Conference as TV Programme

This week the “British” Nationalist Conservative Party (it’s a party within the party that has been ruling England since 2010) hold a “conference.”

This is equivalent to a television programme with a plot focussed around a character acting in a pantomime.

Those of us commentating on the conference as straight journalists, supporters, or outraged civil society are like other characters in the television programme playing scripted roles. We don’t know it, but the purpose of the conference is to draw us into the whole Spectacle. In our own minds we’re playing the roles of critics, of “Spectators.” Yet, really we’re participants in a manipulated drama, part of whose purpose is to draw us in.

Source: Spectacle

The conference is not a political event — it is a television programme. Journalists who believe they are analysing the conference are actually performing scripted roles within it. Critics, supporters, and outraged civil society alike are characters drawn into a manipulated drama. The Spectacle’s genius is that even its critics serve its purpose: by engaging with the pantomime, they validate it as real politics rather than theatre.

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