Posted by Barry Boterman
https://www.metafilter.com/211082/Are-you-not-entertained-Trumpire-and-the-Spectacle-of-disintegration
I wanted to share with you a
blog I recently discovered by Dr. Eric Fattor. I have searched here but could not find his name anywhere so I assume it has not been shared before. The blog was started in 2017 and describes the relation between Trump and what it calls the 'Spectacle of disintegration', which is the latest evolution of the Spectacle as first envisioned by the French Philosopher and Situationist Guy Debord. It consists of a long series of short articles, which also occasionally discusses related topics. In his analysis, Dr. Fattor borrows heavily from the concepts created by Guy Debord in his book 'Society of the Spectacle' (published in 1967, yet only becoming more relevant as the processes leading to Spectacle which he outlines have continued to ferment). in the book he argues that Spectacle has become the dominant religion and power vector through which society is organised. In this book he introduces two forms of Spectacle, Concentrated Spectacle, as practiced in the USSR and China, and Diffuse Spectacle, as practiced in western countries. After the fall of the USSR however, these two Spectacles fused together to become the next evolution of the Spectacle called the Integrated Spectacle, combining the strengths of both Spectacles and eliminating their weaknesses. Finally, the advent of social media symmetrised the relation between media producer and media consumer, and has ushered in the current form of the Spectacle, which is the Spectacle of Disintegration. Though all four forms of Spectacle can and do still exist side-by-side. It is through understanding the principles on which the spectacle is founded that we can understand the rise of Trump, and why he is a symptom of a larger system that has been created, and why even after he is gone, society will continue to be organised in the manner it currently is, until a new, more effective Spectacle can be discovered.
So what is the Spectacle?
"the spectacle is a world order built by the current iteration of global capitalism. It represents a world where the bulk of value-added assets come not from manufactured goods or commodities, but from the imaginary aura created by the sum-total of these commodities into various competing lifestyles and cultures. Each of these cultures conjure a menu of dreams, fantasies, aspirations and fears that individuals seek by associating themselves with a galaxy of brands, logos, and other signifiers through the purchase of the goods and services affiliated with those brands. For most individuals living in the spectacle, life becomes and endless effort to imbibe and emulate the sensory output of the spectacle, not just for the mere purposes of entertainment, but because this pursuit creates a ready-made existential meaning for individuals and communities in world that otherwise provides no such meaning. As Debord argues, "The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.""
Below is a list of links to the various articles most directly related to discussions of the trumpire, and i have extracted the most relevant paragraphs into a single text for easy reading by those who are time-constrained.
Dr. Fattor starts of with a general introduction of the concepts needed:
Introducing the Trumpire
https://ericfattor.com/2017/01/18/first-blog-post/
"Imagine two things you never ever thought could, would, or should be combined, mixed or somehow fused together–strawberry smoothies and lantern batteries, beaver pelts and pecan shells, reality television and western civilization. This is what the world now presents to us in the form of the Trump presidency–a fusing of the American Empire and the Donald Trump marketing death cult. In the former is the traditional apparatus of global rule controlled or presided over by the United States. This is a world that gives a large percentage of the world all the trappings and trimmings of liberal consumer society at the cost of large zones of economic underdevelopment policed by the American military force or a blue-helmeted UN auxiliary. In the later is the Trump media and branding juggernaut using its weapons of mass promotion to turn celebrity notoriety into sufficient political capital to buy access to the halls of power of this empire. Together they form the unprecedented and strange amalgam of governance that takes shape before our eyes. An assemblage of power here dubbed the Trumpire."
The Spectacle
https://ericfattor.com/2017/02/02/the-spectacle/
"The Trumpire is the product of a particular assemblage of forces converging at a unique moment in history. It may be rhetorically useful to compare the Trump regime to past totalitarian or authoritarian governments, but such comparisons in the long run only distort and inhibit a genuine understanding of the Trump phenomeon.
"Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the outcome and the goal of the dominant mode of production. It is not something added to the real world—not a decorative element, so to speak. On the contrary, it is the very heart of society's real unreality. In all its specific manifestations—news or propaganda, advertising or the actual consumption of entertainment—the spectacle epitomizes the prevailing mode of social life."
I try to emphasize this point to my students by asking them why they are in school (especially those enrolled at expensive liberal arts colleges). Usually, the first response I get is a canned answer about the importance of "getting and education" and "making a contribution to society." Inevitably, more honest answers to the question begin to emerge–something to the effect of: "I want a good job and a college degree is more likely to make that possible." I then ask "Why do you want a good job?" Again, a few canned responses repeating the "contributing to society" theme, before someone evetually says, "I want to make lots of money." "Exactly!" I reply, to which I then ask, "And why do we want to make lots of money?" A long moment of silence ensues before someone chimes in: "To buy stuff!" And there is the answer. The spectacle fuels the thoughts, hopes, dreams, aspirations and fantasies of vast populations who are embedded within it and motivates them to take on substantial debt to purchase the services of higher education (or for others, to play the lottery or audition for talent shows despite the long odds of success)."
