In an exclusive interview with ECPS, Professor Juan Bautista Lucca of the National University of Rosario (UNR) analyzes Argentina’s shifting political landscape under President Javier Milei. He argues that Milei’s project represents “a radicalized hybrid—ultra-neoliberal in economics but ultra-populist in rhetoric.” For Professor Lucca, Milei has transformed neoliberalism into a moral crusade, “sacralizing the market” while turning politics into “a permanent apocalyptic theater.” He views Milei’s alliance with Donald Trump as part of a broader “geopolitics of Trumpism in the Global South,” where sovereignty is redefined through ideological, not strategic, ties. Following Milei’s sweeping midterm victory—with La Libertad Avanza winning 41% of the vote—Professor Lucca warns that Argentina stands in a Gramscian “interregnum,” facing both consolidation and disillusionment.
In an in-depth interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Juan Bautista Lucca, a leading political scientist at the National University of Rosario (UNR) and Independent Researcher at CONICET, offers a comprehensive analysis of the Javier Milei phenomenon, situating it within Argentina’s longer populist tradition while revealing its radical departures from the past.
Reflecting on Milei’s sweeping midterm victory, Professor Lucca rejects the idea that the results represent a referendum on economic policy. Rather, he sees them as “an expression of the president’s capacity to maintain a narrative of radical rupture and moral regeneration.” For Professor Lucca, Milei’s strength lies not in delivering material results but in sustaining an affective narrative of moral renewal, one that continues to mobilize polarized sectors of society while leaving centrist voters disengaged. “People in the center,” he observes, “are not very motivated to vote… participation was one of the lowest in the last 40 years of democracy in Argentina.”
Professor Lucca identifies a deeper “normalization of populist discourse” in Argentina’s political mainstream, in which neoliberal orthodoxy is now “celebrated as an act of moral courage.” Unlike past neoliberal leaders such as Carlos Menem or Mauricio Macri, who concealed their economic programs, Milei “doesn’t want to hide this economic agenda; he even sacralizes it.” This, Professor Lucca argues, represents the sophistication of neoliberal populism, where austerity and moral regeneration are fused into a coherent political language.
Asked whether Milei’s libertarian project fits within existing typologies, Professor Lucca insists it marks a qualitative rupture: “He is ultra-neoliberal in economics but ultra-populist in rhetoric.” Milei’s “libertarian populism,” he explains, blends market maximalism and anti-establishment radicalism with “messianic performativity.” His leadership, characterized by a “rock-star persona and apocalyptic imagery,” transforms politics into what Professor Lucca calls “a permanent apocalyptic theater,” where representation depends less on programs than on emotional intensity.
From a geopolitical perspective, Professor Lucca sees Milei’s alliance with Donald Trump and symbolic alignment with Israel as evidence of a “geopolitics of Trumpism in the Global South”—a transnational ideological coordination that redefines sovereignty through shared cultural codes rather than strategic alliances. In this worldview, “external financial dependence is reframed as liberation,” an inversion of Argentina’s traditional narratives of autonomy and self-determination.
Looking ahead, Professor Lucca warns that Argentina stands “in an interregnum—what Gramsci called the time when monsters appear.” Whether Milei’s Leviathan endures or gives rise to “a Behemoth from populist Peronism” remains uncertain. Yet, he notes, the greatest danger lies in a growing “third Argentina”—a disenchanted electorate that “simply doesn’t want to participate in politics.”
Milei’s midterm triumph underscores the urgency of Professor Lucca’s diagnosis. With La Libertad Avanza capturing nearly 41% of the vote, securing 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of 127 lower-house seats, Argentina’s president has consolidated his grip on power. The landslide—hailed by supporters as a rejection of Peronism and condemned by critics for deepening inequality—marks a pivotal moment in Argentina’s democratic experiment: one where chainsaw economics meets populist spectacle, reshaping both the country’s political grammar and its social contract.
In an exclusive interview with ECPS, Professor Juan Bautista Lucca of the National University of Rosario (UNR) analyzes Argentina’s shifting political landscape under President Javier Milei. He argues that Milei’s project represents “a radicalized hybrid—ultra-neoliberal in economics but ultra-populist in rhetoric.” For Professor Lucca, Milei has transformed neoliberalism into a moral crusade, “sacralizing the market” while turning politics into “a permanent apocalyptic theater.” He views Milei’s alliance with Donald Trump as part of a broader “geopolitics of Trumpism in the Global South,” where sovereignty is redefined through ideological, not strategic, ties. Following Milei’s sweeping midterm victory—with La Libertad Avanza winning 41% of the vote—Professor Lucca warns that Argentina stands in a Gramscian “interregnum,” facing both consolidation and disillusionment.
In an in-depth interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Juan Bautista Lucca, a leading political scientist at the National University of Rosario (UNR) and Independent Researcher at CONICET, offers a comprehensive analysis of the Javier Milei phenomenon, situating it within Argentina’s longer populist tradition while revealing its radical departures from the past.
Reflecting on Milei’s sweeping midterm victory, Professor Lucca rejects the idea that the results represent a referendum on economic policy. Rather, he sees them as “an expression of the president’s capacity to maintain a narrative of radical rupture and moral regeneration.” For Professor Lucca, Milei’s strength lies not in delivering material results but in sustaining an affective narrative of moral renewal, one that continues to mobilize polarized sectors of society while leaving centrist voters disengaged. “People in the center,” he observes, “are not very motivated to vote… participation was one of the lowest in the last 40 years of democracy in Argentina.”
Professor Lucca identifies a deeper “normalization of populist discourse” in Argentina’s political mainstream, in which neoliberal orthodoxy is now “celebrated as an act of moral courage.” Unlike past neoliberal leaders such as Carlos Menem or Mauricio Macri, who concealed their economic programs, Milei “doesn’t want to hide this economic agenda; he even sacralizes it.” This, Professor Lucca argues, represents the sophistication of neoliberal populism, where austerity and moral regeneration are fused into a coherent political language.
Asked whether Milei’s libertarian project fits within existing typologies, Professor Lucca insists it marks a qualitative rupture: “He is ultra-neoliberal in economics but ultra-populist in rhetoric.” Milei’s “libertarian populism,” he explains, blends market maximalism and anti-establishment radicalism with “messianic performativity.” His leadership, characterized by a “rock-star persona and apocalyptic imagery,” transforms politics into what Professor Lucca calls “a permanent apocalyptic theater,” where representation depends less on programs than on emotional intensity.
From a geopolitical perspective, Professor Lucca sees Milei’s alliance with Donald Trump and symbolic alignment with Israel as evidence of a “geopolitics of Trumpism in the Global South”—a transnational ideological coordination that redefines sovereignty through shared cultural codes rather than strategic alliances. In this worldview, “external financial dependence is reframed as liberation,” an inversion of Argentina’s traditional narratives of autonomy and self-determination.
Looking ahead, Professor Lucca warns that Argentina stands “in an interregnum—what Gramsci called the time when monsters appear.” Whether Milei’s Leviathan endures or gives rise to “a Behemoth from populist Peronism” remains uncertain. Yet, he notes, the greatest danger lies in a growing “third Argentina”—a disenchanted electorate that “simply doesn’t want to participate in politics.”
Milei’s midterm triumph underscores the urgency of Professor Lucca’s diagnosis. With La Libertad Avanza capturing nearly 41% of the vote, securing 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of 127 lower-house seats, Argentina’s president has consolidated his grip on power. The landslide—hailed by supporters as a rejection of Peronism and condemned by critics for deepening inequality—marks a pivotal moment in Argentina’s democratic experiment: one where chainsaw economics meets populist spectacle, reshaping both the country’s political grammar and its social contract.
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca is a leading political scientist at the National University of Rosario (UNR) and Independent Researcher at CONICET.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Juan Bautista Lucca, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
Milei’s Victory Is Not an Economic Referendum, but a Moral One
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In light of Javier Milei’s surprising midterm victory, how do you interpret this result as a referendum on two years of libertarian governance amid economic contraction, corruption scandals, and low turnout? What does it reveal about the resilience and transformation of right-wing populism in Argentina?
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca: It’s a complex question, so I’ll try to answer as much as I can. First of all, I have to say that it’s not surprising—the number of people who support Milei. But even if I say that, I could also say that this is a kind of referendum for them, or a referendum on concrete economic results. I would say that the result of the last election is more an expression of the president’s capacity to maintain a narrative of radical rupture and moral regeneration.
Even if in the 2023 election he didn’t campaign against Kirchnerism as much, he opposed the idea of la casta. But now, he incorporates the idea of anti-Kirchnerism, and it was very effective in nationalizing the election—turning what was essentially a provincial or local contest into a national one. He was able to make it a national debate. So, it’s not a referendum on economic policy.
I also have to add that the low electoral turnout, in a way, shows that those who went to vote are mostly the highly polarized ones. People in the center, who don’t agree with either side of Argentina’s antinomic populist politics—with Peronism and Kirchnerism on one side, and La Libertad Avanza or Mileism on the other—are not very motivated to vote. People in the center of the ideological spectrum, or those distant from this cleavage, tend to stay home. That’s why participation was so low—one of the lowest in the last 40 years of democracy in Argentina.
Argentina Is Witnessing the Normalization of Neoliberal Populism
To what extent does this electoral outcome signal the normalization of populist discourse within Argentina’s political mainstream—especially when neoliberal prescriptions are wrapped in anti-elitist and moralizing rhetoric?
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca: We are facing an unsettling but truly effective normalization. This normalization started more or less three years ago, when the mainstream right accepted that Milei is not just an outsider, and their debate, discourse, and programmatic perspective—or their ideological propositions on policies—were no longer as radicalized as they had been maybe ten years ago. So, the normalization of Milei’s discourse really began three or four years ago.
During the pandemic period, this discursive operation represented the sophistication of neoliberal populism as we knew it in Argentina with Menem or Macri in the past, because they no longer need to hide their economic program. In the past, we could see that Macri and Menem tried to conceal their programmatic preferences. They didn’t openly express the idea that we were in the midst of a new or renewed Washington Consensus. But now, Milei doesn’t want to hide this economic program; they even celebrate it as an act of moral courage, perhaps.
This is important for Argentina’s political imagination, where Washington Consensus prescriptions were always very unpopular but are now gaining more and more popular legitimacy. That’s why we are witnessing the normalization of this radical discourse. We could see it in the last two elections, this year and in 2023, when the idea of controlling debt and the state deficit was celebrated by all participants in the election—even the Peronist candidate, Massa.
Right now, other candidates on the Peronist side have decided to accept the idea of controlling the deficit and reducing not only social policies but also other kinds of spending—the amount of money wasted on unproductive policies, especially at the provincial and subnational levels. Governors have decided to accept Milei’s neoliberal restrictions on spending for policies, infrastructure, and other kinds of initiatives. And when they accept these ideas and policies, they are normalizing the programmatic perspective of our president.
Milei and Trump Share a Cultural, Not Just Political, Alliance
Protesters march through the streets of Argentina’s capital during demonstrations against the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Nov. 30, 2018. Photo: Gabriel Esteban Campo.
Given the US bailout and Donald Trump’s open political intervention, how do you evaluate this episode as an instance of transnational populist coordination? Does it point to a new geopolitical articulation of Trumpism in the Global South?
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca: It’s a complex question. Of course, there is a strong link between Trump’s administration and Milei’s administration, but I also have to note that it is a strong relationship between both individuals, not merely an administrative connection. This shows that Trump is not supporting Milei as a conventional geopolitical ally, since in Latin America there are other countries that are more powerful or geopolitically significant—perhaps nations in the Caribbean or Brazil. The link between Trump and Milei is more about companionship within a global and established movement that shares certain cultural codes, symbolic enemies, and a specific vision of the world—particularly the defense of Western civilization.
We could see this in Milei’s administration when he chose Israel as the first country to visit as president, breaking a long-standing tradition in Argentine administrations since the return of democracy. Traditionally, the first country an Argentine president visited was Brazil. Milei broke with that, and this reflects not only his stance toward Israel but also his affinity with Trump. This is not a geopolitical expression but rather a relationship rooted in cultural codes and a shared worldview.
This effectively points toward geopolitics of Trumpism in the Global South, where national sovereignties are paradoxically redefined through transnational ideological alliances. In this case, the alliance is supported not only by ideological affinities but also by shared cultural representations of how they enact their policies. For example, the recent government shutdown in the Trump administration is more or less the same as what has been experienced since the beginning of the Milei administration with the shutdown of the budget—used as a political strategy.
If we look not only at the link between Trump and Milei’s administrations but also at the policies they are implementing in both countries, they are largely similar. This convergence shows how they choose to express their alliance not only at the geopolitical level but also in domestic politics.
Milei Redefines Dependence as Liberation and Sovereignty as Submission
How might such external dependencies—both financial and ideological—reshape Argentina’s historical narrative of sovereignty and national autonomy, central tropes within both Peronist and anti-Peronist imaginaries?
