Weber’s era shared more between left and right than either shares with hyperpolitics.
Evidence
Despite his hostility toward the radical left, however, Weber and his opponents remained children of the same age—however hieratic, his plea for vocational intransigence reflected a form of politics that presupposed institutional involvement of the populace. Both Weber and his ideological adversaries thereby shared a vision of political engagement that was markedly more patient and sustained than that which prevails in the twenty-first century. For German Communists and fascists, the personal may well have been political, yet it would not have occurred to them to reduce the latter to the former, and they inhabited a social landscape much deeper and more expansive than the brittle societies in which we live today. The mass politics of Weber’s time was certainly no less heated than our hyperpolitical moment, yet it was more solidly institutionalized. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 56
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Resonates with the reader’s goal of explaining why saturation produces little change — institutional grounding, not intensity, is what converts feeling into force.
Related
- Weimar-era mass politics was hotter yet more institutionalized than today’s (similarity 0.91)
- Weber defined mass politics as slow drilling through hard boards requiring passion and judgement (similarity 0.80)
- Social-democratic mass politics were a contingent product of specific social conditions. (similarity 0.79)