This is a satirical character created by British comedian Jon Harvey as an intergalactic space warrior. Originally known as Count Binface or Count Dustbin Face, his origin dates back to 2017, when Harvey ran in the United Kingdom general election against Theresa May under the then name of Lord Buckethead. Reinventing himself as Garbage Can Face, he has achieved his greatest electoral success in the Clacton by-election: 9,455 votes, second position, and 26.9% of the votes. An election that the authoritarian leader Nigel Farage comfortably won with 63.3% in a context where the majority of the majority parties boycotted the election, considering it a farce.
He is not the first nor will he be the last in the long tradition of satirical candidates who serve as a leading indicator of the protest vote. 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 alleged that politicians, by nature, were like him: “thick-skinned, dull animals, who move quickly when they are in danger and have large horns in the middle of their faces.” In Mexico, discontent with the PRI was mythical 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, the countercultural Yippies movement formally nominated a farm pig for president. Named Pegasus, he did exactly the same thing as politicians: “he fed on garbage, but in a more transparent way.”
The success of satire is the previous symptom of the drastic political mutation of the system and the beginning of a new political cycle. The prophecy was Beppe Grillo as you all know well. The comedian filled squares in the 2000s, deriving his jokes from the 5 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, with echoes in Florence and Rome, whose main promise was to deliver a 450-gram beef steak per day to each 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 elections to the European Parliament in 2024. It is still remembered in France, to give another example, how in 1981 the comedian Michel Couluche ran for the presidency against François Mitterrand and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, obtaining a 16% voting intention in the polls until its withdrawal due to pressure of all kinds.
Satirical candidates playfully break institutional decorum, paving the way for others to build on what they have achieved with even more cognitively and culturally disruptive political strategies. In the 80s, the boy from Queens, Donald Trump, was a satirical candidate who did not run until decades later to do so as a successful outsider within the GOP. You always have to pay close attention to these movements. A voter does not choose Count Dustbin Face or a chimpanzee because he believes they will govern, but because the menu of official options seems like an insult to his intelligence. When the satirical vote grows, it indicates that the traditional system is completely disconnected from the street.
Alvise's Squirrels is not satire, but it remains a leading indicator of deep fatigue and polarization in the generation of democracy. Although the massive pool of disenchanted citizens seeking alternative styles, media and messages is still much larger.
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). Already leaving institutional rigidity in its language, showing radical honesty, vulnerability and authenticity. Few do it and one of them is Óscar Puente. IH (human intelligence), that purest side, different in each person, compared to AI (artificial intelligence) and its digital filter.
Next week
Other cognitive wineskins
Without meaning to, or wanting to, we are assuming in the EU an external operating system in the form of generalized satire and colonization on other cognitive wineskins. Without mediation structures, without parliamentary didactics, everything is becoming a cognitive bombardment that paralyzes and overwhelms us, and that cannot be explained with the old democratic perspectives. For that strong and full democracy to return, yes, “a space warrior” is demanded with the empathy and closeness of a real human being in the face of technocracy.
The hawk's eye
Presidential dynamics
The EU is being colonized by a presidentialist dynamic of an American and evangelical nature that sharpens ideologization as a simulacrum. 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 pay attention to the fact that the European social matter is not that of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia or the United States, all of which, by the way, like Spain, are very tied in electoral terms, although now the authoritarians dominate.