The Spectacle and history
https://ericfattor.com/2017/02/10/the-spectacle-and-history/
"When the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus recently announced they were closing down their traveling acts, more than a few articles observed the irony of the end of a classic American amusement coinciding with the beginning of the Trump presidency. In the society of the spectacle, a three-hour circus extravaganza that for many families was the entertainment highlight of the year—an occasion for which they might travel hours or days to witness—was buried in an avalanche of daily distractions one can plug into at any given time. So pervasive has the imperative of the spectacle become that even the political process by which the United States chooses its president delivers more "thrills, chills and spills" than the travelling Big Top that once had a monopoly on such amusement."
The concentrated Spectacle
https://ericfattor.com/2017/02/15/the-concentrated-spectacle/
"The concentrated spectacle is the spectacle that is spun out of the imperatives of totalitarian control found in the Soviet Union and China. At the heart of the power of the concentrated spectacle is the imagery of violence and the implements of coercion whose force lies less from their use than their sight and media representation. All of this power flows from the concentrated image of the dictator who occupies the exalted deified space in these totalitarian societies. As Debord argues, the concentrated spectacle "imposes an image of the good which is résumé of everything that exists officially, and is usually concentrated in a single individual, the guarantor of the system's totalitarian cohesiveness."
The Diffuse Spectacle
https://ericfattor.com/2017/02/23/the-diffuse-spectacle/
"McKenzie Wark captures the distinction between concentrated and diffuse spectacles best when he writes, "Big Brother (the concentrated spectacle) is no longer watching you. In His place is little sister and her friends: endless pictures of models and other pretty things. Whereas the concentrated spectacle gives a permanent and seemingly unchanging image of ruthless power and authority to pacify its people, the diffuse spectacle keeps it subjects pacified by inducing them to constantly chase rotating pop cultural trends and conceptions of "cool." Yet for all the differences that exist in the nature of the concentrated or diffuse spectacles, however, the effects are largely similar—to legitimize or neutralize resistance to totalitarian political and socio-economic structures. In the concentrated spectacle, the star of decision-making is the omnipotent figure in a highly regimented regime whose visage and public statements of power and strength reassure the star "fans" (in this case the subjected population) who need such spectacular boasting from these god-like to be reassured everything under control. The diffuse spectacle trades these reassurances by the star of decision-making for the opportunity to emulate the luxurious and opulent lifestyles of the star of consumption. Both populations accept their respective status quos and are unable or unwilling to imagine any alternative."
The Integrated Spectacle
https://ericfattor.com/2017/03/06/the-integrated-spectacle/
"In 1988, as the Cold War was about to come to an abrupt close, Debord finally offered up this new understanding of the spectacle. Dubbed the "integrated spectacle," this form was the "rational combination" of both diffuse and concentrated spectacles into a potent new assemblage of power. Debord describes the effects of the combination in the following way:
As regards concentration, the controlling center has now become occult: never to be occupied by a known leader, or clear ideology. And on the diffuse side, the spectacle has never before put its mark to such a degree on almost the full range of socially produced behavior and objects. For the final sense of the integrated spectacle is this reality no longer confronts the integrated spectacle as something alien.
More profoundly, the integrated spectacle can also be thought of in terms of the processes of neoliberal globalization that were in their early stages when Debord wrote his Commentaries. Debord presciently argued that "the society whose modernization has reached the stage of the integrated spectacle is characterized by the combined effect of five principal features: incessant technological renewal; integration of state and economy; generalized secrecy; unanswerable lies; and eternal present." "
The Spectacle of disintegration
https://ericfattor.com/2017/03/16/the-spectacle-of-disintegration/
"There is one more evolution of the spectacle that needs mentioning. Interesting enough, there are two variations of this spectacle offered up by two different thinkers in the last decade: the Disintegrated Spectacle by Jeffrey Kinkle and the Spectacle of Disintegration by Mckenzie Wark.
Mckenzie Wark's notion of the spectacle of disintegration begins at the point at which the integrated spectacle has reached full maturity and has extended its reach over the entirety of the globe to the point where there are no spaces in the everyday lives of the world's population that are not influenced or permeated by the images of the spectacle. In this state of affairs, the spectacle becomes "internalized, privatized, "personalized"—miniaturized, domesticated, speeded up, put at every infant's disposal—with the image doses more and more self-administered by interactive subjects, each convinced that the screen was the realm of freedom."
