World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

The British newspaper, The Guardian, has published a report on who was financing the members of Congress who sought to question the results of the 2020 national election. One wonders why US media has thus far not pursued this matter. The article is clear:

“An anti-tax group funded primarily by billionaires has emerged as one of the biggest backers of the Republican lawmakers who sought to overturn the US election results, according to an analysis by the Guardian.

“The Club for Growth has supported the campaigns of 42 of the rightwing Republicans senators and members of the House of Representatives who voted last week to challenge US election results, doling out an estimated $20m to directly and indirectly support their campaigns in 2018 and 2020, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

“About 30 of the Republican hardliners received more than $100,000 in indirect and direct support from the group.

“The Club for Growth’s biggest beneficiaries include Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, the two Republican senators who led the effort to invalidate Joe Biden’s electoral victory, and the newly elected far-right gun-rights activist Lauren Boebert, a QAnon conspiracy theorist. Boebert was criticised last week for tweeting about the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location during the attack on the Capitol, even after lawmakers were told not to do so by police.”

The article reminds us that thinking about the insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January solely in terms of President Trump is a serious mistake. Ever since the Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court, the political landscape in the US has changed dramatically. Tim Lau wrote in 2019 about the significance of the decision:

“….a bare majority of the justices held that ‘independent political spending’ did not present a substantive threat of corruption, provided it was not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign. 

“As a result, corporations can now spend unlimited funds on campaign advertising if they are not formally ‘coordinating’ with a candidate or political party. “

As I have noted in many previous posts, the political economy of the US is decidedly skewed toward greater concentrations of income and wealth. Citizens United allows the beneficiaries of this political economy to influence the political system to ensure that the government has insufficient revenues to cover the needs of the citizenry and to create a tax system that inordinately falls on the poor and middle classes, creating an anti-government sentiment.

One hopes that the investigations into the insurrection asks some fundamental questions about the financing of the protest. Who paid for the bus and airplane tickets, the hotels, and meals? Who financed the pre-planning of the insurrection? These questions demand answers.