The Wealthy Support Behind the Racists

We have all heard about the racist GOP Presidential candidate – Vivek Ramaswamy. This guy is a real piece of work. The epitome of the fast mouth that gets ahead of its brain. Yet, nothing profound, original, or thoughtful results from all his verbal shenanigans. Ramaswamy was in business before he entered politics, and this background has attracted wealthy white backers from Silicon Valley to Wall Street.

First, we have billionaire Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager who is also an investor in a weirdly focused investment fund that Ramaswamy controls called Strive Asset Management. One can only suspect that Ackman is betting on Ramaswamy having some political position in the future and he can potentially collect on that investment. Strive is nothing more than a portfolio of ETFs that have become more popular in recent years. I guess he plans to sell it as an anti-woke investment fund to differentiate it from others.

It appears that based on the company’s website they have raised close to a billion dollars. The speed to get to this number by an unproven fund manager is unheard of in the investment world. This could probably be attributed to his presidential run, and the rhetoric of aligning with Trump, in the hopes of getting a job in his administration, if he wins. Investors are willing to give him money as a hedge, a just-in-case investment. He has a white supremacist adjacent worldview, and he talks greasy about Black people every chance he gets so this makes it easy to get them to open their wallets.

This Ackman guy is an interesting character. He has no public track record of speaking up or investing in Black issues. Nothing, I mean zero. During the uprisings of 2020, he said nothing. He gave a small jester of working with a few Black investment banks on one of his deals but included in this minimal effort were women, minority, and veteran-owned entities. So, you know what that means. They co-opt our oppression and water down any type of exclusive benefits.

A quote from a June 10th, 2020, Institutional Investor article entitled, ‘Hedge Funds Mostly Silent on Black Lives Matter Protests’. The author states, “And several hedge funds do offer publicly traded funds, including Third Point and Pershing Square. Neither of those firms nor their outspoken founders – Dan Loeb and Bill Ackman – have said anything publicly in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. I’ll get to Dan Loeb later in the article, but Ackman’s silence is amplified when you consider how he has lent his voice to the Israel-Hamas conflict during the last month.

If you look at Bill Ackman’s Twitter page, you see a man, that has turned into a one-man reporting machine in his advocacy for Israel. He has advocated ideas like outing the names of college students who are protesting the war. Going so far as to imply that employers should not hire them once they graduate. He knows this is a slippery slope and dangerous, but in this case, probably doesn’t care. It is said that silence is complicity. This guy is supporting the racist Ramaswamy and has never publicly used his platform to fight against anti-Black hate. Well, as the saying goes in business, the numbers speak for themselves.

Ackman’s current Twitter page features the mush mouth mayor of New York giving a speech in support of Israel. A viral video of a Black man providing reasons why people should support Israel and not show disrespect to the tactics of the country’s supporters. He also has reposted quotes from suspected white supremacists like Douglas Murray of the UK, a guy who goes on speaking engagements and writes books about phony white outrage. This article he wrote in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post provides context to his hustle.

Second, you have the Silicon Valley bros who are fans of the bigoted Ramaswamy. Of course, there are the usual suspects like Musk, Peter Theil who like Ackman is also an investor in Strive. An article by The Guardian discusses this association.

David Sacks, an investor and early PayPal employee says he’s a supporter of not only Vivek but wait, another candidate, the White supremacist Governor of Florida – Ron DeSantis. This guy is a real character. Born in apartheid South Africa to a Jewish family, he wrote a book with Thiel called ‘The Diversity Myth’ where he attacked affirmative action and the notion that multiculturalism is a net benefit to society. Like Thiel, he appears to be embedding himself even more than in the past in far-right politics. These guys are the epitome of why you don’t see more Black founders get funded and more Black employees at tech companies. He has a podcast with another investor, Canadian-born Chamath Palihapitiya, an early Facebook employee.

Chamath is of Sri Lankan descent. He was also quite doing the 2020 uprisings. I can remember him saying one or maybe two very vague statements on his Twitter page. This guy goes hard on everything from the environment to corruption in high finance but during one of the most important moments in his lifetime, he was silent. Now, why am I mentioning this guy? Because he mentioned moron DeSantis’s favorite adjective – woke! He referenced it when describing northeast cities like New York in contrast to cities in the south. He found a report somewhere that six southern cities had contributed more to the US GDP for the first time in history. You see this is the same thing white supremacists do when they want to push some racist agenda. Find some information (i.e. IQ garbage) somewhere, even if it’s in a sewer, that confirms their anti-black racism.

Let’s go back to Dan Loeb, a billionaire hedge fund manager. This guy is associated with The Manhattan Institute, a white supremacist think tank that sponsors trash like Charles Murray, Heather McDonald, Christopher Rufo, and John McWhorter. Loeb manages Black money. These hedge funds get money from these pension funds where a lot of state and city government employees work. Again, a glance at this guy and you can see that he barks about everything from the Middle East to charter school education. Yet, he is quoted by the author referenced earlier that he was dead silent on Black oppression doing a time when others were speaking out. Many of whom are usually not as loud.

This Loeb character has a history of lecturing Black people about racism and oppression, but only when it’s in his interest. When he is not getting his way and wants to strike a nerve. Loeb was previously the chairman of Success Academy, a network of 50 charter schools in the New York area. According to a Politico article, during this tenure, he was exchanging emails with a Black senior city official.  He is quoted as writing, “I am happy you had and your children are getting a good education but how you can do so little when poor black kids are failing out and boys disproportionately ending up in prison is really surprising,”. The nerve of this prick. He went a bit further two months later.

He claimed that a Black Democratic state Senator had done “more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood” by not supporting charter schools. Loeb is a suspected anti-Black racist. Using Black people as footballs in his game of power politics. How many Black companies has he financed? How many Black people does he have working with him at Third Point? How many millions has he donated to meaningful Black empowerment and causes – no strings attached? The KKK analogy was recently used by Vivek -the bigot when he went after a Black congresswoman. Hmmm…I wonder if Vivek was advised, read, or heard about Loeb’s tactic and decided to incorporate this tactic into his playbook of anti-black racism.  Either way, it seems he has plenty of financial backers and sympathizers who at best will turn a blind eye to his rhetoric.

This is the power of white supremacy. The engine that allows it to impose its will, disproportionately on the world. The ability to maintain the racial status quo. The money backing these dangerous racist mouthpieces throw rocks and hide their hand. In many cases, they play both sides, confusing people about who they really are. From Hollywood, up to Silicon Valley, over to Wall Street, we’re up against a very organized, financed, and motivated opponent. It is important to practice group economics and become more savvy about those who are fighting against moving humanity passed this long cold winter.