Could You Even Stop Using Bezos' Amazon If You Wanted To?
Will Bunch is probably better known for books he wrote The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream, Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy and The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, than for his rock writing, but I first became aware of him when we were both a lot younger and I was working at Warner Bros Records and he was researching his first book, Jukebox America: Down Back Streets and Blue Highways in Search of the Country's Greatest Jukebox. Today he’s the best known columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Yesterday he started his column with a quote from fascism expert Timothy Snyder’s book On Fascism: “Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
I’m going to guess that someone interested in a book about the search for the jukebox with the best collection of music in the country is also going to be interested in a column about stopping fascism in its tracks in that same country. Like mot journalists and people who pay attention to journalism, the pre-Bezos Post was a good standard because of, in Bunch’s words, “the pivotal scene in 1976′s All The Presidents Men— which burnished both the facts and some legend about The Post, star reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and their role in the Watergate scandal that took down Richard Nixon— takes place in the dead of night on the pitch-black lawn of top editor Ben Bradlee. The two journalists, fearful they are being bugged, relay their source Deep Throat’s warning that ‘people’s lives are in danger, maybe even ours.’ In a famous monologue, Bradlee (played by Jason Robards, who won an Oscar) tells Woodward and Bernstein to keep reporting the story, that ‘nothing’s riding on this except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country,’ adding his trademarked newsroom cynicism, ‘not that any of that matters.’ Yet perhaps an even more revealing scene occurs earlier, when Nixon’s campaign manager John Mitchell— called by the reporters for his comment on a damning article— instead issues a warning to The Post’s trailblazing publisher, saying ‘Katie Graham’s going to get her [crude word for breast] caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.’ Katharine Graham’s Post had a lot at stake— federal regulators could strip her company’s lucrative TV licenses— yet both the story and the quote, minus the T-word, were published and The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its relentless pursuit of Watergate.”
Bunch reminded his readers that “These are the stories that journalists tell ourselves in order to live— so much so that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos felt compelled when he bought The Post from Graham’s heirs in 2013 to invoke them to reassure a wary newsroom that he would never diminish The Post’s reputation for courageous journalism. The $200 billion man wrote in a letter to staffers: ‘While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.’ Bezos was lying.”
On Friday, the world’s third-richest person, his scandal-scarred British publisher Will Lewis, and the iconic newspaper they control stunned both the American body politic and the media world by spiking their editorial board's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president. The move came just days ahead of an election defined by her rival Donald Trump’s increasing threats to impose a tyrannical form of government with mass deportation camps and arrests for his growing enemies list, including journalists.
Lewis’ utterly incoherent defense of the decision— ending a tradition of presidential endorsements The Post launched in 1976, the same year that All The President’s Men was released— did nothing to quell the rampant, informed speculation that his boss Bezos has killed the already-drafted editorial out of fear a revenge-minded Trump 47 could terminate the billionaire’s extensive business dealings with the federal government. It seemed all too fitting that Trump was in Austin meeting executives of Bezos’ space venture, Blue Horizon, at the same time as the endorsement kibosh.
If this looks like the latest saga of open corruption in a nation that’s become a billionaire kleptocracy, it is— but this moment is also so much more than that. America is witnessing the raw power of dictatorship some nine days before voters even decide if that will truly be our future path. The cowardly Bezos can spend billions to erect a manmade projectile that sends him into space, but he’ll never have the cojones of a Katharine Graham. He is obeying fascism in advance, and he is not alone.
Three thousand miles west, Bezos’ fellow billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong— owner of the Los Angeles Times since 2018— pulled essentially the same maneuver in killing his editorial board’s endorsement of Harris that had been in the works for weeks, and which followed months of editorials warning of the authoritarian dangers of a Trump presidency. Observers noted that Soon-Shiong is a longtime close friend to— you guessed it— another [South African] billionaire, Elon Musk, who is the world’s richest man and has thrown all his time and considerable dollars into getting Trump elected. (Soon-Shiong’s daughter [a shameless liar] insists the reason was both candidates’ failure to address the carnage in Gaza.)
… The message here is clear. The cowardice of the news organizations controlled by Bezos and Soon-Shiong has already taught Trump— in the words of Yale’s Snyder, a leading U.S. expert on fascism— what power can do, and if he prevails in next week’s election, he plans to bring that hammer down in full force. What happened at The Post and the L.A. Times was a stunning betrayal of journalism’s moral values, but in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.
