The mayor of Nice wanted to claim, during a press conference, an initial assessment after three years of his term, “a comprehensive policy, a policy aimed at improving the quality of life of each individual in our city,” he said in the presence of his deputies Benoit Kandel, Christian Tordo, and Philippe Pradal: “Today, we have the necessary hindsight to measure its impact. Today, all these measures must be known to everyone.” This suggests a new information campaign with the slogan “+ more purchasing power for a better quality of life”. What to say… We know well that knowing how to do without letting people know is worth nothing, so…
“A city is also the well-being of its inhabitants. I did not wait for the national debate to take the necessary initiatives to improve the daily lives of my constituents. Since 2008, I have placed the purchasing power of the people of Nice at the heart of my action,” declared the Deputy Mayor of Nice.
Forgotten is the liberal economy which was nevertheless the guiding line of the government of which he was a part, Christian Estrosi once again chose the themes of the “social and solidarity economy” to illustrate, with an unusual style of a housewife listing small figures one after the other, the benefits of his action on behalf of the constituents (see the box).
Far from the ministerial splendor and the gilding of Parisian salons, the page seems turned and it’s a return to the “real” life (as he likes to say) of the provinces, the “lord” of Nice knows that in the field, one only exists through action.
As Hegel said: “one must know how to choose the direction of history” and Christian Estrosi knows that politics is played on an emotional level much more than a rational one. Times are tough and people need to be reassured. That is why, continued the mayor of Nice, “no one should be left on the side of the road… and those who need it must be able to benefit from these measures.”
Of course, we know that one must not confuse impressions with the substance of the statements, but we also know that political consensus, that obscure object of desire, passes through media channels to reach public opinion. On the other hand, “propaganda” as a persuasion strategy is a system of organization that aims to neutralize reason to rely on emotions and imagination. Therefore, we should expect spectacular stagings to reach this imaginary.
To conclude, what if Shakespeare was right when he had Hamlet say: “Nothing is either good or bad in itself, everything depends on what we think of it?”…
- The first recognized case of propaganda organization is that of the Catholic Church, which in 1622 created the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide to spread the Catholic faith in the world.
