Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
Jeff Bezos, currently the wealthiest human being on planet Earth, did not purchase the Washington Post in 2013 because he was expecting newspapers to make a lucrative resurgence.
This self-evident fact doesn’t receive enough attention.
I will say it again for emphasis: Jeff Bezos, who has used his business prowess to become the wealthiest person in the world, did not purchase the Washington Post in 2013 because he was expecting newspapers to make a profitable comeback. That did not happen.
What did happen is the world’s richest plutocrat realizing that he needed a mouthpiece to manufacture public support for the neoliberal corporatist establishment that he is building his empire upon. This is why WaPo ran sixteen smear pieces on Bernie Sanders in the span of sixteen hours at the hottest point in the Democratic presidential primary battle. It is also why it continues to publish filth like this:
"How will Democrats cope if Putin starts playing dirty tricks for Bernie Sanders (again)?" https://t.co/tNG3FCL8SR via @PostOpinions
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 13, 2017
Last year Silicon Valley venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya said that Amazon is “a multi-trillion-dollar monopoly hiding in plain sight.” In June Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, wrote that Amazon is trying to “control the underlying infrastructure of the economy.”
Bezos continues to get cozier and cozier with the US power establishment as his empire metastasizes across human civilization. He kicked WikiLeaks off Amazon servers in 2010, he scored a 600 million dollar contract with the CIA in 2013, he joined a Pentagon advisory board in 2016, he hung out with Defense Secretary James Mattis in August, and he’s spent nearly ten million dollars this year lobbying the federal government, which is likely what led to an NDAA amendment gifting Amazon a $54 billion market it’s expected to dominate as a supplier to the Pentagon.
A pleasure to host #SecDef James Mattis at Amazon HQ in Seattle today pic.twitter.com/JnQZoSOnFN
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) August 10, 2017
Billion. With a ‘b’.
The Intercept reports that attempts to scale back the amendment by anti-monopolists have led to some adjustments, but to little real effect.
“This amendment looks like it will crown Amazon as an official gatekeeper to government procurement,” said Lina Khan of the Open Markets Institute.
“Government spending that was previously dispersed across hundreds of distinct companies will now instead all be channeled through one company, with Amazon collecting a tax.”
Meanwhile Democrats are fixated on the Koch brothers and Republicans are focused on George Soros.
I gave this story a jokey headline, but seriously, watch Jeff Bezos very closely.
Your future is increasingly more likely to be imperiled by new money tech plutocrats like him than by old money plutocrats like Soros and the Rothschilds.
The power dynamics of the plutocracy is shifting as the world changes at breakneck pace, and people need to be able to keep adjusting the way they think about things to keep up. A lot of folks in conspiracy circles are still talking about deep state power structures like it’s 2004, and meanwhile those power structures are all prepping for a tech explosion, monetary revolutions, vast shifts in the global economy and the end of oil.
These changes are already well underway. Let’s get our brainpower focused on the present.
The richest man in the world did not purchase the Washington Post because he believed newspapers were about to enjoy a lucrative resurgence, and he certainly didn’t purchase it to ensure the production of high quality journalism. He bought it so that he’d have a trusted mouthpiece through which to lie to you about what is happening in the world in a way that will benefit his empire.
* * *
Hey you, thanks for reading! My work is entirely reader-funded so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, and maybe throwing some money into my hat on Patreon.