Is populism a social pathology? The myth of immediacy and its effects

Abstract

This article argues that populism, both in its left-wing and right-wing versions, is a social pathology in the sense contemporary critical theorists give to it. As such, it suffers from a disconnect between first order political practices and the reflexive grasp of the meaning of those practices. This disconnect is due to populists’ ideal of freedom, which they understand as authentic self-expression of ‘the People’, rejecting the need for mediating instances such as parties, parliaments or epistemic actors. When enacted in political practices and institutions, this ideal creates the conditions for undermining different forms of political freedom, including populist’s own ideal of collective self-expression, which they erode by fostering expressive domination. This all makes populism a self-defeating political ideology and bad candidate for advancing democracy in times of crisis. The article ends with a consideration of the advantages of this view compared to existing approaches to populism.

After the epistemological turn: A framework for studying populism as a knowledge phenomenon

“…All these accounts contribute to the assumption that populist voters reject facts and are prone to having a simplified view of reality. The tendency to pathologise populist knowledge practices is further reinforced by the fact that populism itself has often been seen as a form of a social pathology (Hirvonen and Pennanen, 2019; Zamora, 2022). Thus, if populism is a pathology, then understandably it resorts to harmful epistemic practices.…”