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca: That’s a fantastic question, because it can be answered through the lens of the Milei administration, which is presenting—or perhaps performing—a radical act of resignification. With Trump’s support and the effort to stabilize the financial system, Milei frames external financial dependence as a form of liberation. It’s a contradiction in terms, but it’s highly effective in gaining support from the electorate. He has also reframed integration into the global neoliberal order as an authentic expression of individual sovereignty. It’s a deeply paradoxical move: he presents liberty where there is dependence and defends sovereignty while effectively handing over the keys to the Trump administration on one of Argentina’s most critical issues—the financial question, debt control, and inflation rates.
Milei Doesn’t Defend the Market—He Sacralizes It
Javier Milei casts his vote in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 19, 2023. Photo: Fabian Alberto De Ciria.
In your studies of ideological structures in Argentine and Latin American politics, you have discussed how right-wing projects often recode neoliberal rationality through affective populist idioms. How does Milei’s “anarcho-capitalism” fit within, or rupture, that ideological tradition?
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca: We see both continuities and ruptures in the idea that Milei is an anarcho-capitalist. How can we analyze that in relation to your question? It represents continuity because it effectively reintroduces neoliberal rationality through an affective populist medium. Sometimes we saw this in more moderate forms with Menem and Macri. However, the Argentine right has traditionally expressed anti-populism in its discourse while employing populism in its strategy. For example, Macri opposed the populism of Kirchnerism, yet in his strategy, he created a sharp distinction or cleavage between one side and the other—constructing a Manichean narrative that was entirely populist, even if he never admitted to being one.
If we use Pierre Ostiguy’s framework, for instance, Macri’s administration was led by elites at the top, but at the subnational level—in the provinces—it relied heavily on “low culture,” which Ostiguy defines as populist.
In Milei’s case, however, there is a rupture with this tradition because he takes the operation to an unprecedented extreme. He radicalizes it. He doesn’t merely defend the market; he sacralizes it. He doesn’t simply criticize the state, as Macri or Menem did; he demonizes it. He presents a more apocalyptic vision. His anarcho-capitalism functions less as a coherent economic doctrine and more as a political mythology. That’s why he promises redemption through the destruction of the existing order. He often says that we need to “burn Rome once again”—in this case, Argentina.
The idea is to push this populist narrative to its limits, portraying society as living in hell, with him as the only one capable of leading it to paradise. It is framed in a far more apocalyptic and radicalized way than in previous expressions of the right in Argentina, such as those of Menem and Macri.
Milei’s Libertarian Populism Blends Market Maximalism with Messianic Performativity
Can we analytically conceive Milei’s project as a form of neoliberal populism, or does its radical libertarianism, combined with moral anti-statism, constitute a novel ideological hybrid that transcends earlier typologies such as the “New Right” of Menem or Macri?
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca: It is, once again, a very complex question, and I think we need more time—or at least we need to see the full picture of Milei’s administration—to provide a more conceptually precise answer. But if I had to give a quick one, I would say that while the neoliberal populism of Menem and Macri sought a certain pragmatic balance between market logic and popular demands, in Milei’s case, he radicalizes both poles simultaneously. He is ultra-neoliberal in economics but ultra-populist in rhetoric.
His libertarianism is not merely technical; he moralizes it. As I mentioned in the previous question, he presents it as a religious issue. This kind of libertarian populism—if I may use that term—is an ideological configuration that combines market maximalism and anti-establishment maximalism with messianic performativity.
It’s like old wine in a new bottle served in a new kind of cup: something broadly familiar but with a completely different flavor. It is presented as a revelation, almost mythological—something that doesn’t fit easily within earlier categories like the New Right or neoliberal populism. It is genuinely new in the sense that Milei adds this messianic, performative, almost religious dimension to the mix of market ideology and anti-establishment maximalism in his politics.
Milei Reverses the Latin American Populist Tradition
Murals of Eva Perón and Juan Domingo Perón in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on October 30, 2016. Photo: Dreamstime.
Considering your engagement with Torcuato di Tella’s work on national-popular coalitions and Bonapartism, how might Milei’s project be situated within—or against—that lineage of Latin American populisms that sought to reconcile mass incorporation with elite hegemony?
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca: The comparison with di Tella is very productive, because di Tella knew the Peronist strategies intimately and how they evolved over time. He was present at every table where Peronism sought to articulate its power, at least during the last democratic period.
The classical national-popular populism that di Tella analyzed aimed to build coalitions under charismatic leadership that mediated between elites and the masses. It was a kind of reinterpretation of Maurice A. Finocchiaro’s idea of leadership. Di Tella saw this leadership in a positive light, while Finocchiaro viewed it as something negative for democracy.
In Milei’s case, however, he inverts this logic. He builds an anti-distributive coalition under charismatic leadership. He takes di Tella’s framework and completely reverses it—turning it upside down, so to speak. Milei not only inverts the logic that di Tella described but also preserves the Bonapartist structure characterized by concentrated power and a direct, plebiscitary relationship with the people. In this context, he relies heavily on new technologies like social media, which played a far greater role in the 2023 election than in this one.
This is partly because we are now in a midterm election where President Milei himself was not a candidate, so each candidate had to express their allegiance to Milei’s narrative through their own social media channels. As a result, the power and potential of social media became fragmented across multiple actors.
To conclude, Milei’s rise represents both an appropriation and a distortion of the traditional Latin American populist model that di Tella described—pushed toward radically opposite ends, the ultimate outcome and final shape of which remain uncertain.
Milei Turns Politics into a Permanent Apocalyptic Theater
The performative excess of Milei’s leadership—his rock-star persona and apocalyptic imagery—has become central to his political grammar. From your theoretical perspective, how does this form of charismatic performativity reconfigure the populist relation between representation, spectacle, and crisis?
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca: Milei is an outsider from the political elites in Argentina, but he’s also someone who came from the media, and he realized very quickly that in the era of spectacularized politics, representation is not based on programs but rather on affective intensity. The performativity that Milei embodies is not ornamental—it is constitutive of Milei and Mileism itself.
The insults, the rock aesthetic, the apocalyptic references—even the hair, in a kind of Boris Johnson or The Cure singer (Robert James Smith) way—are not simply part of a communication strategy. They are the cornerstone of his political force. His charismatic performativity produces what we could call a politics of permanent event, and he uses social networks to sustain it every day. He sends more tweets and posts than the time he spends sleeping.
He reconfigures populism away from institutional constraints into a logic of pure messianic events. It is a populism—a permanent apocalyptic theater. And Milei, more than anyone, understood that very quickly and very clearly. That’s why it was so effective during the election period.
Milei’s Leviathan May Soon Face a Behemoth from Populist Peronism
The colorful facade of a building in the iconic neighborhood of El Caminito in Buenos Aires, Argentina, featuring figures of Maradona and the Perón couple. Photo: Alexandre Fagundes De Fagundes.
And the last question is: Looking ahead, do you foresee Argentina entering a phase of libertarian-populist consolidation, or are we witnessing the incipient exhaustion of a political model whose moral and economic contradictions may soon reinvigorate a re-articulated Peronism or left-populist alternative?
Professor Juan Bautista Lucca: It’s not easy. If I could see the future, I would say that we are in the middle of a transitional period—an interregnum, as Antonio F. Gramsci might say. And, Gramsci said that in these transitional moments, monsters tend to appear, and Milei is one of those monsters. But the question is what will come after—I don’t know. And whether Milei will be the only monster in town, maybe, I don’t know either. I think we are entering a future where this kind of Leviathan that Milei is now creating will be confronted by a Behemoth from populist Peronism. They are trying to reorganize their forces and establish new leaderships in the absence of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
From my perspective, the only critical scenario we could foresee in the near future is if the policies that Milei has presented, expressed, and implemented produce bad results and outcomes. At the moment, there is no antagonistic opposition capable of confronting and defeating Milei. The only one who could defeat Milei is Milei himself. But this is not an unrealistic scenario, because Milei is an outsider. He is not part of la casta, so he must go through a long and complex process of learning—how to debate, how to build consensus, and how to uphold the informal institutions of Argentine political culture. He needs to understand this background and learn to engage with the other elites who have governed Argentina for maybe twenty or more years in every province. The territorial power of governors in Argentina is very strong, so he needs to negotiate and reach consensus with them.
So, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I don’t anticipate a simple return of traditional Peronism. It’s more likely that we will see the emergence of a new political articulation—perhaps a renewed form of left-wing populism that learns from Milei’s capacity to connect affectively. Because this is key in Argentina right now: polarization is not ideological—it’s affective. People are divided by emotions and feelings that bring them closer to or further from Milei. That’s why, as I said before in your first question, this election expressed a position of fear that is not linked to either pole of this antagonistic populist divide. There is a third Argentina that is not represented in this election. And it is not expressed because these people don’t want to show their hatred or opposition to Milei’s policies—they simply don’t want to participate in politics. This is something completely new in Argentina. Even during the pandemic, when people were angry or opposed to Alberto Fernández’s government and its policies, they still voted for new parties. But now, more than 30% of people don’t want to participate; they don’t want to belong to either pole of Argentina’s polarization. This is a completely new phenomenon that we must interpret and analyze carefully when the time comes.
In this exclusive interview with the ECPS, Professor Ivan Llamazares of the University of Salamanca analyzes Argentina’s shifting political landscape under President Javier Milei, whose recent midterm victory consolidated his power and emboldened his radical austerity agenda. Professor Llamazares argues that while Milei’s libertarian populism intensifies Argentina’s ideological divisions, it does not fundamentally alter them. “It’s a modification, an intensification—but the underlying structure is still there,” he explains. Rejecting comparisons to Bolsonaro’s authoritarianism, he insists that “authoritarianism is very weak in Argentina, whose popular culture is deeply democratic.” For Professor Llamazares, Milei’s experiment embodies an “extreme illustration” of global right-wing populism—yet remains distinctly Argentine, rooted in enduring social cleavages, economic crises, and democratic resilience.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei has consolidated his grip on power after his party, La Libertad Avanza, won nearly 41% of the vote in the midterm elections, securing 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of 127 lower-house seats. The landslide victory marks a major political endorsement of Milei’s radical austerity program, dubbed “chainsaw politics,” defined by deep spending cuts, deregulation, and free-market reforms. The results will allow him to advance his agenda more easily after facing frequent legislative resistance in his first two years in office. Supporters have hailed the win as a rejection of decades of Peronist economic management, while critics warn of deepening poverty, unemployment, and inequality as a result of sweeping cuts to education, healthcare, pensions, and social programs. Despite stabilizing inflation and restoring investor confidence, Milei’s reforms have sparked widespread hardship and a risk of recession. Meanwhile, a record-low turnout of 67.9% reflects rising public apathy and disillusionment with Argentina’s political class.
Against this backdrop of economic turbulence and populist consolidation, Professor Ivan Llamazares, a leading scholar of political science at the University of Salamanca, reflects on the deeper ideological and institutional dynamics shaping Argentina’s political transformation in an exclusive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). Known for his research on ideological structuring and party system dynamics in Latin America, Professor Llamazares situates Milei’s rise within Argentina’s longstanding ideological fault lines—the enduring struggle between Peronist interventionism and neoliberal technocracy.
Professor Llamazares cautions against viewing Milei’s ascent as a structural rupture. “It’s a modification, an intensification,” he explains, “but the underlying structure is still there.” In his view, Mauricio Macri’s victory in 2015 marked a more significant political realignment, introducing a coherent center-right, pro-business coalition that shifted the ideological balance of Argentine politics. Milei, he argues, has merely intensified this trajectory, infusing it with “a new rhetoric, a new style,” and a libertarian flair.
While comparisons to Bolsonaro and Fujimori are unavoidable, Professor Llamazares stresses the limits of authoritarianism in Argentina. “Authoritarianism is very weak… even the authoritarian project itself must be very weak,”he observes. This weakness, he suggests, is rooted in Argentina’s deeply democratic popular culture, shaped by the trauma of the last dictatorship and the political learning processes that culminated in the country’s 1983 democratic restoration. Unlike Bolsonaro, Milei “hasn’t taken significant steps toward building authoritarian institutions.”
At the same time, Professor Llamazares acknowledges that Milei represents “an extreme illustration” of a global populist trend that merges moral populism, economic deregulation, and cultural grievance. Yet, he underscores that many aspects of Milei’s project are “very typically Argentine,” reflecting specific socio-economic tensions—between export-oriented elites and protectionist sectors, between dollarization and social protection, and between a cosmopolitan upper class and the working poor.
Ultimately, Professor Llamazares interprets Milei’s moment not as a new ideological paradigm, but as a cyclical populist insurgency within Argentina’s enduring political structure. “Milei represents something new in style,” he concludes, but the deeper ideological foundations of Argentine politics remain intact.