The integrated spectacle still relied on centralized means of organizing and distributing the spectacle, run by a culture industry in command of the means of producing its images. The disintegrating spectacle chips away at centralized means of producing images and distributes this responsibility among the spectators themselves. While the production of goods is outsourced to various cheap labor countries, the production of images is in-sourced to unpaid labor, offered up in what was once leisure time. The culture industries are now the vulture industries, which act less as producers of images for consumption than as algorithms that consumers swap between each other—while still paying for the privilege. "
The disintegrating Spectacle
https://ericfattor.com/2017/03/25/the-disintegrating-spectacle/
"The last post discussed Mckenzie Wark's notion of the spectacle of disintegration—a variation of the spectacle where the audience is invited to participate in the smothering of their own creativity by digitizing the banality of their lives on various social media platforms. Whereas the original intention of this evolution of the spectacle was to enhance the entrenched structure of the status quo, what has happened instead is the breaking off of certain elements of the spectacle that spin autonomously apart from the larger global media vortex.
For now, all that remains is to examine the other notion of the spectacle tailored to the times of the twenty-first century—Jeffrey Kinkle's notion of the disintegrating spectacle. Kinkle's analysis is less interested in the application of new technologies in the expansion of the spectacular power and more on the fate of humanity in the face of a spectacle that has largely accomplished its goal of eliminating all human agency and dissent in the world. As Kinkle himself defines the term:
The disintegrated spectacle is a society that is not subject to any kind of external threat, but is rather rotting on the inside. If the nature of the spectacle is 'the transmutation of everything for the worst,' as Debord wrote in the late seventies, the disintegrated spectacle is a world threatened by its own idiocy.
It is here perhaps where we can bring back the discussion of the Trumpire that began these posts. In the disintegrating spectacle, Donald Trump is the popular solution to an imagined problem—a problem no one can quite describe with any concrete articulation, but is nevertheless so dangerous and pressing the entire American political establishment must be up-ended in order to meet it. It may have to do with immigrants, but not explicitly; it may have to do with Muslims, but don't mistake the travel ban as a ban based on religion; it may have something to do with Obamacare, but it sure seems a lot of people want to keep Obamacare around.
What makes all this problematic is that while the problem is ill-defined, the ramping up of the American military apparatus to combat it represents the possibility of a future where the integrated spectacle makes an unpleasant return much more willing to emphasize its concentrated side than its diffuse side. Make no mistake, the reality shows and shopping malls and Pokemon Go aren't going anywhere—just be ready to enjoy all these things in the midst of police in riot gear, surveillance drones, and constant warning and alerts about vague terrorist threats."
The Trumpire and the Integrated Spectacle
https://ericfattor.com/2017/04/18/the-trumpire-and-the-integrated-spectacle/
"It is now time to go back and revisit some of the earlier comments of this space with regards to the notion of the Trumpire. As some of the earlier entries attempted to show, the Trumpire is the name given to the merging of the power of the traditional military-industrial complex and all its ancillary institutions with the power of the global media apparatus. Upon his election, the person of Donald Trump was perhaps the most perfect instantiation of these two monolithic entities coming together. On the one hand there is Donald Trump, the tabloid figure and reality television star whose savvy for publicity and connections in the public relations, advertising, real estate and other trademark industries of late capitalism have made him a household name, even if that name was often uttered with a tinge of disgust. On the other hand, President Trump represents a man with unorthodox foreign policy and national security views taking control of the United States' uniquely dominant military arsenal. These two Trumps merge together to lead an assemblage of power that has never had this kind of command over the material infrastructure of both hard and soft power simultaneously. Such a fusion deserves its own unique moniker—the Trumpire.
A society organized around the spectacular nature of consumer capitalism—where the need to keep the masses enraptured with the pursuit of ever new products, services and experiences—serves as an ideal platform for also disseminating uncertainty, mystery and fear. The social agents and interests that control the institutions of the state are naturally drawn to the prospect of using the spectacle to legitimize their hegemony by conjuring up the image of nefarious enemies and displaying them through the communications apparatus to a mass public whose tastes have already been adjusted to a diet of fantasy and illusion in the commercial sphere. But instead of the sexy imagery of glamor and luxury summoned up by the advertisers and marketers, there is the savage imagery of brutality and death invoked by the forces in charge of protecting the status quo. This conjuring up of the sights and sounds of danger and threat by the prevailing complex of power is the essence of Debord's notion of terrorism.
