As political scientist Philip Converse demonstrated back in 1964, and as other scholars have subsequently shown, an overwhelming majority of Americans do not hold coherent ideological views. People who do are, in many ways, outliers. The force behind the horseshoe, then, is another dimension of politics without which it is impossible to understand, among other things, why on earth Chomsky and Kissinger would be embraced by people who would never otherwise agree with them both on much of anything. This is the populist, anti-establishment dimension of U.S. politics.

 

Populism as a term has become something of an empty signifier and, for many, a pejorative. It has been associated with nativist right-wing leaders—such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Polish politician Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Trump—but also with Sanders’s presidential campaign. If anything, in the United States, populism was historically associated with the egalitarian politics of the Populist Party and the subsequent left-wing progressive movement.

 

But here, what we mean by populism is simply a worldview that pits average citizens, “the people,” against “the elites,” whom populists view as corrupt. This can mean different things for conservative and progressive populists.

 

On the right, for example, it manifests in “America First” nationalism, isolationism, and the distrust of experts and the news media. On the left, it manifests in the distrust of the traditional party establishment as well as of business interests and mainstream commentators. That is why populists on both sides of the horseshoe generally distrust the traditional mainstream press and its elite talking heads and frequently seek out information from more ostensibly independent and explicitly ideologically aligned sources. It also pushes people inward, toward an isolationism rooted in the belief that when the United States gets involved abroad, it does so in the interests of the country’s political or business elite.

 

In both cases, it foments a contrarianism that is perhaps most visible on issues where there is a rare national consensus, such as support for Ukraine. In this case, the contrasting motivations of left and right populists lead both sides to reach the same position: one that “both-sides” the war in Ukraine, denies Ukrainians agency, and plays right into Putin’s hands. And this, despite the fact that there is nothing inherent in either far-right or far-left thought that leads to support for Russia or opposition to the plight of Ukrainians.

Glory to Ukraine!