We will win the battle

For some time now, it seems that our society has been militarizing. An obvious manifestation of this is the pre-war environment in which we live, with the possibility that countries like Russia might commit some hostile act that would force us to use force. To what extent this possibility is real or is an excuse to increase public spending on defense is not easy to clarify. But when I speak of militarization, I am not referring to this, or not only to this.

There is, also, a militarization of vocabulary and political discourse. A little over five years ago, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, military language became common. The virus appeared as an alien enemy to be fought, and political leaders never tired of saying that we would win this battle and that these were times of effort and sacrifice. A similar situation is being experienced today with the development of artificial intelligence and the more or less apocalyptic discourses that accompany it regarding the possibility that control might be lost and that it could extinguish humanity. In the case of AI, this narrative hides the idea that its development is inevitable and that we must prepare for what may come, but it leaves aside what is obvious: that AI is a human technology and that, if it is developed, it is not by a force of nature or by the unstoppable locomotive of progress, but because there are humans, with names and surnames, who decide to do so.

A more dangerous example of the use of military language was seen this summer with the migration crisis in Ceuta and the idea that it was an invasion. Anyone with a modicum of common sense knows that invading a country implies the intention to occupy the territory to subjugate it, to annex it to one's own sovereignty, and to plunder its resources. It is true that there are countries and political groups that instrumentalize migratory flows for their own benefit, but one must be very malicious to think that the intention of the migrants in Ceuta was to conquer the Iberian Peninsula or to implement the Maghreb way of life there. Even so, a significant part of the political forces and the media have bought into this discourse, which is akin to racist theses about the danger of cultural substitution and the Islamization of Europe. Language is never innocuous.

Closely related to this is the message that we find ourselves in a state of constant emergency. I am not referring to the fatigue of some people in the face of the almost uninterrupted succession of heat alerts, heavy rain alerts, or any other calamity, but to the fact of defining as an emergency any situation that requires political action. What was once a problem or a crisis is today elevated to the status of an emergency, be it water, climate, or residential. A change that is not only rhetorical.

The appeal to emergency seeks to justify the adoption of rapid measures, dodging any rigorous and plural debate, but this haste, many times, has no other effect than to hide previous errors and failures. Unfortunately, this is not just an example of bad politics. The worst part is that, in a community in permanent emergency, public opinion ends up valuing a government of stunts and populist measures more than one that carries out serious and long-term politics. This is indeed a real threat to our way of life, and it does not come from other places nor does it emerge from any laboratory lost on a desert island.