Lulletje Rozewater
09-19-2010, 11:49 AM
Malema and the rise of the unread http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/photo/resize/2010-09-03-julius-palin-01/618/408
He’s a reactionary who’s hated as much by conservatives as he is by liberals, which is why the theories of John Lukacs are so edifying to read. Not that the people he writes about actually read him. As a profile of Sarah Palin in the latest issue of Vanity Fair seems to suggest, the politics of proudly unschooled nationalist populism are back in the ascendancy in America. Sound familiar? By KEVIN BLOOM.
In his 2005 book Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, the Hungarian-born American historian John Lukacs puts forward the argument that the greatest threat to “our civilisation” is the backwards slide of liberal democracy into national populism. The primary target of Lukacs in the polemic is the US’s Republican Right. He claims that US conservatives have abandoned their founding principles of order, tradition and stability in favour of a political strategy that invokes external and internal enemies, and he cites leaders who manipulate the masses by appealing to “the myth of the people”. There’s nothing particularly new in this, except the fact that Lukacs is a self-confessed reactionary who despises liberals as much as he despises conservatives. His only allegiance is to a clear-eyed analysis of politics in the current age.
read on
http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-09-03-when-democracy-becomes-populism-palin-malema-and-the-rise-of-the-unread
He’s a reactionary who’s hated as much by conservatives as he is by liberals, which is why the theories of John Lukacs are so edifying to read. Not that the people he writes about actually read him. As a profile of Sarah Palin in the latest issue of Vanity Fair seems to suggest, the politics of proudly unschooled nationalist populism are back in the ascendancy in America. Sound familiar? By KEVIN BLOOM.
In his 2005 book Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, the Hungarian-born American historian John Lukacs puts forward the argument that the greatest threat to “our civilisation” is the backwards slide of liberal democracy into national populism. The primary target of Lukacs in the polemic is the US’s Republican Right. He claims that US conservatives have abandoned their founding principles of order, tradition and stability in favour of a political strategy that invokes external and internal enemies, and he cites leaders who manipulate the masses by appealing to “the myth of the people”. There’s nothing particularly new in this, except the fact that Lukacs is a self-confessed reactionary who despises liberals as much as he despises conservatives. His only allegiance is to a clear-eyed analysis of politics in the current age.
read on
http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-09-03-when-democracy-becomes-populism-palin-malema-and-the-rise-of-the-unread