Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The word “populism” is the new specter that is haunting the tenants of liberal politics. It is used to signal the breakdown of traditional, party-based politics to a politics of the “people” versus the “elite.” In the case of France, the most recent manifestation of populism is currently embodied by the Yellow Vest movement. Importantly, no party has managed to transform the energy of the movement into electoral gain. In other contexts, such as the election of Donald Trump in the USA and Jair Bolsonero in Brazil, those leaders who have managed to translate popular frustration with the status quo into electoral victory have attempted to dismantle liberal institutions while reinforcing the disciplinary apparatuses of the state. In such a context where populism leads to the rise of authoritarianism, it is useful to consider Stuart Hall’s analysis of the emergence of “authoritarian populism” in the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s policies of the 1970s. Faced with economic crises, she rode the wave of a growing anti-statism in the British population while ultimately reinforcing state power in the shift away from the social welfare state to neoliberal austerity. Hall’s reversal – analyzing populism as a conscious strategy of the state rather than a spontaneous rejection of the status quo by the people – guides my discussion of populism in the contemporary conjuncture. Authoritarian populism today, I argue, is a state project aimed at creating a new global cultural, economic, and social consensus out of the “progressive” neoliberalism (Nancy Fraser) of yesterday.