Reading Populism

[gawkrodger]

coming to the end of this (world cup, politics and being busy at work means I have not been reading much over the last 6 weeks or so) and very much enjoyed it so far (even if I thought the Brexit chapter was the weakest by far) but one thing which has annoyed me - for all his talk of maps, there isn't one in the whole book!

 

[redsquirrel]

but one thing which has annoyed me - for all his talk of maps, there isn't one in the whole book!

Yes I made the same criticism. It does seem a strange omission

 

[redsquirrel]

Incidentally the copy of the Margaret Canovan book, The People, I ordered via Leeds libraries has arrived.

Any interest in me posting up my thoughts on it when I've finished it?

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Incidentally the copy of the Margaret Canovan book, The People, I ordered via Leeds libraries has arrived.

Any interest in me posting up my thoughts on it when I've finished it?

Yes. I would. But it isn't a book or author I am familiar with.

 

[redsquirrel]

No probs. I'll try to put up some stuff over next weekend.

 

[redsquirrel]

Started Margaret Canovan's The People.
Quite slow going as despite being short (140 pages) it is very dense and packed.

Chapter 1 focuses on the different definition (and their historical origins) of "the people". The links to Roman populous, the beginnings of the political creation of people during the Civil Wars and French and, especially the, American revolutions.

 

[redsquirrel]

Kind of regretting agreeing to summarise my thoughts on this book now. It's so dense that to do it any sort of justice is going to take some time.

Anyway I made a mistake above. Chapter 1 is really an introduction summarising the book, Chapter 2 is were the different definitions of people are looked at.

Chapter 3 concentrates on links and contrasts between people and nations.

The first section looks at how the construction of people is part of the construction of nation but also distinct from it. The idea of nation being a community over time while people is a community over space is introduced. And there is a discussion of how democracy is built on nationhood.

The second part on people-building is probably the most directly relevant to this thread. There is an interesting (and well developed) argument about the contrast between the Roman populus, with a people being created by (an urban) society and the Romatic idea of a "natural" people pre-existing the nation, so people can linked to Volk but can also be opposed to it. Canovan then considers the basis of people for liberalism

Membership based on political will and individual choice, not determined by genetic make-up

and the application of people to a universal (or at least multi-national) definition. There is then a very useful (and IMO absolutely accurate) discussion of the EU as a people-building project, which includes an excellent dissection of Habermas' attempts to create this European peoples. Canovan (rightly IMO) points out that Habermas' desire requires a highly top down elitist anti-democratic political force to construct a European peoples. At this point Canovan posits an alternative to both the Roman and Romantic idea of people, arguing that a people

may be the contingent outcome of intersecting actions by a multitude of political actors, none of them in a position to foresee or control the result.

And she traces how this was how people can about both in America and England.
Canovan also points out the contradiction in Habermas European people - they are to be created based on an universalist premise but are then to be enclosed with a particular polity (Canovan does not mention it but you can clearly see here how fortress Europe is created).

This last point then acts as a springboard to the final section, which contrasts people with peoples - a universal definition of people with the mobilisation/creation of a particular people. She uses the French Revolution as an example of how a universal definition of people becomes identified with a specific people. Canovan then makes (a strong) argument that regardless of the moral appeal of universalism the political boundaries of people have to be considered as brute facts

However, hard it may be in the abstract to justify a boundary between 'our people' and outsiders, political discussion has to start from the fact that such boundaries are in place. ....
Neither can such boundaries be considered inconsistent with democracy, since they are in one sense democracy's precondition and in another its outcome.

One criticism of of Canovan I would have her is that this discussion seems to be based around a focus on democracy as liberal democracy. One could (very fairly) argue that it is liberal democracy, and not alternate forms of democracy, that is the brute fact, but still it would have been nice to have some discussion how other forms of democracy might address this conflict between a people and peoples.

 

[redsquirrel]

On a separate note just saw this story
Islands in the illiberal storm: central European cities vow to stand together

Zsolt Enyedi, CEU’s deputy rector, said that in the middle ages, cities were often seen as “islands of freedom”, and the task of cities in the modern world was to cease to be islands and inspire the rest of the country.

