FREEDOM CAUCUS: THE ADVANCING TECHNOCRACY

On 26 February 2023 / Dossier American Lobbying, Geopolitics, IBI World UK / Leave a comment

In the US mid-term elections in January 2023, Ron DeSantis, a Republican, was re-elected as Governor of Florida. In his state, he managed to win seats in areas traditionally held by Democratic candidates. He did this by waving the flag of religious extremism, managing to win votes even among black and Latino minorities, presenting himself as a candidate of ‘doing’ instead of ‘saying’.

In contrast to Trump, who unleashed his supporters to attack Capitol Hill, DeSantis presents himself as a man of duty, loyal to the institutions, who wants to introduce technocratic and undemocratic rules in a completely constitutional way, by obtaining new laws, not violating existing ones. In the esoteric part of his message, he does not accuse Hollywood actors of eating babies, as the QAnon sect does and as many Trump followers believe, but accuses the Democratic and Republican parties, more or less in corrections, of incapacity.

The analyses and solutions he proposes are draconian, as explained in the leaflets of the organisation that nominated and supports him, Freedom Caucus: first, ‘the leaders of both political parties have consolidated so much power that most members of Congress have no meaningful role in the legislative process beyond voting for or against. The result is that the ‘People’s House’ serves everyone in Washington except the American people: politicians, connected lobbyists, and entrenched bureaucrats”, in a framework in which no real difference emerges between elected Democrats and Republicans[1].

The Freedom Caucus wants to see an end to the tradition whereby, once elected, parliamentarians are not bound by a mandate but, if they believe (one implies: if they are corrupt), can sometimes vote for proposals from the other political party. At the same time, the system for selecting leaders must no longer be bottom-up, as is typical for America, but must be managed by the party leadership. On the contrary, the preparation of legislation, today the prerogative of a small elite, must be extended to as many parliamentarians as possible – and the current possibility of a parliamentarian also voting for someone else with a simple proxy must be banned. And the power of lobbies to break the terms of budget laws, causing the federal deficit to increase unchecked, must be curbed[2].

Reintroduce strict rules to punish officials and employees of federal political structures if they do not comply with the decisions of the Senate and Congress. A necessary proposal because of the current anarchy that allows any lobby to find a weak point in any office to impose its interests or its proposals for procurement and public spending. And for every law and decree, before it is passed, it must be mandatory that every parliamentarian has time to read and study it – that is at least five days[3].

These are sensible measures in themselves, which completely shift the centre of power. Today, it is individual lobbies that are in charge, disinterested in the common good but only aiming to defend special interests. Freedom Caucus, as in the political tradition that emerged in Europe since the Risorgimento in the 19th century, wants the party secretariats to be in charge, which are also the decision-making centre for the nomination of candidates right down to the smallest village in the country – and the corruption of the lobbies is concentrated in the party’s control room, so that the top leadership can choose who to bribe according to what they consider to be the country’s compelling interests. Interests that are chosen on an ideological basis (which is a first for America). A basis which, for the Republicans, must be that of Christian fundamentalism, white supremacism, missionarism, the superiority of science and technology – because they no longer want a government of the people, but one of the ‘best’[4].

What is the Freedom Caucus?

Freedom Caucus founders: from left, Mick Mulvaney, Scott Perry and Madison Cawthorn[5]

The House Freedom Caucus was formed in January 2015 by a group of conservatives and members of the so-called Tea Party Movement^[6]. It currently consists of a good number of Republican Party members traditionally known to be among the most reactionary and worst-assorted exponents of the US populist far-right within the House Republican Conference (the party’s main forum used to communicate with its members and known to produce a daily political analysis publication: the Legislative Digest), i.e. the party’s caucus for Republicans in the US House of Representatives^[7].

The description of the House Freedom Caucus given by its first chairman, Jim Jordan, is of a ‘smaller, more cohesive, more agile and more active’ group of conservatives^[8] positioned on the far right^[9] of the political spectrum, which has supported Donald Trump in the past. Founding members include Scott Garrett, Jim Jordan, John Fleming, Matt Salmon, Justin Amash, Raúl Labrador, Mick Mulvaney and Ron DeSantis^[10]. They are parliamentarians who have built their careers on their own and who, once elected to Congress, the Senate or the parliaments of the individual states, realised that they had to mediate on the very issues on which (abortion, immigration, social welfare, health, taxation, police) they are convinced that there is no room for negotiation, and that we are facing a juxtaposition between crusaders of Christ and Satanists of real socialism.

