July 1, 2025
Again in New York Metropolis, Mamdani’s win exhibits even billionaires don’t at all times get what they need.
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Greenpeace activists deploy an enormous banner at St. Mark’s Sq. in Venice on June 23, 2025.(Stefano Rellandini / AFP by way of Getty Photographs)
If final week was the perfect of instances for Zohran Mamdani and the working folks of New York, it was the worst of instances for the billionaires who spent a small fortune making an attempt to cease him from securing the town’s Democratic mayoral nomination. Media mogul Barry Dillerto call only one, donated a cool $250,000 to Andrew Cuomo’s marketing campaign, solely to see the disgraced former governor lose by a decisive margin.
However Diller would quickly have the ability to drown his disappointment in Nice Gatsby–themed cocktails as he joined Tom Brady, Ivanka Trump, and a minimum of three Kardashians for the cheeriest occasion on this 12 months’s oligarchic social calendar—the Venetian wedding ceremony of journalist Lauren Sánchez and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
It was a juxtaposition that even CNN questioned, because the community reduce from an interview with Mamdani to protection of the gilded spectacle. The reportedly $50 million affair booked all 9 of Venice’s yacht ports, closed components of the town to the general publicand compelled the relocation of resort visitors to make room for the comfortable couple. All of it served as a stark if luxurious reminder that there isn’t any expense the mega-rich gained’t pay to safe their very own consolation—besides, in fact, the toll their extravagance takes on the communities from whom they extract their wealth.
The lovebirds’ selection of Venice alone demonstrates their carelessness. As a result of the town contains greater than 100 islands within the Adriatic Sea, it’s uniquely susceptible to rising sea ranges pushed by warming world temperatures. Although Sánchez claims to be “devoted to preventing local weather change,” and Bezos has known as the problem “the largest menace to our planet,” their visitors arrived within the Metropolis of Bridges by way of 96 non-public jets, probably the most carbon-intensive mode of transportation. Bezos has additionally made splashy commitments to preventing local weather change, like pledging $10 billion to his Bezos Earth Fund, whereas Amazon has promised to develop into carbon impartial by 2040. However emissions from Amazon’s supply fleet almost doubled between 2019 and 2023, and its latest information middle will guzzle hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and the power equal of 1,000,000 properties yearly.
This disingenuousness is as a lot a enterprise technique for Bezos as Prime’s two-day supply, enabling him to launder his status with out hurting his backside line. This sample definitely performed out final 12 months together with his possession of The Washington Publish—the place, as quickly as he felt threatened by an ascendant Donald Trump, journalistic integrity fell overboard extra rapidly than an inebriated wedding ceremony visitor on a luxurious gondola.
As I lined in a column earlier this 12 months, Bezos killed the Publish’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, directed the editorial board to publish op-eds that solely help “private liberties and free markets,” and oversaw the exodus of greater than 20 reporters and editors. Pamela Weymouth, granddaughter of trailblazing Publish writer Katharine Graham, described this capitulation in a current piece for The Nation as endangering “the very factor that makes America a democracy.”
Present Difficulty
In equity to Bezos, although, charity-washing is an occupational hazard for billionaires. Mark Zuckerberg initially donated to organizations preventing the California housing disaster that he helped exacerbateearlier than quietly ending his funding this 12 months. The Gates Basis provides 90 % of its funding to nonprofits in rich nations somewhat than the impoverished ones whose GDPs are smaller than its namesake’s internet price. The magnanimity of the über-wealthy tends to provide what journalist Anand Giridharadas has known as “pretend change,” or efforts that cease wanting systemic change as a result of these methods underpin the benefactors’ huge wealth.
That’s why any imaginative and prescient of progressive change can not depend on Bezos or his celeb wedding ceremony visitors to function towards their self-interest. (No, not even Oprah.) A Inexperienced New Deal won’t come from oligarchical guilt however from mass actions. Just like the one which deployed nearly 30,000 door tits and pooled funds from 27,000 donors to share Mamdani’s message of real financial empowerment.
His victory on Tuesday added to a rising physique of proof that even billionaires don’t at all times get what they need. Final 12 months, Elon Musk spent over 1 / 4 of a billion {dollars} electing Republicans, however no sum of money may save him from Donald Trump’s mercurial mood. Nor did his wealth sway the voters of Wisconsin, the place he contributed $21 million to a state Supreme Courtroom candidate who ended up shedding by 10 factors.
Voters’ rising skepticism of the 1 % is little doubt being stoked by grassroots activism. Like in Venice, the place native protesters threatened to fill canals with inflatable crocodilesforcing the marriage of the century to relocate to the town’s outskirts. Again stateside, progressives Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proceed to draw document crowds throughout the nation on their Preventing Oligarchy Tour. At a current cease in Oklahoma—a state Trump gained by 33 factors—Sanders spoke to a standing-room-only crowd.
May an anti-billionaire backlash be constructing? If that’s the case, it’s simply in time for subsequent 12 months’s midterms.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and writer of The Nation, America’s main supply of progressive politics and tradition. She served as editor of the journal from 1995 to 2019.