To elaborate, the state:
...constructs its own inconceivable foe, terrorism. Its wish is to be judged by its enemies rather than by its results. The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive. The spectators must certainly never know everything about terrorism, but they must always know enough to convince them that, compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic. "
This is not a drill... It's entertainment
https://ericfattor.com/2017/05/14/this-is-not-a-drill-its-entertainment/
"The firing of Comey clearly has the look of a chief executive trying to figure out how to consolidate his power and there is very much a cause for concern, but in the end, will anything really be done? Will the hemming and hawing result in substantive action being taken against Trump and his administration by ostensibly independent bodies within the government or pressure groups and movements outside of government? To answer this question, previous precedents and references to past parallels to the days of Richard Nixon are not much help–the popular mindset and media environment is very different in the early twenty-first century than the mid-to-late twentieth century.
In a world that demands the production of endless streams of news, information and entertainment to keep all of us staring at our televisions, radio, computers and smart phones, this bombshell of an event should be seen less as news and more of another episode of an indefinite reality show constructed around the presidency of Donald Trump. The first "season" of this show—the campaign Trump for the Presidency—should have demonstrated to everyone that all the conventional wisdoms, replete with their traditional unspoken protocols and unwritten codes of conduct and informal norms and behaviors, did not apply when popular discontent with neoliberalism combines with an insatiable media apparatus ready to serve every wish, desire, fantasy, and dream of the disillusioned body politic. Mainstream commentators and traditional academics assuming the laws of political physics that applied to past presidents have failed to notice we are now on a different planet and a new set of physical laws operate here.
Debord also writes, "The tautological character of the spectacle stems from the fact that its means and ends are identical. It is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the globe, endlessly basking in its own glory." Trump, largely through instinct more than acumen, appears to understand this better than most. In the society of the spectacle, the media needs news and events to sensationalize and turn them into infotainment. It is largely unconcerned about the moral or ethical dimension to the news stories that it covers. One only need to observe how CNN or Fox or MSNBC political shows bear more than a faint resemblance to ESPN or Fox style sports show.
This goes to the heart of what Debord says in the quote about the "sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity." The effect of all this coverage is not an outraged mass public that demands accountability for the corruption and overreach of certain segments of the government, but a still better act the next time around–that the next bit of Trump related news be juicier and more jaw-dropping than this. To the "this is not a drill" warnings from the likes of Chenoweth, Trump replies, figuratively speaking, "are you not entertained?" "
Trump and the media are not enemies
https://ericfattor.com/2017/08/30/trump-and-the-media-are-not-enemies/
"The tautological character of the spectacle stems from the fact that its means and ends are identical. It is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the globe, endlessly basking in its own glory"
Instinctually, Trump is aware that the media cannot help themselves whenever he goes on one of his rants in front of his fans or sends out an outrageous tweet. Though the individual reporters and editors may loathe to cover such developments, the internal logic of the media and of spectacular capitalism demands that such provocations and declarations be covered and analyzed. This gets to what Debord is referring to by the idea of the means and ends of the spectacle—Trumps outrageous commentary garners substantial ratings, which benefits news and media outlets that cover said comments. These news and media outlets then fill their substantial amount of airtime and print space with commentary about the commentary—whether it is critical of Trump or supportive of him is not important, just so that there is an abundant supply of it and that it sustains the ratings the original comments brought. Inevitably, the media commentary and punditry, combined with the demands of governing and outside events, results in Trump making new, often more outrageous comments, which then unleashes a new cycle of commentary and counter-commentary ad infinitum. All the while, the ratings remain high, revenue from ads are robust, and those who own, control and benefit from this arrangement become more powerful. So long as Trump continues to be Trump, there is no reason why this arrangement will end. Indeed, the real threat here is if Trump every decided to not talk/tweet. The system may not be able survive such a scenario.
In between all the partisan bickering and canned discussion are an endless stream of human interest stories, celebrity profiles and advertisements that glamorize and glorify a way of living that are bursting at the seams with passion, pleasure, prosperity and happiness. Or, put in a more vulgar, (but also perhaps more effective language), Matt Taibbi says, "America's TV networks have spent the last forty years falling over each other trying to find better and more efficient ways to sell tits to the 18-to-35 demographic." The media establishment barrages the viewer with titillating images to sell its products and get the masses to watch its shows by appealing to the emotions, fantasies, fears, hopes, and dreams of its audience. Eventually however, people start to realize they are, to use Debord's figurative words, "in chains." They realize the images and dreams on the screen are illusory, but they also don't want to give up the slim hope that they might still come true for them (if no one else). The appeal of Donald Trump stems from the fact that, realizing the media dream is fake, they are drawn to someone who is "strong" enough to go after this machine that holds them in a state of paralysis. They delight in Trump's denunciations of CNN as "fake news" because in a certain, strange way, he is right....ironically, it is not the news that is fake, but everything else on the channel—the ads, the phony perkiness of the anchors, the contrived interest of the reporter interviewing the obscure reality television star with apparent bated breath. They are tired of being spoon fed this drivel but can't detach themselves from it when it is all their body can now digest. Their one hope is a man who knows this awful media apparatus so well he can identify its weak points and attack it where it will do the most damage.
