Frost. It hadn’t happened yet, but it was only a matter of time and, with the run-off round looming and with the real or presumed connections that gradually emerged, the worst of the electoral campaigns came to light.
The spaces for discussion on the issues decrease and the dominant motifs of the discourses forcefully become the denigration of the adversary, the ferocious delegitimization of the competitors reduced to enemies and the demonization against the person.
Or, in its mildest and most falsely bipartisan version, the ridicule of those who risk capturing the votes of others. This is certainly a legitimate practice, given that the harshness of an electoral campaign does not always allow for fair play, and also considering that among the candidates, there are often many good reasons to make oneself ridiculous and to be ridiculed.
So let’s go to memes, the millennium’s weapon of mass distraction par excellence, let’s make room for graphics with captivating tones with the big face of the “enemy” clearly printed in the foreground accompanied perhaps by a sharp slogan.
A highly exploited communication technique, in which the main concept becomes “Vote for us, not because we are the Best, but because the others are Worse”.
The latest case, only in chronological order, is the one involving the M5S in support of Terenziano Di Stefano, on the one hand, and the DC in support of Grazia Cosentino on the other.
A meme from a few days ago features the faces of the candidate for mayor, the blue Ars parliamentarian Michele Mancuso and the former governor Totò Cuffaro, accompanied by an eloquent caption, “If they win, Gela will become a colony of the Christian Democratic leader ”
Perfect synthesis of what was declared in the previous days by the Deputy Vice President of the Ars himself, the five-star Nuccio Di Paola, who presented the vote to Di Stefano as the only useful weapon to prevent “the city from ending up in the hands of Cuffaro”. For Di Paola, in fact, the candidacy of the engineer Cosentino would above all bear the signature of the former president of the Region.
Same arguments but from the other side, those summarized in the meme which instead sees the candidate for mayor Terenziano di Stefano, together with the former Dem parliamentarian Lillo Speziale and Di Paola himself. In this case, according to the anonymous authors, if Terenziano were to win, the city would be returned to a phantom “left”, (the late Giorgio Gaber would be turning in his grave), complete with hammer and sickle in the foreground.
