The Mediatization of Political Personae, 1880s–1930s

Abstract

It is no exaggeration to state that interactions between politics and media turned more complex in recent years. Unidirectional assumptions about the relationship of democracy and mediatization have been challenged. The modes of mediated politics established throughout the twentieth century are obviously under pressure. The nowadays ubiquitous but equally vague term ‘populism’ captures some of the underlying dynamics. At the core of the term’s genealogy is a bewilderment with the rise of a type of political strongman, who belongs to an older age of authoritarian politics yet simultaneously thrives in the modern world of social media and media-generated ‘realities’. The dynamics fuelling the careers of politicians such as Jair Bolsonaro, Victor Orbán and Donald Trump, specific as they are, constitute a new mode of personalized politics and may be seen as extreme— but in this sense telling—examples of broader changes in how politics is mediated. A striking feature of these personalized politics are leaders’ attempts to connect directly with their publics through media, like the yearly call-in show (‘direct line’) bringing Russian citizens in a more-or-less staged dialogue with Vladimir Putin. More recently, Donald Trump’s Twitter-based presidency evoked discussion and disbelief: not since the Italian fascist Benito Mussolini mounted his Roman balcony had a national leader merged so completely with a communication platform, Nicholas Carr judged. In particular, the Trump presidency triggered new interest in personalized politics and the fusion of entertainment and politics—the overarching theme of this special issue. A less evident explanation of Trumpism has discussed the American president as a product of the wrestling universe: What appears chaotic, improvised and grossly amateuristic actually follows simple but suggestive narratives—you have to stick to your role— and thus displays a certain professionalism. The link between Trump and wrestling works on two levels. First, the direct links, i.e. the connections of Trump to the wrestling world, a scene of white men among whom Trump figures himself—starring in the Hall of Fame or sharing a video of him ‘beating up’ a CNN journalist. More relevant to the questions we focus on in this issue is a second layer, the structural intermingling of reality and fiction, with wrestling catering to an audience that believes in something it recognizes as show (both the fights and bizarre stories