Taming the People: Comparing Protests and Populism in Arab and American Politics

The rise of populism has been an uncontested global reality in recent years. However, it is unclear exactly how culturally distinct populist movements imitate or mirror each other, especially given the different rhetorical, political, ideological, and cultural contexts within which they operate. This article addresses this issue by comparing recent manifestations of populism across contemporary Arab and American contexts, with a special focus on former United States President Donald Trump’s response to the George Floyd protests and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s handling of demonstrations in his country. We argue that each leader deployed common rhetorical tactics as a populist strategy to undermine the protestors’ attempts to articulate the people’s will. At the same time, our analysis shows how the different contexts in which Trump and Sisi operate also impact their ability to successfully translate their populism into political effectiveness. By conducting this analysis, our article shows how similar populist tactics across different cultural contexts may lead to divergent outcomes, revealing the importance of institutional as well as popular bases of support for would-be populist politicians.

Neoliberalism in the Age of Populism

This chapter takes a critical look at the changes in the global economic policies within the new neoliberal paradigm. It highlights the relevant literature, starting with its evolutionary academic understanding, the notion of neoliberalism as an economic development model and a political imposition, and finally, the literature focused on its transformational abilities across sectors and boundaries. Such contribution to knowledge would have implications not just for developing nations but policy makers active within the space. Overall, the chapter provides a disaggregated understanding of the current international structure, particularly in light of the new wave of populist movements.

‘An Epic Tale of England’: Atmospheric authentication of nationalist narratives

Kynren is an outdoor spectacular pageantry performance which tells a tale of England, drawing on myth and history, to make several claims about Englishness and Britishness. It does so in the political wake, first, of constitutional crises in the UK centred around Brexit; and second, of debates around heritage, empire, race and nation which have been driven by responses to the Black Lives Matter movement. These themselves are manifestations of broader, global trends in which populist movements have attempted to reassert state-legitimacy through nationalism, heritage and culture. This paper explores, how Kynren affectively presents and discursively performs a narrative which puts place and landscape, and specifically the place and landscape of the peripheral region of County Durham in which it is located, at the heart of nation. We argue that the ways in which this narrative is authenticated performatively through the spectacular affective atmosphere of Kynren show how and which nationalist narratives resonate most readily in popular culture.

The January 6 Insurrection: Historical and Global Contexts

The 6 January 2021, Trumpist insurrection is in continuity with centuries of white mob violence in the United States, going back to the thwarted 1861 attempt to attack the Capitol in order to overturn Lincoln’s election. At the same, time Trumpism as a modern phenomenon also exhibits links and affinities to contemporary global neofascist and rightwing populist movements. Although small towns and rural areas were heavily represented among the participants on 6 January, analysts need—in the spirit of Marx—to avoid the Lassallean trap of writing off rural populations as uniformly conservative. In this sense, we need to grasp the pervasive racism at the root of Trumpism and its analogues without falling into a view of rural areas as monolithic.

‘We lie best when we lie to ourselves’: Stephen King’s It and the horrors of nostalgia

Stephen King’s 1986 novel It follows a traditional horror story arc of restoration of order through defeat of a monster, but the interlude sections of the novel complicate this narrative structure with an alternate story arc in which the people of Derry are also a source of horror within the novel, who enable the monster with their desire to sanitize the past of the town. This arc, in which the townspeople are perpetrators and enablers of horrors, reflects a cultural tendency towards nostalgic views of the past that would have been noticeable in political and cultural movements of the 1980s. As nostalgic currents have returned to prominence in political movements surrounding the election of Donald Trump and other populist movements, re-examining the interlude sections of It reveals commentary about the horrors of nostalgia that, like the cyclical reawakening of the novel’s monster, are relevant once again.

