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Populism

The Abuse Of The Concept Of ‘Populism’

January 28, 2023 Prabhat Patnaik, Black Agenda Report. , ,
All regimes based on class antagonism require a discourse to legitimise class oppression and this discourse in turn requires a vocabulary of its own. The neoliberal regime too has developed its own discourse and vocabulary and a key concept in this vocabulary is “populism”. This concept is given great currency by the media, which is peopled by members drawn from the upper middle class who have been major beneficiaries of the neo-liberal regime and have therefore developed a vested interest in its continuation. So pervasive is the reach of this concept that even well-meaning and progressive members of the literati have fallen victim to its abuse and employ the term with the pejorative connotation typically imparted to it by the corporate-owned media. The term “populism” of course is not an invention of the neo-liberal intelligentsia.

The Convoy And Canada – A Call To Step Up

February 19, 2022 John Cartwright, The Council of Canadians. , , ,
I have spent time listening to leaders and activists from across this country, and I have learned one thing: we as civil society must step up and provide courageous leadership in this time of crisis. Unions, racial and climate justice organizations, faith leaders, students, residents’ groups, health care activists – all of us have a role to play to help overcome this polarization, to bridge divides and to focus on crucial issues of  social justice. We need to start organizing at the national and local level – bringing together people from all walks of life to determine strategies that will address the realities of each region of our country. There is no magic slogan that can turn this around. It’s about deep organizing. We know that public health measures are about saving lives, just as mandatory seatbelt laws save lives.

How The World Went From Post-Politics To Hyper-Politics

January 3, 2022 Anton Jäger, Tribune Magazine. , , ,
Ten years and a decade of populist turmoil later, Ernaux’s testimony reads both familiar and unfamiliar. The rapid individualisation and decline of collective institutions she diagnosed has not been halted. Barring a few exceptions, political parties have not regained their members. Associations have not seen attendance rise. Churches have not filled their pews, and unions have not grown precipitously. Across the world, civil society is still mired in a deep and protracted crisis. On the other hand, the mixture of diffidence and apathy so characteristic of Ernaux’s 1990s hardly applies today. Biden was elected on a record turnout; the Brexit referendum was the largest democratic vote in Britain’s history. The Black Lives Matter protests were mass spectacles; many of the world’s biggest corporations took up the mantle of racial justice, adapting their brands to support the cause.

The Politics Of Protection

November 23, 2021 Sarah Jaffe, Dissent Magazine. , , ,
The 2008 financial meltdown and the global economic crisis that followed put thousands of cracks into what Mark Fisher called “capitalist realism”—the idea that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The neoliberal era appeared to be at its end. But it staggered on; the next decade saw most Western states respond with the typical neoliberal playbook. Now, the coronavirus pandemic has made it even easier to imagine the end of the world, and the response of those same states has been quite different. Is neoliberalism actually ending? And what comes next? Political theorist Paolo Gerbaudo explores those questions in his new book, The Great Recoil: Politics After Populism and Pandemic. 

The Gamers’ Uprising Against Wall Street Has Deep Populist Roots

February 11, 2021 Ellen Brown, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
A short squeeze frenzy driven by a new generation of gamers captured financial headlines in recent weeks, centered on a struggling strip mall video game store called GameStop. The Internet and a year off in this shut down to study up have given a younger generation of investors the tools to compete in the market. Gerald Celente calls it the “Youth Revolution.” A group of New York Young Republicans who protested in the snow on January 31 called it “Re-occupy Wall Street.” Others have called it  Occupy Wall Street 2.0.  The populist uprising against Wall Street goes back farther, however, than to the 2010 Occupy movement. In the late 19th century, the country was suffering from a depression nearly as severe as the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Scheer Intelligence: Don’t Believe Anything You Were Told About Populism

November 20, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , , ,
The word “populism” gets a bad rap these days as corporate media warns of its alleged dangers and President Barack Obama goes so far as to blame Sarah Palin for its recent rise. But, according to Thomas Frank, the founding editor of The Baffler and author of What’s the Matter with Kansas and his new book, The People, No, a detailed account about the history of populism in the United States, true populism is a force for good, not evil. On this week’s installment of Scheer Intelligence, the journalist and historian joins Robert Scheer to discuss in-depth how the Democratic Party chose to quash populism, while the Republican Party decided to use its stripped-down ideals for its own nefarious means.

Three Populists And Three Women

June 18, 2020 Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell, Counterpunch. , , ,
Looking at the total Covid-19/Coronavirus global death statistics on Saturday, 13 June 2020, three things become noticeable. The first remarkable issue is that Donald Trump’s USA has just exceeded the total number of fatalities it suffered during World War I. In that war, the USA lost 116,516. On Saturday morning, the USA had lost 116,795 to the Coronavirus, continuing on an approximately daily death rate of between 800 to 1,000 since the last few weeks. It happened on Donald Trump’s watch and no blame shifting can change the fact that the USA did rather badly compared to all other countries on earth. Secondly, in terms of total deaths caused by the Coronavirus, the top three positions are held by “America First” USA (1), the UK (2), and Brazil (3).

