The Sacrifice of the Sacred King

"In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake, right under the precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of Nemi is perched, stood the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood. ..  In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier."

From "The Golden Bough" - by James G. Frazer

Post by "Mon Seul Desir"

Hello Ugo 

You once asked, what was the meaning of Trump, it crossed my mind that without anybody’s planning or intentions, Trump became an immense collective scapegoating ritual where all the sins and impurities of the tribe are placed upon the king, who is then ceremonially driven out to purify the tribe. Since the 1960s this seems to have increasingly become the function of the American Presidency superseding its previous role which it has held since the days of George Washington, that of a near omnipotent God-Emperor who incarnates American collective power. It’s certainly corresponds to the sacred geometry of Washington DC, enclosed by its pomerium, the sacred regalias on display, the Temples to the Divine Emperors, the Axis Mundi rising through the centre of the Capitol’s rotunda. I personally visited the place a decade ago and was absolutely struck by the mystical religious layout of the place. It was effectively the centre of a secular City of God, destined to extend to, and redeem the entire world. I would say that Americanism is in fact the world’s dominant religious system, erecting its theocracy over the ruins of the British World Empire just as the theocracy of Diocletian Jovius was erected over the ruins of the Roman-Hellenistic Mediterranean Empire. 

Now I must point to the Ancients warnings against hubris and the prophecies of Christian mystics that the reign of God can only come with the return of Christ. When one pushes too hard against the Cosmos, it pushes back. Alexander declared himself greater than Hercules, he was assassinated, his family exterminated and Ptolemy Soter was one of the few of his Companions who lived to found a dynasty and die in his bed. 

 I think that when the history of the USA over the past century is written several generations from now, it will describe not the March of Progress towards the future, the description will be of an ever increasing surrender to hubris culminating in overreach and collapse. 

This is the consequence of giving the powers of an advanced culture to an archaic one, they see what they can do with the new powers, not what they shouldn’t do. The social structure is overwhelmed by the new powers, the effect is that of Dr Erskine’s Supersoldier Serum, what is good becomes better, what is bad, worse. 

Homeric society started out as heroic warrior communities ruled by chiefs and freemen’s councils, their cosmology was of Primordial Chaos forged into Order by the Will of the Gods, the earthly rulers were shades of the Gods, ordering the human community as the Gods ordered the Cosmos. As their knowledge advanced, they studied the Order imposed by the Gods, the regularities they shaped, the ordered structures, from this they developed basic mechanics, observations of nature and the skills to create ordered organizations of their own, the concepts of objective law and disciplined organizations led to basic state bureaucracy and when merged with the fury of the Iron Age warrior led to the Greek Phalanx and the Roman Legion. The Homeric kings who in the past had commanded a few thousands warriors who were the freemen of his kingdom became massively powerful monarchs who had armies of tens to hundreds of thousands supported by workshops and officials who could undertake campaigns for years and where bound to absolute obedience. They became the Incredible Hulk’s of the Ancient World capable of smashing through everything in their paths, the humanistic ethic of the original Homeric world was overwhelmed by a power system stronger than it, the exercise of power became increasingly arbitrary, society turned into a regime of slavery and terror, the lacks of ancient culture became evident, the lack of a deep sense of ethics, no real work ethic, the absence of culturally integrated large scale structures, even the rulers enjoyed no security, any courtier could be a possible assassin, simply eating lunch was a terrifying adventure, their own relatives couldn’t be trusted, the guards who protected them one day could butcher them the next... 

One sees this in Seneca who discussed the ethics of committing suicide under a despotism, of Boudicca who revolted and was massacred after she and her daughters were tortured by petty officials who had the power of life and death over even provincial aristocrats, the Gospels can be read as the testimony of common people living under the arbitrary will of the powerful. Boudicca could torture and kill any commoner under her power, imperial officials could do the same to her, the officials could be ordered by the Emperor to kill themselves on a whim and the Emperor themselves had to watch everyone... The Homeric values of personal freedom and dignity had lost any meaning and increasingly it became impossible to do science under the constraints of Hesiod’s metaphysics, the whole concept of a civilization ordered under its own collective will was dying. 

Ultimately this became unsustainable, the reaction came, the Christians stated power comes only from God, the Cosmos is not ordered by the Emperor or any God he represents, it was created by God as an intrinsically ordered structure, there no law of Man, only the law of God which Man can only discover and interpret, all this apparatus of temporal power is just the product of ambition and greed, there is no divine purpose here, a counterfeit of the true City of God. The theology of the Glory of Rome died, abandoned by a people that could not bear its weight anymore and just wanted to breathe freely. Deprived of the faith that sustained it, Rome collapsed under its weight its ruins to become spolia to its heirs who had turned to the City of God. 

Now Medieval Man stepped into the world with the certainty that it was God’s and that he had to live by His rules. Everything moved by His eternal laws, that could be understood and applied to both the human and natural realms. Rulers were as completely under God’s law as the beggar, a new institution was born, Medieval Kingship and Feudalism organized with the support of God’s Church, a massive body of law and customs was created to modulate, contain and control power, lord and vassal relationships, knighthood, the Estates, the Guilds, the Communes, ultimately reaching its fullest development in the great Medieval Courts like Versailles, war was codified into the sport of Kings instead of the genocidal total wars of the late Classical world. The much ridiculed Versailles functioned as a containment structure for power, the King could reign without ruling, he didn’t need to constantly torture and kill people to show he was in charge, he simply distributed perks and honours, he had great fringe benefits compared to a Classical ruler, greater personal comforts, minimal risks of assassination, eating his meals in peace, no worries about his guards, outside the palace a massive array of autonomous institutions ran the whole society without royal intervention, the king’s subjects lived in security and prosperity, the much maligned costs of Versailles were insignificant compared to the costs of despotism. The so-called Enlightenment pseudo philosophers could never have survived in Ancient Rome, they would have been lion food, in a 20th century tyranny it would have been concentration camps and bullets in the back of the head, they were in fact free because the containment structures of the Versailles system protected them, they thought France could be made into a better country if it was ruled by a Caesar, they got Napoleon who used up the wealth and manpower of France the way Alexander used up Macedon, people don’t realize what they have until they lose it... 

Now armed with the concept of God’s law, the development of philosophy took new directions first under the scholastics and then under the natural philosophers taking the development of science well beyond that of ancient world, a new Christian work ethic fostered the Guilds of free craftsman who took technology beyond that the classical era with the clock, navigation skills, new architecture and art and eventually an Italian named Volta but together the first electric battery, opening a new unsuspected realm to science, knowledge that would overturn the Medieval metaphysics and lead to the Quantum Realm and the world of Relativity. 

