Financial reason and populist feeling are not opposed but entangled

Evidence

The second fallacy implied here is a symbolic distinction between the cold, calculating rationality of finance (manifest in the speculative logic of capital) and the emotional capital invested in the type of populist-nationalist politics responding to this rationality (their “attack on reason”). Yet, as we have seen time and again, markets and publics alike rely on a speculative imagination that contains both passions and interests to engage uncertainty. Although markets’ amoralism and publics’ anger are both undoubtedly real, the opposition between (financial) reason and (populist) feeling can be entirely deceptive. In the culture wars of the Trump and Brexit era, populist passions animate (rather than oppose) the rationality of finance. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 268

Categorization

• XREF: Recalls Adorno’s insight that rationality serves passions and vice versa, from the Frankfurt School history.