{ "article": { "title" : "The Wedding That Ate Venice", "author" : "Louis Pisano", "category" : "essays", "tags" : "", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/wedding-that-ate-venice", "date" : "2025-06-30 11:01:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_LaurenSanchez.jpg", "excerpt" : "It wasn’t just a wedding. It was an occupation.", "content" : "It wasn’t just a wedding. It was an occupation.For a few deeply strange days in late June, Venice ceased being a city and became a film set, one where no one knew what movie was being made, who the audience was supposed to be, or why the lead actress had clearly studied every frame of Kim Kardashian’s wedding content like it was an NFL playbook. Lauren Sánchez, the new Mrs. Bezos, didn’t just get married. She tried to canonize herself.And she had a plan. There was a glitzy bachelorette party in Paris. A carefully stage managed sunset cruise down the Seine under the hum of drones. There was a wedding in Italy, just like Kim. There was a Vogue exclusive, albeit digital, complete with a dolce-vita wannabe shoot in her Sophia Loren inspired Dolce & Gabbana wedding gown. And in perhaps the most surreal flourish, Sánchez booked Matteo Bocelli, son of Andrea Bocelli yes, the same Andrea who famously sang at Kim and Kanye’s wedding in Florence.This is not a coincidence. This is scripting. This is someone trying very, very hard to manufacture a wedding-as-moment.What she failed to realize is that it is no longer 2014. The culture has changed, the fantasy has expired, and Lauren Sánchez is not Kim Kardashian. She doesn’t have the influence, the intrigue, or the irony like the kind Kanye West once knew how to manufacture, art-directing a wedding that felt both sincerely grand and wryly self-aware. She has money and a lot of it but no myth. And that’s the problem.To understand just how off Lauren Sánchez’s wedding was, you have to go back to the one she was clearly copying: Kim and Kanye, 2014, the wedding that practically invented the modern celebrity ceremony.Say what you want about KimYe, but that wedding made an impact on the culture. Optimized for virality: high/low, couture-meets-chaos, social media bait wrapped in Givenchy. From the Parisian pre-wedding fits to the Florence ceremony staged in front of a crumbling fortress, everything was hyper-curated and deeply personal. This wasn’t some random destination wedding with a Vogue shoot tacked on. It was a painstakingly crafted narrative.Paris made sense, Kim and Kanye were fashion-obsessed, and Paris Fashion Week was their red carpet. They were front row. They were in it. Florence, we later learned, was where their daughter North was conceived. That detail turned what could’ve been a rich-person location flex into something intimate, even romantic. And then there was Versailles, the site of their rehearsal dinner, a deliberately imperial choice that positioned them as pop-cultural royalty. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t supposed to be. It was about legacy wrapped in gilded historic grandeur.And the aesthetic? Tasteful. Thought out. Kanye commissioned a massive Carrara marble table for the reception. Riccardo Tisci designed Kim’s dress. The guest list was curated like an art exhibit, full of industry insiders and cultural players. This was a cultural event with layers and textures that made sense.Yes they were showing off but at the same time they weren’t just showing off; they were performing an aspirational lifestyle that millions could obsess over, analyze, and replicate in mini ways online. That wedding birthed endless memes, think pieces, and viral moments. It was maximal but meaningful. It had context.Venice, however, had no narrative in the Sánchez-Bezos wedding. It was the background, a luxury prop for a story Venice didn’t ask to be part of.The city did not greet the event with open arms. As Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez exchanged vows, a few hundred protesters gathered at the Venice train station on the following day with one clear message: “Bezos, f**k off,” and “Out of our lagoon!” They chanted in Italian, their voices rippling through the ancient city like a wave of defiance.Venetian locals like 22-year-old Sofia D’Amato made it clear that this was not about envy. “We are not jealous of the fact that he earns so much money,” she told CNN. “We are jealous when his wealth hits us in the face.”That wealth hit hard. The wedding reportedly cost $55 million. While Sánchez and Bezos pledged a combined €3 million to three Venetian cultural institutions, D’Amato dismissed the donations as “paltry” compared to the spectacle and disruption inflicted upon the city.Protesters didn’t just express resentment toward Bezos’s private