Karácsony spoke in similar terms: “Populism is striving for hegemony, but it cannot win over cities. Cities can be the bridgeheads starting from which all the current crises of democracy can be repaired,” he said.

Damn those stupid anti-democratic non-cosmopolitans. If only they were enlightened like city dwellers.

 

[redsquirrel]

Chapter 4 focuses on the relationship between the people, populism and democracy.

First there is a discussion of the connection of the people to "the common people" and the history of the common people within liberal political thought, the tension between the fear of the liberal elite for the common people and the invocation of the common people to secure the political changes desired.

The second section traces some examples of (new) populism in liberal democracies, most of the stuff here has been previously discussed on the thread but one new theme is Canovan's raising of the idea of "audience democracy" whereby there is a

bypassing [of] party structures and the ideological commitments they embody

From this there is a claim that Blair was/is a populist.

The third section tries to provide some sort of identification of populism, Canovan stresses the difficult in having an consistent definition of populism, ultimately arguing that

What links [populists] together and identifies them all (however tenuously) as 'populist' is the broad and variable discourse of 'the people'

The fourth and final section is built around a discussion of populism

not just as responses to specific political and socio-economic conditions but as evidence of tensions at the heart of modern liberal democracy

Canovan then traces the strengths and weakness of the idea that populism arises from the tension between the democratic and liberal constitutionalist strands of liberal democracies, before rejecting it. She emphasises how at times liberalism was defined by the cause of the people, for example the expansion of the electoral franchise. For Canovan the opposition of populism to liberalism has arisen because

the balance of authority between the liberal vanguard and the lagging grass roots has shifted, in Europe as well as traditionally egalitarian societies like the USA or Australia.

------

There are a number of things I'd take issue with in this chapter.
First, I'd again make the point that Canovan tends to blur democracy with modern liberal representative democracy, yes the discussion is specifically about populism in modern liberal democracies but how can populism be seen from other forms of democracy.

Second, the lack of class really stands out in this chapter. You have a number of sentences that give you a double take they are only possible to make when class is reduced to social relations. The obvious one above about the egalitarianism of the USA(!) being a good example. You also have a bad contrast of Marxism with populism, with the contention that the former is economistic and the latter political. To be fair most of these howlers do not actually invalidate the substantive points Canovan is making but they are rather troubling.

Third, I think Canovan identification of populism as those that invoke 'the people' is weak. If your populism includes Blair and New Labour then I think you've gone wrong somewhere. Politicians have always invoked 'the people' (as Canovan points out) there needs to be something more than that, the vertical rather than horizontal alignment and dyadic/triadic model discussed in regard to other authors is much more useful here.

That said I think Canovan's core contention, that populism and the people form part of ideological basis for liberal democracy, that in contrast to the two strand theory the concept of the people is linked to liberal constitutionalsm is well argued. I'm still unsure to what extent I agree with it but Canovan makes a good case.

 

[redsquirrel]

In Chapter 5 Canovan looks at the sovereign people as an ideal and as asks can popular sovereignty be expressed (within modern liberal democracies).

Canovan starts by looking at the idea that the contradictory aspects of popular sovereignty - that it refers to both an ideal political authority and a real set of individuals at the same time. She attacks the idea that these two contradictory aspects can be separated out and that popular sovereignty can be separated from legal sovereignty, pointing out this contradictory nature of "the people" has been present from classical times. From this Canovan asks two questions

1 - Can popular sovereignty be understood?
2 - Can popular sovereignty be exercised?
(NB: on this second question she limits herself to a discussion within modern liberal democracies, which IMO results in some flaws, or at least limitations, in her discussion on this question).

In answering 1 Canovan traces the establishment of the sovereign people as an idea in Enlightenment thinkers, looking at the how the people were used by different groups during the English Civil Wars. There's a interesting discussion on how the sovereign people appear in Hobbes (worth reading this with Ellen Meiksins Wood's Trumpet of Sedition butchersapron not sure if you've read Canovan's work but I think her reading of Hobbes might interest you). The discussion then goes onto Locke, where Canovan makes a case that within Locke's work there is a more radical establishment of popular sovereignty with "revolutionary political mobilisation" than is often attributed to him - namely that there must be body of the people that can legitimately overthrow the monarch or parliament.

