Alan M. de León’s Reviews > Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences > Status Update

“Amnesty International, after all, is not the Communist Party anymore than a golf club is the NSDAP. NGOs run by professional staff are not fortresses of civil society but heads without bodies, recruiting donors rather than members and lacking both the ambition and prospect of uniting a cohesive base.”

“Policy encompasses the methods by which states organizes their societies, such as choosing winners and losers in industrial society. Politics pertains to campaigning, competition between parties, forging alliances and coalitions”

“[NGOs] were not financed through dues but turned to wealthy donors. Skocpol refers to such NGOs as “advocates without members” - lawyers speaking on behalf of defendants who, for the most part, would remain mute and passive… they made up the ghost armies of postpolitics.”.

“Netflix, drugs, and delivery services have turned the twenty-first-century home into a self-enclosed repository of creature comforts… the ability to “stream alone” has driven up the “opportunity costs” of other activities… constant refinement of personal consumption appeared as an imperative of capital itself. Collective life had to be thinned out to clear new inroads for the market.”

“A 2024 DNC visitor noted that it now acts as the party of labor and of capital; of debtors and of bankers; mocks the Ivy League but is largely run by Ivy Leaguers; of anti-monopolists and of Silicon Valley; for immigrants and for border security; insiders and of the marginalized; family and of freedom; ceasefires and of the war machine; opposes fascism but abets genocide. That even-handedness needs correction”