Ezra Klein: One of the hardest things to do is describe the overall shape, texture, rhythm of a political era. We'll talk about wokeness. All cops are bastards. Woke one was crazy. We'll talk about Trumpism. I was saved by God to make America great again. But getting at the overall form in which they all take place is really, really difficult. One idea for this that has taken off a bit recently that have been hearing a lot around me is hyper-politicization.

Hyper-politics is a concept from Anton Jäger. He's a historian and contributing writer at New York Times' opinion. And he's also the author of this book, "Hyper-Politics, Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences." And what he's describing is an era in which politics feels like it is everywhere. The intensity of political opinion and commitment is really, really, really high, that things are swinging wildly from one side to the other. But things are not securely attached to political institutions and structures. And so these powerful periods of intense mobilization don't seem to have lasting consequence. I think it's a really interesting way of trying to get at what is happening behind what we're all feeling. He joins me now. Anton Jäger, welcome to the show.

Anton Jäger: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Ezra Klein: So let's just begin at the beginning. What is hyperpolitics?

Anton Jäger: Hyperpolitics is a concept that describes a change in political culture in the West, in which we see an increase in political activity on a variety of metrics, whether it's voting, protest, but also political violence.

But that increase in political activity is not matched by an increasing institutional strength. So if you look at the indices of union membership, party membership, or other civil society organizations, those have stagnated or have continued to decline. And that is a situation, I think, which doesn't really have a proper precedent across the 20th century, maybe also not the 19th. And for that reason, I introduced the concept to make sense of a new, confusing political present.

Ezra Klein: So you're describing a situation in which people and moments feel more political in some cases. In some cases they're doing more political things. You have huge mass protests like in Black Lives Matter, but there is a deinstitutionalized reality to politics. They're not parts of parties in the way they once were, union, civic organizations are in decline. And so they're not civically or institutionally attached. It's this kind of mixture of political activity absent institutional membership.

Anton Jäger: That's right. Yes. And of course the story I'm telling is a historical one, and it comes with contrast. So if you're using these two axes, politicization, as I call it, and institutionalization, you can get a certain chronology of political forms as well.

So I talk about the mass politics of the 20th century, which could be highly politicized, particularly, let's say, the 1920s and the 1930s, but was also very heavily institutionalized. So to be politically active, often meant to be in an institution.

And I contrasted it also to the post-politics of the 1990s of the 2000s, as it's often called, in which you had a decline on both of those indices, so low institutionalization and low politicization.

And what we're looking at now, indeed, is this strange scissors shape, namely a lot of political activity has also become easier and it's become more necessary to pursue it, but it doesn't really have an institutional form, so it feels very inchoate. And as I claim, that also means it doesn't have as many policy consequences as it used to have.

Ezra Klein: So I don't want to question your definition of your own concept. But one thing I feel like that doesn't quite pick up on, but which is part of why this idea has resonated, is the hyperness of hyper politics, this feeling of things rising and falling with incredible rapidity.

It's like one year, you're deep inside Black Lives Matter and wokeness, and then it's like the vibes have shifted to Trump and then, you know, they come all the way back. Nothing seems to last, but everything seems incredibly important. You have a very thoughtful, ironic style here, but I want to get at this kind of frenzied nature of it, which you do describe in the book.

Anton Jäger: Yeah, so I think the volatility or the frenzy you're pointing at is a quintessential feature of the phenomenon I'm describing, because what do institutions do with political activity? They stabilize it and they give it longevity over a longer time period.

And if you don't have these institutions to tie your political action to, and also not, let's say, the mechanisms of delegation or representation that come with these institutions, I'd say also maybe discipline. That means that short-termism is the de facto mode of a lot of political action.

Because you can be enormously interested and invested in one question for a couple of weeks, you follow the media cycle, but then once, let's say, the popularity fades or it doesn't seem as urgent, you move on to the next thing. And there's no institution that's actually there to set the agenda to help you articulate a long-term vision that might unite your politics across all these short-term issues.

So the hyper has both a spatial and a temporal side to it. Spatial insofar as it can go everywhere and it can gather loads and loads of people. I mean, there are record numbers in terms of turnout, not just in the U.S., but across the West for protests in the last 10 to 15 years, but it's also hyper in that it doesn't cover a very long time span and almost like a political market, you can invest in a product. And then when you see that its value is plunging, you can dump your shares and you can move on to the next issue.

