Authoritarian Populism and the Cultural Roots of Fascism in Britain
Inspired by the conjunctural analysis (Jefferson 2014), established by Stuart Hall, and colleagues (Hall et al 1978; 2013), as central to the explanation of emerging political-cultural formations, this paper revisits the concept of authoritarian populism and situates Brexit in Britain as the successful outcome of a counter-hegemonic project. Understood in terms of the political craftwork associated with the manufacture of consent (Gramsci 1971; Chomsky & Herman; 1988), the paper reconsiders the Leave campaign as dramatic art, a performance cleverly designed to act out a moral crisis (Cohen 1972; Elliott Cooper A. el al. 2014) sufficient to destabilise the authority of government and throw it off centre.