Strategists and managers of modern populism (siglos xvi-xviii)

Abstract

In the Renaissance and for later centuries, thought giants designed a new society around utopia and structured power in a symbiosis between aristocracy and plebs. They turned the majority (the people) into courtiers, thereby immaterialising tyranny. One of the keys is the implantation of a mentality called today as “populism”, of joyful acceptance of tyranny throughout the Modern Era. In this article we analyze the process, instruments and method of changing. And we find two groups of leaders: one we can define as “strategists”, capable of replacing the Inquisition with the subtlety of seduction. The second, “managers”, in charge of conceiving manuals to generalize a mentality of “princes” between the gleba, the “servants” and the plebs. An impressive group of political marketers, similar to the current “spin doctors”.