United, Not Divided: My Lessons from Bernie Sanders’ "Fight Oligarchy"

Zuck and Musk are counting on our paralysis, our guilt, our division. Let’s disappoint them.

This week, I started and finished Bernie Sanders’ Fight Oligarchy.

In his new book, Senator Sanders defines oligarchy, connects it to Trump’s authoritarianism and his Big Tech oligarchs, covers global examples of oligarchic power structures outside of the U.S. (e.g. Russia), provides lessons from history of when and how oppressive, hateful systems of power were toppled, and shares a vision for how we might fight oligarchy in today’s America.

“Oligarchy is a system in which a small number of extremely wealthy individuals control the economic, political, and media life of a nation. It is a system in which ordinary people have very little power to determine the future of their country. If you’re an American, it is the system in which you’re living. That must change. In the wealthiest nation on earth we must build a political movement that creates a government that represents all Americans, not just a handful of billionaires.”

- Bernie Sanders in Fight Oligarchy

He describes the irrefutable gap in wealth between regular working Americans and Trump’s oligarchs, such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. He says, “The truth is that, right now in America, the people on top have never, ever in the history of our country, had it so good.”

Earlier this year, when he toured America on his Fighting Oligarchy Tour, Sanders told crowds, “We’re the only major country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people despite spending twice as much as most countries. Sixty thousand people a year die because they don’t get to a doctor on time.”

This disparity is on poignant display this week as 43 million lose their SNAP benefits while Trump builds ballrooms and mobilizes his ICE agents on American people without care for their constitutional protections, in scenes look ripped out of 1930’s Germany.

Recent polling indicated that only 30% of Americans now approve of the MAGA “movement,” while 43% supported the No Kings protests, which over 7 million Americans showed up for last month.

The rallying cry of “no kings” has limits, still, when the wealthiest tech billionaires have enthusiastically bent the knee, transforming themselves from disruptors into courtiers. Fight Oligarchy covers recent history, such as when Elon Musk poured over $277 million into Trump’s campaign and turned X into a de facto propaganda apparatus, rewarded with an unprecedented government position to oversee the very agencies meant to regulate his companies. When Mark Zuckerberg made his pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, paid Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit over his 2021 account suspension, donated another million to the inauguration, and dismantled Meta’s fact-checking and DEI programs—then went on Joe Rogan to call for a more “masculine” workplace culture that echoes Trumpist grievance politics. When Jeff Bezos killed the Washington Post’s planned Harris endorsement, apparently deciding that his space contracts and cloud computing dominance with the federal government matter more than editorial independence.

These men recognized that in an autocratic system, proximity to power translates directly into market advantage, favorable regulation, and the crushing of competitors. They’ve learned the lesson of every oligarch throughout history: kings reward loyalty with monopolies, contracts, and the freedom to operate without constraint. Their genuflection is a calculated investment that pays dividends in billions, proving that without these tech titans opening their wallets and bending their platforms to serve autocratic ambitions, no modern wannabe king could rule.

So what do we do?

In the 1770’s, American colonists stood up to the most powerful monarchy in the world, which saw them as little more than subjects to be taxed and exploited. In the beginning of that struggle, they had no regular Army, no Navy, and very little wealth compared to the British empire. Further, a significant minority of people in the colonies supported the crown and opposed the movement for independence. The American revolutionaries had no international support, they were on their own. But if they lacked a military as strong as the British, they had something that their adversary could not compete with. They had a vision that rejected the “divine right of Kings” and a passionate belief that “all men are created equal” and “are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” They were prepared to fight and die for these principles, as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.”

- Bernie Sanders in Fight Oligarchy

The book forced me to reckon with a question I’d been avoiding: what does resistance actually look like when we’re this entangled?

The numbers tell the story of our entrapment: approximately 280 million Americans use Facebook, and about 170 million use Instagram. Around 230 million Amazon customers are from the United States, and approximately 180-184 million Americans have Amazon Prime memberships. Tesla sold approximately 634,000 vehicles in the U.S. in 2024.

We’re empowering the oligarch ruling class and then taking to the streets to protest them. Something’s got to give.

I’m not preaching, but standing with you in this confounding reality we’ve erected. While I’ve left Instagram and Facebook, I still have an Amazon Prime Membership, I use an iPhone, I even drive a Tesla. Worse almost, I sold my Tesla partially in protest when Elon began going off the rails, and after not even a year I traded back for one. As much as I despise Elon, and as humiliating as it is to drive it, this car makes a huge difference in my day to day life. As a neurodivergent person, I’m always losing my keys or my phone, but when my phone is my Tesla key, I have to have it to go anywhere. I love the clean and consistent interface and how much easier it is for me to navigate the vehicle controls.

And last March, when getting out of my car at Jamba Juice with my daughters and cousin, a man came up to me and screamed, “FUCK YOU, FASCIST!” “Fair,” I thought, despite being a bit stunned, “I get it.”

“Yes but I’m suing Meta!” I wanted to call out in defense.

And in the same way that I passionately believe people need to take their business off Meta’s products, for reasons of protecting kids and also for fighting authoritarianism, your expression of resistance might look different. We’re not going to get anywhere by pointing fingers at one another and policing each others’ behavior when the real enemy is those in power and the systems we exist in that keep us entrenched.

“It’s important in this unprecedented moment in modern American history, we learn from the past and remember that much of the history of the United States is a history of struggle. Of ordinary people coming together to challenge entrenched power, to confront injustice, and to accomplish what the political and economic establishments of the time insisted could not be done. When we stand together, we win. When the ruling class divides us up, we win.”

- Bernie Sanders in Fight Oligarchy

The more we turn against one another, or expect a standard of perfect resistance, the more divided we become and the more they win. Maybe it’s about finding the least friction way for you to pull some of your dollars out of the ecosystem that supports Trump’s ambition of authoritarian control.

Maybe it’s easier for one family to trade in their car, maybe it’s easier for another to cancel their Prime subscription. Maybe the actor who drives their Tesla to set also demands a Meta-free marketing strategy to their producer and marketing team, in the same way they’ve demanded in the past to free the bid. Maybe it’s the startup founder determined to compete on safety and not growth at any cost, and the VCs that fund them. Maybe it’s the family unable to make most concessions, but able to put a food library in front of their house to feed their neighbors. Maybe it’s the new grad, employed by big tech, too scared to walk away from that security, but willing to call and ask their representatives to regulate tech and AI companies.

Maybe it looks like buying Sanders’ book at a local bookstore. Or if you prefer audiobooks, it’s a 2 hour 41 minute listen, narrated by Bernie himself, and right now you can get a copy on Libro.fm, where you designate a local bookstore to benefit from your purchases, for $8.75 with the code 30OFFAUDIOBOOK2025.

This isn’t about being good enough. It’s about being awake to the systems we’re part of, allowing anger, and cultivating a willingness to do something—anything—with that anger. The oligarchs are counting on our paralysis, our guilt, our division. Let’s disappoint them.

As Bernie said, when we stand together, we win.

P.S. Don’t forget to vote today!! I loved what my friend, former Meta colleague, and now Libro.fm employee, Natalie, wrote yesterday about managing our existential dread through local civic engagement, including, of course, voting. Separately, her essay reflecting on her time at Meta and it’s impact in the world is also something I highly recommend reading.