But the lie here is that Trump isn't attacking any weak points. He is only making it stronger. The audiences, as the quotes from the media executives show, are flocking to them in greater numbers, hoping to see if the media monster will be slayed and not realizing that this is not really in the cards. Trump's success is the media's success and vice versa. If something like the Mueller investigation succeeds in setting forth a chain of events that end the Trump presidency, the media will suffer for it in the long run. But it won't be destroyed. And that is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this—the only entity that can truly be vanquished here is Trump. The media, and the society of the spectacle that it helps to create, will persist long after Trump is gone. "
The Triumph of the Integrated Spectacle
https://ericfattor.com/2018/11/16/the-triumph-of-the-integrated-spectacle/
"The integrated spectacle is the combination of the representations of authoritarian and totalitarian power (associated with the Eastern Bloc nations of the Cold War) with the representations of upper middle-class luxury and consumer abundance (associated with the West during the Cold War). In the integrated spectacle, these heretofore contradictory ideas enter into a surprisingly comfortable accommodation with each other. It means the shopping malls and sitcoms of liberalism are fused with the secret police stations and state propaganda of totalitarianism. It means the shining skyscrapers that are a signature image of western abundance are now found in cities like Abu Dhabi and Astana while the urban squalor associated with the imagery of the underdeveloped world can be found in the banlieus of Paris or the skid rows of Los Angeles. It means the cult-of-personalities that demanded unquestioned loyalty from their subjects that were a key aspect of leadership in closed societies now manifest themselves in a portion of the voters and supporters of western leaders like Donald Trump in the US or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
This is the triumph of the integrated spectacle–the victory of the form of spectacle that will take hold going forward and more fully entrench itself as more and more states realize many groups of people have no problem with curtailing political rights in exchange for the opportunities to enjoy consumerist comforts. One does not need the right to vote or be able to bring a grievance to the state in order to keep up with the Kardashians or become a social media celebrity.
As powerful states and monopolistic media corporations make daily inroads in learning to tame the unruly online world, the spectacle will become more and more integrated. Spasms of subversive information and feral activity will still spring forth from time to time, but these will become less frequent as they are met with harsher repressions by the state and bigger and more elaborate pop culture distractions sponsored by ever more powerful corporations. In the wake of this, a strange new medievalism emerges where the advancement of human knowledge and material well-being goes on hiatus for an extended period of time. But don't call it a Dark Age—there will be too many bright HD billboards covering the skyscrapers of major buildings combined with the faint glow of millions of personal devices for that."
Russiagate and the Spectacle
https://ericfattor.com/2019/03/31/russiagate-and-the-spectacle/
"The question at this point centers on why the various elements of the national and international media fell into this trap of exaggerating and amplifying the most contrived and spectacular aspects of a major story like Russiagate? This question is especially pertinent given that if one were keen on trying to discredit Donald Trump and had an agenda of prematurely removing him from office, there was still plenty of corruption, malfeasance, venality and evidence of illegal or immoral activities to justify a campaign for impeachment and possibly indictment. Why latch onto the one story that, while certainly having the biggest blockbuster potential, was also going to be the hardest to prove? A conventional answer to this question lies in the commercial aspects of American media, with its focus on maximizing ratings and clicks in order to deliver the largest audiences as possible to advertisers. However, a deeper and more theoretical explanation is found by looking not just at the profit motive of the media companies themselves, but their place in the larger holistic world of the society of the spectacle—a world where appearances have the ultimate sovereignty over any material realities and, in the words of Guy Debord, "the true is a moment of the false."
As has been discussed here before, the spectacle is a world order built by the current iteration of global capitalism. It represents a world where the bulk of value-added assets come not from manufactured goods or commodities, but from the imaginary aura created by the sum-total of these commodities into various competing lifestyles and cultures. Each of these cultures conjure a menu of dreams, fantasies, aspirations and fears that individuals seek by associating themselves with a galaxy of brands, logos, and other signifiers through the purchase of the goods and services affiliated with those brands. For most individuals living in the spectacle, life becomes and endless effort to imbibe and emulate the sensory output of the spectacle, not just for the mere purposes of entertainment, but because this pursuit creates a ready-made existential meaning for individuals and communities in world that otherwise provides no such meaning. As Debord argues, "The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images."
