Just something everyone should read.
Definitely raises an eyebrow if corpo media says “hey lefties check this out” and hits the FOMO button on a “popular must-read” I’ve never heard of before. Doesn’t automatically mean it’s a problem, but something to note I guess.
The title sounds like something I’d definitely skim in a bookstore.
The book is Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences, for those of you who also hate bullshit click bait headlines.
The article is a short summary of the book. It’s the summary that’s worth reading. You will get way more out of it than just the title of the book. It’s not “click here to see the title” type of an article so not really a clickbait.
I’d say the article is a summary of someone with very polarized political options trying to milk quotes from a book meant for an academic context. Especially the part where they attempt to define the far right (MAGA) as “not fascist”. Which, in the context of the original author is not a fair summary. The author is using very specific language to point to the differences of historical ideas of fascism and a modern day fascism that is not reacting to a popular working class consciousness.
I haven’t read the book myself. But even reading the context of the quotes the article uses. Or literally looking up the definition of the specific categorization the author used (in the quotes) tells me this obvious flaw in the articles implied message.
The article is attempting to use this to “blame” any rise in working class resistance to fascist tactics as a cause of escalation. That if, “the left didn’t keep pushing” we’d remain in this other thing. A word people find less scary. So it has this implied “it’s actually the resistance to blame that we won’t return to “normal” after Trump.”
It’s very typical pseudo intellectual though. It’s not a criticism I have of the author of the book. Because I’d have to read it entirely. It’s a criticism of the article that I feel is misrepresenting the author in a very specific way that is vague enough that only the average reader of “the guardian” would be perfectly persuaded into its narrative of anti “far left” propaganda.
Edit: you said you read the book yourself. So, I’d love your analysis. I think you may be missing the articles purpose because you have more connection to the source material that is filling in its purposeful gaps for the average reader. But, having only read the article. I feel like it doesn’t seem to do the book justice. It glosses over definitions and appeals to an emotion of “not fascism”. I’d appreciate your perspective though. I will add it to my reading list.
It’s surprising how much the word “clickbait” has changed over the years. On lemmy today, the word “clickbait” just means “the article tried to get me to click through, rather than only reading the title.” It used to be that if you put everything you had into the title, we’d call it “clickbait” because you were baited into clicking to see more when there was none.
I’d say “click bait” originally is a “joke without a punchline”. You are baiting the user into something that is very interesting and promising the click will give them an instant satisfying conclusion. Not that EVERYTHING is in the title. I definitely find your definition true but a little too specific. The entire point is the promise that the click will instantly satisfy the missing dopamine of a conclusion.
The click bait reveals just enough to be interesting but doesn’t give you the satisfaction of a conclusion.
The “bait” is that it’s not satisfying. It’s actually a boring story that you had to read several paragraphs to figure out. The title was misleading and the conclusion actually didn’t align with it in reality.
You got “baited” into reading a boring article that implied something exciting. The 75 lb housecat in the thumbnail was just a boring photoshop and they spent 5 paragraphs talking about cats diets and exercise before telling you that.
Hey this isn’t Dungeon Crawler Carl!
Interesting read, though I was struck at how little - almost nonexistent - corporate media was in the analysis. Money was more prominent, and that’s certainly true but the overlap is enormous.
Maybe for someone born
twenty years afterwhen Fox News started it isn’t as blatantly obvious how changes in corporate media has shaped politics.I think the part about money was about current situation. IMO before social media the difference wasn’t as crucial. We had left leaning and right leaning media and all of them had funding. Fox did have huge impact on politics in US but outside of US I think it was more balanced. Fox News was more a symptom of a rotting American system than the cause. It started in 1996 when American right was already braindead and easy to manipulate. The game changed with social media where getting millions of dollars from some billionaire backers or as part of disinformation campaign by Russia or Israel makes a huge difference. Right wing influencers have access to more funding and are dominating that space everywhere. So…
They [the right] 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.
is spot on IMO.
Fair, I just see it as the logistics part of how oligarchy runs things, and the ridiculous part is that our families keep it going by refusing to delete it.
Those aren’t new issues though, just extensions of television-era theory that increases all the impacts and variables. And of course evil moves faster now as you indicated. I guess it’s just a different focus.
I really have my doubts about a book that The Guardian wants leftist to read. Kind of a red flag right there. It’s not like the guardian is writing articles about how the left is “devouring” Parenti.
Red flags don’t sound like a bad thing here
The people’s flag is deepest red. It shrouded oft our martyred dead.
Edit: whoever downvoted a Billy Brag lyric quote - jail. Straight to jail.
If it helps this is a quote from him in the article: "Even with all the baggage and connotations, I still think the easiest thing is to call myself a Marxist.”
Didn’t get that far. (Or I missed it skimming over the whole thing) But from what I did speed read I could only tell that the article itself was definitely written with quotes to specifically confuse liberals.
I guess I shouldn’t shit on the book particularly. The guardian doesn’t expect anyone to read it because of the article. What I read of the article sounds like something academic being described out of an academic context by someone not on the left.
But, no one on “the left” is “devouring” this book. It’s very academic and that’s totally fine. I think the libs just grabbed it because they’re trying to take the book out of context to say “the far left is what will cause fascism”. Which is not at all what the author was saying. Seems he was trying to categorize a difference between what we have with MAGA and historical occurrences of fascism. Which is fine in an academic context. But they just want to write “this leftist academic doesn’t think it’s fascism”. Those were the quotes and section of the article that made me roll my eyes.
It’s not a coincidence that they are putting this narrative out right now, now that there is a popular socialist movement growing in the US. “We must stop socialist to prevent Trump from turning fascist” is what they are trying to imply with this article. Typical liberals siding with fascist.
Anton Jäger’s recent book, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences, is being read by Labour watchers and leftwing thinkers
Have you read it ?
Of course. Why do you think I consider it worth sharing? Because of the pictures?
That article was a good read. Thanks for that. I will add it to the list but it might be a year or two before I get around to it. :D
OMG, same. 0 time for books recently. The article is very interesting in itself though.
No I’ve got a massive pile of books to get through. I read a lot :)
I meant that I also should have time for it in about a year :) Right now all I read is school related.
Adding to the list in that case
