Race and Populism. A Comparative Study of Thatcherism, Peronism and the American Populists

Abstract

This article re-examines the race-populism nexus. It asks: Does populist political construction of the figure of “the people” necessarily involve processes of racial othering? We answer this question by revisiting three emblematic cases of populism. Each historical case illustrates a basic type of identity formation that can have an i) exclusionary, ii) ambivalent or iii) positive impact on racial justice. The first case is Thatcherism, whose “authoritarian populism” feeds on and reinforces anti-Black racial prejudice. The second is Peronism, which has an ambivalent relationship with race that promises to shed important new light on this classic case of populism. The third case is that of the American Populists, whose pioneering experiments in interracial politics remain an enduring illustration of populism’s progressive potential. In each case, we focus on a key document from that political regime/movement: the Conservative Manifesto of 1979, the Peronist Constitution of 1949, and the Omaha Platform of 1892. The article concludes that populism, as a logic of action, acts as a catalyst that intensifies whatever specific content is mobilised – racist and anti-racist content alike.

Introduction

How is “the people” defined in populist politics? For many, the construction of the people by populist leaders, movements and parties undermines the pursuit of racial justice. This is because, it is argued, defining who counts as the people is always an exclusionary operation. Historically, however, a rigid opposition between populism and racial justice is misplaced. While it reflects some instances of populism, it ignores others, including some of the most important. This article analyses the racial politics underlying three emblematic cases of populism: American populism, from which the terms “populist” and “populism” derive; Peronism, perhaps the quintessential populist movement; and Thatcherism, which inspired the “authoritarian populism” debate of the 1980s. This allows us to clarify the conceptual possibilities that underpin the race-populism nexus. Race can be deployed in populist politics in i) exclusionary, ii) ambivalent or iii) more progressive ways.

Our argument is that any politics built around “the people”, at least in any white majority country, will have a racist undercurrent. Since the majority of people are white, an alternative mode of identification is needed for an anti-racist politics. However, if the people is a project rather than an immutable object, then it can be redefined in new ways to include racialised minorities who have traditionally been excluded from the people. This understanding frames our historical analysis. Populist movements lie on a continuum, ranging from the ethnically inclusive to the ethnically exclusive. We propose to account for this flickering entanglement by looking at how populism constructs the “we” in “We the people”. Populism defines national identity through antagonistic forms of identification. This involves three different types of identity formation, each with a specific relationship to race. In some cases, identity formation depends on a racial Other who is blamed for the undeserved suffering of the “we” in “We the people”. This is when the race-populism nexus becomes exclusionary.¹ Another basic type of identity formation is more ambivalent: it promotes socio-economic redistribution but fails to secure symbolic recognition of racial others. A third basic type is more progressive in that it defines national identity in opposition to (dominant white) elites and competitors by promoting interracial cooperation and solidarity. Taken together, these different forms of constructing national identity constitute a central dimension of populist constitutional politics.

Race and Populism – Definitions

Race and populism are defined semiotically. Race is understood here as a signifier whose fluctuating meaning is open to contestation [Hall 1997]. This understanding of race, in turn, excludes naturalistic and positivistic approaches to populism. These include the ideational approach [Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017] and the political strategy model [Weyland 1996; Pappas 2012]. Neither provides a coherent account of the diverse ways in which race and populism intersect. By reducing populism to a set of ideas, typically studied as individual-level attitudes or claims, the ideational approach is silent on structural racism. Similarly, reducing populism to a matter of rational strategising by self-interested political leaders ignores the emotional dimension of any process of racial othering.

We therefore need a definition of populism that is precise enough to distinguish it from other political phenomena, while taking into account the ways in which it intersects with race. With this requirement in mind, we define populism as a way of doing politics according to the logic of democratic resentment [Demertzis 2006; Engels 2015; Ure 2014]. This logic identifies four necessary conditions for populism to emerge: denied equality, undeserved inferiority, rivalry and redemption [Carreira da Silva and Vieira 2019]. Populists share with democrats a normative orientation towards equality and equal respect. Unlike democrats, however, populists exploit the betrayal of these norms in the form of a sense of undeserved inferiority on the part of a segment of the people. They do this to divide the people into two rival parts, one of which is blamed for the suffering of the other. Finally, populists typically make a redemptive appeal, demanding the restoration of the original democratic promise of equality and inclusion. As a logic of action, populism acts as a catalyst that intensifies whatever specific content is mobilised – racist and anti-racist content alike.

In short, both race and populism are understood in relational terms. Philosophically, this understanding draws on American pragmatism. Pragmatists reject dualistic ways of thinking [Mead 2010; Peirce 1955]. They see social reality as composed of processes, the content of which is open to constant redefinition. However, social processes are not free-floating. Populism, for example, does not have a specific political content, but follows a distinctive logic that is anchored in and shaped by specific social contexts. Given this, the idea of democratic resentment is particularly useful for addressing the rivalrous competition involved in processes of racial othering for two reasons. First, resentment is an affect that fundamentally affects the formal-structural dimension of identity formation processes. We do not deny that resentment is an emotion with both cognitive and affective valences that can be studied as an independent variable, including with reference to populism [Barbalet 1992; Cramer 2016]. But emotions are not only individual feelings; they also help to organise collective action. It is precisely because political structures are intertwined with structures of feeling that we are interested in resentment as a logic of social and political action – specifically, the logic that underpins populism.

Second, the logic of resentment determines how populists understand national identity. For populism, the sovereign people – a collective that understands itself as a political entity – is a redemptive achievement. It is redemptive because it is the result of a process of collective moral cleansing, a purge that populists undertake in the name of the people with a view to reconstructing the people. It is an achievement because it is less a matter of identity affirmation than of identity formation. Far from residing in the distant mythical past of nationalists or conservatives, the populist “we” is as much a redeemed projection as an offended collective. This is how populists construct the first-person plural in a democracy – the “we” in “We the people”. This political construction is not an ideology in the sense of a self-referential set of complementary beliefs or ideas. But it is ideological in a broader sense. It defines ideological relations: a specific affective relation is defined around populist normativity. In particular, this ideological relation establishes antagonistic groups centred on the perceived betrayal of normative commitments. In turn, we argue that reconstructing these ideological relations sheds valuable light on the nexus of race and populism.

