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      Faux Populism and Crypto Join Forces for Dastardly Pyramid Scheme

      Here's how to connect Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele to Sam Bankman-Fried and the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

      John Feffer
      Dec 17, 2022

      It should be obvious to pretty much everyone at this point that anything crypto is an old-fashioned grift, a scam, a Ponzi scheme. Those who got in on the ground floor of crypto-currencies and NFTs and the like--and then left when the going was good--have made out like bandits. The rest of us are left holding the bill.

      Consider NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. These are collectibles--some might call them art--created by the same block-chain technology as cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, turned an image of his first tweet into an NFT in December 2020 and auctioned it off for $2.9 million a few months later. Dorsey donated the proceeds to charity, but most others have taken the money and run. When the purchaser of his NFT tried to resell it in April 2022 for $50 million, the highest bid was a paltry $280.

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      Progressives Need to Understand Why the Son of a Hated Dictator Won the Philippine Election

      The failures of liberalism made illiberalism popular. But the inevitable crises of the Marcos-Duterte regime offer opportunities for progressive organizing.

      Walden Bello
      May 21, 2022

      As a progressive activist, I am dismayed at the election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the former dictator, by a landslide in the recent Philippine presidential election. But as a sociologist, I can understand why.

      The vote for Duterte and the even larger vote for Marcos were propelled by widespread resentment at the persistence of gross inequality.

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      Populism, Freedom, and the Current Threats to Democracy

      Progressive Populists need to understand the current struggle as a long-term battle over whose interests the Democratic party and the broader U.S. political system serve.

      James Stone
      May 14, 2022

      Much ink has been spilt on the subject of populism, so it would be a fool's errand for me to presume to settle the debate over the meaning of the term. I will simply confine myself to pointing out two well-established facts. First, the original 19th century U.S. populists sought to forge a multi-racial movement of the producing classes to challenge the abuses of power by big corporations and wealthy individuals. They believed that business interests such as railroads and banks as well as wealthy individuals constituted a plutocratic threat to democracy in gilded age America.

      The hybrid system of private campaign finance and lobbying in the United States is the epitome of organized corruption on a massive scale and we cannot be surprised that it produces outcomes which further privilege the wealthy and monied interests.

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