The election campaign began last week. Naturally, as expected, not all political forces are displaying the same level of activity. That depends on many factors — particularly their financial resources and political objectives. Specifically, if a political party’s sole purpose in taking part in the elections is to promote the authorities’ claim that Pashinyan’s main opponents dream of turning Armenia into a Russian-style “guberniya” (province) and are merely Russian stooges — a narrative eagerly echoed by several parties in this campaign — then there is hardly any need to spend an entire month touring every town and village in Armenia repeating that “profound” idea. Speaking every other day would be more than enough.
But regardless of the substance or frequency of their messaging, those following the campaign can compare political forces by two criteria:
a) the level of aggressiveness,
b) the intellectual level.
And if the observer is impartial, they will conclude that Civil Contract is the “leader” in both categories. The party and its leader are absolute champions when it comes to threats, swagger and insults. I do not want to reproduce these displays of what amounts to these outright attacks on voters— everyone can already see them. Unfortunately, regardless of my own wishes, Pashinyan’s hysterical shouting keeps flooding my social media feeds, reminding me of Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator. Incidentally, that film was made in 1940, when the disastrous consequences of Nazism were not yet obvious to everyone.
In style and rhetoric, Armenia’s little dictator resembles that “great dictator.” In terms of substance, however, they are not alike — because, ultimately, the “little” one, ultimately, has no substance at all.
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This aggressive tone, accompanied by threats and blackmail, sharply contradicts to the campaign’s main “logo” — a heart symbol supposedly representing love. Civil Contract’s campaign has about as much to do with that heart symbol as the 2018 revolution had to do with love and solidarity.
As for the intellectual level, there is hardly any point discussing it. Civil Contract’s crude and ignorant propaganda, tailored for a brainwashed audience and scraping the bottom of the barrel, cannot be compared to the messaging of any other political force. Yet despite all this, they still occasionally try to present themselves as champions of literacy and intellectualism.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