Ezra Klein: One of my critiques of the book is that you often will gesture at what seems very obvious about this to me, which is that this is digital politics. This is online politics. This is algorithmically mediated politics. You write about hyperpolitics, it is dynamic, intense, and polarizing, yet also ideologically diffuse, visibly modeled on the fluidity of the online world.

You don't spend much time in the book describing or theorizing the fluidity of the online world. But I want to spend some time on it here because the politics you're describing a politics I recognize and live through. This just feels like not even what institutions are or are not able to do now, as much as politics, which is fundamentally downstream of what we pay attention to, and our attention is fundamentally shaped now by algorithms that care about controversy, that care about newness that are hunting amorally and constantly for whatever we'll get a rise out of people. And if you build politics on that completely bizarre superstructure of attention, and this is what you get.

Anton Jäger: I'm broadly in agreement, and I don't think it necessarily contradicts or is in friction with the thesis I'm defending.

I'm a bit hesitant about a lot of views, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years, that assign not just a primary, but as we say, a monocausal role to digital technology, where somehow the Internet explains everything. And then the book shouldn't have been called hyper-politics, but just extremely online politics. Then it's just a book about the digitalization or the increasingly digital nature of our political lives.

I want to resist that collapse. I want to resist equating hyperpolitics just with extremely online politics. For the reason that many of the theories we've had, let's say that tried to describe the Brexit vote or the Trump vote through something like Russian bots or bought Facebook ads, there was, of course, during the Arab Spring already a theory that these were so-called Facebook revolutions, that it was digital platforms that were really driving the upsurge. But also recently the idea that the reason social media is playing this role is primarily because it's the only thing we pay attention to.

And I don't think that's very compelling. For the very reason that you also have to pay attention to the environment in which digital media was launched. And there it's not as if social media did all the work on itself. It's more that the civic or social landscape in which it entered it found a population that was ready to experience so much of politics online.

Of course, these algorithms are addictive, but the question is always why does it stick? Why are people so taken to it? And at the same time, a lot of the reason there are protests doesn't just have to do with hallucinations online. These are very, very real and very important topics, whether it's mass incarceration or police violence in the US, let's say inequality, but surely on the right, they'd say migration. And these are not simply things that digital platforms have somehow conjured up out of nothing.

It's more that I think social media has acted as a magnifying glass and an accelerator of certain trends that came before, but which I think surpass the digital. And if we reduce everything to the digital, we are only having a conversation about platforms when I think it should be a much broader conversation.

Ezra Klein: I always think of the conversation about what you're calling digital as a conversation about attention. And you can have that conversation well or poorly. And I agree with you. Dissolving things down to Russian bots or Facebook ads is ridiculous. I didn't believe that in the 2016 election. I don't believe it now.

But let me push this a little bit. Because when I say it's my critique of the book, I don't mean I think you have it wrong in the book. I actually just wish there was a chapter on it in the book.

And one thing I was thinking about as I read the argument you were making about institutions is, well, what do I see happening with the institutions we have today? Because it's not as if all institutions are gone or nobody is part of a party. You can look at the DSA, which is rising in America and has a real institutional formation. There are people who, you know, devote their lives to the Democratic Party, to the Republican Party.

And one thing I would say about all of these people, not literally every individual, but many of them, is they exhibit the tendencies of hyper-politics even more than normal people do, right? The tendency to get overly invested in what gets called online, the current thing, to have like incredible waves of sentiment, but then not be able to kind of translate it over a long period of time. The sort of tendency to look back on something like two or three or four or five years ago, something recent and think, oh my God, what were we just doing, right?

Famously, AOC, just gave an interview, which you said, that woke one was crazy.

Audio Clip:

• Interviewer: I have a local city councilman that has this saying "woke one was crazy." Oak one was crazy. And I think that what's important is that we have to assess what... Was it? I mean, did the movement go too far with some of those positions? I mean, you briefly supported the idea of defunding the police.
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Well, you know, I think that during this time and during, especially during COVID, there was a huge opening of the Overton window. We were shut down. There was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that were had in that time were quite fruitful.

Ezra Klein: I think what she's describing there is the way online politics led ideas that are real and rooted in the real world to sort of take some forms and be expressed in ways that people no longer wish to defend.

