The book ‘Antipolitics’ (published in 2024) by Scrump and Evelyn contend that contemporary politics functions primarily as a form of managed theatre, designed to obscure the continuity of power among entrenched elites.
Drawing on intellectual antecedents such as James Burnham, Carl Schmitt, and Jacques Ellul, they conceptualize politics not as the contestation of ideas but as the perpetual operation and reproduction of ruling structures. “Antipolitics”, as they define it, represents a deliberate renunciation of faith in institutional politics and an insistence on perceiving power as it truly exists — unmediated by the legitimating myths of democratic process or representation.
Within this framework, the modern individual is depicted as subject to a subtler, more sophisticated form of domination. Rather than overt coercion, the managerial state exerts control through economic dependence, bureaucratic regulation, surveillance, and the omnipresent influence of media and culture. This system engenders what the authors term a form of “modern enslavement”: A condition in which individuals are persuaded of their freedom while their beliefs, choices, and possibilities are systematically circumscribed by unseen forces. The resulting conformity is maintained not by physical constraint but by psychological conditioning and the internalization of elite norms.
This idea was echoed in Edward Bernays’ seminal 1928 book, ‘Propaganda’. On the opening page, he asserts: “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind”.
Posted by -Joel-Snape-