Populism Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

It May Be the Last Time

Lithuanian art and culture resisting a takeover at the height of hybrid warfare

November 10, 2025 • by Edvardas Šumila

Recent developments in Lithuanian politics have produced a decisive, immediate, and spontaneous resistance from culture workers in various fields. The formation of a new coalition government led to the populist political project Nemuno Aušra (NA)—headed by the antisemitic politician Remigijus Žemaitaitis—being given control of the Ministry of Culture. Žemaitaitis has ...

Democracy

Is Social Media Destroying Democracy—Or Giving It to Us Good and Hard?

It’s easier to blame the algorithm than the bewildered herd

October 28, 2025 • by Dan Williams

One of our era’s most influential narratives is that social media is destroying democracy and perhaps civilization itself. For the liberal establishment, this story helps to explain the surging success of right-wing populism, as well as collapsing institutional trust, growing polarization, and an apparent explosion of misinformation and deranged conspiracy ...

Is Social Media Destroying Democracy—Or Giving It to Us Good and Hard?

Politics

Why Does the Far Right Love a Pompadour?

Big hair and bad ideas

December 20, 2023 • by Adriana Piatti-Crocker

Why do these politicians don big hair? Perhaps their inventively crafted manes serve to hide behind their bad ideas. Or maybe, like the pompadours of male entertainers, their big hair is the best way to be remembered by voters. Who can forget such hairdos?...

Why Does the Far Right Love a Pompadour?

Social Research

What, If Anything, Do Populism and Conspiracy Theories Have to Do with Each Other?

Why “powerless” populists suggest conspiracy

November 15, 2022 • by Jan-Werner Müller

The following is an excerpt from an essay first published in Social Research: An International Quarterly. It is part of the journal’s issue Conspiracy Thinking. Populist parties that do not do well at the polls have to face an obvious contradiction: How can it be that the populists are the people’s only morally ...

<strong>What, If Anything, Do Populism and Conspiracy Theories Have to Do with Each Other?</strong>

Social Research

Conspiracy Thinking, the New Issue of Social Research

The New School journal introduces its latest issue

November 10, 2022 • by Social Research

The Fall 2022 issue of Social Research tackles the subject of conspiracy thinking, from ungoverning to elective affinity....

Conspiracy Thinking, the New Issue of <em>Social Research</em>

Politics

The Struggle at Turkey’s Boğaziçi University

Attacks on higher education tighten the grip of the AKP’s hegemonic project

April 1, 2021 • by Birgan Gokmenoglu

_____ Late at night on January 1, 2021, by presidential decree, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appointed new rectors to five universities in Turkey. One was Professor Melih Bulu, who became rector of the prestigious Boğaziçi University. This liberal and pluralist institution hosts dissident students and faculty, including many connected to Academics for Peace, ...

The Struggle at Turkey’s Boğaziçi University

Democracy

“Carl Schmitt’s Comeback?”

Understanding Trump and global authoritarianism

February 17, 2021 • by William E. Scheuerman

As the saying goes: “that was then, but this is now.” I had little inkling that Schmitt would soon become pertinent to present-day political developments. With the dramatic worldwide emergence of authoritarian populism, Schmitt’s thinking seems disturbingly relevant. As the Cambridge jurist Lars Vinx has correctly noted, Schmitt’s significance today ...

Education

What You Learn When You Talk to Conservative Students

College professors and college administrations have to do better–we are losing these kids to extremism

February 3, 2021 • by Claire Potter

"We have a tough job in the next four years as we try to rebuild a more inclusive and truly democratic national conversation." - Claire Potter...

What You Learn When You Talk to Conservative Students

Democracy

Mini-Trumps in the Wilderness

Trump’s loss of the presidency in 2020 may spell disaster for his fellow populists in Eastern Europe

November 18, 2020 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

Joe Biden’s election as president of the United States has seriously weakened authoritarian and populist governments around the world. For independent global powers like Russia, Brazil, and Turkey, Donald Trump’s departure need not amount to a complete tragedy. But for the current governments of Poland, Hungary, and Serbia -- and ...

North America

After Trump

Towards democracy and social justice

October 23, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

That, of course, is the problem. And the problem is grave. In 2016, we were worried about what Trump’s victory might mean. Now we know that things have become much worse than most of us ever imagined, and not only for us in the United States. Trump has been a revolutionary—he ...

Democracy

Ghosts of Weimar

Is factual accuracy even the point when it comes to the discourse of antifascism?

October 15, 2020 • by Anton Shekhovtsov

Alexander Yanov, the emigré historian of Russia and Russian nationalism, was critical of major Western approaches towards post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s. He criticized the "devious simplicity" of the Western logic holding that, because a non-market Russia had been the West’s sworn enemy, a free-market Russia would become its partner. ...

Democracy

Far-Right Populism is Bad Enough

On fascism, populism, and democracy

October 15, 2020 • by Jan-Werner Mueller

From more or less mad Roman emperors to -- of course -- Adolf Hitler, by now it would seem easier to name historical figures to whom Donald Trump has not been linked than ones whom he has been said to resemble. By the same token, there has been a deluge ...