Chuck Darwin<p>J D <a href="https://c.im/tags/Vance" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Vance</span></a>’s speech at the Republican National Convention was all but indistinguishable from the claims of the <a href="https://c.im/tags/John" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>John</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Birch" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Birch</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Society" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Society</span></a> in the 1970s. </p><p>Senior Birch leader <a href="https://c.im/tags/Gary" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Gary</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Allen" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Allen</span></a> (father of Axios executive editor Michael Allen) wrote in his 1971 book, "None Dare Call It Conspiracy", that <br>a group he called the “<a href="https://c.im/tags/Insiders" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Insiders</span></a>,” consisting of “power-seeking billionaires,” <br>sought to ➡️ squeeze the middle class “to death by a vise.” </p><p>This would be done by pursuing a strategy of tension: </p><p>the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations would channel money to Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, and a whole sordid host of New Left organizations to stir up trouble in the streets <br>“while the Limousine Liberals at the top in New York and Washington are Socializing us. <br>WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A DICTATORSHIP OF THE ELITE DISGUISED AS THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT.” </p><p>The hidden hand of the Insiders, he said, lay behind the radical tumult of the late 1960s and early 1970s, all at the expense of the American middle class. </p><p>Crucially, although "None Dare Call It Conspiracy" included anti-capitalist elements, <br>it was still profoundly hostile to socialism and communism, <br>-- with Allen at one point arguing that both ideologies were simply different terms for monopoly capitalism.</p><p>Bircherite producerism did not prevail in the 1970s, <br>either within the contested space of American right-wing politics or national policy. </p><p>🔸“Woke capital” is used essentially in the same way as “the Insiders,” </p><p>🔸and not just by J. D. Vance. </p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/Andy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Andy</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Olivastro" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Olivastro</span></a>, the director of coalition relations at <a href="https://c.im/tags/Heritage" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Heritage</span></a>, defined it as “a top-down anti-democratic movement . . . on the part of some of the biggest and most important names in American business . . . to change the definition of capitalism itself.” </p><p>The only major distinction between “woke capitalism” and the Insiders is that Allen insisted that the core goal of the conspiracy was power as such, <br>whereas “woke capital” is more interested in ensuring liberal and left-wing social policy.</p><p>Nonetheless, today’s right-wing critics of neoliberalism are fundamentally embedded in the same political tradition. </p><p>Thankfully, Vance, one of the most unpopular vice-presidential candidates of the past fifty years, <br>is a poor messenger for his Bircherite economic politics.<br><a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/07/vance-trump-gop-john-birch" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">jacobin.com/2024/07/vance-trum</span><span class="invisible">p-gop-john-birch</span></a></p>