Presidential candidate Donald Trump, December,2015. Flickr/ Matt Johnson. Some rights reserved.He seems to have come out of nowhere; is immoderate and choleric, and he uses a rhetoric full of rage and a mystifying almost unfathomable message. His policy positions do not square with those of the party he claims to represent and, at the moment, he dominates public discourse and the political process. He is of course, Donald Trump. But what type of politician is he? And why should the answer to this question matter?
As for the first question, theories vary widely and confusion abounds. While some consider him an authoritarian, authoritarian populist, incipient fascist, and even a downright fascist leader, others, rather strangely, have seen in him the textbook example of an ideological moderate. When asked whether Trump may be a pure populist, Michael Kazin, an authority on American populism, is perplexed because he “[didn’t] really get much of a sense of who the people are” in Trump’s discourse. What is more certain is that Trump, unlike his other establishment rivals, is not a true conservative. What is he, then?
I suggest, pace Kazin and other baffled pundits, that Trump is a most authentic example of insurgent populist leadership, which belongs squarely within a long tradition of populism in the US – and, in fact, is breathing new life into it.