 By the 19th century the world saw the emergence of a new form of organization, Technocracy, to manage the new railways and telegraph system, the first components that would grow into the Technosphere and a schizophrenic type of Man, Medieval Man in family and public life and Technospheric Man at the railway station, telegraph office and engineering and science lab. 

The concept of regularity and intrinsic order in Homeric society lead to technologies and forms of organization that overwhelmed its ethics and social structure, the Roman Empire was a supersized Homeric chiefdom with the bureaucracy and military of King Philippe the Second but without the customs and institutions that restrained and stabilized his regime, before the power system Homeric society was completely helpless, only the replacement of its values by Medieval ones, accompanied by the collapse of the Roman system allowed the people to become free. 

Today Technospheric Man has carried out a similar revolution, Technocracy, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, it’s technology, it’s conception of Man as taught by Freud and Jung, its achievements that have obliterated the old sense of limits, the Atomic bombs that can level mountains in minutes, the contraceptives that have removed immemorial fundamentals of the relations between the sexes, the medical advances, the communication systems and so much more. Today’s Western system is simply a collection of decayed Medieval courts surrounded by the modern equivalent of the Fuggers and Medecis in the corporate lobbyists attempting to use structures taken from Black Panther’s Wakanda and Doom’s Latveria to create some sort of City of God on Earth, they’re as completely overwhelmed as the Classical rulers were, they wanted absolute power, they have it and everything that goes with it, they’re afraid of each other and of the people they rule, they’re quickly finding that absolute power burns the hands that attempt to wield it. But do they even truly understand what they’re attempting to wield? Does their Medieval mentalities even contains the concepts and cognitive patterns that would allow them to understand? 

That the problems the world is facing are problems in managing the Technosphere, they’re not political and the accepted techniques of financial and legal manipulation don’t work, traditional assumptions are obsolete, essentially what is required is Apollo Mission Control style technocratic management. Do these skills even exist in the current elites? Or they will simply persist in enforcing superstitious rituals of purity and redemption? 

Today I point out the Internet, consider what the printing press did to the power of the Medieval Church, the first printed books came in 1455, 62 years later in 1517 Martin Luther posted his 95 theses and the rest is history. The Internet is the printing press on gamma rays, it’s Big, Mean and Green, consider that the properties of any substance is dependent on the nature of its bonding patterns whether its chemical or social bonds, the current system is dependent on vertical bonds converging on small groups of people, the Internet allows the creation of very large numbers of horizontal bonds across this structure, eventually sufficient to overwhelm the vertical structure and cause it to collapse. I don’t think their pathetic attempts at censorship will work anymore than burning printed tracts and heretics worked for the Church. Can the current governments even survive into the age of the Internet? 

Now this was a long one Ugo, when I start writing I’m never sure how it’s going to come out!

The Great Reset: The Western Path to Dekulakization

 

One of the Soviet propaganda posters promoting the collectivization of agriculture in the 1930s. On the lower right, you can see a small man opposing the line of the marching peasants, He is recognizable as a "Kulak," one of the local independent farmers who were dispossessed and partly exterminated to leave space for collectivized farms, considered more efficient. There exist several similarities between the fall of the Kulaki and the current "Great Reset" that sees the destruction of a number of economic activities, such as retail commerce, seen as inefficient in comparison to modern electronic commerce.

 

In the 1930s, the Soviet Union carried out the "dekulakization" (раскулачивание) of Ukraine. It was the term given to the removal of the relatively wealthy, independent farmers ("kulaki"), to be replaced by collective farms. Their properties were confiscated, many of them were relocated to remote regions, and some were exterminated. We don't know the exact numbers, but surely we are in the range of a few million people. The transition to collectivized farms may have been one of the causes of the great Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s, known as the "Holodomor," 

The reasons for the dekulakization are several. In part, they were related to the belief that large-scale, centrally planned enterprises were the most efficient way to organize production. Then, the Kulaki were seen as a potential enemy for the Soviet Government, while the region they occupied was a strategic asset in terms of food production in an age when famines were an effective war weapon. 

But these considerations are not enough to explain why the Kulaki were so ruthlessly destroyed in just a few years. It was, rather, just a simple power game: the Soviet Government aimed at controlling all the means of production of the state. It couldn't tolerate that an important section of the economy, food production in Ukraine, was independently managed. And so it intervened with all the might it could muster.

The most interesting part of this story is how the removal/extermination was an early example of a successful propaganda-based demonization campaign. The Kulaki were consistently portrayed as inefficient and unreliable "enemies of the people." Once it was established that an independent farmer was an enemy of the people, then any attempt to defend the Kulaki would automatically turn defenders into enemies of the people. So, the Kulaki were completely overwhelmed, unable to organize any kind of collective resistance. The best they could do was some degree of passive resistance, for instance by hiding food rather than delivering it to the Soviet authorities. Of course, propaganda exploited that to reinforce the message that they were, indeed, enemies of the people. This is the way propaganda works.

At this point, I guess you understand the point I am making: the similarity of the current situation with the dekulakization of nearly a century ago. Also this time, an entire sector of the economy (actually more than one) is being crushed to leave space for different economic entities, believed to be more efficient with providing the same services: mainly the "new economy" of the Silicon Valley companies. This shift is sometimes called "The Great Reset." An appropriate name that could also be applied to the dekulakization. 

The first victim of the Great Reset has been retail commerce. Mom and pop shops everywhere are the modern Kulaki, replaced by the onward marching militias of virtual commerce under the Amazon banner. But also franchises and shopping malls have been badly hit. It is impressive how nobody in the field dared to oppose the destruction of the source of their livelihood -- they were overwhelmed by propaganda, just like the Kulaki. 

Other victims are waiting for the axe: Universities and schools are going to be defunded, obsolete against the onrush of e-learning. Public transport has become nearly useless with the triumph of virtual work and the fear of boarding a crowded bus: it will be replaced by the smart cars and using AI software. Mass tourism and mass air travel are already relics of the past, resources that can be saved and used for other purposes. And the pervasive control of everyone is advancing: now just as at the time of the Soviet Union, those who control the message control everything. In comparison with Soviet times, the modern propaganda effort is similar. Most propaganda is based on demonizing someone and, today, those opposing the Great Reset are labeled as "deniers" (the equivalent of the "enemies of the people" of Soviet times). 