Canovane then moves onto the 2nd question. While there was (is) an attempt by some to equate the people with parliament/congress/elected representatives this is rejected by most people who clearly separate the people form the (elected) government. As such if popular sovereignty is to be exercised in a practical manner some alternative is required. Canovan outlines two possible alternatives 'direct democracy' and deliberative democracy. It should be noted that Canovan explicitly makes it clear that it is not her intention to discuss the pros and cons of either direct or deliberative democracy rather to analyse how far they are able to provide popular sovereignty to be achieved in practice.

The section on 'direct democracy' (and it should be noted that Canovan sometimes, but not always, places direct democracy in quote marks) mainly focusses on referenda. There is some discussion of how accurately referenda can reflect the 'will of the people' but I'll just quote Canovan's summary as it pretty much cuts to the chase

Looking for the sovereign people in the practices of 'direct democracy', we have found that it is not entirely absent but is decidedly elusive

Canovan than begins the discussion of deliberative democracy which takes a starting point from Rousseau's separation of the general will from the popular will. Under the form of deliberative democracy Canovan outlines different thinkers views, including Habermas' view that something close to deliberative democracy is already present to more radical forms that propose institutional changes that would "turn individuals into active members of a political community".

Even if you don't bother reading anything else in the chapter, or book, the conclusion at the end of this chapter is worth reading as it provides a good summary of Canovan's major arguments. Unfortunately I'm reading a hard copy of the book and it's too long for me to type out in full but the section below is key

What we are dealing with is not just an 'imagined community' but an occasional community of action: the war appearance on the public stage of a large scale movement in which individuals are consciously united as people and act as a collective body.....
Classic example of such events perhaps occurred in England in 1688/9, in America during the Revolution and in Poland at the height of the Solidarity movement.

 

[redsquirrel]

In the above post I tried to summarise Canovan's arguments without analysing them, but the content of chapter 5 is clearly important in any discussion of populism.

Before analysing Canovan's arguments with respect to populism, there's a number of points on which I would criticise Canovan generally. As I've said before while I can understand her deliberate intention to limit the discussion of the people with the liberal democratic framework I think it ends up creating issues. For instance, towards the end of the discussion on whether popular sovereignty can be understood Canovan states.

Either the people are simply an aggregation of individuals with no capacity for collective sovereignty, or else they form a corporate body that can exist and act as other corporate bodies do. In the latter case, they are 'the people' only as members of the whole, not as individuals; there is no way in which they as 'the people' can hang to either their individuality or to their reserve authority. As 'the people', the individuals are subsumed within the corporate whole, and the whole including the individuals is subsumed within the acts of the representatives of the whole

However, as Canovan points out in the very next paragraph

And yet, inescapable as [the arguments above] may seem, they are at odds with political experience.
...the imagined sovereign people as is emerged momentously .... stubbornly continued to be collective and individual, present and in reserve.

I certainly agree with the second paragraph but the first paragraph only stands if you limit yourself to a relatively narrow sphere of political thought. Any communist and/or anarchist would immediately point out that the individual is not subsumed by society but in actual fact an individual is only able to fully become an individual as part of a society, thus the supposed contradiction traced does not exist and hence there is no conflict with political experience.

The examples Canovan uses to evidence the emergence of popular sovereignty in practice are revealing. There is no mention of the Russian revolution, the Paris Commune or the Spanish Revolution.

