A New Era of Bread and Circuses

 

Written by Rodrigo Guerra

Nearly two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Decimus Junius Juvenal wrote a phrase destined to outlive the empire that inspired it: panem et circenses — “bread and circuses.” In his Satire X, he denounced how a citizenry that had once been the protagonist of public life had ultimately surrendered its political freedom in exchange for food and entertainment. The people no longer demanded virtuous rulers, fair institutions, or public accountability. Free grain and the spectacles of the circus were enough.

Juvenal identified one of the most effective mechanisms of political power: when citizens stop thinking about the common good and concern themselves only with immediate gratification, governing them becomes much easier. There is no need to persuade them; it is enough simply to distract them.

Twenty centuries have passed, yet the strategy remains very much alive. Today, the “circus” is no longer necessarily staged in the Colosseum. It can be broadcast in prime time, spread virally across social media, or become an endless succession of distractions designed to monopolize public discourse while underlying problems remain untouched. Entertainment replaces debate; scandal supplants legitimate civic concern; emotional excitement displaces critical reason.

Our age has coined a new vocabulary to describe these forms of distraction. Sportswashing uses major sporting events to improve the international image of regimes criticized for human-rights violations. Greenwashing cloaks institutions in ecological rhetoric while, behind the scenes, their practices remain deeply polluting. Pinkwashing turns inclusion and diversity into marketing tools, encouraging consumers to be more “trendy” than thoughtful about the true nature of human rights. Artwashing finances cultural activities “of the people and for the people” in order to acquire social prestige while diverting attention from corruption, superficiality, or abuses of power.

All of these phenomena follow the same logic: constructing an attractive narrative that prevents society from seeing reality. The problem is not merely telling lies; it is ensuring that no one has time to ask questions.

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han has taken this reflection one step further. In Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (Verso, 2017) and Infocracy: Digitization and the Crisis of Democracy (Polity, 2022)¹, he argues that today’s “bread and circuses” no longer need to be orchestrated exclusively by an autocratic messiah. The novelty is that we now collaborate willingly in our own distraction. We keep ourselves occupied producing content, chasing “likes,” reacting to fleeting trends, and consuming an endless stream of information that rarely becomes genuine knowledge.

This new form of permanent entertainment has become an extraordinary ally of authoritarian neopopulism. A distracted society loses its memory, its capacity for critical thought, and its sense of history. While citizens remain held captive by the spectacle, those in power are free to act as they please, constrained only by the limits of their own arrogance.

“Una nueva era del ‘pan y circo’” was originally published in El Heraldo de México on July 21, 2026, and appears here in English translation, republished with the permission of the author.  

Note

1. Published in Spanish as Psicopolítica: Neoliberalismo y nuevas técnicas de poder (Herder, 2014) and Infocracia: La digitalización y la crisis de la democracia (Taurus, 2022).