Yeah we all hate the guy but I'm having trouble explaining exactly why he's so despicable, like in a cohesive way. Yeah he makes people jump through hoops for crumbs but that feels like it's not the whole of why he's abhorrent.
Yeah we all hate the guy but I'm having trouble explaining exactly why he's so despicable, like in a cohesive way. Yeah he makes people jump through hoops for crumbs but that feels like it's not the whole of why he's abhorrent.
He's a microcosm of the concept of "philanthropy" being a performative grift done by the rich to whitewash their images and get richer doing it.
An ex worked in shark conservation. The donor demographic she targeted was 9-digit millionaires and billionaires. Despite the entire model of their business in some way devastating the oceans as a whole, they could greenwash themselves by paying a $100k indulgence to make one particular legal protection for one particular species of apex predator in one particular area. Now those pigs are known as philanthropists despite destroying the underlying food chains of every shark and the natural systems that generate them.
It's atomising whatever systemic issue can be rendered into seemingly positive indulgences, then recuperating that issue away from radicals. Philanthropy is one of those areas of spectacle that's so parasitic.