Politics & Power Quote by Peter Singer

Singer’s hesitation - “whether fascist is the right word I don’t know” - is doing as much work as the accusation that follows. It’s a philosopher’s tell: he’s policing his own rhetoric in real time, signaling that the point isn’t name-calling but diagnosis. Fascism is a moral alarm bell; plutocracy is a structural claim. By backing away from the most incendiary label, he makes the less dramatic one land harder, like a prosecutor choosing the charge that will actually stick.

The phrase “in fact” frames this as a correction to a comforting civic myth. It implies we’ve been mistaking ritual for reality: elections, rights-talk, and patriotic narratives operating as a democratic costume while power migrates elsewhere. Singer’s target isn’t just “the rich” as a social class; it’s the conversion of wealth into rule - the way a “very small, very wealthy elite” can shape policy, labor conditions, media narratives, and even the boundaries of what counts as “reasonable” debate.

Context matters because Singer is steeped in applied ethics and the real-world consequences of abstract systems. This isn’t a romantic lament about lost virtue; it’s an argument about harm and responsibility. If political outcomes are predictably purchased, then citizens’ moral obligations and political strategies shift: outrage alone becomes performative, while institutional reform (campaign finance, lobbying restrictions, antitrust, tax structure) becomes the only serious arena.

The subtext is bleakly contemporary: democracy doesn’t always get overthrown. Sometimes it gets quietly outbid.