Paradoxes of Populism: Troubles of the West and Nationalism’s Second Coming

A study of the rising popularity of populism and the misconceptions surrounding it

Populism may come across as little more than an extreme form of national belonging – nationalism run wild so to speak – a case for national psychologists or a kind of collective pathology. However, as so often, appearances are deceptive.

Paradoxes of Populism argues that the far-from-random similarities with ordinary manifestations of nationalism should be approached not as a venture into the classical structures of nation-states and identities, but as a disruptive and destabilising consequence of some of the constituent elements of sovereign nation-states becoming eroded and prised apart by contextual global processes and their agents. Hence, populism in all its varieties – and there are many, as the book demonstrates – is riddled with even more paradoxes and inconsistencies than mainstream nationalism itself: confusing causes and appearances, realities and fantasies, and turning the world inside out. The age of populism is truly the Second Coming of nationalism, and it has come with a vengeance. Its advent, however, happens in the background of real problems for millions of ordinary people in liberal-democratic states. This book sets out to engage with these real-world challenges as well as their political and cultural interpretations in the populist fantasia.