Dupes and Deplorables??: How anthropology might help us to better understand populism”

It’s been several years since our eyes first trained on the Trump campaign which seemingly came out of nowhere and first took on the Republican and later the Democratic Party to win the White House. Soon thereafter, news of Brexit hit and in early 2019, Israeli populism outflanked left, right and centre parties to victory. What is puzzling if not entirely surprising, is that rather than seeking to understand on what grounds these political grounds had shifted, we were hit in media, scholarly conferences, and every day discussions with expressions of enormous disdain for the electorates — “dupes” “deplorables” — whose votes had surprised not only political leaders, but scholars and journalists alike. Anthropologists are curious beings, by and large, and in this presentation I will share stories and experiences from the field — both Israel and the United States — that I believe can help us not only to understand some of the “what’s happened” but also allow us to consider how political strategies and mediated politics easily shift our attention away from the meaningful to the superficial.