Paul K. Jones – Critical theory and demagogic populism

Abstract

Critical theory and demagogic populism provides a detailed analysis of the relevance of the Frankfurt School’s work to understanding contemporary populism. It draws on the research that the Institute for Social Research conducted concerning domestic demagogues during its period of ‘exile’ in the USA. The book argues that the figure of the demagogue has been neglected in both orthodox ‘populism studies’ and in existing critical approaches to populism such as that of Ernesto Laclau. Demagogic ‘capture’ of populist movements and their legacies is thus a contingent prospect for ‘left’ and ‘right’ populist movements. An account of ‘modern demagogy’ is thus detailed, from the Institute’s own dedicated demagogy studies through to their dialogue with Weber’s work on charismatic leadership, the US liberal critique of demagogy and Freud’s group psychology. The Institute’s linkage of ‘modern demagogy’ to the culture industry speaks to the underestimation in ‘populism studies’ of the significance of two other ‘modern phenomena. The first is ‘cultural populism’ – the appeal to a folkloric understanding of ‘the people’ and/or ‘their culture’. The second is the pivotal role of modern means of communication, not only in the recent prominence of social media but demagogic exploitation of all media since the rise of literacy and the widening of the suffrage in the nineteenth century. The dialectical dimensions of these processes are also highlighted in reconstructing the Institute’s work and in extending these analyses through to the present. The book so concludes by weighing up potential counter-demagogic forces within and beyond the culture industry.

Table of contents

• Part I: Critically theorizing demagogic populism
  • Chapter 1: The Institutes analysis of ‘modern demagogy’
  • Chapter 2: Expanding the reach of the Institute’s analysis
  • Chapter 3: Gramscian analyses of fascism and populism Poulantzas, Laclau, Hall
  • Chapter 4: Towards a synthesis of critical perspectives
• Part II: Populist contradictions of the culture industry
  • Chapter 6: Cultural populisms and culture industry
  • Chapter 7: Counter-demagogic popular art Towards a selective tradition
  • Excursus An outline of Trumpian psychotechnics
  • Chapter 8: Structural transformations of demagogic populism