The lineage of monarchical practices in political communication—used to convey authority and dominance—was normalised in American democracy through traditions such as addressing the nation, presidential inaugural speeches, and the State of the Union address. These forms of political communication have since become universal practices, adopted by leaders in many countries around the world. Idealist leaders often use such occasions to unify the people, highlight achievements and progress, address challenges to be overcome, and set goals for the nation’s future. Progressive leaders, meanwhile, seize these opportunities to empower citizens and promote values such as secularism, science, and solidarity, thereby strengthening democracy and advancing citizenship rights. These ceremonial forms of political communication serve as crucial milestones, shaping national agendas and laying the foundation for a progressive present and collective future.
However, populist, reactionary, and authoritarian leaders often use the opportunity to address the nation as a tool of narcissistic propaganda—a display of power, personal glory, and division. They exploit existing social, religious, political, economic and cultural fault lines to shift blame and outsource their failures onto others. Reactionary leaders consistently use public communication strategies to conceal their shortcomings and divert attention from the everyday struggles of working people. For such leaders and their parties, these occasions become instruments to manipulate the masses in pursuit of political and economic self-interest, while governing ruthlessly in the name of patriotism and territorial nationalism. Ultimately, these practices undermine citizens, erode democracy and undermine people’s everyday aspirations, and weaken trust in the state, governments, ruling parties, and political leadership.
Reactionary leaders and their conservative political parties operating within market-driven contemporary democracies use strategies of political communication to manipulate voters’ minds during electoral processes. Their goal is to capture state power, advance reactionary agendas, and safeguard the interests of capitalist markets. In such contexts, governance systematically undermines the working population while privileging the rich and powerful. Populist and authoritarian leaders, in particular, exploit the practice of addressing the nation to focus on abstract yet emotionally charged issues—such as migration, Muslims, terrorism, sovereignty, religion, and national culture. These narratives serve to distract citizens from their everyday struggles and fundamental needs for survival and aspirations for growth.
During the era of liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation, democracies were severely undermined by capitalist market forces, which forged alliances with undemocratic and dictatorial leadership and parties with political powers. These developments eroded the conditions necessary for the deepening of democracy. Political communication became a tool to normalise illiberal forces within society, territorialising, deterritorialising and reterritorialising populations according to the shifting needs of capital. The alliance between capitalism and authoritarian political leadership frequently deploys reactionary nationalism to justify wars and conflicts. Such strategies are used to territorialise and deterritorialise people, ultimately serving the stability of capitalism and its relentless processes of accumulation.
Economic, political and social marginalisation created by capitalism has forced working people to become migrants, either within their own countries or abroad, while imperialist conflicts and resource wars have turned many into refugees and destitutes. These forced migrants are often used as pawns in political debates, deployed to shift the focus, manipulate public opinion, and conceal the failures of reactionary politics and the capitalist economy.
In recent years, the interests of the people—their everyday needs, their empowerment, and their progress along the path of secularism, science, peace, and prosperity—have largely disappeared from political leadership’s addresses to the nation. These speeches have become strategies to speak at the people rather than for them. Instead of reflecting citizens’ concerns and lived realities, they are often used to ignore those concerns in the name of patriotism, nationalism, and notions of racial or religious purity, all in pursuit of dominance and control.
“Politics sans people,” “economy sans labour,” “work sans workers’ interests,” “religion sans spiritual solidarity,” and “culture sans collectivity” represent five pillars of contemporary capitalism and its political environment, which undermine democracy, secularism, and citizens’ rights in the relentless pursuit of profit. Political communication today is often used by leaders to advance the strategies of capitalism, reinforcing its hierarchical and exploitative pyramid of wealth and power.
Digital capitalism and its platform economy have reignited reactionary political propaganda, undermining the unity of working people. Political leaders, in collaboration with their capitalist allies, exploit these digital platforms to accelerate profit—often at the expense of people and their communities by promoting reactionary projects. Therefore, it is crucial to listen carefully to leaders’ addresses to the nation, in order to discern the politics that serve the working masses and to challenge reactionary propaganda in different platforms and the hollowness of such political discourse promotes by political leaders in the name of ‘addressing the nation and national interests but forgetting the people’. Such hypocrisy must be exposed in order to reclaim people’s democracy that truly serves the people and the planet.