Staffers from both newspapers have resigned and tens of thousands of subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions, including, loudly, Liz Cheney. It’s worth noting that although plenty of Germany’s top oligarchs— Gustav Krupp, Fritz Thyssen, Emil Kirdorf, Carl Bosch, Carl Duisberg, Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche, Herbert Quandt, Friedrich Flick— supported Hitler, no mainstream newspapers did and he could only depend on the Nazi newspapers, like the Völkischer Beobachter, the party’s official mouthpiece— even more complicit in the rise of fascism than the New York Post (owned by Murdoch), the Las Vegas Review-Journal (owned by Adelson), the Boston Herald (formerly owned by Murdoch) and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (formerly owned by outright fascist Richard Mellon Scaife). Once Hitler took over the country, he immediately imposed strict censorship and control over the media. Many independent newspapers were shut down, and those that remained were forced to align with Nazi propaganda. Some journalists who refused to comply were imprisoned or killed. No one doubts that Trump has learned that the Nazi regime's control over the media was essential to its ability to maintain power and spread its ideology. By suppressing dissent and promoting propaganda, the Nazis were able to manipulate public opinion and create a climate of fear and conformity.
This morning, Judd Legum published a piece at Popular Information with some of the facts and figures showing Bezos’ dependence on the largess of the federal government for his businesses. He noted that “The Washington Post, unlike Amazon and Blue Origin, has been a money loser for Bezos, reportedly running a deficit of $100 million last year. More importantly, Bezos believes that Trump's hostility toward the Washington Post, which produced critical coverage of Trump's presidency, cost his companies billions in government contracts. In 2019, Amazon sued the federal government for awarding a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft, alleging that Amazon lost out on the contract based on Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post… In a few months, it is possible that Trump will be president again. This time, Bezos faces an even more acute threat to his business interests. Elon Musk, who owns Blue Origin's chief rival SpaceX, has aligned himself closely with Trump, spending tens of millions in support of Trump's campaign and making appearances in swing states on Trump's behalf.”
Immediately after the announcement of Bezos having killed The Post’s endorsement of Kamala, “Trump was seen meeting with Blue Origin CEO David Limp. Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign's chief spokesman, embraced the suggestion that the meeting and the announcement of the non-endorsement were linked. Robert Kagan, who worked at the Washington Post for two decades and resigned immediately following Lewis' announcement, said the meeting was evidence of a quid pro quo. ‘Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,’ Kagan told the Daily Beast. ‘Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.’”
The apparent capitulation to Trump illustrates the danger of billionaires scooping up major media organizations as a side hustle. For nearly everyone, the price Bezos paid for the Washington Post is an unfathomable amount of money. For Bezos, it's less than half the $575 million he paid for his new 417-foot superyacht, Koru, and its 246-foot support yacht, Abeona, which has a helipad, accommodations for staff, and storage for smaller boats and jet skis.
Bezos did not get to the point where he could afford such yachts through his dedication to journalistic integrity. He became the second-wealthiest person in the world by prioritizing the bottom line. And it appears that continues to be his priority.
…Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the LA Times, also abruptly demanded his publication stay neutral in the presidential election. Soon-Shiong bought the paper for $500 million in 2018.
Soon-Shiong is a healthcare and biotech entrepreneur whose companies rely on the federal government. His companies regularly seek FDA approval for new drugs, vaccines and therapies and federal funding for research.
Also worth mentioning: before Germany declared war on the U.S., there were many American oligarchs who supported Hitler, best known among them virulent antisemite Henry Ford, JFK’s father (and RFK Jr’s grandfather) Joseph Kennedy. George HW Bush’s father Prescott Bush, Andrew Mellon (whose fascist grandson, Tim Mellon, had been Trump’s biggest donor before Elon Musk jumped in), JP Morgan bankster Thomas Lamont, Fred Koch (father of the fascist Koch brothers)…
We’ll take this further later today. So… please come back in a few hours.
In 2012, Romney was secretly recorded opining that 47% of the US was a bunch of freeloaders. In 2016, HRC was secretly recorded about her "basket of deplorables." In 2024, Trump publicly demeans, diminishes, and insults various voting blocs who, in the aggregate, probably constitute a majority of the electorate.
If Covid, was, indeed, a biological science experiment gone wrong, one can argue that MAGAism is a poli sci experiment gone wrong. The GOP* 2024 campaign has violated most every existing assumption about our political system, yet it appears to be succeeding at this point.
My political memories date back to 1968, and I've never seen anything quite like it.
*Contrary to Dem prevailing "wisdom," the problem goes MUCH deeper…