wealth, they drew stark contrasts between that opulence and the struggles of Amazon workers. One woman, identifying herself as an Amazon employee, shouted into the crowd, “We can barely pay the rent. Many of us come from far away to reach the warehouse… We don’t see these millions.”The march, which moved through the city’s iconic bridges and squares, was a kaleidoscope of political symbolism: Palestinian flags, pride flags, anti-fascist banners, and Venice’s traditional red standard. Some even modified the golden lion on the Venetian flag to wear a black balaclava, an unmistakable symbol of resistance.Predictably, city officials were quick to condemn the protests. In a press release, Venice’s municipal government called the demonstrations “ridiculous” and “grotesque,” dismissing opposition as “folklore of ‘No to everything.’” Their statement claimed that “contesting a wedding (any wedding) is already ridiculous in itself,” as if the billionaires’ invasion was the natural order, and dissent a bizarre outlier.But for many Venetians, this wasn’t just a wedding to protest, it was a painful reminder of how their city is commodified and controlled by the ultra-rich, at the expense of everyday life.There’s something oddly fascinating about Lauren Sánchez’s entire trajectory leading up to this wedding. The soft launches. The yacht wardrobe. The increasingly intentional paparazzi strolls. The Paris bachelorette that felt like a Vogue World afterparty with bigger bank accounts. She wasn’t just planning a wedding, she was orchestrating a character arc.But if the wedding itself was a fantasy no one asked for, the Vogue coverage was the hallucination that followed. Behind it all, the unmistakable hand of Anna Wintour, who still seems to believe that a Vogue feature has the power to manufacture cultural relevance.But this time, she didn’t just co-sign the narrative, she helped script it. According to reports, Wintour personally advised Lauren Sánchez on which designer to choose for her wedding dress. That wasn’t just a fashion favor. That was the ultimate act of legacy media meddling, as if the right label could turn a billionaire yacht wife into a main character. Wintour, still clinging to the idea that her blessing carries myth-making power, anointed Sánchez with the same institutional pomp once reserved for actual icons.The thing is, everyone involved in this coverage fundamentally misunderstood who reads Vogue in 2025, especially online. Today’s audience is digital-native, hyper-aware, and deeply fluent in the language of spin. We know when we’re being sold something. And in this case, the product was Lauren Sánchez: aggressively packaged, horrifically over-styled, and force-fed down our throats like a satin-wrapped ad for moneyed mediocrity.These people aren’t aspirational. They’re not even neutral. They’re actively loathed.And yes, sure, you could compare this to the backlash when Kim Kardashian got her first Vogue cover. But that outrage was alive. That cover mattered. It arrived right as social media was exploding. Thirst was aspirational. The vibe was peak maximalism. KimYe were the zeitgeist. Whether you loved them or hated them, you were watching.Jeff and Lauren wanted that. Desperately. But what they staged in Venice wasn’t a cultural coronation, it was a hollow production for people who still think “rich” means “interesting.”There’s no iconography. No real story. Just a swarm of strategists hovering off-camera in the lagoon.The difference between a moment and a media stunt is simple: one has soul. This had scheduling.If Vogue still thinks it can manufacture buzz by throwing up carefully curated wedding posts on Instagram, the comments sections say otherwise. Scroll through any of the ten posts Vogue put up about the Sánchez-Bezos wedding, and you’ll find a consistent theme: anger, disgust, and outright mockery.Comments like “Who asked?” “So tone-deaf,” “More billionaires ruining the world,” and simply “No one cares” flood every post. The wedding has become a lightning rod for frustrations about wealth inequality, entitlement, and the performative exhaustion of these ultra-rich pageants. It’s a digital rebellion against being sold a fairy tale that feels increasingly grotesque and irrelevant.The optics are impossible to ignore: a billionaire wedding in Venice, a city suffocated by luxury excess, doubling as a sort of political power mixer for America’s richest, regardless of the ideologies they champion. It’s a reminder of how the ultra-wealthy consolidate influence behind closed doors, far from the consequences their politics inflict on everyday people.The only real moment of truth in this entire circus didn’t come from Sánchez or Bezos. It came from the Venetians protesting on boats. From the clips