Hyperrealpolitik, the term, was first coined by Gourney Detoure, a cultural anthropologist, around the turn of the millenium, combining notions of the Hyper-real (the surrogate, the language, the counter-reality based upon a presumed reality) and Realpolitik (politics and behavior in the real world as opposed to the utopias of morality and ethics).These conflicting notions combine in Hyperrealpolitik to describe the encounter of political expediency in terms of real world social/political action/agendas and the arbitrary fit of tacit, implied or covert utopias, patriotic, nationalistic, and moral, that are (sometimes transparently, sometimes opaquely) used to disingenuously justify or motivate action or emotion in a society, ethnic, nationalist, religious or ideological group, party or nation.
For example the WMD debate by the Bush Administration in the USA in 2002 before the Second Iraq War bears all the hallmarks of Hyperrealpolitik:
a) A hidden or obfuscated political agenda (a complex realpolitik agenda - in order to, amongst other things) control Iraq's oil and more effectively control the Middle East).
b) However this is falsely justified by appeals to moral, (Saddam has comitted genocide in the past), and patriotic (in terms of make-believe threats to the state) ideals in the abstract.
c) The public and members of government and governmental agencies (like George Tenet for example and Colin Powell) perpetuate these lies, this parallel reality even though they all know them not to be true. They are complicit in the creation of this false reality which has little to do with facts in the real world but more to do with abstractions based upon this parallel reality that becomes not so much 'what if' but 'is real'.
Therefore abstract and subjective reflections of realities and moral duties legitimize action in the real world (the invasion of Iraq), however, the reality of the situation has little if anything to do with the abstract premises upon which this action is based. This process is an example of Hyperrealpolitik.
The key difference between this theory and that from which it is built on, Eco's Hyper-real and Baudrillard's Simulacra is the injection of the concept of the willing suspension of disbelief amongst contemporary actors. It explores the gulf between knowledge (objectivity, to a point) and belief (subjectivity) and how society is willing to delude itself for expediency, while knowing it is doing so, in pursual of realpolitik 'goals' or other ends or motives, including prejudice, discrimination and racism. History [or rather partisan history], and memory [or rather selective memory] are key elements in these self induced or waking delusions.
A creative analogy (which would also apply to simulacra) is a theory of 'syncopation,' which is described as a momentary contradiction of regular meter. Syncopation has been described as "putting the accent on a note that isn't there." Jazz for example is a highly syncopated musical style and so arguably is Rap. Societies complicit in their own voluntary delusions are putting the accent on a note that isn't there.
See -
Detoure, G. 2006 Hyperrealpolitik. [Reproduced above] http://hyperrealpolitik.blogspot.com/2006/01/its-nice-place_113749733391155997.html
Detoure, G. 2003 "Hyperrealpolitik and the 'New World Order,'" in Method Against Method. 23-59 1:3
Detoure, G. 1999 "Why society must be defended against itself: A theory of Hyperrealpolitik.' in
Popular Cultural Dynamics. 156-199 4:7
Hyperrealpolitik -
...years from now people will look back on President Bush and say, 'I have no friggin idea what that guy was talking about....but he talked exactly what I wanted to hear' - Andy Dick
We are living in an era when facts, and rational analysis, are on the ropes. The president has been inhabiting a world, Ron Suskind wrote in a 2004 New York Times Magazine article, that scorns ''the reality-based community.'' Congress routinely adopts policies that cater to special interests, which are then justified by the sort of smarmy, fact-free spin that the comedian Stephen Colbert has labeled ''truthiness.'' - Adam Cohen 2006
"There is no such thing, at this stage of the world’s history in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Other of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my papers, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." - John Swinton, 2006
'What we need to realize is that the infamous “Bush bubble,” the administration’s no-reality zone, extends a long way beyond the White House. Millions of Americans believe that patriotic torturers are keeping us safe, that there’s a vast Islamic axis of evil, that victory in Iraq is just around the corner, that Bush appointees are doing a heckuva job — and that news reports contradicting these beliefs reflect liberal media bias.' - Paul Krugman 2007
"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." --Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
