Jan-Werner Müller teaches politics at Princeton. Street, Palace, Square: The Architecture of Democratic Spaces is out now.
Can there be poetic justice in politics? Perhaps once in a lifetime. In 1989, a young Viktor Orbán bravely told the crowds in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square that it was time for the Russians to go home, just as protesters had demanded in 1956; almost four decades later, he was heckled on the campaign trail with the same words. There were more chants of ‘Ruszkik haza!’...
Péter Magyar is a conservative, but also the only hope for defeating the regime; hence he has effectively absorbed most of what used to be liberal and left-wing opposition forces. Unlike Orbán and his henchmen, Magyar does not consider it his mission to incite hatred of minorities, but he also makes a point of keeping away from the Budapest Pride parade.
What is Trumpism? After all these years, we’re still asking the question. For some, Trump’s second term has revealed the fascism that was there all along; others diagnose a peculiar combination of 1970s New York swamp politics and Southern white supremacy. One thing is beyond dispute: recent months have seen an extraordinary concentration of executive power and an unprecedented...
Months before the Trumpist onslaught on higher education, US universities were rushing to prohibit protest encampments. Why do some ramshackle tents on lawns present such a threat to authority – as opposed to demonstrations and marches, which remain generally permitted, subject to certain regulations?
Italy is often thought of as a political laboratory, anticipating events in other countries: fascism in the 1920s; the showman-businessman turned politician in the 1990s; populism in the 2010s. Great significance has been attributed to the government of Giorgia Meloni, who became prime minister in 2022. For some, it signals the return of fascism in a novel form; for the majority of pundits...
This week, we talk to regular LRB contributor Jan-Werner Müller about populism, Trump and the state of democracy.
Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.