of locals being rerouted around security barricades so that billionaires in sunglasses could glide through canals in peace. From the quiet rage of a city that’s been turned into a playground for the ultra-rich, now forced to host their mythmaking rituals.This wasn’t a wedding. It was a symptom. A symptom of just how far removed the 1% has become from the rest of us and how tone-deaf our media class still is when it comes to documenting them.Lauren wanted her Kim moment. She got her Marie Antoinette moment instead.As for Vogue? It’s still playing prestige dress-up in a world that already left the party. The rest of us are rolling our eyes, wondering how many more of these billionaire Barbie weddings we’ll be forced to endure before the fantasy fully collapses.They barricaded the protesters out of Venice, shutting down dissent with walls and security.Me? I got blocked on Instagram. Turns out the easiest way to silence a critic in 2025 is just one click away." } , "relatedposts": [ { "title" : "Culture Must Be the Moral Compass That Geopolitics and Economics Will Never Be", "author" : "EIP Editors", "category" : "essays", "tags" : "", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/culture-must-be-the-moral-compass-that-geopolitics-and-economics-will-never-be", "date" : "2025-07-15 16:14:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/2025_7_Opposing_Nazism_1.png", "excerpt" : "The widespread cultural rejection of Nazism in the West did not emerge spontaneously from humanity’s innate sense of right and wrong. It was not simply that people around the world, and especially in the West, were naturally alert and to the moral horror of fascism.", "content" : "The widespread cultural rejection of Nazism in the West did not emerge spontaneously from humanity’s innate sense of right and wrong. It was not simply that people around the world, and especially in the West, were naturally alert and to the moral horror of fascism.Rather, the transformation of Nazism from a nationalist ideology admired by many Western elites into the universal symbol of evil was a story of narrative engineering and the deliberate construction of collective memory. It is a story that reveals a larger truth: culture has always been the moral compass that geopolitics and economics cannot, and will not, provide on their own.And at this moment, it is crucial to understand and use the power of culture to shift geopolitics, and not the other way around.Understanding this history matters today more than ever. Because if it was possible to turn Nazism into the ultimate taboo, it is equally possible to reposition other violent ideologies and state projects—such as Israel’s ongoing system of apartheid and settler colonialism—as morally indefensible. But to do so requires acknowledging that cultural reckonings don’t simply arrive; they are made.Pre-War Ambivalence: When Fascism Was FashionableContrary to the comforting myth that the world naturally recoiled from Nazism, in the 1920s and 1930s many influential Americans and Europeans viewed Hitler’s Germany with admiration. American industrialists like Henry Ford openly praised Hitler’s economic management and fierce opposition to communism. Ford even funded antisemitic propaganda through his publication, The Dearborn Independent. British aristocrats, including the Duke of Windsor, flirted with Nazi sympathies, seeing Germany as a model of discipline and order.It was only when Hitler’s ambitions clashed with the strategic interests of other nations that fascism became intolerable. And even then, many major US and UK companies maintained their business interests with the Nazis, including Ford, IBM, GM (Opel), Standard Oil (now ExxonMobil), Chase Bank, and of course Coca-Cola, who famously created the brand Fanta so that it could break the boycott and do business with Nazi Germany.This distinction is critical: condemnation of Nazism began not as a moral imperative, but as a political necessity. Germany’s aggression threatened the European balance of power, British imperial security, and eventually, American economic and military interests. The moral narrative would only come later, after the fighting was over.It is important to learn from the past and see that only culture can shift perception, and to use culture to shift the economic realities that would otherwise wait to be shaped by politics.Wartime Shifts: From Enemy State to Symbol of EvilWorld War II did not instantly transform public opinion. For many Americans, the war in Europe remained remote until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Even then, the decision to fight Nazi Germany was entangled with power politics: Hitler declared war on the United States first, effectively forcing Roosevelt’s hand.Nevertheless, the