This article was published on October 24, 2017

Iceland knows how to do proper political campaign videos


Iceland knows how to do proper political campaign videos

My tiny homeland way up north in the unforgiving Atlantic, Iceland, has parliamentary elections coming up on October 28. It’s Iceland’s second snap election in a row, after yet another scandal brought down the government

This time around, a whopping 10 parties are fighting to get their representatives into the 63 seats of the world’s oldest parliament, Alþingi. The competition is fierce and it’s hard to get in the spotlight, so parties have to find creative ways to get the attention of voters — and nobody has done it better than the Social Democratic Alliance (SDA, Samfylkingin) which just released this masterpiece:

The original music video is brimming with crazy, yet poignant, imagery such as Trump-esque bananas dancing around a chihuahua peeing on a chocolate cake: a jab at Iceland’s current Prime Minister’s cake-decorating video.

The text, written by Icelandic author and SDA candidate, Hallgrímur Helgason, poetically illustrates the socialist vision of inclusion and the need to fight corruption in Iceland’s politics.

Loosely translated, it reads something like this:

Politics are a bitch, bitch, bitch.

Bites as we speak, speak, speak.

[…]

Everybody has stopped paying attention, attention, attention.

We’re just pawns, pawns, pawns.

[…]

Don’t go on electing the old mafia,

instead join us into new and better times.

According to its YouTube description, the video is meant to get people to vote SDA and to reach marginalized and undecided voters.

I’m not exactly sure how a trippy music video is supposed to that, but I sure as hell hope that the other parties — inside and outside Iceland — will follow suit and respond with their own crazy videos.

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