All that doesn't mean that the Great Reset was planned in advance, nor that the virus was manufactured on purpose. It simply means that the various actors in the economic arena saw how they could gain an advantage by acting in a certain way, and they did. These large organizations do not really plan in advance, they have no "brain," but -- like amoebas -- they move in the direction of the food they need. And they act on the principle that says, "never let a good crisis go wasted."

Of course, the Silicon Valley Companies of our times are not the same thing as the Soviet Government of the 1930s. But there are similarities. Those companies that dominate the management of information on the Web operate very much Soviet-style: they are large, pyramidal organizations, often dominated by a charismatic leader (Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, etc.). In terms of size and planning style, they are not different from the People's Commissariat for Agriculture (Народный комиссариат земледелия) (Narkomzem), established in 1917, the entity that carried out the dekulakization. And they reason mainly in terms of power balance: they don't like and they don't tolerate competition. 

The difference is that the Narkomzem was part of the state, whereas the Silicon Valley companies are not. They do control large swats of the American government but, on the whole, they are best seen as feudal lords. You can call them "Web Barons."

The current situation looks not unlike when King John of England signed the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, forced to do so by England's Barons. Right now, the US government seems to be overwhelmed by the Barons of the Web, not unlike King John of England was. At least, when you hear that Twitter can cancel the account of the President of the United States, then you understand who is the boss. 

And here we stand: we are seeing a classic situation in history: a central government being challenged by feudal lords. It is typical of when a state starts its downward path toward collapse, it is what's happening with the Western Empire. So, what's going to happen, now? Can history serve as a guide for us?

History, we know, always rhymes, but never repeats itself. In the 1930s, the Kulaki were destroyed by superior powers and that was the end of the story. Today, the situation is much more fluid. 

For one thing, there is not a single, monolithic entity involved. We have several Barons who temporarily found a common goal, but which are potentially in conflict with each other. Then, the US government is not so weak yet. It still controls (and is controlled by) the military, and that's the crucial element that may change many things. 

It is not clear what the military think of the current situation. Probably they don't have special objections about the elimination of retail commerce and other obsolete economic activities. But they also understand who is paying them: they get their money not from the Web Barons, but from the Government. And they may decide to do something to avoid going the same way as mom and pop shops. A few tanks in front of the Capitol Building would send a much clearer message to the Web Barons than that conveyed by a half-naked, horned shaman. 

If the government is backed by a credible military force, then it would be possible to reduce the power of the monopolies of the Web: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and the others could be nationalized and/or broken down into less powerful entities. On the other hand, nothing prevents the Web Barons from building up their own military forces. Fluid situation, indeed. 

The only sure thing is that the decline of the West is ongoing. There is little that can be done about that.

After publishing this post, I discovered that the same concept had been developed by another Cassandra, on the "The Cassandra Times" blog. That post came before mine, and it has therefore the honor of being the first having noted that the modern small business owners are the equivalent of the Kulaks of Soviet times.

The Deification of Emperor Trump: Following Caligula's Path

Jake Angeli, high priest of the growing cult of Emperor Donald Trump, dressed as the horned God Cernunnos. The deification of Emperor Trump in Washington, yesterday, didn't go so well, but we are moving along a path that the Romans already followed during the decline of their empire, including the deification of emperors, starting with Caligula. So, comparing Roman history to our current conditions may tell us something about the future.

I already speculated on what kind of Roman Emperor Donald Trump could have been and I concluded that he might have been the equivalent of Hadrian. The comparison turned out to be not very appropriate. Clearly, Trump was no Hadrian (a successful emperor, by all means). But, after four years, and after the recent events in Washington, I think Trump may be seen as a reasonably good equivalent of Caligula, or Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, who also reigned for 4 years, from 37 to 41 AD.

Caligula was the prototypical mad emperor -- you probably heard that he nominated his horse consul. And he was not just mad, he was said to be a cruel, homicidal psychopath, and a sexual pervert to boot. In addition, he tried to present himself as a living god and pretended to be worshipped. He even claimed to have waged a war against the Sea God Poseidon, and having won it!

But, really, we know little about Caligula's reign, and most of it from people who had plenty of reasons to slander his memory, including our old friend Lucius Annaeus Seneca (he of the "Seneca Effect") who was a contemporary of Caligula and who seriously risked being executed by him. The Romans knew and practiced the same rules of propaganda we use today. And one typical way to slander an emperor was to accuse him to be a sexual pervert.

But it really doesn't matter so much if Caligula really was so bad as we are told he was. The point is that there is a certain logic in his actions. In Rome, just as in almost every ancient empire in history, Emperors were far from being warmongers. And that was for perfectly good reasons: imagine you are the emperor: you are the richest person in the world, you can have everything you want, you may order people to do whatever you want to do, and if they refuse you can have them killed. You can even force people to worship you like a God and many will do that without any need of forcing them. Then, why should you risk all that for the mere pleasure of slaughtering a bunch of bad-smelling barbarians?  

That put emperors in a quandary: their power was based on military might, but the soldiers needed to be paid. And in order to pay them, military adventures needed to be undertaken. But military adventures, then as now, are risky and you never know who will win a war unless you fight it. This problem was the reason why many Roman emperors didn't end their careers in their death bed. Either they were reckless and then defeated, or too prudent, and they were killed by their own troops. The latter was the destiny of Caligula, who refused to engage in the invasion of Britannia. No invasion meant no booty and no bonus for the troops. And the troops were not happy. In the end, Caligula was killed by officers of the Praetorian Guard, a military corps that was supposed to protect him.

At this point, I think you can see how Trump's rule can be seen as similar to that of Caligula. Of course, Trump never made senator a horse, but he surely had stormy relations with the US congress -- as you saw in the recent events in Washington. As for considering himself a God, well, Trump may not have gone as far as Caligula, but surely he tended to aggrandize himself more than a little! The apparition of Trump's follower, Jake Angeli, dressed as the horned God Cernunnos,  even gave a certain theological meaning to the occupation of the Capitol building in 2021.

The main point in the similarity, then, is that both Caligula and Trump did their best to avoid major wars and succeeded, at least in part. Trump had to compromise with the military, providing huge financing for the military apparatus. We don't know if Caligula did the same, but his fake campaign against Britannia may have been an attempt to appease the military without risking a real invasion. Whatever the case, Caligula was eliminated and replaced with an older and more pliant Emperor, Claudius. 

