If you’re wondering how “Succession,” the HBO series about siblings fighting for control of a family empire—thought to be inspired by Rupert Murdoch’s family—ends, James Murdoch can tell you, despite never having watched the show. James, Rupert’s younger son, often referred to as “the smart one” in the clan, walked away last March with some two billion dollars—but no job—after his father merged most of the Murdochs’ Twenty-first Century Fox media empire with Disney. James’s brother, Lachlan, was chosen by their father to run the corporate bits that remained after the merger (chiefly, Fox News and Fox Sports). But no role had been carved out for James, who for years was the C.E.O. of Twenty-first Century Fox and Sky, P.L.C., and the deputy C.O.O. of News Corp, the publisher of papers such as the Post.

“It’s all good,” James, who is forty-six, said. “I just feel very lucky to have the opportunity at this point to make a clean break, and literally have an empty slate.” He was sitting in an upper floor of a modern office building in the West Village, the new headquarters of his private-investment company, Lupa Systems. (It is named for the mythical wolf who suckled the founders of Rome, one of James’s favorite cities, where he worked as an archeologist’s assistant before attending Harvard.) The only newsprint publication on display was a copy of The New York Review of Books.

In May, James delivered a commencement address at the American University of Rome, and his remarks seemed as fitted to his own new life as to those of the graduates. “The outcomes in our lives are never predestined,” he said. He urged the students not to “let others define what your success will be,” and to “fly your freak flag high.”

So far, for James, this has meant investing in a smattering of tech and media enterprises and defying his family’s conservative politics. The challenge of waking up two billion dollars richer, as he described it, is figuring out “How can you spend your time and your resources trying to be useful?” He has bought a controlling stake in the Tribeca Film Festival; invested in Artists, Writers & Artisans, a company that produces comics and graphic novels; and put twenty million dollars into the Void, a virtual-reality-entertainment company, among other ventures.

He has also donated to the Democratic Presidential candidates John Hickenlooper and Pete Buttigieg. Of the latter, he said, “It’s clear to anyone who hears him speak that he has an extraordinary mind.” The 2020 election, he said, is “a really crucial moment” for liberal democratic values.

Having spent years working for his family’s company in the Far East and Europe, James said that he has grown worried about rising threats to democratic societies around the world. “There’d been a bet for a long time that economic liberalization would inevitably lead to political liberalization,” he said, “but it didn’t work out that way.” Instead, he said, authoritarian regimes are using digital disinformation tactics and other high-tech weapons to undermine democracies. “The connective tissue of our society is being manipulated to make us fight with each other, making us the worst versions of ourselves,” he said, sounding an awful lot like a person describing Fox News.

“Yup, it’s bedbugs. You must have forgotten to sleep tight.” Facebook

Twitter

Email

Shopping Cartoon by Zachary Kanin

Is James taking aim at his father? “There are views I really disagree with on Fox,” he said. “But I wouldn’t cast it as some reaction to that.” He is also backing a program at the Center for New American Security, a bipartisan think tank. The aim of the program, called Countering High-Tech Illiberalism, as it’s described on the Web site for the Quadrivium foundation, founded by James and his wife, Kathryn, is “to craft effective, practical, actionable, and ambitious policies domestically and abroad” that impair illiberal populism, such as fighting disinformation and electoral interference. (Fox News hosts have downplayed Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.)

Quadrivium also supports nonprofit groups seeking to increase American voter turnout by making it easier to register to vote and safeguarding voting rights—steps that could help defeat Trump. “But this is not just a Trumpian problem,” James said. “Generally, Western liberalism is up against an enormous amount of opposition everywhere.”

James did not want to comment on his relationship with his father, but said that they’d seen each other recently at a corporate board meeting. Asked whether the two talk, he said, “There are periods of time when we do not.”

Like his five siblings, James is the beneficiary of a family trust that holds the remaining News Corp and Fox stock, but it is unclear whether he will ever exercise any control over the companies. “Succession” offers no clues. “I don’t watch ‘Succession,’ ” he said. “Not even a peek. Why would I?”

He also hasn’t seen “Ink,” the Broadway play about his father’s London tabloid, the Sun, or “The Loudest Voice,” the Showtime series based on Gabriel Sherman’s book about Roger Ailes, the disgraced former head of Fox News. “There are only so many things you can watch,” he said, shrugging. ♦