THE HOUR OF THE PREDATOR
GIULIANO DA EMPOLI (tr. Sam Taylor)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now
Rating: 4.25* of five
The Publisher Says: A chilling assessment of international politics in our time, from an internationally bestselling author whose work has sparked controversy and debate across the world
Blending the author’s personal insight with startling historical comparisons to the days of Machiavelli and the Spanish conquest of Mexico, The Hour of the Predator describes the growing influence of tech billionaires, the rise of autocratic regimes and the erosion of traditional diplomacy, to paint a chilling picture of a disintegrating world order.
Giuliano Da Empoli’s The Hour of the Predator is a timely and incisive examination of the shifting power dynamics in global politics, where traditional governments find themselves increasingly outmatched by technology tycoons and autocratic geopolitical predators who shape the world through brute force, deception, and disruption.
Drawing on his experience as a political advisor to a former Italian Prime Minister, Da Empoli takes the reader on an eye-opening journey around the international political circuit—from New York to Riyadh, and from the United Nations to Mohammed bin Salman’s Ritz-Carlton— and through the looking glass to a world of ruthless power struggles, where the tech lords already seem to inhabit another world and AI is already out of control.
The Hour of the Predator is the latest book from the internationally bestselling author of The Wizard of the Kremlin, which has been translated into thirty-five languages and is now being adapted for a major movie by Olivier Assayas.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Author da Empoli states a truth we're all familiar with succinctly: "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." This has been true for forty-plus years, starting with the election interference that installed Ronald Reagan in office in 1981 and ushered in the most efficient, nost rapacious looting of the US national treasure by the greediest scum on the planet.
It is now a beautiful moment in our cultural history. The US Congress is, at last, returning to the control of the president's political enemies so will be able to function as Congress again. The greedy scum that's risen to the top has finally made we-the-people suffer privations bad enough to deliver "Them" a ringing rebuke: "Enough."
Author da Empoli has crystallized a large portion of the reasons why in this book. The Cold War gave the greediest capitalists and other grifters an extremely useful straw man to wave in the hoi polloi's faces as they steadily set the stage for their revolution of greed. When the straw fell out slightly before the stage directions were fully drafted, "They" were forced to share the benefits of peace "They" had not planned on ever occurring while scrambling for another way to keep accumulating more. More what? Whatever. Just MORE. Money, power, toys, MORE.
There is no satiating this greed. The story of "Golden Age" Spain in these pages is vivid proof of that. The wildly misinterpreted guidebooks for greed by Baltasar Gracián, for conquest and dominion by Machiavelli, became morally celebrated by many bad-faith actors over the centuries. Always, always ending in the practicioners steadily growing more and more incompetent at exercising the (wrong) lessons they learned from these misinterpretations.
Our present moment is seeing the collapse of kakistocracy across the globe: Hungary rejecting Orban. deeply admired by felonious yam, was the one that stunned me the most. Macron is in a lot of trouble for trying to take things away from the French that they do not want to lose; and his mistake? The only reason for this is to make the banksters richer. Our Gross Old Pedophiles did better for decades by promising they were fighting the insiders who make we-the-people poorer by loading up their wallets with taxes not dollars. The illusion popped when diesel hit $8 a gallon because the war felonious yam and his stooge Kegsbreath the TV presenter who wanted to cosplay soldiers catastrophically failed to do what their boardgame view of the world wanted.
Reading Author da Empoli's refreshingly snarky and irreverent words in this moment of unbelievable possibility is an excellent way to solidify the startling fragility of "Their" power. Elon Musk alone spent close to HALF A BILLION DOLLARS to get the Gross Old Pedophiles party's candidates elected. He lost all those races with "Them" because money = speech = influence only works on docile people.
I am neverendingly astonished at "Their" inability to see why FDR should be "Their" God: his reforms quieted the socialist revolution well underway and that would've taken a lot more from "Them" that actually, by right of conquest, was defensibly theirs. Whatever else one can say about elite education, it has signally failed to teach any one of its graduates the importance of making concessions to get long-term buy-in to an inherently unfair system. "They" are once again on the precipice of losing the war because "They" don't see the point of strategic retreat that can be sold as "Their" loss to appease, re-docilify, us.
I'm glad. We-the-people need to win the war this time.