war provided fertile ground for a reframing of Nazism. Wartime propaganda efforts by the Allies recast the Nazi regime as a brutal, alien threat to civilization itself. Hollywood joined in: The Great Dictator (1940) ridiculed Hitler’s delusions of grandeur, while Casablanca (1942) romanticized resistance. Images of goose-stepping soldiers, swastika flags, and shattered cities circulated widely.As the Allies advanced, they encountered the first concrete evidence of the Holocaust: ghettos, mass graves, and emaciated survivors. Yet even then, much of this evidence remained unknown to the general public. It was only after liberation that the full horror became impossible to ignore.Post-War Revelation: The Holocaust and the Cultural BreakThe turning point came in 1945, with the liberation of the camps and the Nuremberg Trials. The images and testimonies from Auschwitz, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen revealed the industrial scale of genocide. Millions murdered with chilling efficiency. A systematic attempt to erase an entire people. For the first time, the abstract notion of “Nazi evil” was grounded in visceral, visual evidence.Sociologist Jeffrey Alexander describes this phenomenon as the cultural construction of trauma. Atrocities do not automatically generate collective memory; they must be narrated, documented, and ritualized until they become an inescapable moral reference point. The Nuremberg Trials played this role by broadcasting confessions and evidence to a global audience. Schools, museums, and the press reinforced the narrative: Nazism was not simply defeated; it was unmasked as pure, irredeemable evil.Cold War Myth-Making: The Free World Versus FascismThe Cold War further cemented this narrative. To build legitimacy against the Soviet Union, the United States and its allies positioned themselves as the moral victors of World War II, the saviors of Europe from fascism. In reality, many of the same powers—Britain, France, and the United States—continued their own brutal colonial projects and enforced systems of racial hierarchy at home.But the cultural story was powerful: the West stood for freedom; the Nazis had embodied totalitarian darkness. School textbooks, popular films, and Holocaust memorialization institutionalized this story, forging a shared moral identity that could be contrasted against communist “evil.”This process was neither accidental nor purely altruistic. It was a strategic use of culture to consolidate power, project moral authority, and deflect scrutiny of the West’s own violence. The lesson is clear: collective memory is not a neutral mirror of reality. It is built, contested, and leveraged.The Sociological Core: Why Public Opinion ShiftsTo understand how an ideology once admired by many became the universal emblem of inhumanity, we must look beyond military defeat. Several mechanisms combined:Symbolic Association: Nazism transformed from a nationalist experiment into a symbol of mechanized genocide and racial supremacy.Cultural Trauma: The Holocaust became a shared wound that redefined moral frameworks across the West.Visual Storytelling: Images and films, rather than mere text, anchored the horror in the public imagination.State Rebranding: The Allies used anti-Nazism to build a postwar myth of moral superiority, even as they pursued imperial ambitions elsewhere.These insights are not simply historical trivia. They are a roadmap for how cultural shifts happen—and how they can be deliberately engineered.Israel, Palestine, and the Next Cultural ReckoningToday, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians—systematic dispossession, apartheid laws, and repeated military assaults—remains largely protected in Western discourse. Politicians insist on Israel’s right to defend itself. Media narratives default to framing the violence as a “conflict” rather than an occupation. Solidarity with Palestinians is often smeared as antisemitism.Yet history shows that moral consensus is not fixed. With enough sustained exposure, narrative work, and cultural pressure, the global imagination can be reshaped. Just as Nazism’s legitimacy eroded, so too can the idea of Israel as an unassailable “victim-state.”This is not a call to equate the Holocaust with the Nakba—each is historically distinct. It is, however, an argument that the techniques which made Nazism morally intolerable—trauma visualization, reframing language, relentless storytelling—are tools available to any liberation movement.Here is how such a transformation could unfold:1. Narrative InversionIsrael’s founding story must be contextualized: a state born from the trauma of European antisemitism that, in turn, created the dispossession of another people. Exposing this contradiction—survivors