Angry crowds are boiling over. Revolution is at hand, something has to change. But change to what and where is it going? It doesn’t matter to many people. Smash what’s there and take control – we’ll figure the rest out later.
Many terms bubble out as we struggle to describe this moment. “Socialist” and “Fascist” have been easily pushed out to describe the followers of Sanders and Trump, some of whom move more fluidly through Sanders / Trump / Paul than our typical left to right, Democrat to Republican divide tells us is possible. What language do we have to even describe this?
That is, in the end, the problem. We have a rise of “Populism”, a largely apolitical beast whose character reflects is leadership – which can come from anywhere in the spectrum. At the radical heart of it all is “Revenge Populism” which lacks any vision of the future and little sense of past, living entirely in the hot here and now.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 