BREXIT, Trumpism and the Agency of Populism in Contemporary Political Communication

Michael Ugorji

doi:10.4172/2165-7912.1000355

Abstract

Donald J. Trump’s presidency and Brexit happened to the world in a flash and that flash has refused to wane. The reality of these two major socio-political upheavals has rattled pundits and since posed the question of how the events came to be. This study addresses the tangential role played by populism, which by its amorphousness and lack of any particular ideological depth readily lends itself to the services of various forms of socio-political ends. Therefore, this paper argues that the capacity of populism, as an ambivalent and radical agent of mass movements, to effectively invade the political issues space and sustain or alter the course of sociopolitical action is pivotal to the strategies that energized Brexit and Trumpism, and eventually gave them unlikely victories. Digging into the depths of this agency unearths its strategic communications powers and also establishes its salience to contemporary political ideology and rhetoric.

Highlights

Recent political discourses are being driven by a powerful current that is located in the remote sites of mass consciousness; and which at the moment seems unstoppable
Populism transcends its purview as an ideological stance to become a motif of a kind in the execution of politicallyactivated ideological campaigns; such as those run by Donald Trump and the Brexiteers during the 2016 presidential election campaigns in the United States and the EU referendum polls in the United Kingdom
Even Nigel Farage of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) positioned himself as the voice of liberation for people of the United Kingdom against the ‘tyranny of Brussels’ and has gone further to establish a radio talk–show after the Brexit vote to sustain his claim to that tag

Summary

Introduction

Recent political discourses are being driven by a powerful current that is located in the remote sites of mass consciousness; and which at the moment seems unstoppable. Populism has been defined primarily as a specific political communication style or a political style that essentially displays proximity of the people, while at the same time taking an “antiestablishment stance” and emphasizing an idealized homogeneity of the people by the exclusion of specific segments of the entire population [1] It has been described as a thin-centered and analytically limited ideology which advocates the sovereignty of the people as a homogeneous entity [2,3]. Despite its lack of ideological depth and limited capacity for analysis, populism interacts with well-established ideologies such as liberalism, Christianism, Islamism, gender politics, left and right-wing radicalisms, among other isms This interactional flexibility with other ideological perspectives answers to its frequent adoption in the promotion of various mass-targeted ideological campaigns. Populism could be said to freely lend itself to various forms of topical social debates, cultural politics and mass movements

Methodology

Findings

Conclusion