Few people require less introduction than Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. A relentless advocate for universal health care, labor rights, and taxing the rich, the two-time Democratic presidential candidate, now 84 years old, serves as de facto maestro of the American progressive movement. If you’ve got a bone to pick with the one percent, chances are you were at least partially inspired by his various campaigns, speeches, and general gadflyery.
In his new book, Fight Oligarchy, Sanders once again makes his pitch for a more equitable society, this time cast through the prism of our current authoritarian moment. Packed with evidentiary statistics and troubling examples, Sanders’s latest suggests that even if billionaires previously held an antagonistic amount of power, the United States (and indeed the world) is now on the precipice of becoming an outright oligarchy—a society that functions solely for the whims of the ultrawealthy, to the detriment of everyone else.
“As bad as the situation has been in the past, it is worse today,” Sanders tells Vanity Fair. “And then when you also recognize Trump and his movement toward authoritarianism…”
Senator Sanders spoke with Vanity Fair about the connections between oligarchal policy and some of the most looming issues of our day, from soaring housing costs to migration and Gaza. The solution, he argues, will involve massive systemic change spurred by the participation of everyday people—specifically more nonpoliticians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez running for office. (The call ended before we could explore the more complicated example of Graham Platner.)
Vanity Fair: Over the years, you’ve been so consistent in your message that I bet a lot of us could write a halfway decent Bernie Sanders speech by memory. In Fight Oligarchy, you address a lot of the same concerns you have previously. So what does this book bring to that conversation that’s new or different?
Bernie Sanders: We are living in an unprecedented moment in American history, so it’s not just, “Hey, people are getting much richer—that’s a problem.” You tie that to the fact that you have an authoritarian president, tied to the fact that the oligarchs are now investing hundreds of billions of dollars into AI and robotics—which I think will have a devastating economic impact—tied to the fact that we have this disaster Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Money has always played a role in politics, no doubt, no question. But right now, when you have one guy, the richest guy in the world, spending $270 million to elect Donald Trump as president, are we really living in a democracy?
What do you think people most misunderstand about the concept of oligarchy?
It’s a term that has often been applied to Russia. The Soviet Union collapsed; a bunch of former Communists took over the major economic factories and so forth. Putin was one of the richest guys in the world, and his fellow oligarchs run the country—that’s an oligarchy. You got a handful of people with huge wealth in Russia. Isn’t that too bad? Oh my goodness. Look at Saudi Arabia. You got a family there maybe worth a trillion dollars. Oh my God, that’s an oligarchy. Go to the UAE. You go to Qatar: very wealthy, wealthy people. They’re living under authoritarian societies run by very wealthy people. Well, guess what? In America, under Trump, we are moving toward an authoritarian society run by very, very wealthy people. That’s called oligarchy.
What is the connection between oligarchy and authoritarianism?
That’s a really important point and question, and I try to make that point. What oligarchs want—and they’re pretty clear, [Peter] Thiel and some of these other right-wing billionaires—they literally believe that, like the kings in Europe in the 1700s, they have the divine right to rule, that they are somehow blessed, and that it is wrong for anybody to try to hold them accountable or regulate anything they do. Thiel—there was a piece where he didn’t just disagree with his critics, he called them Antichrist. He used the religious term to suggest that anyone who wants to regulate or hold accountable the oligarchs, as they transform our world economy with AI robots, that they are Antichrist. It’s like the devil to challenge the divine right of the oligarchs to do anything they want. That’s where these guys are coming from.
Look, the rich have always been anti-union. They want to exploit their workers. They want tax breaks. They want deregulation. Nothing new about that. But these guys are taking it to a whole new level. And with Trump as president, he’s their guy. They support him. We should understand how dangerous a moment this is.
You wrote about the three companies that are the largest single shareholders in pretty much everything: Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. How do we change that dynamic?
The systems in this country are broken, and that’s the simple truth. It’s an economy in which, as you indicate and as I wrote about, we have more concentration of ownership than we ever have before. Three major Wall Street investment firms combined are the major stockholders of [nearly 90%] of the S&P corporations in America. Just think about the incredible power that three boards of directors have—probably less than 100 people—over the economy. In sector after sector, you have large corporations controlling what is produced, the prices.
