Baudrillard and The End of the Political

Introduction
At the outset of his intellectual career, Jean Baudrillard began by critiquing and radicalizing the works of Marx. However, following the decline and failure of the rebellions of the 1960s, a disillusioned and hopeless Baudrillard underwent a metaphysical turn, which produced the works characteristic of the second period of his intellectual life. From the 1980s onwards, using concepts such as simulation and simulacrum, his analysis of consumer societies, and his critique of the mass media, Baudrillard created specific, trend-setting works, despite their written ambiguities. The main discussion of the present article revolves around the question of what evidence Baudrillard uses to argue for the end of the political. The central hypothesis implies that, according to Baudrillard, we have entered the postmodern space with the transition from the modern era—a virtual and hyperreal space saturated with information and communication. In this space, the more information is produced, the more meaning is lost. He believes that due to the intensified activity of the media, reality itself has been forgotten, and we are instead faced with fabricated realities that are created and manipulated by the media. In his view, within such an environment, the social cohesion that bound society together has lost its quality and effectiveness. Consequently, we are witnessing the refraction and evaporation of society, the social, the masses, power, resistance, and ultimately, the political itself.
 
Methodology
the article uses a descriptive-analytic method.
 
Findings
The findings of this study are discussed under the following themes:
1- Until the late twentieth century, the fundamental nature of the media was largely unquestioned; it was conventionally understood as a mirror of reality—a neutral tool depicting events as they occurred. The culmination of this perspective is found in the work of Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media). However, Jean Baudrillard, a fierce and systematic critic, challenged these predominantly liberal assumptions by interrogating the very nature of the media and the realistic dignity assigned to it. Baudrillard’s critique serves as a crushing response to McLuhan's theory of the "global village" and the media's role in the modern world.
Whereas McLuhan believed the media would clarify global events, thereby increasing public awareness and connectivity—positing that greater information volume leads to greater individual understanding—Baudrillard insists on the opposite. He argues that as media proliferate and more information is supplied, the social space becomes more opaque, resulting in less meaning overall. Baudrillard builds upon the lesson he learned from McLuhan, that "the medium itself is the message," and turns it against him. This proposition confirms that the primary significance of media lies not in the content but in the form of communication itself. An event need not occur in the objective, external world; what is more important is that it is nurtured within the media in a way that makes it appear more real than reality itself.
2- Baudrillard argues that the era of modernity—defined by politics, culture, and social life—has passed. In its place, a revolution in meaning, initiated by digital technologies and the exchange of signs, has ushered in a new epoch that stands upon the ruins of the previous one: the era of postmodernity. This new condition is characterized by the absence of politics, culture, and genuine social action. Postmodernity has done to modernity what modernity itself did to tradition: it has effected a complete destruction and erosion, reducing it to meaninglessness and collapse. For Baudrillard, we inhabit a postmodern world—a world that has collapsed in on itself. It is a time of dissolution, where everything is reduced to signs that signify nothing. Consequently, events in this world are rendered meaningless because there is no real subject to grant them identity and presence. As a result, events cease to be events for a subject; instead, they occur autonomously, without any reference to a subject.
3- For Baudrillard, an entity called "power" has a purely virtual, rather than a real, existence. Power is neither one-dimensional, two-dimensional, nor three-dimensional; it is neither networked nor rotational. Instead, power is an image—a pretense that can only be found within the media and not in the objective world. One must seek power in the propaganda gestures of politicians and rulers, which are themselves merely a form of media reproduction. In reality, there is no such thing as power. Furthermore, Baudrillard would argue that Foucault cannot adequately describe the devices of pretense that multiply around the axis of a vast, simulated mechanism—a mechanism that twists all arrangements into an ever-widening spiral of illusion. This is because Foucault's gaze remains fixed on a classical semiotics of power, an framework incapable of accounting for this hyperreal dimension.
 
Analysis
Baudrillard's argument in support of his hypothesis regarding the "end of politics" revolves around the idea that society is the cornerstone of the political. He contends that the media have now filled all the empty spaces between individuals—spaces that were previously occupied by social contracts. Consequently, with the collapse and refraction of society itself, the possibility for genuine political action also ends, as there is no longer a social space in which it can occur. Politics is thus relegated from the real world to cyberspace and the media, becoming manifest only in the gestures of politicians. In this state, politics itself becomes a film, an allegory, or a pretense.
 
Conclusion
Baudrillard's pessimistic stance culminates in the idea of the "end of politics." This pessimistic philosopher holds no hope for the reform or transformation of contemporary affairs, believing we are instead confronted by "silent majorities" in the social world. These orientations have led his thought to resemble a form of romanticism and political apocalypticism. His theories were, in many ways, the product of intellectual frustration resulting from the perceived barrenness of the 1960s' political events. These frustrations prompted an intellectual metamorphosis, steering Baudrillard toward a position of political conservatism.