That being said, if there is any weakness to her comprehensive coverage, it might be that she seldom analyzes the effects of new media on these issues. Mayer demonstrates that fake news and misinformation has existed long before the Internet was able to spread it. Combine that with aggressive gerrymandering and misinformation, and you have a recipe to influence policy and elections. Mayer makes it abundantly clear that almost all of these conservative sources of opposition are rooted in privileged millionaires' and billionaires' funding. The secondary conclusion is that the groundswell of support for the Tea Party, etc., is not the result of grassroots efforts. The conclusion is simple: wealth disparity is so great in the US that a tiny proportion of the population can exert disproportionate influence.

Mayer connects all the dots and supplies ample details to build on your prior knowledge and actually arm yourself with facts. Prior to reading this book, I already knew about the Koch brothers and the shadiness that is super PACs, etc. So a lot of this book just boggles my mind for the sheer volume of money we're talking about, and the ways in which people on both sides of the spectrum try to influence elections at all levels. Our current Prime Minister is the son of a former Prime Minister! Nevertheless, funding to political campaigns in Canada is nothing compared to the US. Our political system is by no means free of corruption or cronyism. Mayer does a good job explaining how political funding functioned then as contrasted with now.Īs a Canadian, I find elements of all of this quixotic and staggering. For someone like me, who wasn't alive prior to 1989, events like the elections in the 1970s are literally before my time and are not something I know much about. She explores the possible motivations behind the Kochs and their allies, and she grounds everything in essential historical context. It's interesting because Mayer positions this story as a fundamental question about whether American democracy can survive such tactics.ĭark Money is a roughly chronological narrative covering the nascence of the Koch brothers through to the present day at the time Mayer was writing. Rather, it's about how a concerted effort in the past decades has influenced American politics.

Although they feature prominently in this book, this is not solely about them. In Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer traces the network of political funding and lobbying spearheaded by the Koch brothers.

Dark money jane mayer review