This limitation to liberalism also effects the discussion of the second question. Direct democracy is pretty much relegated to holding referenda, so the conclusions Canovan draws are hard to argue against. But even within the liberal democratic framework direct democracy is much richer than referenda, what about the early union movement, what about co-operatives or in more modern times initiatives such as the open source movement.
Interestingly, while Canovan notes a number of (perfectly correct) reasons why referenda are flawed as measures of government by the people, she does not mention the fact that the result of most referenda need to be carried out by a representative government, so even if the referenda did represent an exercising of popular sovereignty the practical measures taken by representatives may/would not do so. Canovan is correct that 'direct democracy' can only be partially identified (at best) with the exercising of popular sovereignty in liberal democracies, but that is because in liberal democracies 'direct democracy' can only be partial! Similar comments apply to the discussion of deliberative democracy (the forms of which Canovan outlines any communist would say forms a crucial aspect of direct democracy). Fundamentally by accepting the liberal separation of politics and economics the discussion of how popular sovereignty can be exercised in practice with democratic structures is limited.

----

However, with regard to an analysis of populism - and particularly the modern populism we are seeing in liberal democracies - Canovan's arguments provide more understanding and the limitations are less evident (or at least hidden). I'd certainly not disagree with the contention that referenda in modern democracies often do not provide an exercising of popular sovereignty, despite the fact that they have been involved by populists as such.

Canovan's thesis also clarifies why populism is inescapable within liberal democracy. liberal democracy invokes the agency of the people as one of its foundations, yet (despite the contentions of Habermas and the like) it deliberately wants to push any exercising of popular sovereignty to a relatively minor sphere of politics, as such those that demand a greater role for the people are able to attack liberalism at its foundations.

 

[redsquirrel]

Neil Faulkner has a background as a military historian and in the book Creeping Fascism sees Trump, Johnson, Orban, Bolsonaro, and the other far right parties of europe as in open alliance and although show different degrees/aspects of fascism, their mutual support makes them as bad as one another in creating the broader proto conditions of real fascism <<<my impression is for him this fear is fuelled by historical precedent which are seen as repeating, particularly with coming crises of climate change and next crash etc on the horizon. As a historian for him all the warning signs are there in bold

David Renton in New Authoritarians recognises the "convergence" between the mainstream right, the far right and fascistic leaders described above but maintains its wrong to misuse the term fascism when its not actually fascism. That said he recognises the blurring and new formations occurring, and history need not repeat itself in exactly the same forms as before, so we should be conscious of those new configurations.

Liz Fekete in Europes Fault Lines takes a simliar position to David Renton, and focuses on endless evidence of a fresh reknindling of openly racist politics in europe, making the case that neo-fascism is breeding within it.

LBJ above said "Fascism? There is a certain family resemblance" and there is

Are you, or anyone else who has read these books, willing to outline their arguments for the above conclusions?

 

[redsquirrel]

The final chapter is on Myths of the Sovereign People, Canovan again traces that contradiction that (in her view) exists within the sovereign people - that despite its theoretical contradictions it has at times had a concrete reality. From this dual basis emerges the myth of the sovereign people. There is a good argument on how myth is a more appropriate term than fiction,

One represent in which 'myth' is clearly preferable to fiction in referring to the sovereign people is that the former suggests a product of collective imagination over time rather than a deliberate and specific invention

There is also a interesting (and relevant) contrast of myths of the people with myths of nationalism and Marxism. Canovan arguing that the myth of the people is backward looking - a return to a time when people were free from the Norman yoke/when the constitution was created - with the forward looking Marxist (and Christian) myths - a new world. There's then a discussion of "People as Myth and Political Reality" which draws on Bourdieu, however, while it is interesting the conclusions are parallel to those drawn in Chp 5 so I'll pass over it.

------

IMO the distinction of the backward looking myths of popularism with the forward looking myths of Marxism has something to it (though I think Canovan might be drawing the distinction too hard). And it is interesting to look these contrasting myths with the formulations of left and right populism drawn by other writers. Certainly right populism tends to be backwards looking with the focus on renewal. Regarding left populism the picture is perhaps more complex, on one hand there is (rhetorical) entreaty of socialism, and thus a new society, yet if we if we look at many of the examples of left wing populism there is less of a invocation of a new world than there is of the post-war period. The renewal that left populists want to turn to is of a different form to that of right populists but it is still to a large degree a renewal than a transformation.

