Lately, billionaire Larry Ellison has been making headlines and revealing his incredible financial power. On September 7, the founder of Oracle, a software giant based in Austin, Texas, became a majority shareholder of Paramount Global, one of the largest film production companies based in Hollywood, following its acquisition by the conglomerate Skydance. Along with his son, David Ellison, CEO of Skydance, they will hold the majority of votes on the board of directors by the family holding company, Pinnacle Media. They could thus become influential actors in Hollywood and American cinema. More recently, the tech mogul further strengthened his financial power by increasing his fortune to $191.7 billion, surpassing Mark Zuckerberg ($174 billion) and Bernard Arnault ($172 billion) and becoming the third largest man the richest in the world, behind Elon Musk, president of Tesla (247 billion), and Jeff Bezos, president of Amazon (197 billion).
These two almost simultaneous pieces of news confirm a broad trend and announce a profound change in the geopolitical context: the diversification and growing influence of billionaire entrepreneurs. No longer confined to the fields of high technology, they are now also attacking the control over the media and entertainment industries. Such a development will not be without consequences in a society where these two areas are largely interconnected with politics. We well remember the takeover of Twitter (now X) by Elon Musk, in 2022, precisely from an ideological perspective: the fight for freedom of expression and against the political propaganda of the social network. Since then, Musk has only confirmed his ideological commitment, going so far as to officially denounce gender transition for minors and his support for the candidacy of Donald Trump.
For his part, Larry Ellison is more discreet about his political opinions. We know, however, that he financially supported certain Republican candidates, notably Rand Paul in 2014 and Marco Rubio in 2016. He is also known to be close to the head of the Israeli government Benjamin Netanyahu and he strongly criticized the action of the whistleblower Edward Snowden, currently a refugee in Russia. He is therefore rather located on the right of the political spectrum, which will probably politicize his Hollywood presence. It should be noted that David Ellison made a donation of nearly $930,000 for the re-election of Joe Biden, taking a position contrary to his father (who has not yet made a donation to a candidate in the American presidential election ).
These few examples, still isolated but spectacular, could be the beginning of a vast change in American and Western political life. If billionaires have been favoring political candidates for some time, notably through donations, it is a new situation to see them taking over the media and entertainment industries by displaying more or less clear political orientations. By accessing these significant means of influence, they could themselves become actors in political life, at the national and international level, and even real kingmakers, allowing them alone or almost to elect the leader of their choice and to consolidate its majority and its popularity. We will see, in the coming years, whether the trend continues or not. But, in any case, governments must count on new actors in the political field, in addition to the various traditional organizations and media already in place.
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