Gaseous Politics

President Harding with pet dog Laddie, being photographed in front of the White House D. C., 1922 | Library of Congress | Public domain

Las Mañaneras

For a period of five years, Mexicans had their breakfast over Las Mañaneras, a three-hour TV programme hosted by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as AMLO. Since the moment it was first broadcast in 2018, Las Mañaneras defied the laws of political marketing. While global communication trends reward short, adaptable formats, like a rare bird protected in a nature reserve, AMLO remained faithful to a traditional style that allowed him, among other things, to set the political agenda of the day. Like Fidel Castro’s endless speeches in the Plaza de la Revolución, or programmes such as Rafael Correa’s Enlace Ciudadano, Hugo Chávez’s Aló Presidente and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s cadena nacional joint media broadcasts, Las Mañaneras belongs to a media species on the verge of extinction.

TV politics

TV politics was born in 1960, when John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon faced off in front of the cameras during the election campaign that would lead to victory for the Democratic candidate. From that event onwards, politics and television were joined in wedlock. While that relationship still endures, the emergence of new forms of communication is leading to a shift in the way power is constructed and managed. In the 21st century, politics tends to be increasingly constructed through social media and other environments where snack culture is generated, circulated and consumed. The video of Javier Milei ripping ministries off an organisational chart was seen around the world long before he swept the 19 November 2023 elections with 56% of the vote.

“Ministry of Culture: OUT. Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development: OUT. Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity: OUT. Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation – some good came from the private sector, nothing good came out of the public sector: OUT. Ministry of Education – indoctrination: OUT.” (Javier Milei, presidential candidate, August 2023)

Gaseous mediatisations

If it is true that the media imposes its logic on political, religious and sporting institutions, it is well worth reflecting on the mediatisation of power – how do Donald Trump, Javier Milei, Volodímir Zelenski or Alvise Pérez do politics? Although some of them have a background in broadcasting – Trump came from presenting a reality show, Milei was an outspoken economic columnist and Zelenski had a background as a TV and film comedian – to a greater or lesser extent they have learnt to move skilfully through the new gaseous environment. Unlike Alvise Pérez, a political actor who is a “gaseous native,” the others are hoary media monsters who, as Antonio Gramsci would say, emerge when the old world is dying and the new world is slow to be born.

“Spain has become a fairground for criminals, corruption, mercenaries, paedophiles and rapists.” (Alvise Pérez, MEP)

Populisms

While AMLO needed three hours to impose his agenda, Javier Milei achieves the same effect with an early-morning tweet or a TikTok micro-video posted on social media by the army of trolls camped out in the Casa Rosada. His media strategy is effective and efficient, achieving the best results with minimum effort. The same can be said of Donald Trump. Both represent a new generation of politicians perfectly adapted to the media ecosystem of the 21st century.

Even though he is almost three decades older than Javier Milei, Donald Trump was a pioneer in understanding the logic of social media and using it as an unprejudiced political tool. While Silvio Berlusconi perfected telepopulism in the 1990s and took TV politics to its logical conclusion, Trump translated it into the language of the digital platforms. Milei completes the transition – his television presence is deplorable, he reads his speeches (badly) and does not know how to interact with his audience. But his know-how unfolds in the gaseous mediasphere, where he moves with the speed and acuity of a vulture.

“Between the mafia and the state, I prefer the mafia. The mafia has codes, it keeps its promises, it doesn’t lie, it’s competitive.” (Javier Milei, President of Argentina)

Memes

Gaseous politics is constructed from small textual molecules that bounce frenetically around social media. When well designed, these ephemeral bites are capable of shaping public debate for a couple of days. “Give me a meme and I’ll agitate the digitised masses,” seems to be the slogan.

 “In that sort of language of the times that is memetics, the expressions of contemporary malaise, mainly on the part of young people, are a practical strategy that brings to centre stage the associations and complaints that are missing in the ordered discourse of modernity, that mark the autism of the political class, the cynicism of the economically powerful classes (…) The meme arrived along with the most powerful generation, technologically speaking. Its arsenal is inexhaustible – it counters the finite map of formal politics and its control strategies with the infinite map of imagination and humour.” (Rossana Reguillo, Paisajes insurrectos).

Complexifying

The brevity and apparent simplicity of gaseous politics might lead us to think that we are dealing with an easily understandable phenomenon. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the number of actors, pieces of content and platforms multiplies exponentially, the ecosystem becomes more complex. Putting the triumphs of Milei or Trump down solely to their social media skills is an exercise in intellectual laziness.

These leaderships emerge from specific social realities and respond to underground shifts that not even the best polls are able to detect. The media, obviously, is an essential part of this framework, but between acknowledging this fact and considering it the sole cause, there is a distance that not even Milei’s sharp chainsaw could cut down. When it comes to explaining these processes, we cannot fail to take the media into account, but the media is not the sole consideration.

 “The main threat to democracy is not violence, corruption or inefficiency, but simplification. In its current form, political practice constitutes a capitulation to complexity, logically mirroring the fact that the understanding of political philosophy does not measure up to social complexity.” (Daniel Innerarity, political philosopher)

Politicians come and go, snacks stay

Interestingly, after so many years of TV overdose, all that remains in popular memory is a handful of expressions, from José María Aznar’s “Leave, Mr González,” to AMLO’s warning to young delinquents to “behave yourselves because you’ll give your mothers a lot of grief.” When the broadcasting is filtered down, all that remains is the micro-texts of snack culture.

To end with, a couple of questions and a hypothesis. Like TikTok videos, Instagram stories or Javier Milei’s insufferable tweets, is it possible that political leaderships in the 21st century might have a very short lifecycle? To what extent does the volatility of the gaseous society condemn them to an ephemeral existence? And the hypothesis: perhaps we are entering the era of snack leaderships – political actors with exponential media growth but whose curves plunge as we grow bored of them.

Gaseous politics at its purest.