In this exclusive interview with the ECPS, Professor Ivan Llamazares of the University of Salamanca analyzes Argentina’s shifting political landscape under President Javier Milei, whose recent midterm victory consolidated his power and emboldened his radical austerity agenda. Professor Llamazares argues that while Milei’s libertarian populism intensifies Argentina’s ideological divisions, it does not fundamentally alter them. “It’s a modification, an intensification—but the underlying structure is still there,” he explains. Rejecting comparisons to Bolsonaro’s authoritarianism, he insists that “authoritarianism is very weak in Argentina, whose popular culture is deeply democratic.” For Professor Llamazares, Milei’s experiment embodies an “extreme illustration” of global right-wing populism—yet remains distinctly Argentine, rooted in enduring social cleavages, economic crises, and democratic resilience.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei has consolidated his grip on power after his party, La Libertad Avanza, won nearly 41% of the vote in the midterm elections, securing 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of 127 lower-house seats. The landslide victory marks a major political endorsement of Milei’s radical austerity program, dubbed “chainsaw politics,” defined by deep spending cuts, deregulation, and free-market reforms. The results will allow him to advance his agenda more easily after facing frequent legislative resistance in his first two years in office. Supporters have hailed the win as a rejection of decades of Peronist economic management, while critics warn of deepening poverty, unemployment, and inequality as a result of sweeping cuts to education, healthcare, pensions, and social programs. Despite stabilizing inflation and restoring investor confidence, Milei’s reforms have sparked widespread hardship and a risk of recession. Meanwhile, a record-low turnout of 67.9% reflects rising public apathy and disillusionment with Argentina’s political class.
Against this backdrop of economic turbulence and populist consolidation, Professor Ivan Llamazares, a leading scholar of political science at the University of Salamanca, reflects on the deeper ideological and institutional dynamics shaping Argentina’s political transformation in an exclusive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). Known for his research on ideological structuring and party system dynamics in Latin America, Professor Llamazares situates Milei’s rise within Argentina’s longstanding ideological fault lines—the enduring struggle between Peronist interventionism and neoliberal technocracy.
Professor Llamazares cautions against viewing Milei’s ascent as a structural rupture. “It’s a modification, an intensification,” he explains, “but the underlying structure is still there.” In his view, Mauricio Macri’s victory in 2015 marked a more significant political realignment, introducing a coherent center-right, pro-business coalition that shifted the ideological balance of Argentine politics. Milei, he argues, has merely intensified this trajectory, infusing it with “a new rhetoric, a new style,” and a libertarian flair.
While comparisons to Bolsonaro and Fujimori are unavoidable, Professor Llamazares stresses the limits of authoritarianism in Argentina. “Authoritarianism is very weak… even the authoritarian project itself must be very weak,”he observes. This weakness, he suggests, is rooted in Argentina’s deeply democratic popular culture, shaped by the trauma of the last dictatorship and the political learning processes that culminated in the country’s 1983 democratic restoration. Unlike Bolsonaro, Milei “hasn’t taken significant steps toward building authoritarian institutions.”
At the same time, Professor Llamazares acknowledges that Milei represents “an extreme illustration” of a global populist trend that merges moral populism, economic deregulation, and cultural grievance. Yet, he underscores that many aspects of Milei’s project are “very typically Argentine,” reflecting specific socio-economic tensions—between export-oriented elites and protectionist sectors, between dollarization and social protection, and between a cosmopolitan upper class and the working poor.
Ultimately, Professor Llamazares interprets Milei’s moment not as a new ideological paradigm, but as a cyclical populist insurgency within Argentina’s enduring political structure. “Milei represents something new in style,” he concludes, but the deeper ideological foundations of Argentine politics remain intact.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Ivan Llamazares, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
Milei’s Victory Reflects Fear, Not Consensus
Javier Milei casts his vote in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 19, 2023. Photo: Fabian Alberto De Ciria.
Professor Ivan Llamazares, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: How would you interpret Javier Milei’s midterm victory in light of Argentina’s ongoing economic downturn, corruption scandals, and record-low voter turnout? What does this outcome reveal about the contemporary resonance and adaptability of right-wing populist discourse within contexts of socioeconomic precarity and institutional distrust?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: It’s a very complex issue; there are many interconnected themes, but one has to interpret this victory in the context of Argentina’s economic and political situation and the dynamics of the last decade. First of all, there is an ongoing and deep division in Argentine society in terms of economic and political projects. On the one hand, we have Peronism and Kirchnerism as a particular and dominant current with internal divisions, and on the other hand, a more market-oriented, right-wing approach that focuses on control, authority policies, favoring market mechanisms, integrating the Argentine economy into the world, less protectionism, and so on. This has been the structural basis of Argentine politics over at least the last decade.
Then there is also the current economic situation. All the problems you mentioned are very acute and very important. In fact, they also led to the defeat of Milei’s party in the Buenos Aires elections a few weeks ago. But, on the other hand, there is also fear—particularly among those sectors that endorse a more liberal economic project. There was fear that the defeat of Milei would entail economic collapse, devaluation, and an uncertain political scenario that could even lead to his removal.
That helps explain the solidification of the coalition in favor of Milei. He received 40% of the vote—40% of the 68% of people who voted—so, in total, it’s probably less than 30% of all eligible voters, about 29% of Argentine society. It’s a majority of votes, but that’s the basic picture. There are, of course, other elements. That doesn’t mean, by the way, that everyone in this coalition is happy about Milei, or likes or trusts him, but they may have preferred the continuation of his project to the uncertainties that would follow his defeat. These, in my view, are the basic elements.
Trump’s Support Boosted Milei’s Momentum, But Interests May Diverge
To what extent might Milei’s electoral resilience be contingent upon exogenous political and financial scaffolding, particularly from Donald Trump and the US Treasury? Could this episode signify the emergence of a transnational populist alliance that fuses neoliberal governance with nationalist rhetoric across hemispheres?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: The answer to the first question is “yes”—it has helped Milei very clearly. It has moved him to the upper bound of the survey projections. It is also clear that the situation of the peso, the chances of devaluation, and so on, improved over the last week due to these commitments by the Trump administration. So it has helped. I don’t know exactly how much, but it must have helped reassure people who perhaps had some doubts yet wanted to avoid the victory of Peronism, and they must have thought ‘at least we have the support of the US, which is the major economic player, and that means the project can continue in this way for a time’. So I think it has been important.
In terms of the alliance, I am not so sure. Of course, there are some ideological, personal, and political affinities—they are close to each other in some respects. But I’m not sure this is going to be so important in the future, in the sense that there are the interests of the US government and the interests of the Argentine government. The Argentine government is dependent, of course, on the US government, not the other way around. But in a situation where US policymakers make a different evaluation in terms of their calculations, they can change. Also, in this case, people refer to ideological proximity, but there are also some economic interests that may have played a role in this support. People close to the Trump political coalition, to the Trump government, also had some interests at stake in the devaluation, investments, and so on. So I would expect some connections and affinities, but I wouldn’t overemphasize them. Each government has its own interests, for sure.
The US Rescue Deepens Argentina’s Ideological Polarization
The US-engineered bailout has been widely interpreted as politically instrumental rather than economically rational. How do such interventions reconfigure Argentine imaginaries of sovereignty, dependency, and anti-elitism, which have long underpinned populist mobilizations from Peronism to Milei’s “anarcho-capitalism”?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: This is complex. On the one hand, this basically reinforces the interpretations that both Peronists and anti-Peronists have about the economic world. In the case of people who are pro-market, export-oriented, and anti-protectionist, who want to integrate the Argentine economy into global capitalism, this confirms that it is better to be associated with the major economic powers of the world, with the US market. So, it works well in that respect.
With regard to the ideological core of Kirchnerism and Peronism, in the same way, this shows that the Argentine government—this anti-Kirchnerist, anti-Peronist government—is just a puppet of international capitalism. So it doesn’t defend the Argentine economy or Argentine society, and it puts Argentina in a situation of total dependency. In fact, they could make the point, and it was a strong one, that this government has increased Argentina’s debt and that we will not be able to pay it. This is just short-term reassurance, but in the end, we face huge problems. We are in a mess.
So, in that sense, it reinforces everything. Perhaps, for people who are doubtful, this is somewhat favorable toward the right because, in this case, they have saved us. Perhaps there are some advantages in being close to these people. And that may be a little similar to the Menem situation. Menem changed Peronist policies, adopted a strategy of being very close to the United States, to international markets, privatization, and so on, and for a while, it worked. Menem won the 1995 elections. So, it works well in terms of Argentine narratives. One has to wait until the end to see how this finishes. Let’s see what happens in a year and a half—what will be the situation of the peso, the economy, whether it will be in recession or not.
Milei Won the Election, but Not ‘the People’
Given the severe austerity measures, deep welfare retrenchment, and widening inequality, how do you account for Milei’s capacity to sustain an affective and symbolic identification with “el pueblo” while advancing a project grounded in radical market orthodoxy?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: He has been successful in solidifying his coalition in order to win against the Peronists and other contenders. I don’t think this means he can portray himself as the leader and representative of a unified Argentine people. I don’t think that is possible. I think the anti-elite populist discourse had more credibility in the presidential elections, to some extent.But right now, the situation is clear. He represents a social coalition that is more middle class. If you look at the electoral results by municipality, he has performed much better in districts where income is higher than in those where income is lower, in contrast to Peronism. He has won, but the idea that “I represent the people, and Peronism represents the elite” cannot work very well right now.
Peronism is weak, but it represents many people—poor people, working-class people, those who have informal jobs, and so on. So I don’t think it works very well in terms of political rhetoric. It worked fine to win the election, but the idea of casta or anti-elite discourse doesn’t work so well right now, actually.
A New Rhetoric, not a New Structure
Crowd of protesters during the cacerolazos—the pots and pans demonstrations—against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 8, 2012. Photo: Dreamstime.
In your earlier work on ideological dimensions and spatial models of Latin American politics, you emphasized the structuring role of ideology in mediating citizen preferences. How does Milei’s “anarcho-capitalist” imaginary, with its libertarian anti-statism and anti-political moralism, reconfigure Argentina’s traditional ideological continuum between Peronist interventionism and neoliberal technocracy?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: What he represents is rooted in the existing structure of ideological and programmatic confrontation. He’s not departing from it; he’s transforming it slightly—rhetorically and in terms of the social coalition. But he draws his strength from this division. In that sense, I don’t think he’s a radical transformer. He hasn’t changed the parameters of these conflicts, which have a long history in Argentina and became particularly solidified under the Kirchner governments—both Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
He hasn’t altered that dynamic drastically; rather, he has given it a new flavor, emphasizing the freedom associated with the market. He has managed to appeal to young people outside formal markets—self-employed workers, young males. But he hasn’t changed the ideological structuring of the Argentine party system. That’s my impression. In a way, he has intensified everything.
This could also be seen, in a similar way, in the election that Macri won. But Macri had a more moderate profile and was more of an establishment politician or leader. Milei is disruptive, but this also has to do with the depth of the Argentine crisis and the depth of Argentina’s conflicts.
Not a Break, but an Escalation of Neoliberal Populism
Can Milei’s experiment be analytically classified as a form of “neoliberal populism,” or do its discursive, moral, and performative elements constitute a qualitatively distinct libertarian-populist hybridity that challenges conventional typologies of populist economics?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: He fits under the first label, but with a new level of intensity and new rhetorical devices. Clearly, it’s pro-market, pro–export-oriented, and neoliberal in an extreme way, with rhetoric that is much more radical. I don’t think he departs from that, but he gives it a libertarian flavor and a highly ideological tone. He draws on obscure economic theoreticians from the Austrian school, speaks in a vulgar way, is rude and disrespectful, and does not represent the elites—the cultural elites—in that sense.
However, he remains rooted in the same neoliberal populist approach. In some respects, he’s also close to Bolsonaro. So I don’t think it’s a total break with the past. By the way, this trend began before Milei, as during the Néstor Kirchner period there were already segments of the Argentine right clearly moving in this direction.
Global Resonance, Local Specificity: Milei’s Unique Populism
How does the Milei-Trump ideological affinity, which is a fusion of moral populism, economic deregulation, and cultural grievance, reflect broader transformations in the grammar of global right-wing populism, particularly its capacity to reconcile anti-establishment rhetoric with financial globalization?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: He represents this trend in a way; he’s an extreme illustration of it—very powerful in rhetorical terms, for instance. Milei embodies something clear and substantive in international terms. I also have the impression that some of these characteristics are very specific to Argentina. I don’t think this ultra-liberal, pro–financial markets, pro–export-oriented, pro-dollarization approach works as well for the radical right in other contexts. I don’t expect or see anything similar when we look at France, Italy, or Germany and when we focus on the radical right.
In some respects, he reflects a distinctly Argentine situation—for instance, the tension between export-oriented and social protection models, the importance of the dollarization process, and the fact that Argentina is an economy where many Argentines hold billions of dollars and have different concerns. There is also the need for the Argentine upper and upper-middle classes to remain strongly connected to international economic markets in different ways—financially and through exports. That’s very Argentinian.
Some elements are similar—pro-market attitudes, certain liberal ideas, anti-elitism, anti-left sentiment, an emphasis on social order, work ethic, discipline, crime and punishment, and punitive policies. But in terms of economic globalization—anti-tax sentiment, by the way, strongly anti-tax—in this respect, many aspects are very typically Argentine.