What this means in terms of Russiagate is that certain material realities, such as Trump's venality and the allegations of possible Russian interference in the 2016 get treated as the ingredients for an elaborate and sophisticated cloak-and-dagger intrigue resembling the plot from a spy novel written by a best-selling author rather than a story of banal quid-pro-quo style corruption that, while still constituting a genuine crime requiring investigation and prosecution, falls far short of the spectacular parameters of the pulp-fiction political thriller or summer blockbuster action movie. The problem is that in the spectacle, where millions observe and interpret politics and politicians along the lines of the fantastical portrayals in popular culture and "infotainment" news media, the existence of the clichéd and timeworn forms of corruption Trump is guilty of become invisible. The day-to-day conversations and arrangements by unremarkable middle-aged white men engaged in garden-variety conspiracy fail to capture the imagination of the masses who, after consuming endless hours of comic books, movies and streaming television, cannot recognize the banality of evil when they see it. "
The crisis of the Spectacle after Trump
https://ericfattor.com/2020/11/15/the-crisis-of-the-spectacle-after-trump/
"Like passing motorists that cannot help but stop to gaze at a car crash, Trump instinctually seemed to know that media institutions, desperate for ratings and viewers, could not help but point their cameras at him and cover whatever faux car crash he conjured through his outrageous statements, rude insults and shameless braggadocio. Audiences that watched this pageant unfold increasingly began to identify with some element of this alienated presentation. Some drawn by Trump's supreme confidence and aggression toward elites and "liberals" found themselves increasingly devoted to supporting him and his success even though what little in the way of policy he offered was unlikely to benefit them materially. Conversely, those who found his antics repugnant were entranced by tropes of resistance fighters struggling against a fascist dictator or concocting elaborate spy-novel like scenarios that made Trump to be a secret asset of clandestine Russian intrigue. What both these approaches to Trump had in common was their fabrication within the framework of the spectacle, the growth of the financial benefits of the primary institutions of the spectacle (media outlets, political fundraising operations, etc.) and the deepening alienation of those who consumed the pageant.
Even before Trump's arrival on the scene of presidential politics, the coverage of political campaigns assumed a reality-show like structure that emphasized sports-talk style analysis of each candidates "electability" and the meticulous delving into every action and statement by the candidates in the hopes of unearthing a bouillon cube of controversy that could be made into a full soup of scandal. The complexities of the world and the forces that vie for control within it rarely receive illumination. The result, as Debord argues, is an individual that may make a good-faith effort to understand the world around them, but "the more he contemplates, the less he lives, the more he identifies with the dominant image, the less he understands his own life and his own desires." "
The MAGA putsch
https://ericfattor.com/2021/01/12/the-maga-putsch/
"Debord observed this back in the 1960s during the periods of unrest that happened in his own time. Throughout The Society of the Spectacle, Debord discusses how the spectacle takes many and often contradictory forms. Thesis 57 is particularly instructive: "The bureaucratic regimes in power in certain industrialized countries have their own particular type of spectacle, but it is an integral part of the total spectacle, serving as its pseudo-opposition and actual support." Debord writes this in the context of the Cold War and the opposition of some countries to western hegemony. His point is that while there may be an ostensible political tension between countries like the Soviet Union and the United States, the conflict ultimately serves to sustain a larger global assemblage of power. No country is completely outside of the spectacle. Domestically, spectacles may also appear to compete with each other for dominance. Debord writes in Thesis 65, "The automobile spectacle, for example, strives for a perfect traffic flow entailing the destruction of old urban districts, while the city spectacle needs to preserve those districts as tourist attractions." In the aftermath of the Watts riots in 1965, Debord wrote, "American blacks have their own spectacle, complete with its press, magazines and coloured (sic) film stars and, if blacks realize this, if they spew out this spectacle as phoney, as an expression of their humiliation, it is because they see it to be a minority phenomenon-nothing but an appendage of the spectacle in general" The overall point Debord makes in these examples is that specific spectacles may come and go, but each of them are a tentacles of the total spectacle whose function is to legitimize the prevailing institutions of socio-economic power and concealing their contradictions.
Thus one can have a mob of partisans drunk on the stories and images and conspiracy theories proliferated on various media sites storm the Capitol building of the world's de facto imperial power without it necessarily constituting a genuine threat to the position of that empire in the world and those who manage it. The traditional values of American democracy as expressed in the US Constitution may be a grave risk, but this is not the same thing. As China shows, the structures of global capitalism that the spectacle conceals can exist and thrive in a variety of political frameworks and the end of American democratic institutions would not mean the end of the global financial and commercial assemblage of power.
Social media was full of expressions of disbelief and discombobulation over the how so many people could be so riled up to commit acts of violence and sedition over fraudulent claims of electoral fraud? The situationist response to this would probably be to pose a similar question—what media-fueled fraudulent narratives do you believe in? Do you believe in the myth of the American Dream and do you spend your daily life pursuing it? Do you seek to acquire the material goods and lifestyle practices you see portrayed and celebrated via the various media platforms you consume? Do you believe that you are the next Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos and with enough grit and pluck you will reach the same heights of success? If the answer is yes, then you, Debord would argu,e are just as wrapped up in the spectacle as those who stormed the Capitol."