And so the way I think there's a connection here is that the people even who are institutions and the way institutions work and collectivities work, those people are also communicating with each other online and tweeting at each other and retweeting each other. Donald Trump communicates with the Republican Party through truth social. So sort of saying there are these two spheres, institutions and the digital world, it doesn't feel real to me. I watch people who lead these institutions communicating with each other through this digital world, and thus the institutions end up in a kind of like a like the same sort of back and forth, slightly wild oscillation quality.

Anton Jäger: Yes. It's very clear that the types of politicization that are typical of the contemporary world also have an effect on how people affiliate with institutions. There I would say hyperpolitics obviously moves at different speeds in different groups. So with the political professional and the, let's say, voter who maybe hasn't voted in a couple of elections and isn't professionally involved in politics, obviously hyperpolitics is going to have very different effects.

Speaker A: So, the volatility or short-termism that we observe in the general population and their attitudes, including toward politics, finds its counterpart even in individuals who find themselves inside these institutions. I believe it is illustrated very clearly in the case of AOC, but the argument can also be cited for several other figures, for the following reasons: Why is it so easy to abandon certain positions or walk away from commitments that were voiced loudly just a few years ago? Many of these political choices and preferences seem no longer anchored in a solid ideology.

Speaker A: And this point is vital in both institutional and historical terms. In the 20th century, political factions always had leaders or certain charismatic figures who led them forward. They were always people who might be even more individualized as party members than others, but at the same time, there existed a program around which everyone could align and orient themselves. And altering or abandoning certain aspects of that program came with concrete political costs.

Speaker A: With the AOC issue, it is about whether she acts as a liaison for DSA, yet DSA is obviously not an official political party. On an individual level, the cost of shifting away from or betraying a specific position appears minimal. Instead, going with the flow and yielding to whatever feels politically expedient in the moment carries a lower cost, precisely because there is no institutionalized party machinery or binding program to hold individuals accountable.

Speaker B: The way I see it, we should look at the system clearly. We need to stay focused without ambiguous, excessive nostalgia for how the world used to be, even if facing reality might be uncomfortable for some. It begins, of course, with the portraits from the 90s and 2000s: over those years, people felt liberated to break away from that world, enjoying a sense of individual freedom precisely because these institutions no longer held total dominance over their lives.

Speaker B: And it also stems from the realization that we cannot simply clone dinosaurs: we cannot extract the DNA of past political parties, implement them into the present, and expect them to be reborn and survive in today's environment. At the same time, it is very obvious that this is a question of power. People do not easily join institutions merely out of a desire to avoid loneliness. The books discussing the crisis of sociality and the epidemic of loneliness are attempting to analyze this very de-institutionalization.

Speaker B: However, beyond the element of socialization, political parties are the vehicle for ensuring collective power; they exist for collective action. As individuals move away from immersive organizational life, transforming individual preferences into effective collective action has grown vastly more complex. Across the West, the decline of political parties has marched alongside the erosion and gradient descent of popular power, especially from below.

Speaker A: For me, sitting in that position, an American in 1954 or 1973 seemed far more capable of transforming personal policy preferences into collective power and government reform. From a political science perspective, there now seems to be a negative correlation between popular will and actual policy outcomes. When complex policies like Medicare are debated, fear campaigns—such as claiming "your insurance will disappear"—routinely derail them. Were we genuinely much better at achieving desired political outcomes in a previous era?

Speaker B: It is important to remember that institutions are not the only factor affecting this capacity; state capacity and transmission channels also play key roles. Yet undeniably, the decline of these institutions has exerted a negative impact on the capacity to achieve policy change. If we look at the New Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s, the construction of the American welfare state was clearly correlated with the mass power of that period.

Speaker B: Following McCarthyism and the civil rights struggles, the decline of this countervailing power made winning concessions from the American business class exceedingly difficult. In Europe, the universal welfare state was likewise not built simply by technocrats; it came about through massive popular pressure from the outside. The securing of social rights across Europe and the US has always been a function of mass power. The loss of union density in the US undeniably shares a profound relationship with skyrocketing inequality today.

