It’s all there bar the car chases in Tusk’s Hollywood-style ‘action’ video
Donald Tusk is trying his best. The president of the European Council understands better than most that the EU needs to change to secure its future. The latest effort from his office takes a leaf out of the Donald Trump or Isil propaganda manuals.
It’s a short video that lists the various summits and meetings Mr Tusk will attend this autumn, from the informal EU heads of government summit in Salzburg to a UN General Assembly meeting in New York. But it’s overlaid with a vintage Hollywood action movie soundtrack and interspersed with shots of jets taking off and moody, metallic writing listing his schedule.
The assessment online ranged from viewers calling it “pathetic” to advising that it “needs more car chases and explosions”. Indeed, the most dramatic action Mr Tusk seems to have planned is the shaking of a great many hands.
I, for one, welcome this silly piece of propaganda, even if it does need a bit of work. It’s high time selfproclaimed liberals, who say they believe in the battle of ideas, started fighting more competently, rather than whining about Russian interference and trying to censor populists. If that means adding a bit of pizzazz to their messaging, then so be it. Steve Bannon is surely not the only one capable of deploying Hollywood methods in politics. The Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem has introduced a new virtual reality tour of the city that depicts it as it was 2,000 years ago. Visitors get taken around nine different spots, where they pull on a VR headset and see Jerusalem’s extravagant temples and forums as they were in the time of King Herod. The virtual tour is a splendid idea, though from the sample images it’s clear that it depicts a rather sanitised version of the holy city. There seems to be not a leper in sight, no Roman soldiers brutalising the locals nor any sign of the filth that would have clung to the place in ancient times. For a more realistic historical tour of the city, it might be best to try the computer game Assassin’s Creed.