The perceived war between finance and nationalist populism is a false binary
Evidence
Diverging from these explanations (which I will discuss in detail in the following section), my claim in this chapter will be that the rise of speculative communities has been at the heart of these political developments, leading to new (and often unexpected) political enmities and alliances. Just as the failures of finance-driven neoliberalism sparked numerous angry revolts against economic and political elites, the forces of financialization reawakened the dormant homo speculans. In doing so, they produced new social and political collectivities, even as they destroyed older ones. Thus, although we have been led to believe that a war has broken out between global finance and the new waves of ethno-nationalist populism, this is in fact a false binary. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 254
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- QUESTION: This becomes the crux the reader must assess: does this ‘false binary’ claim hold up, or does it concede too much to populists by describing them as simply exercising speculative imagination rather than as actual authoritarians?
Related
- Financialization reawakened homo speculans, forging false-binary populist alliances. (similarity 0.93)
- Financialization and national populism form a false binary, not opposing forces (similarity 0.90)
- Progressive politics can weaponize speculative methods against finance capitalism (similarity 0.82)
- Progressive politics can combat financialization only by adopting its speculative ground (similarity 0.82)
- Regressive populism and speculative finance are forming new alliances. (similarity 0.81)
- Populist passions animate rather than oppose financial rationality (similarity 0.81)
- The financialization-neopopulism convergence is widely framed as a paradox requiring explanation. (similarity 0.81)
- Speculation’s tension between rationality and irrationality now defines Western political fault lines (similarity 0.81)
- Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones (similarity 0.81)
- Markets and nationalist publics may both yearn for uncertainty rather than stability. (similarity 0.81)
- Finance’s social dominance rests on popular speculative imagination, not mere value subordination (similarity 0.80)
- The rationality-irrationality divide in speculation maps onto elite-versus-insurgent conflicts (similarity 0.80)
- Finance shapes modern societies’ collective myths and imagined communities, not just economies (similarity 0.79)
- Financial reason and populist feeling are not opposed but entangled (similarity 0.79)
- American populists historically sought a pact with, not a clash against, finance (similarity 0.79)