Mickey Zedung and Minnie Europe

I read an article in The Guardian* dealing with the opening of Disneyland en Hong-Kong: "the meeting of the world's biggest Communist party and the planet's best-known entertainment corporation"- Mouse Zedong.

I also remembered (I had to make an effort) there is a EUROdisney in Paris where I am sure sits another mouse, ready to defend social rights and fair economy, soft power and multilateralism- although I've been told Donald is the European one, grumpy and impolite, always something going wrong with him or with Daisy.

So I was thinking about those two new friends I now name Mickey Zedong and Minnie Europe, and I also sat down to read an article from Prof. Peter Van Ham untitled "branding european power".



With this package in one hand and a cigarette in the second one (I only have two), I started to smoke and think- this way I posed the french philosopher from the 60's.

The use of the branding methodology in public diplomacy has become a common place. Some would even say it has always existed- can we say Napoleon branded France?

So countries brand and re-brand themselves like products. They have to compete with big firms which most of the time have more power than them. They promote their name, logo, motto, give a sense of belonging to their citizen by translating their values in visual and material things. Think about Britain in 1997.

We live in a branded world. Even Naomi Klein and NO LOGO became a brand. Even the brandalist or brand fuckers are branded. Brands became a cultural ressource and a way of identification no matter what noble humanist intellectual may say about it. It's there.

Is it because citizens become more 'consumers' than patriots? Is it because the total answer the nation, the school or the church could give you has lost its sense and been replaced by non absolute palliatifs and answers?

Nostalgia of the absolute. There are two major threats in the world said Paul Valéry: order and disorder.

But is it such a bad thing in a way not to will to die (litteraly) for your country anymore, your bloody soil? Is it so sad to make simple and playfull logo of your flag rather than a sacralised untouchable violent(fanatical)emblem ?

If the EU brands itself, would it put an end to the integrity of the idea of Europe? Would it put an end to centuries of european philosophy and litterature? Because this is where the conflict is today: between intellectuals from the world of ideas and european technocrats they accuse to belong to Plato's cavern and belive EU is a bad product.

I believe brands do not have the monopole of irrelevance. Ah!

Le branding est mort, vive le branding!

I am sure Donald would have agreed with me.