Austria's new Chancellor Sebastian Kurz gives the press conference after meeting at European Commission HQ in Brussels, Belgium on 19.12.2017. Wiktor Dabkowski/ Press Association. All rights reserved. In the past, when a country was suffocating, it could be aired by opening the windows to neighboring countries. But now we do not have this resource any more. In neighboring countries the air has become as unbreathable as in ours. José Ortega Y Gasset
The concept of ‘left-populism’ that has been attributed to emerging democratic and justice-based political movements throughout the world, including such entities as Podemos, Syriza, France Insoumis, the Five Star Movement, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour and Bernie Sanders' alternative political agendas, involves a misconceptualisation. We offer a new concept called “left-transformation” to explain the policies of those movements and argue that they are not populist, and that their programs are in fact anti-populist and based on justice. In this first piece, we will focus on the concept of populism, elaborate its origins and invite the reader to rethink the concept. Our second article will explain why we use the concept of ‘left-transformation’ and why it is a more radical way of forming a political strategy for those movements.
It is apparent that global society is experiencing a severe oscillation in its political, social and economic spheres. This oscillation stems on the one hand, from inequality, precarity, poverty, the resurgence of racism and the rise authoritarian regimes throughout the world; on the other hand from democratic and justice-based movements whose goal is to ensure equality, liberty and fraternity in their societies. That is to say, the polarization is deepening and societies can now be divided into basically two camps: conservatives and progressives. "The tyranny of the majority" which is becoming the hegemonic power in many countries threatens the notion of “plurality” and targets minorities, intellectuals, democrats and migrants as enemies. Under these circumstances, the uncertainty of the future both politically and economically rattles the everyday life of people, inhibiting any expectations they may have of prosperous lives.
