Re: <nettime> Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics

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

Allan, in my view the state is a corporate state, that is, its policies are
elaborated in tandem with at least certain sectors of the largest
corporations, according to old logics of "national champions" and notions
of full-spectrum competition where corporate reach and profitability are
key competitive elements from the state perspective. To this extent, the US
state has directly produced climate change (I leave it to others to report
on other countries). To make this state responsible for the harms it is
currently producing - and therefore responsible to its own citizens, and to
the world in the case of climate change - is the issue.  Indeed, that means
overcoming the definition of the "anti-state state," where libertarian
ideology just serves to hide the military-police-carceral structure under a
cloak of inconsequential verbiage. In the case of the US corporate state,
people have tried and failed, witness the current disaster. But turning
away from the state will not stop it from doing what it is doing.

It looks like Keith agrees with me on that score. The situation is abysmal
and you have to engage nonetheless. I support Democratic candidates who are
challenging the old guard in the primaries. I don't believe anything until
I see confirmation in action. I try to open up intimate spaces where people
can actually talk. I try to organize myself spiritually in the face of
ongoing tragedies. Capitalism and schizophrenia remains the order of the
day...

On Tue, Aug 4, 2026 at 12:56 PM Keith Sanborn via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> Didn’t mean to imply that you accepted Putin’s characterization of Ukraine
> but it’s the ultimate consequence of the leveling of those distinctions.
> Even voting has become a fool’s errand—perhaps it always was—but it won’t
> make me ignore some possibilities for a turnaround in some members of the
> Democratic Party.  I won’t support those who sold out to AIPAC, but I
> believe there are some of that party who are persons of conscience. The
> Democratic party has become an embarrassment. Perhaps it always was as part
> of the neo-liberal order. But at the moment the fig leaves are off and the
> situation here has reached a critical turning point, to use a tainted
> term.  Impeachment is the only way to stop the fascist juggernaut in the us
> as those more inspired seem inadequately competent in the required skills.
>
> > On Aug 4, 2026, at 12:57 PM, allan siegel via nettime-l <
> nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> > Brian, I would like to add or clarify a point you make in this succinct,
> cut-to-the-chase post.
> > You state that, "I have two convictions about politics. The first is
> that the ultimate political dispute will always be over control of the
> state." I think it is not only about control of the state BUT a definition
> OF the 'state' and its responsibilities. I keep being reminded of a post I
> saw during the World Cup; of the 48 nations participating, the United
> States was the only one without Universal Healthcare. Why? Because
> politicians etc. do not believe that health care is the responsibility of
> the state. Is it the responsibility of the state to address "ecological
> breakdown"?
> > best
> > allan
> >
> >
> >> On Mon, Aug 3, 2026, at 23:43, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
> >> I don't know about all of you, but from time to time the US situation
> >> overcomes me, plunges me into painful depression. Never more intensely
> than
> >> in this moment, as crimes against humanity unfold against the
> background of
> >> unaddressed ecological breakdown. But you have to engage, you have to
> work
> >> with the tools you've got and find new ones.
> >>
> >> I have two convictions about politics. The first is that the ultimate
> >> political dispute will always be over control of the state. The second
> is
> >> that the current figure of the corporate state is not only totally
> corrupt,
> >> but worse, it has taken over civil society in an attempt to literally
> >> program people's thinking and behavior. I think one should withdraw from
> >> this debased field of really-existing civil society (which is now being
> >> reduced to AI slop), abandon any shred of belief in the political
> >> mainstream, and create-sustain-strengthen whatever form of intimate
> >> conversation is possible. First, to recover the capacity to think and
> feel,
> >> and then ideally, use those capacities to act on the threats and
> potentials
> >> of the time. People are doing this in many different ways, trying to
> find
> >> out who they are or could become when the future is curtailed, yet we
> live
> >> on.
> >>
> >> To act is to confront the capitalist state, which never ceases to act on
> >> you. Analyzing the current figure of authoritarianism and its embrace by
> >> large numbers is essential. Earlier debates about "whether this is
> fascism
> >> or not" may have missed the mark, first by assuming that fascism is
> >> something known and recognizable from history, second by assuming it is
> >> essentially different from (neo)liberalism, and third, by
> underestimating
> >> the psycho-social damage that the latter has done to everyone, enabling
> >> social decay. Anton Jaeger's book Hyperpolitics goes some way toward
> >> characterizing today's atomization and dissociation, but only from an
> >> objective viewpoint, chiefly with statistics. But that places you at a
> kind
> >> of neutral, abstract remove, and it culminates in self-objectification
> >> (which statistic am I?). Jaeger spurred me to read Alberto Toscano's
> more
> >> significant philosophical book, Late Fascism (2024).
> >>
> >> Writing in advance of Trump II, Toscano does something very compelling.
> >> First, he rehearses the most probing analyses of historical fascisms,
> >> particularly in the writings of Ernst Bloch, Georges Bataille and
