The key points
- Simple and stereotyped passwords
There is a lot of talk today about populism. The best dictionaries describe it as: “an ideological attitude which, on the basis of principles and programs generically inspired by socialism, exalts the people in a demagogic and unrealistic way as the repository of totally positive values” (Treccani, 2017).
In reality, the term comes from afar, being attributable to the socialist and anti-tsarist movements of Russia in the second half of the 19th century. Each country, in its own way, has then made use of it: from Germany in the thirties to Argentina by Juan Peron (just read A.Weale, The myth of popular will, Luiss Univ.Press 2020). Even in Italy some political leaders have made extensive use of it, from Silvio Berlusconi to Matteo Renzi and Matteo Salvini. But no one has ever taken the path of populism more than the M5S, whose exponents have always evoked the idea of a plenipotentiary democracy freed from parliamentary delays which, with the help of technology, establishes a direct relationship with the voters.
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A form of deciding democracy based on simple and stereotyped slogans (on the need to recover the “complexity of reality” see A.Barbano, The vision, Mondadori 2020) and on permanent consultation methods guaranteed by the Rousseau platform.
We therefore imagined, for a moment, some identity cornerstones of the populist vulgate being translated into concrete facts. And public and transparent decision-making methods through the web (Interesting the contribution of M.Barberis, How the internet is killing democracy. Digital populism, Chiarilettere 2020). Also because this was said by the revolutionary narrative, oriented as it was to affirm the moods and wishes of the people at the expense of the caste. But it was a dream book that, over time, would inexorably give way to far more earthly and usual intentions (interesting also A. Masala, J. Viviani, (cur.), The age of populisms. political and social, Carocci 2020) Thus the cornerstones of populism, from which it drew popular investiture, have all been systematically betrayed. TAP and TAV have become essential infrastructures, the guarantee notices are due, Europe has become friends again, the zero mandate was born. Its ideal operating methods have also been betrayed: forbidden alliances have become coalitions with anyone, direct streaming and minutes behind closed doors. Finally, no real decision-making capacity has been impressed on democracy. Indeed, there has been a progressive centralization of decisions by the Government and even more by the Premier, depriving the Parliament and the law of any apparent usefulness.
Illusionism
Despite all this, the populist vulgate has not changed and its identity icons have remained intact. In fact, an imaginative narrative has been built around them that goes beyond all reality. A communicative operation of populism on populism, made up of idolatries and fictions at the same time increasingly intransigent and disconnected from reality. A sort of squared populism with unattainable exponential progressions. After all, this is nothing new. Illusionism, in great battles, has always paid off. Remember Jasper Maskelyne, head of the Gang of Miracles? The British illusionist division that, in the Second World War, “hid” Alexandria in Egypt by inducing the German-Italian air force to bomb a puppet port built 10 miles away? And that, in El Alamein in 1942, he built a battleship of cardboard and wood, complete with mannequins and tanks, while the real division, disguised as a convoy, bypassed the German troops? In that case, the opposing armies were deceived. In the case of squared populism, the victim is (look at it) the people themselves.