Granddaddy politics

Summary

Granddaddy Politics and the Loss of a Future

The narrator uses the Soviet joke about “racing on gun carriages”—the succession of elderly Soviet leaders who died in office—to introduce granddaddy politics. In this kind of politics, power remains with aging, unaccountable leaders until death forces a change. The narrator argues that this produces stagnation and nostalgia rather than a meaningful future, and that leaders can treat younger generations as expendable, including by drawing them into wars. Remarks attributed to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are presented as examples of an attitude that minimizes the value of individual life.

The argument broadens beyond politics. The narrator describes the 2020s as marked by pervasive doomerism, weakened senses of identity and purpose, and a fixation on past ideals. They connect this mood to declining confidence in the future, citing the return of smoking as a rejection of the idea that people should preserve themselves for a promising future. They also criticize the pursuit of supposedly advanced technologies, such as sex dolls, when these deepen isolation rather than foster human connection. The narrator acknowledges that fears about AI and apocalypse may have real grounds, while suggesting that some people are also drawn to the idea of everything ending.

Necrocracy, Chronocide, and Panphobia

Drawing mainly on philosopher and cultural theorist Mikhail Epstein, the narrator calls a politics organized around death and the past necrocracy. They connect it to Freud’s concept of Thanatos, or the death drive, and to slogans that glorify repeating past wars. Epstein’s term chronocide—violence against the natural course of time—describes the sacrifice of the future to an idealized past.

The narrator applies this critique to Russian politics and propaganda, while arguing that similar patterns can appear across ideologies and countries. They also discuss Epstein’s concept of panphobia: an aggressive fear and hostility directed at the world as a whole, which they connect to political disorientation and destructive impulses.

Hyperpolitics and Stagnant Power

The video argues that far-right traditionalism can present a return to an imagined past as a revolutionary future, but its critique is not limited to the right. Drawing on historian Anton Jäger’s account of hyperpolitics, the narrator describes a landscape of constant outrage and burnout in which power structures remain entrenched even as public life feels volatile and precarious. Protests and intense political activity, they argue, do not necessarily lead to lasting change.

Berserk as an Analogy

The narrator uses Kentaro Miura’s manga Berserk to illustrate these themes. Its decaying aristocratic order, the God Hand’s unaccountable power, and the role of predetermined causality reflect the feeling that ordinary people have no agency. Griffith’s rise shows how a charismatic leader can exploit a stagnant order by promising people a future and security—even when that promise is built on violence and a false sense of inevitability.

Chronocracy and the Possibility of Resistance

The conclusion is not that resistance is futile. Though Berserk is relentlessly bleak, its characters keep going after catastrophe. The narrator presents Epstein’s idea of chronocracy, or the primacy of time, as an alternative to granddaddy politics. This means not simply replacing one ruler with another, but recognizing that time cannot be stopped or rolled back.

The video closes by urging people not to accept the claim that the future is already lost or to give up on it prematurely.

Presenters and Contributors

• Presenter: Unnamed narrator.
• Other contributors: No other speaking presenters or contributors are identified in the subtitles.