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September 11, 2007
An interesting article on populism by Paul Blokker in the German Law Journal. It argues that the rise of populism in both East and West in the last two decades or so attest to a growing discontent aimed against the political establishment in both Eastern and Western Europe, and underline the supposition that, rather than being merely a transitory phenomenon restricted to situations of social deprivation and unfulfilled popular expectations, populism should be regarded as a more structural phenomenon whose critique strikes at the centre of the modern democratic system itself.
Populism is understood by most of these analysts as a political ‘style' and a set of distinct arguments, rather than as a coherent ideology in its own right (which would need, apart from a coherent set of core superstructural, politico-philosophical premises, to include the ‘translation' of the latter into a set of institutions, such as those found in liberalism as a political doctrine and its institutional derivations in the form of representative, pluralist democracy, the division of powers, and 'checks and balances'
populism in modern democratic societies is best seen as an appeal to the ‘people' against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of the society.
The distinctive set of populist arguments includes an absolute prioritization of the people, its political participation (however defined) and its sovereign will, anti-élitism and an anti-establishment attitude, a claim for radical freedom and ‘direct democracy', a re-enchantment of the alienated people (an alienation which is deemed the result of the artificial constructions of legal-rational institutions) through the unification of the people with political power, combined with a disdain of formal institutions and pluralist representative democracy, and an organic and undivided vision of the ‘people'.
The acknowledgement of a distinct relation between populism and democracy (most directly through the importance of the demos for both) also means that populism cannot be treated as a mere pathology of modern democratic society, as argued by many analysts
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Gary, I guess this is sort of related to, and even a bit off of this topic too.
It would be fair to say that most reasonably sane people to not want wars. Perhaps this populism that you are pointing to is an expression of this.
Meanwhile I happened to listen to Late Night Live yesterday. Philip Adams interview David Talbot re his new book Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years.
Remarkable stuff. Well worth listening to, or reading the transcript.
The Kennedy's were venemously hated by the Pentagon establishment. Why?
They were totally pissed off re the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis---they wanted to take out Castro and the Russians too.
When JFK was assassinated there were wide spread celebrations throughout the US military. Talbot was a teenager attending a California military college at the time. When JFK's murder was announced there was collective cheering---and this from teenagers! Philip also mentions that the then USA manager of Melbourne's Southern Cross Hotel threw a party in celebration too.
There was even a mention of LBJ at one point expressing concern that the USA had been taken over by a military coup, and he, LBJ, was expressing profound despair at the very soon possibility of all of the nukes being launched.
Altogether it was a chilling expose of the psychotic underbelly of the USA political psyche. That psycho-pathology being very much alive and "well" at this time via the lets take out Iran mind-set and much more.