Influencing in the short term is relatively easy, but consolidating ideas in a society requires time and persistence to establish concepts, mental frameworks that people end up seeing as something normal and common sense. Mental frames, which linguist George Lakoff theorized about back in the 1980s, are one of the main persuasion strategies. They condition the voter's vision of reality. Reality and discourse, which go hand in hand in politics. The latest example, this week: the Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, in her criticism of restaurants that close late, showed herself to be the interventionist left, although she defended labor rights in restaurants; On the back, the response of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, was the libertarian right, in defense of “the streets full of life and freedom”, which also create jobs.
There are two mental frameworks that are making their way in Spain: the left, scolding and interventionist, boring and spoilsport; the right, libertarian and rebellious. Is that so? Have left and right exchanged some flags?
“The left has been given the message that anything it proposes in terms of regulation is seen as an imposition on people's lives. It already happened when Minister Alberto Garzón said that we had to eat less meat and a scandal broke out, like now with bar hours. But the criticism is not coherent. In Spain we have a society, like all European ones, that is quite regulated,” indicates Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, professor of Political Science at the Carlos III University (UC3).
In his opinion, if the left is giving the image of being boring, it is because it is. “If we want to stop climate change, we have no choice but to introduce restrictions on personal choices such as the consumption of gasoline or meat. The left has a scolding or excessively regulatory image, but it cannot not have it, because the other is frivolous, irresponsible,” he adds.
But politics is also a story. If the voter identifies with the discourse of his party, if he feels comfortable in the mental framework that is proposed, he will tend to reject what does not fit there. The left may not be funny, but does this interventionist image favor it among its voters?
“The left fails because it fails to convey that the freedom of the right is frivolous because it plays with the common good,” emphasizes Sánchez-Cuenca. Issues such as public health, the environment, and workers' rights are typical of the left and inevitably require interventionism that is annoying, she adds. There you cannot let your guard down because it would be too painful a concession. However, she suggests they could compromise on issues such as inclusive language, which bothers many people because it interferes with informal daily communication, she stresses.
Another factor is the moral superiority of the left, to which this analyst dedicated a book. “They always think that they understand the world better than the right, which has a superficial conception of things. They are too full of reason, so much so that sometimes people do not understand them,” he maintains.
Regarding the rebellion displayed by the right, he points out that it is a reaction to the generalized common sense that prevailed in advanced societies between the sixties and nineties, more inclined to the left. “The rebellion has changed sides, and that makes the left look like a conservative, puritanical, scolding group,” he says.
Mental frames are so effective that politicians around the world use them to influence public opinion. The right has been holding onto the flag of freedom for decades, but with a particular meaning, as sociologist Josep Maria Antentas, professor at the Ramon Llull University (URL), warns. “In the 20th century the right could associate capitalism with freedom and socialism with lack of freedom, but theirs was market freedom, selfish,” he says.
With the crisis of 2008, the credibility of that neoliberal discourse was damaged. “In recent years, the right has taken up the fight against what is politically correct, feminism, environmentalism, to channel the discomfort of a sector with a somewhat false rebellion, to have a slightly more offensive ideological project. It has had to be reconverted: it plays with identity fears and tries to exploit that discomfort towards more individualistic logics. Ayuso’s freedom speech seeks to exploit that individualism,” he details.
Why doesn't the left talk about freedom? “It has been a long time since the left has had a solid socioeconomic project for social transformation. You may have great ideals, but that translates into timid proposals. On the more institutional left there is fear of challenging the economic model and its basic foundations, and somehow it ends up remaining in a managerial left, which is no longer the bearer of great flags of change,” he underlines.
Without being able to substantially improve the lives of citizens in matters such as employment or housing, the left loses strength in its defense of freedom. And it opens the door, says Antentas, for the discourse of right-wing rebellion to have some success.
