Populism definition politics

To begin, populism’s core political appeal is a moral antagonism between the people and the elites, however defined. In contrast, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Donald Trump in the United States (as well as several other leaders in the Global North) are right-wing populists related to fascism, as they overtly celebrate xenophobia and anti-immigrant policies.

Further inspired by the work of Laclau (2005), anthropologists tend to think of populism as a style of political discourse that employs a polarising logic.

2008. Populism itself does not define either, which is partially why it is a “thin-centered ideology.” As populism transcends the traditional left-right divide, populists adapt the elite-people distinction to their respective host ideology. 9: 1658–82.

Canetti, Elias. Consider the discussion of Peronism mentioned above.

(1960) 1984. This fascistically ethnonationalist and racist populist illiberalism unites those who feel devalued by liberal multiculturalism and the patterns of capital accumulation that have historically accompanied it in the post-WWII era.

The fascist discourse of many populist movements has led some scholars to argue that they are intrinsically interrelated—in other words, that populism is always related to fascism (Finchelstein 2019).

Freud, Sigmund. The discipline makes sense of populism by focusing on themes including sacrifice, scapegoating, ritual, and the nature of group belonging. From this point of view, liberal paradigms of democracy that focus on mediation through institutions are overly restrictive as they repress the emotional nature of political participation.

Ethnography has trodden a middle ground in this debate.

This is because “the people” and “the elite” are flexible terms, and populists can characterise them in very different ways.

Right-wing populists tend to characterise “the people” in socio-cultural terms, and often combine their populism with nativism.

Think for instance, of how Trump’s “people” are coded as White Americans.

Note on contributor

Julia Fierman is currently Lecturer on Anthropology at Harvard University. Thus, crowds are sometimes perceived as stripping people of their agency or as intrinsically sinister, as they may elicit irrational and base feelings. Studies of totalitarianism and dictatorships have drawn on structuralist theories of the ‘master-signifier’—a signifier that does not refer to specific content (or ‘signified’) but is the anchor for a whole symbolic system—to understand how certain figures occupy singular symbolic functions.

Therefore, scholars, policymakers, and the public should seek greater insight into what populism is and its consequences for politics moving forward.