A Divided Peronism Searching for Renewal
Large crowds march nationwide in defense of public universities and state education in Argentina — one of the largest demonstrations of President Javier Milei’s government, with attendance estimates ranging from 100,000 to 500,000. The building with the image of Eva Perón can be seen in the background in Buenos Aires on April 23, 2024. Photo: Dreamstime.
Peronism has historically embodied a polyvalent synthesis of populism, nationalism, and social justice. How is the Peronist opposition reconstructing its ideological and discursive identity in the face of Milei’s anti-Peronist moral crusade and his attempt to redefine “the people” as entrepreneurial individuals rather than collective actors?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: A good question. First of all, one has to say that Peronism is in the process of reconstruction. It is deeply divided, and there is no clear national leadership. On the one hand, we have Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; on the other, other possible leaders, in particular Axel Kicillof, the governor of the province of Buenos Aires. And there might be other figures within Argentine Peronism who could move in different directions because Peronism is a very plastic, very flexible political creature. So, we don’t know exactly how it is going to evolve over the next couple of years. It’s clear that it has to change.
Historically, it has been the dominant force in Argentine politics, and it has now suffered a very humiliating defeat. The analysis of why this has happened is very complex. I would say that they will have to stick to the idea of social justice and reject many elements of the Milei platform. They don’t have alternatives in that respect. Otherwise, they will lose their reason for being, because if they are going to defend entrepreneurship and individual economic freedom, for that purpose people already have Macri, Milei, PRO, Libertad Avanza, and others. That is not possible.
They also have to appeal to trade unionists, organized labor, and new social sectors that are now more Peronist than in the past—or to sectors that are close to some elements of the Peronist platform, such as people who work at universities. So, they cannot change dramatically, but they must find a new balance, for sure. And that doesn’t mean that, when the situation is ripe, they won’t win. They could easily win future elections.
It depends on Milei’s economic performance, but it’s also true that they must find an economic platform to make national policy—and that is very difficult. Alberto Fernández totally failed. He was divided between different currents and tendencies and didn’t find an economic balance. It is possible that someone more pragmatic—let’s think, for instance, of Sergio Massa—someone very pragmatic, who might even be close to the center-right in some respects, could eventually win. This person could maintain some elements of Peronism but move in a more orthodox direction. That is possible.
But one must also keep in mind that Argentine economics and politics are highly volatile. We have many experiences of very drastic changes, and Peronism has the structure and the network to build something new on that basis.
Authoritarianism Is Weak in Argentina’s Political DNA
In comparative perspective, do you discern substantive parallels between Milei’s “chainsaw politics” and other neoliberal-populist experiments in Latin America—such as Fujimori’s authoritarian neoliberalism or Bolsonaro’s reactionary anti-globalism? How do Argentina’s institutional legacies and socio-political cleavages inflect these trajectories?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: There are some shared elements, for instance with Bolsonaro, in terms of rhetoric and economic direction. They clearly share certain themes—also with Fujimori, in his attempts to reshape the Peruvian economic framework and redefine the role of the state. On the other hand, there are important differences.
One of them is that authoritarianism in Argentina—and this is just an intuition, as there is not enough empirical evidence to confirm it definitively—is very weak. I would say so. Even the authoritarian project itself must be very weak. In fact, despite all the excesses, problems, and exaggerations, Milei hasn’t taken significant steps toward building authoritarian institutions.
That may have to do with Argentine popular culture, which is deeply democratic. It may also stem from the intensity of the trauma of the last authoritarian experience—the violence, the suffering, and the learning processes that led Argentine society to bid farewell to authoritarianism in 1983. It could also be related to the characteristics of Argentine civil and political society.
So, I don’t think an authoritarian transformation is taking place right now, and I don’t think it’s very likely. Bolsonaro attempted to do this; he failed. He failed, but at least he tried. I don’t imagine Milei doing the same. I’m not sure if he’s powerful enough, structurally speaking, within the broader right. The argument could be made that some social and economic sectors are using him, but they are not very strongly connected to him. The Argentine right is plural—there are other actors operating there—so I don’t see this happening.
A Cyclical Insurgency, Not a Structural Rupture
Inauguration ceremony of President Javier Milei at the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on December 10, 2023. Photo: Fabian Alberto De Ciria.
Based on your long-standing research on party system dynamics and ideological structuring in Latin America, does Milei’s ascent represent a critical juncture in Argentina’s cleavage structure—a durable reconfiguration of the left–right and populist–technocratic axes—or rather a cyclical populist insurgency within an enduring Peronist framework?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: I would go for the second interpretation. It’s a modification, an intensification—there are significant changes—but the underlying structure remains the same. In that respect, my impression is that Macri’s victory was more important. Until Macri, you had the Peronists and the Radicals—Alfonsín, a Radical; then the Peronists; then Menem; then De la Rúa, who was a Radical, although he led a broad and plural coalition—and then again, the Peronists. With Macri, you had the emergence of a center-right coalition. It was not Radicalism; it was a new actor, one that was very strongly pro-business, pro-market, and so on.
So, Macri brought about a more important and enduring change, and Milei has intensified this in a way—with a new rhetoric, a new style, representing something different. But the structure of pro-market, pro–export-oriented versus protectionist, social-expenditure-driven, inflationary policies represented by Peronism remains in place. I don’t think that has changed.
Populist Style Loses Credibility Once in Office
How might we interpret the performative and aesthetic dimensions of Milei’s leadership, such as his rock-star persona, symbolic aggression, and social media theatrics, as mechanisms of discursive populist construction, mobilizing affective resonance in a post-institutional political environment?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: They are mechanisms—populist elements, populist styles—and shifts in that direction. I have no doubt about it. These elements are more powerful and usually more effective for politicians who are outside of power. They made much more sense and were more impactful in electoral terms when Milei was an outsider contending for the presidency.
Right now, I doubt that they contribute much to his success. The credibility of these elements tends to erode once a president has been in office for three or four years. So, I don’t think this will add much in the next presidential elections. He represents a different style, but it is not as credible. Now the economic alternatives are clear, and that’s what led to Milei’s triumph—not so much that he gave a concert saying, “I’m the Lion,” and so on. That’s my impression.
And who knows—perhaps in two years we will have a Peronist with a very disruptive style. It’s possible. By the way, in Argentine politics, Peronists are often disruptive in style, while the right and the Radicals tend to be more established figures. Milei has changed that, but Menem was also a disruptor—someone who represented something new in terms of style. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was as well, in the way she spoke and mobilized. Eva Perón, too, in the past. Peronism has a long tradition in that respect, and it is interesting that Milei has taken it and transformed it in a different way, of course.
Peronism Will Likely Re-Emerge as Argentina’s Next Political Force
Murals of Eva Perón and Juan Domingo Perón in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on October 30, 2016. Photo: Dreamstime.
And the final question is: looking forward, do you foresee a durable transformation of Argentina’s political field toward a libertarian-populist realignment, or will economic contradictions, institutional inertia, and popular backlash catalyze the re-emergence of a renewed progressive or Peronist counter-populism capable of reclaiming “the people” from the right?
Professor Ivan Llamazares: A very ambitious question. We cannot predict the future, for sure. Many things can happen. We could also imagine that Milei is successful—it’s a possibility—that the macroeconomy begins to work in a Chilean way in the future. That’s a possibility. We don’t know.
But if I had to make a bet, I would say that this libertarian coalition will also face strong economic problems. I’m saying that not on the basis of any future anticipation, but on the basis of previous experiences. This might be wrong, but recent experiences since the 1970s suggest that it is very difficult for such complex economic and social systems to function smoothly. That’s why Argentine economists say it is very difficult to find a virtuous balance—a virtuous cycle—in Argentine economics, and that sooner or later governments face imbalances and bottlenecks that lead to reconfigurations.
So, I would expect—though I’m not sure if in two years or in four years—a crucial change, an oscillation. And I would assume that Peronism will play a key role in that change, that it will be able to lead a different coalition, and that coalition will have to represent something quite distinct from Milei’s policies. Will they, in the end, pursue the same policies as Cristina Fernández de Kirchner or Néstor Kirchner? Probably not. They would probably have to find a different policy. But I would expect a change in the next two to four years in Argentina’s economic policy.
In an in-depth and sobering interview with the ECPS, Princeton historian Professor Sean Wilentz warns that the United States has moved “beyond a constitutional crisis” into a state of “constitutional failure.” He argues that the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling has “turned the presidency into a potential hotbed of criminality,” effectively dismantling the rule of law. “We’re no longer living in a truly democratic regime,” he cautions. Linking America’s democratic decline to a “highly coordinated global problem emanating from Moscow,” Professor Wilentz calls for a “democracy international” to counter what he terms a “tyranny international.” Despite his grim assessment, he expresses cautious faith that “most Americans will vindicate America itself” before it is too late.
In a sobering and wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Sean Wilentz, one of America’s most prominent historians and the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University, delivers a stark assessment of the United States’ political trajectory under Donald Trump’s renewed presidency. “We’re no longer living in a truly democratic regime,” he warns, adding that “we’re no longer living under the rule of law, that’s for sure.”
Tracing the roots of this democratic unraveling, Professor Wilentz argues that the United States has moved beyond a constitutional crisis into what he calls “constitutional failure.” In his words, “The Constitution has failed to withstand the attacks upon it that are undermining certain basic American values and basic American rights.” At the center of this failure, he identifies the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling—an “extraordinary” and “completely invented”doctrine that grants the president near-total impunity for acts committed in office. The decision, he contends, “fundamentally changed the character of the federal government,” turning the presidency “into a potential hotbed of criminality.”
For Professor Wilentz, this crisis is not merely legal or institutional but global in scope. He situates America’s democratic backsliding within a “highly coordinated global problem” emanating from Moscow. “You lift the lid and you see Putin’s influence everywhere—whether it’s Marine Le Pen or others, there he is. And certainly in the case of Trump… there are strong intimations that this is what’s happening.” He describes this network as a “tyranny international”—a transnational front of illiberal collaboration linking figures like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Donald Trump. To counter it, Professor Wilentz calls for a “democracy international” built on solidarity among democratic societies: “We can no longer afford to be divided… We have to think of this as something like an NGO, perhaps—a movement, an expression of something we’ve never needed before, but now, we truly do.”
Throughout the interview, Professor Wilentz situates Trumpism within a long American tradition of minority rule and reactionary politics, connecting today’s populist-authoritarian coalition to the legacies of Reconstruction’s overthrow and the racialized backlash against the Voting Rights Act. Yet, he also stresses the unprecedented nature of the current moment: “What we’re seeing today is unparalleled in American history… the authoritarians, the reactionaries, have actually taken power and are holding it.”
Still, despite his grim diagnosis, Professor Wilentz insists on retaining a measure of faith in the endurance of democratic habits. “It’s an enormous test,” he concedes, “but I still believe most Americans will vindicate America itself.”
This interview stands as one of the most forceful scholarly warnings yet about the erosion of democracy in the United States—and the urgent need for a coordinated, global democratic response.
In this thought-provoking commentary, Dr. João Ferreira Dias argues that the dominant ideology underpinning contemporary right-wing movements is not populism or illiberalism, but nativism—a worldview centered on defending the “native” population against perceived external and internal threats. Drawing on theorists such as Cas Mudde, Ernesto Laclau, and Fareed Zakaria, Dr. Dias shows that while populism offers the form of political antagonism (“the people” versus “the elites”), nativism provides its substance: the protection of cultural and demographic identity against globalization and multiculturalism. Dr. Dias concludes that nativism’s emotional and existential appeal—rooted in fear of the “other” and longing for cultural homogeneity—has achieved social hegemony across much of the West.
We often speak of populism, the radical right, or illiberalism. Yet, to truly understand the rise and entrenchment of the contemporary right, we may need to shift our analytical lens toward nativism. What unites right-wing populist leaders with individuals such as Mr. Armando, the bakery owner; Ms. Aurora, a civil servant; Uncle Venâncio, a retiree; or José Maria, a private school student, is not a coherent philosophical conception of the state. It is something more elemental and psychological: the belief that globalization and multiculturalism—especially in the form of immigration—are dismantling national identities.
When radical right-wing populism first emerged, it proved difficult to classify. While it drew from the Nouvelle Droite (Taguieff, 1993), it also contained a performative, mobilizing dimension, and a radicalism based on the division of society into “us” and “them.”
Cas Mudde (2007), a leading scholar in the field, defined this populism as a “thin-centered ideology,” rooted in the binary logic of “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elites.” Ernesto Laclau (2005), in contrast, identified populism as a political logic—a way of constructing the political—rather than a specific ideological content.
Generally, the radical right populism of recent decades rests on a threefold structure: (i) the moral division between the “pure people” and the “corrupt elites”; (ii) the defense of national identity against multiculturalism; and (iii) the combat against the political left, viewed as conspiring against Western values and the traditional family.
