tripleC 15(2): 441-458, 2017 http://www.triple-c.at Technopopulism: The Emergence of a Discursive Formation Marco Deseriis Northeastern University, Boston, USA,
[email protected], http://neu.academia.edu/MarcoDeseriis Abstract: This article contends that technopopulism is a discursive formation that emerges from the convergence of two preexisting discourses: populism and technolibertarianism. Whereas these discourses are historically distinct the 2008 financial crisis and the 2011 wave of struggles precipitated the political conditions for their intersection. Such convergence produces both tensions and possibilities. On the one hand, technopopulism engenders a radically participatory model of democracy, which is ultimately anti-institutional as citizens cooperate and engage in sophisticated decision-making without the mediation of professional politicians. On the other hand, the more electorally successful technopopulist parties are led by charismatic leaders who synthesize the positions that emerge from the netroots to mobi- lize them against the establishment. These two seemingly contradictory aspects precipitate in two variants of technopopulism: a leaderless-technocratic variant, which is derived from the open source mode of governance and from early experiments of the Global Justice Movement in networked self-government; and a leaderist-populist variant, which is more strictly focused on the electoral competition as an intrinsically hegemonic practice. The article concludes with a reflection on the discursive complementarity of these two variants. Keywords: technopopulism, technolibertarianism, populism, electronic democracy, social media activism, Global Justice Movement, Free and Open Source Software, Podemos, Five Star Movement, Occupy Technopopulism is the belief that the “government of the people, by the people, for the people” (Lincoln 1953 [1863]) is achievable by means of information communica- tions technology.