Month: September 2022

The readings for this week by Brubaker, Finchelstein, Mudde, and Paxton, all question why we label governments, or different classes/groups of people as populist, authoritarian, or fascist. Brubaker questions if the term “populism” is used as a tool for analysis, or if it is just a journalistic cliché that is thrown around as a label for groups and individuals. By extension I feel that this idea applies to the other terms as well. Do we use the terms authoritarian, or fascist to gauge ongoing political issues, or are they just catchy headline terms that garner clicks? In other words, how do we utilize these terms?

In tandem with their utilization, the readings all question and analyze their characterization. These terms generally carry a very negative denotation with them due to their history, (particularly due to the events that transpired throughout the 20th century in Europe) and generally speaking most people would likely not want to be directly associated with them. A major point of contention when discussing these terms is questioning how we identify them? Do we label them as worldviews, ideologies, or can we even put them on the same level as an ‘ism’ like conservatism, liberalism, and socialism? One thing is certain, and that’s that all three terms define a strong political viewpoint regarding governance and equality.

Readings:

• Rogers Brubaker, “Why Populism?” NUPI Podcast (51 minutes) 

• Federico Finchelstein, “Introduction: Thinking Fascism and Populism in terms of the Past” in Federico Finkelstein, From Fascism to Populism in History (University of California Press, 2017).

• Cas Mudde, “Populism in Europe: An Illiberal Democratic Response to Undemocratic Liberalism” (The Government and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro Lecture 2019). Government and Opposition, (2021): 1-21.

• Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York, 2004), pp 3-23.

Owen Billo

All the readings this week offer some kind of definitions for “populism” and “fascism” as well as discussing the definitions of others. These definitions are used, among other purposes, to draw a line between populism and fascism, but the definitions and lines drawn differ such that I am still left wondering: which is the most correct? Mudde offers his own take on the dominant “ideational approach” for populism, where a group identified as “the people” must defeat a group identified as “the elite.” I personally agree with this definition, but it is incredibly broad (which is the intention) and could potentially describe movements which are not conventionally considered populist.

Finchelstein loosely applies the ideational approach to draw a line between populism and fascism, arguing that populism becomes fascism when “the people” becomes a race/ethnicity/nationality and tries to bend politics to the will of that group. It might also be added that fascism loses the democracy-focus of populism, and Finchelstein’s definition misses some aspects of Paxton’s description of fascism. In other words, the line between populism is thicker than we might think, but also very flexible.

Additionally, both Mudde and Finchelstein argue that populism is also an “illiberal-democratic response to undemocratic liberalism” (Mudde, 1) while also acknowledging that populism can vary in political orientation. But what is the possibility of liberal populism, especially in an illiberal political environment? In this case, I think their definition of populism could exclude some kinds of populism.

Perhaps “which definition is most correct?” is the wrong question for such nebulous concepts – concepts which might be better described by qualifiers than a definition.