From a governmentality perspective, Fareed Zakaria (1997) introduced the concept of “illiberal democracy” to describe regimes that maintain electoral institutions while eroding liberal principles: consolidating power in a charismatic executive, weakening checks and balances, politicizing the judiciary, and overriding constitutional limits in the name of majority will.
However, illiberalism, in my view, is either inextricably tied to the radical right, or it remains conceptually ambiguous. In fact, the radical left also exhibits illiberal tendencies—engaging in practices such as censorship or moral cancellation—but in favor of minorities and a coercive form of progressive social purification, rather than a majoritarian ethos. This suggests that illiberalism is not exclusive to the right, nor is it sufficient to describe its ideological nucleus.
The term nativism, although first used in 19th-century America to describe anti-immigration movements such as the Know Nothings or the Ku Klux Klan, reemerged in modern academic discourse in the 1950s, particularly through John Higham’s Strangers in the Land (1955). In that work, Higham captures the sense of alienation experienced by native populations facing rapid demographic and cultural transformation.
In the 1990s, as scholarly attention to populism intensified, Paul Taggart and Hans-Georg Betz argued that modern right-wing populism was characterized by a fusion of three elements: populism, nativism, and authoritarianism (Betz, 1994; Taggart, 2000). In the following decade, Cas Mudde (2007) identified nativism as the core ideology of these parties, and populism as their political form. Later refinements clarified this conceptual division: populism provides the structure—the antagonism between “the people” and “the elites”—while nativism offers the content, namely the opposition between natives and foreigners (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017).
This clarification substantiates the central argument of this essay: that nativism should be analyzed as an ideology. Let us consider why.
First, the populist discourse of “us” versus “them” is not exclusive to the radical right. It is equally present on the radical left, which often constructs a similar dichotomy between “the people” and “the elites,” or between the “majority” and “minorities.” The difference lies in the subject being defended and the identity politics at play, rather than in the structure of the discourse.
Second, the radical right is not uniformly illiberal. It exhibits significant internal variation. Many such parties and movements are illiberal with respect to morality—advocating traditionalist or exclusionary cultural values—while remaining economically liberal. Others, though equally illiberal in terms of cultural values (a sine qua non), adopt statist economic models, defending welfare policies but restricting their benefits to the native population. Thus, illiberalism is not a constant across the radical right, but nativism is. It constitutes the shared ideological foundation that allows for otherwise divergent policy positions.
This is why it may be more accurate and analytically fruitful to define these movements simply as nativist, and their ideology as nativism. This classification applies to both political elites and voters alike.
At its core, the ideology’s resonance lies in the perceived demographic threat, most radically articulated in Renaud Camus’ “Great Replacement” theory. This idea has circulated widely, in varying intensities and local adaptations, across Western societies. As native populations decline demographically—due to lower birth rates—and immigration brings culturally distinct newcomers, a so-called “perfect demographic storm” is formed: the “demographic winter” of the native population collides with the “demographic summer” of incoming groups.
The result is a growing sense of existential threat, particularly toward Muslim immigrants, who are seen as both culturally incompatible and demographically ascendant. This sense of threat fuels resentment toward multiculturalism and the progressive left, which is often held responsible for promoting it. What emerges is a feeling of estrangement in one’s own homeland—a central affective dimension of modern nativism.
In sum, the ideology that has achieved social hegemony in many Western societies today is best understood not as populism or illiberalism, but as nativism: a worldview centered on the defense of the native population’s perceived interests, identity, and territorial integrity. Those who support nativist movements are not primarily mobilized by economic platforms, but by a profound distrust of the “other.” This “other” is not necessarily blamed for stealing jobs, but for competing for scarce welfare resources—access to schools, healthcare, housing—or even for altering the cultural landscape of spaces that once symbolized familiarity and social cohesion.
Biology reminds us that the presence of the “other” is often the most basic trigger in the formation of the “we.” Thus, what we are witnessing is not merely populism or illiberalism, but nativism at its core—an instinctive social reaction which, when politicized, seeks to defend what is perceived as the homeland (the nation) and protect those considered its rightful heirs.
References
Betz, H.-G. (1994). Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe. Palgrave Macmillan.
Higham, J. (1955). Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925. Rutgers University Press.
Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. Verso.
Mudde, C. (2007). Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge University Press.
Mudde, C., & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017). Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Taggart, P. (2000). Populism. Open University Press.
Taguieff, P. A. (1993). Origines et métamorphoses de la nouvelle droite. Vingtieme siecle. Revue d’histoire, 3-22.
Zakaria, F. (1997). The Rise of Illiberal Democracy. Foreign Affairs, 76(6), 22–43.
In a wide-ranging interview with the ECPS, Dr. Mariana Sendra, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Deusto, examines the endurance and contradictions of Javier Milei’s populist-neoliberal experiment in Argentina. She interprets Milei’s strong midterm showing as “an endorsement of his government—but not a blank check,” warning that he and his followers “might interpret this electoral support as a green light to override institutional constraints.” Dr. Sendra highlights the exhaustion of Peronism, the influence of US backing, and Milei’s alignment with transnational far-right networks. While his administration remains formally democratic, she cautions that Argentina’s “democratic coexistence” is under pressure from rising intolerance and exclusion, calling on observers to “remain vigilant.”
In the wake of Argentina’s pivotal midterm elections—widely regarded as a referendum on President Javier Milei’s two years in office—Dr. Mariana Sendra, Postdoctoral Researcher in Social and Human Sciences at the University of Deusto, offers a penetrating analysis of Argentina’s evolving political landscape in her interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS).
Dr. Sendra explains that Milei’s strong electoral performance, with La Libertad Avanza securing over 40 percent of the national vote, can be seen as “an endorsement of Milei’s government and of the future reforms that at least part of society considers necessary.” Yet, she cautions, “this is not, of course, a blank check for Milei.” According to her, many voters sought to avert economic instability following US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s suggestion that Washington’s financial support might be withdrawn if Milei performed poorly.
In assessing the opposition’s weakness, Dr. Sendra highlights the exhaustion of Peronism and its credibility crisis. After years of alternating rule and recurring scandals, “the movement does not have the legitimacy to point out Milei’s own mistakes,” she notes, arguing that “people simply do not see them as a credible alternative.”
The interview delves into Milei’s fusion of radical market liberalism and populist rhetoric, a dynamic Dr. Sendra explored in her co-authored study “Is Milei a Populist?” She calls this a conceptual “puzzle,” since neoliberalism “dismantles the idea of ‘the people’ as a collective subject,” whereas populism depends on it. Milei, she observes, reframes the shrinking of the state “not as a loss, but as a way to make room for individual initiative.”
Addressing Milei’s international alignments, Dr. Sendra underscores the significance of “the Trump factor” and US financial intervention, which she describes as “a form of foreign interference.” However, she distinguishes Milei from nativist far-right leaders, arguing that “his ideology is not nativist” but rooted in a nostalgic vision of Argentina’s 19th-century prosperity.
At the institutional level, Dr. Sendra warns that Milei’s growing concentration of power and confrontational leadership style could erode democratic safeguards. “Milei and his followers might interpret this electoral support as a green light—or a kind of blank check—to override institutional constraints,” she cautions. Still, she notes that Argentinian civil society and political elites retain “the institutional resources to push back if he crosses certain lines.”
Looking ahead, Dr. Sendra predicts that Milei’s model could endure if inflation continues to decline and middle-class sectors remain shielded from austerity. Yet she foresees long-term risks: “His policies will produce inequality and exclusion,” she concludes, “but we will see that in the long term.”
On 21 October 2025, the ECPS, in partnership with Oxfam Intermón and Qalia, held the UNTOLD Europe Workshop on Migration Narratives at the Residence Palace in Brussels. Titled “The Impact of Colonial Legacies on European Migration Policies,” the event gathered scholars, journalists, and activists to examine how historical hierarchies continue to shape European migration discourses and governance. Panels led by Maria Jesús Zambrana Vega, Prof. Ilhan Kaya, and Dr. Reda Majahar, among others, explored the politics of representation, power asymmetries in knowledge production, and decolonial approaches to migration policy. The workshop concluded with group discussions emphasizing the need to decolonize migration narratives, amplify migrant voices, and promote inclusive, rights-based policy frameworks across Europe.
Participants engage in a panel discussion during the UNTOLD Europe Workshop on Migration Narratives, held at the Residence Palace in Brussels on October 21, 2025. Photo: Umit Vurel.
Reported by ECPS Staff
On 21 October 2025, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), in collaboration with Oxfam Intermón and Qalia, hosted the UNTOLD Europe Workshop on Migration Narratives at the Residence Palace in Brussels. The event, titled “The Impact of Colonial Legacies on European Migration Policies,” brought together scholars, journalists, civil society representatives, and activists to critically examine how historical hierarchies and colonial frameworks continue to influence migration discourses and policy across Europe.
The workshop opened with welcoming remarks from the project partners, followed by Maria Jesús Zambrana Vega, Project Coordinator at Oxfam Intermón, who presented the goals and structure of the UNTOLD Europe Project. She highlighted the project’s mission to uncover the enduring impact of colonial histories on European migration governance and to promote inclusive, rights-based narratives.
The introductory panel, “Who Tells the Story? Power, Perspective, and the Politics of Migration,” explored the intersection of history, power, and representation in shaping migration narratives. Professor Ilhan Kaya (Ghent University) discussed the importance of reclaiming the “right to tell” within European contexts, emphasizing memory and agency in migration storytelling. Journalist Nawab Khan reflected on the shortcomings of EU migration policy in his talk, “Why the EU Migration Policy Has Failed Till Now?”, Doctoral ResearcherMarwa Neji (Ghent University) examined power asymmetries in knowledge production, while Ahsen Ayhan (Solidarity With Others) discussed the emotional and gendered dimensions of displacement in “Home We (Can’t) Carry: Migration, Gender and the Politics of Inclusion.”
The second session, “Migration Experiences – Voices and Perspectives,” foregrounded personal testimonies and lived experiences. Professor Ilias Ciloglu shared “My Personal Journey of Building a New Life in Belgium from the Ground Up,” while Becky Slack (Your Agenda) addressed the media’s role in framing migration and gender. Dr Reda Majahar (University of Antwerpen) critically examined “Global North–South Hierarchies in Refugee Research under European Funding Regimes.”Katerina Kočkovska Šetinc (Peace Institute Slovenia) and Mojca Harmandić (Pandora’s Path Institute) reflected on integration and systemic barriers in their speech “In Between Journeys and Belonging: Intersections of Migration, Integration, Support, and Systemic Barriers in Slovenia.”
After lunch, participants turned to comparative perspectives in the Country Case Studies session. Presentations explored how colonial logics inform contemporary migration frameworks: Andriana Cosciug (Romania), César Santamaría Galán (Spain), Fouzia Assouli (Morocco), and Anissa Thabet (Tunisia) each presented on their respective contexts.
The final part of the workshop was dedicated to interactive case study discussions. Participants, divided into small groups, analyzed country-specific materials and collaboratively developed alternative framings for migration narratives. They identified recurring colonial logics in European migration management, discussed missing voices, and drafted practical recommendations for EU policymakers.
Participants engage in interactive group discussions during the final session of the UNTOLD Europe Workshop on Migration Narratives, held at the Residence Palace in Brussels on October 21, 2025. Photo: Umit Vurel.
The workshop concluded with group presentations and a lively plenary discussion. Participants emphasized the need to decolonize policy discourses, amplify migrant and gendered perspectives, and foster communication strategies rooted in equality and human rights.
ECPS Early Career Research Network (ECRN) member Neo Sithole contributes to the final plenary discussion during the UNTOLD Europe Workshop on Migration Narratives, held at the Residence Palace in Brussels on October 21, 2025. Photo: Umit Vurel.
The UNTOLD Europe Workshop offered a rich space for cross-sectoral dialogue, combining critical academic insights with creative and policy-oriented reflection. As part of the broader UNTOLD Europe Project, the event marked an important step toward reimagining how Europe narrates migration—beyond colonial legacies and toward inclusive, humane, and forward-looking policy frameworks.
Group photo of participants at the UNTOLD Europe Workshop on Migration Narratives, held at the Residence Palace in Brussels on October 21, 2025. Photo: Umit Vurel.
On October 23, 2025, Deakin University hosted the International Conference on “Bureaucratic Populism: Military, Judiciary, and Institutional Politics” at Deakin Downtown, Melbourne, in collaboration with the Deakin Institute for Citizenship & Globalisation, the Deakin Digital Life Lab, POLIS, and the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). The event convened leading scholars from across the globe to examine how unelected state institutions—from militaries to judiciaries—adopt populist idioms to claim legitimacy “in the name of the people.” Opening the conference, Professor Simon Tormey reflected on the indeterminacy of populism as both ideology and style, while Dr. Nicholas Morieson’s keynote advanced a framework distinguishing between populism’s exogenous capture and endogenous discourse. Through three thematic panels, participants explored how bureaucratic, military, and judicial populisms reshape governance, authority, and democratic accountability worldwide.
