An essay on the global wave of anti-political anger
Unlike “anti-establishment” which a bit vague and overused to the point of meaninglessness, anti-politics describes a mood that doesn’t easily convert into governance. It’s a rejection and/or skepticism of politics as it exists to actualize people’s desires.
The essay documents three different examples of anti-politics historically:
- mass party radicalization after WW1 (rejection of the politics of consensus)
- forming a second culture outside of the state in Eastern Europe (viewing politics as a dead-end)
- today’s internet swarms (negating without a positive program) and the American case
In his 2017 work Psychopolitics, Byung-Chul Han writes of how power today has grown reliant on manipulating psychological states, uniquely made possible by technologies of control. Its symptoms are of the mind, like burnout and diseases of despair, coupled with addiction and compulsion. Understanding psychopolitics helps us to reframe the time in which we live, where one’s mental state has become a leading place of conflict.
Very true. I like doing this as well. I think the path of least-resistance, sitting in our room, is actually the most harmful. Generative activity only happens when you're engaging with novelty and meeting others, even just in passing.
In the past decade, the writer Simone Weil has grown in popularity and continues to provoke conversation some 80 years after her death. She was a writer mainly preoccupied with what she called “the needs of the soul.” One of these needs, almost prophetic in its relevance today, is the capacity for attention toward the world which she likened to prayer. Another is the need to be rooted in a community and place, discussed at length in her last book On the Need for Roots written in 1943.
Unlike “anti-establishment” which a bit vague and overused to the point of meaninglessness, anti-politics describes a mood that doesn’t easily convert into governance. It’s a rejection and/or skepticism of politics as it exists to actualize people’s desires.
The essay documents three different examples of anti-politics historically:
- mass party radicalization after WW1 (rejection of the politics of consensus)
- forming a second culture outside of the state in Eastern Europe (viewing politics as a dead-end)
- today’s internet swarms (negating without a positive program) and the American case