becoming occupiers—breaks the simplistic binary of oppressor and victim.2. Visual Culture and TestimonyJust as photographs of emaciated bodies in camps forced an awakening, so too can images of bombed Gazan neighborhoods, amputee children, and anguished families. Digital archives and survivor testimonies can anchor these experiences in collective memory.3. Linguistic ReframingTerms like “apartheid,” “settler colonialism,” and “ethnic cleansing” shift perception from tragic conflict to structural violence. Legal frameworks—UN reports, ICC filings—can fortify these terms with institutional legitimacy.4. Media SaturationBypassing corporate media gatekeepers requires a multi-platform strategy: TikTok clips, Substack essays, livestreamed trials of Israeli policy, viral documentaries. Saturation is what makes denial unsustainable.5. Global RealignmentPositioning Palestine within global struggles—Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, anti-colonial movements—expands solidarity. When the Global South embraces Palestinian liberation as part of its own decolonization, moral isolation will deepen.6. Cultural Institutions and EducationJust as Holocaust education became standard in Western curricula, Nakba education can be mainstreamed. Museums, memorials, and fellowships can institutionalize remembrance and scholarship.7. Policy Pressure and Legal ActionPublic consensus is the soil in which policy change grows. Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, coupled with legal prosecutions of war crimes, transform moral clarity into material consequences.8. Making Occupation a LiabilityWhen supporting Israel becomes politically and financially risky—akin to defending apartheid South Africa—corporate and governmental alliances will fracture. Reputational risk can be a powerful motivator.Conclusion: Cultural Reckonings Are EngineeredIt was not “natural” for the West to reject Nazism. It took defeat, trauma exposure, and decades of cultural labor to enshrine anti-Nazism as a foundational moral principle. Similarly, it is not inevitable that the world will recognize Israel’s oppression of Palestinians as an urgent moral crisis. It will require strategic, sustained, and courageous cultural work.Culture—more than geopolitics or economics—sets the terms of what is morally acceptable. It is the compass that can point humanity toward justice. But only if we are willing to pick it up and use it." } , { "title" : "Neptune Frost", "author" : "Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman", "category" : "screenings", "tags" : "", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/eip-screening-neptune-frost", "date" : "2025-07-12 16:00:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/netune-frost-movie-poster.jpg", "excerpt" : "Thank you for all who joined the special screening of Neptune Frost, with exclusive introduction from writer/director Saul Williams. Stay tuned and become a member for our next edition of our EIP monthly screening series.", "content" : "Thank you for all who joined the special screening of Neptune Frost, with exclusive introduction from writer/director Saul Williams. Stay tuned and become a member for our next edition of our EIP monthly screening series.Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing. Co-directed with the Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region’s natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry. Set between states of being – past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience – Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends." } , { "title" : "Uranus & The Cycle of Liberation", "author" : "Céline Semaan", "category" : "", "tags" : "", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/uranus-and-the-cycle-of-liberation", "date" : "2025-07-11 16:25:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_Uranus.jpg", "excerpt" : "I’m definitely not an astrologer. I don’t even know where Uranus is in my chart. But I do know how to read systems and translate them to the public. What I’ve learned, through years of designing for social and environmental justice, is that history doesn’t just unfold. It cycles upwards. And if we learn to pay attention to those cycles, we can prepare—not just to resist collapse, but to shape what comes after.", "content" : "I’m definitely not an astrologer. I don’t even know where Uranus is in my chart. But I do know how to read systems and translate them to the public. What I’ve learned, through years of designing for social and environmental justice, is that history doesn’t just unfold. It cycles upwards. And if we learn to pay attention to those cycles, we can prepare—not just to resist collapse, but to shape what comes after.Even if you don’t