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For this week’s vamp valley stream, I’m joined by Daniel Bessner to talk about how our politics are in the grips of a powerful decadent rationalist illusion: it’s the idea that information is power. But as Daniel points out, despite having all the information regular people have no effect on politics. We know everything, but can’t change anything. It is a longterm problem in nominally democratic US (and Europe) that has been massively exacerbated by internet technology. We’re wrapped up in the Spectacle, confusing the consumption of nonstop political content with politics. You could say that we’re whistleblowing on our own profession, trying to make people understand that information is not a magic spell — just knowing things about the world won’t miraculously lead to change.

—Yasha

Some essays that inform our conversation:

* End of Mass Politics and Empire’s Critic and Democracy in Exile by Daniel Bessner

* Gaza and the Death of “Information Is Power,” Information is not power, Influencerism is the highest form of capitalist realism by me.