Something similar occurred with Donald Trump, replaced by an older and more pliant emperor because he clearly showed that he did not plan any major military campaigns. Unlike Caligula, and luckily for him, Trump was not physically eliminated (so far). But the trend is clear: The Washingtonian Emperors are desperately trying to acquire more and more powers in order to try to control an increasingly divided society. "Deification" - turning the leader into a God - may be a good strategy in this sense and it is likely that we'll see more and more US presidents using it in the future 

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This being how things stand, can we use the Trump-Caligula analogy to conceive future scenarios? The future is always difficult to predict, but it is also a lot of fun to try. So, let's tell first the story of the Roman Empire after the death of Caligula, then we'll see to create a narrative for the modern Global Empire after the removal of Donald Trump. 

Caligula's successor, Claudius, was a relatively weak emperor who couldn't oppose the military adventure in Britannia, and that nearly brought the Roman Empire to its doom. Initially, the invasion was successful but, later on, the Romans seriously risked losing everything when Queen Boudicca led a revolt against them in 60 AD, nearly succeeding in throwing back the invaders into the sea. Eventually, the Romans managed to quell the revolt, but it was a close call.

The problem was not so much Britannia, but the fact that the Empire had seriously overstretched itself. While Boudicca's warriors scoured Britain, torturing and killing Roman citizens, on the opposite side of the Empire, in Palestine, a revolt was brewing. It exploded with tremendous fury in 66 AD and, this time, the Romans failed to quell it immediately. After the fall of Jerusalem to the rebels, it took nearly eight years of hard fighting to reestablish the Roman domain in the region. During this period, the survival of the Empire itself was at serious risk. 

We may imagine that if the Romans hadn't needed to garrison Britain, they could have had more resources to defeat the Jewish insurrection. As it was, instead, the effort of having to control two unruly regions at the same time and at the two opposite extremes of the Roman dominion led to financial problems and to turmoil all over the Empire. in 68 AD, Emperor Nero lost control of his generals and was forced to kill himself. For a year, four different generals fought each other for the imperial throne. Eventually, Vespasian, a general who had fought both in Britain and in Palestine, restored order in 69 AD, but the situation remained difficult. One indication of the financial problems of the time is that in modern Romance languages, urinals are named after Vespasian, probably because for the first time he placed a tax on their use. 

In time, the Roman state managed to recover a certain balance and the deep state scored a major victory when they placed a career soldier at the top, Trajan (53-117). Trajan may have seen himself as the successor of Alexander the Great and he maintained his promise to expand the Empire. In 101 AD, he engaged in a successful military campaign against Dacia (more or less modern Romania). Then, in 113 AD he embarked in an ambitious campaign destined to get rid once for all of the competitor Parthian Empire, in the East. It was nothing less than an attempt of world domination. By taking control of Central Eurasia, the Roman Empire would have been able to dominate the whole continent. That was the dream, at least, but dreams tend to evaporate fast when confronted with reality.

At the beginning, Trajan obtained some major victories, but he was not Alexander the Great. The Romans conquered the region that we call Iraq today, but further advances were simply unthinkable. They had overstretched their domains to an extremely dangerous level. In order to finance his campaigns, Trajan had devaluated the Roman currency and a new civil war could have shattered the Empire. Fortunately for the Romans, Trajan died before he could truly wreck the Empire's finances. His successor, Hadrian, stopped the wars of conquest and reorganized the Empire within militarily sustainable borders. Of course, the Roman empire was doomed anyway, but at least Hadrian avoided that it would collapse already during the 2nd century AD: 

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Now, let's start from these ancient events to create a scenario for our times. Joe Biden is clearly no Trajan, but he has something in common with the weak and old Claudius. As such, Biden may fail to stop the US military from engaging the Empire in one or more risky military adventures, for instance attacking Syria, or maybe even Iran. 

The military strength of the US is so large that it is hard to think a relatively minor campaigns could be unsuccessful, but they would seriously weaken the Empire and generate internal frictions. The attack on the Capitol building already gave us a taste of what the results could look like. 

After Biden will be gone, it may be possible to see the Global Empire in the hands an aggressive military leader. Such a leader might decide to do what Trajan did. She might engage in an all-out effort to destroy the rival empire, the Chinese Empire, just as Trajan tried to destroy the Parthian Empire. (why did I say "she"? You know that!). That would mean global domination for the Western Empire.

Could a warlike Empress succeed? Unlikely. Just like Trajan nearly wrecked the Roman finances in his attempt, our Empress may well wreck the Western economy -- or the whole world's economy --  forever, with the additional result of wrecking the whole ecosystem as well. But history seems to reason in its own terms that was unavoidable from the beginning. For one thing, in our times things seem to happen much faster than in Roman times and the fall of Washington to a Barbarian army doesn't seem to be so unthinkable as it was just a few days ago. 

 

The Mind of the Evil Ruler: What Goes on inside the Heads of the People who Govern the World?

The damage that bad rulers can do to people and things is gigantic, especially considering that they command military apparatuses of immense power. But what goes on in their minds, exactly? Are some of them truly evil? Or just criminally incompetent? We'll probably never know for sure, but we have some hints for at least some of them. Here, I am exploring the case of Benito Mussolini, using the diary written by his son in law as a source of information.

There is a sentence attributed to Terry Pratchett that goes as, "the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters." Actually, I think Robert Heinlein said something similar first (although I can't find that quote anymore). In any case, the idea that collective intelligence goes down with the number of the members of a group seems to have some logic in it, although it cannot be said to be scientifically proven.

If that's true, then we have a huge problem. How to manage states formed of tens or hundreds of millions, even billions, of people? A possible solution is to reduce the denominator of the formula to a single, absolute ruler who takes all the decisions. Indeed, it seems that human crowds, dumb as they may be, tend to think that all problems can be solved by someone who "will get things done." 

Unfortunately, the idea of giving all the power to a single big man doesn't seem to work so well. Another quote by Robert Heinlein says "A well run tyranny is almost as scarce as an efficient democracy." (confirmed). You may have read that Trump is a narcissist, Biden is affected by Alzheimer's, Putin by the Asperger syndrome, and that Assad is evil just because he is. The list of mad or evil rulers is long, but what do we know about these people? In practice, very little because they live shielded by a barrier of lies in the form of propaganda and press releases. Even the people who know them well, relatives and close friends, may well be fooled by people who arrived at the top exactly by their capability of fooling everyone, perhaps even themselves.

Maybe, if we could have a diary written by one of these madmen, say, Adolf Hitler, we could understand what made them do the evil things they did. But the manuscript that was claimed to be Hitler's diary in 1983 was a hoax and no dictator of note ever left us a personal diary. It is perhaps a consequence of their personality. As I said, they tend to swindle everybody, including themselves, and a diary would be a weapon in the hands of their enemies.

