Together, these “engineers of chaos” are reinventing propaganda for the age of selfies and social media and, in doing so, transforming the very nature of the democratic game.
On February 19, 1787, Goethe was in Rome. Having arrived in the city in the early days of autumn, he had settled into an ordinary apartment overlooking Via del Corso, from which he could contemplate, without being noticed, the liveliness of the main artery of the historic center. In the Eternal City, the poet had come to seek everything that had been lacking in his life as the enfant prodige of German literature, private advisor to the Duke of Weimar, responsible for the mines and the road network of the duchy: above all, the freedom to use his time as he wished. In order not to be bothered by the admirers of Werther, who had been following him wherever he went for years, he had assumed the false identity of a painter, a certain Jean Philippe Möller, who until then had guaranteed him the peace for which he felt so much need.
But today the poet hears a loud noise and, when he leans out the window, an unexpected scene appears before his eyes: on the balconies and in front of the gates of the surrounding buildings, the residents have begun to bring out chairs and rugs, as if they suddenly wanted to transform the street into the living room of their house.
Meanwhile, on Via del Corso, the usually orderly flow of the carriages has been reversed, causing chaos, and some strange characters have begun to appear among the crowd. “Young men disguised as women, clad in festive costumes, bare-chested and bold to the point of impudence, caress the men who come before them, treat women with familiarity and without any consideration, as if they were their equals; in short, they give in to every kind of debauchery, as their whim, humor or vulgarity suggests.” Similarly, “women also enjoy appearing in men’s clothing,” with ambiguous results that the poet does not hesitate to describe as “extremely interesting.”
“In fact, among the crowd there is a character with two faces: it is not clear which is his front and which is his back, whether he is going or coming.” It is the beginning of carnival, the celebration that turns the world upside down, subverting not only the relations between the sexes, but also those between classes and all the hierarchies that regulate social life in normal times.
EVERYONE IS PRESSING AFTER EACH OTHER
“Here a signal is enough,” Goethe writes further, “to make it known that everyone can do the crazy in his own way and that, with the exception of beatings with sticks and stabbings, almost everything is permitted. The distinction between classes, between great and small, seems for a moment to be suspended; everyone presses behind each other, everyone accepts without a second thought what happens to them, while freedom and debauchery are kept in balance by the general good humor.”
In this atmosphere, the coachmen disguise themselves as gentlemen and the gentlemen as coachmen, while even the black-robed abbots, who are usually treated with the greatest respect, become ideal targets for confetti made of plaster and clay. Thus, very soon, the poor appear covered from head to toe in white and gray stains. No one is protected from the attacks, least of all the members of the highest families of society, who gather near the Ruspoli Palace, precisely where the fiercest attacks and the bloodiest battles break out.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Pulcinellas, appearing from all sides, gather at a point on the road, choose a king, crown him, place the scepter in his hand and, accompanied by music and deafening shouts, parade along the Via del Corso on a small decorated carriage. Everything takes place in an atmosphere of general joy, although Goethe does not fail to note some disturbing notes: “Not infrequently,” he writes at one point, “the fight becomes very serious and general; and then one is struck by the ferocity and personal hostility with which everyone vents their anger.” And further, as he describes the horse race that takes place between the two ends of the Via del Corso, he mentions serious accidents and “not a few misfortunes, which, however, pass unnoticed and to which no importance is attached.”
This is the dark side of carnival: the inextricable combination of celebration and violence, on which its subversive potential rests and which almost always leaves those who participate in it, since it is impossible to observe from the outside, with a hidden doubt about the true nature of what has really happened.
Because carnival is not a celebration like all the others, but the expression of a deep and irresistible feeling, simmering under the grace of the culture of the people. It is no coincidence that, as Goethe once again notes, this is not a holiday that the authorities offer to the people, but “a holiday that the people offer to themselves”. No power has ever managed to completely free itself from carnival and its subversive spirit. Over the centuries, it stopped walking the streets to move to the pamphlets and cartoons of popular newspapers, until it reappeared in more recent times in the satire of television comedians and the verbal attacks of digital trolls. But only today has carnival finally abandoned its peripheral position, on the edges of the consciousness of Western man, to take on a central role never seen before, establishing itself as the new paradigm of contemporary political life.
CHAOS ENGINEERS
And today, behind the messy and grotesque appearance of populist carnivals lies the feverish work of dozens of political communication strategists, ideologists and, increasingly, scientists and Big Data experts, without whom national-populist leaders would never have come to power.
Together, these “chaos engineers” are reinventing propaganda for the age of selfies and social media, and in doing so, they are transforming the very nature of the democratic game. The propaganda of the chaos engineers is the political translation of Facebook and Google. It is inherently populist because, like social media, it tolerates no mediation and puts everyone on the same level, with only one parameter of judgment: likes. It is indifferent to content because, like social media, it has only one objective: what Silicon Valley geniuses call “engagement,” and which, in politics, means instant consensus.
