Baudrillard called 1990s post-Wall activism soft, after-the-orgy ideology

Evidence

As Baudrillard noted in 1994, “human rights, dissidence, antiracism, SOS-this, SOS-that” were “soft, easy, post coitum historicum ideologies, ‘after-the-orgy’ ideologies for an easy-going generation which has known neither hard ideologies nor radical philosophies.” The contrast with the politically overcharged twentieth century was striking, in Baudrillard’s view. The generation that came of age after the fall of the Wall had rediscovered altruism, conviviality, international charity, and the individual bleeding heart. Emotional outpourings, solidarity, cosmopolitan emotiveness, multi-media pathos: all soft values harshly condemned by the Nietzschean, Marxo-Freudian age … A new generation, that of the spoilt children of the crisis, whereas the preceding one was that of the accursed children of history. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 37

Categorization

• DEFINE: Baudrillard’s characterization anchors the ‘postpolitics’ mood of the post-1989 generation that the periodization builds on.