The No Bezos protests marred by the usual anti-Trump sentiment
Anti-capitalist pauperism and envious anti-Americanism are not enough to explain the hostile campaign against Bezos. If Mr. Amazon had remained anti-Trump, no movement would have emerged in Venice.
The protests organized in Venice against the lavish wedding ceremony in the city between US magnate Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez could be considered a minor episode in the context of current international politics and its repercussions on the internal situation in Italy. And yet this story is a litmus test of the inherent distortions in the political culture not only of our country, but of Europe and the West.
What prompted the collectives “No space for Bezos” – which brought together fringe groups from radical environmentalism, the ultra-left social centers, trade unions, and even the ANPI (National Association of Italian Partisans) – to lash out so fiercely against the decision of the mega-entrepreneur, creator of the global service giant Amazon, to hold his wedding party in the world-famous Italian lagoon city, investing €40 million in the operation, donating €3 million to the local administration, and providing jobs for hundreds of people, not to mention the knock-on effect and free publicity?
A first answer is to identify the chronic persistence and cyclical emergence in our country of a hypocritical pauperism that is in reality driven by fierce envy of anyone who excels and succeeds in the economy, in business, or in the professions. Personal success stories do not have great value as examples in Italy; they do not inspire a desire to emulate them. Instead, they generally induce, on the one hand, widespread, utilitarian, and conformist adulation; on the other, the barely concealed, sometimes explicit, hope that today's winner will crash and burn tomorrow, be humiliated, and that the sycophants of his happy days will be able to mercilessly gloat over him.
This trend is closely linked to a centuries-old history of laborious modernization, a limited subsistence economy, partial and belated industrialization, and paternalistic statism. It has generated a deep-rooted aversion to capitalism and market logic, victimhood, and the belief that it is the state, through resources drained from the tax system, that must solve economic and social problems. This has been widely reflected in the political culture of the Marxist/socialist left and the nationalist/fascist right, both of which converge in a fundamental idea of an ‘ethical state’ promoting justice; in corporatist social Catholicism; and, more recently, in the populist ‘anti-politics’ of the Five Star Movement, which leads to the myth of a largely subsidized society. Historically, this translates into a conspiracy theory narrative according to which the success of entrepreneurs is almost never described as the result of creativity, audacity, or intelligence, but tout court as the result of political favoritism, theft, and corruption.
On a second level, in the radical rejection of the luxurious Venetian celebrations of Mr. Amazon and his wife, we can clearly identify an equally deep-rooted prejudice: anti-Americanism. More precisely, prejudice against the rich American, seen as a crude boor, incapable of understanding the sophistication and depth of European cultural history, and who reduces the latter to a degrading amusement park. Anti-Americanism as an expression of the frustration of the elites and masses of the old continent, starting with the outcome of the Second World War, due to the impact of the overwhelming economic superiority and political hegemony of the United States, is turned into an embarrassing, snobbish, persistent superiority complex towards the leading entrepreneurs of the New World, which leads to viewing them in an exclusively caricatural and minimising light, rather than seriously asking why—and even more so in the age of Big Tech digital capitalism—the United States produces such an abundance and variety of entrepreneurs who, starting from scratch or little more, manage to accumulate such enormous fortunes, while Europe produces so few, and often supported to a decisive extent by public aid.
But anti-capitalist pauperism and envious anti-Americanism are not enough to explain the specific case of the hostile campaign represented by the Venetian “no Bezos” movement. To fully understand, in its context, the stubborn attempt to sabotage the wedding of the world's largest “digital merchant” whose services are used daily by much of the world, starting with his detractors, must first be traced back to the rhetoric and political polemics prevailing today in the Western left, which is increasingly lacking in common programmatic arguments but very quick to coordinate as one in attacking those who are identified from time to time as “existential” enemies. The procedure in this regard is now standard: an opponent is singled out as the absolute enemy, demonized, and then all public figures who support them, or even those who do not oppose them enough, are demonized by association.
Needless to say, the “monster” in this case has a blond quiff and goes by the name of Donald Trump. It is the position toward the current US president, with his place in the current American left/right polarization, that determines how the Western progressive political-media complex treats major entrepreneurs and, in general, successful figures in any field.
The big bosses of Silicon Valley's Big Tech and its surroundings have been widely praised as benefactors of humanity and philanthropists until they were lined up compactly and disciplined in the Democratic Party camp. When one of the biggest among them, Elon Musk, changed his position, first by turning X (formerly Twitter) into a temple of free speech against the iron-fisted censorship of the Biden era, then by explicitly supporting Trump, he immediately went from genius to outcast, crypto-Nazi, and danger to democracy in that unique “narrative.” And since Bezos' Washington Post did not endorse Kamala Harris, and subsequently the Amazon boss himself attended—along with those of Facebook, OpenAI, Apple, and Google—at The Donald's inauguration ceremony, confirming a certain rapprochement with the new administration, the demonization machine immediately kicked into gear against him, as it did against all the other big managers, who have become “capitalists and enemies of the people.” Even one of the leaders of the Venetian protest, the usual Tommaso Cacciari, admitted with disarming sincerity that he attacked Bezos primarily because “he materially, politically, and physically contributed to the election of Donald Trump.”
In short, if Mr. Amazon had remained anti-Trump, no “No Bezos” movement would have emerged in Venice, and his wedding would have been hailed unanimously as a triumph of elegance and a great success for our country.
