Re: <nettime> Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

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

On Fri, Jul 31, 2026 at 2:07 PM allan siegel via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> Hello,
> What if Trump is 2/3 Bonaparte and 1/3 fascism, then what? The article has
> motivated me to get a hold of the book to see what Mr. Jäger really has to
> say. Based on the article he seems to make some rather ahistorical
> assumptions; doesn't collective memory have at least some minimal weight in
> political consciousness? and, some remarks are painted in broad
> self-contained chronological strokes as if forms of agency don't carry over
> from one generation to the next? and what about geographical bias? Which is
> why I would like to see the actual book.
> best
> allan
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2026, at 13:09, Felix Stalder via nettime-l wrote:
> >
> > I haven't read the book, but from the article here, I think two things
> > are useful. One is that Trump doesn't represent fascism, but
> > Bonapartism, ie. not a collective mass movement, but a mass of people
> > joined individually to a singular leader.
> >
> > The other is this:
> >
> > "They [the far right] are not more organized or more ideologically
> > coherent or more strategic [than the left]; they are just better funded
> > – which puts quite a lot on the shoulders of capital itself as the
> > overarching organizing principle of global politics. Money might not be
> > the only thing talking, but it’s the only thing getting what it wants."
> >
> > In other words, somebody is still doing the boring but necessary
> > organizational, institutional work. It's capital.
> >
> > Also, there is a great line on Reform UK: "There is just Nigel and a
> > smartphone and then a couple of private donors." (I think this doesn't
> > apply to the far-right in France or Germany.)
> >
> >
> > all the best. Felix
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Meet the man whose groundbreaking book is being devoured by the left
> > Zoe Williams
> >
> > 23.07.2026
> >
> >
> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/23/anton-jager-groundbreaking-book-being-devoured-by-left
> >
> > “I am acutely conscious,” said Andy Burnham outside 10 Downing Street on
> > Monday, “that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this
> > street.” It was good to hear him say it because, beneath all the cabinet
> > gossip and rune-reading, there is a feeling of terror about the
> > immediate future and also about ourselves, the electorate. Is this who
> > we are now? Wildly enthusiastic one minute, seething the next; as
> > passionate about the change we want as we are convinced that those who
> > promise it are incapable of enacting it?
> >
> > It is perhaps not surprising that Anton Jäger’s recent book,
> > Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences, is
> > being read by Labour watchers and leftwing thinkers. As the New York
> > Times wrote, it’s “among the best and most dazzling efforts to model the
> > political present in all its maddening strangeness”. Still, I think
> > Jäger was surprised to have his honeymoon interrupted so I could
> > interview him about it. Life comes at everyone quite fast in a
> > hyperpolitical age.
> >
> > Jäger, 32, raised in Brussels by parents who work in the arts (“bohemian
> > class?” I ask, and he says carefully that they are boho “adjacent”),
> > educated at the University of Essex, then Cambridge, is now a lecturer
> > in the history of political thought and theory at University College,
> > Oxford. He has an intense, angular face and a calm, almost self-effacing
> > manner. His philosophical reference points are Deleuze and Guattari,
> > Mouffe and Laclau, but asked to situate himself in the firmament of the
> > European left, he says simply: “Even with all the baggage and
> > connotations, I still think the easiest thing is to call myself a
> Marxist.”
> >
> > His thinking runs as follows (don’t get hung up on the dates, though
> > some, like 1989, are non-negotiable). The years 1914 to 1989 mark the
> > age of mass politics, when politicisation was high and
> > institutionalisation was also high – so people engaged with politics
> > electorally and on the streets. They were joiners – of political
> > parties, unions, congregations, working men’s clubs, reading groups;
> > they participated in multiple interlacing institutions. Not by
> > coincidence, this was also a time when political struggle resulted in
> > concrete gains. Then, 1989 to the financial crash in 2008 (the years
> > often called the “long 90s”) was the age of post-politics, when
> > institutionalisation was low (we emphatically did not join clubs then,
> > we went to clubs), and politicisation was through the floor. It was a
> > time when technocrats took care of business while everyone else went to
> > a rave, and we said history was over. From the crash through to about
> > 2020 (sometimes earlier, this boundary is the most fluid) was the age of
> > anti-politics – a resurgent Tea Party in the US, Beppe Grillo and
> > anti-establishment protests in Italy, the Arab spring, the Occupy
> > movement. Politicisation in this period came back with a vengeance, and
> > even while institutionalisation hasn’t recovered, these movements still
> > have institutional ambitions. Protest movements in Spain and Greece bore
> > political parties, Podemos and Syriza; protest candidates in the US,
> > France and the UK, had their eyes on retaking traditional parties from
> > which the revolutionary intent had long been stripped away.
