The numbers and records achieved and broken with the reconfirmation of Flavio Stasi as Mayor of the largest city in Calabria confirm different analyzes and reflections, in some cases foreseen, taken for granted, in any case almost all shareable.
However, overlooking evaluations of a strictly political-electoral nature, on which it is always better to leave room for the direct protagonists, I try to put on the plate just some of the sociology and pedagogy of symbolic communication, in public and political communication.
I have spoken about it several times in the past, in unsuspecting times. But with the electoral results of last June 10th which consecrated him as the absolute winner and without any kind of misunderstanding, I believe we can have the official certification: Stasi has completed a very simple epistemological break in the dictionary, in the language and in the political and , therefore, in the living body of symbolic communication and in the complex dynamics of building consensus in public opinions.
Stasi did so during his first mandate, without worrying in the slightest about possibly being perceived in a completely antithetical way to the contents, methods and feelings that instead nourished and strengthened his emergence, decades ago, as a civic movementist and as an icon of youth protest against all established powers and all institutions.
Translated: the quasi-plebiscite towards Stasi a few days ago, as some lucid commentators have also written in recent hours, is not and absolutely cannot be caged in a left-wing or centre-left option. Because that’s not the case.
Stasi was reconfirmed with around 65% of the votes from a community which for decades, with the two original cities of Corigliano and Rossano, has opted for openly right-wing mayors.
And it is the same community, fused a few years ago which, regardless of ideological positions and acronyms, today has very probably identified in him, in his public figure, exactly that man alone in command, decision-maker, intolerant of political correctness and diplomacy, scarcely inclined towards assemblyism on everything and which decides nothing, often emerged (with its pros and cons) in the electoral narrative that has just ended.
There is also more, for goodness sake, such as the fact that Stasi played a lot, I imagine with strategy, on inflaming from below the autonomist propensity of the community compared to the more or less occult powers of Cosenza and Germaneto, as they were told in rallies and press releases.
But even this declination, which is of pure symbolic and emotional communication, aligns well with that iconography of the strong man capable of defending, even possibly making mistakes but on his own, the interests of the indigenous people from epic external incursions.
There is. Works. And it could also have its own reason, especially today.
If then on this semi-serious analysis, which however aims to induce us to reflect on the strategic value of communication and its conscious governance, two other interpretations are grated, perhaps the dish becomes even more indigestible or tasty depending on who loves it or not love the authentic.
The first seems to have finally become indisputable.
Compared to the government vision, whether shared or not, built, consolidated and relaunched by the Stasi alone over the last five years, there has been no type of opposition, neither within the council (with some councilors even moving to the opposing camp), nor outside from the civic assembly. And this is a given. Point.
I am referring to the political forces of the centre-right which, until a few months ago, through absurd declarations by their local representatives, did not even perceive the meaning and gravity, perceived instead by their own electorate, of the delay which had accumulated both with the immature -opposition which with the subsequent, irresponsible non-decision of one of its own candidates in good time, up until the last minute entry into the field of the heroine Pasqualina Straface from whom the impossible was bizarrely expected.
On the one hand, Stasi has systematically de-institutionalized on his personal social networks both his new public image as mayor, deliberately frozen in that of the movementist detached from powers and symbols of power, and what should have been but never was communication official of the institution, with very serious misunderstandings, never remedied and which, as expected, will continue to erode, in general silence, the very meaning of public institutions, which cannot and must never coincide with the people who represent them pro tempore.
On the other hand, the prolonged and inexplicable narrative and communication void of any alternative vision compared to the one legitimately constructed and disseminated for five years has in fact crystallized that mutation of the same social political language (which became social) which was still recognizable until a few years ago and recognized in multiple strata of the electorate.
And all this has produced two effects that are underestimated, not by everyone:
1) it has become literally incomprehensible to widespread public opinion, every attempt at analysis and proposal timidly different from that personified by the outgoing mayor;
2) any de-construction of the consolidated image of the outgoing mayor by any competitor in an electoral campaign lasting just two months has become impossible.
The second grating is given or if you prefer confirmed by the numbers.
It’s true: the numbers should all be read better and some will say even with more caution and heaviness.
But some of them can, indeed should, already continue today a debate that is not obvious; at least to avoid making the same mistakes of the watered-down wait-and-see approach that occupied the city’s democratic scene, astonishing or amusing the Stasi himself almost until the end.
In fact, it is enough to read the results of Fratelli d’Italia (FDI), the relative majority party in the country and the party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, also a convinced local co-protagonist of what was, in essence, the incredible non-opposition to the first Stasi Municipal Administration.
In fact, in the same electoral consultation, FDI goes from 7582 list votes in the European elections to 2350 list votes in the municipal elections, with a difference of over 5000 votes.
This implosion of party lists, from the European to the administrative ones, has also affected other acronyms, both from the city’s centre-right, except Forza Italia (party of President Roberto Occhiuto and candidate Pasqualina Straface) which has instead maintained if not perhaps increased its consensus; both from the center left in support of Flavio Stasi, as in the case of the PD which passes 3300 votes in the European elections to 1300 in the municipal ones or, in a separate case, the Five Star Movement which even loses almost 11 thousand along the way.
I believe that all these area votes and sympathy for Stasi ended up straight in the super civic lists in support of the reconfirmed mayor is also an indisputable and also normal fact, in light of the very important result achieved. In short, it is a fact that does not shock anyone, much less the reconfirmed beneficiary, who continues to have fun, without being surprised by anything anymore.
It should instead matter to someone else if those over 5,000 votes of the Brothers of Italy were also to flow into a possible silent and transversal support for Stasi, because in this case, since FDI is not an extemporaneous civic list but a national party that Rome is proudly identitarian, distinctive and even divisive, it could also mean that Stasi was perceived, at least in its already seen methods of government, as more Melonian than our own Melonians. Yes!
This last circumstance certainly has no influence on the results and the final outcome already written, but it could certainly offer less asphyxiated reading tools than those proposed in these hours (behind closed doors) by party staff and secretariats; let’s say that it is perhaps an even more exhilarating point of view, freely inspired by the famous film by Corrado Guzzanti, Fascists on Mars, but in reverse!
I close by reiterating that mine is and is intended to be only a neo-realist snapshot, one of the many that are being read after the vote, absolutely not journalistic nor political; the outburst of those who have been doing business for around thirty years in the production of content and communication strategies; a screenshot without filters, so to speak, to unplug and lower the tension; and this is net of the respective and legitimate theses of the fans who have been singing along until yesterday, warming up a little a political climate that has remained stale and dull for too long; and, out of pity, for those who, first recovered with a 90% discount in a notoriously suspicious Martian tender and then promoted again on Mars with subsequent direct assignments and amounts increased without any proportion, continue to heat chairs and sofas in some office for years which would otherwise be strategic for the image of the City, even going so far in these hours to self-attribute, self-accusing themselves on social media of what would not be allowed to them, of having even campaigned for one of the two candidates, in this case abusing (if capable) of their function and position, in fact overpaid for nothing and with important public resources.
Lenin Montesanto
(Press release)
: Stasi also wins with the fascists on Mars){kind=link}