Neopopulist leaders use speculative imagination to re-embed society on exclusionary terms

Evidence

Neopopulist leaders wield a speculative imagination that mobilizes nationalist myths in bids to appeal to disenfranchised groups (typically, but not exclusively, drawn from the white working and middle classes). This, then, is a course of social re-embedding that is inherently exclusionary and discriminatory. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 262

Categorization

• DEFINE: First hint of the book’s ‘speculative imagination’ concept being applied to the political realm — key to defining homo speculans.
• ADDENDUM: Speculative imagination mobilizing nationalist myths resonates with the immodesty piece: both show identity-signaling as a political instrument rather than an expressive given.
• XREF: connects to: Gilded Age agrarian populists combined speculative imagination with nativism and racism — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 439; Digital speculation platforms amplify populist mobilization beyond traditional social movements — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 698