From FIFA to Lacan: the transparence of power

On the 2nd December 2010 FIFA announced the country that will host the FIFA World Cup in 2018. This may seem an unusual place to start to unravel the trends of power - but the reaction to this announcement and to the beginning of the release of 251,287 US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks, gives a hint of a shift in attitudes towards democracy and corruption.

The main candidates for the hosting of the 2018 World Cup - England, Russia, the Netherlands & Belgium and Spain & Portugal - sent to Cape town, South Africa, their representatives to lobby for the assignation of the World Cup. Most notable was England, which sent representatives from the three elite strands of its society: David Cameron on behalf of the government, Prince William on behalf of the monarchy and David Beckham on behalf of popular culture. Interestingly enough, not all of the bidding countries felt the need to do the same. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, for example, decided not to visit the FIFA delegates so as not to interfere with the decision, that, he stipulated, had to be taken ‘in peace and without any outside pressure’.

Putin’s remarks were widely considered by the world’s media to refer to the British The Sunday Times which, weeks before the decision, had reported that two members of FIFA's executive committee had been asking for money in exchange for their support to any bidding country. This report led to both members having their right to vote suspended, although one, the Nigerian delegate Amos Adamu claimed later that his request for $800,000 was necessary to build four football stadiums in Nigeria. Then, days before the host was to be announced, a documentary broadcast by the BBC series Panorama alleged, once again, that corruption and bribery was rife at every layer of FIFA.

On its broadcast on November 29th, the documentary drew criticism from the British press and from the public, who believed that these accusations were unpatriotic and would compromise England’s chances to win the bid. However, on December 2nd, FIFA announced that the 2018 World Cup was going to be held in Russia, and that the following tournament in 2022 was going to be held in Qatar. After hearing these news, the attitudes in the British press and public rapidly changed, to condemn the corruption, which was seen as the reason that their bid had been lost.
As yet, there have been no consequences. Russia and Qatar have kept their spoils, FIFA remains the only, and unchallenged, governing body over world football and the attention of the British public was rapidly diverted to new, impossible dreams. In fact, while the bids - and consequent accusations of corruption - were being discussed in both Cape Town and subversive documentaries, the world press was already busy with a new hot topic: Wikileaks.

Impressive timing. Two emperors getting new clothes at the same time: world diplomacy and world football. For a few weeks, world governments tried to deny everything, condemned Wikileaks as unpatriotic and the cables as dangerously compromising then opted for the silent treatment. Civil society seemed to have found in Julian Assange a new hero for modern times, then quickly realized that he was just another martyr. The only one who said a wise, definitive word on the whole issue was, once again, Vladimir Putin. Commenting over Julian Assange’s detention in a British prison, Russia’s president famously stated: ‘If it is full democracy, then why have they hidden Mr Assange in prison? That's what, democracy?' Then he nominated Julian Assange for the next Nobel Peace Prize.

There is a feeling, sometimes, that overpowers even the mightiest commentator, when put in front of such peaks of hypocrisy. However, as the Italian citizens now know well after 15 years of government under Berlusconi, it is exactly in such moments that words are most necessary. How to comment Putin’s declarations? How to understand the emergence of naked power and corruption at every level of today’s democratically representative decision making?

We could move towards such questions from very far away. From a place where the world cup and Wikileaks count very, very little indeed. Giorgio Agamben noted how the situation of the Jewish population in Germany during Nazism was one of ‘bare life’: having lost their citizenship and their civil rights, the Jews stood in a position where their own life had been stripped of any social legitimacy, to the point of becoming bare life. We could try to apply the same kind of reasoning to the current appearance of what seems to be the core essence of power itself: stripped of any democratic legitimization, power stands today as a paradoxical ‘bare power’, mighty in its independence from any popular approval. This seems to be the case already in countries sunk in a democratic crisis, such as Russia, Italy or Belarus, but it is never predicted that such a trend will not soon take place in democratically sound countries such as Great Britain and France. Nevertheless, the recent measures of austerity enforced everywhere in Europe seem to go towards the redefinition of a State which has lost any other function but that of domination over a territory and repression of any possible dissent.

