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

What is it about?

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.

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Photo by C Drying on Unsplash

Photo by C Drying on Unsplash