Paula Biglieri & Luciana Cahadia: Seven essays on populism

perspective, Paula Biglieri and Luciana Cadahia (2021) set the record straight regarding right-wing populism – it has never existed. The authors reject the identification of populism with reactionary governing paradigms, raising some provocative objections. Fundamentally, can it really be said that Jair Bolsonaro, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Donald Trump, Cristina Kirchner, Rafael Correa, Lula da Silva, and Evo Morales are all “populists”? Against chiefly consensual diagnoses, the authors believe that scholars should not adopt populism as a term that equally applies to both emancipatory movements as well as those antithetical to them. On the contrary, ultraconservative stances should accept another name: fascism. Biglieri and Cadahia suggest that “populism is itself a chest [arcón] that contains a series of secrets to be deciphered” (17). Still, none of its threads should be linguistically nor politically mistaken with grifting statecraft. From the outset, the book stitches together theory and militancy. The authors remind readers that those occupying Latin American streets are also their intellectual and affective peers.