Insurrectionary Populism? Assessing the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol

The attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 was extraordinary. Analysts and commentators quickly attributed the attack as having been motivated by “populism” without much nuance or recognition of the diversity of voices and attitudes embedded in the insurrection. This commentary assesses the populist ideas and attitudes expressed by the insurrectionists in an effort to understand why they felt drawn to Washington, D.C. that day, as well as why they felt their attack on the U.S. Capitol was legitimate. In so doing, it addresses the particular ways the insurrectionists framed and legitimated their attack (at least to themselves). The January 6 insurrection was an extraordinary attack on American democracy, but it was related to deep themes and elements of US political culture. Understanding those dynamics is crucial to preventing such attacks in the future.

Conceptualizing a Populist Narrative

Narrative analysis represents the cutting edge in various domains of political communication research and has recently made its way into populism studies. Nevertheless, despite the growing academic interest in populist storytelling and populist narratives, a conceptual foundation of these phenomena remains scarce. Situated at the intersection of political communication and literary studies, the article fills this gap by proposing a systematized concept of a populist narrative. Building upon the minimum definitions of the background concepts, the study identifies a set of necessary attributes shared by populist narratives. It further discusses the effectiveness of populist narratives with the focus on four dimensions: archetypal structure, emotionality, suspensefulness, and ability to facilitate identification. Against the backdrop of the increasing role of storytelling in contemporary politics, the article facilitates a more coherent and meaningful examination of populist narratives.

Beyond “Populism”: The Psychodynamics of Antipolitical Popular Movements

I argue here that the term “populism” captures too much, including movements that are enthralled by a fantasied ideal as well as genuine movements for plural and popular sovereignty. The term is too often used to deride all popular movements, but this is to the detriment of genuinely political and democratic movements for democratic sovereignty. I distinguish popular movements that are genuinely political and generative from those that are regressive and anti-political. The latter, I argue using psychoanalytic theory, are melancholically clinging to a lost Thing, while democratic popular movements are open to creating new societies. To explore these differences I draw on Lacan and Klein whose theories point to the need for creatively working to create new collective identities rather than melancholically clinging to old ones.

The Dark Side of Nonviolent Action?

Given a perceived qualitative and quantitative shift in the use of nonviolent action by rightwing populist actors in recent years, this article based on case studies from Austria (the Identitarian movement) and Indonesia (the 2/12 movement) discusses the methods, legitimacy, and effectiveness of the use of nonviolent action by right-wing populist movements. It finds that the use of nonviolent action by those actors is largely pragmatic and tactical and that it often is borderline in terms of remaining nonviolent. It further identifies that in line with right-wing populist ideology, rather than only addressing state authorities and elites, the movements addressees of the nonviolent action are often minority groups or people supporting minority groups. Developing a classification of nonviolent action in democracies (dissent, civil disobedience, political disobedience) the article further finds that right-wing use of nonviolent action has a tendency towards transcending normal dissent towards political disobedience.

Populism, Liberalism and the Eclipse of Emotion

I argue that the way philosophy conceives of the political subject fails to understand the populist subject. In Section I, I shall sketch an ambiguity in how Hobbes conceives of the political subject as both driven by the passions and yet capable of rationally subduing them. In Section II, I argue that these two different conceptions of the will lead to different models of political representation. In Section III, I offer an sketch of some of the ways the Hobbesian picture of the mind as fueled by the passions has been eschewed by modern liberal philosophy. Finally, in Section IV, I offer an account of two features of populism which seem to me to suggest that the Humean model of the will is appropriate to understand certain essential features of populist politics.

A Model for Right-Wing Populist Electoral Success?

This article adds to the large literature on right-wing populist parties (RWPP), explaining how anti-immigrant sentiments become salient for vote choice. Within the large literature on RWPP, anti-immigration attitudes are the most important variable to explain the vote share of RWPP. Yet, recent research shows that there is not always an empirical effect between having anti-immigrant attitudes and voting for the RWPP. In this article, we develop a theoretical model that explains the conditions under which anti-immigration attitudes matter. We then test this model based on the case of the AfD in Germany, a typical case for a right-wing populist party exploiting anti-immigrant sentiment. Focusing on the AfD in Germany, we illustrate that the refugee crisis in 2015 in combination with a perception of high government unresponsiveness to stop the crisis provided the structural conditions necessary to activate latent anti-immigration sentiment among large parts of the population. Using a structural analysis and individual panel data for Germany’s general elections in 2013 and 2017, we find that immigration critical attitudes were already present among parts of the population in 2013 but immigration was a secondary topic in the 2013 election, even among AfD voters. Due to the immigration crisis in 2015, immigration became a salient topic. The combination of a perceived external crisis or shock combined with a perceived government’s unresponsiveness quickly offered a winning formula for the AfD. A probability probe for two other countries (Sweden and Italy) with different contexts also show salience for the model.

Towards A Model of How Populist Leaders Disappear from the Media

Research shows that the media have been one decisive factor in the rise of the most high-profile populist leaders across Western democracies, but also that media attention can begin to dip when populists become established actors. However, the circumstances under which a populist leader can experience loss of media interest in him or her have not been theorized. Therefore, this article makes a contribution towards filling this gap. I offer an explorative and reflective analysis of the diverging political trajectories of Sarah Palin and Donald Trump as a means of suggesting circumstances under which a populist leader is likely to be upstaged by another populist leader taking over the public spotlight. However, this first cut at identifying relevant variables in such a scenario highlights serious conceptual, methodological, and theoretical considerations that must be confronted in future research taking on this research question, and that I deliberately sidestep in this analysis.