Part I — The Oligarchic Paradigm

Part II — The Oligarchy’s Foot Soldiers

As of 2020, there were 1.8 million tax-exempt organizations in the United States, including almost 1 million public charities, more than 100,000 private foundations, and close to 400,000 other types of nonprofit organizations.  More people are currently employed in this sector than in either construction or agriculture, a clear marker of the collapse of productive economic activity in our nation.  Arguably, many of these organizations, perhaps a majority, are involved in legitimate activities of the type that come to mind when one thinks of the word “charity.”  Nevertheless, in recent decades, particularly since the 2010 Supreme Court ruling “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,” the non-profit sector has become the prime vehicle for the creation of an “oligarchical party” aimed at transforming American society and subverting our elected government.

In addition to the public record of registered Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs), there is also the rather hazy realm of Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) of which there are tens of thousands world-wide.  NGOs were first recognized as legitimate protected entities in 1945 by the newly-created United Nations.  Chapter X of the UN Charter grants “consultative status” for organizations which are neither governments nor member states, and in 1950 this category was expanded to include “any international organization that is not founded by an international treaty.”  The United Nations has come to rely heavily on the deployment of NGOs, and NGOs have become indispensable in pushing key priorities of oligarchical policy—including “climate change,” population reduction and “sustainable development.”  The United Nations has now given NGOs official “observer status” at its assemblies and meetings.

In recent years, NGOs have become notorious for their role in fomenting “Color Revolutions” and other subversive activities.  Their role in the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine, the “Rose revolution” in Georgia and the various uprisings of what was called the “Arab Spring” is extensively documented.  NGOs have also been used by British, American and other intelligence agencies, and an alphabet soup of NGO classifications has been created to define how different NGO-types operate:  QUANGO (Quasi-autonomous NGO), INGO (International NGO), DONGO (Donor Organized NGO), GONGO (Government-operated NGO) and many more.  In the world of NGOs, the intelligence services, the foreign policy establishment, the UN apparatus, and the private power of the foundations and fondi all intermingle.

For example, in 1983 the U.S. Government created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental foundation.  The NED funnels government funds through INGOs, like the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and Freedom House.  These organizations are comprised almost exclusively of neo-con and neo-liberal Democratic and Republican “war hawks.”  In 2014 this apparatus, working closely with the Soros Foundation, funneled tens of millions of dollars and deployed “grass-roots” NGOs on the ground to effect a coup d’etat against the elected government of Ukraine.

Some, within the world of NGOs, have attempted to separate themselves from the unsavory taint of “capitalism” and intelligence operations.  An example of this is the World Social Forum, founded in 2001 as an “anti-globalist” rival of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum.  Wholly controlled by NGOs, however, the World Social Forum is even more rabid than the Davos crowd in agitating for “climate control” measures and “sustainable development,” i.e., depopulation.  The United Nations, through its cultural subversion branch UNESCO, has been active in the World Social Forum from its 2001 founding.

Subversion by Oligarchical Money

In 2010, in a case known as “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,” the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, overturned the 2002 Campaign Reform Act and ruled that independent contributions to political campaigns—by non-profit organizations (NPOs), corporations, labor unions and other “independent” organizations—could not be restricted by the government.  This ruling allowed these organizations to spend unlimited sums to support or oppose political candidates.  In the 13 years since this Supreme Court ruling our electoral process has been overwhelmed with billions of dollars of “dark money,” emanating not from the political parties themselves but from “independent” organizations who are allowed to keep their sources of funding secret.  What records exist have shown that during the last decade the lion’s share of this new funding has come not from corporations but from wealthy private donors, channeled largely through NPOs. 

The “Citizens United” ruling was further expanded by subsequent court rulings, including in the 2010 “Speechnow v. FEC” case that ruled that a political committee may accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, unions and NPOs as long as they do not contribute directly to candidates.  The FEC subsequently allowed the creation of independent expenditure-only committees, now known as “Super PACs,” and in 2011 they added a new category of “Hybrid PACs,” which can act as both a PAC and Super PAC.

The effect of all of this has led to a situation that every candidate for federal office—and increasingly also state office—is now utterly dependent on untraceable money which flows from the wealthiest sector of the population, particularly from the foundations, NPOs and other tax-exempt sources.  The choice for these elected officials is either to “toe-the-line” of their donors’ agenda or face a cut-off of funds for their election campaigns. For example, in the first six months of 2023 non-profits funneled more than $16.5 million from anonymous donors to Super PACs spending on 2024 federal elections.  Almost all of the money comes from non-profit organizations, which are both tax-exempt and permitted to hide the identities of their donors.

