ABSTRACT
The picture presented in the previous chapters shows that populism has been a constant presence in Israeli society since the 1960s. Its endurance is not exclusive of Israel. In his book The Populist Persuasion, Michael Kazin shows that populist tropes are a constant feature of American politics. Populism is also a steady presence in Latin America since its first expressions in the 1930s up to the present, with leaders such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. The persistence of populism in very diverse societies does not mean that we are facing a common phenomenon. As argued earlier,106 populism is a complex, multifaceted concept – a “family,” with two main sub-families and varied manifestations. To understand better the centrality of the populist phenomenon in the Israeli context, as well as the specificity of Israeli populism, it is worth comparing it to the different versions that have existed or currently exist in the USA, Latin America, and Europe. First it is important to differentiate between true populist movements
and political movements with populist elements. For some scholars, populism ranges from a “structured and lasting mass mobilization, led by a political leadership with a highly coherent programme” to “a largely improvised style that ‘tends to bring together different symbolic materials and to root itself in multiple ideological locations, taking on the political guise of that area which welcomes it’ and which appears as a ‘collection of rhetoric put into action through the symbolic exploitation of particular social representations’ (Taguieff, 2002)” (Tarchi 2008: 85). I have adopted a stricter definition of populism, and differentiate here between populist themes or styles that are ubiquitous in contemporary politics, and populist movements. To define a political party as populist, we must identify in its discourse the themes typical of populist ideology, a certain political style, a specific form of organization (strong leadership, movement more than party), and a specific role, namely, mediating in conflicts over the inclusion/exclusion of social groups.
