ABSTRACT

This chapter considers the way the transformation of media values and political economy has driven the resurgence of right-wing populism in America. Broadcast media have been central to American right-wing populism and movement conservatism. Donald Trump is the synthesis of a media politics in which affective intensity and enjoyment are the principle political-economic values. He is not simply a media-savvy showman; he offers himself as a subject of enjoyment and elicits affective identification. In order to properly identify the manner in which affective media engender populism, it is necessary to theorize populist political ontology. The centrality of media to right-wing American populism owes to a confluence of media deregulation, the diminution public political institutions and a well-funded conservative political network. Trump successfully channelled the online spaces of the so-called alt-right in constructing a pure politics of jouissance.