How A Conservative Rural Country Defeated A Far-Right Presidential Candidate
The 2016 Austrian Presidential Election
Proclaim The New School a Sanctuary Campus for Undocumented Students
An Open Letter to President Van Zandt and Provost Marshall
Flirting with Populist Politics
“He reminds me of Hugo Chavéz”, I blurted out to the group discussing Donald Trump and the current state of the US presidential election. Befuddled looks abounded. Much has been written and plenty discussed regarding Trump’s authoritarian streak. Mainstream media is rife with articles, memes, and comments comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. Two Mexican presidents, Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon, have already compared Trump to Hitler. Trump’s call to ban all Muslim travel to America is eerily reminiscent of the Nazi regime. The Huffington Post has linked Trump’s style of politics to the historical populist regimes of Adolf Hitler and Silvio Berlusconi, …
Claims to Populism, Danger to Democracy?
No US election campaign in living memory has seen as many invocations of “populism” as this one. Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are labelled as “populists;” the term is regularly used as a synonym for “anti-establishment,” irrespective of any particular political ideas; it is also associated with particular moods and emotions: populists are “angry,” their voters are “frustrated,” or suffer from “resentment.” Similar claims are made about figures in Europe: Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders are most commonly …
