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Jonny Hall, The politics of antagonism: populist security narratives and the remaking of political identity, International Affairs, Volume 101, Issue 1, January 2025, Pages 371–372, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae290
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Extract
Georg Löfflmann's The politics of antagonism meticulously details the security discourses of the Donald Trump era, exploring the key components of Trump's populist narratives and their consequences for the broader political environment. Given Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election and the degree of polarization in American politics, this is an important endeavour.
The book's main theoretical contribution of ‘populist security imaginaries’ is outlined in the second chapter. The concept draws from research in critical security studies, political communication and political psychology. It explores the ‘interlocking security narratives’ and ideas that nationalist populists—the focus of the book—put forward to ‘exploit ontological insecurities … for political gain’ (p. 5). Löfflmann argues that security discourses and ‘the social construction of threat’ serve as the crucial mechanism in the appeal of populists—something that has been overlooked in previous studies of populism (p. 5). It is not just that nationalist populists divide the world into ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, but that ‘the language of security and identity … plays an integral part in the populist process of political communication’ (p. 2). Put another way, populism and (in)security are intertwined.
