On Oct. 19, three days after Israeli soldiers killed the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the Israeli military released a video that was dated a year earlier, just before the attack that began the war in Gaza. It shows, among other things, Samar Muhammad Abu Zamer, whom the Israeli military says is the wife of Mr. Sinwar, moving into a tunnel carrying a black handbag.
In the blurry video the purse has a boxy shape, with top handles and some metallic hardware at top center. Avichay Adraee, the Arabic-language spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, posted the video on X as well as a still of the handbag next to a photo of a similar-looking Hermès Birkin, along with the lines: “Did Sinwar’s wife enter the tunnel with him on October 6th, carrying a bag from the Birkin company, which has an estimated value of about $32,000? I leave you to comment.”
On cue, the comments began — and not just on Mr. Adraee’s post (though as of Wednesday, that one had over 4,000 of them).
“Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s wife reportedly spotted with $32,000 Birkin bag as she went into hiding,” read a headline in The New York Post. Some reports added a question mark, some did not. Some commentators disputed the handbag identification, saying it was impossible to tell if the bag was a Birkin (or even a luxury bag at all, for that matter). Hermès did not respond to questions on Tuesday about whether the bag was definitely one of its products, or definitely not.
But in a way, Birkin or not, what matters is what Mr. Adraee wanted to imply by associating the leader of Hamas, whose death in combat has cemented his heroic status in the eyes of many Palestinians, with a luxury brand. What mattered was the coded meaning of such an expensive item.
“The running theme is the exposure of hypocrisy,” said Christopher J. Berry, an emeritus professor of political theory at the University of Glasgow and the author of “The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation.”
The luxury good becomes “a tool to reveal the discrepancy between what someone says publicly and how they act privately,” Mr. Berry said. It subverts the myth, dearly held, that leaders should sacrifice self for country. Instead it suggests that they put self over country. Especially suffering country.
The mere suggestion that Ms. Abu Zamer might have been carrying a Birkin — a bag from one of the four largest luxury companies in the world; a bag that its creators claim is a better investment than gold; a bag worth more than many people make in a year — was the hook. That is why, in case anyone missed it, the purported cost of the bag was so important. (Hermès Birkins begin at around $10,000 and can reach the hundreds of thousands, depending on material, size and rarity.)
Luxury goods owned by politicians have been perceived — and criticized — as symbols of corruption and moral decay at least since the Stoics began rejecting material wealth. Especially if the people being governed are suffering economically.
The tactic of calling out a taste for wealth has become a key element in the political propaganda playbook on all sides of the spectrum, in wartime and in peace, often whether the allegations are true or false.
It has been true enough throughout history that it’s not hard to believe. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Marie Antoinette played happy shepherdesses while France starved, and the Romanovs toyed with Fabergé eggs while Russia froze — all to their detriment. Imelda Marcos will go down in history for amassing an enormous shoe collection during a Philippine famine.
In fact, any association with the world of luxury fashion can trigger scathing critiques: See the controversy sparked by the 2022 Vogue cover featuring Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine. Some viewers saw her participation in a fashion magazine during wartime as an example of leaders who prioritized their own fame over the realities on the ground. More recently, the new British prime minister, Keir Starmer, was accused of accepting luxury freebies, including $3,000 worth of eyeglasses, from a party donor, after running on a platform to clean up Tory sleaze.
This has become only more true as luxury itself has become a universally recognized language, spoken the world over via social media channels and celebrity. But in making its greatest totems — its brands — into global symbols of aspiration, desire, status, class and elitism, the luxury industry also made them into easy targets.
Indeed, Hermès in particular is often invoked almost as shorthand in corruption cases. In 2018, when former Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia and his wife were accused of stealing state funds, the authorities raided their properties and found millions of dollars’ worth of luxury goods, including an estimated $12 million worth of Hermès handbags. George Santos’s misappropriation of campaign funds to buy Hermès products became headline news even before he was voted out of Congress. But Hermès is not alone.
The Trump campaign has taken to featuring a necklace often worn by Vice President Kamala Harris — a gold chain link style from Tiffany — in fund-raising pleas, juxtaposing (as in the Adraee post) a photo of Ms. Harris wearing the accessory and an image of a similar necklace from the Tiffany online store, along with a quote from Senator JD Vance saying it made his “blood boil” when he saw the photo on Twitter.
The necklace pictured on the Tiffany platform actually seems to be a larger version of the one Ms. Harris wears (other sizes retail for significantly less). But as with Ms. Abu Zamer and the Birkin, accuracy is less important than the suggestion of profligacy and disconnection between what the candidate says and what she (maybe) buys. Or can be accused of flaunting.
The one exception to the anti-luxury rule seems to be Mr. Trump himself, who has made a virtue of his own love of fancy goods, in part by embedding it in his campaign promises: Look at the lifestyle Mr. Trump has achieved; vote for him, and he will get it for you, too.
For everyone else, however, “material objects are at the heart of this thing,” Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, told The New York Times during the Santos controversy. “They expose what is seen as a universal character flaw and make it concrete.”
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