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Anton Jäger's book lauded as 'groundbreaking' in Guardian profile

booksJul 23, 2026857

The Guardian profiles Anton Jäger, 32, and his book Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences, noting the book is being read across the left and praised by the New York Times as “among the best and most dazzling efforts to model the political present.” Jäger, raised in Brussels by parents who work in the arts, studied at the University of Essex and Cambridge and is now a lecturer in the history of political thought at University College, Oxford. He names Deleuze and Guattari, Mouffe and Laclau as philosophical touchstones and describes himself as a Marxist. Jäger frames the recent century as three political ages: 1914, 1989 as mass politics with high institutionalisation; 1989, 2008 as post-politics with low politicisation and institutional decline; and circa 2008, 2020 as anti-politics, when resurgent protest movements produced new parties such as Podemos and Syriza and insurgent candidates targeted established parties. He argues we now live in an age of hyperpolitics, where politicisation is intense but political consequences and durable institutions do not follow. The profile opens with Andy Burnham outside 10 Downing Street to sketch the era’s uneasy mood, and notes Jäger was surprised his honeymoon was interrupted for the interview, underscoring the sudden attention his book has attracted among Labour watchers and leftwing thinkers.

The Guardian
@theguardian.com

Meet the man whose groundbreaking book is being devoured by the left

493h ago
DexterSaysMeow2

Sorry. He sounds like another Explaino the Clown to me. For example, he tries to point out as "strikingly similar" and "fleeting" the Black Lives Matter movement - where protests were met violently by our rapidly militarizing police forces, but really only truly slowed by a deadly pandemic -

Quoting this
Dave Andress23

Cambridge PhD, Oxford job, the word "climate" appears exactly once in the piece, dismissively. People like this will be preaching at us from the ruins. But we'll be living in them.

Annie Leymarie6

"The right are not more organised, more ideologically coherent or more strategic than the left; they're just better funded... [with] capital itself as the overarching organising principle of global politics. Money might not be the only thing talking, but it’s the only thing getting what it wants."

Laura Friedrich Merton3

Really interesting. Just bought the book - from Blackwell’s, not the other place 😁

The Scales ⚖️
@shakethescales.bsky.social

'Needless to say...' is the most telling phrase in this entire article. I'll buy the book though. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

61h ago
HT4Ecosocialism
@ht4ecosocialism.bsky.social

Anton Jäger has been lauded for his exceptional ability to make sense of these strange political times – and he’s only 32. The writer and academic explains why we’re living in an age of hyperpolitics

13h ago
Daenelia
@daenelia.bsky.social

That looks interesting too! I've just read an article about Anton Jager, Hyperpolitics: extreme politicization without political consequences. Might be a good companion read.

11h ago
Jim Obey
@jimob1.bsky.social

The current hyper-political moment explained through the prism of the 'long '90s'. Top-notch. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

1h ago
bermynick.bsky.social
@bermynick.bsky.social

I've just seen a review of a book about the perma-crisis shit show we live in, and how we got here; Hyperpolitics by Anton Jäger, support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.

1h ago
RaggedTrouseredPhilanthropist
@fatfreddiescat.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... "He writes that Trump,.......... like Napoleon, relying on “the largely passive support of impoverished peasants … not a collective but ‘formed by the simple addition of isomorphous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes’.”

Just now
Rose Byrd
@rosame.bsky.social

"Is this who we are now? Wildly enthusiastic one minute, seething the next; as passionate about the change we want as we are convinced that those who promise it are incapable of enacting it?" Fascinating article, relevant and worth a read www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Just now
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theguardian.comMeet the man whose groundbreaking book is being devoured by the left

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