The Oligarchy’s Non-Profits

As discussed in Part I of this report, the legal status of non-profit organizations was first recognized in the enabling legislation which established the national income tax in 1913.[1]  That same year, another law, the “Statutory Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations,” was enacted which defined non-profits as “any corporation or association organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, or educational purposes, no part of the net income of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.”  Over the years non-profit status has evolved into a myriad of classifications,[2] the two best known being 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4).  Originally, 501(c)(3) classification was rigorously restricted to charitable organizations, but this is really no longer the case, as the government’s interpretation of what constitutes a “charity” can now include things like “trans-gender” support or pro-drug “harm-reduction.”  501(c)(4) non-profits, which originally were intended for non-partisan social activity like civic leagues and social welfare organizations, has now become the classification of choice for the multitude of “woke” and “progressive” organizations which are trying to reshape American culture and society, as well as for the political organizations which flood our electoral process with millions of dollars of dark money.  This has created a situation in which the extra-governmental operations of the fondi—with their own political and cultural agenda—are given preferential tax status by our elected officials and courts.

501(c)3 non-profits are exempt from payment of federal income taxes, and donors to these non-profits can claim a federal income tax deduction of up to 50 percent.  These non-profits also enjoy the same limited liability protection as for-profit corporations, so that officers and members are typically not personally liable for the debts and obligations of the nonprofit corporation.  For 501(c)(4) non-profits, the rules are somewhat less generous and more restrictive, but only by matters of degree.  Beginning with Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and escalating dramatically in the 21^st century, non-profits have become the beneficiaries of huge cash infusions by both the federal and state governments.  One example of this is the allegedly anti-drug and homelessness programs which fall under the misnamed rubric of “harm reduction,” almost all of which are farmed out—at taxpayer expense—to 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) non-profits or in some cases to UN-registered NGOs.

Drugs

When one speaks about the push to legalize deadly drugs in the United States, the first name that comes to mind is obviously the billionaire George Soros.  Through his tax-exempt Open Society Foundation and other vehicles, for decades Soros has financed ballot initiatives in numerous states to legalize drug usage.  In July, 2000, one of Soros’ organizations, the Lindesmith Center, merged with the Drug Policy Foundation to form the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization which is now at the forefront of the effort, in almost every U.S. state, to legalize drugs.[3]  It was the Drug Policy Alliance which spearheaded the 2020 passage of Oregon’s Ballot Measure 110, which decriminalized the possession of all drugs, including heroin, cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamines.  Incredibly, despite its goal to spread drug usage among the American public, the Drug Policy Alliance has been granted favored status as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, i.e., it is legally a “charitable” organization.

Foundations and non-profits control the pro-drug “harm-reduction” apparatus nationwide.  The National Overdose Prevention Network (NOPN) is a subsidiary of the Public Health Institute (PHI), a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and its policy agenda now dominates many states’ “anti-drug” approach, including the distribution of free needles and crack pipes, naloxone and narcan (to allow addicts to keep taking drugs), and in numerous cities the establishment of non-profit-run “injection centers.”  There are literally thousands of these pro-drug “treatment” programs and agencies across the country.  One example of this is the Harm Reduction Circle in the State of California which, in 2022, was granted legal status as a Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation. 

A Note on “Trans-genderism”

Foundations and non-profits have also been at the center of all of the “cultural warfare” in the United States, ranging from the “trans-gender” movement to “critical race theory” and “equity,” to the stealing of elections.  One of the most important of the plutocrats pushing trans-genderism has been the tax-exempt Pritzker Family Foundation, founded in 2001 by J.B. and M.K. Pritzker.  Investigative journalist Chris Rufo has extensively documented the Pritzkers’ horrifying initiatives in Illinois and Michigan, targeting and victimizing impoverished ghetto youth as part of their trans-gender efforts.[4]  One might argue that it is in this realm that the utter evil of oligarchical culture is most transparent, and it is hard to argue with that assessment.  For the sake of brevity, however, we shall leave the discussion of the cultural onslaught against the American people to a future discussion.

The Homeless

Just as the foundation/non-profit combination has taken control of drug policy in America, the same is true for policy regarding the exploding homeless population.  In reality, as Michael Shellenberger demonstrated conclusively in his 2021 book San Fran-sicko, the drug problem and homelessness problem are one and the same thing. 

In California, the state with the largest homeless population, all local and statewide programs directed toward the homeless are run by foundations and non-profits.  One of the key power-brokers in setting California’s homeless policy is Marc Russell Benioff, the billionaire co-founder, chairman and CEO of the software company Salesforce.  Benioff also serves on the World Economic Forum's board of trustees.  In 2000 Benioff created the tax-exempt Salesforce Foundation, and in 2019 he created the non-profit Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, which together with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) published the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, a work which argues that homelessness is entirely a crisis of affordable housing and has nothing to do with drugs.  That line—that it is housing that is the problem, not that homeless encampments are open-air drug dens—is now hegemonic in California and throughout much of the nation.

