History in Newpopulism

Ideologies have played a vital role in human history. Whether the Enlightenment, capitalism, communism, fascism, socialism, anarchism, and all the other “isms,” ideologies have, sometimes alone and sometimes in competition with each other in defining political history. When Fukuyama declared that history had ended, he meant that ideological history had ceased to exist when capitalism won the fight against communism. Since then, no ideologies have been able to question or challenge the neoliberal system except the Newpopulist rhetoric. The global shift toward liberal democracy coincided with the historical shift in the balance of power toward those nations and peoples who favored the liberal democratic idea, a shift that began with the triumph of the democratic powers over fascism in World War II and that was followed by a second triumph of the democracies over communism in the Cold War. The liberal democratic international order that emerged reflected the new overwhelming global balance in favor of liberal forces. Now the reemergence of the great autocratic powers, along with the reactionary forces of radicalism, has weakened that order and threatens to weaken it further in the years and decades to come. The world democracies need to begin thinking about how they can protect their interests and advance their principles in a world in which these are once again powerfully contested. The present entry intends to understand the nuances of history in the context of contemporary Newpopulist framework.