Crony capitalism was the bone and sinew of the Third Reich. Field Marshal Herman Goering owned the iron and steel industry. All of the Reich's buddies got a nice slice of the pie.
And Obama introduced it to the U.S.
--- "Crony capitalism was the bone and sinew of the Third Reich."
Mussolini defined Italian fascism as the combination of corporate and state power. The term, crony capitalism, seems to have come about to sully the notion of basic capitalism in order to confuse terms, and thereby confuse a citizenry.
The National Socialists were what Hitler and Goebbels called "Aryan socialists" to distinguish them from the Marxist socialists, and so the various versions of "state" power -- some with greater control or involvement in corporations -- have defined these. The Soviet Socialists and the Sino-Socialists or Chinese Communists have all be termed "crony capitalists."
Today's Democrat-led West and Europe's EU Commission are essentially working hard towards this "crony" end, which is not capitalism with its competition between competitors, but state power further controlling corporations.
All the complaints from the pro-this side and pro-that side refuse the notion that the Ukraine-Russia conflict is actually a civilizational and cultural event are basically cheering for one version or another of Mussolini's construct above. Given twenty two years of military adventurism and consistently lost wars on the part of the so-called "Pax America," the "state" and some corporation have gained in power and control, but this has meant that in the West -- the EU and the US -- we have behaved according to the terms of Mussolini's idea. And the other "crony capitalists," all war profiteering for the few and to the detriment of the many. Today's American involvement in Ukraine seems far less about "freedom" than that growing combination of state and corporate power, with all the profiteering thereto.
And for this, the US has passed into over $31 trillion in federal debt and the EU is essentially bankrupting at a fast pace. Make sense? Only if you are among the profiteers.