Jan-Werner Müller in The Guardian on Populism

Network member Jan-Werner Müller (Princeton) has a new piece out in The Guardian.  In the article, entitled "Trump, Erdoğan, Farage: The attractions of populism for politicians, the dangers for democracy," Jan-Werner offers a thoughtful and incisive examination of the various forms of populism and the complex relationships between populism, democracy, and identity.  

The first paragraph follows; the full piece may be found here.

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After Brexit, and with a Trump victory in November still a possibility, liberals are in a panic about populism. They have struggled to comprehend what a figure like Trump is about ideologically – hence the enormous amount of ink spilt over the question of whether he is or isn’t a fascist – and the rather hapless attempt to coin the term “Trumpism” (Trump, you see, is really a representative of Trumpism). Alternatively, liberals have focused on actual Brexit and Trump supporters and jumped to conclusions about what they think and, especially, feel. As a result, the content of what, after all, is an “-ism” – that is to say, a political belief system – has become conflated with the supposed psychological states of its supporters, namely feelings of resentment and relative deprivation.

The piece continues here.