Populist-left parties channeled square-movements’ spirit into electoral bids for state power

Evidence

This scene could have happened in many other places during the 2010s: New York, London, Athens, or Paris. It crystallized almost all the decisive traits of the left’s populist turn: the capacity to re-inject enthusiasm and passion into politics, the central role of the leader, the massive use of new technologies, the deployment of a language and symbology that broke from the traditional left. As such, these political parties had taken up the slack of the declining movements of the squares. They built on the legacy of those movements, drawing lessons from their instability, and turning their spirit into ambitious electoral forces aimed at the conquest of executive power. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 121

Categorization

• XREF: Continues the squares-movements thread (Podemos/Indignados vs. Occupy, Syriza) from earlier chapters of this same study. — connects to: Populist-left parties replaced mass-party structures with leader-centric media-driven quick mobilization — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 97; Left populists fused PR skills with square-protest horizontalism into a new politics — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 257; Populist-left politics emerged amid party decline and labor movement collapse — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 15

Broader Connections

• Left populists fused PR skills with square-protest horizontalism into a new politics #corroborates (0.95) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 257
• Populist-left politics emerged amid party decline and labor movement collapse #qualifies (0.75) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 15