The New Age of Political Influence
A special guest post from Jane Kinninmont
The below is from Jane in her own voice:
Dear Mega-Orderers,
Right now a lot of the rhetoric from Trump and Musk comes back to the idea that politics feels broken – so anything goes. Institutions need to be torn down completely and trust placed in a few key leaders who are on your side, apparently.
It’s a classic sales technique: start with something that makes everyone say “yes” and then leap to another conclusion. Yes, politics feels broken, to many people. Somehow it seems that some of the people who benefit from politics feeling broken are… the people who help to break it…
So I was really glad to have the chance this week to steal Jason’s seat as Disorder host (coups are everywhere!) and to sit down with investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan for a deep dive into how money distorts our politics.
Listen on Apple Podcasts here; or on Spotify here.
Peter is an Irish writer, an expert on corruption, and author of the book Democracy For Sale, how money is being used often in an underhand way to influence politics and distort democracy.
This is right up our street as the Disorder podcast draws connections between the areas that are most conspicuously disordered, like Ukraine or Libya, and wider global trends including kleptocracy, flows of dark and dodgy money, and the links between these trends and neo-populism. We also had him on the show before
talking about the influence of dirty money on British politics.
He explained how he became interested in all of this after observing some odd political advertising during the Brexit referendum campaign – and of course a lot has come to light since then about dodgy campaign tactics.
Now, the influence of money on politics is becoming both more obvious and harder to track as tech titans and AI oligarchs take on politics. Peter talked to us about how this can facilitate political manipulation. What’s happening in the US with Elon Musk is happening right out in the open; other examples may be more hidden as the power to control the information that we all consume is more and more concentrated.
Listen on Apple Podcasts here; or on Spotify here. And pls assess do you love Celtic accents as much as I do? Wow I love them and wish everyone sounded this way… how much more energetic and upbeat life would be!
Peter’s recommended reading for us:
I think Anne Applebaum's latest piece in the Atlantic on Musk and political interference in Europe is something we could discuss, and which keys in with a lot of what is below.
Fundamentally, I think the question of what does political interference mean in an era of tech oligarchs is a huge, huge question. Ezra Klein's recent podcast on the attention economy in politics is really good on this.
And you can read Peter’s Substack at https://democracyforsale.substack.com/
Back to Jane and Peter.. They discuss:
How does Britain compare with other countries in regulating political donations? How can we also think about and deal with the less tangible role of influence that Musk has as a major media owner?
Perhaps there is a vicious circle to analyse here - the influence of the super rich in politics undermines democracy, people feel their vote doesn’t count and have a sense that there’s corruption in the system, yet sometimes they then turn for answers to exactly the same parties and people who are supported by mega rich donors. A sense that “they’re all at it” somehow seems to benefit the Trumps and not the Bidens.
What would Peter’s 30 second elevator pitch to Keir Starmer be? He boils it down to just three words – but you’ll need to listen to the ep to find out J
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Peter’s website -
https://www.petergeoghegan.com/
Peter’s substack -
RUSI’s Centre for Finance and Security specialises in the intersection of finance and global security. Their research includes work exploring the nature of the threat from global illicit flows, the harm they cause and how best to respond.
Also allow me to recommend another substack… this one from Timothy Snyder on what he terms the ongoing coup in DC:
And then here is a pod by Ezra Klein interviewing a REPUBLICAN RIGHT WING AEI STAFFER who makes clear that he things the deliberate intention of Trumpian policy is to disorder things:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-yuval-levin.html