The names of these parliamentarians are unknown on the international stage, but they are important at home, and have had different political trajectories – as in the case of Justin Amash who, in 2019, horrified at the role the Freedom Caucus was playing in the country, left both the organisation and the Republican Party[11], or in that of Labrador, who is head of the Idaho State Attorney’s Office[12]. But it is a unique case.

Scott Garrett is known for his crusade against homosexuals[13] and has made a career out of Trump, who appointed him head of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (a state bank that manages federal investments abroad)[14] after he had publicly stated that he wanted it closed because it was an instrument of collaborationism with international communism[15]. Mick Mulvaney, on the other hand, was appointed by Trump to head the Federal Office of Management and Budget[16]. Jim Jordan is not only against homosexuals, he is also against vaccines[17], against abortion[18] and against laws to protect the environment[19]. They are not leaders: how is it possible that we have become so influential?

Thiel, Bannon, Musk and Trump’s mistakes

March 2017: a Freedom Caucus board meeting which, as we can see, has no place for women[20]

Of the Freedom Caucus we often just pick up on the choreographic elements and crazy theses. But this is a very serious mistake. The word caucus comes from the Algonquian language (an Indian tribe in North America), and describes the ‘council of elders’: Just as the members of the ‘councils of elders of yore’ were not elected, neither are the members of today’s caucuses, so that each represents only himself, and the first of the caucuses is the one born in 1763 in pre-independence Boston when the colonists, organised into liberal clubs, gather at the Garret, a pub near Boston harbour, to pre-select candidates for future elections, from municipal to state^[21].

In these pubs, those who are present vote, and often one does not know the other people with whom one is debating. Nevertheless, caucuses were the main form of decision-making process for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mainly due to the elitist nature of American parties at the time^[22]. It was only from 1831 onwards that caucuses were coupled with elections, in order to limit the power of secret associations that were gradually infiltrating the top party structures, such as Freemasonry, but in the last century they themselves became secret, cross-party assemblies^[23], since the two major American parties are loosely ideologised and are pure lobbying organisations^[24]. The awakening of the Caucuses, desired by the extreme right, took place in the 2016 election campaign, which crowned Trump: his heated and violent tones, the vulgarity of his attitudes and the profuse factiousness of his actions, brought out what had only slumbered^[25].

On the campaign trail, each candidate has claimed the status of ‘outsider’ and attacked almost every other rival as a creature of the ‘establishment’, despite the fact that the ‘opponents of the system’ are senators, governors, first ladies or billionaires: each has launched their campaign as a bold insurrection against the corruption of power and in defense of the purity of the people^[26]. Among them are characters like Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign chief, later arrested for corruption^[27], yet a member of the ‘National Security Council’ (the ‘circle of advisers who became very powerful thanks to Henry Kissinger who made it a shadow government behind Nixon and who decides the political and military strategy of the US Administration‘^[28])^[29]. Bannon’s role as chairman of Breitbart.com^[30] , with its racist, misogynist, and Islamophobic outlook, and its stated desire to blow up our system of government, suggests that this is a person who not only has no right to be a permanent member of the world’s most powerful advisory body, but also has no right to hold a position of responsibility in any government“^[31].

Vladimir Putin and Steven Seagal[32]

The friendship between Bannon and Trump goes back a long way^[33]: in 2011, the two led the campaign of Maricopa County (Texas) Sheriff Joe Arepaio, who was trying to prove that Barack Obama was not really an American. Arepajo was guilty of several crimes against humanity, relating to the treatment of illegal immigrants in illegal concentration camps^[34], but was later pardoned by Trump when he was elected president^[35]. It was Steven Seagal (actor, martial arts expert, film producer, entrepreneur and US singer-songwriter with Serbian citizenship, naturalised Russian), a right-wing extremist who, in September 2011, raided a private home with a tank during the filming of one of his TV shows^[36].

Seagal at the time worked with Paul Manafort (Donald Trump’s campaign chief) and Julius Nasso, connected to the Gambino crime family; together they sold a self-styled Russian nuclear technology in the United States through an unidentified company Eurotech Ltd^[37] (in 2016, Vladimir Putin reportedly awarded Seagal Russian citizenship^[38]). The caucus later named Freedom was born in those years by this group of people, coordinated and financed by then Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who was the one who convinced Trump to run for president in opposition to the Republican leadership^[39].