On October 23, 2025, scholars, researchers, and practitioners from around the world convened both in person at Deakin Downtown, Melbourne, and online via Zoom for the International Conference on “Bureaucratic Populism: Military, Judiciary, and Institutional Politics.”Jointly organized by Deakin University, the Deakin Institute for Citizenship & Globalisation, the Deakin Digital Life Lab, POLIS (Politics & International Studies), and the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), the event brought together comparative, theoretical, and empirical perspectives to interrogate the rise of populism within unelected state institutions.
The conference opened with welcoming remarks from Professor Simon Tormey, who acknowledged the Wurundjeri people as the traditional custodians of the land and extended respect to Elders past, present, and emerging. In his opening speech, Professor Tormey reflected on the evolving state of populism research from a political theorist’s perspective, highlighting the fluidity and indeterminacy of the term. He traced conceptual approaches—from Cas Mudde’s ideological framing to Margaret Canovan’s notion of “the people” and Ernesto Laclau’s discourse-based theory—while raising critical questions about the nature of populism in bureaucratic and technocratic settings. Professor Tormey proposed that populism, far from a fixed ideology, operates as a style or mode of political communication that traverses both elected and unelected institutions.
Setting the intellectual tone for the day, Professor Tormey argued that the enduring puzzle in populism studies lies in its conceptual elasticity—its ability to appear simultaneously as a critique of power and a mode of authoritarian legitimation. He invited participants to consider whether bureaucracies and technocracies, often viewed as non-populist domains, might themselves harbor populist impulses—mobilizing claims to “the people” to defend authority, moral order, or institutional sovereignty.
Following the opening address, Dr. Nicholas Morieson delivered the keynote speech, presenting the conference’s concept paper on bureaucratic populism. His framework identified two faces of the phenomenon: exogenous capture, where populist leaders co-opt bureaucratic, judicial, or military institutions to serve partisan ends; and endogenous discourse, where institutions themselves adopt populist rhetoric, positioning their interventions as expressions of popular will against corrupt elites. Dr. Morieson demonstrated how this dual dynamic blurs the boundary between populism and guardianism, enabling unelected institutions to assert custodial power in the name of “the people.”
Through comparative analysis of cases in Brazil, Indonesia, and Pakistan, Dr. Morieson illustrated how militaries and judiciaries invoke democratic legitimacy while constraining popular sovereignty. His address underscored the need for a discourse-centered approach to detect when bureaucratic language shifts from technocratic neutrality to populist moralization—an analytical challenge of growing global relevance.
With panels devoted to bureaucratic, military, and judicial populism, the conference offered a vital forum for exploring how populist logics travel across state institutions and reshape democratic governance. As Professor Tormey aptly noted, the day’s discussions would not only deepen understanding of populism’s multiple faces but also probe one of the most pressing questions of our time: how the very institutions meant to safeguard democracy may increasingly speak—and act—in the name of the people.
Panel 1 – Bureaucratic Populism and its Implications
Paper 1:“No Public Service, No Democracy. Why Populist Administrations are Dismantling the Professional Public Service,” byMark Duckworth (Co-Director of the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies; a Senior Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation).
Paper 2:“A Different Populism: Anglophone, New World, Frontier,” byProfessor Stephen Alomes (Adjunct Associate Professor at RMIT University).
Paper 3:“Compliance and Capture: Bureaucratic Transformation under Populism in India and Hungary,” by Dr. Nicholas Morieson (Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University).
Paper 4:“Survival, Sovereignty and Destiny: Centralized Power in Putin’s Russia Through Bureaucratic Populism,” by Lachlan Dowling (Student at Deakin University).
Paper 5:“Bureaucratic Populism and Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan: A Study of Institutional Populism and Hybrid Governance,” by Kashif Hussain (PhD candidate in Peace and Development Studies from the University of New England).
Panel 2 – Military Populism in Comparative Perspective
Paper 1:“The Making of a People’s General: Military Populism and the Discursive Legacy of Soedirman in Indonesia,” by Hasnan Bachtiar (PhD candidate at Deakin University), Azhar Syahida (A Researcher at the Center of Reform on Economics (CORE) Indonesia)& Ahalla Tsauro (PhD student at Université Laval, Canada).
Paper 2:“Military Populism in Egypt, Pakistan, and Thailand: An Empirical Analysis,” by Muhammad Omer (PhD Candidate in Political Science at the Deakin University).
Paper 3:“The Re-Emergence of Military-Populist Governance in Indonesia under Prabowo Subianto,” by Wasisto Raharjo Jati (A Researcher at the Center for Politics within Indonesia’s BRIN (National Research and Innovation Agency) in Jakarta).
Paper 4:“Militarized Populism and the Language of Conflict: A Discourse-Historical Analysis of the India–Pakistan May 2025 Standoff,” by Dr. Waqasia Naeem (Associate Professor in School of English at Minhaj University Lahore).
Paper 5:“Hybrid Regimes and Populist Leaders: A Case Study of Imran Khan’s Trajectory from Parliament to Prison,” byFaiza Idrees (Independent Researcher from Pakistan) & Muhammad Rizwan (PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University).
Panel 3 – Judicial Populism and Competing Narratives of Authority
Paper 1:“How can courts be populist?” by Mátyás Bencze (Former Judge and a Professor of Law at the Universities of Szeged and Győr, Hungary).
Paper 2:“Judging the State of Exception: The Judiciary in the Israeli Populist Project,” by Dr.Elliot Dolan-Evans(Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Monash University).
Paper 3:“Judicial Populism in Pakistan: Discourse and Authority in the Panama Papers Judgments,” by Muhammad Omer (PhD Candidate in Political Science at the Deakin University) & Prof. Ihsan Yilmaz (Research Professor of Political Science and International Relations, and Chair of Islamic Studies at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI), Deakin University).
Paper 4:“Populism and the Noxious Relationship Between Political and Intelligence Elites in Post-Communist Czechia, Slovakia, and Romania,” by Bohuslav Pernica (Lieutenant colonel (ret.), co-editor of the White Paper on Defence, Czechia) & Emilia Șercan (Assistant Professor in the Journalism Department at the University of Bucharest).
Paper 5:“Competing Populisms in Pakistan: Politicians’ Anti-Military Narratives and Bureaucratic Counter-Narratives,” byZaffar Manzoor (MPhil Scholar at the Department of English Linguistics and Literature, Riphah International University Islamabad, Pakistan) & Dr. Muhammad Shaban Rafi (Professor of English at Riphah International University Lahore, Pakistan).
In an in-depth and sobering interview with the ECPS, Princeton historian Professor Sean Wilentz warns that the United States has moved “beyond a constitutional crisis” into a state of “constitutional failure.” He argues that the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling has “turned the presidency into a potential hotbed of criminality,” effectively dismantling the rule of law. “We’re no longer living in a truly democratic regime,” he cautions. Linking America’s democratic decline to a “highly coordinated global problem emanating from Moscow,” Professor Wilentz calls for a “democracy international” to counter what he terms a “tyranny international.” Despite his grim assessment, he expresses cautious faith that “most Americans will vindicate America itself” before it is too late.
In a sobering and wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Sean Wilentz, one of America’s most prominent historians and the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University, delivers a stark assessment of the United States’ political trajectory under Donald Trump’s renewed presidency. “We’re no longer living in a truly democratic regime,” he warns, adding that “we’re no longer living under the rule of law, that’s for sure.”
Tracing the roots of this democratic unraveling, Professor Wilentz argues that the United States has moved beyond a constitutional crisis into what he calls “constitutional failure.” In his words, “The Constitution has failed to withstand the attacks upon it that are undermining certain basic American values and basic American rights.” At the center of this failure, he identifies the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling—an “extraordinary” and “completely invented”doctrine that grants the president near-total impunity for acts committed in office. The decision, he contends, “fundamentally changed the character of the federal government,” turning the presidency “into a potential hotbed of criminality.”
For Professor Wilentz, this crisis is not merely legal or institutional but global in scope. He situates America’s democratic backsliding within a “highly coordinated global problem” emanating from Moscow. “You lift the lid and you see Putin’s influence everywhere—whether it’s Marine Le Pen or others, there he is. And certainly in the case of Trump… there are strong intimations that this is what’s happening.” He describes this network as a “tyranny international”—a transnational front of illiberal collaboration linking figures like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Donald Trump. To counter it, Professor Wilentz calls for a “democracy international” built on solidarity among democratic societies: “We can no longer afford to be divided… We have to think of this as something like an NGO, perhaps—a movement, an expression of something we’ve never needed before, but now, we truly do.”
Throughout the interview, Professor Wilentz situates Trumpism within a long American tradition of minority rule and reactionary politics, connecting today’s populist-authoritarian coalition to the legacies of Reconstruction’s overthrow and the racialized backlash against the Voting Rights Act. Yet, he also stresses the unprecedented nature of the current moment: “What we’re seeing today is unparalleled in American history… the authoritarians, the reactionaries, have actually taken power and are holding it.”
Still, despite his grim diagnosis, Professor Wilentz insists on retaining a measure of faith in the endurance of democratic habits. “It’s an enormous test,” he concedes, “but I still believe most Americans will vindicate America itself.”
This interview stands as one of the most forceful scholarly warnings yet about the erosion of democracy in the United States—and the urgent need for a coordinated, global democratic response.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Sean Wilentz, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
What We’re Seeing Today Is Unparalleled in American History
Model of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment (First Black Regiment) Civil War Monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, dedicated in 1847. National Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Photo: William Perry.
Professor Sean Wilentz, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let’s start right away with the first question: As a historian of American democracy who has closely tracked the Trump presidency, how do you assess the current political moment in the United States—particularly the resurgence of Trumpism in 2025—within a broader global pattern of populist and authoritarian movements? What parallels or divergences do you observe between the American case and the democratic backsliding seen elsewhere?
Professor Sean Wilentz: That’s a very good question. First of all, as an American historian, as well as an American, what we’re seeing today is unparalleled in American history. There’s been nothing like it. The closest comparison you could make is the Confederate secession over slavery that led to the Civil War—which is not, of course, a happy example or a happy parallel. But it’s also different, because here you don’t see a secession; you see the authoritarians, the reactionaries, actually taking power and holding it. They don’t have to secede to get it.
And yes, it’s frightening. There are certain direct connections to what’s going on in Europe. Some of the people who have been most instrumental in pushing the authoritarian aspect of this have had very close connections with Viktor Orbán in Hungary—actually spending time in Budapest learning how to transform a country into a kind of authoritarian regime, much like what we’re seeing Trump try to do here, and in many ways succeeding.
What strikes me most is how rapidly this has all occurred. It’s true that Trump had his first administration, which was then interrupted by the Biden interregnum. Nevertheless, since January (2025), it’s been stunning how quickly he has gone about dismantling basic American institutions and the rule of law—with the aid of the Supreme Court of the United States as well.
I can’t think of anything comparable, apart from the generalized populist wave you mentioned—a kind of revolutionary current running through the West. It’s present in every country to some degree. Nevertheless, the United States is different, and it’s happening here with remarkable speed. Because of America’s unique place in the world, that makes it all the more frightening for everyone else.
Trump Has Brought Violence to the Very Center of His Political Machinery
Donald Trump at rally in support of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach who is the Republican candidate for governor in Topeka Kansas, USA on October 6, 2018. Photo: Mark Reinstein
In your recent comments, you warned that Trump and his circle act as though “provoking and inflicting violence” are integral to their politics. How do you interpret this in light of your historical understanding of political violence as a state and populist strategy in the US?
Professor Sean Wilentz: I mean violence has always been at the forefront of American life and American politics. The best example I can think of is what happened in the 19th century, when the Union had won the Civil War and slavery was abolished. There were efforts to adjust the political system—particularly in the South—to the reality of freedom for the formerly enslaved. A period called Reconstruction was entered into, which was a kind of revolution in American democracy, expanding its possibilities to include people who had been enslaved.
That effort was undone. It was overthrown, and it was overthrown violently by groups—you may know some of the names. The Ku Klux Klan is the most famous of them—but they used violence strategically, in concert with political leaders. It wasn’t just the hoi polloi out there burning crosses and attacking people. It was very much coordinated with political elites. Violence was at the forefront of it, and without it, the effort to destroy Reconstruction would not have succeeded.
Now, we’re not seeing the same kind of systematic violence, but there’s a great deal of it—and it’s mostly being deployed by the government itself. It’s the unleashing of agencies like ICE—the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency—which has been rounding up people on the streets. It’s the presence of national troops, the National Guard, in American cities, which in itself is an act of violence just to have them there. It creates the atmosphere, the feel, of martial law—and that is what the administration is trying to encourage or build up.
So yes, violence is very much present. The climate of opinion is completely permeated by this atmosphere of violence and potential violence, almost all of it coming from the government itself. There was the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which was a very strange episode—because who knows exactly who did it. It doesn’t seem to have been particularly politically motivated, but that, of course, becomes a means for the administration to turn him into a martyr right away—a martyr for their own cause—and to use that as a pretext to further suppress, or threaten to suppress, the opposition in all kinds of ways. So that’s violence of a different kind, but it nevertheless lies at the heart of what’s going on right now. They’ve brought it to the very center of their political machinery.
