Tag: populism
-
#OccupyWallStreet: Perfectly Coherent
General Assembly in Iowa City Much has been made by some news outlets and pundits about the supposed “incoherence” of the Occupy Wall Street protests. “The protesters” don’t have a coherent message, we are told. They can’t even agree on any solutions. What the heck are they proposing? This angle is wrong-headed. The strongest and…
-
Radicals, Liberals & #OccupyWallStreet: This is What a Populist Alignment Looks Like
Glenn Greenwald asked yesterday whether Occupy Wall Street “can be turned into a Democratic Party movement?”. He discusses how the tone of establishment Democrats has quickly shifted and how many in the Party—including the White House—are now clamoring to figure out how to ride the anti-Wall Street populist wave. Judd Legum of the Center for…
-
Populism & Hegemony (series)
The broad political Left in the United States has been plagued for decades now with a culture of reaction, fragmentation, issue silo-ing, and a chasm between insiders and outsiders. Can the concepts of populism and hegemony help to explain these challenges? What insights might we gain through an exploration of these ideas? A series on…
-
Long lefty laundry lists | Populism & Hegemony pt.4
This is the fourth post in a series. Let’s say that I care a lot about the war in Iraq, and I start planning with some other folks in my town to put together a public rally to call for an end to the war and occupation. Well, what if we made the rally about…
-
Bonding & Bridging | Populism & Hegemony pt.3
This is the third post in a series. Strong group identity is something of a double-edged sword for social justice movements. On the one hand—as discussed in part one of this series—it is absolutely essential. There can be no serious social movement—the kind that challenges the powerful and privileged—without a correspondingly serious group identity that…
-
Marx’s error | Populism & Hegemony pt.2
This is the second post in a series. As discussed briefly in part one, in modern society our identities are complex. Our lives tend to be fragmented. In different spheres of our lives, we play different roles, hold different loyalties, perform different identities, and cultivate different aspects of our identities. Take a minute to think…
-
Anatomy of Political Identity | Populism & Hegemony pt.1
The broad political Left in the United States has been plagued for decades now with a culture of reaction, fragmentation, issue silo-ing, and a chasm between insiders and outsiders. Can the concepts of populism and hegemony help to explain these challenges? What insights might we gain through a study of these ideas? Populism and hegemony…
Jonathan Matthew Smucker 