Speaker A: There is a pervasive public sense that people today feel utterly powerless against politics. Is this merely a perceptual issue, or is it reality? The American political system has historically been highly resistant to structural reform over very long periods. The Great Depression shattered the system and broke Republican dominance. FDR was able to adopt those policies not solely because of union density, but because Democrats held an overwhelming legislative majority in Congress that is unimaginable today.

Speaker A: Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" and the long expansion of welfare provisions directly followed the shock of JFK's assassination. For decades prior, the civil rights movement was persistently stonewalled by Southern dominance in Congress, where the filibuster was utilized primarily to kill civil rights legislation. Meaningful progressive leaps often emerge only from rare, non-linear moments of crisis rather than ordinary procedural routine.

Speaker B: I agree that the precise causal mechanisms around union density and inequality can be debated. But what stands out is that, despite lacking theoretically coherent political engagement, people today know far more raw information about the world than ever before. Yet this deluge of information is framed in an increasingly emotionalized manner.

Speaker B: One suspect dynamic is the combination of how much information you absorb and how constantly you are compelled to experience acute emotional reactions, set against an actual scope of personal power and available institutions that remains extremely low. This generates a pervasive feeling that everything is moving forward and controlled entirely without your participation, consent, or ability to influence outcomes.

Interviewer: In the red-blue system, where do you live? In a blue state, and you know, your voice hardly matters in the national—you know, in the presidential election thing. The same thing happens in a very conservative state, doesn't it? Everyone knows how your state is going to turn out. What difference does it make? Do you vote? I think we've always wanted to frame this as an issue of personal agency, but is it really just a matter of personal agency, right? The question is how much money you put into political engagement, and then your absent agency contradicts and gives you this dilemma.

Scholar: Yes, both are true. With a slight modification, I would say this: First, I think the feeling of a lack of individual power is real, but it is not absolutely unprecedented. The large-scale flowering of policy in the 1930s and 1940s, and perhaps somewhat in the 1950s, marked that beginning. The nuclear arms race, to many people, seemed to be the supreme expression of powerlessness in the 20th century. As George Orwell said, it produced the most anti-democratic weapon imaginable. So one cannot say that things were not like this before.

Scholar: I don't want to pretend that reinstitutionalizing or reorganizing today's institutions will automatically mean things get better. In implementing a certain politics, the question also arises of where power has shifted, even at the state level. That's why I don't think simply looking back to the 50s and 60s is the answer. For instance, unelected institutions in Europe and the United States, like central banks, hold just as much power today, and whether they are subject to popular or electoral pressure in the same way is a complex question. So there is no immediate guarantee. Achieving these political outcomes requires certain constellations and coalitions between elites and popular power, and only when that constellation is favorable does it actually work.

Scholar: I believe one of the most important political blockages we have observed on both sides of the Atlantic over the past 20 years is that the mass power factor has significantly decreased, even while politicization has grown. This dynamic may explain why real political breakthroughs have become so much harder.

Scholar: When it comes to the paradox of increased visibility and modern political mobilization dynamics, I completely agree. The video content you can now stream on your smartphone screens—whether it's atrocities in the Middle East or mass violence on the other side of the planet—significantly increases political awareness. There is this spontaneous experience, but it also creates an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

Scholar: The difference is that if you heard about the nuclear arms race in the 1940s and 50s, or read about it in the 90s, you read about it in print, but it wasn't broadcast live into your living room 24/7. Now, what can you actually do right in the moment, especially if you spend a lot of time on social media? It reinforces the feeling of powerlessness. An interesting aspect of social networks is how they provide an immediate, pseudo-action answer: you see something horrible, and you post, comment, or react. It produces an action with chaotic or non-existent material effects, but it immediately closes the stress cycle of feeling like you must act right now.

Interviewer: That's one of the reasons why I focus so much on the political elite. One of the unusual things across this historical era is that the elites are more confused than anyone else. Let's look back at Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, published around 1922. Lippmann's diagnosis was that the world outside and the pictures in our heads are always misaligned. His answer was that technocratic elite groups who knew everything should manage things. That answer failed because it assumed the elites wouldn't be confused. But today, nobody is more disoriented by social media than figures like Donald Trump or Elon Musk. Ordinary people turn to them asking for advice on what to do and where to align, but these elites are often the worst people to ask because they are the most driven mad by 24/7 political attention.

