Giuliano Da Empoli, an Italian-Switzerland essayist and political scientist, analyzes the ramp-up of the autocrats and tech magnates in his latest “predators’ time”. According to him, the development of technology allows “the aggressor to have the advantage”.
Giuliano Da Empoli considers Tuesday morning that the current world is marked by an “assault bonus” where “predators” challenge the rules in place, at a lower cost. “On the military field, drones at 500 dollars destroy equipment that cost tens of millions of them” and there are cyber attacks, digital aggression or disinformation campaigns that “do not cost anything”, but against which it “is very difficult”, if not “impossible”, to defend, he notes.
For him, characters like Donald Trump illustrate this dynamic of aggression by destroying “the rules and taboos one after the other” and by changing positions overnight. “Yesterday he launched His peace plan for Gazatomorrow, he could go in the opposite direction and it would not cost him nothing politically, “notes Giuliano Da Empoli.
“Hypnotized” and disoriented company
According to the writer, society is “in a state of hypnosis” in the face of these actions and it has “a lot of trouble understanding what is going on”. It is therefore “prey”, “the laboratory rat” of this world of predators.
We are exposed to a hypnotic flow of shocking information that we do not have time to take into account and which is constantly renewed
Giuliano Da Empoli also explains that people “don’t have time to realize” this state of the world. It is thus, according to him, that the American president convinces, while his actions produce only small results (…), even “counter-effects”. Its voters “are captive in its system,” he observes.
This speed is a force for predators, according to the Italo-Swiss. It offers them a mystical dimension: “People have the impression that nothing happens, that everything is blocked and the predator offers almost a form of miracle” by saying that he will “break the rules, the laws and produce a concrete result on reality. Almost as God”, explains the writer.
Digital transition and call for protest
For Giuliano Da Empoli, this is due to “the transition to digital” which makes society pass “from a sphere with rules and codes (…) to a ‘digital Somalia'”. That is to say “a state in bankruptcy, without rules, where the laws are made by lords of war and where nothing is guaranteed. [Seule règle] the law of the strongest “.
We rock in a world of symbolic aggression that can become physical and real
Giuliano Da Empoli calls for awareness and adapted responses to counter this trend because liberal democracies and “our life systems and public decisions are in danger”, according to him. “I think you should have a little more courage in the face of Trump’s offensive. There are sacrifices to make, but we have the means to oppose all of this,” he said.
Interview by Pietro Bugnon
Article web: Julie Marty
