An unsatisfying term I’ve been thinking through to make sense of this is “postpolitical.” The right looks for that one signifier to prove the shooter was a leftist, the left hopes for proof he was a right winger, and so on. But for these kids don’t use signifiers that way (1/)
Even if you came of age politically in the 2000s (me), detached from the history of 20th century political struggle, partisans, the party form, you likely found signifiers *in order to express* political commitments, which were still, for the most part, attached to institutions
Even the weirdo cranks—libertarians, Avakian communists, Civil War re-enactors—had their base in orgs with vanity political parties, newspapers, conventions, meetings, what have you. This is not how the internet works, and it accelerated even faster after the spontaneity of 2020
The online signification economy is not structured by coherent goals of building a party form or achieving institutional legitimacy. It’s about differentiating oneself within a vast network of competing sources of attention. Avoiding cringe is just as important as ideology
If the End of History 90s produced a layer of signification detached from history it was equivalent to the first film in the franchise: it poorly referenced a past but it was a past in living memory. By now the past that is referenced is always already the pastiched version
The shooter allegedly referencing Bella Ciao is a great example: even for leftists in the 2010s, the song became a way to place oneself in relation to a decade of actual historical struggle. But it’s just a meme now, recycled for inter-group competition
You have to remember that for this generation even the Bernie left is ancient—they experience history through waves of online that oscillate rapidly against what came before. Woke, post-woke, it’s all about situating oneself against more seemingly powerful signifying practices
So post-political isn’t the right term but I think what I’m trying to work through is the idea that *even if they feel* like they have political commitments they are unmoored from institutional politics. That’s been increasing for decades (2010s “socialism” is similar!), sure,
but once it’s *entirely* online—directed at defeating rival influencers instead of, say, organizing a union or even street action—it becomes evacuated of “politics” as we have understood them up to this point. Eddington nailed this w/the kid who ends up as a RW influencer
The key is to not fall into the trap of determining which ideology they fit—that’s just more signification play!—nor is it to call it meaningless. It’s all VERY meaningful for them! Because they live in a world where our political institutions have revealed themselves meaningless
Anyway, a penny for suggestions in a better term to describe what I’m outlining here, and preferably without recourse to Baudrillard lol
I absolutely should have mentioned Anton Jäger’s work here—the book version of this is coming out next year!—but I think I want to distinguish this new Gen Z version from the 2010s hyperpolitics moment, which was still grounded in coherent signifiers—there were just too many
@matthiasellis incoherent radical centrism? ie the most american thing of all
@matthiasellis I like hyperpolitics, idk if it applies here though