The hour of the predator dawns as the old order nears its end. A doddering president Joe Biden becomes a metaphor for a disintegrating world order incapacitated by new threats. In the just-released non-fiction Hour of the Predator, Swiss-Italian author Giuliano da Empoli presents a new order shaped by autocrats and plutocrats such as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, AI-adventurer Sam Altman and their global prototypes.
These populist-business billionaires are changing the world, fundamentally and irrevocably, hastening a geopolitical transformation as dramatic as the 16th century collapse of the Aztec empire under Spanish conquest. Or the collapsed Roman, Russian, Ottoman and British empires. This is “one book you absolutely need to read in order to understand current politics”, recommends historian Anne Applebaum.
The predator-prey, powerful-powerless dynamic intertwines the highs and lows of history. Power has myriad faces—brutal in war, ruthless in intrigue, seductive in rhetoric, ugly in threats, imperious in executive orders. The legion of loyal lackeys scurry to please the tyrant. The power capital becomes a swamp infested with toadies, parasites, leeches and assorted creepy-crawlies. We have seen this face of power. But da Empoli also reveals the exercise of power behind closed doors, not necessarily through yells and tantrums, but in the curling lip, unblinking stare, low, menacing voice, the silence signalling time to leave—forever.
As an advisor to the Democratic Party’s former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, da Empoli has witnessed the innards of power. In his earlier best-seller The Wizard of the Kremlin, he portrays Vladislav Surkov, ‘Putin’s Rasputin’, the secretive sorcerer who invented ‘Putinism’. It is now being adapted into a Hollywood movie, starring Jude Law. da Empoli uses his political experience to chilling effect, unveiling a cynical world, empty of ethics and shame, a world where corruption, scandal and hypocrisy do not disqualify aspirants from high office. He says billionaire populist strongmen like Trump, Mohammad bin Salman, Argentina’s Javier Milei, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan along with business and tech tycoons are steering the new world order. The conjoined age-old axis of evil—power and money—now on steroids.
Power-wielding narcissists and nerds inhabit another world. The public knows this but perhaps hasn’t grasped the full implications. Notes da Empoli: “The predators are not of this world—and do not wish to be.” Their ambitions are otherworldly—conquering outer-space to mine minerals or plunging to ocean depths for fun. These champions of freedom are unconstrained by existing social, political and regulatory conventions. Their god complex raises them above the banality of democracy and accountability. History, taxes and rules don’t apply to them. “They have no knowledge of the past, they despise the present, and the future is but an egotistical projection of their own fantasies,” observes da Empoli. He paints a world where the public feel disempowered or have abdicated their power to envision their future. And so, people’s abandoned future becomes the predators’ playground.
History happens, whether predators and the public like it or not. History is an iteration of the drama of predators and prey, winners and losers. Like the Aztecs. Or Nigeria’s Igbo tribe. From 1857 onwards, Christian colonisers plundered their land and robbed their dignity. British imperial inducements— jobs, education—incentivised conversion. In his brilliant book Things fall Apart on the Igbo saga, Chinua Achebe observes: “Things come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again.”
This ebb and flow of human destiny nourish and destroy civilisations. Predators and public may not know history. But history knows us.
Pratap is an author and journalist.