Twitter and Leadership

Among the many confusions of the time-time of transitions, instability and misunderstandings-one of the most notable in the public sphere can explain the erratic behavior of leaders with respect to the opinion of the people. In regard to this sentence I will deal with what people mean; about the opinion I had already pronounced a year ago ("Desdén por la racionalidad", 15.07.18).

The first observation has to do with Western political tradition. People, or the public, has never had a single meaning. For the classical Greeks (Aristotle) ​​one thing was the demos and another the ochlos; Marx distinguished between working class and lumpen; Arendt understood that one thing was the people and another was the populace. Less rigorous distinctions have been made between people and mass. In all cases, the first term is positive and the second negative, and the difference is that we, workers, people, are incorporated in an order, woven of legal and informal norms; while ochlos, lumpen, populace, no. Whichever regime is considered the best, political theory excluded or dissolved this disordered fringe.

The contemporary leveling has put us in the trance of confusing the various social agents. Not all people are public, although Facebook and Twitter give the impression to the contrary. It is not the same Kim Kardashian whose essential feature is the void, that Lady Gaga who sings, acts and reasons about its context. And even so, accepting that there is an imbricated public in a network of norms and relationships, this is not always right (being benevolent). This is where people in management positions can lose their way.

In this order of ideas we could distinguish three types of leaders: the dominant, the demagogue and the leader.

The dominant is imposed on any opinion, marginal or extensive, reasonable or not. This type of leader is the autocratic. The demagogue is mounted on the crest of the wave of opinion and, therefore, abdicates leadership. It acts as an amplifier of exalted, nervous opinion; it is propped up in the darkest, most morbid and demonic aspects of the human spirit. The demagogue exercises the style of populist politicians, even if it is not. The demagogue does not influence, is influenced.

The leader of a liberal democratic society takes the opinion as an indicator of the issues that concern sectors of the population and the type of perceptions and inclinations that a fact arouses. He is able to interpret social emotions and can focus on improving information, raising the quality of discussions, channeling concerns in a reasonable direction and leading heterogeneous opinion forces towards a goal or, at least, compatible goals.

The autocrat forces the tweeter, the demagogue flatters him, the leader leads him.