ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the American Tea Party movement has played a prominent role in forcing a return to neoliberalism. Progressive treatments of this development have been rather dismissive: seen through a lens that emphasizes the inherent tension between capitalism and democracy, neoliberal populism can only appear as an incongruous phenomenon. The article suggests that such assessments reflect an insufficiently developed understanding of the moral force and affective charge of neoliberal discourses and their ability to shape popular democratic sentiment. It considers the political significance of this by examining progressivism’s conceptual logic and the way it has distanced itself from popular concerns and affects. The article concludes that the modern progressive political imaginary participates in the making of political realities that elude its grasp, unreflexively fueling the very kind of neoliberal populism that it ignores or dismisses.
