Gold hit $3,600 per troy ounce on Monday, and high profile Right-wingers will no doubt treat the news as a vindication. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, for example, you’ll find advertisements for Birch Gold Group promising to protect retirement savings from imminent dollar collapse. Meanwhile in Britain, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage disclosed in January that he made £189,000 last year alone promoting gold to party supporters. So what is it about this precious metal that anti-establishment figures can’t get enough of?

Gold sits at the center of a multibillion-dollar ecosystem where political anxiety generates enormous sales commissions. The New York Attorney General found Lear Capital charging markups so devastating that customers who invested $174,000 walked away with less than $95,000 in actual gold value. Facebook advertisements micro-target conservatives aged over 59 with keywords such as “Deep State” and “pension crisis”. One scheme used fake “Fox News Insider” pages to harvest leads from users identified as having “distrust of government”. Sales scripts include conspiracy theories about “Fed coin” and warnings that Joe Biden will seize retirement accounts.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg for what is sure to be the greatest gold rush in memory. Gold’s surge to $3,616 — up 37% this year — comes as markets price in Federal Reserve rate cuts while Trump tries to fire Fed governors. The White House just exempted gold bars from tariffs, acknowledging the metal’s political symbolism. Every gloomy economic data point becomes marketing copy for those in the precious metals trade: rising public debt means buy gold, Fed independence concerns mean buy gold, the dollar dropping 10% this year means buy gold, foreign central banks dumping Treasuries for bullion means buy gold.

The business model works brilliantly. Companies such as Goldco pay conservative personalities up to 10% of revenue for partnerships while marking up products 15-35% over spot price. Premium “numismatic” coins carry 90-219% markups. When Glenn Beck’s Goldline partnership generated $500 million in sales between 2009 and 2011, congressional investigators found some customers paying over 200% markups for coins worth a fraction of the price. The model survived fraud charges because it works: US Mint data shows gold and silver coin sales are 289% higher during Democratic presidencies than Republican ones, though Trump’s headlong rush toward de-dollarization is bucking those trends.

This relationship between conservatives and gold isn’t new. William McKinley’s 1896 victory over William Jennings Bryan’s inflationary “Cross of Gold” populism established Republicans as the party of sound money and the gold standard. Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 gold confiscation created a permanent conservative grievance which marketers still invoke to this day. Radio host Rush Limbaugh perfected the modern model in the Nineties, transitioning from warnings about government overreach directly into gold advertisements. When mainstream advertisers fled after controversies, precious metals companies remained loyal to Right-wing pundits, creating a relationship where hosts felt free to stoke currency distrust — which most distrusted anyway — while gold companies provided boycott-proof revenue.

The demographics are also telling. Conservative gold buyers average 51-53 years old, with higher incomes, deep institutional skepticism, and ties to other aspects of the “prepper” economy — Costco sells both gold bars and prepper food buckets. For them, it’s as much about ideological validation as sound investment. Gold represents everything modern finance doesn’t: it’s physical, traditional, and government-independent. Think of it as “trad crypto” for people who distrust both Silicon Valley and Washington. When former representative Ron Paul published End the Fed advocating for a gold standard in 2009, he was offering a worldview in which the authentic value of weighted precious metals stands against fake fiat currency.

What’s fascinating is how the panic-driven thirst for consumer gold coexists with genuine warning signals across world economies. Conservative media personalities understandably distrust the Federal Reserve. Their audiences genuinely fear currency debasement — as well they should, given two decades of quantitative easing. Gold companies absolutely gouge customers with massive markups. Yet everyone involved can claim a sense of righteousness. Hosts believe they’re protecting listeners, listeners believe they’re safeguarding families, and companies believe they’re serving an underserved market.

Given the current state of things — several major military conflicts, climate instability, nearly every major economy teetering on a demographic or fiscal cliff— perhaps they’re not entirely wrong.

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Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work

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