Anton Jäger

Jäger, although still in his mid-twenties, already seems to have become a recognised authority who has published a string of articles about European and American populism (e.g. in the left-wing review Jacobin). He is currently finishing a doctorate in history in Cambridge — this book is essentially a reworking of his earlier master's dissertation for the mainstream Dutch-language market.

This is not so much a history of populism as a history of "populism". Jäger takes us through the different ways the term has been used to describe political movements by academics, journalists, and politicians themselves, from its origins right through to the era of Trump, Wilders and Farage. He is particularly interested in the divergence between the positive view of populism as a grass-roots movement to right economic wrongs, as seen in the original use of the word to describe the politics of the US People's Party in the 1890s, and still apparent in recent positive statements about populism-as-such made by Americans like Obama and Albright, and the more familiar negative view of populism as demagogic identity politics, usually based on a "paranoid" idea of a common enemy, which goes back to the explanations of McCarthyism put forward by writers like Richard Hofstadter in the fifties and sixties.

Jäger raises some interesting and non-obvious points about the way politics is tied to its representation in the media, including the way journalists have latched on to "populist" as a safely non-judgmental term, which can cover anyone from crypto-fascists to mainstream party politicians who are a bit too fond of speaking in slogans. Interesting too how he identifies a key problem in the way that newspapers have moved away from being the organ for readers with a specific party affiliation, which formerly made them effective places for informed debates and dissident views on policy, but now leaves even "serious" papers looking in the first place for the sensational and newsworthy, which inevitably means that "badly-behaved" demagogues float to the top in the clickbait.

Like other things I've been reading about populism lately, Jäger seems to take the view that "populist" demagogues are responding to real concerns in their audiences (as well as manufactured ones), in particular growing inequality and a sense of detachment from the political process. The answers the populists put forward, however, are mostly vague and concerned primarily with reinforcing self-respect and national/ethnic identity. Unfortunately, voters seem to respond to that kind of slogan-based politics in a way they no longer respond to arguments about economics and social policy. Even if the majority of respondents in a survey think it would be a good idea to renationalise public utilities, that thought isn't going to drive them to the ballot box, especially if they have good reason to doubt that the party proposing such a policy will ever implement it. The left needs to find a way to get around that.… (más)