The Mayoral Election of Buffalo, New York, revisited
During the June days all classes and parties had united in the party of Order against the proletarian class as the party of anarchy, of socialism, of communism. They had …
The Recent Democratic Primary Election for Mayor in Buffalo, New York and the New Working Class
Introduction In my blogs and in my recent article for Soundings, Class and Nation in the Age of Populism I have been suggesting that the association of the term ‘working …
Reflections on the recent presidential elections in Peru
In my recent blog posts I have been arguing that under a conception of democracy which equates the term exclusively with that of parliamentary representative democracy, change is limited to …
Reflections on the Recent Presidential Elections in Portugal and the Rise of the Far Right.
On Sunday 24th January last, Portugal held presidential elections. This was an event largely ignored by the British press. The Guardian reported the outcome online here. The elections were largely …
Parliamentary politics, the establishment and the plight of the left behind
In Part 2 of my blogposts on Black Lives Matter I raised the issue of the relationship between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary action in contributing to progressive democratic social change. I …
Black Lives Matter and the Contradictions of Representative Democracy- Part 3 Class, Nation and Empire
In Part 1 of this blogpost, I referred to Black Lives Matter (BLM) being a movement that challenges the self-image of nations whose symbols and icons include celebration of their …
Black Lives Matter and the Contradictions of Representative Democracy Part 2- What is democracy?
In the first part of this blog, I said that the BLM movement and Keir Starmer’s reaction to the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston raised important questions for …
Black Lives Matter and the Contradictions of Representative Democracy- Part 1
When the statue honouring slave trader Edward Colston was toppled from its plinth in Bristol by a crowd of young people and thrown into the river, the new Labour leader …
On the accession of Boris Johnson to Power
I am writing this on the day that Boris Johnson, having been elected leader of the Conservative Party by a huge majority, becomes prime minister of the country to the …
The Guardian, Donald Trump and Fake News- Part 1: The Relevance of Bourdieu
Fake News is a term that has become ubiquitous in the media. Its symbolic significance is as great as its meaning is obscure. The symbolic significance is related to the importance that people attach to differentiating the truth and reality from lies and distortions.
The complexities associated with the use of the term has parallels with those raised by attempts to understand the term “populism”.
In 1992 French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu published an interview which is highly relevant to the understanding of populism and fake news today.
In this post I set out Bourdieu’s views and explain how they help us to understand the phenomenon of populism. I will analyse the relation of this to the ubiquity of the term fake news in the traditional media in a subsequent post.