Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
America’s withdrawal from democracy did not just happen. It is the result of a 50-year plan that was begun in the 1970’s with the distribution of the Powell Memo, which advised the wealthy that in order to protect their wealth — and obtain more wealth — that democracy was not their friend. Democracy in Chains is the story of the multifaceted plan to quietly take control of academia, the media, the courts, and state legislatures. When Trump finally came along, they no longer had to be stealth any more.
See my full-throated review on my website HeatherHollick.com
This book is the first part a foundational trilogy of required reading for understanding how America has gotten to where it is the 2020s.
- Start here with Democracy in Chains to understand the philosophical and ideological underpinnings that drove the movement.
- Move on to Dark Money to understand how a small group of billionaires created and executed a plan.
- And then read Hiding in Plain to see the breadth of the operations and the depth of the corruption.
In Their Words…
From the Amazon listing:
Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect–the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan–and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.