Giuliano da Empoli: “Big technology companies have a totalitarian project” | Culture | EUROtoday

Giuliano da Empoli (Paris, 52 years outdated) has been observing the mutations of energy for years. After the novel The Kremlin Wizardimpressed by Vladislav Surkov, spin physician of Vladimir Putin, this yr he printed The hour of the predators (Seix Barral), an essay a couple of world the place democracies face the hazard of a brand new alliance between large expertise and rising populism. The Italian-Swiss author and political scientist chairs the assume tank Volta pro-European and is a professor on the Paris Institute of Political Studies. This dialog came about within the French capital, a number of days earlier than the top of a yr that has reconfigured the geopolitical desk.

Ask. What is your evaluation of 2025?

Answer. Nothing very new has occurred, however there was an nearly apocalyptic acceleration of issues that we already noticed. In Greek, apocalypse means revelation. What was latent has come to mild: a collection of political and enterprise predators with very totally different pursuits converge on one goal: they wish to eliminate every little thing that limits their energy, the foundations, the judges, the establishments. Europe, which is a world manufactured from guidelines and brakes, is within the highlight. For our continent, it’s an unprecedented problem.

P. He says he’s “the scribe of a dying civilization.” Is the top of the world coming?

R. No, however maybe the top of liberal democracy. Even if Trump leaves tomorrow, it’s a mistake to imagine that we are going to return to enterprise as ordinary. The world of yesterday won’t ever return.

P. Compare Trump, Putin or Meloni with the Borgias.

R. As in that point, at present violence and insults are as soon as once more rewarded. Violence in politics is just not essentially unhealthy: the verbal aggressiveness that characterizes it manages to comprise or keep away from bodily violence. Politics is what permits folks with reverse concepts and totally different pursuits to not kill one another. But this cycle is being extra violent than ordinary. And we Europeans arrived ill-prepared for battle: our leaders have been skilled in peaceable instances, which didn’t require particular braveness. Now it’s beginning to be vital.

Even if Trump leaves tomorrow, it’s a mistake to imagine that we are going to return to enterprise as ordinary. The world of yesterday won’t ever return.”

P. Are current leaders mediocre?

R. I think of the generation after the fall of the Wall: Mitterrand, Kohl, Felipe González… They didn’t do everything well, but they managed to make historic decisions. Today’s European leaders are not prepared for this phase change. They find it difficult to update their software.

P. Should we move from peace mode to war mode?

R. I don’t like warlike rhetoric. I prefer to say it another way: we have to move from management to politics. I only see two European leaders who do politics in Europe, each in their own way: Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sánchez. But none of them embodies a European leadership capable of confronting Trump, Putin or technology.

P. The idea of ​​Europe is changing, of sending Erasmus young people to the new military service, as Germany and France already propose.

R. It’s dizzying and a little dystopian. Leaders who want to gain stature cling to the issue of Russia because it is the simplest thing to do: mobilize through fear. But we cannot reduce everything to war or limit the idea of ​​Europe to doing military service to go to the front in Estonia. The real danger is not so much an invasion by Russia as ending a majority of far-right governments on a rearmed continent.

P. An image that marked 2025: in January, Trump takes office surrounded by leaders of big technology.

R. It was the culmination of the political rise of the big tech. They are no longer just companies: they propose a new governance model and an ideological project, which involves ending liberal democracy as we know it. The submission of economic elites to political power, even the worst of all, is part of historical normality. Remember Hitler in 1933… But here is something more disturbing: these companies embody political power in and of themselves. Not only do they dominate the economy, but they influence our way of seeing the world, thinking and wanting.

P. Does true authoritarianism come from Silicon Valley and not from Trump?

R. In a way. The governance model of these companies, their project in its current form, is totalitarian in a strict sense: managing large masses of humans through data and non-democratic processes. There are nuances, but there is an ambition for total control that is more dangerous than Trump’s disorderly authoritarianism.

