European and American left-populist movements rose together between 2012 and 2017

Evidence

We gain a better sense of the left-populist life cycle when we periodize it in two phases. At first, between 2012 and 2017, left populism was on the upswing. In Greece, it succeeded in marginalizing the socialist party and finding its way into the national government in 2015. On the other side of the Mediterranean, it disrupted the two-player game of Spanish politics, won several important municipalities, and seriously threatened to overtake the socialist party at the national level. In France, the explicit adoption of a populist agenda almost won Mélenchon a ticket for the second round of the 2017 presidential election. Meanwhile, in the anglophone world, it handed the keys to Jeremy Corbyn and enabled Bernie Sanders to challenge the establishment of the Democratic Party in the primaries of the 2016 presidential election. These were not autarchic political experiences, however. Each of these movements took inspiration from the others and several transnational alliances saw the light of day—“First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin,” said Tsipras, quoting Leonard Cohen, on an American trip. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 162

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: European populist-left parties revived mass political enthusiasm around charismatic leaders — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 119