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The Society of the Spectacle Today

Poverty and healthcare assume the appearance of individual responsibility, the state assumes the appearance of an obstruction to open market circulation flows, the commodity assumes the appearance of base survival, a satiated proletariat assumes the appearance of a good credit score, a redistribution of wealth assumes the appearance of socialism, a megalomaniac assumes the appearanceof fascism, culture assumes the appearance of a mechanism of empowerment, the struggle against racism assumes the appearance of democratic leaders taking the knee in kente cloth, a healthy economy assumes the appearance of a healthy population, ad nauseum.

Whether in the aftermath of a Biden victory, riddled as it is with vacuous appeals for unity, or even in the more superficial 2019 pseudo-debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson, whose harmony of apparent disparities bespoke more about the spectacle than it did about political polarization—in all that surrounds us we witness today no deficit for the pertinence of the spectacle’s mandate for unity-in-difference.”

Nothing is any longer the opposite of anything

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