Taking Account of the Visual Politics of Populism

Populism is arguably the defining political phenomenon of the first two decades of the twenty-first century, and it also is perhaps the defining academic publishing phenomenon in political science of the same period. An enormous amount of research has been produced on the topic in recent years, but strangely, one important aspect of populism has remained largely ignored: the visual and aesthetic aspects of populism. This is striking, not only as it is widely acknowledged we are living in a world characterized by a “pictorial turn” where images shape our political reality, but also because some of the most salient cases of populism in recent years have used the visual as a core aspect of their appeal: from Trump’s red “Make America Great Again” caps to UKIP’s incendiary anti-migrant billboards to Hugo Chávez’s iconic red beret. Given this context, I make the case for studying the visual politics of populism. I first articulate why images matter in populism, then delineate the benefits of taking into account the visual from the perspectives of the analytical dimensions of populism discussed in this symposium, and outline potential methodological approaches for tackling the visual in future work on populism.