Fight Oligarchy

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont opens by describing the Fighting Oligarchy tour he launched in January 2025. Oligarchy, as Sanders defines it, is a system in which a small number of extremely wealthy individuals control a nation's economic, political, and media life, leaving ordinary people with little power. Audiences from both conservative and liberal states turned out in large numbers, driven by shared anger at what Sanders calls the domination of American life by the billionaire class. The book's goal, he writes, is to explain how the country reached this point and what can be done about it.

Sanders argues that the United States now operates as an oligarchy. He presents data showing that Elon Musk, worth nearly $400 billion, owns more wealth than the bottom 52 percent of American households; the top one percent own more than the bottom 93 percent; and CEOs of large corporations earn 350 times more than their average employees. The problem extends beyond individual wealth to corporate consolidation: four companies control 80 percent of beef processing, and similar concentration exists across energy, health care, and technology. Three Wall Street firms, Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street, are the major stockholders in 95 percent of S&P 500 corporations, an index of 500 large U.S. public companies, giving them enormous influence over the economy.

Sanders contends that the media is controlled by a handful of conglomerates and billionaires. Six international media corporations control what 90 percent of Americans see, hear, and read, ensuring that issues affecting working people receive minimal coverage. He names Musk as the owner of X (formerly Twitter), Jeff Bezos as the owner of The Washington Post, and Mark Zuckerberg's Meta as the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. He traces the corruption of the political system to the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which allowed unlimited spending on campaigns. Since that ruling, political spending has risen by more than 1,600 percent. In the 2024 election, 100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion. Musk alone spent $290 million to help elect Donald Trump and was rewarded with control of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a body that dismantled federal agencies and fired tens of thousands of workers.

Sanders describes the passage in early July 2025 of Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," which provided over a trillion dollars in tax breaks for the top one percent and over $900 billion for large corporations while cutting Medicaid, nutrition programs, and education. He argues that Republican members voted for it out of fear that oligarchs would fund primary challengers. He cites North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who opposed the bill over its health insurance impact on his state but announced he would not seek reelection after Trump threatened to primary him. Sanders extends his critique to the Democratic Party, arguing that billionaire donors shaped Vice President Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign to avoid challenging corporate interests, costing her the election. He also contends that fear of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which spent $100 million in 2024 to defeat congressional critics of U.S. aid to Israel, has silenced opposition to Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which Sanders describes as a violation of international law.

Turning to Trump's presidency, Sanders describes attending the January 20, 2025, inauguration and seeing the three wealthiest men in America standing directly behind Trump, with 13 additional billionaires whom Trump had nominated to head major federal agencies seated behind them. He contrasts this scene with Abraham Lincoln's vision of government "of the people, by the people, for the people." Sanders details Trump's economic agenda: the tax breaks in the "Big Beautiful Bill," the effective shutdown of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the breaking of federal trade unions, and plans to privatize Social Security, Medicare, and public education. He also documents what he calls unprecedented kleptocracy, noting that Trump accepted a $400 million jet from Qatar, launched a personal cryptocurrency that generated $1.2 billion, and presided over lucrative deals between Middle Eastern governments and his family's business interests.

Sanders argues that Trump's rise was made possible by the Democratic Party's decades-long abandonment of the working class. The average American worker earns less per week than in 1973 after adjusting for inflation, 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) sent millions of jobs overseas. Trump campaigned with an understanding that the system was broken, but rather than offering solutions, Sanders argues, he followed the classic demagogue's playbook: scapegoating immigrants, racial minorities, and LGBT people while stoking fear and division. Sanders details Trump's use of what he calls the "Big Lie," a strategy of calculated dishonesty: claiming he won the 2020 election erodes faith in elections; calling the January 6, 2021, insurrection a "day of love" condones political violence; and branding journalism "fake news" destroys public trust. He warns that the "Big Beautiful Bill" includes $75 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which would make ICE larger than the FBI and DEA combined, creating what he views as a dangerous domestic paramilitary force.

Sanders broadens his argument to the global stage, contending that oligarchy defines the world's economic and political order. The top one percent own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent of humanity, and at least $12 trillion in private wealth sits in offshore tax havens. He surveys conditions in Russia, where Vladimir Putin presides over a kleptocratic state and the wealthiest 500 people own more than the bottom 99.8 percent; in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where royal families hold enormous fortunes while thousands of migrant workers died building megaprojects; in India, where over 200 billionaires hold a combined $941 billion while over 75 million people live in extreme poverty; and across Africa, where four billionaires control more wealth than 750 million people.

To counter despair, Sanders draws on American history, arguing that every major advance came when ordinary people were told change was impossible and fought anyway. He recounts the American Revolution, the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the labor movement that won the eight-hour workday through struggles like the 1886 Haymarket Square rally and the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, the women's suffrage movement that secured the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the fight for free public education, and the LGBT rights movement that progressed from the 1969 Stonewall rebellion to the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

Sanders then presents the Fighting Oligarchy tour as evidence that a new movement is forming. Beginning in Omaha, Nebraska, the tour grew to draw 9,000 in Warren, Michigan, 34,000 in Denver, and 36,000 in Los Angeles. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York joined for several legs, and crowds turned out even in deeply conservative areas: 20,000 in Salt Lake City and 12,500 in Nampa, Idaho. About 30 percent of attendees identified as Independents or Republicans. Sanders describes the rallies as foundations for movement-building, with follow-up efforts including hiring organizers, training volunteers, and recruiting over 7,000 people interested in running for office. He highlights the victory of Zohran Mamdani, a former Sanders campaign volunteer and New York State Assembly member who, despite being heavily outspent by former governor Andrew Cuomo, won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary on a grassroots platform focused on affordability for working people.

In his final chapter, Sanders lays out a policy agenda: overturning Citizens United and abolishing super PACs, committees that can raise and spend unlimited campaign money; automatic voter registration; a wealth tax ensuring no one possesses more than a billion dollars; a 32-hour workweek to share the gains of automation; Medicare for All, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated would save $650 billion a year; tuition-free public college; construction of four million affordable housing units; a $17 minimum wage; 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave; and expanded Social Security benefits. He closes by calling for a political revolution, urging readers to run for office, organize unions through the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), join protests, and use social media to advance progressive ideas. If Americans refuse to be divided by race, origin, religion, or sexual orientation, Sanders insists, they can defeat the oligarchs and build a more just society.