Canovan's thesis also helps distinguish fascism from modern right wing populism. While fascist myths clearly had a backward looking element there was also a key forward looking element in them, there was to be a new world - autobahns taking the German people into their new lands. Off the top of my head I cannot think of any of the modern right wing populisms that base themselves on forward looking myths to any significant degree. Those that want to equate modern populists with fascists need to address this point.

 

[redsquirrel]

And in Umbria (a traditional stronghold of the centre-left) the centre right list, now led by Lega, crushed the PD-M5S coalition by 20%, putting the nonsense idea that withdrawing from government with hurt the League into the rubbish bin. It is very hard to see anything other than the current government living on borrowed time.

Defections from M5S to the League.

Franco Pavoncello, a political science professor and president of John Cabot University in Rome, said if the PD was successful in Emilia-Romagna then the coalition could try to maintain the partnership for a little longer, especially with both parties knowing they would be crushed in general elections if held in the near future.

(my emphasis)
This is the key, it is hard to think that it is not a matter of when not if the League gets back into government.

 

[dilberto]

All change is selective and ultimately elitist, progressive change is no different. Social progress seeks to improve upon the traditional model and so is inherently anti-conservative, anti-native and anti-tradition.

Populism is the result of the interests disfavoured by the prevailing change in a society becoming the majority interest in that society as a consequence of the selectivity of that prevailing change. So modern populism could be seen as being indicative that progressive change is reaching its elitist phase and this is why the western establishment and its favoured groups are becoming increasingly sceptical about democracy and popular opinion.

 

[butchersapron]

Just fuck off.

 

[Flavour]

Defections from M5S to the League.
(my emphasis)
This is the key, it is hard to think that it is not a matter of when not if the League gets back into government.

Are you following what has been happening with the Sardine movement? sort of sprang up out of nowhere as a vaguely left (or at least self-declared anti-fascist) populist group, has not become or endorsed any parliamentary parties as yet and is still quite embryonic in terms of its organization despite having held lots of very big rallies in cities across the country. the kneejerk square-filling anti-salvini rally is one thing, sure: and quite easy. getting them to agree on they do want as opposed to what they don't want might take some time. time they may not have... though admittedly the league's polling has dropped a bit in recent months. still likely to form a government after the next election though, whether that's 6, 12 or 18 months from now - nobody thinks the M5S-PD coalition will last very long.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I’ve just ordered this: The new class war: did a liberal elite pave the way for rise of Trump?

Neoliberalism is a synthesis of the free market economic liberalism of the libertarian right and the cultural liberalism of the bohemian/academic left,”


“The populist backlash has its roots in the dismantling of the post-war social democratic order, a “revolution from above” enacted to promote the “material interests and intangible values of the college-educated minority of managers and professionals, who have succeeded old-fashioned bourgeois capitalists as the dominant elite”. Industry has been destroyed and isles of working-class democracy such as trade unions are a declining force. Heartlands have been usurped by hubs – big cities which suck in investment and high-end business and professional services”

His conclusion - essentially a return to centrist nostrums isn’t of interest but his analysis of the driving forces behind the rise of populism is.

If anyone is interested in discussing it let me know

 

[redsquirrel]

I'd certainly be interested in hearing about your thoughts on it.
Not sure that I'll get around to reading it. My reading list is pretty long at the moment.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I'd certainly be interested in hearing about your thoughts on it.
Not sure that I'll get around to reading it. My reading list is pretty long at the moment.

Ditto. I’ll post up thoughts once the book arrives

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Whilst I'm waiting for the book to arrive (and while I find time to read it) Lind has written this for Unherd:

Britain's new class war

A new democratic pluralism is needed to bring political peace to a divided country

unherd.com

I've got a number of problems with it.

Firstly, I do not believe that the New Deal in the US and the post-war consensus here was genuine 'power sharing'. There are numerous reasons but off topic for this thread.

I also think there is a causality between the new deal/post war consensus and the rise of neoliberalism. The low-wage service economy did not only come after the high-wage industrial economy: it grew out of it, sped by the decline of manufacturing and shaped within the distinctive matrix of the postwar public-private welfare.

