THE HOUR OF THE PREDATOR

On authoritarian politicians, megacorporations, and tycoons unfettered.

“All the guardrails of the old world—the respect for the independence of certain institutions, human and minority rights, a concern for international repercussions—have no value now that the hour of the predator is upon us.” So writes Italian Swiss writer and political scientist da Empoli, chronicling the post–Cold War implosion of democracy around the world. The predatory age, largely but not totally dominated by capitalism and capitalists, harks back to the “age of the Borgias or the conquistadors,” effected by brute force. Da Empoli, in a modern rejoinder to Machiavelli’s Prince, examines state violence as a constant process. So it is that Vladimir Putin has been adamant about continuing his war in Ukraine, legitimated, in a perverse way, by his effort to regain territory lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Likewise, da Empoli writes, actors everywhere are mounting offensive wars—which, after all, are cheaper than defensive ones, since it takes a multimillion-dollar missile to bring down a multihundred-dollar drone. The author writes with flair and a certain ironic snark, as when he appends to the Saudi dictator-in-waiting Mohammed bin Salman some iteration of the word “sweet”: “MBS, as he is known, is all sweetness and light”—until you cross him in some way, that is, at which point he becomes “Borgia 2.0.” Da Empoli offers keen remarks on the current American scene, noting, for instance, that every Democratic presidential candidate from Bill Clinton on has been a lawyer, every Republican a businessperson—and people hate lawyers. Thus, the author notes, “Donald Trump is a life form perfectly adapted to the present moment,” endorsing war on the old elites and rewriting history to erase the very thought of democracy.

A sharply observed work of political philosophy, with the warning that, in this world, the big ones eat the little ones.