Methodology

We have chosen three white-majority countries with significant historical episodes of populism. By choosing three typical cases of populism, we are able to explore a puzzle within the phenomenon [Seawright and Gerring 2008: 299], namely the nexus of populism and race. This is not to say that these are “pure” empirical accounts. We fully acknowledge that each case involves a complex, often contradictory combination of features. Nevertheless, our analysis suggests that each case is associated with certain basic types of identity formation. We begin with Thatcherism, the political project that gave rise to the concept of “authoritarian populism”. The second case is Peronism which, for many, is the ultimate example of populism. The third case is the American People’s Party of the 1890s. American Populism (with a capital P) is noteworthy not only because it is the first time the term appears in English, but also because it was a bottom-up social movement that challenges the easy conflation of populism with Caesarism.

We illustrate each type of identity formation with a political document: the Conservative Manifesto of 1979, the Peronist Constitution of 1949, and the Omaha Platform of 1892. The politics of these texts, since the meaning of a text is inseparable from the context of its production and circulation, is key to understanding how race and populism interact. Why this object of study? First, because, contrary to the standard view [Grattan 2016: 8], there is a canon of populist writings and ideas. Second, most approaches to populism avoid the question of the institutionalisation of populist ideas, principles and beliefs. In contrast, we see each of these texts as a material manifestation of the operating principles that underlie populist politics, namely their conception of national identity. If one is interested in how race has shaped populist politics, this is the place to start.

Focusing on the race-populism nexus takes us both away from formal discourse analysis and closer to some key texts. We focus on texts because they provide a valuable gateway to our actual object of study, populism and its guiding principles. Our textual analysis is a variant of social hermeneutics [Soeffner 2004]. It aims to identify the organising principles of the text in question, understood as structuring the text and inhabiting the surrounding cultural and social world. Attention to text and context is therefore crucial. We study the enunciation and production of discourse, not its enunciation and reception. In particular, we are interested in the production of political constitutional discourse. We therefore undertake a close textual analysis of key populist constitutional texts, ranging from constitutional drafts and political manifestos to constitutions themselves. Despite their different formal status, all these documents share one crucial characteristic – they all describe the principles and rules by which a country is organised, i.e. they are constitutional [or constituent] documents [Gardiner (1906) 1962].

Constitutional documents are not only constative but also performative acts of world-making. That is, they function as acts that constitute new political entities. This is most obviously the case with constitutions. But, as Janet Lyon and others have shown, manifestos can also help to bring “the people” into being [Frankenberg 2019: 33; Lyon 1999: 14]. Günter Frankenberg further argues that an archetype of constitutions is the “constitution as political manifesto” or the “manifesto constitution” [Frankenberg 2006: 439]. This idea that constitutional documents, including constitutions, draft constitutions or political manifestos, can represent both a constitutional moment and a claim to constituent power underpins our methodological strategy. One advantage of such a strategy is that the populist character of these texts is established through research, rather than being predetermined a priori. In doing so, this paper follows the recent wealth of empirical research arguing that comparative constitutionalism should draw on social science insights and methodologies [Hirschl 2014: 151-191]. This often involves the comparison of constitutional documents, ranging from constitutions to parliamentary speeches, correspondence and legal proceedings [Petersen and Chatziathanasiou, 2021].² Which brings us to the question – what role did race play in how our constitutional documents helped to bring “the people” into being?

Exclusionary Populism: The Case of Thatcherism

We begin with Thatcherism, the political project that inspired the debate on “authoritarian populism” in the 1980s [Laclau 1977; Hall 1980a].³ Moreover, with its restructuring of British society and politics and its rhetorical Euroscepticism, it laid the groundwork for a later populist moment: Brexit [Jessop 2017]. The labelling of Thatcherism as authoritarian populism was a conceptual and polemical move by British Marxists, particularly those invested in developing a Gramscian approach to the study of populism [Atkins 1986; Jessop et al. 1984; Jessop et al. 1988; Mouffe 2018: 20]. Their aim was to study the broader cultural and political consequences of Thatcherism, namely its racial politics, and how these intersected with class. This assessment of Thatcherism as a populist project has been supported by a range of other scholars [Dixon 1983: 161, 169; Saidel 2023: 121, ff.; Morgan 2022: 192], including at the level of social attitudes [Sanders, Scotto and Reifler 2016]. Less studied, however, is the normativity that underpins their constitutional politics. It is at the level of constitutional politics, however, that the figure of “the British people” is more fully articulated. Hence the question: To what extent does Thatcherism’s construction of the people depend on racial othering? Our findings are clear: A particularly exclusionary politics of race underpins Thatcherism’s understanding of national identity.

Our object of study is the 1979 Conservative manifesto. As the manifesto of the Conservative Party for the general election that brought Margaret Thatcher to power, the text outlined the contours of a new political era in the United Kingdom. Before proceeding, however, a word is needed on the nature of manifestos, and election manifestos in particular. Following Derrida’s influential reading of declarations of independence as acts that constitute new political entities, manifestos are not only constative but also performative acts of world-making [Derrida 1991: 13]. This is true of all kinds of manifestos (war manifestos, feminist manifestos, etc.), including political manifestos. Party manifestos are as old as political parties themselves. Issued by a political party before a general election, they present the party’s promises to the electorate [Thackeray and Toye 2020]. Because they represent official party policy, manifestos have a special status. They sometimes operate not only at the ordinary level of legislative politics, but also at the higher level of constitutional politics. This seems to be the case with the Conservative Manifesto. Consider how it ends: “Most people, in their hearts, know that Britain has to come to terms with reality. […] The years of make-believe and false optimism are over. It is time for a new beginning” [Conservative Party 1979]. This new beginning in British politics marks the beginning of “Thatcherism.” As has often been noted, this manifesto is one of the earliest political expressions of monetarism and neoliberalism in Britain [Gamble 1988]. But, we ask, is it also the beginning of a populist way of defining who counts as “the people” that seeks to ignite racial rivalry for political gain?