The Court’s Immunity Ruling Paved the Way for Authoritarian Rule
Your essay “The ‘Dred Scott’ of Our Time” draws parallels between the current Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision and the 1857 Dred Scott case. Could you expand on how this analogy helps us understand the Court’s transformation of constitutional meaning in the Trump era?
Professor Sean Wilentz: Just to fill in, the Dred Scott decision of 1857 was a very important one in American history—perhaps the most important until now, or at least the most notorious. The then–Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger Taney, wrote a decision in which he basically said that the government could do nothing to prevent the spread of slavery into the territories of the United States, that slaves were property according to the Constitution, and then went on to declare that Black people had no rights which white people were bound to respect.
It was a notorious decision because it was—ironically—based on the method we now associate with so-called originalism: going back to the framers of the Constitution, interpreting what they said and meant, and then coming up with your own, essentially distorted, idea of their intentions. That was certainly the case with Roger Taney, and it played a fundamental role in hastening the coming of the American Civil War.
So that’s why it was so notorious. Now, what we see in the current Court is somewhat different. It’s interesting—they claim to be originalists, much as Roger Taney was an originalist, which is a kind of bogus judicial theory. But what they have done is to give the president absolute immunity from criminal action for anything he does in office, so long as he can describe it as an official act.
That, in many ways, is a more dangerous decision than Dred Scott, because it grants the president extraordinary power to do all the kinds of things that Trump is doing now. The decision was just as threadbare, just as weak, just as poorly reasoned as Taney’s ruling. But unlike Taney’s decision, it simply invented things—there is no constitutional basis whatsoever for that immunity ruling.
They simply asserted the need for presidential authority and did so in such a sweeping way that it has paved the way for what we’re seeing now. I liken the two because both were dramatic decisions that changed the character of the political situation—decisions that, in the first case, led to Civil War, and in the second, I hope will not, but that have nonetheless had a comparably destabilizing effect.
Both are, to put it plainly, intellectually barren and corrupt—beneath contempt, really—for anyone who studies these matters seriously as a question of law. And the fact that the Supreme Court has gotten away with this is another example of what we’re up against, because it’s not simply coming from the White House—it’s also coming from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, from a supine Congress and a complicit Supreme Court.
What We’re Seeing Is Not a Crisis but a Constitutional Collapse
The US Supreme Court building at dusk, Washington, DC. Photo: Gary Blakeley.
You have described the immunity rulings and the Supreme Court’s handling of the Fourteenth Amendment as “a historic abdication,” arguing in“The Constitution Turned Upside Down”and“A Historic Abdication”that the Court has effectively inverted the amendment’s logic. Do you believe this moment represents a constitutional breaking point—or a severe but reversible deviation—and what does this inversion reveal about the evolving relationship between federalism, judicial power, and democratic accountability?
Professor Sean Wilentz: I’m a historian and I don’t want to predict, but there’s no question that this is a fundamental break with what constitutional precedent has been. And it’s kind of draped around a particular theory, which is not originalism, which was there before, but this idea of the unitary executive. The unitary executive is another kind of right-wing, fake philosophical or judicial principle, which says that basically the president can do whatever he wants in administering the executive branch, including interfering with agencies that have been established by Congress, not by the executive, to administer the laws that Congress has passed and the president has signed.
This is, again, another break from what has been present in the United States for centuries. This is something completely novel, and it’s something extremely destructive. So, to that extent that originalism helped bring us some of the more cockeyed decisions that we’ve seen over the last 20 years even—this theory now has thrown the Constitution up for grabs as to what the Constitution actually means. It no longer has the stability that it had before. Things are very unstable with this Court.
There was another point that I wanted to make regarding the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment is a crucial document in American history. It was one of the Reconstruction Amendments—I was earlier talking about the Reconstruction period in American history—that involved the passage of three basic amendments: the abolition of slavery under the Thirteenth Amendment, the guarantee of equal protection under the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment, and then the guarantee of suffrage rights in the Fifteenth Amendment.
The Fourteenth Amendment came up for discussion when the state of Colorado wanted to keep Trump off the ticket in 2024 because he had engaged in insurrection on January 6th. In the aftermath of the Civil War, in the Fourteenth Amendment, there’s a section that said quite explicitly that anyone who had engaged in an insurrection against the government of the United States should be ineligible for any future office, both state and federal.
It couldn’t have been plainer, couldn’t have been clearer. And the fact that Trump had engaged in the insurrection meant that states control election laws—this gets back to the federalism issue. The states control who gets to be on the ballot in their particular state and who doesn’t. It’s not a national decision. Colorado perfectly had the right to do so. The Colorado courts, the Supreme Court, decided that Trump had engaged in insurrection and therefore he was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court Has Dismantled the Foundation of American Citizenship
What the Supreme Court did was basically gut the Fourteenth Amendment. It came up with this completely—I won’t go into details; it’ll bore your listeners—but a bogus explanation for why the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment should not be adhered to, and basically let Trump stay on the ballot. It then went even further in basically saying that in order to have anything like this happen, Congress would have to pass a law to enact the amendment into effect. Because Congress had not done so, therefore the amendment was not in effect.
This is an extremely dangerous way of looking at these important amendments, because by that logic, slavery has never actually been abolished in the United States, because Congress never passed a law to enact the Thirteenth Amendment. Now, that’s an extreme way of looking at it, but we’re in extreme times. Let me make that clear to everyone. I don’t think that slavery is about to be brought back to the United States, but nevertheless, the logic of their decision was one where that would have been possible.
So the Constitution—and especially those amendments, the Fourteenth Amendment in particular, which was kind of the linchpin of what one historian has called the “Second Founding”, the post-slavery founding—involved not just the rights of the freed former slaves being protected and expanded, but, more generally, rights being extended to the American people as a whole, because the revolution that got rid of slavery was revolutionizing the entire idea of American citizenship.
Which brings me to my final point, which is that another feature of the Fourteenth Amendment was what we call birthright citizenship, which stated that anyone who was born in the United States is automatically a citizen of the United States. This was a way to protect the rights of the former slaves, to be sure, but it also—and this was explicitly stated by the people who framed this amendment at the time—meant that anyone from around the world, in this asylum of freedom that the United States is supposed to be, who is born here, is actually a citizen here.
The Supreme Court is on the brink of getting rid of that—of nullifying it, or severely modifying it—to say that if you’re here illegally, or you don’t have the proper papers, therefore you’re not a citizen. This is a complete gutting of what the Fourteenth Amendment was all about.
So, in these ways, yes, it’s a constitutional crisis—but it’s beyond a constitutional crisis. We’re now in a case of constitutional failure. The Constitution has failed to withstand the attacks upon it that are undermining certain basic American values and basic American rights.
The Supreme Court Has Turned the Presidency into a Hotbed of Criminality
White House captured from the south side. Photo: Dreamstime.
In your writings on “The Immunity Con,” you suggest that legal arguments for presidential immunity constitute a deliberate distortion of constitutional tradition. How do you assess the intellectual and political origins of this distortion?
Professor Sean Wilentz: Ideological zealotry and a kind of—I don’t want to say corruption in the sense of people being bought off or something—but a kind of intellectual corruption, aimed at creating a different kind of political order. These are the hard-line conservatives on the Court—Justices Thomas and Alito, and to a certain extent, Justice Gorsuch. They hold a very radical view of what the United States ought to look like—a radical, reactionary view—and they are imposing it. They have enough support from the rest of the Court—Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh—to prevail. This is something they believe reflects the framers’ intent, but it is, in fact, a fundamental departure from it.
The immunity decision, as I said, is not based on any constitutional principle whatsoever. It’s completely made up—out of thin air—and it has fundamentally changed the character of the federal government. If you have a three-branch government that’s supposed to be based on checks and balances—in other words, the president is not all-powerful; his powers can be checked by Congress and by the Supreme Court, and vice versa—it’s a system very delicately designed to prevent the kind of tyranny and demagoguery we’re seeing now, to ensure that no one can be all-powerful.
They have found a way because they have a supine Congress—a Congress that will never defy the maximum leader, Trump—and a Supreme Court that’s going along with it for its own reasons. So we end up with something like the immunity decision, which gives the president, as I said, virtually complete power—to the extent that, as came up in opening arguments in the case, if the president deemed it an official action to assassinate one of his political rivals, he could not be prosecuted for that crime. That’s extraordinary by any stretch of the imagination in a Western democracy—that you can literally murder your political opponents because you consider it an official act. That’s giving away the ballgame. We’re no longer living in a truly democratic regime. We’re no longer living under the rule of law, that’s for sure. And that’s the power the immunity decision gave to the president.
So, quite apart from even the checks and balances, just in terms of the basic ideas of the rule of law, it’s turned the presidency into a potential hotbed of criminality. And depending on who is in the White House, we’re seeing right now how criminality, if given a chance, can metastasize like a cancer.
The Cultural Roots of Trumpism Run Deep
Do you see Trump’s authoritarian populism as primarily a legal-constitutional threat, or as a deeper sociopolitical phenomenon anchored in culture, identity, and media ecosystems?
Professor Sean Wilentz: It’s both. But the cultural underpinnings of this have been around for a very long time. This is part of the broad sweep of American history—forever, really, but certainly since the 1960s. What some of us think of as the advances of the 1960s was a sort of second Reconstruction, if you will, which sought to undo what had gone wrong the first time around and give Blacks in particular—but not just African Americans—equal rights. This is a reaction against that. And it has to do most fundamentally with the issue of voting—trying to repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was a great breakthrough, really an extension of the 15th Amendment, to guarantee Black rights. So the sweep was always there. Those cultural and political aspects have been present for a long time. What’s happened now, though, is that what the Trump people—and the people behind Trump—have done is tap into those resentments, seize power with them, and turn it into a constitutional issue.
Now they’re trying to undermine the Constitution. Before, you had plenty of politicians in the Republican Party in particular—the Democrats had other problems—but the Republican Party especially was tapping into these resentments, which showed up in all kinds of ways: in religious politics, in deregulation politics, in attempts to combine what was a traditional conservative agenda—basically pro-business, low taxes, deregulation, breaking down the New Deal, which was our sort of weak version of social democracy—trying to get rid of that. But now it’s become much more radicalized.
Under Trump, that tapping in is the same; it’s just been heightened because Trump is a demagogue unlike anything we’ve ever had before. We had George Wallace from Alabama, a segregationist racist who ran for president and tapped into similar sentiments, but he didn’t succeed. We’ve had difficult presidents, like Richard Nixon, for example, but even Nixon, for all his excesses, still understood the constitutional order in a very different way than Trump does. Trump has no use for the constitutional order at all. What we’ve seen—just to answer your question again—is that these cultural and social forces essential to Trumpism, though present all along, have now been turned into a true constitutional crisis unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
Minority Rule Is Now the GOP’s Central Strategy
In“The Tyranny of the Minority, from Calhoun to Trump,”you trace a lineage of minority rule in American history. How does Trumpism fit within this long tradition of counter-majoritarian politics, from John C. Calhoun’s antebellum theory to the modern GOP?
Professor Sean Wilentz: The modern GOP has been—this is part of what I was saying earlier about the reaction against the Second Reconstruction. The modern Republican Party managed, under Ronald Reagan, to do an extraordinary thing: to create a national majority that swept to power twice in crushing elections in 1980 and 1984. They believed that they had created a political coalition that would last forever and could never be undone. But it did get undone, and as a result, the Republicans launched a process whereby they realized they were not going to be the majority, so they were going to have to do what they could to install minority rule. In other words, a minority was going to have to rule the country—and how do you go about doing that? In all sorts of ways, even before the current Trump regime, the Republicans had been doing their best to make sure that the minority would rule.
They did so in all kinds of ways, but the most fundamental one was to suppress the vote—by getting rid of the provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and using whatever powers were available to them to redistrict. In the United States, each state gets to draw its own districts—its congressional as well as state legislative districts. And these days, with computers, you can draw those lines very precisely, so that even though a majority might, in fact, be against you, you can draw the lines of the congressional districts and so forth to keep the overall minority in power, having an overwhelming majority of congressional representation. It’s less the case with the presidency, because the presidency is elected in a very different way, but there are ways to suppress the vote there as well. For example, requiring voters to provide all sorts of documentation that they are citizens—something that was never necessary before. Ordinarily, in the United States, you sign up to register to vote, and you get to vote. Now, you’re expected to show all kinds of documents that most students, younger people, minorities, and less well-off people—many of whom are Hispanic and Black—don’t have. They don’t have passports, for example. They don’t have the kinds of documents that are now required in order to vote. These laws have been brought in to make it much more difficult for people to vote, so that, quite apart from redistricting, it’s suppressing democracy. It’s anti-democratic.
These are things that the Republicans have been doing for some time. It’s just that now, under Trump, they’ve been magnified and made even more obvious. In the old days, conservatives running for office would never say they were trying to suppress the vote. Trump is absolutely unashamed about it. He says, “We don’t like Democrats. We think Democrats are communists. We think Democrats are not loyal citizens, and we are against them.” And so they’re not going to make any bones about what they’re doing.
