MAGA's "People's Capitalism"

An Alliance of Bourgeoisie and Mob

It’s like Lenin said, “When it is not immediately apparent which political or social groups, forces or alignments advocate certain proposals, measures, etc., one should always ask: ‘Who stands to gain?”

So who stands to gain from ICE’s terror campaign? As Adam Tooze points out in his newsletter Chartbook this morning, “The MAGA immigration crackdown in the US is a bonanza for politically connected, small and mid-caps.” His source for this is a Financial Times piece: “Companies reap $22bn from Trump’s immigration crackdown.” I decided to take a closer look at the list of beneficiaries. While there are several publicly traded and venture capital-funded firms, the biggest recipients show a striking pattern: they are all regional, dynastic family businesses and major GOP donors. In addition, they have engaged in legally questionable practices.

For instance, the top company at the top of the list, Fisher Sand & Gravel, is owned by the Fisher family of Dickinson, North Dakota. The Fishers give generously to the Republican Party, and Tommy is a guest on conservative TV and talk radio, where he may have caught Donald Trump’s eye. The Fisher business has a bit of a checkered past: environmental violations, shady labor practices, and most notably, fraud.

From Wikipedia:

In 2009, Micheal Fisher, then-owner of Fisher, pled guilty to nine counts of felony tax fraud,^[11][12][13] being sentenced to 37 months in prison and over $300,000 in restitution. Amiel Schaff, FSG's former chief financial officer, and Clyde Frank, FSG's former comptroller, also pled guilty to one count each of conspiracy to defraud the United States in 2009. The 2009 Department of Justice settlement required FSG to pay a total of $1.16 million in restitution, penalties and fines, implement measures to prevent future fraud at the company, and cooperate with the IRS in audits of its tax returns.^[14]

And this next part is a little too on the nose:

Another former head of the company, David William Fisher, pled guilty in 2005 to possession of child pornography of a 10 year old child and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Although in exchange for his guilty plea, the charges of sexual exploitation of minors was dropped.^[15][9] He was released on April 30, 2010.^[16]

You can go down the list and check; SLSCO, CSI Aviation, and Barnard Construction all have a similar pattern: a regional, closely-held company that is “politically integrated,” so to speak.

If you’re familiar with the work of Melinda Cooper, this wouldn’t surprise you. In 2022, she wrote “the private, unincorporated, and family-based versus the corporate, publicly traded, and shareholder-owned” and that “[t]he family-based capitalism that stormed the White House along with Trump stretches from the smallest of family businesses to the most rambling of dynasties, and crucially depends on the alliance between the two.” Trump, of course, comes from this social class, whose business practices are “informal,” or, more blunty put, often downright criminal.

When you add in the presence of Thiel-backed firms like Anduril, you begin to get a picture of the Trump coalition’s material basis. It’s an alliance of this family-based regional scam capital and a reactionary fraction of the tech sector that focuses on defense and security. Then you add in ICE’s function as an employment program for the Trumpenproletarian mob and all the illiterate influencers and, voila, you have the class composition of actually-existing American fascism, which characteristically enough, is also a racket. It’s the mob from top to bottom.