> > protester in a mask that says ‘I can’t breathe’
> > A Black Lives Matter protest in London on 6 June 2020 after the killing
> > of George Floyd. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
> >
> > Hyperpolitics is what came next: intense politicisation, with neither
> > institutional roots nor ambitions. “On the surface,” Jäger writes, “the
> > Black Lives Matter protests would seem to have little in common with the
> > mob that stormed the Capitol in January 2021. Morally, they are worlds
> > apart … Organisationally, however, these movements exhibit a striking
> > set of similarities: fleeting in duration, they maintain no membership
> > rolls and struggle to impose any real discipline on their adherents.” As
> > a consequence, everything explodes and nothing changes; movements surge
> > suddenly forward and yet no territory is taken. He quotes political
> > theorist Paolo Gerbaudo’s contemporary interpretation of the evocative
> > phrase “bodies without organs”. Modern political movements, he writes,
> > are “concentrated and muscular, yet without an internal metabolism”.
> >
> > He found this pattern across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
> > and Development and he only stopped there, he says, because “I don’t
> > have the linguistic and cultural reach to fully tell this story
> > globally”. His descriptions are powerful. He writes of climate strikers
> > and anti-lockdown demonstrators alike as “a myriad animated by brief,
> > potent stimuli, stirred to action by charismatic influencers and digital
> > demagogues”. And that, you have to admit, is exactly what it looks like.
> >
> > These four eras – mass politics, post-politics, antipolitics and
> > hyperpolitics – “are not just concepts,” Jäger says, “they have some
> > empirical data behind them. ‘How institutionalised is society?’ is
> > basically a question of, how does civil society look? How are membership
> > organisations looking? What are the affiliations, what are the types of
> > bonds that people have? That’s not very difficult to quantify. You can
> > look at union membership, you can look at church attendance, you can
> > look at less overtly political forms of belonging. The political axis is
> > more difficult to measure, but not impossible – namely, how many people
> > attend elections, how many people strike, how many people engage in
> > political violence, how many people engage in political communication,
> > write letters to editors or now post online?”
> >
> > He argues that the height of mass politics was between the wars. To
> > illustrate this in the book, he lists all the civic organisations during
> > the Great Depression in the small Austrian hamlet of Marienthal – they
> > spanned all human activity, from work to thought to rabbit-breeding. I
> > won’t list them all here but there were many. Considering the effect
> > these organisations might have on the collective psyche, Jäger considers
> > the history of his own family: “On the Flemish side, this meant that the
> > Christian Democratic or the Catholic party was not just a party that
> > said how you were to vote, or which union you joined, but also had a
> > very strong say in what happened in the bedroom. It was a total
> > doctrine, not something that purely applied to your political
> > deportment.” There was little boundary between public and private, and
> > no such thing as a political identity without a membership card. It was
> > personally quite constraining, but it got shit done. (Sidebar, I’ve seen
> > a nascent institutionalised-politics like this, in Manchester, in 2019;
> > the local Momentum group was campaigning for Jeremy Corbyn, but it also
> > had a running club, a knitting group and a book group. I was overcome by
> > the sense of seeing a trade union movement reborn. Needless to say,
> > Corbyn did not win that election. Institution-building can’t be done on
> > the fly.)
> >
> > The destruction of political organisations was “not monocausal”, Jäger
> > says, though in the book he puts it squarely on the shoulders of the
> > union busting by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. People lost faith
> > in organisations because the crunchy bit of their leverage – the bit
> > where you get what you want by withdrawing your labour, the bit before
> > all-out war – was taken away. Unions were defanged and workers
> > impoverished, and many ultimately saw their industries collapse in the
> > process.
> >
> > Jäger says there were also cultural and generational shifts over decades
> > – people in the 60s and 70s seeking a different relationship with
> > collective institutions, for example, and looking instead for
> > emancipation and equality – so it takes a while for the picture to
> > cohere, and Communist parties remained tenacious through the 1980s in
> > Italy, for instance. “In 1989, suddenly it’s as if there’s a day and
> > night difference,” he says. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of
> > the cold war, he says: “Suddenly everyone deserves to party.”
> > Large crowd climb onto the Berlin Wall
> >
> >
> > It is a strange sensation to have the 90s narrated back to you by
> > someone who was born in 1994, but it is mainly unsettling because it is
> > so accurate. Tony Blair did describe globalisation as a process as
> > inexorable as the weather, and that is also how neoliberals described
> > the economy – a thing that happened to you. “This is the ambiguity of
> > the post-politics of the 90s,” Jäger says. “Politics is no longer
> > something that you see as effecting large-scale social change, and the
> > forms of liberty that are available to you are now more private, more
> > intimate, more individual. At the same time, the idea that you can
> > collectively bundle together with other individuals and change society
> > starts to appear very, very remote.”
