Jeff Bezos accidentally exposes the truth about "Western democracy"

By dictating the opinions of The Washington Post, Bezos exposes how Western society is rigged

He really just went out and said it. Jeff Bezos, a plutocrat, the second richest man on earth, the guy who owns Amazon, also counts The Washington Post amongst his collection of toys. That happens to be of the most influential newspapers in the United States, and indeed the world.

And yesterday, he made an announcement which confirmed all of the things the left has long said - just like Donald Trump is discarding all of the pretences about US imperialism. Truly, we live the age of ‘they’re saying the quiet part out loud’.

What he said underlines why we don’t live in a real democracy, and never have, no matter what we’re told.

In a Tweet yesterday, Bezos said he’d shared a note with the Washington Post team about a “change coming to our opinion pages,” as he puts it.

He says:

“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

He goes on to say:

There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.

What is particularly funny is what he says next:

I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.

Freedom minimises coercion, he solemnly declares, in a statement by a plutocrat ordering his newspaper to stop publishing opinions he doesn’t agree with. Come on, that is genuinely funny. It’s funny, too, because he declares that he’s “confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America.” Personal liberties, right for America, but not right for the editors of the Washington Post opinion section!

This is also somewhat amusing given the notoriously coercive form of work which dominates Amazon. Referring to the surveillance they’re under, workers have testified that “you feel like you’re in prison.”

After Bezos informed his opinion editor, David Shipley, that was going to coerce him into restricting the range of opinions published, that man commendably resigned.

A few things here. “Personal liberties” and “free markets” is just code for “economic policies which favour extremely rich people like me”. The guy runs a newspaper and he wants it to be a propaganda rag which convinces ordinary citizens that economic policies which rig society in favour of people like him is actually in their best interest.

As for “free markets”, Bezos is the living embodiment of this sham. A useful website tracks how much public subsidies Amazon benefits from, in turn, lining the pockets of Jeff Bezos. It turns out his company has benefited from subsidies worth $11.6 billion - and counting. His Blue Origin space company also benefited from tens of millions of dollars worth of public subsidies. Bernie Sanders led the fight against Congress bailing it out altogether.

Jeff Bezos also makes dosh from taxpayers the world over. Public contracts he’s been awarded include for the Ministry of Defence here in the UK, while in 2022 it was reported he’d been handed £425 million worth of government contracts over two years.

The same people who like to decry what they call the evils of ‘big government’ are the same ones lapping at the teats of government. (Apologies for the imagery).

This underlines the nature of our economic system - socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor. The state is rolled back when it comes to struggling Americans or Brits, but it provides the ultimate safety for corporate giants. For the average Joe, it’s sink or swim, for the rich, the position of the state is - “we’re at your service!”

What Jeff Bezos really wants is a newspaper which promotes the idea that cutting taxes on the rich and flogging public assets to billionaires benefits all of society. The fact the economic system has failed - and American wages for so many workers has stagnated - contradicts that claim, but he wants a newspaper that tries to brainwash people into believing otherwise.

Now it should be noted that Jeff Bezos ordered the Washington Post to violate its history of endorsing the Democrats in the last election. That decision came the same day that executives from his aerospace company met with Donald Trump, he claimed that was a coincidence and his decision wasn’t driven by business interests. Note, however, that Washington’s rulers have the power to block public contracts Bezos benefits form. In any case, the decision led to around 250,000 cancelling their Washington Post subscriptions, about a quarter of a million.

He’s also shelled out a vast sum to make a documentary about Melania Trump, and his Earth Fund halted funding for an initiative monitoring companies’ decarbonisation - both decisions widely understood as Bezos bowing down before Donald Trump.

Now his decision at the Washington Post has caused widespread anger. Jeff Stein, the chief economics reporter, tweeted:

“Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section today - makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know".”

Well, look, what Bezos has done is a real service here. He’s proven us right. There are those of us who’ve said that rich moguls own newspapers in order to promote political agendas which benefit their interests. Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million back in 2013, a fraction of what it had been worth a decade earlier, because that was a sound investment - he wanted to use it for political influence.

This has always been the case. As British media mogul Lord Beaverbrook told the Royal Commission on the Press in 1948, he ran the Daily Express newspaper “purely for the purpose of making propaganda and with no other object... I look at it as a purely propagandist project.”

Notably, back in 2003, all 175 newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch just coincidentally all supported the invasion of Iraq. And indeed we’ve seen how media oligarchs cheerlead for their country’s foreign policy - as of late, throwing their weight behind Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Indeed, owning newspapers also buys political influence directly. As Russian media mogul Evgeny Lebedev – whose family once owned The Independent and still owns London's near-monopoly newspaper The Evening Standard – candidly put it: “It's unreasonable to expect individuals to spend millions on newspapers and not have access to politicians.”

In the US, there are six media companies which own the vast majority of all media in the country.

We don’t live in a real democracy. That’s because even though almost all adults have a vote, those with wealth are the ones with power. Society is rigged of people of a tiny elite who run entire countries as profit making enterprises, at the expense of the majority who live there.

This system is falling apart, unable to provide security and prosperity for so many. And that’s led to the rise of right-wing populism which tells citizens that their lives are getting harder because of migrants, refugees, Muslims, you get the gist - rather than a society rigged in favour of a tiny few, like Jeff Bezos.

And until we fix that, humanity’s future is looking pretty bleak.