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Populism is Not in the Air (but maybe it should be)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2018

Ernesto Semán
Ernesto Semán*
Affiliation:
University of Bergen, Norway
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Abstract

Analogies between the rise of Donald Trump in the United States and populist leaders in Latin America are an emblematic case of misleading comparative analysis. They hide the ideological core of Trumpism, which undermines collective action and its emblematic institution, organized labor, dismantling the protections it attained during the twentieth century. In particular, references to Argentina's Juan Perón obscure Trump's emphasis on individual economic freedom, property rights, and the naturalization of inequality, values engrained in American political thinking. They also distort the populist legacies in Latin America. Populist leaders in the postwar years challenged liberal democratic thinking by posing that social rights and collective prerogatives for excluded groups should prevail over individual citizenship in order to expand political democracy. That legacy is not only alien to Trumpism; it might also be the main weapon to fight against it.

Type
Workers and the Radical Right
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 93: Workers and Right-Wing Politics , Spring 2018 , pp. 125 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2018 

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Footnotes

I am deeply thankful to Professor Barbara Weinstein for her insights and suggestions, which have improved the basic arguments of this article.

References

Notes

1. Alejandro Corbacho and Jorge Streb, “Is Trump a Peronist?,” in Global Americans, November 3, 2016. https://theglobalamericans.org/2016/11/donald-trump-peronist/. Accessed November 1, 2017. A. Dirk Moses, Federico Finchelstein, and Pablo Piccato, “Juan Perón Shows How Trump Could Destroy Democracy Without Tearing It Down,” The Washington Post, March 22, 2017 http://wapo.st/2o2AUBa?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.fb7ee45ac36f. Accessed November 1, 2017.

2. Thea Riofrancos, “Democracy Without the People,” in n+1, February 6, 2017. https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/democracy-without-the-people/ Accessed November 1, 2017.

3. James, Daniel, Resistance and Integration (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 34Google Scholar. Auyero, Javier, Poor People's Politics (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2009), 188Google Scholar.

4. Rush Limbaugh Show, Radio Program, April 30, 2009. Rich Lowry, “Barack Obama: American Caudillo,” National Review, November 21, 2014. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393253/barack-obama-american-caudillo-rich-lowry Accessed November 1, 2017.

5. DeChancie, John, Juan Perón, World Leaders, Past & Present. (New York and Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers 1987), 10Google Scholar.

6. Hayek, Friedrich, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1944)Google Scholar.

7. Semán, Ernesto, Ambassadors of the Working Class. Argentina's International Labor Activists and Cold War Democracy in the Americas (Durham, NC, and London, Duke University Press, 2017), 13Google Scholar. I have always wondered why “Peronismo” as a noun evolved towards its Anglicization, “Peronism,” unlike its cousins Varguismo and Cardenismo, and its more remote relatives like Chavismo, which remained profoundly native. Was this a necessary condition for its transformation into a global sign of Latin American populism? Or was it the other way around? And why Peronism and not “Varguism” or “Cardenism”? Because of some intrinsic characteristics of the movement? Or it is because of the specific moment in which it emerged, 1945, and the demands from social sciences at the time? In this sense, the term's trajectory seems to go in the opposite direction of “caudillo,” which preserved in English its Spanish roots.

8. A classic example of this narrative is Chapman, Charles E., “The Age of the Caudillos: A Chapter in Hispanic American History,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 12: 3 (1932): 281–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Of course, later works, most famously by Miguel Murmis and Juan Carlos Portantiero, made visible the flaws of Germani's insights: The workers who joined Peronism were not predominantly recent migrants, many were activists who had a long trajectory on the Left, the relation they established with Perón was more negotiated than initially described.

10. For a detailed analysis of these exchanges, see Samuel Amaral, “Del Fascismo al Movimiento Nacional Popular: El peronismo y el Intercambio Germani-Lipset, 1956–1961.” Universidad del CEMA, Documentos de Trabajo, No 402, Buenos Aires, August 2009.

11. Lipset, “Working-class Authoritarianism: ‘A Reply to Miller and Riesman,’” 380.

12. Kenworthy, Eldon, “The Function of the Little-Known Case in Theory Formation or What Peronism Wasn't.” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Latin American Studies Program, 1974)Google Scholar.

13. Grandin, Greg, Fordlandia. The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), 181Google Scholar.

14. Semán, Ernesto, Ambassadors of the Working Class. Argentina's International Labor Activists and Cold War Democracy in the Americas (Durham, NC, and London, Duke University Press, 2017), 114–16Google Scholar.

15. A classic study of the events is James, Daniel, “October 17th and 18th, 1945: Mass Protest, Peronism and the Argentine Working Class,” Journal of Social History 21:3 (Spring, 1988): 441–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. For an analysis of 2011 Wisconsin and the crisis of the Democratic Party, see McAlevey, Jane F., No Shortcuts. Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Thelen, Kathleen, Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity (New York and Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Chapters 3 and 5 offer a comprehensive view of the transformations in labor relations in the United States.

18. See Noam Scheiber, “Trump Shifts Labor Policy Focus from Worker to Entrepreneur,” The New York Times, September 3, 2017.