«THE a man who is constantly read by the European political class”, “the new court intellectual of Europe”, “a modern Machiavelli, illuminating the traits of today’s authoritarian leaders”. These are some of the exuberant media characterizations of the new star of the European intelligentsia. THE Giuliano da Empoli became widely known in 2022 with the novel “The Wizard of the Kremlin” (Kedros publications), in which he describes his rise in the post-Soviet world through the eyes of his main communications adviser, Vadim Baranov.
Giuliano da Eboli declares himself incurably European and believes that anything new will emerge “only if Europe enters a digital trade conflict with the US”
The character of the latter is inspired by Vladislav SurkovPutin’s famous “gray cardinal” and founder of the authoritarian ideology of “sovereign democracy”. The book, which has now been made into a movie with Jude Law in the role of the Russian president, he takes the reader on a journey through Russia of the last 35 years, from the frenzied process of the entry of capitalism in the 90s to the Sochi Winter Olympics and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, while at the same time revealing in a fascinating way the worldview of Putinism.
Jude Law as Vladimir Putin in the film “The Magician of the Kremlin” which is also playing in Greek cinemas from March 12
Da Eboli wrote The Magician during the pandemic, consciously attempting to recount the events “from the devil’s point of view”. The goal, he states in one of his interviews with Politico, “was to enter the mind of the evil one, the opponent. It’s a much more interesting venture than saying he’s bad and just labeling him.”. Although he did not think it would be a commercial success, the book became a bestseller, selling 650,000 copies in France alone. And its release coincided with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the desperate attempt of European leaders to understand Putin’s logic. And so, overnight, Da Eboli found himself conversing with Europe’s political leaders, such as the French president Emmanuel Macron or the Danish prime minister Mete Fredericksenand to be thoroughly read by the political circles of the West.
It is certainly not the first time that the Italian-Swiss author wanders the corridors of power. His father was an adviser to the socialist prime minister of Italy Bettino Craxi in the 80s. When he was shot three times by members of the Red Brigades in 1984, Giuliano was just 12 years old. In the 1990s, with the rise of Berlusconism, he publishes his first book on politics and the new generation, which opens the doors to some political connections. Soon, he ends up in the political office of a feral politician, then mayor of Florence, named Matteo Renzi. Da Eboli will follow Renzi to the Palazzo Chizzi, the “Italian Maximus Palace”, before realizing that front-line politics is not for his stomach after all. In 2016 he retired to Milan, founded the Volta think tank and began to carefully study the great transformations brought about by the digital condition and social networks in the structure of politics and the exercise of power, on the occasion of the rise of the first “algorithmic party”, the Five Star Movement.
“The Chaos Engineers”
As he himself recounts in his book “The Engineers of Chaos” (Kedros publications), Italy at the beginning of the millennium was the matrix of a political experiment that would become general in the following years: an ethno-populist attempt to exploit anger with the help of experts in algorithms and digital marketing. The structural mutation of the political game brought about by the ability to micro-target voters, he notes, is that parties can now support different and contradictory agendas to different groups of disaffected voters, obliterating the Right/Left opposition and collecting votes from across the political spectrum. To put it simply, they can simultaneously ‘sell’ ‘homeland’ to ‘patriots’ and ‘internationalism’ to ‘internationalists’, ‘revolution’ to ‘revolutionaries’ and ‘counter-revolution’ to ‘counter-revolutionaries’. Politics, says Da Empoli, is thus transformed from a centripetal to a centrifugal force. Instead of creating the conditions for a social convergence, turning towards the center, it essentially upgrades the extremes, constantly fueling polarization. It is a rift, he adds, similar to the one that separates Newtonian from quantum physics: an introduction of chaos into previously ordered reality.
In September 2024 Da Empoli accompanied Emmanuel Macron to the UN General Assembly and then to Canada. Two months later he was again at the side of the French president in his Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salmantaking extensive notes on his next move. It was a special quid pro quo, in the context of which the leader offers access to the inner workings of power, supplying material to write, and the intellectual offers a fresh perspective on the distributed, less “wooden” than that of professional advisers. These, along with other “experiences” that the success of “The Wizard of the Kremlin” gave him, such as a discussion about artificial intelligence with Sam Altman and him Demi Hassabimake up the corpus of Da Eboli’s latest book entitled “The Hour of the Predator” (“The Hour of the Predator”/Pushkin Press).
The “predators” of politics and the tech-bros
The argument begins exactly where the reflection on the rupture of traditional politics left off. With one crucial difference. Now the supporters of the chaos strategy (the Trumps of all kinds) are not in the opposition, as in the 2010s, but in the government. “The Chaos”says Da Eboli, “no longer the weapon of the insurgents, but the emblem of those in power”.
According to his diagnosis, we are in one “machiavellian moment” in History, where rules are thrown aside as destruction and chaos are more profitable than keeping the peace. A period when all the “guardrails” of the old order give way before the unholy alliance of two different “predators”who argue that “break” them “typical” procedures to achieve, supposedly, “substantial” solutions. The authoritarian policies of the hard Right, which refer to the agendas of the past (nationalism, masculinity, aggressive action). And the tech-bros who made possible the return of the former through their platforms. Without being nationalistic or nostalgic, they share with the former a deep aversion to rules, restrictions and regulation.
And Europe? Although he is not spared criticism for his naivety and arrogance, Da Empoli declares himself incurably European and a supporter of a European federalism. For him, after all, Europe represents everything that modern predators hate: the idea of a power bound by rules. This is, in his opinion, the reason they are fighting it, but also the reason that anything new will arise “only if Europe enters a digital trade conflict with the US”as stated on the Agenda Publica website.
After the release of “The Magician of the Kremlin” some saw with reservation the choice of the Italian-Swiss author to surround difficult historical events with a novel mantle. For him, his hybrid writing, which combines literature and political essay, is rather an asset. But also the reason he now lives in Paris. “If you have the two passions that I have, politics and literature, there is no other place in the world that has blended them consistently over the centuries. There is no other country where every president wants to be a great novelist and every novelist has a clear idea of how he would run the country.” he previously reported in the Financial Times.
