Political Brutality

Former President Barack Obama used the occasion of Nelson Mandela’s birth centennial to warn against the dangers of a return to authoritarianism and intolerance. It was a more than opportune message of alarm in a world dominated by a sort of political brutality that counts on the increasing affection of the electorate. Donald Trump is probably the best example of an ideology that abhors political correctness and uses language that is coarse and easy to understand, and that also appeals to primitive feelings as opposed to reason.

Trump’s latest bravado, posted on his Twitter account in capital letters, threatening the Iranian president with vulgar language, is not an innocuous anecdote. Once he withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear program, burying one of the greatest diplomatic successes of recent years, Trump increased international tension, knowing that his arrogance is well appreciated among his supporters.

Trump, Vladimir Putin and Matteo Salvini, among others, have established a new and aggressive style in which brutality dominates. Italy voted for a movement whose motto was “go fuck yourself”* and has become a radicalized country that is against immigration under the hand of public figures such as Salvini. Their decisions, almost always with xenophobic and nationalist overtones, are highlighted by insults and arrogant expressions from top-level politicians. “The Italian ports will only see them in postcards,” Salvini recently warned, on his Twitter account, speaking about Spanish nongovernmental agencies that rescue survivors in the Mediterranean.

The dialectic established by these leaders is not an innocent breach of diplomatic rules, one of the most powerful tools for preserving peace and harmony. It is a broader rupture of a personalist power that negotiates or appears to directly converse with people through social networks – disregarding democratic institutions – which empathizes through colloquial language, and dazzles with patriotism and patriotic protectionism; that, in short, does not use language as a means of communication, but of domination.

Faced with a world that is too complicated, and with a democracy that is slow and complex in its balance of power, strong leaders impose their dynamics. The profile of Putin, a former Soviet spy, with his military build and manners, is the protective guide that, according to him, Russians demand.

In the time of fake news, the brutality of power is exercised with little respect for the truth. The important thing is not what was said in Helsinki, but that Putin speaks on an equal footing with Trump, whom, by the way, only half of Americans criticize for trusting more in the Russian’s word than in his own intelligence officials.

The game of gestures and unconfined words is directly linked to populism and points to a dangerous drift from propaganda control to totalitarianism, which is too short a path.

*Editor’s note: In recent elections, Italians supported the Five Star Movement, a populist movement founded by Beppo Grillo in 2009. In 2007, Grillo launched the idea of “Vaffanculo Day” (Fuck-off Day), to mobilize support for a popular initiative to change election laws and to show their resistance to what they consider to be bad policy. Matteo Salvini, the current president of Italy and leader of the League party, has formed a populist government with the Five Star Movement.