> Theodor
> >> Adorno, with a constant movement between their ideas and context and
> what
> >> one can see in the present. This is stunning, because if you're like me,
> >> you read all those authors, but long before these specific aspects of
> their
> >> writing became so applicable to the present. Adorno's "Freudian Theory
> and
> >> the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda," supplemented by Jairus Banaji’s
> >> analyses of serialized alienation and sectarian violence in India, is
> the
> >> most intense read, because it gets at how a hollow simulacrum of belief
> can
> >> be performed by its nihilistic adherents, as if in a reality show I'm
> >> tempted to add, but to the point of bloodshed. Toscano actually
> minimizes
> >> the interpretations of Bloch and Bataille, but to me they illuminate
> >> particular strands - like the Christian longing for some utopian
> community
> >> outside the degraded forms of the present, and especially Bataille's
> idea
> >> that fascism integrates and channels the unruly violence of people who
> >> could never be integrated to the smooth, rationalized, law-governed
> world
> >> of liberal industrialism.
> >>
> >> After that tour de force, Toscano says there may be a better way to
> >> understand contemporary authoritarianism - by looking at the concrete
> and
> >> steel of the US carceral state, and by reading the analysis that Black
> >> radicals like George Jackson and Angela Davis produced inside those
> prisons
> >> in the 1970s. This is where he gets the notion of a hyperbolic
> preventative
> >> fascism that is triggered by the actions of a weak and undeveloped left
> -
> >> pretty much exactly what we are looking at in the US, not only because
> of
> >> the backlash against the scattered and ineffectual "decade of protest"
> in
> >> the 2010s, but also the perceived threat to capital represented by
> >> half-assed climate-change mitigation strategies or hypocritical DEI
> >> initiatives in the corporate workplace. From behind bars in the 70s,
> Black
> >> prisoners theorized the "anti-state state" that exalts the freedom of
> >> capital while throwing huge organizational resources into war, policing
> and
> >> carceral repression. Toscano delves into Du Bois and other Black
> radicals -
> >> George Padmore, Walter Rodney, Cedric Robinson, Ruth Gilmore - to
> >> substantiate Jackson and Davis. As Toscano writes: "The lived
> experience of
> >> state violence of Black political prisoners and its theorisation
> grounds a
> >> theory of US fascism and racial capitalism capable of interrupting
> narrow
> >> and clichéd images of fascism in mainstream political thought."
> >>
> >> A third chapter - which is as far I've got - develops the notion of the
> >> "anti-state state" by looking into the mid-twentieth century relations
> >> between authoritarianism and liberalism in Italy and Germany. This is
> not
> >> only about the well-known convergence between Italian and German
> >> industrialists and their respective authoritarian political parties -
> >> reduxed today by a vast swathe of US capital - but more incisively, it
> >> zeros in on the heavily racialized Nazi ideal of freedom, which builds
> out
> >> and rationalizes the contradiction between the individual's total
> >> submission to a leader and his or her simultaneous self-deputization as
> a
> >> violent autonomous agent on the ground. If you've had to confront
> anything
> >> like the Proud Boys or the Three Percenters, you're gonna recognize
> that.
> >> More surprisingly, Toscano quotes a French historian, Johann Chapoutot,
> who
> >> unearths a whole Nazi managerialism based on these ideas of racially
> >> granted freedom. "In the managerial register that, according to
> Chapoutot,
> >> was promoted by the Nazi non-state, ‘German freedom’ was defined by a
> >> performance principle (Leistungsprinzip). The individual SS officer was
> >> given maximum initiative and flexibility in executing their mission,
> while
> >> the community of the people was defined as a Leistungsgemeinschaft, a
> >> ‘community of achievement’." This is the dark affiliation between Nazism
> >> and contemporary corporate managerialism, which continually proclaims
> its
> >> absolute distinction from authoritarianism while extinguishing human
> >> self-awareness in the pursuit of meaningless productivism. Toscano
> >> comments: "The very possibility of a fascist freedom – and the
> unsettling
> >> imperative to reflect on the abiding potentialities of white,
> >> settler-colonial, propertied, masculinist figurations of freedom – is
> >> excised by the discourse on ‘totalitarianism’." Now, as the leftwing DSA
> >> surges in the US and Muslim candidates start entering politics, breaking
> >> the stranglehold of the Israel lobby and the grotesque verbiage about
> the
> >> "defense of the free world," we will see whether the totalitarian
> boogeyman
> >> can still disguise whatever we call the new authoritarianism, so
> profoundly
> >> illuminated by the critiques of the past, yet so refractory to simple
> >> categorical analysis.
> >>
> >> Late Fascism is a lot better than anything by Timothy Snyder or
> especially,
> >> Anne Appelbaum. Anyone who thinks that the structure of liberal
> democracy
> >> has not produced the current authoritarianism has apparently missed the
> >> career of Elon Musk. Sure I want Ukraine to escape domination by Russia.
> >> But not in order to reinforce a social order that condemns us all to
> >> repression, war and climate change.
> >>
> >> OK, 'nuff said. Anyone else who wants to comment on or refute this
> book, or
> >> raise some other, better interpretation, you have a reader.
> >>
> >> best, Brian
> >>
> >> On Sun, Aug 2, 2026 at 5:14 AM Andreas Broeckmann <
> ab@mikro.in-berlin.de>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> 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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