At 8,908 words, the 1979 Manifesto is a remarkably short document. It is organised around “Our Five Tasks”, a thematic structure adopted for its simplicity [Butler and Kavanagh 1980: 154-155]. The manifesto begins with a brief foreword by the party leader. This is followed by a section setting out the rationale for the five tasks. The bulk of the manifesto consists of a point-by-point discussion of each task.

The way a text works depends on the context of its production. In this case there are two relevant contexts. First, the neo-Nazi National Front was on the rise in the 1970s and was predicted to do well in the 1979 election. Its poor performance is sometimes linked to the rise of Thatcherism and, in particular, her adoption of some of the same language. A case in point is Thatcher’s infamous speech on immigration in January 1978, in which she complained that Britain was being “swamped by people of a different culture” [quoted in Smith 1994: 179].⁴ Thatcher also had a somewhat close relationship with Enoch Powell, an early proponent of both neoliberalism and “cultural racism” in the 1960s and 1970s. This can be described as the racial politics of Thatcherism, i.e. the study of how race was resignified as a matter of political identification and polarisation during the Thatcher years, a process with non-trivial cultural and institutional implications. There is no shortage of literature on this subject. For example, Hall’s work [1980b: 342] examines the politics and ideologies of racism in 1970s Britain, Murray’s study [1986] examines the anti-racist press campaign in the run-up to the 1979 election, Bourne’s research [2013] analyses how Thatcher encouraged the transformation of Black politics into ethnicism, and Peplow’s book [2019] provides insights into how Black and minority ethnic communities faced a complex history in the period of increased Commonwealth migration to Britain after the Second World War. The 1979 Conservative Manifesto cannot be properly understood without taking this context into account.

Second, there was the Winter of Discontent in 1978-1979. Several unions took strike action against the Labour government’s introduction of the pay cap. A series of indefinite strikes affected major sectors of the British economy, including a national rail strike announced in January 1979. On 28 March 1979, the Conservative-led opposition won a vote of no confidence in the Labour government by 311 votes to 310, triggering a general election. The election result was a landslide victory for the Conservatives. Labour would not return to power until 1997. To use Hobsbawm’s [1978] famous diagnosis of the British left in the 1970s, Thatcherism halted the “forward march of labour”.

How is “the people” defined in this context? Stuart Hall traces the racialisation of the category of “the people” by Thatcherism to concrete policies such as policing [Hall 1978]. However, such policies cannot be understood without reference to the normative basis of Thatcherism as a political project. This is why the 1979 Conservative Manifesto is so important. Our analysis shows the extent to which the document activates a populist opposition between the many/us and the few/them [Butler and Kavanagh, 1980; Gamble 1981: 148 and Dixon 1983: 165]. This opposition is articulated in a historically unprecedented way. The state takes the place of “them” and “us” refers to a collection of atomised rational citizens. The “us” in “We the people” is presented as a collective of law-abiding, hard-working heirs to a long tradition of constitutional liberties and representative democracy. Thatcher’s “preface” makes this clear: “FOR ME, THE HEART OF POLITICS,” she writes, are “people” who just “want to live their lives” [Conservative Party 1979].

Crucially, however, this is a white, atomised collective. Cleverly coded into the language of the Conservative Manifesto is the idea that the common people face not only the threat of big government but also the rivalry of a non-white mass [Hall 1973]. As Anna Marie Smith observes: “The deployment within Thatcherite discourse of various coded and explicit representations around race and sexuality has to be understood in terms of Thatcherism’s hegemonic project as a whole. The right-wing attacks on black immigrants, multiculturalism and queers played a crucial role in legitimising certain aspects of this project” [1994: 31]. In the case of the 1979 manifesto, “they” are immigrants who are in “our” country illegally to take our jobs, abuse our welfare state and make our communities unsafe. This means that any account of the “social discipline” axis of the Thatcherite political project must address the rights of migrants [Dixon 1983: 173]. The 1979 Manifesto, with its discussion of migrant rights, constructs whiteness in terms of the opposition between the many and the few.

Under the heading “The Rule of Law”, the manifesto includes an entire section on “Immigration and Race Relations”. The very decision to discuss immigration in relation to race is revealing. Its content removes any doubt that it is not about immigrants in general, but about non-white immigrants. This is one of the longest sections of the manifesto, and the only one organised in a bullet-point structure. Importantly for our purposes, the manifesto interweaves the category of “immigrant” with that of “ethnic minority”. It begins with the introduction to the section:

The rights of all British citizens legally settled here are equal before the law whatever their race, colour or creed. And their opportunities ought to be equal too. The ethnic minorities have already made a valuable contribution to the life of our nation. But firm immigration control for the future is essential if we are to achieve good community relations. It will end persistent fears about levels of immigration… [Conservative Party 1979]

