Chris Rufo, the pugilistic pundit leading the Right’s charge against how public schools teach race and sexuality, is backed by billionaires who profited handsomely from the 2008 financial crisis that threw 8.6 million people out of work, 7.8 million people out of their home, and drove thousands of excess suicides.

Rufo is a senior fellow and prominent spokesperson at the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank that has fueled recent hysteria over critical race theory (CRT) and LGBTQ curricula in schools. While the Manhattan Institute doesn’t disclose its donors, the organization’s board is helmed by executives who are deeply invested in preserving the country’s entrenched economic inequality — and who come from a financial industry that has plundered massive wealth from communities of color.

The situation illustrates how corporate interests are quietly using their wealth to stoke hate and divide America over culture-war issues in order to divert people’s attention from more pressing matters — namely, the country’s grotesque wealth inequality and the near-total control Wall Street now exerts over everyone’s economic lives.