Scholar: Yes, the book is written from below in the sense that it describes the consequences of drastically lowering the cost of political expression via the internet. In the past, if you encountered an obvious injustice or moral scandal, you had to write a letter to the editor, contact local party leadership, or stand in the center of a public square and shout. Today, you can express yourself politically far more cheaply and easily, but that brings diminishing returns. It looks easy, but what are the actual material consequences for social change?

Scholar: Looking at the upper class, we see a parallel dynamic of extreme politics and deinstitutionalization. The Trump administration's second-term governance style—its short-termism and inability or unwillingness to plan—reflects how different elite factions are fragmented. Consider the striking example of Elon Musk's recent aggressive posture. People look at the richest individual wielding immense power and assuming the right to steer national politics, which generates intense public backlash. When questioned about this, Musk retorted that a quarter-billion people follow him, claiming more people love him and despise the mainstream media, before openly insulting interviewers on his own platform. What is most remarkable is seeing two representatives of the elite class screaming at each other in the public sphere. Normally, one would expect a degree of class solidarity and joint long-term projects among elites. Instead, particularly in the US and Europe, elites lack coordinating institutions across sectors and regions. Online polarization reinforces this, preventing them from acting in their own collective long-term self-interest.

Interviewer: You wrote an insightful piece in New Left Review exploring this dynamic around Donald Trump. You noted that some left analysts expected an automatic class solidarity between figures like Elon Musk and the editors of The Economist. Yet in reality, the American elite is highly fragmented, with CEOs and media figures frequently locked in bitter, hostile disputes. What is your intuition about this current absence of elite solidarity compared to previous eras? For example, during McCarthyism, wasn't elite politics always fiercely competitive rather than monolithically unified?

Scholar: Assuming that there must be an automatic class instinct and natural alignment among all elites is a crude generalization. Elite competition and fragmentation have historically been the norm rather than the exception, especially in a country as large and economically diverse as the United States. The only periods in American and modern global history where genuine elite unity existed were when they organized against a common challenge—namely the working class, through anti-communism or the Reagan-era suppression of the labor movement. Once those pressures subside, factional infighting emerges. Over the past decade, however, society has become exceptionally polarized, providing immense momentum to populist crosscurrents.

Scholar: Focusing on Trump's second term, while some observations remain speculative, anyone following media and social platforms over the past two years can see a clear departure from previous administrations. The defining characteristic is an acute short-termism, completely tethered to the 24-hour news cycle. Major political decisions appear to be made almost entirely based on their immediate media impact and perceived viral popularity. It is not that Trump lacks ideological factions around him—figures like Rubio or Colby have explicit blueprints for restoring American hegemony in the new century—but Trump evaluates these proposals through the lens of immediate media dominance: "Will this capture the next 24 hours of news coverage if I threaten action against this country?" Then, 48 hours later, attention pivots to a completely different issue. This personalization and volatility is symptomatic of a broader institutional crisis, where governance is reduced to a narrow faction detached from stable mass-party structures, leaving the administration incapable of formulating coherent policies looking even a week or two ahead.

Host: Looking forward, I mean, it is a stark contrast. Under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, five-year projects and long-term planning can be looked at, whereas in our decision-making, I mean, it's measured day by day. If there is a fundamental issue, it is being hyper-focused on the specific moment and human interactions. People around him, many key figures often commented on—J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller—they are actually not purely short-term thinkers. All of them consider things from a long-term perspective and think ideologically, perhaps more so than other political elites. Joe Biden at the end of his administration, one of the things his defenders said was that his plans were measured in decades, but unfortunately, elections and political turnover happen just a few years later. So the question is whether Trump's erratic nature is a harbinger of what is to come, or what is actually happening in the short term—this deinstitutionalization driven by online algorithms and emerging dynamics, where he acts like a tuning fork vibrating to the future. Or not. Looking at Great Britain, they have been changing Prime Ministers and cabinet ministers at an incredible speed, showing massive volatility that doesn't affect China in the same way. So yes, I would like to know your thoughts on how much of this short-term approach is structural, and to what extent Trumpism and the characteristics of this specific type of figure are merely an adaptation to a new technological and media landscape.