October Surprise
https://ericfattor.com/2024/10/04/october-surprises/
"The idea of an "October Surprise" is a common trope in US politics. First coined in the 1980s, the idea refers to the possibility that some major unforeseen event elapsing within a month of the a scheduled US presidential election will be of such an impactful consequence it will alter the outcome of the election.
On this spectacular terrain, the October Surprise goes from a curious but usually infrequent anomaly of an election year to a daily narrative battle. In the society of the spectacle, the October Surprise comes about not because of an external unforeseen event, but because an non-event of dubious importance is raised and amplified to a potential pivot point of world-historical consequence. Accusations by Trump and his surrogates of slow response times to the disastrous floods of southern Appalachia (including Trump's own disruptive visits to some of these locations) require Harris, Biden and in many cases, the entire emergency relief apparatus of the federal government, to launch their own media holding action that also distracts from or inhibits actual rescue work. Like during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when local politicians and administrators were holding endless press conferences while a humanitarian crisis unfolded at the Superdome, the effort to "appear" to be doing something takes precedent or actually doing something, echoing the famous line from Debord: "The present stage, in which social life has become completely occupied by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing—all "having" must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. The October Surprise comes about when one side fails to publicly respond to the narrative being generated by the opposition and not due to some organic event."
October Surprise - 2
https://ericfattor.com/2024/10/25/october-surprises-2/
"As the "October Surprises" reach their apotheosis, the spectacle will begin to transition to the electoral and post-election narratives.
However this middle phase resolves itself, a brief respite is likely to occur. But this respite should not be understood as any kind of "end" to the pageant. The victors will glory in their triumph while the defeated will lick their wounds. In the meantime, the dark corners of the spectacular terrain where most of today's overamplified sensationalism originates (with these dark corners including the misinformation operations of foreign states, partisans trolls curating their podcasts and rebuilding bases of subscribers or free agent trolls on social media) will begin to test new packages of alternative histories of the events that just took place, fresh conspiracy theories and the familiar shotgun blast of accusations. Real world events (natural disasters, acts of terrorism and new bouts of international conflict) will also intercede and provide new starting points for fresh narratives of unspeakable crimes and unconscionable degeneracy. As certain of these narratives begin to take hold, agents in government will use them as justifications for the use of state power in the form of hearings, indictments and public trials. (This will be especially true with a Harris win and the inability for Trump to effectively delay the court cases against him. These cases are obviously not conspiracy theories, but plenty of spectacular speculation will nevertheless accompany them). Again, the contours of these struggles will differ based on who will have won and who will have lost. The details of this aftermath likely will be taken up in a future post.
In the present moment, however, the key item to remember is that on the spectacular terrain, exhaustion and attrition do not have the same impacts as they would in the concrete world. Digital resources are much less prone to depletion and thus approaching temporal events (like an election) that might give the impression of an imminent culmination are rather just shifts in the nature of the battle. The larger siege, as Debord points out, never truly ends."
Celebrity in the integrated Spectacle
https://ericfattor.com/2025/01/12/celebrity-in-the-integrated-spectacle/
"As Debord writes, "Entering the spectacle as a model to be identified with, he (the celebrity) renounces all autonomous qualities in order to identify himself with the general law of obedience to the flow of things." Stated another way, "as specialists of apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects that people can identify with in order to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations that they actually live...They embody the inaccessible results of social labor by dramatizing the by-products of that labor which are magically projected above it as its ultimate goals: power and vacations–the decision-making and consumption that are the beginning and the end of a process that is never questioned."
What is of interest here and relevant to the overarching question of the role of the choices of Trump for his new Cabinet is the place of celebrity in this new version of the spectacle. Though never using the language of "celebrity" quite as explicitly as before, Debord does offer what might be an archetype of what a celebrity of the integrated spectacle would look like. Panamanian General Manuel Noriega may not be a recognizable name to most people in 2025, but in 1988, his name was at the top of every global newspaper as a geopolitical drama unfolded between Panama and the United States. After being a local asset and advocate for US foreign policy and in the informal employ of the CIA throughout, Noriega found himself de facto president of the country after the disputed election in 1988. Flouting US instructions to stepdown, Noriega declared the election void and declared himself as president in a time when Panama need "strong leadership" to deal with the foreign interference of the United States. Viewing this pageant from afar, Debord wrote:
"Far from being a peculiarly Panamanian phenomenon, this General Noreiga, who sells
everything and fakes everything, in a world which does precisely the same thing, was
altogether a perfect representative of the integrated spectacle, and of the successes it
allows the assorted managers of its internal and external politics: a sort of statesman in a sort of state, a sort of general, a capitalist. He is the very model of our modern prince, and of those destined to come to power and stay there, the most able resemble him closely. It is not Panama which produces such marvels, it is our times."