Just as the social media algorithm is programmed to offer users whatever content it can keep them on the platform a little more often and a little longer, the chaos engineers’ algorithm pushes them to support any position, whether reasonable or absurd, realistic or intergalactic, that is enough to touch the aspirations and fears – above all the fears – of the voters. For these “Dr. Strangeloves” of politics, the game no longer consists of uniting people around a lowest common denominator, but, on the contrary, in igniting the passions of as many small groups as possible, in order to then bring them all together, even without their knowledge. The inevitable contradictions contained in the messages addressed to one group or another remain, for the most part, invisible to the general public.
In such a system, the majority is no longer won by moving towards the center, but by uniting the edges. And the old ideological barriers give way to the new division between “the people” and “the elite.” From Brexit to the election of Trump to the Italian case, the success of national-populists is measured by their ability to blow up the right-left divide, in order to capture anger and frustrations wherever they come from.
Like social networks, the new propaganda feeds mainly on negative emotions, because they are precisely those that guarantee the greatest involvement. However, it also has a cheerful and liberating face, often unnoticed by those who emphasize only the dark side of the populist carnival. Ridicule has always been the most effective means of overthrowing hierarchies. During carnivals, a liberating laugh buries the pomp of power, its rules and pretensions. Nothing is more destructive to authority than a brazen person who turns it into an object of ridicule.
Faced with the programmatic seriousness of the ruling technocrat, the boredom and arrogance that emanate from his every gesture, the rebellious palazzo, in the style of Trump or Grillo, delivers a whiplash that releases energy. Taboos, hypocrisies and linguistic conventions collapse amid the cheers of the festive crowd. There is no place for the spectator in carnivals: everyone participates in the unbridled celebration of the upside-down world, and no insult, no joke is too vulgar to contribute to the overthrow of the dominant order and its replacement with a dimension of freedom and fraternity. Carnival creates in those who participate in it a strong sense of fulfillment, unity, metamorphosis and rebirth; the feeling of being part of a collective body that is constantly renewed. Each person, from spectator, is transformed into an actor, without any discrimination based on income or level of education. The opinion of a bystander is just as valuable as that of an expert, even more so.
The transfer of carnival to the Internet produces the effect of liberation from inhibitions that once arose from the act of putting on a costume. Trolls are the new Pulcinellas who add fuel to the liberating fire of populist carnivals.
In this climate, nothing is more harmful than playing the role of the party-breaker. The fact-checker, underlining the error with a blue pencil; the liberal with a raised eyebrow, outraged by the vulgarity of the new barbarians.
In the eyes of the populist, the progressive is a pedant who always keeps his index finger raised. His pragmatism has become synonymous with fatalism, while the carnival kings promise to turn the existing reality upside down. Life is not only about rights and obligations, about numbers to be respected and forms to be filled out.
The new carnival does not coincide with conventional thinking, but has its own logic, closer to that of the theater than to that of the academic audience; more eager for bodies and images than for ideas and texts; more focused on the intensity of the narrative than on the accuracy of facts. A reasoning, undoubtedly, very far from Cartesian abstractions, but which is nevertheless not devoid of an unexpected coherence, if only for the systematicity with which it overturns all consolidated criteria, to affirm others in the opposite direction. Behind the apparent absurdity of fake news and conspiracy theories, for example, a very clear logic is hidden.
WHO HAS A UNIFORM, HAS AN ARMY
From the perspective of populist leaders, alternative facts are not simply a propaganda tool. Compared to real information, they have the advantage of being an extraordinary means of cohesion. “In many ways, absurdity is a more effective organizing tool than truth,” wrote Mencius Moldbug, a blogger on the American alt-right. “Anyone can believe the truth, while believing absurdity is a real testament to loyalty. And who has a uniform, has an army.”
On the other hand, the leader of a movement that incorporates fake news into its vision of the world stands out from the rest. He is not a pragmatic and fatalistic bureaucrat like many others, but a man of action, who constructs his reality to meet the expectations of his supporters.
…Lies succeed because they are embedded in a political narrative that appeals to the fears and aspirations of an increasingly large segment of the electorate, while the facts of those who try to counter them are part of a narrative that is no longer considered credible. In practice, for populist followers, the truthfulness of each individual fact is of no importance, because what is true for them is the totality of the message, which corresponds to their experience and feelings. In the face of this, the collection of data and corrections will be of little value if the overall vision of government officials and traditional parties continues to be perceived by an increasingly large number of voters as having little connection with reality.
To combat populism, we must understand it and not simply be satisfied with condemning it. Or dismissing it as “the age of irrationality”, as George Osborne, David Cameron’s former finance minister, does. The contemporary carnival is fueled by two ingredients that have nothing unreasonable about them: on the one hand, the anger of the popular classes, which is based on real economic and social causes; on the other, a powerful communication machine, originally conceived for commercial purposes and then transformed into the preferred tool of all those who want to multiply chaos.
(Excerpted from the book “Engineers of Chaos”, by Giuliano Da Empoli)