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Paul K. Jones is Reader in Sociology in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University<p>'Ranging widely across the different intellectual contexts in which questions of populism and demagoguery have been debated since mid-century, Jones puts the critical theorists’ work into fruitful conversation with fascinating interlocutors from David Riesman to Raymond Williams, from Gramsci to Laclau. He carefully elaborates his concepts and then tracks their nuances across political science, media and cultural studies, into the very fabric of the culture industry. This tour de force reveals untapped riches of critical theory for understanding not just an earlier historical moment but indeed the present resurgence of right-wing populism as well.'<br />Johannes von Moltke, Professor of German and Film, Media and Television, University of Michigan<br /><br />'As a piece of intellectual history reconstructing the development of critical theory’s engagement with the study of demagogic populism, this is superb. Its deep understanding of the history closely informs and enables its critical work on the varieties of theoretical responses to populism.'<br />David Owen, Professor of Social and Political Philosophy, University of Southampton<br /><br />'The electoral success of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy proves that activists with neo-fascist roots can come in from the margins to displace ‘mainstream’ politicians. The current moment in the (dis) United Kingdom’s ongoing ‘great moving right show’ illustrates that long established parties can be reshaped around ever-more regressive policies. [Jones] direct(s) us to what are therefore urgent problems: what explains the attractions of authoritarian reaction? How do we act through our politics, social movements and cultural interventions to effectively counter the right and advance a progressive agenda? Jones [and Morelock] provide rich evidence that the concerns and arguments which Horkheimer, Adorno, Löwenthal and their colleagues developed seventy years ago and more can offer starting points to meet key challenges of our time.'<br />Mike Makin-Waite, <i>Radical Philosophy</i> 213, October 2022</p>
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Part I: Critically theorising demagogic populism
1 Introduction: from orthodox ‘populism studies’ to critical theory
2 The Institute’s analysis of ‘modern demagogy’
3 Expanding the reach of the Institute’s analysis
4 Gramscian analyses of fascism and populism: Poulantzas, Laclau, Hall
5 Towards a synthesis of critical perspectives
Part II: Populist contradictions of the culture industry
6 Cultural populisms and culture industry
7 Counter-demagogic popular art: towards a selective tradition
Excursus: an outline of Trumpian psychotechnics
8 Structural transformations of demagogic populism
Appendix: Theodore Adorno, Introduction to Prophets of Deceit
Index
Populism is one of the most significant phenomena in twenty-first-century politics, but what it is and how it functions remains a source of dispute. Side-stepping the usual debates over definition, Critical theory and demagogic populism makes a unique contribution by revisiting the Frankfurt School’s ground-breaking work on demagogy.
The book reconstructs the Institute for Social Research’s ‘Studies in Prejudice’ project of the 1940s, providing an analysis of demagogy in the United States that engages with Weber’s work on charismatic leadership, the US liberal critique of demagogy and the theories of Freud, notably his group psychology. The result is what Adorno calls ‘a kind of psychotechnics’, where the rally acts as a site of performative cultural production of demagogic speech. Extending this analysis into the present, the book identifies modern demagogy as a key feature of contemporary populism. Populist movements, whether ‘left’ or ‘right’, are susceptible to ‘demagogic capture’, and the likelihood of capture has only increased with the rise of the culture industry, since demagogues, from Father Coughlin in the 1920s to Trump today, have always been ‘early adopters’.
Providing a critique of orthodox populism studies and its critics, notably Laclau, Critical theory and demagogic populism brings the wider Gramscian tradition into productive dialogue with the work of the Institute for Social Research. It concludes by extending the Institute’s analysis to assess ‘counter-demagogic’ forces.