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An illness can be a grave moment for a political leader. It can be a time for discretion, or it can be a time for immense public exposure.
Winston Churchill, for example, preferred to keep his strokes secret in 1949, when he was head of the opposition, and in 1953 as British prime minister.
Both leaders represent two radical opposite ideologies. The conservative Trump is on the right of the political spectrum, while Chávez was on the far left. But the reality is much more nuanced than that.
In this era of “ocular politics,” a leader’s physical appearance can become a focus of public attention. When the leader is no longer a physical representation of fitness and power, we often see two opposite attitudes from the media and the public. Either they want to confirm leaders are fit enough to fulfil their obligations as head of the government, or they want to prove that they’re the “fallen hero” who could not continue to carry the burden of the executive office.
Trump — again, just as Chávez did many times during his cancer ordeal — invoked supernatural intervention, calling his COVID-19 infection “a blessing from God that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise.” He had the opportunity to ostensibly prove the efficacy of an experimental drug, Regeneron, and proclaimed:
The main difference between the Trump and Chávez cases is how each man presented himself physically to the public after their diagnoses.
Trump pushed for a quick release from the hospital, staging a heroic return to the White House. He climbed steps to the White House energetically, although with some breathing difficulties, did a military salute and, some days after, greeted people gathered below from the balcony of the presidential residence (something reminiscent of leaders like Argentinian General Juan Domingo Perón, the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and Chávez himself).
Chávez, on the other hand — particularly during the advanced stages of his cancer — presented himself as the suffering leader overcoming pain and frailty to plead to God for both a miraculous cure and victory in his last political battle — the presidential election of 2012.
Chávez used his cancer as an opportunity to compare himself to a suffering Christ carrying the cross, as well as assuming the role of the preacher during a Catholic Mass celebration.
The grotesque aspect of these performances — the desecration of democratic and religious conventions — enhances among their followers the impression of authenticity that Trump and Chávez sought to create as part of their political branding.
Grotesque transparency affects people’s political decision-making and behaviour.
That’s why we should care about the use and abuse of this form of political communication in an era of superficial debates on social networks, social polarisation and a culture more focused on visual images — reducing everything to a beautiful or shocking image — than it is on detailed and substantive arguments.
Populist leaders who manipulate this mode of communication fuel the suspension of reason, inflame those who are blindly partisan and produce “mutilated and confused ideas,” as the Dutch 18th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza once said. Spinoza wrote in his treatise Ethics about “mutilated” ideas that cannot be articulated in a logical way, and are therefore “confused” because they tend to rely more on imagination than on reason — something both Trump and Chávez have used to their advantage.
(This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here.)
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