How is this possible? Even to the most innocent eyes, it seems extremely strange how European populations are willing to accept these changes in the nature of power. However,  such a changing landscape should be considered not only on the level of its factual reality, but also in that of its imaginary substance. It is exactly there that we can find how what Mark Fisher calls the TINA (There Is No Alternative) syndrome affects the social imagination of contemporary European citizens to the point of paralysis: It is true that world diplomacy is founded on a tangle of lies and abuses, but, on the other hand, is there an alternative to it? It is true that the banks have destroyed the world’s economy, but is there an alternative system? And so on. The amazing influence of the TINA syndrome goes to the point, for example, of justifying the monopoly of corporations such as Shell and Esso in the creation and management of new, sustainable energy systems, of multinational banks advising Governments on economic policy. Similarly, it is now widely accepted almost as inevitable that what once was supposed to be the democratic power of governments and international institutions (from FIFA to the WTO) is now quickly turning into a repressive tautology, legitimized only by its own strength.

As an ironic catalyst, it was exactly the emergence of uncontrollable events such as Wikileaks what quickened such a transformation of contemporary power. While it was once the case that capitalism was blamed for having colonized the imagination of the people, to the point of blinding them to its conspicuous wrongdoings, it is now the case that world powers (governments, banks and transnational institutions alike) can fearlessly present themselves in front of the public in all their corruption.

In this sense, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reply to a Columbia University student who asked him about the abuse of human rights on homosexuals in Iran is extremely revealing. ‘There are no homosexuals in Iran,’ he said. Beyond reason and ridicule, there is a space where alternatives are unthinkable and, thus, not included in any sphere of rights. It is from this position that world leaders can show openly what were once believed to be unforgivable faults, but are now increasingly being perceived as merely the 'naughty' side of the existing order. Think of Berlusconi’s sexual obsession, Putin’s mafia connections and methods, etcetera. It is not coincidence that exactly these two leaders were the first to dismiss Wikileaks’ revelations as nothing dangerous to their stability in power.

It is this very twist in the methodology of power that seems to be overshadowing that Chinese model of authoritarian democracy that, for a few years, seemed to be the destiny of the economically developed and developing world. In front of the nakedness of some European powers, China’s use of censorship, for example, looks both dated and a distinct sign of weakness. The Chinese government cares if its subjects openly talk about the crimes, abuses and corruption that happen in its territory: it will launch a cyber-attack against a corporations such as Google as soon as an important political or intelligence official reads unflattering remarks about himself on the web. The new European powers, in contrast, are now experimenting with a type of narcissism that goes beyond the fragile type of Chinese politicians, and that finds its perfect image reflected in the sheer omnipotence of its power, rather than in the cloudy mirror of public opinion.

There is also a psychoanalytical aspect to this decaying importance of public opinion as a legitimizer of political power. Jaques Lacan remarks on the difference between a group of people who silently know a secret, and the moment when someone in that group finally reveals it. The difference, continues Lacan, is that at the moment of revelation it is the big Other which learns the secret that everyone else already knew. The secret becomes part of the conventional interpretation of the world shared by the group, that is, their reality, and therefore starts acting upon it. It seems that the developments currently at the crossing between the nakedness of power and the TINA syndrome, are moving towards the disappearance of the role of public opinion as the big Other. It could be said  that power has simply decided to break its modern bond with public opinion as its legitimizer, and therefore to take on role of the big Other, the actor that creates reality. In other words, public opinion and the people are becoming a non-entity that has lost the ability to tell the big Other anything of its interest, and thus to intervene on reality; or at least not in the democratic way that was typical of the XX century.

Within this landscape, what is the potential for action left to those who hold only nominal power,  the people? If the bond of legitimacy with those in power is broken, how can the people push forward their claims for social change and honest representation? The small example of FIFA and the British public has shown how only two options seem to be available to the people: either to silently accept the blatant corruption of the system of power, in the hope of receiving a grace, or to seek relief in some loud protesting that has no consequences.

But are these really the only two options left? Or is it the case that the system of representation has to be thoroughly rethought, maybe to the extent of arbitrarily removing from power those who hold it today? It is indeed a complex challenge, that of facing naked power with the fully clothed weapons of protests and elections. One that might require considering the option of facing it on its same level of bare brutality. Or, possibly, that will suggest a break away from it, substituting protesting against the solipsistic reality of power with the immediate and unmediated creation of an alternative reality, based on direct decision making and values of social and environmental justice.

Without doubt, it will be the choice between these possible solutions what will define the type of future that we will live in.