That’s a sharp, cynical aphorism: politics works by turning private hopes, fears, and identities into a shared story people are willing to act on. Its power lies not merely in lying, but in making a partial vision feel like common reality.
What it captures
- Collective fantasy: Nations, parties, movements, and “the people” are partly imagined communities—sustained by symbols, narratives, rituals, and shared enemies rather than direct acquaintance.[1]
- Mobilization: A political fantasy gives people a reason to coordinate: a promised future, a moral mission, a grievance, or an identity. Political imagination can visualize alternatives and thereby change what people treat as possible.[2]
- Power: The “art” is getting many people to invest emotionally in that vision, then converting that investment into votes, legitimacy, obedience, donations, or sacrifice.
Where it is right
Politics often does depend on simplification. Complex societies need usable stories—“we are a nation,” “this policy will restore prosperity,” “our opponents threaten our way of life.” Such stories can create solidarity and enable action that no purely technical policy paper could inspire. Political imaginaries shape what people believe exists, matters, is possible, and who counts as “we.”[1]
Ideological fantasy can also make policies emotionally compelling: it supplies a promised good, explains why it has not yet arrived, and induces desire for a redemptive solution.[3]
Where it oversimplifies
Calling all politics “collective fantasy” risks implying that every shared ideal is delusional. But some collective visions become real institutions: constitutional rights, public health systems, abolition, universal suffrage, and welfare states all began as contested ideas about how society could be organized. Collective imagination is not inherently escape from reality; it can be a condition for changing it.[4]
A more precise version might be:
Politics is the art of turning private desires and fears into shared narratives powerful enough to organize collective action.
That keeps the insight about imagination and mobilization, while leaving room for the difference between propaganda, utopian idealism, and durable institution-building.
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- https://www.gu.se/sites/default/files/2026-06/ArtMonitor Working Paper 007eng MW.pdf
- https://c4aa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Political-Imagination.pdf
- https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-12274-8_10
- https://nonprofitquarterly.org/dreaming-is-a-political-act/
- https://www.newsweek.com/id/154925
- https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/09/apolitical_reas.html
- https://www.studocu.com/en-ca/document/toronto-metropolitan-university/people-power-and-politics/pog-100-lecture-notes-google-docs/21495511
- https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9780822390923_A35866455/preview-9780822390923_A35866455.pdf
- https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/articles/4277/
- https://www.studocu.com/en-za/document/university-of-kwazulu-natal/political-science-101-introduction-to-political-science/weeks-1-13-pols-notes/60735559?origin=AI-question-page-6
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