The distinction between “ethnic minorities” of a “different race, colour or creed” from other “British citizens” and the need for “firm immigration controls” to allay “persistent fears about levels of immigration” is a telling indication of what is to come. Several points stand out. The first is the promise of the introduction of a new British Nationality Act, which will be in place two years later. As David Dixon observes, “the British Nationality Act of 1981 was no mere peripheral modernisation, but rather the formalised expression of a reconstructed national identity which was a vital and central objective of the Thatcher programme’s racial and ideological politics” [1983: 175]. Another notable point is point five: “We shall severely restrict the issue of work permits” [Conservative Party 1979]. This speaks directly to the fears associated with competition in the labour market. The promised restriction on work permits is aimed at a racialised category of immigrants competing for jobs in Britain. The second point is the last. The need to take “firm action against illegal immigrants and overstayers” is an unmistakable attempt to racialise migration [Ibid.]. This effectively moves the whole issue of migration out of the realm of human rights and into the realm of illegality and abuse of hospitality. In these points, as in the rest of this section, we see the axes of social discipline and social competition coming together under a politics of democratic resentment. The concluding words, a combination of a promise to improve “language training in schools and factories and training facilities for the young unemployed in the ethnic communities’” and a reaffirmation that such measures “will achieve little without effective control of immigration”, is indicative of the general tenor of the manifesto’s racial politics [Conservative Party 1979]. An idealised image of a future political community formed through the purging of morally corrupt elements completes the section: “That is essential for racial harmony in Britain today” [Ibid.].

Whiteness also works with populism through a racialised, individualised conception of national identity. The use of first-person plural pronouns (we, us, ours, ourselves) reveals some important ways in which national identity is constructed in the document. Thatcher’s foreword sets the tone for what follows. It begins by pointing to what brings the audience together, namely their shared experience of Britain in the 1970s. It is implied that these are also those who are legally entitled to vote in the next election to the British Parliament, i.e. citizens and legal residents. However, the text makes it clear that it is addressing an audience that includes more than those merely resident in the UK; its addressees are figuratively construed as members of a “once great nation” that is now in decline, and who believe that something must be done to reverse this decline. Inclusion in “our country” is based on a common-sense notion of rationality and, above all, a notion of law-abiding freedom. The preface concludes by invoking the commonalities that unite the text’s audience as members of the same nation. What exactly these “things we have in common” are, however, is left for the reader to discover in the rest of the Manifesto.

The very first thing “we have in common” comes immediately at the beginning of the next section, which sets out the five challenges faced. “We”, and this is perhaps the most important political use of the first-person plural in the entire document, “are the heirs to a long tradition of parliamentary democracy and the rule of law” [Conservative Party 1979]. Having elevated the audience to the highest moral and political status, the 1979 manifesto presents them with a once-in-a-generation challenge. This dramatic effect is achieved by rhetorically asking the audience: “What has happened to our country, to the values we once shared, to the success and prosperity we once took for granted?” [Ibid.– authors’ emphasis]. The 1979 manifesto thus reveals the second thing “we have in common”: a shared experience of crisis. “During the industrial strife of last winter,” the manifesto says, “confidence, self-respect, common sense and even our sense of common humanity were shaken” [Ibid. – authors’ emphasis). An apocalyptic tone is then introduced for added dramatic effect: “At times this society seemed on the brink of disintegration” [Ibid.]. The present is construed as an exceptional situation, in rupture with a notion of the past associated with the image of a “long tradition” of steady and gradual development. The crisis is not only socio-economic but also moral; our “self-respect” is threatened. By suggesting that the public’s sense of dignity was at stake and that this was the work of a well-identified enemy, the 1979 Manifesto mobilised the politics of democratic resentment.

The third thing “we have in common” is a direct result of the opposition between “us”, the heirs to a long tradition of parliamentary democracy and the rule of law, and “them”, whose actions and beliefs have brought us to an impossible situation. The opposition between “us” and “them” structures the rest of the document. To begin with, “they” include the “violent criminals and thugs” for whom “really tough sentences are essential” and the “hooligans” for whom “we need more compulsory attendance centres” [Conservative Party 1979]. Even the reintroduction of “capital punishment for murder” is not ruled out [Ibid.]. In short, the first step in the process of identity formation of “them” involves violent, physical threats to “our” bodily integrity. The second step extends this process of identity formation to a much wider category of people. The “us” vs. “them” opposition becomes racialised. This racialisation of categories is all the more remarkable as it accompanies, indeed supports, the increasing dramatisation of the political message of the text. What was once a matter of behaviour now becomes a matter of ethnic heritage and cultural identity. Whiteness is associated with the “long tradition” of respect for the “rule of law”, as opposed to blackness, which is associated with disrupting “good community relations” and provoking “persistent fears” [Ibid.]. “We the people” becomes not just a collection of rational, law-abiding social atoms, but a white collection of rational, law-abiding social atoms. This “we” is opposed by a menacing “they”. They are physically violent and dangerous, they are ultimately responsible for the Winter of Discontent and the country’s decades-long decline, and they are members of ethnic minorities who have migrated to Britain with one explicit aim: to compete for our material and symbolic resources. Or, to quote Daniel Trilling: “Culture and ethnicity were conflated with ‘nation’; the unspoken assumption about the fearful ‘people’ Thatcher referred to was that they were white, while the ‘people of a different culture’ were not” [2013].

Ambivalent Race: The Racial Politics of Peronism

Let us now turn to one of the most emblematic populist experiments of all time – Peronism. Despite the vast literature devoted to Perón and Peronism since the 1960s [Karush and Chamosa 2010: 3-12], the racialised nature of Peronist politics has been largely overlooked [Elena 2016: 185]. However, a recent wave of populist scholarship has challenged entrenched notions of racial exceptionalism that see Argentina (and Peronism) as regional outliers. This article contributes to this literature through an analysis of the Argentine Constitution of 1949, also known as the “Justicialist” or Peronist Constitution [Argentina 1949]. Before proceeding, however, a brief description of the rise of Peronism in Argentina in the mid-1940s is in order.

In June 1943, a military coup, ideologically aligned with fascism and led by President General Edelmiro J. Farrell, aimed to transform Argentina from oligarchic rule to mass democracy. The military government dissolved Congress, imposed press censorship and banned political parties. Perón entered the political scene as head of the National Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, strategically aligning himself with the resistance to the conservative military regime and cultivating the support of the labour movement.