And we’re also seeing that in the media, where our friend Mr. [David] Ellison has just bought CBS and Paramount and now, I guess, is looking at buying CNN and maybe TikTok as well. So you have a handful of zillionaires controlling media. [Elon] Musk, of course, controls [X, formerly Twitter]. [Mark] Zuckerberg controls Meta, which is Facebook and Instagram. [Jeff] Bezos The Washington Post and Twitch, et cetera, et cetera. You add all that together, you’re living in an economy where the media is controlled by very few large conglomerates owned by billionaires, and an economy where we have more concentration of ownership than we’ve ever had.
Now to deal with all of that stuff, you need a political revolution. You need a movement of people who say, “You know what? It’s not a radical demand that we have an economy that works for all of us. A political system which is based on one person, one vote, not billionaires owning the system.” That is not a radical idea, but what it requires—and maybe we saw this on the No Kings day on Saturday, when 7 million people came out—is a kind of grassroots political movement, which says that in the richest country in the history of the world we can have a decent standard of living, full development, we can have a vibrant democracy. We can have a shorter workweek. We can have the best educational system in the world. Can have the best health care system in the world. How do we expand life expectancy in the United States, not lag three or four years behind other OECD countries? We can do those things. But to do that, you gotta take on the greed.
How is the oligarchy tied to the housing crisis?
They’re tied in a number of reasons right now. It’s not only what they’re doing, which in terms of companies like Blackstone and other private investment firms means literally buying up entire communities, converting working-class homes into expensive or managed rental units, raising rents unconscionably. That’s what they are doing. But what they are not doing is building the kind of low-income and affordable housing that we need. Look—the entire economy now is geared to the needs of wealthy people. I don’t know this for a fact, but let me make a guess that the yacht-building companies are doing very well. You got apartments in New York City that sell for millions and millions of dollars. So they’re what the investor class, what the billionaire class, is paying attention to—the needs of the very, very wealthy people. How do we suit their needs? Let’s give them fancy homes. Let’s give them their own private doctors while you don’t have insurance. Let’s give them wonderful private schools for their kid and to hell with everybody else.
In the book you mention how oligarchy is linked to the violence in Gaza. Can you explain that a bit?
You have a corrupt campaign finance system where you have billionaire-funded super PACs, to a large degree, now controlling both political parties. One of the super PACs is a group called AIPAC, and I guess they have other super PACs as well. And what they have done over the years [is] spent hundreds of millions to tell members of Congress that you will support the prime minister of Israel, no matter what he or she may be doing. And what that has translated to in recent years—as Netanyahu’s extremist government has gone to war against the entire Palestinian people; have killed or wounded 10% of the population, women, children, and the elderly; have destroyed the entire infrastructure of Gaza; have committed what many people believe, including myself, is a genocide—is AIPAC is saying, “Look, if you don’t support what Israel is doing, we’re going to defeat you. If you support what Israel is doing, we’re going to give you a whole lot of money. It’s your choice. A lot of money.” They have been successful in defeating really good progressive candidates in the House who have stood up and said, “You know what? I cannot support the horrific policies of the Netanyahu government in Gaza.” They defeat them. And on the other hand, they have given a whole lot of money to the people who say, “Oh wow, let’s go get my picture with Netanyahu and say what a great guy he is.”
How do you think oligarchical policy fuels migration?
Well, that’s a complicated answer. I don’t know that I can give you a detailed answer, but all that I do know is that you have about 10 million undocumented people in this country—the overwhelming majority of those people came into this country illegally, absolutely correct—and they came here for the same reasons that my father came into this country. They came without any money in their pockets. They came to try to get a better life for their kids. Sometimes walked a thousand miles to get over the border. What I think we have lacked in this country for decades, with few exceptions, has been serious immigration policy—comprehensive immigration reform. We now have masked ICE agents roaming the cities of America in unmarked vans, picking people off streets, sometimes picking up American citizens without due process, throwing them in vans, transporting them to God knows where, sometimes to South Sudan…. I don’t think that is what America is about. Many of the undocumented are working in some of the most difficult jobs. You talk about COVID and essential workers? Well, I’ve got news for you: A lot of those people were working in meatpacking plants, were working in nursing homes. A lot of them died maintaining this economy. So I think what we’ve got to be doing instead of picking them all off the street is moving to a comprehensive immigration reform. If there are criminals out there, people commit violent acts, get ’em out of this country—I don’t think anyone objects to that. But I strongly object to what Trump is doing.
