Years ago, while visiting the Pyramids of Giza, I noticed a pattern of behaviour that seemed ordinary at first glance but later took on a deeper meaning for me. Most tourists approached each pyramid along the route most familiar to visitors. They stood before the same face they had already seen in photographs, tourist brochures and the media; they took a few pictures and then moved on to the next pyramid. Few took the time to walk all the way around the pyramid, see its four faces and grasp the true size of its base and the grandeur of the structure as a whole. During my visit to the pyramids, I did not settle for viewing only that familiar face. For instance, I walked around Khafre’s Pyramid and photographed each of its four faces. My album contains photographs of me standing before different faces of each of the pyramids.
The other three faces of each pyramid may be unfamiliar to many viewers because they have usually seen only the same famous, repeatedly reproduced image. However, the fact that one or more faces are unfamiliar is no evidence that they do not exist. For example, if a viewer has only one familiar image of Khafre’s Pyramid in mind, that is a limitation of the viewer’s understanding, not a limitation of the pyramid itself. When we speak of Khafre’s Pyramid, we do not mean one specific face. The name refers to the pyramid as a whole: a structure whose four faces together form a single entity. No one can claim that simply because one face has been seen more often in tourist images than the other three, that face constitutes the entire pyramid. An image taken from a single angle may be entirely real, but the reality contained in that image is not the whole reality of the structure.
The same problem arises in understanding realpolitik. Realpolitik is not the name of any one of these four traits in isolation. Realpolitik is a single edifice with four fundamental faces: lying, irresponsibility, immorality and conspiracy. Each of these traits is a face of that same unified structure. Just as one cannot separate one face of Khafre’s Pyramid from the other three and call it the entire pyramid, one cannot reduce realpolitik solely to lying, solely to irresponsibility (silence), solely to immorality, or solely to conspiracy.
However, most people come to know realpolitik through whichever face has been presented to them by personal experience, a book, a political crisis or the media. Someone who has faced the silence of an institution for months may see only irresponsibility. Someone who has fallen victim to character assassination and psychological damage may view immorality as the principal face of realpolitik. An individual who has confronted the distortion of truth and the fabrication of narratives may recognise lying. Another, having experienced the covert activities of power groups, the targeted leaking of information and behind-the-scenes coordination against them, may recognise conspiracy.
None of these observations is necessarily incorrect, and no experience, simply because it reveals a different face of the structure, negates the experiences of others. The error begins when a real face is mistaken for the structure as a whole. The observer stands before one face and, because the other three faces are out of sight, gradually forgets that they are confronting only one part of a structure with four faces. Here, a mechanism similar to anchoring bias is at work: the first or most apparent face so preoccupies their mind that it becomes the criterion by which the entire structure is interpreted. The issue is not that the face is unreal; rather, the issue is that one part of reality is mistakenly taken to represent the entire reality of the edifice.
The media also play a role in fixing this limited angle of view in the public mind. Just as repeatedly reproduced images of the pyramids from only one or two angles shape public visual memory, the media typically present only one part of realpolitik. They may report on a political lie without examining the structure of irresponsibility that allows the liar to evade accountability. They may highlight a moral scandal but remain silent about the conspiracy that orchestrated or concealed that behaviour. In this way, the public receives a real but incomplete picture from the media.
In the edifice of realpolitik, the face of irresponsibility is usually more visible than the other three. The silence of politicians, irrelevant responses, unsigned letters, anonymous accusations, the shifting of responsibility from one institution to another, and the refusal to be held accountable are experiences that unfold directly before the victim’s eyes. It may therefore appear that the problem lies solely in irresponsibility. But irresponsibility is not a face detached from the others. Along one boundary, it is joined to the face of lying, because evading responsibility often requires a distortion of the truth. Along another, it is joined to the face of immorality, because ignoring human suffering is impossible without moral collapse. Immorality, in turn, is linked to conspiracy, for secretly planning to eliminate, destroy or deceive others is impossible without trampling upon moral values.
The same relationship applies to the other three faces. Lying cannot endure without irresponsibility, because the liar must be able to evade accountability. Conspiracy is impossible without immorality, because eliminating or destroying others requires moral values to be trampled upon. Without the cover of lying and concealment, immorality is easily exposed to public judgement. Each face reinforces and protects the other three. The four traits are not merely placed alongside one another; they are connected along their shared boundaries and together hold up a single structure: realpolitik.
Therefore, an experience or a book may clearly show only one or two faces of realpolitik. This limitation does not necessarily constitute a flaw in that experience or book. Every witness looks at the edifice from a specific vantage point. The researcher, however, must not remain at that same vantage point. They must understand that the face they can see ends at a boundary where it meets another face. The task of structural analysis is to go all the way around the edifice and reveal the connections among all its faces.
Unlike tourist photographs of the pyramids, specialised, academic and archaeological archives contain a far wider range of images. For example, Harvard University’s Digital Giza project maintains an extensive archive of images of Khafre’s Pyramid and the surrounding complex. Digital Giza provides a 360-degree view of the Khafre complex that users can rotate; such a tool, in stark contrast to a static photograph, frees the observer from confinement to a single angle. Within the scope of the experience it recounts, Märta Stenevi’s book serves a similar function: it does not leave the reader standing before a single face; rather, it takes the reader all the way around the edifice of realpolitik, enabling them to see all four of its faces—lying, irresponsibility, immorality and conspiracy.
A full understanding of realpolitik requires us to step away from the familiar angle of view sold to us by the media, political parties and official narratives. We must behave like a visitor who is not content with taking a single photograph of the pyramid’s most famous face. We must go all the way around the edifice, measure its edges and see where its faces meet.
In the course of our study, what is revealed when the second, third or fourth face comes into view may be unfamiliar to others. They might say, ‘This is not the pyramid we know.’ But the answer is clear: the pyramid has not changed; the vantage point has changed. What they fail to recognise is a part of the very same edifice that has always existed but has never formed part of the repeatedly reproduced images in their minds.
The same is true of realpolitik. If someone has seen only silence (irresponsibility), the appearance of lying, immorality and conspiracy may seem unfamiliar to them. But these three traits were not later added to realpolitik. They have been part of the same edifice from the very beginning. Lying, irresponsibility, immorality and conspiracy are not four isolated phenomena; they are four faces of a single edifice. Their unfamiliarity to the observer does not prove that they are absent; it merely shows that the observer has not yet gone all the way around the edifice of realpolitik.