The turning point came in October 1945, when a failed coup against the government led to Perón’s dismissal and imprisonment. His arrest sparked a massive demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires on 17 October 1945, a pivotal moment in Peronist history. Upon his release, Perón made an impassioned speech announcing his candidacy for the presidency, positioning himself as the champion of “the people” against the forces of oppression. The subsequent election campaign, marked by polarisation between Perón and José Tamborini, saw Perón emerge as Argentina’s first democratically elected populist leader. On 24 February 1946, Perón was elected President of Argentina with 52.84% of the vote.

For Perón, the Argentine Constitution of 1949 was the third stage of the Peronist movement, which had begun with the 1943 Revolution and developed during his term in office from 1946. This final step consolidated the earlier advances made in the streets and in government: “The essential principles of the Peronist doctrine now shine as the polar star of the nation in the preamble of the new Justicialist Constitution,” Perón declared in 1950 [Perón 1950: 8]. Different approaches to populism give different moments in this political process analytical priority. Discourse theory focuses on the 1943 revolution and has little to say about Perón’s constitution or governments [Groppo 2009]. The political strategy approach pays more attention to the institutionalisation of Peronism, but reduces it to a rational attempt to maximise utility [Negretto 2013]. In contrast, we focus on the Peronist constitution without ignoring its normativity. We compare a little-studied document – the Peronistas’ Anteproyecto – with the 1949 Constitution in order to better capture the principles and justifications that underpin the relevant articles.⁵ In particular, we ask: What kind of politics of race does the 1949 Argentine Constitution produce?

The “we” in “We the people” refers first and foremost to the working class, which is granted numerous constitutional rights and guarantees. But who exactly is the working class in Peronist Argentina? Like other Latin American countries, Argentina had been populated by successive waves of immigration. Historically, Argentine national identity had resulted from the encounter between indigenous peoples and settlers. Any discussion of national identity in Argentina therefore necessarily involves an examination of immigration [Acha and Quiroga 2012; Adamovsky 2012, 2014; James 2010].

This makes the changes made to Article 31, which regulates immigration, crucial to how the Argentine pueblo identity was construed by the Peronistas. Whereas the 1853 Constitution had a relatively open attitude towards immigration, granting automatic citizenship rights after only two years of residence, the Peronist Constitution transformed immigration into a powerful political instrument of nation-building and citizenship. It is worth quoting the justification for this change in the Anteproyecto:

Argentina is interested in immigration, but it is interested in immigration not only as an increase in population for economic purposes, but as a means of creating a consistent and unified nationality. Until now, a policy of attraction has been followed without spiritual content, in which affective considerations did not play a role at all. […] Such a system cannot last. It is essential to bring settlers, but we must turn them into citizens, in order to link them more closely to our nationality. The foreigners who, in use of a respectable right, do not like acquiring Argentine nationality, are settlers who do not interest us because they either act through material and selfish motives or constitute elements of social disturbance. [Partido Peronista 1949]

There are several notable aspects to this justification. First, a distinction is made between mere settlers and full citizens. It implicitly articulates a movement from individuals motivated by mere economic interest to those motivated by a superior sense of national consciousness. Citizenship is not automatic, but is achieved through effort. For a historically wronged collective such as the Argentine working class, dominated by a sense of underserved suffering, can there be a more rewarding message than the constitutional recognition that their efforts have not been in vain?

A second important aspect is implicit in this justification. It refers to the fact that in the 1949 Constitution, as in the 1853 Constitution, immigration effectively means European immigration (Article 17). The fact that the Peronists chose not to change this constitutional provision seems to suggest that the construction of national identity involves a state-sponsored policy of whitening Argentina, a process that began with Juan Bautista Alberdi, the ideologue behind the 1853 Constitution, and includes Perón, the self-proclaimed father of the “descamisados” (shirtless, as opposed to properly dressed). However, a careful analysis of the racial politics of the 1949 Constitution reveals a more complex picture [Edwards 2018. See also Andrews 2004; Rodríguez 2016].

Perón’s supporters were not only denigrated in classist terms as “descamisados”. They were also the object of vicious racist abuse. Anti-Peronistas called them “cabecitas negras” (“little black heads”, as opposed to intelligent whites), “negro peronista” (black Peronist), “negro villero” (shantytown Black) [Milanesio 2010: 55], or simply “negros” [Elena 2016: 189]. The Argentine poor were not only socio-economically disadvantaged; they were also much more likely to be of African and Amerindian descent.⁶ As Gino Germani observes: “The ‘criollo’ component of the new working class was so prominent that it gave rise to a stereotype: the ‘black head’, which in turn became synonymous with the Peronist. Like all stereotypes, it had great distortions but also strong empirical support” [1973: 466]. The symbolic power of this racially tinged stereotype did not stop at Perón’s supporters: the opprobrium extends to the “black myth” surrounding Eva Perón, the attempt to associate the First Lady’s proverbial vitality with her allegedly mixed racial heritage and working-class background [Capelato 1993: 314].

The construction of national identity by Peronism thus involves a Janus-faced figure of the Argentine pueblo: one poor, one dark-skinned. However, these faces were not subjected to the same symbolic work. On the one hand, the figure of the “descamisado” occupied the highest place in the symbolic pantheon of Peronism. Associated with the French sans-culottes, it represented a wronged collective that deserved redemption and dignity. On the other hand, there is no comparable symbolic reversal of meaning in the case of the term “cabecitas negras” [Grimson 2017: 116]. As Adamovsky concludes his study of criollista discourse in Argentina, “in the years of classical Peronism, there was no explicit critique of the myth of a white-European Argentina, nor any concerted effort to openly claim the non-European as part of the nation” [2015: 58 – authors’ translation]. However, the very idea that Argentine national identity could include non-white elements was a way for the Peronist movement to make the Argentine national ethnos a political issue, rather than a naturalised reality. This ambivalent treatment of race by the Peronists extends to the text of the Constitution. Consider how the 1949 Constitution treats this socio-cultural dimension in comparison with socio-economic deprivation. As noted above, the new constitution contains a whole new catalogue of social rights. On the other hand, apart from the more conscious political construction of citizenship, the few articles on immigration and racial discrimination were not modified or expanded in any meaningful way. This does not necessarily mean that Peronist Argentina is a case of pure class resentment that has rendered processes of racial othering invisible. But it does raise the question of what kind of racial politics Peronism mobilised, and with what consequences.