P. Another image of the year: in September, Netanyahu promises at the UN to “finish the job” in Gaza, while several diplomats leave the plenary session.

R. I am obsessed with the relationship between symbolic and physical violence. In 1996, Netanyahu was the first Israeli politician to introduce verbal brutality into election campaigns. He was facing an untouchable figure like Shimon Peres, whom he tried to destroy with unprecedented verbal violence in the context of his country. Thirty years later, the point of arrival has been the limitless violence that we witness today. When political systems degrade and become so violent, even if only through words at first, the likelihood that it will end in physical violence increases. And that scares me a lot.

P. In his book he is critical of Barack Obama’s presidency.

R. I liked Clinton and Obama. Over time I have changed my mind: your responsibility is enormous. Obama was a charismatic leader, but politically weak. He achieved health reform, which was important, but little else. Meanwhile, he dedicated himself to exhibiting symbolic gestures that generated enormous prejudice. For example, Michelle Obama’s famous organic garden. He wokismo It was blessed bread for the Borgians, the perfect fuel to feed their chaos machine. President Obama did nothing against the nascent Trumpist power and fueled reactions that strengthened it.

P. What does seeing you become a content producer evoke in you?

R. The politicians of the third way brought the left closer to the business world and did not stop the growing power of technology, in the full illusion of start up nation. For Blair, Obama, Macron and others, supporting them was modern and regulating them was old. It is not strange that they go to work for them at the end of their terms.

P. Another photo: in November, Justin Trudeau makes his relationship with singer Katy Perry official.

R. Politics has moved towards the field of entertainment and already works with similar criteria. Look at the Trump rallies, which are like spectacles. stand up. They’re even funny until they turn violent. In Italy this has existed for decades: let’s not forget Berlusconi…

I only see two European leaders who do politics in Europe: Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sánchez. But none of them embodies a European leadership capable of confronting Trump.”

P. He says politics has grow to be a mixture of tv collection.

R. When I wrote my ebook final yr, I mentioned it was 10% The West Wing of the White House —the heroic half—, 15% of House of Cards —the Machiavellian half—, and 75% of Veep: floor, vainness, absurdity and leisure. Now it is nearly every little thing Veep. There’s nothing left of Aaron Sorkin anymore.

P. Where do you stand politically?

R. I used to be a supporter of the third means and labored for a few years with Matteo Renzi, however I used to be fallacious about some issues, particularly within the technological subject. Now I really feel extra left-wing in sure elements, nearer to the road of Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. On different points, nonetheless, I’m much less left-wing. In issues of id, I’m extra universalist and fewer near what woke: I imagine that our variations by way of id will be built-in into a typical challenge of society.

P. What did you be taught out of your dad and mom?

R. My mom, who’s Swiss and a specialist in German literature, transmitted to me frequent sense and a love for Russian authors. and my father [el economista Antonio da Empoli, con cargos en la OCDE y la presidencia italiana], the damaging pleasure of believing that politics is the place the place an important factor in life occurs. Today I feel that maybe it was an phantasm, a mistake. But he transmitted that sickness to me: considering that politics is probably the most decisive factor, and that it’s a must to be there on your life to rely. Shortly after returning to Rome, my father was critically injured in an assault by the Red Brigades. He died shortly after in a automobile accident, and that double blow marked me. I attempted to mimic him, however I noticed that political motion was not my nature. I do higher as a author. When I labored in politics I ended up fully depressed.

P. In the ebook he mentions the “apocalypse clock”, the metaphor that marks how shut the world is to a world disaster that may arrive at midnight. What time does that clock say at present?

R. The physicists linked to the Manhattan Project, who constructed the atomic bomb, mentioned there was a minute and a half left earlier than midnight. Now we’re crossing a threshold, coming into a special world. What is coming shall be a really totally different humanity. Who goes to control us? An meeting made up of six businessmen, a bunch of American neo-fascists and the Chinese Communist Party? Anyway, I have never answered you in regards to the time, however it’s essential to have understood that it is nearly midnight.