Reclaiming Populism

May 6, 2020 Thea Riofrancos, Boston Review. , ,
In the years between Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 Republican primaries and the 2018 midterm elections, a rash of opinion pieces compared him to Latin American leaders, contemporary and historic. A headline in The Washington Post declared, “Trump is the U.S.’s first Latin American president.” “In Venezuela, we couldn’t stop Chávez. Don’t make the same mistakes we did,” read another. The New York Times published virtually the same article three times: “Is Donald Trump an American Hugo Chávez?”; “What Hugo Chávez Tells Us About Donald Trump”; “Will Democracy survive Trump’s populism? Latin America may tell us.” These very pages analyzed “Trump’s Latin American model.”

On Contact: The New Republic

April 26, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. , ,
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to D. D. Guttenplan, the editor of the Nation, about the history of populism in America, its current rise and the problem of democracy. His new book, ‘The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority’, focuses on nine progressive activists emerging during the Trump administration. Among them, new labor activist Jane McAlevey, racial justice campaigner and Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi Chokwe Antar Lumumba, and environmental activist Jane Kleeb, all working to restore America’s democratic, political, and economic systems against the rise of proto-fascist forces and demagogues seeking power.

Populism Is Not The Answer To Neoliberal Fascism

September 11, 2019 Henry A. Giroux, Truthout.org , ,
We have entered an ominous age of political conformity. Support is growing for a right-wing populism that views liberal democracy as both an anachronism and a curse. Meanwhile, many of those who oppose this growth of the right wing are turning to a left-wing populism that is dangerously susceptible to the same patterns of demagoguery and discourses of unity and exclusion. The signposts are clear. Across the globe, politicians spew out inordinate incitements of hatred and bigotry, while legitimating and often overtly supporting racism.

Facing Populist Assault, Global Elites Regroup In Davos

January 22, 2019 Paul Wiseman and Jamey Keaten, Apnews.com , ,
DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — As the world’s financial and political elites convene here in the Swiss Alps for the World Economic Forum, their vision of ever-closer commercial and political ties is under attack — and the economic outlook is darkening. Britain’s political system has been thrown into chaos as the country negotiates a messy divorce from the European Union. Under President Donald Trump, the United States is imposing trade sanctions on friend and foe alike, and the government is paralyzed by a partial shutdown over immigration policy that forced Trump and a high-level U.S. delegation to cancel the trip to Davos.

Two Populisms, Not One

December 23, 2018 Paul Street, Counterpunch. , ,
Two very different “populisms” that have arisen in response to neoliberal capitalism in the West. A left-leaning social-democratic “progressive populism” targets the capitalist concentration of wealth and power and the unbridled pursuit of private profit as enemies of the people and the common good.  This populism is egalitarian and radically democratic.  It tends towards socialism.  Its attractive policy agenda, supported by working-class majorities, includes the downward distribution of wealth, the expansion of the social safety net, university quality health care, increased minimum wages and union power, public jobs programs, and the protection of livable ecology (a Green New Deal). 

The Establishment’s Bi-Partisan Fear Of Popular Revolt

September 12, 2018 Gareth Porter, Truthout.org , ,
The two most powerful think tanks in Washington, representing center-left and center-right political elites, have responded to the populist shocks of the 2016 presidential election by trying to reposition themselves and the Democratic and Republican Parties as more sympathetic to populist concerns even while maintaining their attachments to the interests of big business and the complex of war-making. The Center for American Progress (CAP), linked to the Democratic Party establishment, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which is close to the Republican Party, have issued two long papers in recent months reflecting their high anxiety over the rapid growth of populism on both sides of the Atlantic...

Mexico’s New Populist President Considers Foreign Pipeline Plans Despite Indigenous Protests

July 27, 2018 Martha Pskowski and Steve Horn, Desmogblog.com , , ,
Andrés Manuel López Obrador looked out at the crowd of reporters at a Mexico City Hilton Hotel the night of July 1. It was a moment that he had waited years for: his victory speech for the Mexican presidency. To win in his third presidential campaign, López Obrador, a left-wing populist whose roots are in the oil-producing state of Tabasco, had to calm business leaders, who warned that foreign investment would flee the country if he took office. However, the candidate who once said he would overturn Mexico's 2013 reforms privatizing its energy sector — which opened the oil and gas industry to foreign investment and created a subsequent pipeline boom — struck a different tone on election night.

Localisation: A Strategic Solution To Globalised Authoritarianism

July 21, 2018 By Helena Norberg-Hodge, Longreads.tni.org , ,
For those who care about peace, equality and the future of the planet, the global political swing to the right over the past few years is deeply worrying. It has us asking ourselves, how did this happen? How did populism turn into such a divisive and destructive force? How did authoritarianism take over the political scene once again? From my 40 years of experience working in both industrialised and land-based cultures, I believe the primary reason is globalisation. When I say globalisation, I mean the global economic system in which most of us now live – a system driven by continual corporate deregulation and shaped by neoliberal, capitalist ideologies. But globalisation goes deeper than politics and the economy. It has profoundly personal impacts.
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