New research on #AlternativeMedia and #Populism: With Ruben Bach and João Areal (@unimannheim), I studied the impact of alternative news consumption on political views during the 2021 German federal election campaign. We find only limited evidence for attitudinal change caused by alt news use, but a stable tendency towards the populist radical right among its users.
The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy
A startling look at how concentrated financial power and consumerism transformed American politics, resulting in the emergence of populism and authoritarianism, the fall of the Democratic Party—while also providing the steps needed to create a new democracy.
This post was prompted by recent events in Nagorno-Karabakh, Kosovo and Tigray and written before the flare-up of the Israel-Palestine conflict after Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Transgression is an essential concept for understanding many of today's political dynamics.
POPULISM AS A TRANSGRESSIVE STYLE by Théo Aiolfi (2022).
"As a consequence of its performative turn, the critical literature on populism has dedicated increasing attention to its sociocultural and stylistic features. Among the most prominent concepts underpinning this approach is the notion that populism relies on the “flaunting of the low” or the use of “bad manners.” This article engages in an extensive discussion of the way this concept is used in the literature and showcases its main limitations. In replacement, I then suggest the alternative concept of transgression, understood as the violation of a norm, which has the substantial advantages of being more flexible and versatile as well as less reliant on a normative binary".
Arguably the most populist, opportunistic and above all extreme conservative right-wing Prime Minister in the recent history of #Greece is the current one.