Milan – The right moment I’m writing this piece is in Milan is 5:30 PM and 11:30 AM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. CNN has just projected Joe Biden – the youngest man to be elected at the senate 50 years ago – to become the oldest 46th President of the United States of America and Kamala Harris, the first black south Asian woman to become Vice President of the country. After an impressively long race through a pandemic and the enormous social tensions that exploded in America with “Black Lives Matter” caused by the murder of George Floyd.
This victory arrives four years after the unexpected rise of Donald Trump, global populism, social media manipulation, and fake news domination. Some weeks before the 2016 Us Election Day, we – at C41 – decided to print our third issue, with a series of artworks by Japanese artist Kensuke Koike, representing the outgoing President Obama and the two new contenders Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. And after a long debate within our editorial team, we decided to cover the artwork representing Donald Trump.
It was a compelling image that – we knew – would be the bearer of a powerful historical and social meaning. In a certain sense, it was. The issue went soon, sold-out and was nominated for Cover Of The Year by Cover Junkie. One copy of the issue became part of a pivotal exhibition at the London Design Museum called “Hope to Nope – Graphics and politics 2008- 2018.” It was the first sign that we were aware of what was going on and able to represent that feeling with a different and independent eye. In the meantime, it was the beginning of a new era in politics, media, and communication dominated by cynicism, fake news, anti-scientific thinking, data mystification, and people manipulation. In fact, as never before from the post-war period, we have seen freedom and reason placed under the constant attack of a reductionist and irrational way of thinking, based on lies, conjectures, and a suspicion culture that has never been based on factual justification. The hate speech combined with the diffusion in social networks of the most various conspiracy theories has put political institutions, relations between countries, and, above all, the notion itself of a civil public debate at risk as never before. Ever as in recent years, the so-called free world has been so close to seeing centuries of struggles, claims, battles, and conquests being so much threatened by trivial and regressive forces.
As if this were not enough, humanity and the American people have increasingly reached the stage where the challenges of climate change, economic and social instability, racism, xenophobia, women’s empowerment and homophobia, and the crisis – also ecological – of the COVID-19 pandemic are becoming more and more acute. In the face of these epochal challenges, we have witnessed an unseen polarization, throughout the free world, between evolutionary drives and irrational forces, which have made fear, suspicion, and hatred their fundamental nourishment.
All of this, now, seems to be just a nightmare from which we have woken up. But thinking that all of this is over would be a terrible mistake. Cause he is just the symptom of something terrible that exists and urges into our society due to a long historical, economic, and social process started decades ago. A process that contributed to generate a colossal divide between key cities’ inhabitants and the people living in rural areas, between those who were advantaged by the change and those who were unaware victims of it. But it is also the consequence of how social networks, algorithm-based communication, and audience profiling, disconnected from fact-checking, could contribute to hacking the public debate, creating more and more social media bubbles and polarization.
In this unprecedented scenario, an “old young man” called Joe Biden, together with a black south Asian woman named Kamala Harris, started a long race that in a first moment pushed them to compete with each other, even roughly, to become then the best political duo to give new hope to the USA and to the world. Joe Biden was considered not so charismatic to compete against Donald Trump. Many of you could even remember what Kanye West said: “America needs special people that lead. Bill Clinton? Special. Joe Biden’s not special.” And indeed, they weren’t wrong in a certain sense. Biden hasn’t got the competitive fierce of Trump or the rhetoric ability of Barack Obama, but he is the right guy, a guy who made perseverance and resilience his mantra. He passed through political failure and success, deep grief and mourning in his life, but he has always found a way to “keep the faith” and finding a unique way to empathize with people, even political rivals. This particular attitude has earned him the nickname “Amtrak Joe” and was the essence of a campaign that drove him to be the most voted man in American history. But the story of Joe and Kamala, to me, is more than a political story. It is more than the US return to decency andwise political leadership. It is, at first sight, the proof that perseverance pays, that competence pays, that hard work pays, that being a nice, good, loyal person is the way to succeed. It is the evidence that America could continue to be the land of opportunity beyondrace, color, gender, and religious prejudice. And the proof that age is just a number.
This is also the resounding success of a transversal movement that has been able to bring to vote more people than ever. Even by those who spent their professional and public lives far from political engagement for decades, the participation was massive. We saw the young generation committed as never before, together with actors, NBA players, athletes, fashion brands and media companies to promote participation.
In this exciting story of determination and redemption, other minor stories tend to the legends, such as those of visionaries and fighters like Stacey Abrams. After losing the Georgia governor’s race in 2018 in an electoral process characterized by the vote’s suppression, Abrams didn’t surrender. She formed an organization to register and empower voters, wrote a book about voter suppression, and co-produced an Amazon Prime documentary, “All In: the Fight for Democracy.” Her vision in interpreting the demographic change in Georgia and her relentless work led Joe Biden to get more than 2.4 million votes in a Southern Republican state that hasn’t elected a Democratic candidate since Bill Clinton.
What is happening right now in the USA is the sign of a new season of renewed political and social commitment, but also the proof that only when we take care of our freedom and of our civil rights we can prevent fear from prevailing over hope, prevarication over rights, bullying over reason, hatred over love. For decades in Europe and the US, we gave our right to vote and participate for granted. We dedicated our lives and our time to our jobs, our families, and our personal interests, but as we saw in America, and as we see worldwide, the challenges we are called to face in this historical moment cannot be met without a new awareness. The consciousness that our vote counts. That our voice can be heard and that if we want it to be heard, we have to trust in rules, non-violent participation, and hard work.
In this moment of change, we have also to be aware of what communication means in this new era. Ask for more fact-checking and more responsibility from traditional broadcasters, social media, and digital giants such as Google, Twitter, or Facebook. On the other side, as the COVID 19 taught us, we have to give ourselves the time to disconnect and slow down, rediscover what really counts for us, our beloved ones, and our communities. This is the time to move from the instantaneousness rediscovering the pleasure of extended narratives. A time in which we have to give ourselves a chance and the right to read, study, deepen our knowledge, check information to empower our conscience. Because the fight for freedom is a never-ending work and it begins in our daily life.
“We know that the voter intimidation is on the playbook, but we also know that the voter determination is what wins elections.”
Stacey Abrams