After the Populist Moment

Abstract

ABSTRACT: While we are paying a lot of attention to U.S. conservatives this election year, it is also an auspicious time to publish a special section on the global right. Just under a decade ago, we passed through a "populist moment," so-called because of Brexit, Trump's election, and the rise of Marine Le Pen as a serious contender for the French presidency, all in rapid succession. It seemed like the beginning of a new era of politics, one emerging from the dashed hopes and profound failings of the neoliberal order—and in many ways it has been. T he terrain on which political struggle now takes place has been deeply altered by the right, with less educated voters, many of them from the working class, leaving their ancestral political parties and supporting the forces of reaction over issues like immigration, national identity, and "law and order." But in electoral terms, the right's record has been hit or miss, and it's worth learning from their failures as well as their successes.