Transnational Kleptocracy and American Authoritarian Consolidation
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Last week, Netflix reached a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s studios and streaming business. Some right-wing influencers were livid, because Netflix produces a fair amount of LGBTQ-friendly content. While I can’t say that I’m ever happy about media consolidation, I must admit that I was relieved that the ‘winner’ wasn’t Nepo Baby David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance.
Yesterday, multiple outlets noted that, despite an overall positive meeting between Netflix’s CEO and cautionary-example-about-the-dangers-of-unitary-executive-theory, Donald J. Trump, the deal faced significant regulatory hurdles. According to Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw:
The story isn’t over just yet. Paramount, which triggered the auction of Warner Bros., may launch a hostile bid. Its brass was in Washington lobbying against Netflix, which also faces opposition from powerful Hollywood guilds. Warner Bros. must still spin off its struggling cable TV networks. Nor is the pilgrimage to the White House a guarantee that Trump’s Justice Department won’t try to block the deal.
“Well, that’s got to go through a process, and we’ll see what happens. It’s Netflix and great company and they’ve done a phenomenal job,” Trump said Sunday ahead of an event at the Kennedy Center, calling Sarandos “fantastic” and confirming that he met recently with him in the Oval Office.
“But it is a big market share. It could be a problem,” Trump added, noting he’ll be “involved” in the decision.
Because nothing says “market capitalism” and “integrity” like having the president intervene in regulatory decisions involving mergers between U.S. media companies.
But wait, there’s more. Guess who’s helping fund the takeover bid?
Affinity Partners, the private equity firm led by Jared Kushner, is part of Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery, according to a regulatory filing.
Why it matters: Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case…. Affinity Partners was not mentioned in Paramount’s press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar…. WBD could be the second major takeover Kushner has been involved in this year, having previously played a key role in the take-private agreement for gaming giant Electronic Arts.
Kushner, you may recall, leveraged his 2017–2020 role in U.S. diplomacy toward the Middle East for massive financial gain. Indeed, Qatar’s Sovereign Wealth Fund saved him from financial ruin. In Trump 2.0, he’s been joined by Stephen Witkoff in the Trump administration’s ongoing quest to compromise U.S. foreign policy through financial self-dealing.
All of this underscores that authoritarian consolidation in the United States is deeply intertwined global politics
First, consider the “lessons learned” by authoritarian-minded leaders about how to subvert electoral democracies. One common strategy involves using state power to drive formerly (and formally) independent media into the hands of pro-regime oligarchs. Hungary provides an straightforward of a successful process of pro-regime media consolidation:
According to press watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Orbán has used media buyouts by government-connected “oligarchs” to build “a true media empire subject to his party’s orders.” The group estimates that such buyouts have given Orbán’s party control of some 80% of Hungary’s media market resources. In 2021, it put Orbán on its list of media “predators,” the first EU leader to earn the distinction.
McKenzie Carrier and Thomas Carothers describe the “backsliding model” in a report that places the actions of the Trump regime into comparative perspective.
Comparative studies of the ongoing global trend of democratic backsliding highlight a high degree of similarity in the basic political method at work—what analysts label as executive aggrandizement or executive overreach.6 Employing this method, elected leaders with anti-democratic intent amass a preponderance of power by undermining all major constraints on their power, whether in the form of horizontal or vertical lines of accountability. Common tactics include weakening the independent judiciary and legislature, politicizing and weaponizing prosecutorial power, undermining the fairness of the electoral process, censoring or harassing independent media, co-opting private businesses, and undercutting the independence of civil society. Executive aggrandizement contrasts with forms of democratic erosion that used to dominate cases of backsliding, such as military coups, or other forms of abrupt, authoritarian takeovers. It involves leaders who have been fairly elected acting incrementally, wielding existing political processes and institutions to erode democratic norms and structures step by step, usually while characterizing their actions as reforms needed to strengthen or purify democracy.
The similarities that they describe are no accident. Authoritarians and would-be authoritarians are drawing on the same de-democratization repertoire. They adapt it to their own contexts and to changing global conditions. Each new successful tactic gets added to the toolkit. We are talking about an active process of transnational emulation and innovation, one that has now taken root in the United States.
Second, this is a particularly terrifying development for the fate of worldwide democracy and human rights. The United States remains the most powerful state in the planet. Even though that status is fast slipping away, the U.S. will remain a great power (assuming that it doesn’t totally implode). This leaves the European Union — itself plagued by dysfunction and democratic erosion — as the closest thing the world has to a pro-democracy member of the great-power club.
The United States has been, and never will be, anything other than a deeply flawed champion of democratic values. But a world with a competitive-authoritarian United States — let alone one committed solely to the active promotion of authoritarianism — is much worse for global freedom than the alternative.
Third, the transnational spread of a neo-authoritarian toolkit isn’t the only way in which U.S. de-democratization is tied up with the current “authoritarian resurgence.” Autocracies have plowed money into laundering their reputations, including by throwing money at international sports, holding well-financed events for the Davos crowd, and establishing overseas news services dedicated to pushing out their preferred narratives of events. They have also, of course, bought support political and business elites in democratic regimes. Some have provided financial assistance to friendly parties and politicians.
Some of these efforts — think specifically of Moscow’s information operations and political outreach — are deliberately designed to undermine foreign democracies. In many cases, though, the corrosion of overseas democratic institutions is a side-effect of policies aimed at enhancing the prestige, legitimacy, and wealth of autocratic regimes.
If you want a deeper dive into the “authoritarian snapback,” check out Alex Cooley and Alex Dukalskis Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics. The New Books Network recently ran an interview with them about the book, which I thought was excellent, if that’s more your speed.
It’s surreal to read the news about Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Netflix at the same time that the Sinister Six fantasize about how congress might seize executive power by turning every federal agency into a multimember commission. But, then again, everything about this current moment — including the evisceration of representative democracy via aggressive gerrymandering; the reign of terror that the Department of Homeland Security is inflicting on asylum seekers, legal residents of the United States, and American citizens; the Trump administration’s routine violation of congressional mandates and appropriations; and the unequivocal murder of suspected drug runners in the Caribbean and the Pacific — screams “democratic collapse,” regardless of whether we manage to vote the regime out in 2028.
ETA 1: I forgot to mention the role of Gulf money in Musk’s takeover of Twitter and in the Trump-brokered sale of U.S. TikTok to his pals.
ETA 2: I’ve edited for clarity (I hope), added another dimension of “global context,” and expanded some of my remarks.
