The roots and development of the phenomenon of populism in American political life and its impact on political decision-making

Abstract

Populism was born in Russia and the United States in the late nineteenth century. And "populism" originally meant an agricultural movement with socialist overtones, to emancipate the Russian peasants around 1870. In the same period, a protest movement was launched in rural America directed against banks and railroads. This term acquired new qualities in the middle of the twentieth century in Latin America with the Argentine leader Juan Peron and the Brazilian Getulio Vargas, who embodied popular movements with national and sometimes social overtones, without any reference to Marxism, class struggle or fascist ideology.

     One of the main features of populism is the rejection of mediating institutions that lie in the distance between the leader or leader at the top of political power and society. The populist leader always imagines the relationship between him and the masses as a direct relationship, without any mediation from institutions or civil society. Therefore, the populist view of politics despises parties and institutions. Civil society and even the media and the press that are independent of state authority, where the activities of mass conferences and direct popular referendums spread, and the leader adheres to the people as an alternative to partisan and parliamentary political practice.

    It is remarkable that former US President Donald Trump was able to achieve remarkable success as a model for the populist politician, as he presented a specific political vision that sees a pure and harmonious people always standing against immoral, corrupt and parasitic elites, and that these elites do not belong to the people and do not care about them. In this way, Donald Trump was a real populist politician in the sense that (Carl Schmitt) came, as he was able to identify the enemy represented in the elites and left-wing and liberal political currents against the real people, to whom Trump came as a leader, savior, and representative to restore his country that had been kidnapped by the enemies. From here, the idea of this research came, which is summarized in clarifying the most prominent effects of the phenomenon of populism on the American political decision-making process.

Keywords: Populism, Political decision, Roots of populism, Trump, Populist