The political objective: to reverse the course pursued by Clinton and Obama in favour of social reforms (first and foremost Obamacare), in international trade relations (the NAFTA treaty^[40] and the Transpacific Partnership^[41]) and in the attempt to pass a guaranteed minimum wage law^[42]. A goal that has the support of financial sharks such as Peter Thiel, who adds to the list of objectives the fight against multi-culturalism, which according to him is responsible for the decline in the quality of higher education^[43]: by trying to make it possible for members of minorities and disadvantaged classes to gain access to university, the bar of quality required of students is lowered^[44], which would explain the opposing racism of whites, but also of blacks and Latinos^[45].

Thiel also poses as an outsider against the cliques of politics, and in this key he claims to have initially supported Trump^[46], but this did not stop him from using political friendships to make his company PalantirTchnologiesInc, a start-up specialising in big data analysis, which has gone public and will be listed on the stock exchange in 2020, to deal with secret matters related to the Pentagon^[47], including the fight against illegal immigrants^[48] and the development of information technologies suitable for countering terrorism, fraud, military and industrial espionage, natural emergencies and for indiscriminate mass surveillance^[49]. Apparently, the CIA and British intelligence paid Palantir princely sums from a fund with which the US supports non-profit companies^[50].

Peter Thiel shakes Donald Trump’s hand^[51]

Thiel generously reciprocates, together with Erik Prince^[52] (the CEO of Blackwater, America’s leading mercenary company and advisor to Donald Trump^[53]), to the Make America Number 1 committee. The money given is used to pay Cambridge Analytica, the British consultancy, founded in 2013 by billionaire Robert Mercer (co-owner of the Breitbart News site, run by Steve Bannon), guilty of collecting personal data contained in as many as 87 million^[54] Facebook accounts without the owners’ prior consent in order to use them to influence the election campaign^[55].

This is a sensitive issue. Thiel’s and Prince’s payments to Make America Number 1 date back to October 2016, and those of this committee to Cambridge Analytica for campaign consultancy are from December 2016^[56], a year after the Facebook data use scandal had already been made public and of which Thiel knows the details, since he is on Facebook’s board of directors^[57]. A suspicion reinforced by other Make America Number 1 payments to Cambridge Analytica for the purchase of personal data, which took place in the last months of 2016, at the start of Trump’s presidential campaign^[58].

This is yet another mistake made by Trump, even before the absurd and bloody assault on the Capitol on 6 January 2021. A mistake that hints at a childish side and a lack of perception of ridicule on the part of these high-powered figures – such as when they attend entertainment events: “Relishing the victory, last month Mr Thiel dressed up as Hulk Hogan for the annual “Villains and Heroes” costume party hosted on Long Island by the Mercer family, Trump’s big backer. He shows me a picture on his phone of him posing with Erik Prince, founder of the private military company Blackwater, and Mr Trump – who was not in costume“^[59].

Looking at the whole thing in historical perspective, one might assume that the Trump presidency was a conscious attempt to see how far one could go in contravening the basic rules of democracy without being overwhelmed. The paradox seems to be that Trump, who boasted of being the champion against the occult powers, was actually a puppet of them. If the mass of supporters continue to believe in the orange-haired billionaire, the far-right leaders are now moving on to the next stage – that of Ron DeSantis and the Freedom Caucus. If Trump brings to the polls those who previously shunned them, and who vote on the basis of emotion, anger and ignorance, DeSantis gets ‘to the heart of the matter’ and achieves what seemed unimaginable – as when he gained a remarkable surge in popularity from his handling of the effects of Hurricane Ian in September last year when, standing alongside President Biden, he played his role as Governor of Florida perfectly, avoiding turning everything into a ridiculous circus, as Trump certainly would have done^[60].

Ron DeSantis, the new man looming

Ron DeSantis^[61]

DeSantis’s positions are as uncompromising as Trump’s: in Florida, he has banned the teaching of sexual identity in schools before the fourth grade, banned abortion after the 15th week without making exceptions for cases of rape or incest, organised flights of migrants to their countries of origin, opposed lockdowns in the months of the pandemic, and even the compulsory vaccines and masks: all aimed at reinforcing his image as an indomitable fighter against the so-called ‘liberal woke agenda’, thus laying the solid foundations that enabled him to win in 62 of Florida’s 67 counties in the mid-term elections^[62].