Pioneering Racial Justice: The American Populists

In this section we look at the forerunner of populism in the West: The People’s Party of America, or simply the Populist Party. American Populism was much more than a party. It was also a social movement that had an important impact on several states in the Midwest and South. The movement and the party were united by their stated creed, a set of revolutionary ideas that took the US by storm in the 1890s. The populist creed was part belief, part printed text. In this section we focus on the latter in order to illuminate the former. Our object of study is the Omaha Platform of 1892 [Populist Party 1892]. Our analysis of the notion of national identity in this legendary document challenges at least two deeply held assumptions in the literature. First, we challenge liberal scholarship whose conflation of democracy and pluralism (paradoxically) leads to the exclusion of the American Populists from populism [Müller 2016: 85; Pappas 2019]. Second, and relatedly, we show not only that the People’s Party employed a distinctly populist mode of politics, but that this included experiments in interracial politics that destabilise traditional accounts of the American Populists as a fundamentally nativist, anti-Semitic, and retrograde political force [Hofstadter 1952].

Adopted at the party’s founding convention on 4 July 1892, the Omaha Platform set out the basic tenets of the Populists’ political programme. Revered by the Populists, feared by the old parties, the Omaha Platform was a divisive document. It laid bare the grievances, real or perceived, of a significant segment of the American population. It identified those responsible for those grievances. Economic and political elites took the brunt of the blame, but systemic forces, namely laissez-faire capitalism, were not forgotten. It proposed fundamental change and demanded urgent solutions. As a radical manifesto, the Omaha Platform is also an intervention in constitutional politics. It was heralded as a Second Bill of Rights. Its influence extended far beyond the American politics of the 1890s; its words and principles reverberated throughout the following century in progressive circles invested in projects of social reform and greater equality. But the moralism of the document is inherently dangerous to liberal democratic regimes. A double-edged sword, then, the words of the Omaha Platform offer a glimpse into the normativity that underpins American populism and, importantly, the role that race plays in it.

In the Omaha Platform, national identity is defined in two mutually reinforcing ways. On the one hand, the “we” is defined by association. The text includes the Populist origin story, which establishes a symbolic link between us, the “suffering people” of the present, and them, the revolutionary people who rebelled against English colonial rule led by Washington.

Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation […], we seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of “the plain people,” with which class it originated. [Populist Party 1892]

At first sight, this is a nationalist affirmation of collective identity. On closer inspection, the Omaha Platform is forward-looking not backward-looking. The aim is not to return to a lost Golden Age of perfect equality and social harmony. Rather, the references to the past are made to legitimise and clarify why the American people of the late 19th century is in urgent need of moral cleansing and redemption. The Omaha Platform is concerned with identity formation more than identity affirmation.

On the other hand, the identity of the American people is defined by an opposition. This is the opposition between us, the simple American people, and them, the foreign peoples, namely in the crucial demand to prohibit “alien ownership of land” [Populist Party 1892]. In other words, national identity is partly defined in opposition, both vertically (to elites) and horizontally (to economic competitors). These antagonisms were primarily socio-economic. For the Populists, national identity is less the affirmation of a given ethno-linguistic heritage than the formation of a socio-economically inclusive collective. It is less about the essentialist question of who the people are than about what the people should do to be fully equal and democratic. The American people is a work in progress. Radically unstable and forever open to redefinition, the people can be traced back to the peculiar producer ethic of the Revolution and forward to a future in which the promise of universal democratic equality is fulfilled.

Any discussion of the ways in which national identity is defined in the Omaha Platform requires a consideration not only of its distant origins but also of the immediate context of its emergence. The grievances of millions of American farmers from the 1870s onwards are central to this. Both the actual socio-economic facts behind these grievances, namely the crop-lien system and the long-term downward trend in the prices of the three main crops (wheat, corn and cotton), and the perceptions of these facts, the perceived sense that farmers’ living standards were declining, are important. This is a central aspect of the logic of democratic resentment. The loser who resents, feels indignation or is consumed by envy is not necessarily a real loser; more than actual losses, what moves the loser is the belief of an undeserved loss. While this perception of undeserved treatment can be translated into a sense of victimhood, it can just as easily be translated into demands for political change and social reform through “discharge mechanisms” such as social movements and democratic politics. With this distinction in mind, let us consider the grievances – both real and imagined – that fuelled American Populism.

Populists were primarily concerned with who reaped the economic benefits of the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877). Income inequality during this period is historically less significant than has long been assumed [Stelzner 2015]. Nevertheless, there was not only a significant increase in inequality, but also a burgeoning public concern about the fairness of income distribution. In particular, more and more people were asking themselves: Who are the winners and who are the losers? The answer, found in the populist pamphlets of the time, is clear. The biggest winners were the railroads, the banks and, more generally, urban, educated Americans. The biggest losers were farmers. From around 1870, farmers in the United States saw the price of their crops fall steadily. At a time when “dollars grow dearer and dearer and scarcer and scarcer” [Hicks 1970: 87], a process accelerated by the decision to demonetise silver in 1873 (in Populist parlance, the “crime of 1873”), farmers saw their living conditions worsen by the day. A strong dollar meant high interest rates on mortgages. Mounting debt was the catalyst for decades of deteriorating living standards for American farmers, who could no longer rely on free land and faced competition from international producers.

