The society of affiliation is constantly polarizing, as this allows it to maintain a semblance of belonging in particular blocs. As a consequence, all positions, institutions and even issues not affiliated in advance with a group of interest are also gradually disappearing in it. The traditional control organisms – from the central bank to public television – which are supposed to watch over the system and not the welfare of a particular group – are today becoming the first spoils of power, which in this way wants to manage the entire system from above and not just carry out the prerogatives assigned to it within its framework. When it is necessary to play against someone all the time, no one has time to think about the issues that constitute the common condition of at least this conflict. Consequently, there is no way to talk about structural issues. And this impossibility is itself, of course, structural.

Not being affiliated or not wanting to be affiliated are becoming downright incomprehensible today. And they immediately turn into an externally projected affiliation with “them.” You can’t affiliate anywhere, and what you say will only be dealt with by further value-laden terms that have special value in our congregation. In debates, it is becoming increasingly rare to nail down someone’s arguments at all other than by means of deprecation, innuendo or association. All of these techniques are specific forms of the general mechanism of affiliation. It doesn’t matter if your arguments are coherent or not, they are “reactionary”, “snobbish” or “nihilistic” not to mention more primitive scoops. And nothing else.

Even those who try to somehow go separate fall into the trap of branding tenacity, uncompromising, distinctiveness, etc. And since in societies of affiliation we have a term and a category for everything (because everything has to be affiliated somewhere) we have one for this too – edge lords. It means authors or commentators who want to be controversial, extreme, radical in their judgments at all costs. But let’s take a look – this says nothing and nothing about the content of their statements, but only their attitude to the moderate, embedded or centrist affiliation. The distance from the center, which someone arbitrarily established as a reference point. The category itself, then, seems to be a symptom of the social crisis caused by someone who is not labeled, even for a moment.

The society of affiliations makes it possible for factual truth to occupy the position of a conspiracy theory as a result of affiliative turmoil, and vice versa. “2+2=4” is a downright dangerous claim in some situations. Back to categorization. Do you know that someone who builds a similar argument to the one above is a representative of a new and disturbing identity? That’s a truther. Someone who, instead of affiliating where necessary, asks himself where the truth lies. And this, it is known, is most likely right-wing, conservative and reactionary.

I don’t think that the search for truth necessarily leads to such positions, although undoubtedly such calls are not coming from the liberal-left circles today. I wonder why? Could it be that they recognize that the truth is already affiliated on the other side for good? Returning to truther, its definition according to the Cambridge dictionary means “someone who does not believe in the generally accepted explanation of an event or situation and thinks it is the result of a secret plan carried out by powerful people. (…) Synonym: conspiracy theorist.”

Let’s leave conspiracies for now and look at the first part of this definition. This is because it suggests that challenging the circulating version of events is some kind of dangerous procedure that is bound to end in paranoia of someone who believes in the secret plans of the rich or other power centers. I wonder what to call not a synonym, but an antonym for our poor truther. This would be someone who is not nit-picking and simply believes what he is told. Especially in what he is told by influential, powerful and rich people. This person simply affiliates himself with the position of the latter, even if he does not belong to their world or share their social privileges. But he keeps a safe distance from the truth, because truth is synonymous with something that lasts regardless of affiliation.

In today’s public debate, affiliation does not occur at the level of opinion or belief, but earlier – already at the basic level of expression. Hence the importance of today’s “shibboleths,” which in the struggle of ideological blocs make it possible to instantly separate the grain from the chaff. In the biblical Book of Judges, the Gileadites and Ephraimites, two feuding tribes were at war with each other. And the former, when they took the road to the river asked anyone coming to the shore if he was an Ephraimite. When he answered that he was not, they ordered him to pronounce the word “shibboleth”. The Ephraimites were unable to pronounce it in such a way as not to betray their identity. Therefore, those revealed were immediately killed.