Yet with his Christian fundamentalism, DeSantis not only convinced the anti-democrats, but also ethnic minorities and many of the democrats, winning votes from those who had voted for Biden in 2020 – including many blacks and Latinos, and especially religious Cuban immigrants. The result: a victory by a margin of over a million and a half votes, making it the widest margin of any Florida governor in the last 40 years. Which is why Trump now fears that the party is running the new man^[63], and that his career is already over^[64]. A hypothesis made possible by the fact that, although DeSantis is not running, his supporters have already raised over 200 million dollars for his presidential campaign^[65].

Even though in his challenge to win the White House Donald Trump can count on an army of loyalists, in November 2022 many among the Republican leaders have taken to looking elsewhere – especially the big financial investors who, tired of the unpredictability, brutality and lack of respect for democratic rules shown by Trump, are not so keen on bringing him back to the White House. Among the first to abandon Trump is Ken Griffin, the administrator of the Citadel Securities fund, known to be with Gates and Bloomberg among the US billionaires on the hunt for nickel and cobalt in Greenland^[66], as well as the second largest financier of the Republican candidates with 60 million dollars, and who has already said publicly that he prefers DeSantis^[67].

A long-standing ally of the former president, Stephen Schwarzman^[68], is convinced that the time has come for a new generation of Republicans to lead the way, promptly followed by some of New York’s big financiers such as Thomas Peterffy^[69], Andy Sabin^[70] and Ronald Lauder^[71]. On similar positions, although not explicitly stated, is Stephen Ross, the king of real estate developers and owner of the Miami Dolphins football team – a very influential figure in Florida and one who has actively supported Trump in past years^[72]. Even Larry Ellison of Oracle, a long-standing friend of Trump, is apparently contemplating a ‘change of horses’^[73].

The Club for Growth, a well-known lobby promoting right-wing economic policies, an expression of several Republican tycoons and of the ultra-conservatives Jeffrey Yass (billionaire financier and investor in TikTok) and Richard Uihlein (Schlitz beer), during the midterm campaign supported alternative candidates to Trump and rejected his calls for a change of course. The Club for Growth is a national network of more than 500,000 Americans in favour of limiting the powers of the state and describes itself as ‘the nation’s leading free enterprise advocacy group’: “We identify key bills to be debated in Congress. We put maximum pressure on legislators to vote as free market and limited government conservatives. And if they do not, we hold them accountable by publishing their voting record“^[74].

New York Post, 11 november 2022^[75]

A poll commissioned by the Club for Growth on possible candidates for the 2024 presidency found that Ron DeSantis has a 3-point lead over Joe Biden, who in turn is 7 points ahead of Donald Trump^[76]. Enthusiastic about the result, the President of the Club for Growth said, “More and more Americans are learning about Ron DeSantis and the good he has done as Governor of Florida,” noting that “Among the potential candidates surveyed, DeSantis has a high growth margin”^[77].

The poll follows similar work by Suffolk University showing that over 60 per cent of Americans want neither Trump nor Biden running in 2024 for the White House^[78]. Almost two-thirds of Republican voters and independents who identified themselves as conservative or very conservative (65%) said they wanted DeSantis to run for president and 56% of these same voters said they preferred him to former President Donald Trump^[79].

Rupert Murdoch has warned Donald Trump that his media empire will not support any attempt by him to return to the White House and that he is intent on trying to make a clean break with the former president’s bad reputation, calling him a loser and a failure responsible for dragging the Republicans into ‘one political fiasco after another’^[80]. His son Lachlan Murdoch, the heir designate who co-owns News Corp and runs Fox News’ parent company, reportedly told DeSantis that the group would support him if he ran in the next election^[81].

Rebekah Mercer, a prominent supporter of Parler, a popular social media site popular with right-wing voters, the owner of a stake in Breitbart News and daughter of New York billionaire Robert Mercer decided to back DeSantis with a cheque for $25,000 the day before the election^[82]. Rebekah Mercer was a member of the board of directors of Emerdata, in whose ranks key former Cambridge Analytica employees work^[83]. And even Steve Bannon, on 12 December 2022, ditched Trump to choose DeSantis^[84], because Trump had the nerve to have lunch with nationalist Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier^[85], and called loudly for the ‘destruction’ of the US Constitution^[86]: one own goal after another.