These grievances gave rise to political protest. Key to this was the “cooperative movement” that grew up around the Farmers’ Alliance. With the active participation of hundreds of thousands of farmers, it inspired new cooperative forms of production and marketing, including cooperative shops and credit agencies. The “co-operative movement” extended beyond the economic sphere in which it originated into the social and political spheres. Ultimately, it pointed to a redefinition of democratic possibility. A vast network of organisers undertook the work of translating economic grievances into political demands. Operating out of hundreds of county alliances in 43 states, most of these individuals were unknown beyond the local or regional level [Goodwyn 1976: 250; Mitchell 1987].

Intellectually, the Populists’ political claims are based on two main narratives. One is Americanism, or the belief that “America” is a unique land where all men are created equal, individual liberty is protected, and the principle of republican self-government is paramount. Another is the producer ethic that has shaped conceptions of “the people” since the time of the Revolution. It suggests that America is a “natural aristocracy” in which those who toil “with hammer and hand” are the noblest part of the community [Kazin 2017: 15].

At first glance, the combined result of Americanism and producerism could be seen as a fundamental limitation on how the Populists defined “the people” and how they proposed to extend political representation. Excluded from “the people” were not only the “idle classes” (the economic elite), but also African Americans [Kazin 2017: 14-15]. This understanding is widespread in the literature [e.g. Laclau 2005: 204]. In reality, while the dominant categories of “worker”, “labourer” and “producer” rarely extended across the gender divide [but see Nugent 2013: 119-124], they often did so across the colour line [Soule 1992]. The historical record shows that in the southern United States, the producer ethic was not an obstacle to the inclusion of Black people in populist definitions of “the people”. On the contrary, intensified by the catalysing effect of populism, the shared economic grievances of poor white and Black farmers were the linchpin for innovations in interracial politics unknown in the United States until the Civil Rights campaigns of the 1950s. Of course, as African Americans saw it, addressing economic grievances was not enough. The more fundamental problem was the whiteness of the conflict between “paupers and millionaires” [Goodwyn 1976: 281]. Indeed, even white Populists who were genuinely invested in addressing the root causes of the grievances of the “common people” were rarely “gifted with the second sight” [Du Bois 1903: 8]. They did not critically reflect on their own participation in a white supremacist culture. Yet the agrarian rebellion and the People’s Party experience contain many episodes of innovative interracial politics that could have changed the history of race relations in the US.

Discussion

The discussion will be guided by the idea that populism acts as a catalyst. Just because populism acts as a catalyst for one reaction does not mean that it will act as a catalyst for another reaction. Reactions depend on social content (beliefs, interests, representations), not on the catalyst. Populism is equally likely to make racist and anti-racist sentiments more intense and pointed. As illustrated below, this helps to explain why it is unhelpful to search for the “right” organisational form of populist politics (e.g. charismatic leadership vs. social movement) for racial justice.

We begin with American Populism. Our focus is on the Populists’ record on interracial politics. One example is the founding meeting of the Texas People’s Party in Dallas on 17 August 1891. The general tone of the discussion is representative of the Populist stance on race relations. The Democrats were criticised for refusing to give Black people representation, and the Republicans for abandoning them. This opened up an opportunity for the Populist Party to represent poor Black farmers. If the claims of white Populist leaders left room for doubt, the words of a Black Populist leader made the issue clear: “If you cannot take us and elect us in this convention, we will not thank you. We do not propose to be appointed by chairmen. You must appoint us by the convention and make us feel that we are men” [quoted in Goodwyn 1976: 290]. As a result, the Populist Party ran for election in Texas with a bi-racial leadership.

This phenomenon was not confined to Texas. Throughout the southern United States, numerous Black reform leaders ran for office on a “People’s” ticket, often under extreme psychological and physical duress. This marked the beginning of Black Populism, whose short lifespan should not be mistaken for a lack of political promise. In a three-party political environment that was “inherently white supremacist”, as Goodwyn [1976] summarises, “the interracial political record of the third party was measurably superior to its Democratic rival and compared well with that of whites in the Republican Party” [Ibid.: 296]. As this and other similar episodes suggest [Frank 2018], the racial politics of the American Populists can only be considered progressive. The Populists constructed an image of the sovereign people, negatively defined by their opposition to a predominantly white elite, and positively imagined as an interracial collective of farmers and other manual workers.

The progressive nature of the racial politics of the American Populists stands in stark contrast to the exclusionary nature of Thatcherism’s racial politics. This “exclusionary” character results from a definition of Britishness that depends on the exclusion of ethnic minorities. This exclusion is reinforced by the catalysing effect of populism, which pits one part of the people against another; the excluded are seen as responsible for the undeserved suffering of the many.

Beyond the racialisation of the categories defining who the people are, it is important to stress that this is the first time in the history of populism that national identity is defined in individualistic terms. Thatcher’s British “people” is an atomised collection of rational agents, not a homogeneous collective. The political and conceptual implications of this novelty are considerable. Politically, it allows for a new, fundamental reconfiguration of who counts as the people. Since what counts is not classes or groups, but individuals and their choices, the politics of resentment takes on a radically new configuration under Thatcherism, either in terms of disciplining the social body, or in terms of instilling a dynamic of competition between these newly separated social parts. Conceptually, by making claims on behalf of an atomised figure of the people, Thatcherism expands what is possible within the logic of democratic resentment. Although resentment is understood here as a collective emotion that patterns social action, it is also a personal emotion felt by individuals. The radical character of Thatcherism is that it uses this individual-level resentment to great political effect: by portraying society as a collection of atoms, each rationally pursuing its self-interest, it effectively makes the politics of democratic resentment deeper and more stable. The dichotomy between the many and the few is multiplied indefinitely. It is no longer just one class/group against another. Under Thatcherism, the resentment-driven division of the political body engulfs both individual interactions and social relations.

