The theatrical culture of fascism

Our culture is theatrical, not literary. If it were literary, it could also be philosophical, because literature uses language not just to express but to think. Theatrical speech is only expressive and if purposive at all, is performative, and performatively rhetorical, with calculated uses and effects. The news media effectuate the theatrical culture because they promulgated claims that are not examined in the uses of speech and language to do so, and not expected to. Public speech does is not a practice of "giving and asking for reasons." Public speech is about striking a pose. The identity of the speaker is more important than the content of the statement to determining its credibility and even meaning, because its meaning is not that this or that is said but that it is what is said by someone.

Trump, a product of Fox News, was able to rise to power because he understood that public discourse is pure marketing, nothing else. He used this in a blatant way that also revealed this as a truth. Which meant the end of public discourse that people would take seriously. Trump's followers believe what he says because they want to believe, because their faith in the boss of it all commands their thinking. Which after all has a long Protestant tradition behind it, especially in America. The risk that the corporate state in allying with the far right and backing Trump chose to take was that those who want to take public discourse seriously and are not enchanted by the totalitarianism of a refusal and ultimately inability to think brought on by the degradation of language so that it is no longer used to think and many people became so cynical about power that they do not care about what they are saying, the sane remnant among the populace will see that they are merely being given orders, that when the bosses say that X is F or anything is anything, they only mean, do what we tell you or else. The latently authoritarian and violent character of governmentality under liberal capitalism becomes the blatant kind of fascism. That increases opposition but also facilitates the state's use of violence. It is a crisis they would have preferred to avoid but now willingly embrace.

The society of theatrical speech makes use of the neo-aristocratic qualities of our society, as the media star system does, since celebrities are elective aristocrats, albeit subject to rapid putting up and taking down, as with hysterics' ways of treating those they suppose to be taking themselves for masters. The hysteric solicits some poor fool to pose as master and then proves that he too has failed and is a fool; demanding a real prick, as if pretending for a moment that would provide satisfaction, she has only to see him oblige to show that he's not one or worse, a monstrous criminal, if she's posturing in the public space constructed by the mediasphere as a feminist, making that social justice warrior complaint, since such types are always protesting too much whether or not anyone thinks of it.

If you say something to someone that is about something and they want to treat you as a fool, they will make some fun of what you have said in order to make it clear that what is interesting is not what you are claiming (which is nothing to them, and making that clear is the point) but the folly of your verbiage, which only reveals something about you.

Since the theatrical society is a psychological one.

This is a common misreading of how theater works. It is even less true of the novel and cinema. But in modern society language in the public sphere is neither philosophical, not being rational, nor poetic, not containing any insights worth recognizing. In the end people wind up going to school to learn what they are supposed to say, and if they are compliant enough, they will believe that in saying what they are told to say they are saying things that are both true (truth is the right use of words, and the boss tells you what that is?) and interesting. To whom? To no one, but you were hoping you'd get some job that involves something you wanted.

When the bosses' state no longer offers anything anyone wants and the wool is removed from everyone's eyes, then they can only rule by force.