BUSTING ‘CHURCHILL’ Populist Statesmanship in the Shadow of Churchill Dr. Lars Cornelissen ISRF Academic Editor
(Disclaimer: this article was written well before statues in general and statues of Churchill in particular became the object of heated debate both in Britain and elsewhere.)
O
ne of the key markers of today’s political landscape is the advent of a specific type of statesman. I say ‘statesman’—and not ‘statesperson’—because masculinity is one of the defining characteristics of this genre of politician. I am thinking, of course, of leaders like Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and, of more immediate relevance to my present purposes, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Benjamin Netanyahu. Aside from a certain performance of masculinity, these leaders resemble each other in a number of ways: each is known for spouting nativistic, bellicose rhetoric; for uncritically celebrating the capitalist economy; for attempting to consolidate their own power through constitutional reform; and for paying little heed to the veracity of their claims—for, in a word, being the torch bearers of the populist far right. Let us not forget that, barring Bolsonaro, they all preside over countries that are embroiled in bitter territorial disputes and that are in possession of nuclear arms. It is easy—and indeed commonplace—to characterise the resurgence of this style of leadership as a product of some mythological ‘white working class,’ imagined as a bullish, racist, and sadistic demographic that wants nothing more than a strong leader to guide it in times of economic, cultural, and libidinal insecurity. This is myth rather than diagnosis, of course, and naturalises the liberal elite’s anxieties about both working class politics and the figureheads of contemporary 51