In the brave new world of Trump's Caesarism, celebrity is now a qualification for government. However, as McKenzie Wark has pointed out, the contemporary integrated spectacle is not something that can be fully controlled or conquered. Indeed, the more one tries to control it, the more one is vulnerable to its undulations. This is what Wark called "spectacle of disintegration," and even in the case of Trump's cabinet picks, we see evidence of its effects. "
Trump, Musk and the Spectacle
https://ericfattor.com/2025/06/08/trump-musk-and-the-spectacle/
"Trump has perhaps a greater need to have the camera on him and to be on tv. In his experience, this is the most impactful form of making messaging war and it has yet to fail him. With his new feud with Musk, he likely sees no reason to change strategy now.
Yet the problem for both is that while they may think they are the ones managing the spectacle, in truth, the spectacle is the ultimate arbiter of power. Both must make decisions in terms of how they play out in their respective media and that while both men may have shown certain abilities when it comes to managing the spectacle, the spectacle in the end cannot be completely managed. It is a kind of digital leviathan that can very easily consume those who try to control it."
The Epstein files: A black hole in a spectacular universe
https://ericfattor.com/2025/07/27/the-epstein-files-a-spectacular-black-hole/
"Both Trump and Musk attempted to continue to feed the spectacle with continuous press conferences that included the signing of executive orders, the liquidation of federal bureaucratic agencies like USAID, the ramping up of a program for mass deportation of migrants and a seemingly endless procession of press conferences, gaggles and choregraphed cabinet meetings to give Trump and Musk the appearance of being hard at work running the country and "making America great again." All of this was done with great skill in the kayfabe tradition that has become the hallmark of the strategy of the Trump Administration. Yet it was only a matter of time when the ceaseless demand for scandal, speculation, innuendo and intrigue that sustains the spectacle would turn against Trump and the new regime.
Now engaged in a full-fledged flame war unfolding across broadcast and social media, Musk dropped his "big bomb": the claim that the reason the Epstein files were not released was because Trump's name was in them. This was the moment that Trump was no longer able to influence the direction of the spectacle and would now be carried away by it.
The question now is whether Trump can tame the spectacle one more time to escape political destruction? Is there a media maneuver that Trump can pull that, while not letting him escape the gravitational pull of the spectacle of the Epstein files, at least allows him to circle around the event horizon long enough to serve out his term and avoid facing any kind of justice for any crimes he may or may not have committed. There is also the question of the hordes of MAGA loyalists and hosts of QAnon conspiracy theorists who must face the fact that the ugly face of the deep state may actually be the person who was supposed to deliver them from it. Finally, amid the scandal are the hundreds of victims of Epstein and Maxwell. While Trump, assuming he is connected in some way with Epstein and Maxwell, manages to avoid any accountability, it will be the justice they are entitled to that will be disintegrated into the maw of the black hole of the scandal. "
Return of the concentrated spectacle?
https://ericfattor.com/2025/10/06/return-the-concentrated-spectacle/
"By 1988, Debord argued in subsequent writing that these two spectacles had merged together to form the integrated spectacle where both forms of spectacle intertwined in a way that made the power of the prevailing assemblage of power even more firmly entrenched in the psyche of the global population and spoke to the ever increasing encroachment of the spectacle on the human imagination. States like the United States, rather than being beacons of freedom and opportunity were instead experiments in novel forms of totalitarian control that effectively disguised themselves as liberal utopias where inhabitants performed the rituals of consumer contentment while silently suppressing an interior world of despair and misery that the prevailing society managed through alternating applications of pleasure and fear.
there is not much in the way secrecy in the way the deployment of National Guard and federal law enforcement has proceeded and gives extra profundity to the contradiction that a program of mass deportation is intentionally being carried out in as public a way as possible but with agents who insist on covering their faces. Rather than speaking to secrecy, the covering of the agents faces speaks to how ever other aspect of the agents' activities is expected to be done out in the open with countless cell phone cameras recording every move.
Thus, the concentrated spectacle reveals itself in a unique form that reflects the bizarre social, economic and political conditions of the United States in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.
While it is certainly true that the rise of an alt-right fascist adjacent assemblage of power into the ruling institutions of the United States and other western democracies was due in part to their better understanding of how to influence and manipulate the spectacle, this advantage is not exclusively theirs, and to assume the right's mastery of the various platforms of digital media is permanent is to commit the same error the centrist liberals of the twentieth century committed when they thought media and entertainment would forever be in service of spreading consumer capitalism and democracy around the world. "
https://www.metafilter.com/211082/Are-you-not-entertained-Trumpire-and-the-Spectacle-of-disintegration
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askamanager_feed) wrote2025-11-17 03:59 pm