Cultural Evolutionary Mismatches in Response to Collective Threat

Across the millennia, human groups have evolved specific cultural and psychological adaptations to cope with collective threats, from terrorism to natural disasters to pathogens. In particular, research has identified cultural tightness, characterized by strict social norms and punishments, as one key adaptation that helps groups coordinate to survive collective threats. However, interferences with threat signals that facilitate tightening can lead to cultural mismatches—either too much or not enough tightening. I discuss two examples of cultural mismatches: the COVID-19 pandemic (a case in which collective threat is real, but there is a resistance to tightening) and the rise of populist movements (a case in which exaggerated threat leads to unnecessary tightening).

The Dark Side of Nonviolent Action?

Given a perceived qualitative and quantitative shift in the use of nonviolent action by rightwing populist actors in recent years, this article based on case studies from Austria (the Identitarian movement) and Indonesia (the 2/12 movement) discusses the methods, legitimacy, and effectiveness of the use of nonviolent action by right-wing populist movements. It finds that the use of nonviolent action by those actors is largely pragmatic and tactical and that it often is borderline in terms of remaining nonviolent. It further identifies that in line with right-wing populist ideology, rather than only addressing state authorities and elites, the movements addressees of the nonviolent action are often minority groups or people supporting minority groups. Developing a classification of nonviolent action in democracies (dissent, civil disobedience, political disobedience) the article further finds that right-wing use of nonviolent action has a tendency towards transcending normal dissent towards political disobedience.

“We Are Peronists, We Are Organic”: Discipline, Authority, and Loyalty in Argentine Populism

Since 1945, Argentine politics has been largely defined by Peronism, a populist movement established by General Juan Perón. While the ideology of Peronism has shifted and swerved over its seven-decade history, its central emphasis on loyalty has remained constant. This paper examines the notion of “organicity” (organicidad), a Peronist conception of obedience, to elucidate how populist movements valorize discipline and loyalty in order to unify their ranks around sentiment and ritual in the absence of more stable programmatic positions. The original sense of “organicity”, as Perón developed it in his early writings, equated to strict military notions of discipline, obedience, and insubordination. In other words, Perón understood loyalty as an organic conception of discipline that consisted of both unyielding deference for the leader and unwavering commitment to the Peronist Movement. Yet, at particular moments in Argentine political history, Peronist militants either find organicity and loyalty to be intrinsically incompatible, or vocalize definitions of organicity that seem to question the top-down structure of the movement celebrated in Perón’s writings. As a result, among Peronists there is disagreement over what it means to behave organically and loyally. This article draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Peronist militants to argue that populism’s authoritarian preoccupation with fealty attempts to obscure the internal contradictions that result from its lack of clear ideological commitments. However, an emphasis on loyalty cannot produce eternally harmonious uniformity. As Peronists come to view those holding alternate interpretations of their doctrine as heretical and traitorous, their accusations against their comrades reveal the intrinsic fragility of populist unity.

Counternarratives of Catastrophe

Chapter 4 investigates how analysts, policymakers, and political movements began to articulate a counternarrative of disaster capitalism as a frame for understanding transition. The disaster capitalism narrative suggests that Western institutions sought to exploit postsocialist recessions to impose harsh reforms for self-interested motives. Following the financial crisis of 2008, populist movements, which often advocated heterodox economic policies, emerged across the postsocialist world. The chapter shows the links between economic anxiety brought on by the failures of transition and the rhetoric and ideology of growing populist movements. It also points to China’s policy of long-term economic liberalization as a success when compared to the economic devastation that neoliberal reforms wrought on the postsocialist countries of East Europe and Central Asia.

Trade and the Roots of Disaffection

This chapter introduces the issue of populism and trade. Populism is defined as a political movement based on social, economic, and political discontents, based on conflict between a ruling elite and the genuine people. It discusses the sources of populist anger, including disruptions of import competition, changes in technology, cultural influences, governmental corruption, and immigration. It proposes an assessment of populist regimes based on their impact on economic welfare and democratic processes. The chapter briefly reviews current trends in populist regimes and provides a historical review of populist movements, concluding with a brief overview of the book’s chapters.