But there are other possibility: the closest thing to a personal diary written by a dictator is a diary written by a close relative or a collaborator. One such diary was kept by Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister of the Mussolini government in Italy from 1937 to 1943. He was not only a close collaborator of the Duce but also a close relative since he had married his daughter. You can find the complete diary in Italian at this link.

 

So, what can we learn from this document? First, note that Ciano was not an intellectual, nor he had any professional expertise. He is best described as a high-rank playboy who had used the money and the prestige of his father, a war hero, to gain access to Mussolini's family and eventually to marry Mussolini's daughter. That, of course, opened up for him a bright career at the top and he was widely considered the most likely candidate to succeed the Duce as Italy's leader. During the period in which he was active as foreign minister, he often acted as the second-in-command in the government. 

Ciano wrote detailed notes of his everyday activities as foreign minister for the whole period of his appointment. Clearly, he was an insider and he knew things nobody else knew. Of course, we don't have to take these notes as completely truthful. Especially in the final pages we clearly detect an attempt by Ciano to distance himself from his illustrious father-in-law and his egregious blunders. Later on, he joined a coup against Mussolini but that sealed his downfall: he was tried and then shot for treason on orders of Mussolini himself. But, overall, it is probable that many details of the daily written document do reflect real events.
 

One thing we learn from Ciano's notes is how haphazardly Italy was run. A country of 45 million inhabitants was steered by people who seemed to carry on, day by day, the best they could without a specific direction. Mostly, the story sounds like a TV soap: the atmosphere in the high echelons of the government was a poisonous mix of gossip, treachery, and abject deference to the great boss. The name of the game was a simple sentence: "Mussolini is always right." Anyone could be demoted to a powerless position if he happened to displease the commander in chief. In 1939, that happened also to Achille Starace, a longtime associate of Mussolini and secretary of the Fascist party. 

Even the great boss, Mussolini, didn't seem to have a well defined plan. He seemed to be thinking that Italy should pursue a policy of territorial expansion and that that was necessary because Italy was a young nation that needed space for its growing population. That could obtained at the expense of the evil and decadent plutocracies that were England and France. And that was to result in the creation of an Italian Empire that would rival the old Roman Empire.

If that was the plan, it wasn't a good plan. Mussolini, just like most politicians, couldn't reason quantitatively and had neither interest nor trust in data. He trusted mainly his intuition and he never understood how badly unprepared were the Italian armed forces, nor how weak the Italian economy was in comparison to that of the powers of the time. Unfortunately for him, he was lucky enough that some of his initial military adventures were successful. And victories don't teach you anything.

Not that Mussolini was a fool, not at all. As a young man, he had been a smart politician and a shrewd journalist. We have his diary during the time when he was in the trenches during WWI and there we find nothing of the warlike rhetoric of his later years. He always kept his head low: no question for him to jump out of the trench and lead a bayonet assault. In 1917, he was lightly wounded by the accidental explosion of an Italian cannon and that was the end of the war for him. It was also a stroke of luck: not only he could gain a reputation as a war hero, but he avoided to be caught in the rout of the Italian army after the disaster of the battle of Caporetto, a few months later. 

20 years later, we read in Ciano's diary how the smart politician had turned into a bumbling fool. Let me translate a few excerpts for you. 

 

Dec 19, 1937. The Duce said: "On my grave I want this epigraph: Here lies one of the most intelligent animals ever appeared on the face of the earth". The Duce is proud of his instinct which he considers, and has actually proved to be, infallible.

Sep 29-30 1938 (Criticizing Great Britain) "When animals are adored in a country to the point of making cemeteries, hospitals, homes for them; when bequests are made to parrots it is a sign that decadence is underway. Moreover, in addition to the many reasons, this also depends on the composition of the English people. 4 million more women. Four million sexually dissatisfied creatures, artificially creating a multitude of problems to arouse or artificially creating a multitude of problems to excite or appease their senses. Not being able to embrace a single man, they embrace humanity ".

June 3, 1939 "I" said the Duce "I am like a cat, cautious and prudent, but when I take a leap I am sure to land where I want.

Dec 24, 1940 – It's snowing. The Duce looks out of the window and is happy that it snows: "This snow and this cold are fine" he says "so the pipsqueaks die: and this mediocre Italian breed is improved. One of the main reasons why I wanted the reforestation of the Apennines it was to make Italy colder and snowier ".

You see what I mean, and there is much more in Ciano's diary. It is like dealing with an old man who has lost track with reality. Yet, as I wrote in a previous post, a post-mortem examination showed that Mussolini's brain was still functional during the last years of his rule. By all means, it was the normal brain of a normal person. What Mussolini's brain had lost was not neurons, but the capability of empathy: understanding and caring for your fellow human beings. 

Empathy requires a certain effort, it is a tool that needs to be sharpened every day. But just as you get fat if you don't exercise your body, you get dumb if you don't exercise your mind. What happened with Mussolini and the Italian government was a self-reinforcing loop. The people around Mussolini soon found that they could keep their position if they never disagreed with the boss. Mussolini, in turn, found that he could easily get rid of those who disagreed with him. And the result was that he was even more surrounded by yes-men who always agreed with him. Eventually, he found he didn't need empathy: he could just order people to do what he wanted. 

It was not just Mussolini's mind that had degraded for lack of exercise. It was the whole chain of command of the Italian government that had degraded in a way that reminds the sentence by Terry Pratchett about the collective intelligence of a group. By the 1930s, the process had led to situation that you could describe as "government by the whims of the boss."

It all became painful clear when, in 1940, Mussolini ordered the invasion of Greece in winter, across the Epirus mountains, with woefully insufficient and poorly equipped troops. We have the minutes of the government reunions that preceded the attack on Greece: it is clear it was the Duce alone who decided to attack and the date of the attack. Nobody dared to oppose his decision. On the contrary, generals competed with each other to state that it could be done easily. A classic effect of groupthink. Disaster ensued, as it should have been expected. 

I think that the key to the whole story is the excerpt from Ciano's diary where he describes how Mussolini rejoiced at the thought of Italians freezing to death. This is not just incompetency or stupidity, it is one of the few moments in Ciano's diary where we see true evil appearing. You might want to picture in your head Mussolini standing near the window of his office, maybe close to a warm radiator, while he rubs his hands together and smiles in a Satanic smile like the character of a comic book. (you may add also the classic Satanic laughter that goes as Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!)

