Our Culture Is Best! Populist Engagement with Culture in the Construction of the Populist Myth

The recent populist upsurge has dramatically transformed political, social and cultural realities, and the end of its success is not yet in sight. Adding to the scholarly work on the political and socio-economic determinants of populist success, this paper analyzes how populism and culture work together in constructing and propagating the populist myth. Concretely, it theorizes the interaction between populism and culture in narrating the people’s suffering of an existential crisis, and the populist leader’s identification with the people through a shared cultural narrative. As the example of French far-right populism shows, this manifests in two interconnected ways: on the one hand populism uses concrete cultural products to shape their dichotomous rhetoric, while on the other hand its articulation in society affects our understanding of who can (and cannot) culturally belong. The concept of equaliberty is introduced to further reflect on the democratic challenges posed by populist narratives, as well as consider the potential of inclusionary counter-narratives. To this end, the notion of artivism is presented as a mode of engagement that can bring the worlds of art and politics together, serving as a creative laboratory to produce equaliberal alternatives to populism.