A mobilizing illusion is what guides life, gives meaning to every day, illuminates, infuses energy and reasons to fight and move on. But what is its source, where does it come from? Is it a political term? Is it the personal heritage of an individual? Is it expressed in the son’s smile or in the propaganda printed on the wall?

For some, the mobilizing illusion evokes images of masses carrying flags and chanting to the sound of partisan slogans, clapping crowds, caudillos, messianic gestures, promises and lies. About speeches in which mediocrity is the rule. The mobilizing illusion understood in this way by more and more people presupposes the expropriation of what was once a very personal property and implies its transformation into an instrument of power. It is a renunciation of dignity. Propaganda was a great agent of this transformation. And polls were tools that explore where politics is going, for articulating proposals and simplifying diversity, for strengthening dependence on the state.

Everyone’s hope turned to the public, entangled in election debates and toxic party speeches, inserted into paternalism, reduced to topics decided by the last bureaucrat and the first caudillo, is perhaps the greatest transformation the world has experienced in our days. And this is the reason that explains the success of populism: propaganda and discourse allow personal illusion to be supported by the caudillo; they make individual projects turn into politics, and the responsibility of every life becomes a matter of electoral conjuncture. Then, education, employment, health, sickness, sun and rain, harvest and profit, will be issues of the state. Assets and the future will be a matter for the Government, i.e. representatives. This strengthens dependence and affirms submission and the latest version of Serbianness. So people sign a blank check and alienate the future.

What is its source, where does it come from? Is it a political term? Is it the personal heritage of an individual?

This political expropriation of illusions has been the thesis of totalitarianisms of all times. An extreme example of the appropriation of privacy by illusions and hopes is the Castro regime in Cuba. There, no personal project can be separated from the fate and slogans of its leaders; no plan can ignore condition or planning; no trip depends on the sheer whim or capabilities of the traveler. No paper is turned without permission: this is the freedom that so many “intellectuals” crave. And what will we say about Venezuela and Nicaragua? All, systems of expropriation of the right to dream and the right to wrong. And the right to be a person with your dignity, your convictions and your doubts, your passions and your convictions.

In the midst of the whirlwind we are experiencing, it is necessary to remember the illusions that mobilize, push and strengthen us. Do you, reader, have an intimate, non-transferable mobilizing illusion that, despite everything, persists as a personal legacy? Can we still protect these illusions? (OR)