Populism – they just want to play

Zionist laser cannons from space are responsible for forest fires in California. Women still drive off after birth. For a speed limit on the highways, the traffic signs are missing and a Reich citizen crowns themselves to the king: contemporary policy is full of false claims and confusing practices. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, Volker Wissing and Peter Fitzek are arbitrary keywords for such nonsense. But do they mean that seriously? Or do you enjoy the brazen lie? Such questions are asked, the Leipzig political scientists Robert Feustel and Gregor Ritschel. Therefore, with your book “Populist Games”, you will investigate as a political strategy based on the concept of “Bullshit”. Because, according to her suspicion, the more unimaginable of nonsense made the distinction between seriousness and fun, truth and lie. They do not understand their study as an alternative to other theories of populism, but as a supplement to identify blind spots. They determine the bullshit bingo in all political camps, but in the right to quite right it is predominantly located.

Dangerous game with the bullshit

“Flood the Zone with Shit,” said Trump’s ex-consultant Steve Bannon the political overdling tactics. It is about saying so much nonsense until nobody can keep up with correcting. But Bullshit spreading should not only overwhelm, says Feustel and Ritschel. The term bullshit introduced the philosopher Harry Frankfurt by underpinning the strength expression – literally: »Bullenkot«. Bullshit, that’s pure nonsense. If the lie is compared to the truth, nonsense is beyond that. Anyone who lies takes part in the truth game and recognizes the existence of truth. The liar only decides to claim the opposite. On the other hand, those who spread bullshit do not take care of truth or lie.

Bullshitter are Blender to Frankfurt who are about performance. Here Feustel and Ritschel start with the concept of the game. They do not mean “play” metaphorically or philosophical, such as in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s language game theory. With the “Homo Ludens” by Johan Huizinga, they understand the game as a social practice. It is delimitation and exceeding, design of other rooms, rules and imaginative appropriation of the world. Through play, people get to know each other. According to Feustel and Ritschel, it becomes dangerous, when the playful mingles into the political, the performative nonsense becomes political.

With the game, according to the approach, the ridiculous and absurd of Bullshill can be grasped, which does not affect those approaches that rely on reason and rational communication. If, for example, a speaker claimed in the tried and tested Reichstagsturm in 2020 that US President Trump was to support the lateral thinkers and imperial citizens in Berlin, then it was neither fake nor fun. “The game is the engine of affect policy mobilization,” say the authors. It promotes emotions and, to a certain extent, make sense. Of course, this essentially means denying the only game. This is how a double perspective appears: you look at something like a game from the outside, while those involved see it differently.

Four insights

The authors make up four aspects of this performative nonsense, which they consider to be promoting knowledge. First, they call the blurring of serious and fun. With holy seriousness you can be deepened into a computer game or observe how concentrated children are playing. The coronation ceremony of the recently arrested imperial citizen Peter Fitzek can be understood as Larp (Live Action Role Playing), i.e. as a real role -playing game. These are actually playful gatherings of people who are disguised to the Middle Ages for weekend pleasure. In the video of the pseudo coronation, Fitzek explains to the viewer the hollow ritual in a solemn tone-King Charles would not have needed this. Everyone involved believes in the power of the ritual, performing the illusion together performatively. Practice gives sense to the nonsense.

The second insight builds on it. Populists create alternative worlds and realities. The qanon catering myth, which has been active since 2017, becomes readable as an alternative reality game. Such computer games mix reality and play elements. At Qanon, the anonymous Q sprinkles traces in internet forums that believe the actors of the movement-with real effects, for example, when armed people penetrate a pizzeria to save their non-existent basement from the supposed children’s melancholy ring of the US government. The game becomes hyperreal. With Jean Baudrillard, the authors understand such distortions as a simulation of reality. As in a scavenger hunt or a complex puzzle, everything is used to create an absurd context and create an alternative reality.

The authors’ third note takes off on the superstition. Against better knowledge, care for personal quirks, knock on wood etc. Without conviction, you stick to the played truth. This facet is crossed with the three other elements, because it does not become clear whether this is primarily about habits and what they have to do with the populist game. On the other hand, the fourth aspect is more plausible again: in the game, affect mobilization and building social relationships are effortless because it builds on the pleasure principle. You share a created, lustful context. The common performance releases emotions, unites inwards and shields outwards. The enemy of the community becomes the opponent in the political competition. Here the individual, which is overwhelmed by dissolving the certainty, experiences a new large count. It finds stop in the syndicate. You are out of you, feels beyond real constraints. Of course, this is not a game for the participants themselves, the authors emphasize – that is also characteristic of the game.

Between nonsense and madness

If you look at these phenomena from outside as games of people who do not believe that they play, this has its charm at the description level. That makes them more tangible. The idea could be mature for the additional perspective for analyzes such as “trigger points” by Steffen Mau, Thomas Lux and Linus Westheuser or the investigations into the “libertarian authoritarian” by Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey. The populist games can be understood as reactions to identity loss of security and escape from perceived insults. The mass effect of mutual confirmation is known, the game offers the framework for such an unconscious appointment. If everyone believes it, the king is not naked. Then elections are fake, there is a veganism dictation and the next ice age is imminent.

The concept of the game is suitable as analytical glasses, precisely because it is not closed. Perhaps it has to be sharpened or supplemented by other shapes such as the festival and the procession – these urge themselves to seek demos from Pegida to transverse thinking, which staged something with fairy lights or remind you of the larp with fantasy costumes. This is about exposing the reality and creating another in the community, just the great emotions.

The crux remains: there is no complete invented world beyond all reality. To a certain extent, people have to work that not everything can be right. Still, they mean it somehow seriously. They trust nonsense, in real life they are constantly oriented towards reality. The game approach can neither dissolve this dilemma nor get it completely. Maybe psychology has to jump to political science here? In turn, access to the game has illuminating trains that could inform other approaches. He plausors absurd situations: for example, that adults hang panties in the face to demonstrate against pandeme control, Óder that they believe that a lack of traffic signs speak against a speed limit on motorways. The game approach does not take their dangerousness to the populisms. But he enables you to increase it seriously in an intermediate step without immediately pathologizing it and making insanity without any nonsense.

Robert Feustel/Gregor Ritschel: populist games. Bullshit as a political strategy. Kohlhammer, 130 p., Br., 24 €.