Billionaire rule has been grossly unjust and patently unsustainable for a long time, but now it is revealing a new level of political toxicity.
Elon Musk made world headlines on June 12 by becoming the first billionaire to become a trillionaire — based on the valuation of his share of Space X stock when it was floated.
Just days later, he was once again on the global stage using X (formerly Twitter), the social media platform he owns, to whip up a racist pogrom against non-white people in Belfast. Homes were set on fire, people assaulted and armed and masked fascist thugs patrolled some streets for a couple of nights.
Thanks to a powerful 20,000-strong anti-racist mobilisation by Belfast United Against Racism, the right-wing thugs, cheered on by the world’s first trillionaire, were quickly isolated.
Musk and like-minded billionaire supporters of United States President Donald Trump cannot be dismissed as distant morbid symptoms of the US empire in decline, because the power of their obscene wealth means their toxic impact is global.
Australia has its own toxic billionaire — the notorious Gina Rinehart, the richest person in this country and the public bankroller of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. Imitating Musk’s notorious 2025 stunt with a chainsaw, Rinehart gave Hanson a “big fat orange bulldozer” because, the benefactor explained, Hanson needs more than a big chainsaw to do what she needs to do!
The big fat orange bulldozer was Rinehart’s symbolic play to the angry “grievance politics”, grounded in years of real decline in working people’s living standards.
But the $1.3 million brand new air plane Rinehart gifted to Hanson is a more fitting icon for Hanson’s actual role as a political pawn for Hanson and the rest of the billionaire class.
Others on Australia’s Rich List, such as James Packer, are open supporters of Advance, the far-right group that collected millions of dollars to support right-wing candidates and anti-immigration social media propaganda.
While some of that war chest was traceable, $8.2 billion from the $13.5 billion Advance declared in receipts for the 2024-25 financial years was “dark money”, reported Stephanie Tran in michaelwest.com.
Advance reported $13.5 million in receipts over the 2024-2025 financial year. However, only the sources of $5.3 million of these funds are disclosed, leaving $8.2 million in “dark money”.
The rich have always meddled in politics. Likewise, they have always been prepared to smash democratic pretense to protect their interests.
However, as their wealth has grown even bigger, more billionaires are more openly meddling in politics. They are more overtly supporting right-wing, racist and misogynist populist politicians and parties.
Why is this?
Some argue it is because the rise of corporate monopolised social media platforms weakens public objectivity and reason, and offers the mega rich such powerful mind-bending tools that they no longer have to hide their political rule.
Billionaire control of social media platforms does allow them to algorithmically manipulate the spread of their toxic hate politics. But their motivation to shift to this more blatant intervention is probably driven by an insecurity arising from their obscenely meteoric accumulation of wealth.
According to Oxfam’s analysis of the 2026 Rich List, the collective wealth of Australia’s billionaires rose by $25.67 billion over the past year.
“The truly staggering surge in wealth is the third consecutive year of wealth gains, and Australia now has its highest number of billionaires on record,” Oxfam said. “This bumper year for billionaires and Australia’s richest comes at a time of ongoing cost-of-living crisis, with millions of households continuing to struggle with rising rents, grocery prices and energy bills.”
The rational response to this, Oxfam pointed out, is to tax the super-rich and cut back the lucrative tax advantages the wealthy have over more than 80% of the population who rely on wages and salaries, rather than property for their income.
But, as we are witnessing right now, even Labor’s mild tax reforms of negative gearing, capital gains tax discount and discretionary trusts has evoked howls of protest from big business and the propertied class.
Oxfam also noted that the total wealth of Australia’s billionaires this year has reached more than $686 billion and the 20 richest Australians hold more wealth than the bottom three million households.
Oxfam added that this increase in billionaire wealth in the past year alone could have:
• Lifted nearly 1 million out of poverty;
• Covered household electricity bills for every single household for more than one year;
• Funded Australia’s entire aid budget almost five times over; and
• Covered the cost of grocery bills for almost 3 million households for a year.
Reason and fairness demand an end to this accelerating inequality and concentration of wealth. That is the real cause of the pain and insecurity which is driving the anger that right-wing populist parties are exploiting and directing against oppressed minorities.
This is why more and more billionaires are throwing their support behind Trump and Hanson. They need to deploy such divide-and-rule tactics to defend their obscenely rising wealth.
This is why Socialist Alliance says tax the super rich, cap rents, build good quality and ecologically sustainable public housing, nationalise the mining companies and transition away from fossil fuels.
[Peter Boyle is a member of the Socialist Alliance National Executive.]