> >
> > There was also a lot of beauty to that time, which he describes through
> > the photography of Wolfgang Tillmans and the novels of Annie Ernaux and
> > Michel Houellebecq. We were obsessed with Houellebecq in the 90s, but we
> > will have to talk about why, and the direction his novels took, and
> > whether we will ever again live in a world whose best cultural artefact
> > is the novel, another time. “The fact that Tillmans as a gay man is able
> > to express and experience the rave culture of the 90s and 00s as a new
> > form of collectivity that wasn’t available to him in the 70s and 80s, I
> > don’t think we should deny the liberatory value of this. It very clearly
> > is the case that there are individuals who did not feel at home in the
> > families, or the communities or the neighbourhoods in which they grew
> > up, in which they finally find a kind of new community that is much less
> > demanding and is less exigent than what they had before. The ambiguity
> > is, of course, that it also implies a profound disenchantment and
> > cynicism around what politics can do.” That’s politics with a capital P
> > – you might see a community animated about an issue, but with no faith
> > in parliamentary channels.
> >
> >
> > There is a critical and rarely mentioned adjunct to the neoliberal
> > destruction of institutions and the post and antipolitics that came
> > afterwards, which is that it didn’t only come for the left. “Thatcher
> > basically did a controlled demolition of popular Conservatism,” Jäger
> > says, “and replaced much of this with PR spin, and also a lot of private
> > funding, because the idea was: ‘We can get rid of our mass party because
> > we’re in control of the media, we can win elections with that.’” The
> > right today, he says, is just as inconsequential as the left, and for
> > exactly the same reason, that it’s hyper but not formally organised.
> > “The people who go on marches subscribe to the same podcast, might
> > follow the same pages on Instagram, might be on the same Telegram
> > channels, but they don’t have an organisational history they shared
> > before they entered the march. This is different even to the BNP, where
> > marchers had a shared history in football hooliganism, and the National
> > Front. That shared subculture is no longer there.”
> >
> > He says this is clear with Reform UK, “which is so heavily
> > leader-dependent. The entire movement is at risk with this scandal of
> > the crypto-billionaire, because there’s no party infrastructure. There
> > is just Nigel and a smartphone and then a couple of private donors.” To
> > me, this fails to take into account that the right is different to the
> > left: they have more money. “Maybe I understated the availability of
> > private funding,” he says mildly. “The fact that we can even talk of a
> > trillionaire, such as Elon Musk, means there’s a complete secession of
> > that individual from what we could even call society. That is a variable
> > in explaining why hyperpolitics on the right thrives and why
> > hyperpolitics on the left has found it much more difficult to achieve
> > tangible results.” They are not more organised or more ideologically
> > coherent or more strategic; they are just better funded – which puts
> > quite a lot on the shoulders of capital itself as the overarching
> > organising principle of global politics. Money might not be the only
> > thing talking, but it’s the only thing getting what it wants.
> >
> >
> > The more immediately controversial proposition of the book, though, is
> > that what we are watching in Trump’s US is not fascism, because the
> > right only travels to that extreme in the face of a direct threat of
> > organised socialism. “The left is doing itself too many favours by
> > considering its opponents fascists,” he says. “You’re overestimating
> > your strength. The contemporary far right is more a function of the
> > crisis of liberalism than it is a function of the strength of the left.”
> > What we’re looking at instead, with Trump, is “Bonapartism” says Jäger.
> > He writes that Trump, and everyone else who has ever got ahead by
> > championing the “left behind”, isn’t representing a strong mass movement
> > or class, but, like Napoleon, relying on “the largely passive support of
> > impoverished peasants … not a collective but ‘formed by the simple
> > addition of isomorphous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a
> > sack of potatoes’.” (That bit about potatoes is from Karl Marx’s The
> > Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.) We skirmish a little about the
> > US Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a standing army that looks
> > extremely fascist, until Jäger concludes: “The spectrum from fascism to
> > Bonapartism can flip into something more radical. At the same time, I’m
> > still more struck by the differences than the similarities with these
> > 20th-century phenomena.”
> >
> > Neal Lawson, guru of Manchesterism and an Anton Jäger fan, lays these
> > arguments over the predicament of our new prime minister. “It isn’t just
> > lack of money Burnham has to contend with but the absence of secure
> > political footings. Temporary hyper-political swarms have taken the
> > place of substantial and secure alliances. He must find a way to surf
> > these volatile waves or be another victim of them.” But we, the volatile
> > waves, also have to figure out how to re-engage with institutions and
> > build new ones, and is that possible? Jäger pauses, dispiritingly, like
> > a mechanic who is about to give you bad news about your fanbelt. “This
> > is an interesting and scary question. We do live in a society in which
> > the incentives for leaving rather than entering organisations are much
> > higher. Recent experience, whether joining a party or joining a union,
> > often militates against the idea that there’s any sense in collective
> > action, and the rational response is helplessness. And yet,
> > repoliticisation is good. Hyperpolitics has increased people’s
> > consciousness of the fact that politics matters.”
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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