THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

It is a common stereotype that populists do not read. But it is truer of some populist leaders than others. Benjamin Netanyahu and Boris Johnson, for example, benefited from superior education and are well read. Though no major philosophers have associated themselves with populism, some marginal intellectuals have gravitated from the "paleoconservative" and Nouvelle École right to populist "greenfield opportunities" in speech writing, think tanks, internet magazines, podcasts and book publishing, where they have faced little competition from established public intellectuals or academics. They bring with them the education and ideas they have acquired and use them to serve populist passions and movements. For example, the term "Alt-Right" was invented by the Yale-educated political theorist Paul Gottfried and was picked up by another student of political theory, the racist Richard Spencer.

The intellectual genealogy of practically all the populist intellectuals traces back to Friedrich Nietzsche and his continental intellectual progeny before it (d)evolves into more esoteric authors. The references to "Foucault," "Derrida" or "structuralism"--and not just "Nietzsche"--in contemporary populist publications like American Greatness demonstrate that populist authors are at least familiar with philosophical ideas in the Nietzschean tradition. Though populist authors often associate post-structuralism with constructed populist bêtes noires like "wokism" and "critical race theory," they also borrow some of their ideas for their own purposes.

Populists have a unique "emotive" concept of "truth" as emotional authenticity. The "truth" is not about the world but about the expression of the passions of the speaker. These passions can receive narrative representations.

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