Guest: Yes, I mean, this is rich with metaphors, but I think there is a Darwinian explanation: you have the agents and ideas, and you have the environment. And the environment, obviously, has changed, thereby structuring history and the stories we tell. But there does seem to be a specific type or archetype that truly thrives in this new environment, and Trump is the prime example. In my view, this is quite personal to him. In terms of media modes, he lived through different eras: he was a creature of television, a reality show host in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, and then, I think, he transitioned effortlessly into the era of algorithms and social networks. But it is clear that in the case of Rubio and Vance, ideology is actually a burden. Precisely because Trump is unburdened by ideological beliefs—which doesn't necessarily mean he believes in nothing—ideology does not act as a filtering framework for his decisions. Other priorities stand at the forefront for him. This is what enables him to be a consummate showman and performer, and that is why he was able to win two presidential elections. When looking at someone like Vance, you sense that while there is opportunism, he is genuinely invested in ideological concepts, wants to write books, recount his conversion, and articulate a coherent worldview. I am not convinced that his appeal to modern, media-saturated, volatile voters will be anywhere near as compelling as the address of the performer himself. Several European politicians have also tried following the Trump style, but it is very difficult. This suggests there is a distinct personal skill or almost craft quality to what he exhibits.

Host: This brings up the question of structure versus concurrent agency. Trump himself is a rare case, but the MAGA movement has its own distinct characteristics as a broader movement in which many of his followers genuinely live. There are real ideas embedded in it, an increasing number of associated institutions, and leaders tied to it. You can live inside that world; it provides meaning, and it organizes massive rallies. In a way, it resembles an older era of mass politics far more than anything else we see today. So from your perspective, is MAGA an over-politicized mass movement, or is it the advent of something fundamentally new? How do you assess what is happening right now in the American landscape?

Guest: I find this very interesting and challenging, because Trump's first term and second term are visibly distinct. I truly believe that Trump's second term is far more institutionalized. During his first election victory, he and his entourage were genuinely surprised that they won in the end. That was not the case the second time. Initiatives like the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 testify to how much better prepared they were, with a deliberate project of institutionalization being executed. The question of whether MAGA constitutes a mass movement akin to 20th-century right-wing mass politics directly intersects with the ongoing debate over whether Trump is a fascist. In his second term compared to the first, we see the partial transformation of the security state—for instance, turning ICE into an armed instrument and attempting to build a solid base of loyal supporters tied to state funding. Such militarized organizational structures do remind one of 20th-century political formations commonly associated with fascist politics. Yet at the same time, the persistent question is whether Trumpism can survive without Trump. There is the issue of figures like Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene and early loyalists who view themselves as the continuation of the movement while breaking away from orthodox Republican party lines. I am simply not convinced that, outside of a few podcasts and media outlets, they possess the institutional infrastructure to sustain this project. The Republican Party has not transformed into a mass-membership party. The recruitment of many ICE agents seems far less dependent on ideological conviction than on financial incentives and employment opportunities provided by the security state. If they lose midterm elections or future contests, I am not sure this configuration can endure over the long haul. A 20th-century party could bide its time across cycles of 5, 10, or 20 years before striking. MAGA, heavily reliant on fickle modern media cycles, can rise just as quickly as it can fall.

Host: One thing we touched on earlier was institutions, but we were primarily speaking about civil institutions becoming petrified. I think there is also the issue of how governing institutions and government itself have become rigidified. This perhaps connects back to what you mentioned about how systems might achieve greater stability. In my view, it is not merely about an isolated branch of power, but the general form of government: in the United States, we have intensely divided politics, shrinking opportunities for bipartisan compromise, mounting veto gates, and a diminishing capacity to pass significant legislative bills over time. Even when major bills do pass—like infrastructure legislation pushed with the Chamber of Commerce—they lead nowhere when it comes to resolving contentious issues like immigration, and much of governance ends up bogged down in the courts. In Europe, the widespread perception is that the European Union creates sluggishness and exercises distant power over daily life. I wonder if the migration of political energy into public discourse, publishing, and media commentary is driven by the fact that discourse requires far less institutional friction and delivers immediate responses. It seems to reflect profound frustration with what can actually be achieved through formal institutions, which are ancient, cumbersome, and bound to balance competing interests. Money in politics can be very loud, but I often think its decisive impact is overstated compared to human agency, because money frequently fails to achieve its intended political objectives in America and elsewhere. Figures like George Soros spend millions, yet looking at the broader political trajectory, he clearly does not possess the total control attributed to him by conspiracy theorists. Nevertheless, at the elite level, the legalization of unlimited campaign expenditures and the growth of lobbying have made it easier for elites to assert their interests. This presents a paradox: meaningful social change has become impossible from below, yet execution has also become remarkably difficult from above.

