As scapegoats are functional for upholding an Establishment that cannot justify the reality of its relationship with the Estate, and that is also the reason why most religions invoke scapegoats in ritual sacrifices, it is not difficult to understand why it is beneficial to the Establishment to invest quite a few resources in institutionalizing and reifying scapegoats by fixing and naturalizing “its” identity. Identity politics that invoke scapegoats rely not only on explicitly ideological framings of public opinion, but also on forms of entertainment that generate mimetic desire.
The generation of mimetic desire is now primarily a function of algorithms rather than sociological market research. The associations between goods are being represented as associations between likes (people who like this product also like these products). This is a very effective way to create an imaginary unity between individuality and sociality. Because it is done by algorithms, there seems to be no intentional guiding, no steering, just the pure and unfettered workings of the free market of desires. Because identity thinking dominates not only the field of politics but also that of entertainment, mimetic desires are easily conflated to genetic desires. This is particularly apparent in the realm of gender, where it is assumed that male and female are both biological and social categories, but it also applies to race and ethnicity, in which biological and cultural “traits” are often depicted as intertwined and thus appearing as natural.
According to Walter Benjamin, the cinematic apparatus has enabled an exteriorization of desire; and thereby also a sense of alienation. We have become accustomed to the uncanny experience of self-externalization through scopophilia, that is, we have become used to the idea that we can experience desire as a projection of an image of ourselves, which at the same time is like a haunting. Hence, the interaction between cinematic projections and self-identification is at once an alienation and a misrecognition. However, this also applies to conceiving otherness; it is never merely that which remains when we distract the self, as the self is generated by the uncanny of haunted alienation. That is, any fixation of otherness also includes an element of haunted alienation, which may, for example, manifest itself as guilt, fascination, revulsion or hatred.
Hence, identity-thinking is deeply intertwined with the conditioning of desire by culture industries, and thus also serves in the process of commodification, where desires can be attached to consumer goods (this is at the core of marketing and advertising). Whereas the cinematic revolution of the libidinal economy helps us to explain the intensity of identity thinking in relation to culture industries and consumption practices, it may seem a little anachronistic to invoke the same dynamic with reference to earlier manifestations of identity thinking such as those associated with racism (including antisemitism) and nationalism. We cannot ignore the thesis put forward by Benjamin, Freud, Adorno and Marcuse that cinematic technology has transformed what we consider to be subjectivity. Yet, at the same time, we can also not ignore the fact, that identity-thinking as played a formative role in the creation of modern subjectivity well before the introduction of cinema.
It is well known that proponents of so-called “Cultural Marxism” also known as the Frankfurt School or just Critical Theory have been highly critical of the commodification of culture. The term Culture Industry is perfect in that sense, that it highlights that what is now commonly known as “Culture” has been completely restructured within the Capitalist Mode of Production. But their thesis is even more convincing, when we focus on the libidinal economy of the Culture Industry. Using Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, Herbert Marcuse, for example, exposes how the systemic production of neurosis intertwines with a set on interrelated phenomena such as consumerism, nationalism and sexual anxiety. These three elements are flare up when we consider the anger of Adolf Hitler as expressed Mein Kampf as well as in his public addresses. We can see exactly the same figuration of neurotic pathologies in the speech and behaviour of Donald Trump. For Marcuse, these are not just by-products of the Capitalist Mode of Production, but a constitutive part of it.
As I have stated before, the concept of alienation can help us understand why the Culture Industry could completely reconfigure our relationship to the real conditions of existence through consumerism, nationalism and sexual anxiety. Whereas Marcuse – at the end of the 1950s – understood anxiety still in terms of the Freudian Repression – the subsequent expansion of pornography as a core component of the Culture Industry forces us to critically reflect on the accuracy of the term anxiety. I have decided to keep it for now, as I believe that one of the mean reasons for the expansion of pornography as the commodification of sexuality is a transformation of the coding of anxiety within the libidinal economy, not anxiety itself, as it remains linked to alienation. Pornography does not reduce anxiety but enhances it. There are two indicators for this: (1) the legal framework remains one embedded in restrictions, shaming and confessions (“yes I am over 18”) and (2) the persistence of the exaggeration of gender-identities, stereotypes and the framing of sexual desire in relation to the categorization of perversions. Consumers of pornography are classified as perverts, who merely respond to external manipulations of desires, because at heart, they are nothing but anxious, alienated beings. The fact that a prerequisite for the commodification of pornography has been and still is the anonymity of the consumer, reminds us of this deep connection between anxiety and alienation.
Mimetic Desire and Anxiety are thus twins of the same Nomos: Identity-Politics and the commodification of culture has played a pivotal role in their restructuring of the libidinal economy that encourages ethno-nationalism, racism and sexism as well as a structural conditioning of self-loathing that serves as its dark side, and as the means through which the fascist imaginary travels. Self-loathing engenders the cynicism that is necessary not just to aspire to becoming an obscene leader, but also to aspire to become his servant. It provides the necessary backbone for corruption, especially of that which must living entities hold as major values: honour, loyalty, honesty, truthfulness, reliability, courage, selflessness and empathy. Self-loathing is the refusal to heed the calling of kenosis: to abandon any attachment to properties that engender entropy rather than harmony.
The self-loathing that is the cornerstone of the anxious alienation of our currently dominant libidinal economy is exactly the reason why people start to believe that we deserve nothing better than kakistocracy. Self-loathing is itself also a mimetic desire and the major currency circulating on social media platforms. It is that which makes people want to destroy the world we live in.
Disaffected Sociology 
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