Colosseum Policy

The way political actors present themselves has undergone a growing transformation, one that transcends the simple accompaniment of technical experts in political communication or image consultancy, a scenic transformation.

This transformation in the political actor's posture and presentation arises from a clear inability to assert themselves intellectually, as the great founding politicians had achieved, in a nation—let it be said—not very receptive to intellectualized bourgeoisie. This intellectual incapacity is invoked by the need to please the masses in simple, sensory ways.

Sensory work, within the framework of political action and essentially political communication, is largely linked to the populist notion; however, there is a dimension that transcends populism and it is this that has been worked on by various political sectors in Portugal and also in the Liberal West: staging.

Political staging is, on a large scale, a platform for success when the "authors of the play" are good at their job—in this case, the analysts who study society, its desires, and the digital content they like to consume, leading to the construction of discourses and the recommendation of content creation that satisfies their audiences.

Fischer-Lichte would reinforce in this paragraph the increased relevance of tone of voice, gestures and rhetorical style to discursive content, something that has also proven true when evaluating the reactions in historical numbers to parliamentary interventions without useful political content, but with a very strong representation that generates a sensory experience of closed opposition to the State of Things.

The success of this new era for political communication is a worrying sign. The consolidation and success of a clear political axis through this presentation mechanism makes this form of political expression a potential gravitational pull, which will easily lead other political actors or political parties to adopt similar stances. This action will lead to a worsening of institutional and protocolary degradation, as well as a widespread "sham" politics.

If this political tool becomes widespread, a reality that was once more distant, chaos will surely be installed, transforming the regime's balance and common sense into existential nullities.

The progressive radicalization of arguments, the frequent manipulation of data, the adulteration of images, and the very – artificial – personification of postures and behaviors, especially of a digital presence that seeks “humanization,” not in the moral context of humanist practices, but in the adoption of behavioral postures that are closer to the citizen, are a constant today.

If proximity between citizens and political actors is necessary for the well-being of the regime, the consolidated farce of rapprochement on the part of political actors is one of the most dangerous elements for democratic vitality.

The widespread use of this practice renders the political actor useless as a legal representative of the population, but the vehemence of control of this tool by a single group of actors allows for the profound ease of entrenching practices and customs based on lies and adulteration.

Schechner, in his interpretation of the phenomenon, attributes to the citizen a dimension of active and not passive spectator, something that I have increasing difficulty in verifying in the various quadrants of our Society, where charm and astonishment, in the sense of rapprochement and identification – artificial – with a political actor, have absorbed much of the force of reason in the judgment of the action and political conduct that is presented to them.

Debord, before the imagination of the 1960s even allowed the conception of social networks, already referred to the fact that social relations are shaped by images, which alerted us to a phenomenon that was then small: the theaters of power and the strength of the image in the success of any political actor, considerations that assume an immeasurable magnitude with the spread of social networks as a political instrument.

The greatest figure of classical theater, the immortal Seneca, would have been profoundly astonished by the mastery of the stagecraft of the little "senators" of contemporary politics. The farcical posture, worthy of being performed in a Colosseum before the masses, and which is presented to us daily by various media outlets, is one of the ills of the contemporary political era.

The veracity and intent of the action are susceptible to doubt, eloquence is devalued and, fairly or unfairly, the credibility of the noblest house of any democracy, Parliament, is radically reduced, acquiring followers attentive to artificial and previously considered confrontations and inattentive to the legislative acts under discussion and the oversight of the executive branch.