The eccentric far-right populist Javier Milei has failed to win the first round of Argentina’s presidential election, with the centrist finance minister Sergio Massa unexpectedly beating his radical challenger.
Supporters of Milei, a potty-mouthed political outsider described as an Argentinian mashup of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, had hoped he was heading for a sensational outright victory similar to Bolsonaro’s shock triumph in Brazil in 2018.
Yes, I was very confused by the “far-right populist” descriptor. Those are two very opposite words.
I disagree with your assessment that far right and populist descriptors are opposites. Admittedly, there’s a degree of subjectivity in definitions here, but my understanding is that conventional scholarship has coalesced around a definition of Populism that is agnostic of the left/right spectrum.
For example, this journal article from 2012 defines it as “a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, the ‘pure people’ versus the ‘corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the general will of the people”.
If you care to read a little more, the authors break down their definition into it’s constituent pieces and provide context, but the important piece is that you can see how populism can come from both the left and the right.
As examples, we can look at, say, the Occupy Wall Street movement from a while back. Very much spawned from left leaning ideology, but it’s defining feature was casting the “corrupt elite” (in this case, the fabulously wealthy) against the general people (i.e. the 99%). On the other side of the coin we can look at Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. The image he wants to cultivate is that of an outsider, someone not tainted by the corruption of the Washington elite. That resonates with a sunset of the population.
Both of these movements have radically different goals and politics, but the framework of those arguments follows the same general template.
I apologize for the US-centric examples, but that’s what I know. As consolation, the article I linked to is specifically a comparative study of European vs Latin American populism.
The poor and middle-class, you know, the majority of the population, have been beaten down by the “corrupt elite” for centuries. The problem with using a term like “far-right populist” is that the far-right are always on the side of corporate interests, additional corruption of government to weaken its power, and anything that would further promote the already fucked wealth gap we have between the rich and the poor. They are the corrupt elite!
Just using your example of Trump’s MAGA movement, Trump is just a grifter trying to promote an image of an outsider, but he very much isn’t one. Calling somebody a “far-right populist” is lying about what their true goals are. It is an oxymoron.
People from the Occupy Wall Street movement, even as misguided and directionless as that movement was, were trying to reduce the power of corporations through their protests. They weren’t lying about being populists.
A better example would be somebody like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, whose actions and voting record are consistent with ones who are trying to take power from corporations and give it back to the rest of the public.