A new kind of personal politics: on the populism of Trump and Sanders

Abstract

ABSTRACT While most studies of contemporary populism see it as a reaction to economic and cultural change that appeals to solidarities based on nation, race, or class, this essay argues that the American populism embodied by Trump and Sanders must be viewed through a new register. The political culture of the U.S. has been dramatically transformed in recent years, and Trump’s and Sanders’s versions of populism reflects these changes. Given the prominence of neoliberalism, Trump and Sanders redefine the classic populist distinction between the virtuous people and the corrupt elite in a more individualistic idiom. They effectively incorporate elements of a bellicose and social media driven political culture into their populist appeal, proving to be successful populist performers in a new media landscape. As shared American religious and political traditions of solidarity decline, they invoke individualistic cultural traditions of entrepreneurship, authenticity, and aestheticism, portraying themselves as rebels against conventional politics and political truth tellers. They demonstrate that politics may become even more about the person and less about policy, and that criteria of authenticity, of encouraging social and cultural divisions rather than trying to bridge them, and saying what one thinks no matter the consequences, may mark the successful politician moving forward.