Hypernormality

I recently watched the latest documentary from Adam Curtis, Hypernormalisation. I highly recommend it to everyone interested in geopolitics as well as those who might be puzzled about the current state of the world. Despite having talked about globalization for years now, many of us still remain skeptical about the actual affiliations of our leaders and their ties to the free market. And if we follow Curtis’ explanation for it, this is normal. In fact, this growing cynicism that we all experience is the direct results of political strategies used by world leaders.

Vladislav Surkov

If, just like me, you’re only a distant observer of Russian politics, you might not be familiar with Vladislav Surkov, once Vladimir Putin’s top éminence grise, or in more colloquial terms, his main strategic advisor for problematic regions such as Crimea. Adam Curtis describes him as a prominent individual who was inspired by “avant garde ideas from the theater” and used them to modern day politics in an innovative fashion. He aimed to distort the public’s understanding of the world by playing with the logical order of things. It builds on a strong entertainment-based society that promotes exhuberant rallies and the hyperpersonalization of its leaders in a media-centric approach.

Creating confusion

Surkov advised Putin to spend governmental funds to finance all kinds of groups, whether non-governmental activists, traditional political opposition but also the most dangerous far-right movements. Such an initiative might at first appear as an attempt to turn the many factions of the country against each other to create chaos but the idea of Surkov was in fact much darker than that. Instead than just letting this whole situation amplify, the Kremlin openly disclosed its affiliation to all groups, including those opposing its political agenda. The public grew utterly confused. It became impossible to differentiate the political actions undertaken by the Kremlin, by disguised initiatives or genuine uprising.

Impact

The Economist described this strategy as a “ceaseless shapeshifting that is unstoppable because it’s undefinable”. It is mirroring the postmodern world in which it was born. Nothing is genuine anymore, and nobody can be trusted. As long as such an idea predominates, people remain alienated and popular uprise is inexistent. One might, in a traditionally cynical way, shrug his shoulders and argue that such dark political strategy can only occur in a country that is authoritarian like Russia, but they would be wrong. Isn’t Trump the perfect embodiment of all this? A man who made a fortune from the exploitation of the postmodern phenomenon that is the growing entertainment industry crafted by American standards. A man who, as depicted by Curtis, once praised his personal connections to world leaders like Qaddafi and officially claimed during a Republican debate to have funded a majority of his opponents in the past to receive personal favors. Openly denouncing a corrupt polity is the ultimate farce that nobody seems to interpret in the extremely threatful way that it should be understood. Americans elected a man who feeds on alternative facts, the narrative expansion of Surkov’s political strategy. And our only remaining watchdogs are now being discredited, what do you really think will happen next?

Jump around 1:18:15 for the part about Surkov