Re: <nettime> Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics

[Andreas Broeckmann via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

folks,

thanks for this interesting discussion. It's good to see that there is a 
debate about developing a more differentiated understanding of the 
current political regimes––one that differentiates between the various 
countries and spheres of relations (and one that recognises that 
"fascism" is not necessarily the most appropriate term for everything 
that is going on).

It was curious that after reading Brian's post this morning, I heard a 
radio interview with the Russian oppositional politician, Yulia 
Galjamina, who claims that, in her view, it is important to understand 
that the current Russian regime is not totalitarian, but authoritarian.

https://share.deutschlandradio.de/dlf-audiothek-audio-teilen.html?audio_id=dira_F9BFDCAA8CC611F17BDEB883034C2FA0

[orig. Russian with German translation; this particular section starts 
around min 14:00]

'Galjamina explained that, like any authoritarian regime, the Russian 
system is based on two pillars: the depoliticisation and atomisation of 
citizens. That is why every form of collective action and community ties 
is needed. “Consequently, simply setting up a book club or organising a 
neighbourhood festival is already a political act,” added the 
53-year-old Muscovite.' (DLF editorial)

She also makes the point that people outside of Russia should be 
thinking of Russia not as a homogeneous block: she says that it is Putin 
and his regime who are everybody's enemy, and his party now probably has 
a mere 16% of support in the population.

... another take on a different kind of hegemonic situation...

best,
-a


Am 01.08.26 um 20:54 schrieb Brian Holmes via nettime-l:
> Hello all -
>
> I too noticed that Guardian article, and because of this discussion I just
> read the short book in a single sitting. I can see why it is being devoured
> by the young British left, because it recounts generational (or really,
> decadal) political experiences that are probably almost impossible to
> reconstruct for people in their twenties today. If you lived through all
> that, however, it makes for a queasy couple hours...
>
> There is no new theory here, unfortunately, in a book whose most important
> reference is Putnam's Bowling Alone. It is a sober and detailed examination
> of political disaffiliation on both left and right, paralleled by the rise
> of purely electoral parties that raise money from the corporate/financial
> sector to produce simulacral majorities - so if you never understood that,
> read it. It does contain the important observation that the conservative
> right, in the US at least, has been able to partially revive some of the
> old civic forms. But it was published too recently to offer any insight
> into the nascent resocialization, particularly of neighborhood life, that
> the left has started carrying out in resistance to ICE. And it has nothing
> at all to say about the strategies and organizational forms of oligarchical
> capital, especially but not only coming out of Silicon Valley, which are
> the most astonishing and threatening developments of the last decade.
>
> If you want to go further with the understanding of contemporary fascism,
> Alberto Toscano has a better theory, which does basically confirm Jaeger's
> undeveloped notion of Bonapartism (see
> https://communispress.com/vectors-of-fascism). Toscano finds a relative
> absence, today, of the mass adherence to the productivist and
> redistributive policies that characterized Italian fascism as a national
> hegemonic project (I mean, one that convinces large numbers of people with
> a relatively coherent ideology). Instead he sees the current repressive
> violence in the US as directly generated by the state, raising the specter
> of "domination without hegemony." Well, that's not even a specter anymore,
> it's a plan. What's fortunately not happening is ideological consolidation
> and a willingness of half the country to go out and do what, for a while,
> it looked like they might. Namely, go out and shoot at the left in the
> streets. That would be real adherence to the extremist ideology that is
> being overtly promulgated by the state (NSPM-7 etc). It could still happen
> after the next elections, but it looks decreasingly likely.
>
> Toscano speaks about a preemptive counter-revolution, giving a lot more
> emphasis to the threat to capital that was posed by the 2010's "decade of
> protest." That's more realistic and more pertinent than Jaeger's
> Baudrilardean portrait of febrile political excitement undergirded by
> nothing at all. It's obvious now that there are three solid legs to
> Trumpian Bonapartism: old school extractivist militarism, the bid for AI
> dominance and the cryptocurrency exit from national economies. All these
> things have cost Trump the wobbly fourth leg of populist conservatism,
> which is kinda reassuring - except that the whole point of Bonapartism is
> to use the populist media and the electoral process as a stepping-stone to
> the authoritarian takeover of the state. That's clearly the plan in the US
> now.
>
> Jaeger is totally right about the disaffiliation. He's also right that
> political parties dependent on oligarchical funds for the "big tent"
> simulacra of electoral campaigns are too hypocritical to chart any course
> for the future. Yet it's strange that he doesn't look into that future -
> really not at all. Democratic societies are presently confronted with
> enormous threats: domestic polarization, global war, climate change,
> frantic movements of distressed populations, the list goes on. Until
> recently, these were conveniently solved by denialism. But in the US today,
> war and genocide, murderous militias generated directly by the state and
> the staggering corporate attempt to ram AI down our throats as the ultimate
> tool of subjective fragmentation and perfected mind control have finally
> given very concrete present-day features to the broader historical critique
> of racialized class society that marked the 2010s and culminated in the
> George Floyd uprising. There is both subjective desire and material need to
> overcome the Putnam-Baudrillard quandary of hyperindividual withdrawal
> agitated by networked passions. Multiple and expanding crises - from
> droughts and wildfires to wars and coming food shortages - offer political
> opportunities. The only way forward is to use these crisis situations to
> break the paralyzing hypocrisy of pseudo mass parties piloted by oligarchs.
> Otherwise it's state of emergency and authoritarianism forever.
>
> Jaeger's book is not a bad one. It's kind of a primer in recent political
> sociology, bravo for that. But it has no analysis of future crossroads, no
> vision and therefore no capacity to help generate the new organizational
> forms that we desperately need. In short, it's an explainer. And being so
> short itself - well, it's another fascinating easy read. Give it two hours
> and see what you think.
>
> best, Brian
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