Performative and ideological populism: The case of charismatic leaders on Twitter

Abstract

Taking Donald Trump’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s use of Twitter as paradigmatic case studies, this article demonstrates that the charismatic leader features as a distinct mode of the performativity of populism. Particularly, the leader is performed as a persona, such as Trump’s ‘defiant’ and Corbyn’s ‘ordinary’ persona, which authentically embodies the mission to save the people from their own enemies, in this case, the mission of national palingenesis (#MAGA and #DrainTheSwamp) and moral vindication (#ForTheMany), respectively. Central to charismatic performances is an affective dynamic which both renders the claim to authenticity convincing and allow for ‘the people’ to be enacted as a concrete political subject. It does so, however, not in an ahistorical and presupposition-less manner, as some post-ideological approaches to performativity imply, but through discursively patterned emotions with profound ideological ramifications. Therefore, populism is better understood as a performative ideology which deserves our close analytical attention if we are to understand its progressive-democratic or reactionary-undemocratic potential.