Right-wing billionaires are investing in a conspiracy cooked up by obscure professors at conservative colleges to end American democracy and install an authoritarian dictator.
Conservatives are pining for a "Red Caesar" to suspend democracy in 2025 and wrest power back from the "cosmopolitan class" of unelected elites they believe are ruling America, and they see congressional dysfunction as a symptom of the institutional rot they believe a dictator could cure, wrote Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch.
"America should be having a robust, life-or-death conversation — when TV’s cable talkfest signs on at 6 a.m. until the last words at midnight, on the floors of the House and Senate, in newspaper editorial boards and down at the barber shop and in Starbucks — about whether we really want to end this country’s 247-year uneven experiment in democracy, and whether one man should have the power to override elections, jail his enemies, free his friends, and eviscerate federal agencies," Bunch wrote.
Kevin Slack, a politics professor at the ultraconservative Hillsdale College, and the Claremont Institute's Michael Anton are the brains behind this push to install a dictator – specifically, Donald Trump – to replace the Constitution with a form of governance that would blend "monarchy and tyranny," and Steve Bannon has been systematically removing obstacles to that goal from government.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
“Intellectuals play a certain kind of role, especially on the right, in legitimating actions of elites in the party and [the] movement,” said Damon Linker, a senior writing fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. “They’re giving people permission to do terrible things."
Linker warned that a "dangerous conspiracy theory" originating with obscure professors is taking root with right-wing billionaires who fund conservative causes and candidates, and Trump has openly campaigned on prosecuting his enemies, filling the government with loyalists, deporting immigrants and deploying the military against Democratic-led cities.
"But in thinking about a 'Red Caesar,' it’s helpful to remember what the actual Caesar said right before crossing the Rubicon: Alea iacta est, meaning, 'The die is cast,'" Bunch concluded. "But in the United States in 2023, the die is not cast, not yet. The majority of Americans do not want to live under a dictatorship, and we have the power to stop this. But America is never going to prevent the 'Red Caesar' unless we start talking about it, loudly and right away."