My impression is that, while losing empathy, Mussolini was also gradually losing the moral bonds that keep normal people from being truly evil. He had discovered that not only he could order to kill foreigners as he pleased, but that the more foreigners he caused to be killed, the more he became popular in Italy. So, he proceeded to expand this strategy until, unfortunately for him (and for many others), the idea backfired. Badly. After that a half million Italians had died because of Mussolini's mistakes, you know how he ended, hanged upside-down. Nobody should rejoice at the death of anyone, but it seems that the universe has ways to punish one's worst mistakes.

Mussolini's case is just one that's close enough to our times that we have abundant documentation about it. It is also sufficiently remote that we can discuss it from a reasonably objective viewpoint. The question is: why is it so easily for governments to be hijacked by evil/incompetent/dumb leaders? Unfortunately, that may occur much more often than we would like to think. Are some of our leaders rejoicing when large numbers of mere commoners die because of their actions, just as Mussolini did? I can think of at least one example of one of our prominent politicians rejoicing at the violent death of the leader of a foreign country, and you probably understand whom I mean. 

And what could be the effect on a president's mind of the capability of killing anyone, anywhere, by a drone strike without the need to provide a justification or fearing retaliation? Can you imagine that drone strikes are decided by people who rub their hands together while producing Satanic smiles? We won't know how evil these people really are until much after they are gone, if ever.

The Corona Crisis: Fighting the Authoritarian Response

At least 20 thousand people (some say many more) marched in Berlin on August 1st 2020 to protest against the restrictions imposed by governments against the Covid-19 epidemic. Unanimously branded as "criminals," "neo-nazis," and "idiots" by the Western media, their presence is nevertheless an indication of a growing movement of resistance against the authoritarian crackdown in Europe.

As I am writing, the Covid epidemics has been over for at least two months in Europe. In the US, instead, the epidemic is over only in the large cities while it is still ongoing in the central states, only recently showing signs of abating. The result is a different perception of the situation. In the US, the progressive movement is still trying to use the epidemic as an anti-Trump weapon, accusing the president of not having been authoritarian enough and not having imposed even more draconian measures. In Europe, instead, the public is starting to perceive that nobody is dying of Covid-19 anymore and that their governments are terrorizing them about a threat that has ceased to exist. It is still an embryonic movement, routinely demonized and criminalized by the government propaganda machine, but it is clearly rising. The recent manifestation in Berlin of tens of thousands of people (perhaps many more) is a clear indication of this trend. Earlier on, we had seen something similar in Italy.

You will be probably baffled by this interpretation of the Berlin demonstration, especially if you live in the US, or if you routinely watch TV or read newspapers in a Western country. But there is a logic in everything that happens and the general perception of the coronavirus is rapidly changing. As an example of this growing interpretation of the situation, let me report, below, a few paragraphs from the book "The End of the Megamachine" by Fabian Scheidler, at present in press in the English version.

Scheidler is seeing well beyond the current epidemic crisis: he sees the disintegration of the whole system appearing, among other thing, as the loss of trust that derives from the routine habit of lying taken by the rulers of society. As I already noted, an empire of lies cannot stand, at least not for long. And the disintegration seems to be accelerating its pace: there are dark times ahead. I suggest that you carefully consider these thoughts by Scheidler. And if you can, do read his book: it is eye-opening.

The Structural Irrationality of the System

The corona crisis has revealed a structural schizophrenia of the system: While governments resorted to extreme means to contain Covid-l9 -—even a temporary shutdown of the economy -- virtually nothing has happened in relation to the climate crisis for four decades. There are no binding reduction targets that are even remotely compatible with the two~degree target, nor is there a serious plan for the rapid restructuring of infrastructure and the economy. This is despite the overwhelming  scientific consensus that accelerating climate chaos is many orders of magnitude more dangerous than the corona virus. Our political systems respond to short-term crises with panic and ad hoc measures, while long-term disruptions are de facto ignored -- apart from occasional soapbox speeches. The highly praised "knowledge society" proves in this situation to be a chimera: for it is precisely here, where prognostic knowledge is the most relevant for the survival of humankind, namely in the climate issue, that it remains politically inconsequential.

The end of truth and the Instability of Ideological Power

While it is evident that representative democracies in many parts of the world are becoming increasingly unstable, there is at the same time no reason to assume that the authoritarian structures that partly replace them would be any more stable in the long run. The constantly changing legitimization for the state of emergency also give them a certain volatility. Declaring war, sometimes against terror. sometimes against a virus, then again against migrants, wears off over time. Changing the enemy too frequently is irritating and exhausting -- especially since for most people, fighting all those enemies in no way brings about any improvement in their own living conditions. On the contrary, the social downward spiral continues on. Permanent political stability can hardly be achieved in this way.

Added to this is the growing fragility of ideological power. Many authoritarian governments that have come to power since 2010 have propped up their rule on the targeted dissemination of fake news, both through social media and through major television stations and newspapers that are in line with their political ideology. Now, lying is nothing unusual tor governments, even in relatively democratic countries. It is part of everyday political life, and it is always the task of a vigilant public and press to expose these lies. Dictatorships that violently suppress a critical public have always bolstered their power with propaganda. What is new about the current situation, however, is that the very concept of truth is being shaken. And this for several reasons. One is the established media's massive loss of credibility, and the other is the systematic attack on the sciences,

....

If it becomes apparent that this supposedly rational civilization is completely blind to the most important information essential for survival, then the governors of this system face a serious dilemma. either they have to attack the sciences head-on and deny their findings, thus exposing rationality, one of the foundations of this civilization as a myth, or they react appropriately to the research and immediately begin a deep socio-ecological restructuring of society. But since the second option seems too terrible, even unthinkable in the logic of the system, the only last result is to sacrifice the claim of rationality. And this is exactly what the political leaders of the new Right, such as Jair Bolsonaro or Donald Trump, instinctively do. The success of their attack on scientific authorities is fed by the widespread feeling that the majority of people have long been systematically lied to by the “establishment." This impression cannot be dismissed: didn't Neo-liberal economists spread false prognoses and promises with their pseudo-science for decades, thus exposing society to downright plunder? Have not many of the politicians and media who complain about fake news today themselves justified wars of aggression (for example against Iraq) with fake news? Hasn't mankind been steered into one economic and ecological crisis after the other by a self-adulating establishment that touts itself as having no alternative?

