Abstract
Donald Trump rode a global wave of right-wing populism to be elected President of the United States, successfully working the politics of grievance and resentment fueled by anger and fear on the part of that sector of the electorate most motivated by racial animus. But his victory should not be construed as a sui generis phenomenon. Rather, it is the result of a longer term process that has resulted in the capture of the Republican Party by right-wing extremists who reject a politics predicated on civil motives and relations, replacing it with an antidemocratic friend-enemy politics. This chapter provides a brief assessment of how that capture was accomplished, followed by an analysis of reactions on the part of public intellectuals from both the center-left and center-right about the threat posed to liberal democracy, which implicitly or explicitly call for a revitalization of the vital center.
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Kivisto, P. (2019). Populism’s Efforts to De-legitimize the Vital Center and the Implications for Liberal Democracy. In: Mast, J.L., Alexander, J.C. (eds) Politics of Meaning/Meaning of Politics. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95945-0_12
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