Follow the money

Wall Street's History of Fascism

The pattern first: American finance has a documented history of underwriting the far right. Read the arc, then we'll test it against single cases.

The Plot to Seize the White House

In 1933–34 Wall Street financiers allegedly tried to recruit Gen. Smedley Butler and 500,000 veterans to depose FDR — a congressional committee said the plan was real; the New York Times called it a hoax

The most literal version of the pattern. A congressional committee found the plan was real; the New York Times called it a hoax. Both things are on the record.

Trading With the Enemy

In 1942 the US seized a New York bank as an enemy asset — one of its directors was Prescott Bush, and it existed to serve the industrialist who helped bankroll Hitler. The documented record, minus the myth

The plot failed. The business relationships did not. In 1942 the US seized a New York bank as an enemy asset — note who sat on its board.

The Dulles Blueprint

Now the machinery, and the man. The lawyers who structured those relationships did not lose the war — they staffed the peace and built the intelligence state. The next three stops are all Dulles-era, because his influence runs well past the one operation everyone knows.

Operation Paperclip: Bringing Nazis to the US after WWII

1,600 scientists, a file-forging agency, a CIA-run Nazi spy network, and a rat line the US government apologized for

First, what that machinery did with the losing side's scientists: 1,600 of them, forged dossiers, and a rat line the US government eventually apologized for.

The Man Who Freed the Nazis

John J. McCloy, 'Chairman of the American Establishment,' and the 1951 clemency that unwound Nuremberg for the industrialists.

Then what it did with the losing side's financiers and industrialists. John J. McCloy commuted the sentences. Paperclip took the rocket men; this took the balance sheets.

The Roy Cohn Method

The domestic operating system for the Dulles doctrine. Favor bank, compromise inventory, and the mentorship of successors from 1953 through 2024.

And the domestic technique, which is the hinge of this whole thread. Cohn learned it in the McCarthy hearings and taught it, decades later, to a young New York developer. This is how the mid-century method reaches the present tense.

Military Grift

The intermediate step the jump to modern self-dealing usually skips: covert action turned into a business, run off the books.

The Enterprise: Oliver North, Richard Secord, and the NSC's off-books network

A private, off-budget financing and resupply company built inside the National Security Council, and the pardons that closed the loop

Iran-Contra as a going concern. North and Secord built a privately-run foreign policy with its own airline and its own accounts — the state's work, on private books, for private margins.

Self-Dealing & Crony Capitalism

Now the present. Same appetite, no plausible deniability required: the revolving door, the carve-out, and the sweetheart contract do the work the coup was for.

Howard Lutnick: Sons, Stakes & Self-Dealing

The townhouse chain, the Cantor legacy, the second-generation conflict

The second-generation version — a Cantor legacy, a townhouse chain, and a conflict that never had to be hidden.

The Pardon Market

Twenty documented cases: money, lobbying fees, and loyalty transactions inside Trump's second-term clemency operation

Clemency as an asset class. Around 1,700 second-term grants, sorted into reward, corruption, and brokered pardons, with the lobbyist pipeline named.

The Privatized Dollar

Who Really Controls Your Stablecoin?

The end of the line, for now: the money itself moving out of public hands. Reread stop one. Nobody needed 500,000 veterans.