Can Little Ukraine Teach Big America How to Deal with Our Oligarch Problem?
Image by Aleksandra from Pixabay
Can little Ukraine teach big America how to deal with our oligarch problem?
Viktor Medvedchuk was the Rupert Murdoch of Ukraine. He ran a rightwing television network and owned TV stations across the country, while simultaneously being one of the richest men in that nation. He promoted hate and division, tax cuts for the rich and gutting the Ukrainian social safety net, and supported some of Ukraine’s most toxic politicians.
Like many of today’s American oligarchs, he owned hundreds of politicians, who consistently voted in Parliament, state, and local governments to protect his businesses, wealth, and influence.
Then came Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who successfully campaigned for president on a Teddy Roosevelt-like anti-corruption platform and, like both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, declared outright war on politically active oligarchs.
As a result, today Medvedchuk is hiding out in Russia, his media properties having been sold to smaller companies that are not oligarch-owned or -influenced. Without the persistent rightwing poison Medvedchuk’s TV and other media properties had spread daily throughout Ukraine, the country is now looking at a more democratic future than does America.
Essentially, what Ukraine’s president and parliament did with their 2021 “deoligarchization” (yes, they actually call it that) law was to say to Ukraine’s billionaires:
In 2021 the Ukrainian president declared a campaign to “de-oligarchize” his nation, having correctly diagnosed his country’s political and economic crises as tracing back to the corruption of Ukrainian politics by that nation’s morbidly rich.
His campaign against Ukraine’s oligarchs was as big a threat to Putin’s network of rich enablers as were the EU’s sanctions or Robert Mueller’s prosecutions of them. Some speculate it was the final straw for Putin, provoking his February, 2022 invasion. It was getting a lot of favorable publicity in Russia, and that threatened Putin and the oligarchs who keep him in power.
Zelenskyy had made clear his goal of eliminating from Ukrainian political life the vast power and influence of that country’s oligarchs.
The law, which went into effect June 7th of last year, defines oligarchs as people who meet three out of four criteria, and limits their behavior in six ways that essentially reduce their political influence to that of average Ukrainians.
An oligarch, by the Ukrainian definition, is somebody who:
Has “significant” influence over mass media,
Controls a business that exercises monopoly influence over a part of the economy,
Involves themselves in politics through funding politicians, political parties, political campaigns, or think tanks, etc. (the phrase used is “takes part in political life”), or,
Has a net worth of greater than $89 million.
America once had a similar tradition and Americans want it back. So much so that they bought hook, line, and sinker the sales pitch from a professional con man who knew how frustrated working people are by our American oligarchs and their seizure of the GOP.
In the 2015 Republican primary, Donald Trump tapped into this longing, promising he would end the political corruption by oligarchs and the corporations that made them rich.
During the Republican primary election, Trump said of his GOP competitors:
