Populist discourse welds nativism onto speculative finance through a govern-by-chaos doctrine

Evidence

Voters appear willing to buy into an unorthodox blend of nativist mythologies, chauvinist sentiment, and speculative finance in populist political agendas. Evocations of both uncertainty and security abound in this discourse. Seemingly incongruent combinations of Pentecostalist revivalism, global trade wars, Hindu nationalism, aggressive interest-rate speculation, Euroscepticism, and so on have been deployed rhetorically alongside an emphasis on “acting swiftly and decisively” and against the “slowness” of liberal democracy. Such discourses are in turn supplemented by a “govern-by-chaos” doctrine, wielded by populist leaders against the technocratic rationality of their neoliberal predecessors. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 251

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘govern-by-chaos’ doctrine as a named conceptual tool for understanding populist governance — useful for the reader’s explanation of financialized populism.
• QUESTION: How exactly does the ‘acting swiftly and decisively’ rhetoric translate the trader’s embrace of volatility into political self-presentation? Worth tracing the mechanism.