The Class War Is Real and Won’t Go Away Without Something Big Changing
- john raymond
- Oct 2, 2025
- 3 min read
Just as the war in Ukraine will not truly end until Belarus, as Russia’s strategic depth and proxy, is forced into unconditional surrender to Kyiv, the class war waged by the ultra-wealthy—and led by President Trump’s alliance with Silicon Valley oligarchs—will not end until the corporate empires of Google, Facebook, Apple, and others are broken up.
These large companies have evolved from innovative firms into supranational political actors. They are not neutral intermediaries but operational centers of power whose antitrust violations and assaults on free speech are weapons in an ongoing war over public consciousness.
I. The War Analogy Is Not Hyperbole
Belarus provides Putin with territory, logistics, and cover; without it, Russia’s war on Ukraine collapses. Likewise, tech monopolies provide oligarchic regimes with the data, narratives, and infrastructure necessary to control populations.
The rich and powerful do not need tanks or conscription to wage their war—they need platforms and algorithms. This is asymmetric conflict: one side controls the channels of information; the other is left fighting to be heard.
President Trump’s alignment with Kremlin interests, combined with the power of Big Tech, forms a two-front offensive. The political front dismantles democratic guardrails. The technological front rewires the information ecosystem so dissent can be throttled or erased.
The result is a “soft occupation” of the public sphere under the guise of moderation and “trust and safety.”
II. Antitrust Behavior as Weaponized Infrastructure
These companies’ histories make the pattern undeniable:
Google has been adjudicated a monopolist in both search and ad-tech in the U.S. and fined repeatedly in Europe and Asia for tying, self-preferencing, and exclusivity. Its default-search payments to Apple and Android OEMs are textbook Section 2 violations, now confirmed in court.
Facebook/Meta built a walled-garden social graph by acquiring nascent competitors (Instagram, WhatsApp), crushing third-party developers via API lockouts, and monetizing surveillance at scale.
Apple enforces an App Store tollbooth and privacy “sandboxing” that protects its rent extraction while leaving no true competitive market for mobile distribution.
Each has crossed the threshold from market dominance into system dominance: they do not merely compete within a market; they define and manipulate the market itself.
This is precisely the state the Sherman Act was meant to prevent.
III. Attacks on Free Speech
These firms market themselves as guardians of free expression while operating as selective gatekeepers:
YouTube bans channels critical of power and hides behind algorithmic opacity.
Facebook throttles or deplatforms dissenting voices under the rubric of “misinformation,” often following government cues or lobbying priorities.
Apple uses App Store policies to exclude or neuter applications that could disrupt its choke points or provide uncensored access to information.
The common denominator is not ideological bias but control. By suppressing what they deem risky or inconvenient, they produce a chilling effect that serves entrenched interests, including Trumpist populism and its oligarchic sponsors.
IV. Why Breakups Are the Necessary Endgame
Just as Ukraine cannot secure victory while Belarus remains an intact Russian staging area, democracy cannot secure freedom of thought while a handful of firms hold veto power over speech and distribution.
Regulatory fines, voluntary codes, and “transparency reports” are not enough. These companies treat penalties as operating costs. Only structural separation—search from advertising, social graph from messaging, app store from operating system—will change the incentive function.
V. Implications
To think of Google, Facebook, and Apple as “just businesses” is to misunderstand the terrain. They are fortified digital citadels in a class war whose weapons are defaults, data, and narrative control.
The public can no more “appeal” to their fairness than a besieged town can appeal to an invading army. The only rational strategy is to strip them of the infrastructure that makes them unassailable.
Until that is done, every dissenter’s voice—including mine—remains at the mercy of private censors aligned with oligarchic power. Breakups are not a punishment; they are the precondition for a free and plural digital commons.
The Only Conclusion
Like Belarus in Putin’s war, Big Tech in Trump’s war is not a peripheral player but a central theater. And like Belarus, it must be taken out of the fight—by law, by structural remedy—before the war for democratic speech can be won.
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