Rigging Elections

When it comes to ensuring that the fondi control our electoral process, the heaviest of the Foundation Heavyweights are directly involved.  The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation and the Pew Charitable Trusts are just a few that are involved in election interference.  One report states that since 2011, almost 200 foundations have made about 1,300 grants totaling more than $150 million to almost 500 non-profits to effect the outcome of elections.

Almost universally, these efforts have focused on what we witnessed in the 2020 election:  supporting mail-in balloting, supporting voter “drop-boxes,” opposing voter ID and similar measures.  In a 2019 report, Voting Rights Under Fire, the Carnegie Corporation of New York praised the efforts of “heroic lawyers, grassroots activists and organizers, coalition and movement builders, and everyday citizens who are fighting to protect and expand Americans’ voting rights.  Right now, nonprofit public-interest litigation groups are working overtime to push back against anti-democratic policies that restrict voting rights in communities of color.”

New Kingpins

The activities of George Soros have been so notorious for so long that he has become almost a household name.  But there are new oligarchical czars that have arisen.  Some, such as the hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, who financed and led the 2017 “The Need to Impeach” campaign against Donald Trump, are somewhat well-known, but there are many more.  One, who is almost unknown by most Americans, is the Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss.  In 1998, Wyss—who has a net worth of $5.5 billion—established the Wyss Foundation.  Since that time he has become a premier funder of the green agenda, and in 2018, Wyss published an article in The New York Times stating his intention to donate $1 billion to environmental causes.  Wyss works extremely closely with various NGOs, and has become a major funder of U.S. environmental organizations, including the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, to lock up western lands and prohibit mining, manufacturing and economic development.

True to his un-American lineage, according to a biography of Wyss written by a sister, Wyss' goal is to “reinterpret the American Constitution in the light of progressive politics.”

In recent years, Wyss, who now lives in Wyoming, has moved aggressively into Democratic Party politics.  In 2007, he established the Wyss Action Fund (now the Berger Action Fund), as a 501(c)(4) non-profit.  In 2015, he established the Hub Project, which has been described as “a front for dark money,” to help elect Democrats.  The Hub Project is managed by Arabella Advisors, of which more below.  In 2021, Wyss attempted to purchase Tribune Publishing, which publishes newspapers including The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun, but despite his being the top bidder, the deal fell through.  Wyss is also now a board member of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank created by Obama and Biden advisor John Podesta.

Arabella and Sixteen Thirty

Arabella Advisors, established in 2005, is neither a foundation nor a non-profit.  It is a Washington, DC-based for-profit consulting company that advises left-leaning donors and non-profits.  In 2021, Atlantic magazine called Arabella “The Massive Progressive Dark-Money Group You’ve Never Heard Of.”  In the 2020 election Arabella clients spent more than $1.5 billion to elect Joe Biden and other Democratic Party candidates.  Many non-profits and Super PACs are part of the Arabella network.  Funds are juggled between 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)4s, foundations, Super PACS and other entities to the point it is almost impossible to determine who is doing what.  Super PACs are free to take money, in unlimited quantities, from non-profits, no questions asked.  Bear in mind that most of these client organizations do not have to disclose donors (i.e., where the money came from), in most cases they don’t have to report how they spend the money (where the money goes), and they don’t even have to disclose their board members.  And all of their activities are tax-exempt.

This has become an intense legal and political battleground.  A complaint against Wyss’ Berger Fund, charging illegal financial activity, was dismissed last year when the FEC commissioners deadlocked 3-3.  The attorney for Wyss in the case was the Democratic Party’s sleazy lawyer Marc Elias who served as the DNC’s cut-out to pay for the debunked Steele Dossier in the attempt to impeach President Trump.

Among the leading clients of Arabella are the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Wyss’ Berger Action Fund, the New Venture Fund, the Fund for a Better Future, the North Fund, the Hopewell Fund and the Windward Fund.  These funds, under Arabella’s direction, then create pop-up “grassroots” organizations through which the money is shunted.  Most of these groups don’t even really exist, except on paper, or with a simplistic one-page website.  Through Arabella’s legal staff, many of these pop-up groups apply for and receive 501(c)(3) non-profit status.

A number of Arabella’s clients were directly involved in 2020 election irregularities.  For example, the Arabella network gave $25 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a 501(c)(3) non-profit.  Allegedly a non-partisan organization, CTCL was run by election analytics experts affiliated with Democrats and progressive causes. The millions in grants that CTCL distributed in the 2020 election were heavily skewed toward increasing turnout in Democratic counties and cities located in swing states.

In 2020, the Sixteen Thirty Fund—the undisputed heavyweight of Democratic dark money—was the second-largest super-PAC donor in the nation.  In the 2020 election Biden’s campaign attracted around $174 million in support from anonymous donors, more than six times the $25.2 million in dark money contributions boosting President Donald Trump.  The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization, has received multimillion dollar donations from billionaires George Soros and Pierre Omidyar[5], among others.  The Fund has also contributed millions to Trump’s opponents in the Republican Party, including $10.5 million to the conservative group Defending Democracy Together, which was founded by the Trump-hating Bill Kristol.