The Rockbridge Network

Chris Buskirk, editor of ‘American Greatness’, a new technocratic, medievalist far-right magazine backed by Peter Thiel[87]

Donald Trump has left a country poorer, weaker internationally and angrier than he found it, and Biden is struggling to regain his footing, and this is not just because of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but above all because of the immense national debt and the implosion of the American social system. We are on the verge of profound change, and even conservatives know this – and traditionally, they tend to lock the US into an autarkic bowl. A trend that pleases the extreme right and increases the power of the likes of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk – and if they bet on DeSantis, the Florida governor has a very good chance of winning the next two presidential terms and, in eight years, driving the US back into a technocratic Dark Ages.

There are new lobbying groups in the limelight, first and foremost the one that brings together Rebekah Mercer, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway and David Bossie, namely the Rockbridge Network^[88], which is targeting DeSantis^[89]. According to a recent New York Times report, the Rockbridge Network is a new group of wealthy conservatives who have invested more than $30 million in new legal, political and media initiatives, including so-called ‘influence programmes’^[90]. The mission of this network is to “disrupt but advance the Republican agenda” with its new political and media programmes: “Rockbridge Network will replace the current Republican ecosystem with more action-oriented and effective people and institutions“^[91].

At the first meeting of the Rockbridge Network, held in 2021 in Arizona, among the speakers was Peter Thiel^[92]. This meeting was followed in the spring of 2022 by a private summit in South Florida, the programme of which, according to the New York Times, included several Republican candidates and a strictly closed-door speech by Donald Trump^[93]: what is certain is that it is something that has little to do with traditional lobbying and promises to be a magnet for many Americans eager, for better or worse, to change the course of US politics in an autarkic key.

In attempting to give a comprehensive definition of the Rockbridge Network, we came across an illustrative brochure that qualifies it as ‘a kind of political venture capital firm‘ that will ‘leverage the capital of our investors with the right political experience‘ to ‘replace the current Republican ecosystem of think tanks, media organisations and activist groups that have contributed to the Party’s decline with people and institutions that are better geared for action, more effective and focused on winning’^[94].

The $30 million allocated in 2021 by the Rockbridge Network was allocated as follows: $8 million to create a rapid-response communications team for conservative activists and leaders, to fund polls, pay influencers, investigative journalists, and cultural renewal projects^[95]; another $8 million was earmarked for the so-called RedState Project, a project aimed at “state-level infrastructure to make red states blue“, needed because “even when state-level conservative organisations are strongest, they are not coordinated” and it is therefore useful to build “a centralisedorganisational force in each state, hiring staff to coordinate like-minded groups“^[96].

Peter Thiel[97]

3.7 million dollars were used for the Lawfare& Strategic Litigation, otherwise known as the Strategic Litigation Committee: the project that, by identifying the weaknesses of certain laws that are invisible to the extreme right, is supposed to coordinate the work of various law firms throughout the federal territory since, according to Rockbridge, the legal system is in the hands of the democrats anyway^[98]; 3 million dollars were invested in the so-called Rockbridge Transition project, which addresses a problem common to all democracies: “winning elections is useless if unpreparedness, lack of skills and administrative state resistance prevent us from actually using power to achieve real and meaningful change“^[99]. The project wants to create and educate “a ‘government-in-waiting’ with the people and plans to staff the next republican administration. The goal is to be ready to govern effectively, with conservative goals, from day one“^[100].

In short: as I see it, someone has taken the opportunity to create a real power structure, a kind of party within a party, capable of independently raising funds, meeting, managing people and media, and adopting strategies without disclosure requirements, thus away from prying eyes^[101]. The brochure of the Rockbridge Network reads: ‘We must show that our party is organised and has the necessary institutional know-how and financial backing, in order to have any chance of winning future elections’^[102]. Samuel Hammond, in his 2016 article, talks about Peter Thiel’s plan ‘to become CEO of America’^[103].

This is the puppet master’s thesis: Thiel would have supported Trump as part of his path to become the shadow CEO of the United States of America, the person who can whisper in the President’s ear what to do, and realise his own personal political reform project^[104]: in this sense, the support currently given to Ron DeSantis would also be merely instrumental. Put another way: when Thiel voted for Trump, no more and no less than when he will vote for DeSantis, he actually voted and is likely to vote for himself^[105].

