In many supposedly democratic countries, there is a strong temptation for political leaders to break away from the traditional framework of democratic debate: instead of conducting in-depth, rational campaigns based on programs, they rush to the finish line with insults, lies, disorder and scandal, offering voters a frenetic spectacle in which the main aim is to finish off opponents with personal attacks in a blitzkrieg. It often succeeds. It’s what I call “victory by chaos”.
This is how Donald Trump was elected, whose campaign of invective, insults and lies, dragging all his opponents through the mud, exceeded all bounds. The same goes for an unlikely candidate, Calin Georgescu, who came out on top in the first round of the Romanian presidential elections, thanks to his frenetic presence on TikTok. This is also the strategy of Jean Luc Mélenchon and his party in France; they operate on the basis of invective and scandal, which are the traps into which their rivals fall; and while they have also taken the time to draw up a comprehensive program, this is only one element of the chaos, since it could only be implemented in a parallel reality, where neither the European Union, nor the financial markets, nor budgetary constraints, nor many other laws of the Republic, including secularism, would exist.
The principles of this strategy, which were analyzed a few years ago by Giovanni da Empoli, in his book on “the engineers of chaos”, in relation to the Italian situation, have since been considerably deployed; in particular, AI technologies have made it possible to lie much more convincingly than before; to create a genuine alternative reality in which the actors of chaos can deploy their strategy and make voters believe that anything is possible, even the most implausible.
That’s what’s at stake: everyone dreams of being free; everyone hates reality, which deprives them of their freedom; everyone then grants themselves the right to invent another. As if lying were the condition for escaping from reality, which would be the highest form of freedom; as if everyone could choose to give words one meaning rather than another. As if distorting reality were a way of changing it.
In fact, reality is unbearable for many people, and rightly so; the future is even more so, and rightly so; and everyone dreams of a different personal reality, one of success, health and happiness.
Some people choose ways other than politics to escape reality: video games, the strongest alcohols, the most suicidal drugs, travel, a change of life, disappearance.
The strategy of chaos offers politicians the means to promise voters the paroxysm of the exercise of freedom: “I’m offering you the possibility of being free, in an unlimited way, and to do this, I’m going to build an alternative reality and destroy everything that makes up the previous reality: institutions, financial constraints”.
And that’s exactly what these cynical demagogues do: offer voters an alternative reality in which they don’t really have to believe; just what they need to feed off the illusory prospect of escaping reality. This strategy offers the prospect of victory through chaos. It is also a way of getting rid of the hated elites, denounced as dictating a univocal vision of reality and imposing constraints in the interests of the most powerful. Chaos is also a means of eliminating the ruling classes.
This kind of cynical strategy works all over the world. It may work in France very soon.
Of course, many things can and must be changed. Of course, today’s reality is not unsurpassable. And we can’t allow a world that is so unfair, so destructive of the environment, so unconcerned about respecting the most fragile, to continue to exist. But inventing a parallel reality, creating institutional chaos, is not the way to make reality more liveable.