La politique sans pensée? Considérations sur l’irrationalisme des mouvements populistes contemporains

Abstract

This article sets out from the assumption that the irrationality of contemporary populist movements is a postmodern phenomenon exceeding religious dogmatism and the anti-intellectualism of 20^th century fascism. It describes the so-called “new right wing” populist politics in Europe and the Americas as a formation against the rationality of Western political discourse. The example of “Trumpism” – the recent shift in U.S. politics – reveals an extreme form of rejecting rational thinking. Its newness consists in the radicality of establishing reason itself as the enemy of politics and producing “alternative knowledge” based on the results of fake science. Trumpism functions as a charismatic representation of the unrepresented. It links a grassroots movement of protest against the establishment with the protectionist interests of big capital and an evangelical anti-Charity ideology. Analysing the postmodern language of alternative facts, this article examines how to think politics without any coherent discourse insofar as the threat of undermining any opposition by rejecting the very existence of political argumentation leads to a necessary reconsideration of the Enlightenment.