The battle of 'The System Kills Us' against Valeri Simeonov

'The ystem kills us',  a networked social movement in Bulgaria, was born after a series of offensive verbal attacks and aggressive actions from the former Vice Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Valeri Simeonov. He offended Bulgarian mothers of disabled children publicly. This latest scandal was the peak of his "career" of being involved in scandals. Through digital media women cooperated together and started protesting for 26 days. Their fight against Simeonov resulted in his demission.could become

This article investigates the context behind Simeonov in the past years, formation of the movement, organization, intentions and actions taken from a networked social movement in Bulgaria - “The System Kills Us”.

Message is the topic, theme and focus someone puts on what they want to communicate. It could be identified as the intention they put to their words, the attitude they have towards an issue of speaking, or the point one wants to make in communication. A politician uses their message to inhabit an idea, to make the audience believe in something, or to make audience wonder if they meant what they said, or not (Silverstein, 2003). Usually there is no clear border to determine what politicians really mean when communicating. They can basically twist words and change meanings when needed. In that sense there are two types of political communication – on message and off message.  First one means a political figure is getting their words across the targeted audience successfully and the second – the opposite. Simeonov was off-message for years (because of words and actions described below), while thinking he was speaking the voice of people and being a politician, regarded with respect.

Image is another component of a political persona. It is an abstract portrait of identity fashioned out of cumulating patterns of congruence across all manners of indexical signs – including visual ones – that addresses and audiences can imaginatively experience, like a hologram (Silverstein, 2003, p. 15). There were situations that clearly proved Simeonov did not succeed in communicating his point, or manage to create an image that would appeal to state population.

From community to networked social movement 

The community of mothers of children with disabilities formed an online movement in 2015. Having being put at disadvantage for years, they managed to mobilize and organize  protests in  years, which became popular as “the protests of the mothers”. The number 8 is a small number in general, but not so small for Bulgaria.

Being neglected with their “personal” problems for years and years, the realized th personal problems that they have are actually a problem of the state. That is why they stared tent protests in front of the National Assembly in the capital city Sofia on June 1. Other people from other cities started joining and the movement grew bigger, on a national level.

People in all cities would protest and wear the T-shirt with the slogan. The tent protest continued for  months and resulted in two new laws – Law of People with Disabilities (financial support) and Law of Personal Help (providing a personal assistant). Law of Social Services (planning and financing high quality social services) is hopefully coming forward soon. By virtue of  actions and accepted laws, the community raised recognition  the problem among the whole population.

This fall (Early October, before Simeonov’s words), a day out ofof a woman, taking care of her sick son was displayed in a TV show (Figure 2) after recent news about movement trying to get inside the Parliament and fight for their rights. Those women were blocked from entering because they did not have proper dress code.

The mother iwas a representative for the whole group. She explained how their life goes every day – she only works night shifts, so that she could take care of her son, because he cannot move or eat without her. By showing this horrific daily life style of the mother and her child, mass media raised even more awareness to the issue and helped the community to grow bigger and stronger.

Figure 2: The woman and her child in a TV show https://www.slavishow.com/%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0-%D0%B8-%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD-%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2-14-%D1%8E%D0%BD%D0%B8-2018-%D0%B3/

State does nothing to help – no professional help, no financial help, no transport, ing. Coming to realize no one except levfor them would take any actionthat they would be doomed, the started fighting together. After Simeonov’s words protests started every day. 

Who isPolitical communication of Valeri Simeonov?

Valeri Simeonov was Vice Prime Minister of Bulgaria for a year and a half. During his career, participated in multiple right-wing parties during. His resignation was submitted this year on November 6. Prior to that, his name was involved in many scandals during the years. In 2015, for instance, on the tribune of the National Assembly, he called the Bulgarian minority group (people of Roma) beastly human-like beings and define their wives as having the instincts of homeless bitches. In 2017 he dragged and aggressively pushed an elderly woman Turkish ethnicity, near the Turkish border.

http://www.bta.bg

All of these schandals helped to construct his Message as a populist.  A psn

Simeonov use  populist discourse  he sp in name of the people and framed his ideas as “good for the nation”.  By spreading obvious populist slogans (promises to help our country prosper) they (those parties) were trying to get more followers. tstate Like most right-wing populist, 'the nation' and 'the people' is a very specific concept implicitly refering to 'our' people', the real Bulgarians. 

h October he called all mothers of disabled children in the country wailing women with allegedly sick children, simply because they were protesting for support (state does not support them in having basic financial conditions for raising  children). He also defined the mothers as using their disabled children for material advantage. All cases were displayed in the public sphere and were building his “bad” image for years and years, but only this last time his offensive words were so hurtful that they caused mass disapproval and voices were finally raised. This is what gave a start the “war” between him and the movement.

