Theatrical brutality makes people believe they have power, even if they don't [View all]
WaPo
The Trump insurrectionists exposed that a politics of spectacle, built upon delusion, is no less dangerous than "the real thing." Precisely because they lack an affirmative political vision, far-right movements fetishize violence as the premier form of civic participation. It is what is offered to the masses in lieu of actual power. The result is violence that becomes almost casual, shorn of any political rationale and reflecting a reality in which human beings are just as disposable as their video game counterparts.
More than a week has passed since a pro-Trump mob overran the U.S. Capitol, but we are still struggling to come to terms with the day's events. Much of the difficulty stems from the fact that the Trump mob was both menacing and ridiculous, dangerous and utterly delusional. On one hand, there was an absurdist quality to many participants: conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, militia members, fans of animal pelts. Yet our cosplaying revolutionaries were not playing at all, leaving five dead and dozens wounded.
The truly frightening thing about cosplaying in this regard is that it is part of a politics of delusion that is acted out in the real world. That many who participated in the attack are having trouble grasping the legal consequences that came along with their live-streamed insurrection testifies to this sense of confusion between material life and the revolutionaries they played on TV.
the author: Suzanne Schneider, a historian at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Apocalypse and the End of History.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/capitol-riot-brutality-violence-performative/2021/01/15/6bd20200-56a9-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html
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