Thanks to Jacques Derrida and his interpretation of Paul Celan’s poetry, the shibboleth has become a figure of something else – an absolute, irreducible and essentially unspeakable singularity[i]. Something that even to myself is foreign or mysterious in me. Today, the shibboleth is returning with great force in its regressive version. It is again becoming a tool for identifying the enemy, which is betrayed by a different linguistic sensibility and a different approach to symbols.

Take, for example, the immediate language regime imposed on the debate after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Writing the name of the country’s capital in the form “Kyiv” rather than “Kiev” or – as in Polish – saying “in Ukraine” instead of the traditional “on Ukraine” was intended to provide the basis for ideological identification before any ideological disagreements could emerge and be articulated. In the course of this conflict, moreover, there were multiple upgrades of these strategies ensuring that already at the level of the simplest linguistic formulas one could identify and punish dissenters.

However, something else is interesting. Both in the biblical story and today, it is not important “what” the word itself means, what is its sense. Only the way it is pronounced, a certain identity style, determines the dynamics in which its use is embedded. Today’s Gileadites and Ephraimites – like their precursors – use language not to communicate, but precisely to NOT talk to each other.

In a society of affiliations, the most important thing is a proper management of difference – especially neutralizing differences that complicate recognized polarities. When one observes the daily brawls in social media, one can notice that one communication gesture almost never happens in them. We do not inquire whether we understood someone’s statement correctly. “Is that what you meant?” – such words have no use here. The political spectacle has taught us all to talk the way politicians talk to each other on TV. And they talk to each other like defendants who are trying to play the role of judges to one another. Anything you say (or don’t say, or say wrongly) will turn against you, expose your guilt, reveal foreign influence, take away your awareness of your own actions. You are already virtually convicted and this conversation is taking place just to complete the formalities.

It turns out that in a society preoccupied with constantly covering up its real misery, which is the misery of alienation from society as such, difference that is not inscribed in a system of hierarchies and oppositions becomes almost existentially unbearable. This means the further disappearance of individuality, and it is on this – if only etymologically, referring to that which is separate and indivisible – that the personality or person is based. In the society of affiliation, however, one is not allowed to be distinct. It is no longer concerned, as societies before it, with creating the conditions for the possibility of singularity, but, conversely, with the systemic blocking of this process.

2.

The society of affiliation is an element of constant censorship and self-censorship. However, it should not be understood in the traditional way, associated with institutions of political power or special offices for manipulating public opinion. Today, censorship is much more subtle and takes place in passing, so to speak. In addition to the aforementioned institutions, which have by no means disappeared, but have moved into new areas of digital giants, there is a process of outright, organic censorship taking place. The society of affiliation uses for it the only real power at its disposal, namely the power of its inertia. Therefore, the main dimension of today’s censorship can be called censorship by inertia.

But there is something else – a change in the definition of participation in public debate itself. Its space has become, in general, so narrow that when you take the floor, meaning you want to say something, you actually take it away from someone else. This is the reasoning today. Hence the dizzying career of another category, which over time has already become a reflex of most affiliated participants in the public simulation. Deplatforming – certain voices should not be lent space, certain actors should not be allowed to say what they think, because this will be to the detriment of the majority and especially to those weaker, more fragile participants. This assumption looks innocent, but in consequences it is not so at all.

After all, where does this obsession with who is allowed and who is not allowed to speak out come from? Why have we all become instinctively doorkeepers guarding the portal to some unquestioned reservoir of wisdom? Do we really all consider ourselves such saints that meeting another with strange views will give him or her, too, that supernatural aura that shrouds ourselves? Because instead of discussing we fight to take away each other’s voice, we simulate a world in which we are the ones who deal the cards and bear the responsibility for the shape of our system. It’s the equivalent of paper straws, through which we ensure that we forgive ourselves of climatic guilt as if we were the ones flying private jets every day.

The exercise of deplatforming is getting us used to what corporate power will do to us in a moment anyway, or is already doing to us as soon as we infringe upon it in even a small way. Just uttering a few shibboleths written into the algorithms of our digital overlords is a quick way to find out. But the rhyming of the reflexes of a large part of the public with the principle of the algorithms themselves means – in addition to evidence of growing digital censorship – also the gradual disappearance of the difference between human reflex and mechanical action. Soon even affiliations will be assigned to us automatically.

