Rethinking Populism

Ernesto Laclau, in his 2005 book “On Populist Reason,” challenged the view—more prevalent in Europe than the United States—that populism is by its nature limited to a racist, nativist, or proto-fascist ideology of the far right. Laclau and his wife, Chantal Mouffe, in several essays helped explain, in effect, how Podemos and France’s National Front and the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump campaigns could all be accurately described as populist. And they present leftwing populism as the appropriate successor for the politics of the older socialist, social democratic, and labor parties.