The ystem ills s

Castells (2013) sees the online space as a stage for networked social movements.  Being inflamed by a little sparkle, people can connect and reach high number of followers of whole community online. The community turned the movement into a networked social one, by creating an open Facebook page on June 23, 2018. It mostly collaborates and organizes activities online, via the page. Currently it has reached 13k likes and 14k followers. Contrary on mass opinion on offline organization being “real” and more reliable, this community succeeded thanks to Facebook. Nowadays all offline infrastructures are connected through the internet up to a certain point, then offline networks occur (Maly, 2018). All offline protests are accompanied by online activism. (Maly, 2018, p. 178) Those protests occurred offline, but mobilization of power took place online.

After Simeonov’s words, the movement became even more determined to stand their rights and fight for more recognition. kus

Organization was happening mostly through posts (Figure 3) within the page, defining place and time to be.Omanifestation Usually people who would participate, or strongly agree with community’s intentions would like the post. On Figure 3 the lady informs people where and where to go, what to bring, and that cars and motorcycles are also joining the manifestation. 

Figure 3: Organising a protest https://www.facebook.com/SystemKillsUs

For 26 days mothers choreographed protests in front of the Council of Ministers in Sofia, for calling Simeonov’s dismissal. It happened through choreography of assembly – the mediated “scene setting and “scripting” of people’s physical assembling in public space (Gerbaudo, 2012, p. 40). They would post photos from the manifestations every day, which made more people think about it and triggered their emotions. In that way more and more people participated. Every day someone from the community would post in the group, noting the place and time.

After their first manifestations, Simeonov said in the public space: 'I will not apologize for my words, because I cannot apologize for telling the truth. It is sad, I know, but it is true.' Style (Silverstein, 2003) in politics play a major role in creating the image. One’s actions, gestures and behavior, how image is communicated. With his refusal, Simeonov made it clear again his style of behavior is entirely negative.

https://www.facebook.com/SystemKillsUs

This circle of protests and rejection by for dismissal by proving he did not do anything wrong continued, which completely demolished his image as an authority.If you kMeanwhile, there was a survey conducted among Bulgarian population. It stoke 81% of the citizens who also called for his retirement. On November 5 cars joined the protests.

On November 14, mothers called everyone to send their e-mails to Vice PM, demanding for a resignation. Over 23k e-mails were reported in hours after the post was written. The same day in city Pernik (Figure5), where citizens were protesting as well, the police officers were supposed to put the situation under control. Instead, they removed their helmets in sign of solidarity. People were united. Eventually, under the pressure of protesting mothers, Valeri Simeonov submitted his resignation on November 16.  

https://zapernik.com/2018/11/14/62360/

Why did it work this time?

We could follow all aspects Simeonov failed as a political authority. By offending Bulgarian citizens and his refusal o apologize for his words, he was off message (Silverstein 2003) that is, he communicated himself as an enemy of the peoplend thus destroyed his populist image. He was now a brute attacking the common Bulgarian.

Usually when politicians say something offensive they can easily get away with no judgment or punishment but this time, the  happened. The movement succeeded in creating making a negative message about him stick. One reason may be the big number of followers of the movement that could mobilize for change. The passion they were defending their opinions with, the stamina and strong will to stay and not to give up.

Another reason is the digitalization. Access to organization and fast spread of message played a huge role in accomplishing the goal. All photos (Figure 6), posted during the period show real emotion and real actions in real time. That is what triggered so many more people’s emotions and feeling of solidarity and community people should fight together in order to make the change really happen. 

Figure 6: Day 22 from the protest, life photos post https://www.facebook.com/SystemKillsUs

 only 26 days “The System Kills Us” managed to force  to submit his resignation.Digital media, and Facebook in particular, w an useful tool. It allowed to mobilize, choreograph and organize a massive movement. If this online page did not exist, if people  not have such easy access to the platform and ability to contacts and connect, the event would most surely not have had such a huge influence and outcome. The organized first on a local level, then on a national one. With the help of digitalization, a lot of determination and strong team, the community connected and worked together both online and offline as a whole, in order to make the change happen.

References:

Maly, I. (2016). New media, New Resistance and Mass media: A digital ethnographic analysis of the Hart boven Hard movement in Belgium. In Papaioannou, T. & Gupta, S. (2018). Media representations of anti-austerity protests in the EU. Grievances, identities and agency. New York & London: Routledge.

Maly, I. (2018). Populism as a mediatized communicative relation: The birth of algorithmic populism. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies. nr213

Maly, I. (2018). The New Right, global nationalistic activism and the Flemish identitarian movement Schild & Vrienden. Tilburg Papers in Culture studies, nrnr. 220

Silverstein, M. (2003). Communicating the Message vs. Inhabiting “Message”. From Silverstein, M. Talking politics. The substance of Style From Abe to ‘W’