Alexis Tsipras with Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos. Flickr/sher xla. Some rights reserved.
In a recent article in The Guardian, Dan Hancox argued that parties like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain have been successful because of their progressive populist rhetoric, which embraced ideas of ‘the people’ against internal and external economic elites rather than traditional Marxist class struggle.
This strategy Hancox connects to Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s idea of ‘radical democracy’, which sees populism as a useful tool in the struggle for socialism. These ‘populist’ ideas were indeed strongly present in the movements and protests that challenged previous governments and led to the popularity of both Syriza and ANEL.