By controlling the system of granting and receiving a voice, and teaching us that this is what public debate is all about, the oligarchy that rules us makes sure that there is little chance in circulation to build a universal alternative to the current system. Even if one were to emerge, the zealous volunteers of the society of affiliation will attribute partisanship to it within the existing affiliations.

3.

There is more and more talk about communities, and less and less about society as a whole. Unless it is a projection of a privileged minority. Within such a division, we always care more about the interest and cohesion of our own group than about the shape of anything broader.

Since other beliefs are, as a rule, ridiculous, we consider them “conspiracy theories.” We place them outside the realm of seriousness and thus save time in verifying them. That being said, however, we apply a similar procedure to our own beliefs, affiliated facts or news stories, because they represent, after all, the ultimate dam against the deluge of insanity. We don’t verify them either, because why should we? After all, shaking them up could trigger the infection of a diseased mentality into our healthy immune system. As a result, we live in a besieged fortress built of blocks of beliefs and narratives whose veracity we are not even allowed to question.

The society of affiliation is ultimately the society that affiliates with itself. It pretends to be a society, although it is its radical negation. Since it is mainly about being in the right company, one has to agree to its internal rules. But since this is the main motivation, these groups turn into communities not so much of mutual adoration, but of adoration of its idea, which nothing fills with real meaning. This is brilliantly shown, for example, in the comedy Perfect Strangers (2016), where the slightest gesture of transgression (exchange of telephones) sets off an avalanche of conflict and crisis in a group of close friends that brings it to the brink of the abyss. Because we live in a society where almost everyone is three paychecks (if they have one at all) away from homelessness, so we affiliate ourselves with groups where three false words are enough to cause carnage. In such societies, we are indeed perfect strangers to each other.

4.

Since in a society of affiliation everyone joins together in tight groups that think the same thing, that means they conspire. We owe it to Peter Szendy to brilliantly show that the original meaning of the word conspiracy is co-breathing[ii]. It can be said that the preparation of a joint secret action requires such a level of intimacy and such a limitation of the group that everyone can literally breathe the same air. As Curzio Malaparte tried to show at one time, successful coups are organized not by the masses, but precisely by groups that, as they say, fit together into one elevator[iii].

Following Szendy’s lead, however, it can be argued that the tracking of conspiracy theories, which is one of the primary mechanisms of distinction in intelligentsia circles today, is in fact a kind of pre-emptive attack by conspirators who “don’t know what they are doing” and yet are proud of it. They are unaware that they are part of a conspiracy, since their social activity must take the form of affiliations as close as an intimate exchange of breaths. Let’s remember that Brutus in Shakespeare ‘s Julius Caesar played a key role in the conspiracy on the basis of a belief falsely manufactured in him by his accomplices. This is a great metaphor for today’s noble bourgeoisie, who are eager to point fingers at conspiracy theories instead of pondering society’s deeper decaying processes, which by no means bypass themselves.

5.

Getting out of the society of affiliation, if at all possible, should start with turning theses into uncertainties. But who could withstand the power of doubt in societies accustomed to sheltering in affiliations? And isn’t affiliation precisely an extreme form of response to boundless anxiety?

Notes:

[i] See: Jacques Derrida, Shibboleth: For Paul Celan, in: idem, Sovereignties in Question. The Poetics of Paul Celan, Fordham University Press, New York 2005, p. 1-65.

[ii] See: Peter Szendy, Pneumatopolitique (ce que conspirer veut dire), https://aoc.media/opinion/2022/02/02/pneumatopolitique-ce-que-conspirer-veut-dire/, accessed 23rd of January 2025.

[iii] See: Curzio Malaparte, Coup d’État. The Technique of Revolution, Translated by Edward Payson Dutton, Independent 2021.