The globalization of populism

The narrative of populism as a “rising tide” has enjoyed currency at least since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the success of the “Leave” campaign in the UK referendum on membership of the EU earlier in that year. And yet, on the eve of what proved to be President Trump’s election defeat some four years later, the British journalist Nick Cohen felt able to muse “(w)e’re endlessly told why populism works. Now see how it might fail” (October 10, 2020). So, one might be for¬given for thinking that what goes around must eventually come around. However, things are not that simple, and the runes are harder to read. Trump duly lost the 2020 Presidential election and handed control of both Houses of the U.S. Congress to the Democrats, but at the same time harvested the votes of over seventy-four million of the U.S. elector¬ate. While significantly less than the over 81 million votes garnered by Joe Biden, Trump’s yield at the ballot box turned out to be larger and more diverse than liberal wishful thinking could entertain. The even more sobering fact is that many of his supporters seem in it for the long run; or at any rate they presently say that they are.