Guest: This is indeed a deeper historical riddle that warrants thorough investigation. The history of deinstitutionalization has affected society, but it has also profoundly transformed the state itself. The structural realignments of the 1980s and 1990s are often narrated simply as neoliberalism, but the underlying shift goes much deeper. On the one hand, there was a concerted assault on institutions deemed impediments to economic recovery—especially labor unions, which were blamed for inflation—asserting that they had to be dismantled to restore economic normalcy. On the other hand, at the state level, there was a deliberate transfer of authority toward unelected, non-majoritarian technocratic institutions. Central banks were declared independent to manage the economy supposedly in the neutral interest of all, explicitly insulated from democratic and elite political interference. Crucially, this mechanism accomplished two things: it detached governance from popular and elite pressures (though elites naturally retain greater access, it is far from seamless), and simultaneously, it vastly amplified the appeal of the veto options you described. When people realize they cannot achieve substantive policy goals through existing institutional channels, the default strategy becomes creating emergency switches and veto gates—stopping what they oppose even if they cannot build what they desire. This veto mindset has become immensely appealing across broad swathes of society. Merely eliminating veto gates will not solve the underlying crisis, because the reliance on vetoes is a symptom of institutional dysfunction. When compared with China, analyzing developmental capacity without the central role of the Chinese Communist Party would be meaningless. In Western systems, the capacity to aggregate elite factions and public opinion has fractured, breeding profound governance pessimism. In this context, Trump's ascendancy represents a peculiar phenomenon: he stages a spectacular show of shattering the gridlocked system, signing sweeping executive orders—such as attempting to revoke birthright citizenship—and tossing them into the crowd like a WWE spectacle, creating the visceral illusion of decisive action where normal institutions have failed.

Guest: Trump attempted to take on administrative functions, but as it turned out, he couldn't really crack the code. He passed fewer formal laws than many other recent presidents, and a large portion of what he attempted to do ended up tied down or reversed in the courts. Initiatives like DOGE move initially with tremendous momentum and acceleration, but after a short while, they run into structural walls and begin falling apart. He appears perpetually caught off guard and buffeted by unfolding crises. He gets dragged into escalations with Iran, which are clearly outside of his deliberate control.

Guest: So beyond the sheer spectacle Trump generates, what is actually happening beneath the surface? For the general public, has anything fundamentally changed for the better? Have prices and the cost of living actually come down? Is the state coping effectively? Is anyone genuinely in control of the situation? Once again, the answer is no. Now you see Donald Trump appearing disengaged, drifting off during high-level meetings, while their coalition faces real risks in the midterms. There is a pervasive sense that nobody is truly at the wheel, yet no alternative faction has a coherent grip on power either.

Host: There seems to be a real dilemma here. The West appears to be locked in a volatile political state that feels inherently precarious, yet illiberal regimes outside the West have not solved these systemic governance dilemmas either. China is advancing at rapid speed, ramping up systemic pressure on the West, yet Western leaders seem at a loss regarding how to coordinate an effective response. While politicians in the West are personally very active and full of policy talk, there is a distinct lack of institutional capacity to follow through and deliver tangible, long-term strategic action.

Guest: Yes, exactly. If we frame this in terms of input and output legitimacy, non-liberal regimes lack formal democratic electoral mechanisms as their source of input legitimacy. Yet, as demonstrated during the COVID policy reversals, public protests still forced leadership to rapidly reconsider its trajectory, showing distinct internal boundary negotiations. In parts of the West, we are witnessing a surge in electoral turnout and participatory noise—an explosion of input—yet it fails to translate into effective governance, leaving the state incapable of meeting baseline structural demands.

Guest: When confronted with direct challenges—such as intensifying competition from China or the geopolitical and economic shock of Trump's tariff offensive—European elites are completely adrift, searching in vain for coherent answers. There are plenty of policy papers and proposals circulating, but there is no executable blueprint. Crucially, Europe lacks the institutional infrastructure required to align conflicting factions and deliver a structural reset for the 2020s.