The deep insecurity that has arisen from these experiences in large parts of the population can easily be diverted into anger towards scapegoats. It is a politically extremely clever move by the new right to choose science for this purpose, because it kills two birds with one stone: on the one hand it can distract from systemic issues, and on the other hand it can remove obstacles to further expansion of the economic machinery. This is why scapegoating science is so attractive to powerful economic groups

But this strategy also means that there is no longer any foundation for truth. With the rationality viewed as a facade, any lasting trust in a firmly established order collapses. We know from history that a certain ideological stability, with a frame of reference generally accepted and not called into question, is essential for social systems to endure. But where is this stability to come from when more and more people feel that order in the world is eroding and that there is no longer any criterion for truth,, except the loudest megaphone? 

.....

In this respect, the Corona crisis and the biopolitical state of emergency have replaced the war on terror, which had already lost a great deal of its power of persuasion as a reason for legitimizing authoritarian measures for a certain period oi time. The rhetoric in both cases is astonishingly similar: Heads of government such as Emmanuel Macron (France), Pedro Sanchez, (Spain), Giuseppe Conte (Italy) and Donald Trump have declared a ‘war against the virus". "The enemy", said President Macron, ‘is there, invisible, intangible, and it is advancing. This requires our total mobilization. We are at war." The pattern is familiar: The nation must pull together in the face of a treacherous and ruthless enemy, putting aside internal conflicts, civil rights and all other issues in general.

It is not a matter of questioning whether states should take protective measures in the face of a pandemic like Corona. However, it is obvious that, beyond sensible strategies to prevent infection, the crisis has been used by many governments to reinforce the already discernible tendency towards authoritarian structures. The measures in 2020 have made it clear to all citizens that their democratic rights can be very quickly withdrawn by the state. For many politically sensitive contemporaries. it was as if a window had suddenly been opened through which the icy wind of a rising dictatorship passed for a moment. Even if this window is successfully closed again: We now know what it could feel like when our rights are suspended overnight (an experience that people in many countries of the global South have already had more than enough). The enemy to be fought, the catastrophe which makes any means legitimate, will probably be different. But the mode of shutdown has already been practiced, including house arrest, bans on assembly and demonstration, total surveillance, control of social contacts, and denunciation of dissenters.

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Are Face Masks Useful Against the Epidemic? Political and Scientific Questions

Are face masks useful against the Covid-19 epidemic? As obvious, it depends on various factors: the WHO says there is no scientific evidence of a benefit from the generalised use of masks by "healthy people in the community." But it is also stated that masks are beneficial when used in special conditions. Here, I tell you what I found about the scientific literature, but first I'll discuss how people tend to approach the problem according to their political views.

This is a modified version of a post that appeared in Italian on "Effetto Cassandra"


The Covid-19 epidemic is winding down in Italy, just like everywhere in Europe. The data indicate that the average mortality in most countries has been below average during the past three weeks, at least, and the curve shows no signs of picking up again. In Italy, there are still a few scattered cases, mostly in Northern Italy, but the numbers are minuscule. On all counts, the epidemic is over.

As a consequence, the use of face masks is not mandatory anymore in most regions of Italy, except inside shops, buses, and other crowded places. I expected that people walking in the streets would gladly shed their masks and enjoy the fresh air of these last weeks of spring, but many didn't. An informal measurement that I made during the past few days shows that if you take a walk in Florence you'll see a good 30% of the people still wearing masks tightly fitted on their faces. Another 30%-40% wear the mask loose on their face, leaving free the nose and often also the mouth. The rest don't wear masks at all.

Curiously, wearing or not wearing the mask seems to be linked to political opinions. In the US, it has been noted that the use of masks is more widespread in "blue states" than in "red states," those supporting Trump. Even more surprisingly, the mortality in red states is lower than in blue states (of course, that's not necessarily linked to the use of masks).

In Italy, things seem to be similar. I have no statistical data, but from what I read and what I see, I can tell you that left-oriented people are in favor of masks, whereas right-oriented ones are not. As it happens more or less everywhere, every issue discussed on social media soon becomes political with two opposite and incompatible opinions. It also happened with masks and extreme opinions are the rule. I received a comment to a post of mine that went as "If we don't wear masks we'll all die." Then, a well-known right-wing member of the Italian parliament, Mr. Vittorio Sgarbi, aired an emotional speech in which he maintained that "Masks are not only useless, they are harmful!"

For a discussion of why most people just can't approach this issue from a rational/data-oriented viewpoint, you can see this post by Chuck Pezhensky. Here, I am trying to do the currently undoable: examine the subject from a rational viewpoint. This approach has already caused someone to shout at me on Facebook "you are an abhorrent negationist" when I stated that things were not so bad as described in the media. But so is life and let me try to tell you the results of a search I made about masks on scientific literature. Just a quick disclaimer: I don't pretend to be a medical doctor, but I do pretend to be able to examine and analyze data. It is my job (*).


To begin with, what is the main route for the transmission of these viruses? On this point, you can read a recent review (in Italian) that summarizes what we know. To go more in-depth in the matter, you can read a hugely interesting article by Shaman and others. It is not very recent (2010) but it provides a complete description of how respiratory diseases diffuse and about their seasonal nature.

From these and other articles and documents, we can conclude that the main vector of the epidemic is the cloud of "droplets" emitted when infected people breath, cough, or sneeze. Instead, the so-called "fomites", particles that stand on solid surfaces and infect by contact, play a marginal role. But it seems logical that diseases affecting the respiratory system are transmitted mainly through the respiratory tract.

At this point, we need to understand how and under what conditions these "droplets" spread and reach other people. Here, the story becomes fascinating. It is clear that the droplets produced by sneezing, those visible to the naked eye, are basically harmless since they quickly fall to the ground. If that was the only problem, we wouldn't need masks at all. But smaller particles, those below a micron (millionth of a meter), are much more effective as vectors. The term "aerosol" is used for a suspension of these particles. You can find a very interesting clip on this matter at this link.

The measurements show how these particles remain airborne for a long time indoors and spread even at a distance of several meters. In practice, an aerosol may saturate a closed space and that makes social distancing useless. Not only that, but their persistence depends on the absolute humidity of the environment. In dry environments (a typical indoor condition), droplets partially evaporate, become even smaller, and the virus remains airborne for longer times. The opposite happens in humid environments.

These characteristics explain why influenza is a typical seasonal disease, as Shaman and others explain well. In summer, the absolute humidity is higher, and therefore the particles forming aerosols may grow in size and fall to the ground. It helps that people keep the windows open longer, which makes the aerosols for ventilation disappear quickly. The ultraviolet rays of the sun also help a lot, but of course only outdoors.

