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Critical theory and demagogic populism provides a detailed analysis of the relevance of the Frankfurt School’s work to understanding contemporary populism. It draws on the research that the Institute for Social Research conducted concerning domestic demagogues during its period of ‘exile’ in the USA. The book argues that the figure of the demagogue has been neglected in both orthodox ‘populism studies’ and in existing critical approaches to populism such as that of Ernesto Laclau. Demagogic ‘capture’ of populist movements and their legacies is thus a contingent prospect for ‘left’ and ‘right’ populist movements. An account of ‘modern demagogy’ is thus detailed, from the Institute’s own dedicated demagogy studies through to their dialogue with Weber’s work on charismatic leadership, the US liberal critique of demagogy and Freud’s group psychology. The Institute’s linkage of ‘modern demagogy’ to the culture industry speaks to the underestimation in ‘populism studies’ of the significance of two other ‘modern phenomena. The first is ‘cultural populism’ – the appeal to a folkloric understanding of ‘the people’ and/or ‘their culture’. The second is the pivotal role of modern means of communication, not only in the recent prominence of social media but demagogic exploitation of all media since the rise of literacy and the widening of the suffrage in the nineteenth century. The dialectical dimensions of these processes are also highlighted in reconstructing the Institute’s work and in extending these analyses through to the present. The book so concludes by weighing up potential counter-demagogic forces within and beyond the culture industry.
. Shils's warnings about this affinity are pertinent too. 4 As we have seen, demagogues tend to be ‘early adopters’ of such means of communication: from Long's use of loudspeakers to Trump's use of Twitter. While contemporary so-called social media are often celebrated for their ‘horizontality’ (as opposed to the verticality of broadcast ‘mass media’), their capacity for demagogic communication is equally potent. Indeed, to some extent the dynamic between populist movement
, whereas the political is the relatively diffuse background that invests politics with purpose and meaning. It refers to the wider dimension of society that is directed towards questions of how to go on in a world of inequality, abuse of power and external threats. I view it as the political dimension of Durkheim's collective consciousness. The political consists of public and private communication on social matters in a multitude of genres voiced by civil society movements, in the shape of civil disobedience, public debates, intellectual publications, social media
rally, then they should rally; to post on social media, they should do that; and so on. The accountability simply does not run in the other direction in the same way. It's not that a is unaccountable to the b i , but a 's accountability is more restricted since what's on the table right now is a 's struggle. Now suppose one of the b i , call her Betty, becomes deeply and extensively engaged, going out of her way to participate in organizing and deliberation. Betty may then emerge as a core member in developing
have tended to command much more attention, due to their spectacular visibility, than other important features of what may be problematic about the version of FD that is currently in place. At this stage, it is no longer possible to ignore the potential impact of social media on mainstream political parties, just as it is not possible to ignore debates on the likely effects of artificial intelligence and computational thinking on the future of educational institutions, such as schools and universities. This is to say nothing about the possible effects of automatons
, nearer the expressions of brotherhood with African footballers, Black Power activists and West African miners in the ‘left populism’ of the Belgrade hip-hop collective Bombe Devedesetih (Bombs of the Nineties) (Papović and Pejović 2016 : 118), who similarly communicate through social media not the mainstream media/recording industry: on the margins of commercial popular music but well within popular music as a mode of expression. The routes through which an African-American visits Novi Sad, a Serb from Novi Sad moves to Chicago and hip-hop's sound and style offers
of the parliament and the government, with the news media and social media as its main carriers. Public opinion is the unpredictable and in principle open terrain where political power seeks legitimacy. In a non-ideal and non-normative context, public opinion can be characterised as episodic, unstable, contestable and contingent, without any a priori foundation in reason. It belongs to a vocabulary occasionally mobilised to achieve or preserve a particular constellation of power, and against economic, expert and governance-based advice. The
, stylisation, TV charisma, social media presence, and so on. Such mechanisms of trust may discourage others from using their freedom to protest. This means that the relationship between the political and politics is always a symbolically mediated relationship. We cannot make our judgements on politics without the symbolically mediated in mind. In this chapter I address symbolic aspects of constitutional politics with emphasis on popular and national sovereignty. I discuss 1) the relevance of the constitutional symbolism of Rousseau; 2) the typification of
the first century B.C . Officially, kids these days are hyperembodied. In the self-care, SoulCycle, sex-positive present, we’re meant to spend our leisure hours applying superexpensive products to our bodies, sculpting them into perfection, and then seducing as many people as possible (at least on social media). The idea that our physical selves are fundamentally unimportant to our identity and value doesn’t loom large in that picture. But, if you’re looking for it, it doesn’t take long to
idea the nineteenth-century doppelgänger literature took to its Gothic limit. Twins are also objects of desire within the entertainment industry and the consumer market more broadly. They’re regular fixtures in books and movies and on TV and social media, and they’re popular advertising tools, given their rarity, cuteness, and quasi-scientific potential. They feature regularly in advertisements for twin packs, two-for-one deals, twin sets, twin engines, and twin appliances, and as co-twin controls for