care about astrology, the timing of these celestial movements provides us a way to examine macro trends that we can learn from. History may not exactly repeat itself, but it does echo.Uranus—the planet astrologers associated with upheaval, rebellion, and technological transformation—entered Aries in May 2010 and stayed there until 2018. That cycle coincided with a surge in political uprisings, many of which redefined our understanding of mass resistance in the 21st century.The Arab Spring began in late 2010, starting in Tunisia and erupting across the Middle East. It wasn’t just about corrupt regimes—it was about reclaiming voice, land, and dignity after decades of foreign interference, neoliberal decay, and post-colonial repression. From Tahrir Square to Pearl Roundabout, these movements were leaderless, fast, and media-savvy.Occupy Wall Street followed in 2011, challenging the violent inequality embedded in late capitalism. In 2013, Black Lives Matter emerged after the murder of Trayvon Martin, later exploding into a global uprising in 2014 and again in 2020. Standing Rock (2016) reminded the world that Indigenous resistance was not only alive but visionary. #MeToo (2017) became an international reckoning with patriarchy and sexual violence, a reminder that personal testimony is political terrain.Across these years, protests were decentralized, digitized, and visual. Social media moved from a personal tool to a frontline of collective witnessing. Livestreams replaced press conferences. Memes became political language. Design itself became a protest, and Slow Factory built the visual language for it.This was not coincidental but archetypal, because Uranus in Aries, even symbolically, tells the story of radical ignition, collective fire, visionary unrest.And yet, none of it was sustained. What followed was a backlash: fascist resurgence, climate denial, propaganda wars, and intensified state surveillance. We saw mass demobilization, media fatigue, and widespread disinformation. Many of the movements that sparked global hope were either crushed, co-opted, or burned out.So now, as Uranus moves through Taurus (2018–2026), the terrain has shifted. Taurus is about materiality, land, value, and stability. It demands we not only rise up, which is crucial, but to build. We are asked to not only critique systems, but replace them. Not just “burn it all down”, but radically imagine what’s next.This is the political and spiritual context I hold as I continue my work.At Slow Factory, we spent the past decade offering free education, cultural strategy, and ecological design rooted in climate justice and human rights. And with Everything is Political, we’re building an independent media platform not beholden to corporate donors or foundation filters—a place where movement memory, critical analysis, and cultural clarity live. If we don’t design the next phase of liberation, someone else will design it for us.This work isn’t about virality. It’s about continuity. We are here to hold political memory. To protect the intellectual commons. To ensure that the next generation doesn’t forget who stood for truth—and who profited from silence.The ask is to build the very systems we are all looking for, and for that we deserve the time, energy and support to imagine, design and co-create as a community. We can’t delegate our liberation to politicians, and we certainly won’t see startups capitalizing on the changes our society needs. Perhaps we will witness the hyper privatization of every single service our communities need, but we must strategize for during and after collapse. Funding structures will have to be challenged, as they are designed to sustain themselves and uphold status quo. However, we are witnessing the collapse of every industry: media, education, banking, all industries we rely on, will be challenged. We are going to need to rely on our creative skills and our ability to build true solidarity across our communities towards a common goal outside of dogma and division. It’s a cultural moment, and we are here for it.Resistance isn’t just about protest. It’s about imagination. And imagination requires discipline, community, and space.We are creating that space right here. And together we can co-create together if everybody puts in effort and care. For now, we are imagining what systems of mitigation amidst systems collapse will look like. Will we outsource our infrastructure to highly funded Silicon Valley funded platforms feeding off of public data feeding ads markets and Ai learning in real time from our work? Or are we truly invested in building sovereign media? I personally invest in the latter, and hope you all join us. Because we are the majority, and truly if we align we are unstoppable." } ] }