The five essays gathered in this book all revolve around a system of interlocking concepts: populism, democracy, politics, the media, and language.

Anchored in very clear ideas such as that "according to their primary functional mode, modern communication media are less informational media than carriers of infections", or that "moral and political aberrations almost always begin with linguistic oversights", Sloterdijk unravels the functioning of modern capitalist societies, arguing against common sense and pre-established ideas.