“The fuzzy and horizontal nature of the movement, with Macron as its only enemy, recalls the origins of the Five Stars Movement. Like the Italian example, it is neither right nor left, and is currently taking a heterogeneous and anti-political form. It is a rejection of everything to do with political parties and representing the…
Tag: populism
Stathis Gourgouris: “Preliminary Thoughts on Left Governmentality”
“In the manufactured politics of crisis that we see increasingly in many societies around the world, the question of what politics can overcome the impasse of so-called democratic rule, which serves as a cover for the domination of liberal oligarchies, has become urgent. Mining the most radical elements in Foucault’s thinking about governmentality, this essay…
Anton Jäger: “21st Century Americanism”
‘The attempt to think Marxism with identity — in short, the attempt to think a left-wing populism — has always held dangers. One should remain vigilant of those dangers even today. The scenario of a populism that never goes beyond identity — the same gambit as that of the alt-right — remains a serious threat. …
Chantal Mouffe: “Mélenchon: A Radical Reformist against Mounting Oligarchy”
‘At stake in left-wing populism is how we can articulate these demands in the construction of a collective will. Its objective is to put an end to the domination of the oligarchic system: not through a “revolution” destroying republican institutions, but through what the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) called a “war of position” leading…
Nancy Fraser: “Against Progressive Neoliberalism, A New Progressive Populism”
The future of hegemony: ‘To those who are now mobilizing under the banner of “resistance,” I suggest the counter-project of “course correction.” … The point is not to dissolve “identity politics” into “class politics.” It is to clearly identify the shared roots of class and status injustices in financialized capitalism, and to build alliances among…
Chantal Mouffe: “The populist moment”
The recent success of European populist politics is the expression of a crisis of liberal-democratic politics: “To live up to the challenge that the populist moment represents for the future of democracy what is needed is a politics that reestablishes the agonistic tension between the liberal logic and the democratic logic. … Conceived in a…
“America in Populist Times: An Interview With Chantal Mouffe”
“Movements cannot be left just to the streets. I am very critical of the idea of politics as fomenting a moment of total rupture with the existing status quo. This is not how revolutions work. At some point, mobilizations will lose steam. You cannot change things only on the horizontal level of social movements. ……