But what is the project? In various public speeches^[106], Thiel argues that the America of the 1950s and 1960s was pushing the frontiers of science, as evidenced by the Apollo project and the conquest of the Moon, which took seven years, whereas today such a long time is used to build a bridge and space projects take decades^[107]. Through the Founders Fund, Thiel has invested tens of millions of dollars in Space-X, Elon Musk’s rocket company that plans a manned voyage to Mars – and in Palantir, which, being technologically more advanced than the military and state intelligence, tends to replace it.

His worldview is well described by his commentary on philosopher Thomas Carlyle’s ‘government of the best’ thesis: ‘Find in any country the ablest man that exists there; elevate him to the highest place, and reverence him loyally: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-making, or other mechanism can improve it in the least. It is the perfect state; an ideal country’[108], the thesis of reactionary blogger Mencius Moldbug, born Curtis Yarvin. From Yarvin’s perspective, government is just a society with a few added layers of pomp and democratic circumstances. An effective government needs an enlightened monarch; someone with vision, strength and, above all, the ability to delegate: ‘I can tell you exactly how decisions are made at Apple,’ Yarvin wrote in 2009: “First, Apple finds a man. It hires him. And having hired this man, it says to him: sir, let you decide”[109].

Mark Randall Meadows, Donald Trump’s ally who contributes his words to trigger supremacists to attack Capitol Hill[110]

Thiel writes: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. … We are in a death race between politics and technology. The future will be much better or much worse. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals can still be crucial. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or spreads the freedom machine that makes the world safe for capitalism”[111]. On balance, this is not neo-fascism, but corporate feudalism or enlightened absolutism.

A corporatism that its founders see in the Freedom Caucus, in which Thiel, Musk, Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus and General Michael T. Flynn^[112] converge, called by Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Randall Meadows^[113], who, after Trump’s electoral defeat in 2020, was among the most active supporters of the failed attempt to overturn the election results and remain in power through violence^[114], which is why he has serious legal scores to settle^[115].

But if it goes in this direction, Thiel will be forced to clash (for leadership), not with Trump or DeSantis, but with Elon Musk – a multifaceted character, who to his love for cryptocurrencies, the speculative tool that economists like NourielRoubini see as absolute evil, is flanked by yet another contradiction, trumpeting his concern for the planet at the very moment when he takes no account of the fact that the computers needed to create them absorb something like 0.56% of the world’s electricity needs^[116], and that perhaps the planet has more pressing problems today than reaching Mars.

The doubts about Elon Musk’s intentions are all there, and certainly not dispelled by some of his impromptu denials, such as his far from reassuring invitation to follow the White Rabbit: a phrase that has taken on the symbolic value of a battle cry of the American extreme right-wing political group QAnon. As is well known, many QAnon adherents are supporters of Trump and what they believe is his secret crusade^[117] against a global Satanist cabal that would like to destroy the world^[118].

Democracy in retreat

Assault on Capitol Hill, Trump incites the masses^[119]

Democracy in the United States is going through a very serious crisis of functioning, of popular support, of institutional resilience. The strong polarisation of the system has taken on intolerable levels of radicalisation over the last five years, partly due to the inability of politicians to deal with problems effectively: an inability that leads to a serious erosion of the legitimacy of the state, which reached its peak on the occasion of the attack on Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021. This shocking event brought to the surface an institutional reality that can be likened to a giant with feet of clay: a phenomenon that affects a growing number of countries and that we can call ‘retreating democracy’^[120].

James Bryce writes: “The choice of President, through what is now practically a simultaneous popular vote, not only involves an enormous expenditure of energy, time and money once every four years, but necessarily induces a crisis that, if it coincides with any passion stirring the people, can be dangerous“^[121]. Trump’s victory was the outcome of a process of progressive dismantling of the US political system that has been going on for several years now. What emerged from the last primaries is in line with the transformation of factional infighting within the parties due to growing disinformation, whereby the right’s only political argument is to accuse the Democrats of wanting a Bolshevik dictatorship and ethnic and religious minorities of preparing the massacre of white Christians^[122].

American national politics, based on only two parties, no longer corresponds to the complexity of societal diversity, industrial, military and financial interests, the need for greater expertise in international relations and new recipes after the successive failure of Keynesianism and neo-liberalism. In the United States, it is not true that the conditions for a solid democracy and state exist, as the philosopher Von Hayek explains: the main function of the state is to regulate the system by means of rules and norms that prevent one social part from arbitrarily prevailing over the others and prevailing over them: in this sense, in his vision, the state takes over the role of mediator between the demands of individuals and organisations^[123].

