In recent years, after a series of strategic blunders and ideological retreats, a familiar script has reemerged on the European left. To win again, we are told, the Left must embrace what some present as a “populist” strategy: reclaim the language of nation and patriotism, turn away from so-called “identity politics,” and rally a supposedly unified people — particularly those popular constituencies left stranded or seduced by the siren calls of the far right.
This line of argument has been articulated most clearly by Raúl Rojas-Andrés, Samuele Mazzolini, and Jacopo Custodi. Their writings, published in academic journals and here at Jacobin, defend what we can call a patriotic or sovereigntist populism. They read the dramatic rise and fall of the Spanish radical left that emerged in the mid-2010s as a grim cautionary tale. Podemos and Más País, they argue, failed to fulfill their initial promise to rally the masses against the establishment. In their view, this downfall stemmed from an ingrained cultural elitism and from abandoning the “national-popular” in favor of what they deride as minority agendas and US-style “woke” language.
We disagree. The French experience, and the widening split between La France Insoumise’s (LFI) Jean-Luc Mélenchon and former allies like François Ruffin, tells a different story. It opens the door to another reading of populism and of the place of the nation within it. Rather than doubling down on sovereignty, it points toward a more promising horizon. This approach looks to Latin America and to the populist experiences there, intertwining national liberation, anti-racism, and other subaltern struggles.
In their recent work, our left-patriotic authors argue that the so-called “populist moment” of the 2010s emerged because traditional left parties had abandoned the working class, leaving a vacuum that “outsider” movements like Podemos and Más País could fill by articulating a discourse of revolt from…
Auteur: Théo Aiolfi
