A machine of mud, slander, intimidation and blackmail

2026-03-28 10:35:00, Opinione Ardi Stefa

In politics, there are figures who build narratives. There are others who build fog and fear.

A senior politician, for decades, seems to have chosen the latter as a survival strategy. Not through ideas, debate, and alternatives, but through mudslinging, slander, intimidation, and blackmail. Whenever reality becomes unpleasant for him, the mtotori is ignited.

A series of unsubstantiated accusations, personal attacks, deliberate labeling, messages of digital citizen, digital immigrant, digital employee, digital policeman, etc., etc. begins.

He treats his opponent as an enemy who must be delegitimized at all costs, not as a political rival. The truth doesn't matter; what matters is the noise that drowns out and eliminates any rational discussion.

It's not just harsh political rhetoric. It's a culture that feeds on fear, distraction, and chaos.

Intimidation becomes a tool: whoever is not with him is against him and as such must be publicly attacked. Whoever is not with him is an enemy and a sellout.

In his paranoia, blackmail becomes an instrument: old files, insinuations, implicit threats. Whoever does not speak and behave like him has no future with him. Whoever does not shake his waist with his song has the probability of entering the list of enemies...

Politics that does not produce trust, but uncertainty.

In a society that aspires to European standards, this approach is not only outdated, but also harmful.

It shifts the debate from policies to people, from programs to fabricated scandals. Instead of discussing education, the economy, justice, we remain stuck in an endless cycle of accusations and counter-accusations. (He told me; I told him. So-and-so with three, five, and ten sentences.)

The paradox is that this "clay machinery" only works on tired terrain, where citizens have become accustomed to conflict and have lowered their expectations of politics.

But each such cycle further erodes public trust. A democracy without trust is simply a scene of noise without substance and a competition of who slanders the loudest, not who offers the most.

Mud, slander, and intimidation may tarnish someone temporarily, but they cannot hold an entire society hostage forever, because mud does not build anything durable to withstand time.

A country, nor the future of that country and its citizens, is built on slander. It is built when it takes responsibility./ CNA