The charismatic leader, the plot, the glorious past: the myths of politics produce monsters

political mythologies.

Illustration supplement Ideas 04/17/22.Juárez Casanova

In some high school in the world, sitting in the last row, the next Homer of our

political

Material must not be lacking, because today, as always, all kinds of mythologies proliferate: barbarian hordes, young lotus eaters, murderous Amazons, great helmsmen, angelic nations, Ithacas, Numancias and Troys.

Especially Troy.

As Raoul Girardet studies in

, all these fantasies, which politicians call "stories", and which I prefer to call "stories", are usually organized into four families.

First there is the mythical family of the golden age, longing for a happy and glorious past, in which nations, religions or races had not yet been adulterated or mixed.

Age that many consider happy, not so much because the words of yours and mine were ignored (which could give the goatherds bad ideas), but because each one was in his house and God in everyone's.

If it were a flag, its motto would be: “Order and return”.

Secondly, there is the myth of the conspiracy, which blames all the evils on some malevolent or resentful group, which would be willing to plot against the good people of all life with the aim of seizing power.

In this way, the anguished complexity of the world, which surrounds us like a fog against which we do not know how to fight, is magically transformed into a series of fears, simple and concrete, that we believe we can know and control.

In politics and religion, against the devil you live better.

Third is the myth of the charismatic leader, who is expected to free the threatened community from the forces of evil.

They are the Jeremías who announce the imminence of an apocalypse that never occurs, the Savonarolas who walk barefoot on the embers of the bonfire of the vanities, the Torquemadas who swear to grab by the horns a straw demon that they themselves have stuffed, the helmsmen who promise to bring us back to Ithaca in one fell swoop, and warlords,

and other Pied Pipers of Hamelin who, instead of taking the rats to the river, take the children to war.

In fourth and last place is the myth of unity.

Religious, national, racial, it doesn't matter, because what really defines her is the hatred she feels towards her enemies, external or internal to her, almost always as imaginary as herself.

Disordered by a permanent state of exception, the community feels legitimated to lie, marginalize or kill in self-defense, thus establishing itself as a true unity of nonsense in the universal.

It seems that the algorithm of the story always suggests the same movie: a wonderful place inhabited by a group of good and friendly people is attacked by a dark horde of evil beings from whom they will be saved thanks to a hero who will return their unit and its original strength.

Only the collars change, the ferocious dogs and the masters of the house remain.

But the fact that political myths are a kind of transcendental structures that are repeated from generation to degeneration does not mean that we should resign ourselves to them.

We may be doomed to wander in a labyrinth of distorting mirrors.

But even so we can study the ballistics of its distortions, with the aim of counteracting them, as in the baroque anamorphoses.

Perhaps in this way history will stop repeating itself, not as a tragedy or a farce, as Marx said, but as a video of cats jumping when they see themselves in the mirror.

For this reason, compared to the myth of the golden age, I prefer the reality of this clay present (which is perfect for a pig from Epicurus's herd).

If the human being is more or less the same in all times and in all places, it makes no sense to yearn for paradise and the Edenic man, nor to wait for the parousia and the new man, but to cultivate this "imperfect garden" that we are, in Montaigne's happy expression.

It is better to prohibit ourselves, with Pindar, from "aspiring to immortal life", to force us, instead, to "exhaust the full extent of what is possible".

It is enough for me, then, to defend those social policies that manage to reduce suffering and ignorance, since I believe, with Paul Éluard, that other worlds are possible, only within this world.

Faced with the myth of the plot, I prefer to search, behind the imaginary herd of scapegoats, for the real giants of ignorance, injustice, fanaticism and nihilism.

And try to resist the temptation of simplicity, because evil has many sources, and many tributaries, although it is possible that the main cause of our ills lies precisely in believing that all our ills come from a single cause.

Nor do I want to be seduced by the myth of the charismatic leader.

I prefer to assume that no one will come to save us, for the simple reason that everyone who came to do so ended up bringing doom with them.

It is better to accept that there are no simple solutions to complex problems, and that all there is is to continue fighting wounded and together, from the ground, and animated by that epic of defeat without surrender that animates the poets of Bolaño or the soldiers of Fence Salamis.

Finally, I will beware of the myth of unity.

Because to imagine ourselves part of a pure and immutable community, when reality is undulating and diverse, is to condemn ourselves to the vision of Polyphemus, who sees everything with a single eye (and whose only courtesy is to devour us last).

More than the wolf, I fear the fierce herd.

And if, as Benedict Anderson taught us, we are condemned to live in “imagined communities”, let us try to imagine them fair, free and plural, because, as Calderón said, “even in dreams you don't lose doing good”.

No one is free from the fascination of political mythologies.

They promise us order instead of chaos, simplicity instead of complexity, security instead of fear, and companionship instead of loneliness.

From afar they are sea sirens, and their song is hypnotic, but once we have thrown ourselves into their arms they become anti-aircraft sirens and the bombs soon fall.

You don't have to be Homer to know that there is only one remedy so that we don't all throw ourselves into the sea, and that is to tie ourselves to the mast of social justice and plug our ears with the wax of a truly enlightened education.

Maybe that way we can make the trip more pleasant, because once we return to Ithaca we can forget about it.

And nothing happens, because, as Cavafis said, the long road is enough for us.

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