ICE now has among the top 15 largest budgets of any militarized force on earth. In the future, will there be a way to dismantle that?
It’s not a question of dismantlement. What you need is sane immigration policy and immigration enforcement. The truth of the matter is that the border should be secure. People want to come into this country; there’s a process that they should go through. There should be policies to make a determination of how many, et cetera, et cetera. But that has been lacking, and both political parties are responsible for that.
There are a lot of people out there who will hear you and say, “Okay, I get it. The game is rigged by billionaires. But what can I, as an individual, actually do to fight that?”
You got to get out of your zone of comfort. Trump is taking this country in a whole new direction. This is a guy who puts up an AI image of him in an airplane defecating on American cities—not quite the image of the president of the United States that I was educated to respect when I was in the fourth grade. As individuals, as American citizens, we have got to rethink the role that we play, and it’s got to be a different role in every respect.
It means speaking out. One of the positive revolutions taking place in recent years is the idea of podcasts. You know, people can get up, do their own podcast, and start talking to other people about whatever issues. We can improve our educational system. We can support workers fighting for decent wages. We’re seeing a number of candidates running for high office—Congress, Senate—who are prepared to take on the oligarchy. Our own organization is training and working with literally thousands of people, young people, often, who want to run for school board, city council, state legislatures, and get their feet wet in the political process, in fighting for working people. Those are some of the things that I think we can do.
There are so many people who feel like politicians have failed them, and we’re seeing all these nonprofessional politicians running for office. So what advice do you have for an everyday person who’s interested in getting involved with either their local or federal politics?
One example: me. When I was a young person, I walked into a meeting in Vermont, and I came out the third-party candidate for the United States Senate. Okay? And I ran around the state. We knew we didn’t have any money. We knew we were going to lose and were only getting 2% of the vote. But it was a lot of fun. I met a lot of people. We talked about ideas, good discussion, you know, talking about, in those days, the war in Vietnam, the economy, et cetera, et cetera. People can jump in. You do not need to be a professional politician. You do not need to have a PhD in economics—trust me, you don’t. You need to have a heart that beats, a heart that is concerned. You need to have compassion. You need to have the courage to stand up to powerful special interests.
Get involved in your local school board, in your city council, in your state legislature, support candidates running for governor, for mayor, for Senate, for the House, for president of the United States. Get involved. And what you will find out is that it’s not just quote, unquote “patriotic duty.” You’ll find that it’s a lot of fun. You’ll meet a whole lot of people you never met before, and you’ll disagree with people. It’s a good experience. So the point is, we have got to become better citizens in a deeper sense of the word, and get involved in all aspects of what America is supposed to be about.
In the book you talk about the need for political leadership that offers a powerful vision for the future. Do you see anyone out there offering that vision now?
That’s exactly the wrong question. I don’t think it’s one person. I think it’s a movement of people, and we got to get away from this, you know…. I’m not a great fan of the great leader. I’m a fan of millions of people getting involved in the political process. Alexandria is doing a phenomenal job, but by the way, it is not just Alexandria. You’ve got Greg Casar as head of the Progressive Caucus in the House. You got Pramila Jayapal. You got Maxwell Frost. You got all kinds of great young people in the House right now who are standing up to the oligarchy, who are fighting for the working class and having real success politically all over the country.
You’ve been throwing a lot of support behind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and she’s had great success. But you’ve recently drawn some heat for supporting Graham Platner. What are your thoughts on that?
Look—six years ago, Alexandria, as it happens, was a waitress, and she looked around her and she saw things that she did not like. People couldn’t afford people living in poverty unnecessarily, people couldn’t afford housing, people couldn’t afford health care. She got involved, and what I want her and others—not just Alexandria—to be as is inspiration to millions of other people. She did it. You can do it as well.
I ran as a third party and got 2% of the vote. And I ran again. I got 1% of the vote. I got 4%, I got 6%, and eventually got elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and eventually got elected to the US Senate. People can do it. Ordinary people can do it. Don’t let the establishment intimidate you. I’m a United States senator. I know all these guys, trust me—ordinary people can do it. So let’s get involved. Let’s stand up, take on the oligarchy, fight for working families, and let us create, as the richest nation on earth, the kind of country that most of us know we can become.
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