The Normalization of Martial Law Threatens the 2026 Elections
National Guard troops on standby during a downtown protest against expanded ICE operations and in support of immigrant rights in Los Angeles, US on June 8, 2025. Photo: Dreamstime.
What’s truly alarming in the wake of what’s happened recently—we have an election coming up in 2026, what we call our midterm elections: not a presidential election, but the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate, the upper house, are up for re-election. In anticipation of that, there’s been all kinds of wild gerrymandering going on—redrawing of districts to boost the Republican vote. But once you start sending the National Guard into American cities under completely phony pretexts—that crime has gotten out of hand, or that there’s some great mob action going on—it’s all lies. But once you’ve sent troops into American cities, you’re normalizing, in effect, martial law—or the precursor to martial law.
When you think about the fact that an election is coming down the pike in just about a year’s time, you worry about whether this normalization of a military presence in cities is going to be used to try to suppress the vote. Either through the presence of the National Guard in cities—and these are Democratic cities, with large Black populations and liberal white populations—or through the presence of federal or National Guard troops with guns and all of that, as well as ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is rounding up and pulling Hispanic people off the streets and terrorizing them. And you can imagine what they could do in terms of intimidating people from going to the polls. So this goes beyond the more traditional voter suppression that we’ve been used to for a long time and have tried our best to fight.
This now becomes a military or violent situation—suppressing the vote in a way that’s not unlike what I was talking about earlier with Reconstruction and the use of violence then. The Ku Klux Klan, those hooded vigilantes, were most effective in trying to suppress the vote. They didn’t want newly freed Blacks to vote, and so they would intimidate them in all kinds of ways. That’s voter suppression in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Now we’re seeing it in a different form in 2025. And if Trump goes through with what I fear he’ll go through with, then we will not have an honest election in 2026. One thing about Trump is—almost psychological—you can always assume that whatever he is doing, he’s going to accuse you of doing. So if he’s accusing you of rigging elections, you can be sure that he’s trying to rig an election. If he’s accusing you of voter suppression, you can be sure that he’s intending voter suppression. This is not just a psychological tic; this is, in fact, how he operates in many ways. He does something and then accuses you of having done it. Which makes me all the more nervous. So, these are not happy times. These are gloomy times, for the most part. I don’t want to sound as if we’re hopeless—not at all. Trump is a very unpopular president.
The Republican Party is not very popular. We’re in the middle of a government shutdown now, basically over healthcare, where the Republicans won’t budge on making major cuts to American healthcare provisions. And most Americans are blaming the administration and the Republicans in Congress for that shutdown, which is affecting people—and will affect them more and more. Those are public opinion polls; that’s not power, but it’s an indication of just how unpopular he is.
If Goebbels Had Fox News, He’d Have Been the Happiest Man Alive
Fox News Channel signboard at the News Corporation headquarters in Manhattan, New York City, July 10, 2019. Photo: Dreamstime.
Now, we all know there have been plenty of unpopular regimes that have been very powerful and have done world-historic damage to Europe in particular—but not just to Europe. And you don’t have to have the majority behind you in order to rule. That is quite true. The United States, however, unlike many of the democracies in Europe—if you go back to the 1930s, say, the Weimar Republic was a very new thing, and democracy was not very well rooted—we do have a 250-year history behind us, and these are institutions that he has shown to be much more vulnerable than people thought they were. But there are still—I don’t want to cite de Tocqueville all the time—but we have “habits of the heart,” as he put it. There are ways in which Americans have certain assumptions about what democracy is and ought to be that I still don’t think have been completely wiped out.
It is true, I’m somewhat amazed, for example, to watch Trump tear down part of the White House—a great symbol to Americans of democracy—and do so arrogantly, installing a kind of dictator chic with this gigantic new ballroom he’s building and all the rest of it. It’s an assault on the American Republic, on the aesthetic of the American Republic, on a building we think of as belonging to the people, not to him. To be doing that in symbolic ways is a wrenching experience. However, there’s no crowd outside, no demonstrations. We have these “No Kings” demonstrations every once in a while, but that’s about it. There’s an eerie kind of acceptance of what’s going on, which is also historically reminiscent of things that have happened elsewhere—where either people just don’t believe what they’re watching, what’s before their very eyes, or they don’t see it.
They also lack historical understanding. In Europe, you have a much clearer sense of history than we do. Americans are always living in the present, and social media doesn’t help in that respect. So we don’t have an instinctual reaction to all of this. But still, nevertheless, I think that when push comes to shove, I hope and expect that the American people will vindicate America itself. And that things have not become so distorted—either by propaganda media, Goebbels-like media. If Goebbels had Fox News, he would have been the happiest man in the world. There’s nothing better than that—television, social media. Can you imagine if he had more than radio, which the Nazis used so effectively in the 1930s? Imagine what they’d have now.
This is all a gigantic obstacle. Nevertheless, I still have the feeling that most Americans are not going to fall for this stuff when push finally comes to shove. How it’s going to be expressed politically is another issue, and that gets into the Democratic Party and other questions, but I’m still kind of hopeful.
We’re No Longer in Normal Politics—That Illusion Must Be Broken
You’ve written that the events of January 6, 2021, were not aberrations but logical outcomes of institutional structures favoring minority rule. How can historians help the public understand that such crises are systemic rather than episodic?
Professor Sean Wilentz: With January 6th, that was a break in many ways, because what you saw was systemic, but it was more the result of the Trump phenomenon—of Trump’s hold over this very violent and very angry segment of the population that has no respect whatsoever for constitutional norms. So I think of January 6th as having echoes in American history, but it was a defiance of everything we’ve thought of. I mean, what president has ever tried to reclaim power after losing an election? Some may have extended their terms or contested results through legal means every once in a while, but one of the aspects of the genius of American politics has always been that there is opposition, but it’s a loyal opposition—that you’re loyal to the Constitution.
Even if you are disappointed in your own political efforts, you nevertheless respect the Constitution, and your loyalty remains there. You give way with the expectation that, down the line, you’ll be able to defeat your opponent and take power back. That’s not what’s going on here. The insurrection in 2021 was an indication of how different this was from anything we’ve seen before. So, for a historian, it’s more a question of marking the difference than looking for some sort of similarity or institutional basis for what’s going on here. There is no institution. The norms are broken at every step. The courts were actually completely against what Trump was trying to do, which was to steal an election. Again, it goes back to this: he accuses you of stealing an election because he’s stealing an election.
Yes, it’s different. But the aftermath of that is extraordinary. Now that he has power, now that he took that power, he has pardoned them all. And the court has upheld all of those pardons—an extraordinary use of pardon power, again a perversion of what the framers had in mind. So here’s really the point. I think that there are many Americans—I don’t know if it’s most Americans anymore—but many still think that we’re in normal politics, in normal times. That this is a Republican president who is perhaps a little unorthodox, a little extreme, perhaps, but nevertheless just a normal politician, a normal party. That is a great demobilizing illusion that has to be broken.
By pointing out what January 6th was all about, we can try to break that illusion—to show that, in fact, these people are basically, some of them at any rate—and they’ve actually announced as much—out to overthrow the United States government, period. And that’s what they’re doing, bit by bit, in fits and starts. They’re keeping the Constitution—or their own idea of it—although a Constitution with an immunity decision behind the president is no longer the Constitution we knew. It’s just not. People have to understand that. And to say it the way I just said it, even now, alarms a lot of people—even those who are already alarmed—but to hear that the stakes are that high makes people think I’m kind of nutty or extreme in my own view. I don’t believe I am, at least as far as intentions are concerned.
I do think there are people in the Trump camp who want to overthrow the government. They won’t call it that. They may have Leninist or Bolshevik techniques, where the end justifies the means, but no one’s going to call themselves Vladimir Lenin—they’re going to call themselves George Washington. But they’re going to overthrow the government in the name of the government. That’s really the key to this kind of authoritarian move: you’re not doing it to destroy anything, but to vindicate what you claim the government actually means. Yet, in doing so, you completely abolish the government as it existed previously.
Trump’s Populism Is a Tool of Oligarchy, Not a Voice of ‘the People’
Anti-Trump protest during the Labor Day Parade in New York City on September 6, 2025. Demonstrators gathered on Fifth Avenue across from Trump Tower during the annual parade in Midtown Manhattan. Photo: Dreamstime.
As you note, Trump’s movement invokes populism yet depends on entrenched minority power. How do you reconcile this paradox—of populism serving oligarchic and exclusionary ends?
Professor Sean Wilentz: It’s exclusionary of certain people, to be sure. It’s classic in terms of authoritarian regimes: you have a despised other, as it were. In this case, it’s the immigrants, particularly Hispanic immigrants. So you focus a lot of popular rage on that group. Now, that group’s very large. But populism here is not about all of the people; it’s about some of the people—and some of the people having advantages over, or directing their anger and rage at, another part of the people. That’s what modern populism is about. It’s not very different from what we might have talked about in the 19th century.
But there’s also the alliance—this is classic—using populist methods to stir up discontent and anger, some of it quite understandable, even justified. People are not doing so well in many parts of the country. History has not been on their side economically in many parts of the country, and that breeds all kinds of resentments and anger, and that’s perfectly understandable. But the question is, in what direction do you take that? And it’s been exploited. In a more normal situation, it was exploited by certain corporate elites. You see them all the time—the Koch brothers, for example, that deregulation family. Conservative, right-wing businessmen with enormous resources use this populist rhetoric to enrich themselves greatly. That’s an old pattern—the elite use of populist rhetoric to give themselves more power than ever—and that’s what we’re seeing, that’s what we have seen.
The danger, though, is when you have a political manifestation that is not simply interested in increasing inequality, which is a very real problem, but in doing so in a way that will not only entrench an oligarchy—which is what we’re seeing—but also destroy American democracy full bore. And that’s what we’re seeing now. It’s the same kind of alliance. Look at all the people supporting Trump. Someone told me that Kamala Harris expressed surprise that the titans of American industry would throw in with Trump. I’m not surprised at all.
If you look at the people helping to support, for example, the rebuilding of the White House—Amazon, and you go down the list—it’s just one large corporation after another. They now see in Trump the future for themselves. They may, behind the scenes, be saying, “Oh, this man’s a little bit too much, I’m not really for him.” Nevertheless, they’re going to go along with him because they think their interests are going to be better served. That’s what gets very, very dangerous—when that kind of populist movement of the corporate elite, the very rich, powerful private institutions, taps into what you think of as the demos, the people, in order to destroy democracy. That’s what we’re seeing. I’ve never seen that before.
We Need a ‘Democracy International’ to Counter the ‘Tyranny International’
And finally, Professor Wilentz, as a historian of American democracy, do you believe the American experiment still possesses its self-corrective capacities—or have structural inequities and partisan realignments permanently undermined them?
Professor Sean Wilentz: That’s a good question. I wish I knew the answer. I said before that I have faith, but we might call it a faith-based initiative in some ways. It’s not quite religious, but it’s certainly more spiritual than institutional. Still, it’s not just that. I think the institutions have shown themselves to be far more vulnerable than we ever expected or could have imagined—not just in terms of domestic affairs, but in foreign policy as well. The speed with which the U.S., for example, dismantled the Agency for International Development—the USAID—which did extraordinary work around the world, was shocking. It was destroyed in the twinkling of an eye. So we realize not only that they are more powerful, but that we are more vulnerable as democrats, with a small “d.”
As a historian, I must say this moment reveals vulnerabilities we’ve never seen before in American history. There have been moments—you have to go back, actually, to the 1790s, when the country was just getting started—when there was a question about whether militaristic or reactionary forces would end up controlling the government. But they were beaten back then. It’s interesting—one of the laws that Trump has invoked is among the last of the great repressive laws from 1798, a period Thomas Jefferson called the “Reign of Witches.” The fact that Trump has had to reach that far back is telling. So there have been precedents, but nothing on this scale.
It’s an enormous test. I hate to sound inconclusive—I wish I had a firmer sense of things—but as a historian, I can only say that what we’re facing is something we’ve never seen before. My great hope, actually, is not only with the American people but also with Europe. We’re going to have to find a way to establish a democracy international, it seems to me. The communists had their international—we need one of our own, a democratic international—built on much closer coordination between you in Brussels, in Paris, throughout Europe, and us here. Because this is an international, even global, problem.
It’s a highly coordinated global problem, and much of it emanates from Moscow. You lift the lid and you see Putin’s influence everywhere—whether it’s Marine Le Pen or others, there he is. And certainly in the case of Trump, while one can’t know for sure, there are strong intimations that this is what’s happening. That’s a kind of tyranny international. We need to establish a democracy international to counter it. It’s something we all ought to be thinking about much more seriously, because there is strength in numbers. We have to coordinate our activities. We can no longer afford to be divided. We can no longer rely solely on our governments. We have to think of this as something like an NGO, perhaps—a movement, an expression of something we’ve never needed before, but now, we truly do.
