Reportage
Bernie Sanders greeted like a rock star in Turin: ‘Fight oligarchy’
Drawing applause, Sanders also mentioned Italy, noting that 79 Italian billionaires grew their wealth by a combined €54 billion just last year.
“We can do better, we must do better and together we will do better,” said Senator Bernie Sanders as he began his meeting with the public at the Turin Book Fair with what amounted to a short rally.
As an expert orator standing before the podium – a posture that suits him best after decades in politics in close contact with voters (or, as he would stress, the working class) and months on the road for his “Fight Oligarchy” tour that began immediately after Donald Trump's election – he rekindled a spark of left-wing internationalism in the struggle that unites the entire world: the fight against the oligarchs.
Sanders revisited the themes and statistics from his newly released book published in Italian by Chiarelettere, Fight Oligarchy, noting that globally the top one percent earns more than the bottom 95% of the population. This is a reality that concerns us all and that can be seen in its most blatant and cruel form in the United States, where the world’s wealthiest individuals live and operate. Elon Musk alone, Sanders pointed out, has accumulated more wealth than the bottom 53% of American households combined.
Furthermore, 95% of US companies are majority-controlled by investment funds managed by just four Wall Street firms, and the same goes for the media: Sanders stressed that 90% of the news Americans read or watch is controlled by four major conglomerates. Among these is the Ellison empire, which, after acquiring Paramount and with it CBS, is now poised to take control of Warner Bros. and its affiliate CNN as well.
Drawing applause, Sanders also mentioned Italy, noting that 79 Italian billionaires grew their wealth by a combined €54 billion just last year. The 1,900-seat auditorium (ironically named after the late Fiat tycoon Gianni Agnelli) was packed. Sanders was greeted like a rock star: people lined up well in advance of the event and some even rushed to the restroom so as not to lose their spot and the chance to sit in a seat closer to the most recognizable face of the American left, who took the stage to the strains of John Lennon's “Power to the People.”
In Italy too, Sanders – an 84-year-old senator from Vermont who has served in Congress for 35 years – showed his appeal for younger generations, the very same people who passionately supported his two runs for the Democratic presidential nomination. Everywhere one could see were young and very young faces, making up the clear majority of the audience that had come to hear him. And they cheered his lengthy speech on artificial intelligence, an issue Sanders believes is one of humanity’s greatest challenges. He remarked that while capitalists aiming to get even richer and weaken unions is nothing new, the world is now facing an unprecedented threat from tech oligarchs. Many of them, he argued, view themselves much like the 19th-century monarchs of Europe, believing they possess a divine right to rule and openly saying that they “don’t believe in democracy.”
The senator said he was in Europe to deliver a clear message: namely that Donald Trump's views and actions toward the continent do not in any way represent the position of the overwhelming majority of the American people. He added that the hatred the US president and the oligarchs harbor toward Europe stems precisely from the Old Continent's legal and social systems, which guarantee healthcare and social assistance to the people and which seek to regulate AI.
Speaking on the new technology, Sanders stressed that there isn’t enough awareness of its potential to trigger a societal transformation 100 times faster and more radical than the Industrial Revolution. When discussing AI and robotics, he urged the audience to look at who is producing and pushing these technologies – a small number of the world's wealthiest individuals – and asked rhetorically whether anyone truly believes these oligarchs care at all about the impact on the working class.
The root of the problem, he argued, is that in the US these billionaires are allowed to spend limitless amounts of money to support their handpicked candidates in elections and to obstruct anyone who tries to curb their power. This, he explained, is why the Democratic Party has ceased to be the party of the working class.
One of the names he mentioned that received one of the biggest ovations from the audience was that of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Sanders added that the progressive movement is currently fighting two wars: the first to defeat Trumpism in all its forms, and the second to fundamentally reform the Democratic Party so that it no longer represents corporate interests. According to Sanders, Mamdani's election was achieved by “working together” and points the way forward. He praised Mamdani for challenging the Democratic and Republican establishments alongside the New York oligarchs, building a grassroots movement of over 100,000 people who campaigned door-to-door.
The ultimate lesson, he concluded, is that if the working class stands together, all the money in the world will not be able to stop them.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/contro-i-nuovi-monarchi-sanders-rockstar-al-salone on 2026-05-17