Restorative fantasies let right-wing populism sell radical change.

Evidence

In Trump’s case, the fantasies of national restoration reassure, mitigating the sense of risk that he provokes. It’s almost as if the fantasies give permission to indulge in the excitement… Vertiginous change and a restored past, all in the same moment; Trump has found a way to renew the formula that the right has successfully deployed since Reagan and Thatcher. (And one perennial problem for the revolutionary left is that it doesn’t have the same recourse to reassuring fantasies, the same appeal to a restored past, with which to leaven the leap into the unknown.) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2032

Categorization

• SEED: The buried insight — the left lacks an equivalent reassuring fantasy to leaven its leap into the unknown — is a genuinely productive essay angle on why revolutionary politics struggles to build mass appeal.
• XREF: connects to: Reactionary movements embrace radical change to defend or restore hierarchies. — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 334

Broader Connections

• Reactionary movements embrace radical change to defend or restore hierarchies. #expands (0.82) — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross, 334