Guest: The strange paradox of our moment is that from a left-wing perspective, one finds oneself urging the technocratic elite: "Please get your act together and build the institutional capacity necessary to coordinate your warring factions." Reflecting on European policymaking over the past decade, this institutional atrophy and paralysis among leadership has become glaringly obvious.

Guest: One way to map this trajectory is to look at the historical progression of mass politics. We had the placid "post-political" consensus of the 1990s—under figures like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair—where, with the fall of communism and the proclaimed "end of history," politics was depoliticized into technocratic administration, and ideological conflict was declared obsolete.

Guest: Then came the post-2008 financial crisis era of "anti-politics"—manifested in movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. This phase was defined by a visceral hostility toward politics as such, rejecting established political parties and institutions entirely, yet failing to build durable organizational alternatives to replace them.

Guest: Today, we inhabit the era of "hyperpolitics." It is characterized by an intense, ubiquitous politicization that is fundamentally disruptive yet organizational shallow. While people are hyper-aware and every cultural marker becomes ideologically charged, this energy collides with an ossified bureaucracy incapable of translation into structural change. Everything from immigration to trade policy with China becomes intensely polarized. We see flashes of mobilization—from the resurgence of the American left around the DSA and Mamdani to the populist right. Yet the decisive question remains: will this hyper-politicization exhaust itself in nihilistic disruption, or can it generate the institutional muscle required to build something lasting?

Host: This brings us back to the evolutionary metaphor you invoked earlier: is this friction a necessary crucible for renewal? Across Canada, Europe, and beyond, old models are breaking down, leaving us in a turbulent interregnum. As the popular Gramsci quote goes, "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters." Are we simply condemned to pass through this trial by fire before anything coherent emerges?

Guest: That was indeed the situation Gramsci was living through and analyzing in interwar Italy. While I don't believe we are currently in a pre-revolutionary scenario, we are undeniably at a juncture that forces structural choices, particularly for the left.

Guest: Furthermore, hyperpolitics has brought a meaningful increase in mass political literacy. Everyday citizens now recognize that key aspects of their material lives—rents, road conditions, grocery prices—are directly tied to political decisions. The understanding that "policy shapes my lived reality and politics can alter it" has taken root. Of course, the internet is flooded with conspiracy theories, noise, and exhausting discourse that makes people nostalgic for the 1990s and 2000s when families avoided political arguments at holiday dinners. But my book does not advocate a retreat from politicization. Mass engagement with politics is healthy and necessary; the real task is discovering institutional forms capable of expanding beyond superficial online grievance into genuine collective agency.

Host: To wrap up our discussion, what three books would you recommend to our audience?

Guest: I’ve selected three distinct books from very different genres.

The first is the classic Trotsky trilogy by Isaac Deutscher (The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, The Prophet Outcast). Deutscher was a Polish-Jewish historian who learned English in his thirties and went on to write one of the most brilliant political biographies of the twentieth century. While foundational for Trotskyists, it was famously read by figures across the spectrum, from Tony Blair to early neoconservatives. I first read it in my early twenties and recently revisited the audiobook; it remains an absolute masterpiece of political history and literary craft that speaks powerfully to our current dilemmas.

Guest: The second book is Willem Elsschot’s 1933 novella, Cheese (Kaas). It is a relatively concise and accessible story about an ordinary clerk who, burdened by growing family expenses, attempts to become a successful businessman by setting up a wholesale cheese enterprise. The comic tragedy is that he utterly detests cheese and never eats it, yet devotes his entire life to marketing it. It serves as a brilliant parable for 21st-century hyper-capitalism, where the compulsion to buy, brand, and sell has become an all-consuming obsession, entirely decoupled from any genuine care or regard for the actual commodities being traded.

Guest: The final book is Michel Houellebecq’s personal memoir, A Few Months in My Life (Quelques mois dans ma vie). Houellebecq is a central reference point in my analysis of hyperpolitics. This is not a novel, but a frank autobiographical account of a chaotic and surreal episode in his personal life involving an ill-fated Dutch art film project. From that bizarre scandal, he launches into a profound, razor-sharp meditation on contemporary sexuality, culture war politics, and institutional decay. Houellebecq is a provocative, prophetic figure whose diagnosis of our cultural moment is indispensable for understanding the psychological terrain of modern hyperpolitics.

Host: Thank you so much for joining us.

Guest: Thank you.