Populist voters speculatively wager on the volatility promises trigger, not the promises themselves.

Evidence

My argument is that, just as market speculators bet against the movements of the market to profit from fluctuations in the prices of securities, today’s speculative communities do not merely “misjudge” the populist promise (nor do they necessarily place [blind] hope in a coming nationalist utopia). By contrast, they are intent on speculating on the promise’s possible, yet uncertain, outcomes. Nationalism, in that sense, is the symbolic insurance taken out by resourceless speculators, allowing them to wager on political chaos. Put crudely, what is at stake here is not the promise itself (“take back control,” “make America great again,” etc.), but the volatility that the promise is likely to trigger—that is, the distance between the promise and its likely breakdown. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 39

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the precise core definition of financialized populism as speculative betting rather than self-harm or misplaced hope.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated goal of answering ‘against their interests’ critique—echoes the idea popularized in Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas but reframes it from error to speculation.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the paradigm-shifting formulation at the book’s heart: voting against one’s interest reframed as rational speculative insurance, a claim the reader will need to assess and likely contest.