The world seems to be crazy. What were previously considered irreversible political and moral conquests today are revealed as fragile agreements subject to the fury of the new rights. It doesn’t matter where we look. In Israel, a mostly debased society, on a scale of cruelty that was inconceivable not long ago. In the United States, a large social majority applauds Donald Trump’s brutal policy against immigration and Maga fans (Make America Great Again). Where they are not in power, radical rights invest all their effort to erode democracy as we have known it. The strength and imposition have once again charged prestige and more and more people seem seduced by aggressiveness in the exercise of power.
The politicians of the new rights aspire to burst the consensus on which liberal democracies were built after World War II. They do it with total contempt for those who think differently (they are “lunatic” for Trump, “shit left -handed” for Javier Milei,). They despise argumentation, knowledge and moral principles. The more incoherent, simplistic and belligerent the speech is, the more its followers celebrate. This includes challenging democratic institutions and the rule of law.
That this political degradation is extended by the most developed countries requires an explanation. We need to understand why so many people are willing to jump through the last remains of rationality that remained in politics. Some attribute this pathological policy to the mental ravages caused by social networks. Others, to economic inequalities and the excesses of globalization and neoliberalism. Let me present in a few lines a somewhat different way of explanation.
In its origins, representative democracy had a strong aristocratic component; Not only because the vote was limited to owners and with education, but, above all, because the chosen representatives were supposed to be the best and most virtuous (among social elites). Those nineteenth -century politicians practiced a paternalistic policy, started from the basis that the great social mass was not prepared to participate in public affairs. The representatives were grouped in parliaments due to affinity of interest, forming parties of notable, with hardly any social roots.
The pressure of the working class and the human sacrifice in the Great War produced the extension of suffrage, first to all men and then also to women. Democracy and representation changed deeply. The mass matches emerged, whose main families were social democrats and democratians. While the parties established strong links with their support communities, they retained undertaking the ability to organize and stabilize the political space. The relationship between leaders and voters remained vertical, although somewhat less than before. Leaders still occupied a prominent position, of a certain superiority. The “masses” were deferens towards the decisions made by partisan organizations. The representation rested on confidence in predictable political leaders, who were due to their electorates but enjoyed a margin of considerable maneuver. In turn, the big media (press, radio, television) and the most prestigious intellectuals organized the public debate.
All this is what seems to be jumping through the air. The verticality of the representative bond is in question. Many people do not want the parties to tell them what they have to think or do, nor that the media set the debate issues. The “aristocratism” of representation is already close to the zero grade. This does not mean the end or resignation of the representation. Rather, we approach a completely horizontal representation, in which the representative is at the service of the immediate impulses of citizens.
A growing number of people want leaders who are equal to them, who do not dare to put on top, or claim a superior wisdom. The representative is now a town server, a mere resonance box of the electorate’s inclinations. Many people have resigned from looking for well -prepared politicians and solid parties; rather aspire to disruptive, rude, ignorant and fun leaders, who in any case do not submit to the dictates of the establishment and carry out without contemplation what their represented ask them (expel immigrants, to end it wokesupport Israel or any other barbarism of our day). The supreme principle is that nothing gets between the leader and his support community.
The most direct result of the appearance of this type of representation is that the norms and values that configured the basic consensus in the political game stop operating. Consequently, the policy becomes stark and derives in a competition between the representatives for the greatest possible authenticity, that is, by the complete and unconditional identification with their followers. It is not surprising then that they reject any possibility of understanding or agreement with other politicians. From this somewhat peculiar logic, an approach between politicians is perceived as a betrayal of the followers, that is, as a concession to a rotten system of compounds.
As I understand, this emptying of classical representation is a consequence of a process of transformation of greater scope that goes far beyond the political sphere. That the classical representation is questioned and totally horizontal forms of relationship between the politician and the citizens respond to a more general process of disintermediation in multiple spheres of social life are explored. The same discredit that traditional parties suffer extends to the big media. People reject the prescriptive mood of the media, prefer that information flow through horizontal channels such as social networks. In the background, it is the same mechanism that makes (which do not need the certification of the central banks).
All activities that dispense with the classic intermediation mechanisms today enjoy great prestige. There is very generalized skepticism towards any form of hierarchical authority, either in politics, media, finance or culture (people pay greater attention to the valuations of users than to the judgment of critics and experts). To a large extent, the chaos that is associated with the policy of our day (which I took in a book, The political disorder).
Digitization has taught us to do things for ourselves in many areas of life. Most intermediates are useless and detestable to us. The specific problem of politics is that we do not know how to dispense with representation (which is nothing but a form of intermediation). We do not accept being subject to the visions of parties, means or experts, but we cannot get rid of them (unlike what happens with many other instances of intermediation that have been disappearing). Hence we are rehearsing with these forms of horizontal representation that exploit radical rights. We may have won in personal freedom and autonomy, but the price to pay is to meet in a permanent barahúnda.
