Growing up, I never heard of the economic hitmen. The economic hitmen are the players in this complex game which went on, just beyond my awareness as a kid, in countries across the world.
As a kid, it seemed like pure paranoia that leaders like Sadam Hussein had so many body doubles, and I believed that geopolitical manuevers were primarily heavy-handed military assaults. I believed that countries did war for national interest, and that generals instead of economic hitmen were calling the shots. The truth is that those with economic and political power (I would look at the 67 or 85 individuals with more money than 3.5 billion people combined) take many steps to try to influence things in their favor long before they pressure for boots on the ground, including the use of economic hitmen.
We need to use the tools we have available to protect the bottle-necks in democracy and remove the filter put in place to prevent representative government from working. It isn’t impossible, and it starts with each of us speaking about and organizing to fix the situation.