ABSTRACT
Personal charisma, though, is at cross-purposes to any form of society and state: it proves itself in times of crisis and presumably derives from whatever constitutes a threat to order. In spite of repeated attempts at borrowing from the stock forms of charismatic stagings, populism has nothing in common with charismatic movements either in appearance or in fundamental pattern, apart from the fact that it, too, is an interactively created social product. As someone who is used to dancing at very different balls and is at home in fundamentally different situations, the populist is a social chameleon. Populism and charisma are irreconcilable. One can find "mistakes" in all populist stagings, insofar as their goal is to cloak themselves in a charismatic aura. The Mitterand-Kohl photograph is an objective expression of precisely that charm: the discrepancy of the form representing the discrepancy of the action. Mazowiecki's right arm, although also slightly bent, is somewhat straighter than that of Kohl.
