Kayfabe

In professional wrestling, everyone knows the fight is staged. The trick is that everyone agrees to pretend it's real.

Kayfabe is the wrestling term for maintaining the illusion that the performance is a genuine contest. Both fighters, the commentators, and the audience all participate in the fiction — not because they're fooled, but because the spectacle is more entertaining than the truth. The concept has become a remarkably useful lens for understanding modern politics.

Watch a legislative debate where both parties perform outrage at each other, then quietly pass the same bill together after cameras leave. Watch politicians who attack each other on television and attend the same fundraiser that evening. The conflict is real enough to generate headlines, engagement, and loyalty from their respective bases. But the structural outcomes — who gets funded, who gets protected, whose interests are served — often remain undisturbed regardless of which side "wins."

Kayfabe doesn't mean nothing is real. It means the performance of conflict can exist separately from actual conflict. The shouting is for you. The deals are for someone else. And as long as you stay invested in the storyline — cheering your hero, booing the villain — you won't notice that both characters work for the same promotion.

The question worth asking: if the fight is real, why does the same side keep winning behind the scenes no matter who holds the microphone?

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References

• Adam Curtis — HyperNormalisation (2016)
• Sheldon Wolin — Democracy Incorporated (2008)