However, his central argument - that "today’s populist politics is best understood as a counter-revolution from below against the neoliberal revolution from above" ois compelling and what I'll focus on on the thread.

 

[redsquirrel]

Are you following what has been happening with the Sardine movement? ... though admittedly the league's polling has dropped a bit in recent months. still likely to form a government after the next election though, whether that's 6, 12 or 18 months from now - nobody thinks the M5S-PD coalition will last very long.

Sorry Flavour didn't respond to this. Yes I've heard of the movement but don't have any real grasp on how much real support they have. So thanks for the info.

Whilst I'm waiting for the book to arrive (and while I find time to read it) Lind has written this for Unherd:

Britain's new class war

A new democratic pluralism is needed to bring political peace to a divided country

unherd.com

I've got a number of problems with it.

Firstly, I do not believe that the New Deal in the US and the post-war consensus here was genuine 'power sharing'. There are numerous reasons but off topic for this thread.

Yes his characterisation of the post-war consensus is flawed in many respects. For example, it is totally wrong to say "that class war came to a negotiated end". And his talk of "lesser, local tribunes" to represent the interests of the working class raises eyebrows. It's obviously a short piece and the book may be better but tit leaves me with the impression (perhaps wrongly) while he is attacking neo-liberalism his position still seems to be wedded to the underlying principles of liberalism.

Still books can often be a lot better than articles.

 

[redsquirrel]

Re-reading Ellen Mieksins Wood's Citizens to Lords and in the discussion of the Greek democracy and the development of political theory came across this paragraph which has some interesting parallels to today

The notion that the late democracy was a period of moral decay is largely a product of class prejudice. .... a new kind of popular politics that brought to maturity the strategy adopted by Cleisthenes at the beginning of the democracy, when he made the people his hetairoi. Critics described these changes as the triumph of vulgarity, materialism, amoral egoism, and ‘demagogic’ trickery designed to lead the ignorant demos astray. What is most striking about the attacks on a leader like Cleon – by figures as diverse as Thucydides, Aristophanes and Aristotle – is that they invariably suggest objections of style more than substance. Aristotle, for instance, can think of nothing worse to complain about than Cleon’s vulgar manner, the way he shouted in the Assembly and spoke with his cloak not girt about him, when others conducted themselves with proper decorum

 

[redsquirrel]

I'm partly cross-posting this from the Trump/COVID-19 thread as I think this the better place for discussion of it.

We're now see loads of pieces from liberal sources, like the BBC, like the Guardian about how coronavirus will be (finally!) the thing responsible for stopping Trump.
Yet all of these piece rest on the same patronising liberal delusion that they've repeated since Trump's run for president, the same crap thrown again and again. That their politics, their "statecraft" is the right and proper mode of politics and that sooner or later those that have been hoodwinked by populism will see their "delusion" exposed, return to fold and behave themselves.

"These people didn't [don't] know what they were voting for" - time and time again this is their refrain. Apart from most did have at lest some idea what they were voting for, that's why the LP just lost a shit load of seats, that's why the RN is now one of the two main parties of France, why the League may become the next government in Italy, why AfD will be a serious force (perhaps even the main opposition) in the next Budenstag.

Trump may lose the election (I'd actually be quite surprised if he didn't lose the popular vote) but the nonsense posted in the pieces above show that liberals still have no fucking clue about the drivers of populism. And these pieces yet again reinforce the point that any class based opposition towards right populisms has to be made not in alliance with liberalism but in opposition to it.

 

[redsquirrel]

Ditto. I’ll post up thoughts once the book arrives

BTW Smokeandsteam has this book arrived yet? What did you think of it?

 

[Smokeandsteam]

BTW Smokeandsteam has this book arrived yet? What did you think of it?

Yes. The book has arrived. But I haven’t even opened it yet as my reading pile has got backed up for various reasons (mainly a diversion into the first shop stewards movement). As soon as I get stuck into it I’ll start posting up here in the same way you’ve done.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I'm partly cross-posting this from the Trump/COVID-19 thread as I think this the better place for discussion of it.

