Stealing the Populists’ Clothes
The populist wave that gained momentum in Poland in 2015, and spread to the United Kingdom and the United States in 2016, will still be with us in the coming year. Populism is an age-old problem for democracies, and only by recognizing what drives can we understand how to combat its appeal.
WARSAW – Two cheers for US President Donald Trump. Without him, the West would still regard populism as a problem unique to Central and Eastern Europe. Yet Trump’s presidency is as clear a demonstration as there could be of the fact that populism is not merely a product of the alleged “immaturity” of post-communist countries.