After Trump’s defeat in the presidential election and the attack on Capitol Hill, Thiel and Musk, without openly disowning the former president, started looking elsewhere for the right man to realise their dream of technocracy. Thiel backed Kevin McCarthy, a Freedom Caucus man^[124]. This is no coincidence, as this organisation wants to influence decisions crucial to the functioning of democracy, including impeachment proceedings, the Justice Department and amendments to the Constitution^[125]. For 2023, Thiel supports the candidacy of Scott Perry for the chairmanship of the House Homeland Security Committee^[126], and Jim Jordan for the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee^[127]: two Freedom Caucus affiliates.

Musk, on the other hand, is banking on a White House candidacy, which he describes as ‘reasonable and centrist’, of Ron DeSantis, one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus, should he decide to run^[128], a decision that is not expected to be made known before the end of the Florida legislative session in May 2023^[129]. DeSantis has grown so much that he has become a formidable political war machine, able to win a second term as Governor of Florida last year with an impressive 19 percentage point lead over his opponent: ‘DeSantis was viewed favourably by 43% of all respondents, while Trump by only 36%. DeSantis leads by 30 points, 59% to 29%, among those who identify themselves as conservatives’[130].

The most striking effect of this degenerative process is the rise of populism, which manifests itself in the abuse of electoral institutions, dictated by religious, economic, and racial nostalgia^[131]. Those riding the wave are no longer the authoritarians of yesteryear, backed by an outsized ideology and an efficient repressive system. These are governments that appear to be democratic, but offer anyone the chance to effectively challenge the rules. They are governments that contradict, for the first time in democratic history, the three rules laid down by the French Revolution: according to them, in order to run the state, one must consciously renounce Freedom, Fraternity (Solidarity) and above all Equality.

[1]https://perry.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hfc_rules_reforms_proposal_7.25.2022.pdf

[2]https://perry.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hfc_rules_reforms_proposal_7.25.2022.pdf

[3]https://perry.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hfc_rules_reforms_proposal_7.25.2022.pdf

[4]https://perry.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hfc_rules_reforms_proposal_7.25.2022.pdf

[5]https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/29/house-republican-freedom-caucus-challenges-00023071

[6]https://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/house-freedom-caucus-conservative-legislation-114593 ; https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/conservative-lawmakers-form-house-freedom-caucus

[7]https://web.archive.org/web/20181213171255/http:/time.com/4067218/freedom-caucus/ ; https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/20/house-freedom-caucus-what-is-it-and-whos-in-it/ ; https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/01/freedom-caucus-right-wing-members-of-congress-form-new-group-to-rally-conservatives.html ; http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/23/politics/what-is-the-freedom-caucus/ ;“https://eu.citizen-times.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/12/03/meadows-line-lead-houses-most-conservative-wing/94887464/

[8]https://www.cleveland.com/open/2015/02/its_official_rep_jim_jordan_no.html; https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7ejw7/the-right-wing-freedom-caucus-says-its-going-to-kill-trumpcare-vgtrn ; https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2017/04/02/gop-centrists-not-freedom-caucus-are-blocking-deal-to-replace-obamacare/?sh=7a806534533e ; https://web.archive.org/web/20190404084802/https:/thehill.com/homenews/house/325856-republican-quits-house-freedom-caucus ;https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/14/a-house-divided ; https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/house-freedom-caucus-to-break-with-leadership-on-budget-220758 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/25/us/politics/trump-health-care-defeat-gop-civil-war.html ; https://web.archive.org/web/20170705233615/http:/origin-nyi.thehill.com/homenews/administration/326643-trump-on-the-warpath-against-freedom-caucus ; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/07/republicans-freedom-caucus-daniel-webster-speaker ; https://web.archive.org/web/20150728055603/http:/www.nationaljournal.com/congress/boehner-vs-freedom-caucus-battle-escalates-20150624 ;https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/insurgent-bloc-of-house-conservatives-proving-to-be-a-thorn-in-boehners-side/2015/03/04/6bec23e4-c29c-11e4-9ec2-b418f57a4a99_story.html ; https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/whos-to-blame-for-the-government-shutdown-a-look-at-the-political-fallout-so-far