Covid-19 dominates another year, with the the global vaccine race illustrating the very best and worst of humanity. Aside from coronavirus (a crucial factor in the ‘VIP vaccine’ and ‘Olivosgate’ political scandals), the death of former president Carlos Menem, rising prices and poverty, trigger-happy policing, IMF debt talks and key elections across the region steal the show – including Argentina’s PASO primaries and midterms, which reshape the political landscape. This is 2021: the year that was.
’ is an unusual book. It’s a fiercely and uncompromisingly critical attempt to reconfigure the terms of the existing debate on populism. Not only do you attempt to recover
populism from its staple association with the far-Right. But you also differentiate yourselves, and your argument, from seemingly like-minded theorists who do not accept that populism is an exclusively right-wing form of politics.
Instead, you boldly argue that populism is always radical and emancipatory – an anti-authoritarian force – and you suggest that what we call right-wing populism has none of these characteristics and belongs to a different universe, that of fascism. Arguing from a historical perspective, Federico Finchelstein reaches the opposite conclusion: that