Politics & Power Quote by Jean Baudrillard

A politician who actually believes his own script is the one person who breaks the spell. Baudrillard’s line is a neat little paradox with teeth: in a system where politics functions as performance, sincerity reads as amateurism, even danger. The others stop believing him not because belief is scarce, but because belief is the wrong currency. What circulates is credibility as spectacle, a shared understanding that statements are instruments, not confessions.

The intent is classic Baudrillard: to expose how modern public life operates under simulation, where “truth” is less a correspondence to reality than a successful effect. In that context, the politician who believes is guilty of category error. He mistakes the sign (the message, the brand, the talking point) for the real. Colleagues, operatives, and rival elites recognize the breach instantly: someone is treating the theater like a courtroom. That’s when the collective bargain collapses. If one actor insists the lines are literal, everyone else looks cynical by contrast, and cynicism is the room’s oxygen.

The subtext is also institutional self-defense. A believer is unpredictable. He might follow through. He might prioritize principle over coalition maintenance, donor comfort, or message discipline. In late-20th-century media politics, especially the televised and spin-saturated world Baudrillard dissected, conviction is not reassuring; it’s destabilizing. The line lands because it flips a democratic fairy tale on its head. We’re trained to applaud authenticity. Baudrillard suggests authenticity is precisely what unmasks the game, and games don’t like being named.