Power without Responsibility: Populism, Narcisism and the Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, much attention has been paid to the rise of political populism and its relationship to neoliberalism and neoconservatism hitherto dominant in the West. In particular, some have speculated that populism is a reaction against the failures of the neoliberal internationalist project, or capitalist globalization. Even so, clearly the new populists on the political Right do not stand opposed to, or outside, capitalism itself. Theirs is not a revolutionary project but a post-crisis reactionary one, demonstrating once again capitalism’s tendency to reproduce and, if necessary, reinvent itself. But if this is the case, and if populism is the political face of this new era of capitalism, what is its cultural-ideological manifestation? This essay suggests that technological developments, not least in the area of social media and its associated individualization of knowledge-sharing, may be driven by precisely the same logic as drives political populism, and may thus be a major part of the culture-ideology that reinforces the new capitalism.