Censorship

In 2018 an organization named Brixton Endeavours Limited was founded in London, England.  It later changed its name to Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).  In 2021 it opened up a U.S. branch and applied for—and received—status as a 501(c)(3) non-profit.  Run by a British national who now lives in Washington, DC, Imran Ahmed, the Center has emerged as a key policymaker for the Biden administration in fighting “disinformation.” Both in Britain and America Ahmed’s two primary foci are fighting “hate speech” and attempting to ban all dissenting views related to Covid.  CCDH also attempted to bankrupt Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover by pressuring advertisers to pull out.

CCDH is merely one example.  The foundations and the non-profits are at the center—world-wide—of the effort to impose a regime of censorship and thought control.  In both Ireland and Scotland, NGOs funded directly by George Soros have been successful in enacting laws which outlaw a very broad classification of “hate-based offences.”  Under these provisions, even anonymous tips that someone is “exhibiting prejudice” can lead—and have led—to police searches of homes and the seizure of personal phones and computers. 

A More Chilling Look at Thought Control

In April, 2022, Michael Lind published an article titled “The End of Progressive Intellectual Life:  How the Foundation-NGO complex quashed innovative thinking and open debate, first on the American right and now on the center-left.”[6]  It is a very moving and insightful piece, particularly since Lind is a University Professor, and what he is describing is what he has actually lived through.  He begins by saying that in the current university environment, “Debate has been replaced by compulsory assent and ideas have been replaced by slogans that can be recited but not questioned:  Black Lives Matter, Green Transition, Trans Women Are Women, 1619, Defund the Police.”  He describes an earlier period from his life when a multitude of journals and magazines would debate issues, from the left to the center-left to the middle to the center-right to the right; a time when thoughts and opinions flowed freely and where universities were havens for open dialogue.  No more.

What created this change, this closing off of open discourse?  Lind minces no words: “The answer is the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Omidyar Network, and other donor foundations, an increasing number of which are funded by fortunes rooted in Silicon Valley. It is this donor elite, bound together by a set of common class prejudices and economic interests, on which most progressive media, think tanks, and advocacy groups depend for funding. . . The donor network uses its financial clout, exercised through its swarms of NGO bureaucrats, to impose common orthodoxy and common messaging on their grantees.”

Lind is not a conservative.  He would probably describe himself as “center-left” or what used to be called a traditional moderate Democrat.  He has little good to say about Republicans.  But what he is decrying is not merely the destruction of the traditional Democratic Party by the crazed woke crowd, but the death of human thinking, the unleashing of two-minute hate sessions against any wavering or dissenting voice.  He describes how today, to even be considered for a MacArthur Prize or to hope to have an article published in The Atlantic, one must obey the party line as dictated by the donors, or as he puts it, “write endless variants of the same screed denouncing Republicans and conservatives as rabid white nationalists

threatening to create a fascist dictatorship right here in America.”

Conclusion

Who then rules in America today?  Or the better question is:  Constitutionally, who is it that is lawfully empowered to rule, to make policy, to defend the well-being of the people?  Historically, this role has been assigned to our elected officials, elected by the people themselves.  Where in the Constitution is any authority delegated to the über-wealthy class and the protected foundations and tax-exempt non-profits they have erected?

In these brief concluding remarks, consider not only what is written above but also the contents of Part I, “The Oligarchic Paradigm.” Re-read Lyndon LaRouche’s analysis of the fondi, of their desire to create a perpetual never-ending plutocratic oligarchical system.  It is not simply a matter of powerful individuals who live and die.  It is the governing of society by an Oligarchic Principle, one which demands that THEY make policy and THEY decide how we live and die.  These are the new gods of Olympus.  Is it not time to return to the unfinished business of Wright Patman,—to eradicate this monstrosity and return to the practice of self-government?

END

[1]. Although certain charitable exemptions from tariffs were inserted into the Tariff Act of 1894.

[2]. There are 29 different types of 501(c) classifications.

[3]. It should be noted that all of these organizations, including the Lindesmith Center, have been the recipients of ongoing U.S. government grants to finance their projects.  The same is true for a great many non-profits engaged in projects on drugs, homelessness, gender studies and the like. 

[4].  See Chris Rufo’s video on the Pritzkers:  How the Trans Movement Conquered American Life

[5]. Pierre Morad Omidyar, another Silicon Valley billionaire, was the founder of eBay.

[6]. “The End of Progressive Intellectual Life:  How the Foundation-NGO complex quashed innovative thinking and open debate, first on the American right and now on the center-left,” by Michael Lind, Tablet online magazine, April 12, 2022