populists Roberto Pfeil/AFP/Getty Images

How Populists Win When They Lose

The present is not remotely comparable to the interwar period, and today’s populists are not fascists. But the lesson from that era still holds: the choices made by established conservative elites, as much as the challenges posed by insurgent outsiders, determine the fate of democracy.

VIENNA – Today, it appears that every single election in Europe can be reduced to one central question: “Is it a win or a loss for populism?” Until the Netherlands’ election in March, a populist wave – or, as Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party, put it, a “tsunami” – seemed irresistible. Now, however, the wave has suddenly receded: following Emmanuel Macron’s big wins in France’s presidential and legislative elections, we are supposedly living in a “post-populist moment.”

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