We're now see loads of pieces from liberal sources, like the BBC, like the Guardian about how coronavirus will be (finally!) the thing responsible for stopping Trump.
Yet all of these piece rest on the same patronising liberal delusion that they've repeated since Trump's run for president, the same crap thrown again and again. That their politics, their "statecraft" is the right and proper mode of politics and that sooner or later those that have been hoodwinked by populism will see their "delusion" exposed, return to fold and behave themselves.

"These people didn't [don't] know what they were voting for" - time and time again this is their refrain. Apart from most did have at lest some idea what they were voting for, that's why the LP just lost a shit load of seats, that's why the RN is now one of the two main parties of France, why the League may become the next government in Italy, why AfD will be a serious force (perhaps even the main opposition) in the next Budenstag.

Trump may lose the election (I'd actually be quite surprised if he didn't lose the popular vote) but the nonsense posted in the pieces above show that liberals still have no fucking clue about the drivers of populism. And these pieces yet again reinforce the point that any class based opposition towards right populisms has to be made not in alliance with liberalism but in opposition to it.

Trump will walk the election if the democratic candidate is Biden. Biden, and there is no getting round this, is clearly afflicted by a degenerative mental condition. That will increasingly be plain once and if he goes up against Trump and his spin machine.

But even if Biden was competent the machine producing him - and the stop Sanders operation - would still nicely speak to your wider point. The Democrat machine demands a second centrist run against Trump despite the glaring evidence of its limitations in 2016. The hope is that the faux blue collar/raised in a black church appeal of Biden can get the job done in the rust belt states that Clinton was toxic in. A kind of centrist trianglulator with the common touch is what they imagine will work.

Like Clinton, Starmer Labour, the French left, much of the European left the flaw in the plan is the politics. There is no popular future for the ‘third way’. All of the polling indicates that American voters are repelled by appeals to elect a better management of the existing system. Trump will again run as the insurgent against Biden and the insider class he represents.

The embedded politics of the Guardian/Labour/Democrat/French Socialists etc are outmoded and increasingly limited to a small group of people with massive amounts of social capital. I expect this group to become increasingly authoritarian politically once the penny finally drops that they speak for no one but themselves

 

[Shechemite]

Sanders is part of the establishment. And if he’s a populist he’s a shit one.

 

[redsquirrel]

I don't think relationship between populism and the establishment is a simple one.

I'd certainly say Sanders' and Corbyn's runs had elements of populism in them, notwithstanding the fact that they occurred within parties that are very much part of the (liberal) political establishment. After all the Republican Party is also part of that political establishment, and Trumps success in the 2016 Presidential election was very much based on a core of support from long-term Republican voters, despite that it would be peculiar to declare Trump as not a populist.

And you have similar "inconsistencies" in Europe, Prodi is one the examples of Italian populism that Revelli identifies but he and the PD are very much part of the establishment. In France the arch-establishment man Macron at the very least flirted with populist language. And moving further east any divider between populism and the establishment breaks down, the Visegard populists were not only often part of a previous establishment but now in the process of rapidly becoming the new establishment.

What I might propose is that the sort of alliance between populism and establishment that leads to successful populisms is harder to balance in left wing populism than right. But that's just a early morning thought before I've had my coffee so I don't know how much water it holds.

 

[redsquirrel]

Not a fan of Mudde but I can't disagree with the main point here.

In short, there is not one single “populist response” to the coronavirus pandemic. There is not even a single “rightwing populist response”. Populist parties and politicians have responded very differently, in part depending upon whether they are in government or opposition. They are also faced with very different contexts, both in terms of number of infections and control of the media.
....
It is far too early to make grand predictions on how the coronavirus will change the world. But we can already say that it will almost certainly not “kill populism”, for the simple reason that “populism” does not have one, unitary response to the pandemic. Based on recent historical experience, I would put my money on the coronavirus crisis having at best a moderate overall effect on populists: some will win, some will lose and some will stay the same.

I do disagree with that last sentence a little, I think post-crisis there's opportunity for the RN, League etc to make some hay re the crisis, with links both to the liberal attacks on services and migration, reinforcing some of there main messages