At this point, the question is whether the masks block the emission of aerosols. The answer is " in part, yes." One problem is that there are so many types of masks and that people often don't wear them correctly. But we can say that, in general, any mask -- even a simple damp cloth -- will block at least a fraction of the small droplets that generate aerosols -- you can see that effect here.

So, is wearing mask sufficient to have an effect on the diffusion of the epidemic? It seems that the answer is positive. A recent study by Leffer et al. shows that there exists a correlation between the use of face masks and the speed of diffusion of the Covid-19  epidemic. That's to be taken with some caution because it is difficult to disentangle the many parameters affecting the diffusion pattern, but it makes sense. Also the recent study by Chu et al. confirms that face masks reduce the transmission of the virus.

On the basis of these data, I would infer that the place where it is easiest to get infected is at home, where you often find yourself in poorly ventilated and dry rooms, especially in winter. From that, you could deduct that locking people in their apartments may not have been a good idea and, indeed, Leffer et al. find no evidence that the lockdown had any effect in slowing down the spread of the epidemic. But for the moment we do not have enough data on this point.

Now we can summarize.

1. The virus is transmitted mainly as an aerosol in indoor and poorly ventilated areas, in winter. In these conditions, social distancing is of little use.
2. In these environments, masks can help a lot, but it would be better to ventilate rooms as much as possible and try to keep them moist. It is even better to stay outdoors as much as possible, exposing yourself to the sun.
3. In conditions where there is no crowding and there is no evidence of the presence of infected people, masks are not needed. This is what the WHO says in their recommendations.
4. Most people will ignore the above points ad behave according to their political orientation. 

And this is what I found. If you know more than me or have different data, please feel free to comment. In science, nothing is ever carved in stone, you can and you should change your mind when new data become available.

__________________________________________

(*) About the right to speak on scientific matters, let me cite again Chuck Pezhensky: 

"One of the reasons I fervently believe our current society in the U.S. is collapsing is the loss of noblesse oblige — the idea that those of us that are better off in some definable way should help those who are less fortunate. I view my role as a full professor as one where I am supposed to think about complex and complicated things for the common good, just like a rich person is supposed to build housing developments for the poor."

The Right-Wing Steamroller: First Trump in the US, then Bolsonaro in Brazil, now Salvini in Italy..... No, wait! Salvini was Defeated!!

A Reflection on the Defeat of the Italian League in the Recent Regional Elections.

The right-wing League has been defeated in the regional elections of yesterday in the "Emilia-Romagna" in Italy. It was a key region, traditionally held by the left. The leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, had made an all-out effort to win there in the wake of the weakening of the traditional political parties, but he failed. It was not just a local event, it shows the weakness of a whole propaganda system and it opens up the question of how social media affect democracy. It is just the beginning of a long story that we'll see unraveling in the future. (BTW, note in the image the Catholic rosary held by Mr. Salvini, part of a hodgepodge of modern and ancient ideas he used for his electoral propaganda).

Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Italian League, had focused his electoral efforts on Emilia-Romagna, the Center-North region that was a traditional stronghold of the Italian left. In the wake of the crisis of the left-wing parties in Italy, it seemed possible, even easy, for the League to win there. That would have been a big blow for the central government and would probably have forced new national elections. Then, the League would have won hands-down.

It was as good as any battle plan. But the best plans of mice and men (and of Mr. Salvini) tend to gang agley. Mr. Salvini turned out to be an amateur in the role of the local Napoleon: he overstretched his forces and he was defeated. Now he is facing an uncertain retreat that he won't probably survive, politically.

Of course, the vagaries of local politics in Italy are only of modest interest for the rest of the world (and even for Italy). Yet, I think we all can learn something from the recent Italian elections. What we have seen was an unexpected failure of the recently developed propaganda techniques that brought right-wing parties to victory almost everywhere in the world.

In terms of electoral propaganda, Matteo Salvini had done everything "by the book" to prepare for the elections. His propaganda machine goes under the name of "La Bestia" (The Beast) and it has been operating for a few years in the way pioneered earlier on by Silvio Berlusconi and that brought Donald Trump to the presidency in the US.

The idea is to target the lowest cultural level of the population. Use scare tactics, find enemies of all sorts, demonize them, then promise safety in the hands of a right-wing government. As "ministro degli interni" (ministry of the interior) at the national level, Mr. Salvini had waged a feverish hate campaign against immigrants, communists, leftists, intellectuals, etc. Then, La Bestia used technologies of targeted propaganda on social media, the same pioneered earlier on by Cambridge Analytics. Again, all done in a very aggressive manner, targeting the most sensible fraction of social media users.

It didn't work. The resistance of the left was remarkable: it was the same surprise that Napoleon must have experienced when he found that he couldn't beat the Russians at Borodino. The left in Italy is commonly seen as a spent force but, evidently, it is not, not completely, at least. But, possibly, Mr. Salvini has undone himself by exaggerating with his electoral tactics. Too much screaming, too much hate, too many threats. Mr. Salvini surely has a certain capability of endearing himself with the least cultured fraction of the population but as a leader, well, you could say he looks more like a bus driver. He never had a job, never worked for a living, failed to obtain a university degree. People perceived that the leader of the League really had no plan other than taking power and then, probably, screaming even louder.

One specific mistake that Mr. Salvini may have done was to play down the climate-environmental problem. He did his best to avoid the subject and when he was forced to face it, he tended to slip away using jokes or sneers. He also failed to comment on the general tendency of his supporters to take an aggressive anti-science position, to say nothing about the barrage of insults they directed at Greta Thunberg. Also here, Salvini gave the impression of having no ideas and no plans. He didn't realize that it is no more possible for a politician to ignore climate change.

So, we saw the first defeat of a set of propaganda techniques that seemed to be invincible with Trump, Bolsonaro, and the others. At the same time, we saw the complete defeat and the disappearance of the "5-star" movement (M4S). The M5S was the result of another attempt to use the Internet in the political process. It was based on the use of a platform called "Russeau" that tried to create a shared decisional process -- in some respects. it was the opposite approach of "The Beast."  Like a giant Rube Goldberg machine, the M5S decisional system worked well until it ceased to work.

Surely, the Beast, the Russeau, and other electoral methods will evolve and change on the basis of the experience gained in this and other elections. But, if the Internet is generating a remarkable revolution on the methods used to win elections, it doesn't seem to help much in what is to be done afterward. This problem is what doomed the M5S and would probably doom the League, in case they were to take power in Italy. With all our powerful communication technologies and models, all politics is still based on 4-5 word slogans: "Make America (or Italy) Great Again." A fine idea, but how exactly?