just how exponential their crimes & intentions are on their own, but the astronomic, very real societal/global harm that these ghouls inflict on billions of us. It is way, way more severe than just chronic poverty or human deprivation. Their desired dystopia, relentless expansion, & intensification – coupled with their delusional devotion to climate ruination – make them a far, far, far more harmful, dangerous & absolute threat than any other group or movement that I can reference. Period. The secrecy, unaccountability, “corporate veil”, off-the-radar/behind-the-curtain & concealed & distant nature of these agenda-setting string-puller “corruptocrats”, further buried by collusive media (Murdoch etc) heaping hyper distraction, ignorance & misdirection on the public sphere – effectively achieve a “shadow government”. Their opacity, obscurity, unaccountability & inaccessibility mean they are even more powerful & less restrained by the limits of regular government.

unrestrained capitalism is freedom“… explicitly, totally, singularly, arrantly against the common good not so much undermining democracy & sovereignty but arse-raping it.

Evil. In essence & in effect. & these apocalypse enthusiasts will literally kill us all. They need to be eliminated, exterminated, eradicated & entirely extinguished with extreme prejudice using every available arm of government – police, military, intelligence & security agency, courts, judiciary & citizenry (that’s you & me toots) in a decisive global effort. Just wiped-the-fuck-out by any means necessary whatsoever & confined to the annals of history in the same dark, contemptible category of massacres, crimes against humanity, & large scale atrocities along with the Nazi blight, Stalin’s purges, Pol Pot’s Year Zero, the Rape of Nanjing, the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki & Hiroshima etc. that is their category.

Rupert Murdoch with the late David Koch. Murdoch has been on the board of directors of the Cato Institute since 1997. “I would remind you,” – “that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice.

the world owes an immense debt to Nancy MacLean for this impossibly important tome of vital & urgent research in this very real emergency.
Don’t underestimate this crisis.
Perhaps more than any other single piece of literature I have yet come across, Democracy in Chains is really the most consistent, depthy & full-scale descent into the libertarian terror & the Koch menace. It is indescribably urgent that everyone understands just how far they have gone & the extent of the threat they pose.

Nancy MacLean, 2017, Scribe, 234 pages.