Imprescindibles para sobrevivir
“La plaga fue terrible. Pero el rumor causó estragos infinitamente más grandes…”

[ .. ]

Le debo a Juan Ángel Juristo la idea simple y luminosa de volver a leer y consultar el Diario del año de la peste de Daniel Defoe, a luz de la peste gripal y periodística que a nosotros nos amenaza:

[ .. ] The plague was itself very terrible, and the distress of the people very great, as you may observe of what I have said. But the rumour was infinitely greater, and it must not be wondered that our friends abroad (as my brother’s correspondents in particular were told there, namely, in Portugal and Italy, where he chiefly traded) [said] that in London there died twenty thousand in a week; that the dead bodies lay unburied by heaps; that the living were not sufficient to bury the dead or the sound to look after the sick; that all the kingdom was infected likewise, so that it was an universal malady such as was never heard of in those parts of the world; and they could hardly believe us when we gave them an account how things really were, and how there was not above one-tenth part of the people dead; that there was 500,000, left that lived all the time in the town; that now the people began to walk the streets again, and those who were fled to return, there was no miss of the usual throng of people in the streets, except as every family might miss their relations and neighbours, and the like. I say they could not believe these things; and if inquiry were now to be made in Naples, or in other cities on the coast of Italy, they would tell you that there was a dreadful infection in London so many years ago, in which, as above, there died twenty thousand in a week, &c., just as we have had it reported in London that there was a plague in the city of Naples in the year 1656, in which there died 20,000 people in a day, of which I have had very good satisfaction that it was utterly false. [ .. ] Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year.

Las negritas son mías.

Casi todo está dicho:

-El rumor convertido en mercancía podrida.
-La mercancía podrida convertida en fuente ingresos económicos.
-Los ingresos económicos, cimiento de una industria del comercio de basuras.
-El comercio de basuras pudriendo la vida pública.

Cualquier parecido con la realidad inmediata es evidentemente voluntario.

En lengua castellana, la Execración contra los judíos de Quevedo lleva mucho más lejos tal comercio endemoniado: el rumor podrido es utilizado para invitar al linchamiento y exterminio físico de los vecinos de otra nación, lengua o religión, Los vecinos contemplan el incendio de mi casa.

• La basura vende, 4.
• La basura vende, 3.
• La basura vende, 2.
• La basura vende.
• Periodismo, Comunicación e Imprescindibles para sobrevivir en este Infierno.