This is a satirical character created by British comedian Jon Harvey as an intergalactic space warrior. Originally known as Count Binface or Count Trashcan Face, his origin dates back to 2017, when Harvey ran in the UK general elections against Theresa May under the name Lord Buckethead. Reinvented as Trashcan Face he achieved his greatest electoral success in the Clacton by-election: 9,455 votes, second place, and 26.9% of the vote. These elections were comfortably won by the authoritarian leader Nigel Farage with 63.3% in a context where most major parties boycotted the election considering it a farce.
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He is neither the first nor the last in the long tradition of satirical candidates who serve as an early indicator of protest votes. In Brazil in 1988 the chimpanzee Tião obtained more than 400,000 votes in Rio de Janeiro. In Canada there was a party whose spiritual leader was a rhinoceros: Cornelius , with whom they claimed that politicians, by nature, were like him: “thick-skinned animals, slow, who move fast when in danger and have big horns in the middle of their face.” In Mexico, the discontent with the PRI was legendary for decades, leading to a popular tradition of writing the name of Mario Moreno Cantinflas on blank ballots. In the US during the 1968 Democratic Party Convention, hit by Vietnam War protests and the countercultural yippie movement, a farm pig was formally nominated for president. Named Pegasus he did exactly the same as politicians: “he fed on garbage, but more transparently.”
When satirical voting grows, it means the traditional system is disconnected from the street
The success of satire is the precursor symptom to the drastic political mutation of the system and the start of a new political cycle. The prophecy was Beppe Grillo as you all well know. The comedian filled squares in the 2000s turning his jokes into the Five Star Movement, a party that capitalized on anger and ended up winning the general elections and governing Italy. There is always a trace of satire. In the Italian case it was the founding of the Steak Party in 1953, echoing in Florence and Rome, whose main promise was to deliver a 450-gram beef steak daily to every citizen. The signs are everywhere. In Germany the editors of the humorous magazine Titanic founded Die PARTEI (the Party) in 2004, achieving two decades later, 1.9% of the votes and two seats in the 2024 European Parliament elections. It is still remembered in France, to give another example, how in 1981 the humorist Michel Coluche ran for president against François Mitterrand and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing obtaining 16% voting intention in polls until his withdrawal due to all kinds of pressure.
Satirical candidates break institutional decorum in a fun way, paving the way for others to build on what has been achieved with even more disruptive political strategies both cognitively and culturally. In the 80s the Queens boy, Donald Trump , was a satirical candidate who did not run until decades later to do so as an outsider within the GOP successfully. These movements must always be paid close attention to. A voter does not choose Count Trashcan Face or a chimpanzee because they believe they will govern, but because the official menu of options seems an insult to intelligence. When satirical voting grows, it indicates that the traditional system is completely disconnected from the street.
The squirrels of Alvise are not satire, but they still remain an early indicator of deep fatigue and polarization in the generation of democracy. Although the massive pool of disenchanted citizens seeking alternative styles, means, and messages is still much larger.
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Our representatives must stop processing a digital, hyperconnected, and polarized reality (the new wine) using the institutional, media, and mental structures of the 20th century (the old wine). Moving away from institutional rigidity in their language, showing radical honesty, vulnerability, and authenticity. Few do it and one of them is Óscar Puente. IH (human intelligence), that purer side, different in each person, versus AI (artificial intelligence) and its digital filter.
Next week
Other cognitive wineskins
Whether intentionally or not, we are adopting in the EU an external operating system in the form of widespread satire and colonization over other cognitive wineskins. Without mediation structures, without parliamentary didactics, everything is becoming a cognitive bombardment that paralyzes and overwhelms us, and which cannot be explained with old democratic views. For that strong and full democracy to return, yes, a “space warrior” is demanded with the empathy and closeness of a real human being against technocracy.
Hawk eye
Presidential dynamic
The EU is being colonized by an American-style and evangelizing presidential dynamic that sharpens ideological simulation. This cognitive battle does not allow Europe to exercise its leadership in a world polarized between the US and China. Those who disdain here the fall of social democracy as a community pillar do not consider the fact that European social matter is not that of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, or the US, all countries, by the way, like Spain, very tied electorally, although now authoritarians dominate.
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