Between the racially progressive American Populism and the exclusionary racial politics of Thatcherism lies the ambivalent case of Peronism. An analysis of the Peronist constitution reveals the activation of a fault line between the haves and have-nots, which often doubled as whites and non-whites. However, this second dimension was largely invisible and only became apparent when the shirtless and dark-skinned pueblo descended from the countryside to the boulevards of the “Paris of South America” to show their support for Perón. Certainly, Argentina’s Black and indigenous heritage – Argentina has an ethnic make-up of 60% European, 9% African and 31% Amerindian [Godinho 2008] – is not explicitly addressed in the text of the constitution. However, by integrating non-white elements into Argentina’s national identity and addressing issues of material redistribution (which disproportionately affected non-white Argentines), the Constitution destabilised the white majority’s self-image. As Germani [1973] commented: “In a country so conspicuously free of ethnic prejudices, this stereotype acquired emotional weight due to its political and ideological content, disappearing in the post-Peronist period” [Ibid.: 466]. Clearly, not even the eminent sociologist can escape the cloak of invisibility that surrounds Argentine racism. But equally significant is what Germani says next, namely that Peronism involved the affective activation of a structural cleavage that quickly returned to its dormant state once Perón left the scene and his constitution was replaced. This is broadly in line with our argument. The Argentine Constitution of 1949 is the end point of a momentous three-stage change in Argentine politics that begins with the 1943-45 Revolution, evolves into the first Peronist government, and culminates in the constitutional reform process analysed here. It is also at this end point that the normativity of Peronism takes its most systematic, clear and consistent form.

Our analysis goes beyond the existing literature in several ways. First, it challenges Negretto’s thesis that this process of constitutional reform was “mainly a strategy to consolidate the power of new political actors” [2013: 114]. In the first place, it does not deviate significantly from the traditional, common-sense view that the 1949 Constitution was nothing more than the result of a “political move” to enable Perón’s re-election [Regolo 2012: 15; see also Negretto 2020: 122]. While this explanation should not be completely dismissed, it does not take into account the dozens of changes introduced by the new constitution that had little to do with Perón’s bid for re-election. Similarly, reducing Peronism to the rational pursuit of political gain overlooks the well-documented fact that Perón mobilised a politics of emotion in the 1940s.

Second, our analysis highlights the importance of the later constitutional phase of Peronism. By refocusing the discussion, we have shed important new light on its normativity. The catalytic nature of populism enabled Perón to mobilise a variety of substantive concerns, including structural racism and intergenerational poverty, in a pointed yet deeply ambivalent manner. In the 1949 constitution, there is no chain of equivalence between the “descamisados” and the “cabecitas negras”. Instead, Perón’s constitution treated culture as inseparable and subordinate to socio-economic concerns. In addressing the socio-economic grievances of the descamisados, Peronism also tacitly addressed the socio-cultural concerns of the cabecitas negras, who were often the same people. Perón tried to represent both the descamisados and the cabecitas negras. Importantly, the naming of Peronistas as “cabecitas negras” does not reproduce a pre-existing classification; it produces it. It works through stereotyping, that is, by making everyone in the stereotyped group uniform through the arbitrary attribution of characteristics considered essential to the group. In the case of anti-Peronist stereotyping, it was a collective response by the urban middle and upper classes, who were increasingly concerned about an “invasion” of the cities and social interactions between classes [Milanesio 2010: 54-55]. Perón sought to reverse this naming (and its exclusionary effects) through the redistribution of wealth and resources, including the granting of certain rights, such as the right to vote, to indigenous populations [Rodríguez 2016: 133]. He achieved this in part by harnessing democratic resentment. As the socio-cultural resentment experienced by a section of the Argentine population was defined by economic deprivation and ethnic discrimination, Perón was able to successfully deploy the logic of democratic resentment by portraying the ruling elite as economically powerful and culturally white. All in all, Peronism offered at best an ambivalent solution to Argentina’s deep-rooted racial problems. While it opened important avenues for the political incorporation of the “cabecitas negras”, it did little to address their continued invisibility in a long-term, consistent manner.

Conclusion

By comparing three white-majority countries with distinctive populist legacies, this article challenges the conventional link between populism and racism. It shows that populism can promote exclusionary, ambivalent and progressive race politics. Thatcherism promotes an exclusionary racial politics centred on a zero-sum game of interracial competition and deep-rooted anxieties about the racial other. Peronism articulates an ambivalent racial politics that was insufficient to make visible racial inequalities in Argentina. American Populism, despite the white supremacist context of the late 19th century United States, promotes some of the most innovative and progressive forms of interracial cooperation in the history of populism. To be sure, we do not wish to pigeonhole our cases into rigid analytical categories. On the contrary, we embrace the complexity of each historical case. The dominant forms of identity formation that have a negative, ambivalent or positive impact on racial justice necessarily coexist with other forms of identity formation. Nevertheless, the prevalence of certain types of identity formation allows us to draw some conclusions about the populist-race nexus.

These are due to the fact that populism acts as a catalyst. Animated by a flickering logic of action, democratic resentment, populism defines people around rival or competitive forms of identification. Racial othering feeds on this rivalrous framework. We identify three basic types of identity formation, each involving a specific form of ethno-racial relations. The exclusionary racial politics that underpin Thatcherism is explained by a type of identity formation that depends on a racial other that is blamed for the undeserved suffering of the “we” in “We the people”. The fact that Peronism defines national identity by promoting socio-economic redistribution while failing to secure the symbolic recognition of racial others explains its mixed record on racial justice. Finally, the racial politics of American Populism are more progressive in that they define “the people” in opposition to (dominant white) elites and competitors, while promoting interracial cooperation and solidarity. Depending on the conjuncture, the populist-race nexus unfolds along a continuum of forms of interracial politics, ranging from the exclusionary and ambivalent to the more progressive. That this happens in reverse chronological order should serve to caution against progressive views of history.