Politics of the absurd - Digital Threat Digest

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect”, is how Franz Kafka opens his absurdist short story The Metamorphosis. Gregor, in his cockroach-like body, then tries to get up and go to work, before realising he can’t because he is in fact an insect.

Fortunately, I didn’t wake up as an insect today, and unlike Gregor, I did manage to get to the office (albeit a bit late). However, the absurdity of the Kafkian world is something I have found myself increasingly resonating with when I read the news and scroll through social media first thing in the morning.

We are now just over six weeks away from the US presidential election, the ‘pinnacle’ moment of the ‘free world’, and the flagship event of the 2024 so-called ‘year of elections’. However, looking back at the campaign period that has led us here, it all just feels a bit surreal and bizarre: Donald Trump’s multiple criminal cases; Joe Biden’s attempts to mask his senility; two performative presidential debates; and most recently on Sunday, the second assassination attempt on Trump in the space of two months.

This is, of course, not a particularly new reality, nor necessarily one unique to the US, but the country’s politics feels increasingly devoid of any meaning or rationale. While I’ve never been a particularly big US politics fanboy, in this campaign I honestly would not be able to tell you either candidate’s flagship policies. However, I would be able to tell you that Trump and JD Vance are ‘weird’, Kamala Harris is ‘brat’, migrants are eating people’s pets, and Taylor Swift supports the Democrats. It feels like everything political has been transformed into an absurd spectacle curated for social media. Policies and genuine debate have been replaced by memes, clickbait, and virality, while political commentary is dominated by polarisation and conspiracy.

In The Metamorphosis, after realising he can no longer speak and can only make incomprehensible noises, Gregor manages to wriggle out of bed and open his door to his family who have been trying to wake him up. They initially express shock and disgust at Gregor’s new insect form, but slowly over time, resign themselves to this new reality. Rather than worrying about his wellbeing, they become more concerned about their new financial situation without the family breadwinner, leaving Gregor neglected and alone, crawling in his room until he slowly dies.

It feels like as a society we have also resigned ourselves to a new absurd political reality – a gradual acceptance of political decay. In 2016, this novel dynamic was met with outrage and shock, but rather than grappling with this deterioration, it now feels like we’ve become numb to how surreal it all is, treating politics like merely another piece of viral content. While I’m not trying to say that we’re all going to die, we do have to keep reminding ourselves that this isn’t normal.

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