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This article investigates pro-vax discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic. Expert and political discussions about the pandemic are abundant, commonly focusing on anti-vax and science-skeptic politics and further connecting them with post-truth and populism. However, research on pro-vax discourse remains largely overlooked. The article focuses on the case of Cyprus which received little scholarly attention in the context of the pandemic, especially by political science and media and communication scholarship. Applying discourse analysis to 120 media units that connect the articulations of scientific experts, politicians and journalists, empirical findings show that the discursive management of the pandemic takes place in the name of science, reason and responsibility, with key mechanisms of persuasion being the moralistic and fear-mongering narratives that place the responsibility for the return to normality on individual citizens. This highlights that communication about COVID-19 is not merely about healthcare and science. Rather, it is politicized and disciplinary in nature. The examination of the case of Cyprus alongside existing theories and debates reveals the internationally salient character of discursive features and patterns including the hegemony of techno-scientific objectivism, epistemological elitism and anti-populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This was a direct attack on the theories of Laclau and Mouffe in that PODEMOS' leadership openly embraced populism and attempted to reclaim its meaning, maintaining close personal ties with the two contemporary thinkers.[11] The blame for the failure of leftist actors was put on "populism" and the "Essex School" as proponents of progressive democratic populism. Crucially, research that focuses on the relative success or failure of populist actors to achieve policy outcomes close to their programmatic promises in order to determine the success or failure of populism per se jeopardizes the conceptual clarity of populism: in reality, what it strives to study is not the populist (formal) component but the policy one. (Liberal) anti-populism has arguably extended its influence on the left too, leading to the dismissal of populism as a potentially beneficial strategy for the left. In other words, left populism brought SYRIZA to power; however, the inability to push forward its policy agenda (the "left" component of left populism) gradually affected its ability to mobilize the popular sectors and to operate as a salient point of populist identification - and not the other way round. Left populism cannot be reduced to a single monolithic category (as it usually happens with "populism" I in abstracto i thus disorienting populism research). [Extracted from the article]

Donald Trump's style is often described as provocative and his administration as catastrophic. Despite this, his popularity remained high throughout his term in office, and in the 2020 US elections, he received 10 million votes more than in 2016. This paper investigates the paradox of political identification through a discursive, performative and stylistic framework. It argues that policy outcomes and rhetorical consistency do not suffice in understanding identification. Rather, transgression – which is typical of populist performativity – plays a pivotal role in interpellating affective collective subjectivities. This article investigates the case of Donald Trump, from his emergence in 2015 until the 2021 Capitol insurgence. It employs discourse and visual analysis to study Trump's rhetoric and performativity, integrating this with in-depth interviews and ethnographic research to examine the ways his style resonated with his supporters. It concludes that charismatic performativity and transgression play a crucial role in political identification regardless of the quality of institutional performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the curious non-emergence of populism in contemporary Cyprus despite the deep financial crisis and profound political disillusionment – conditions that are treated as necessary and sufficient. Putting emphasis on Cyprus' key historical particularities, the article inquires into the ways Cyprus' political past, and the subsequent salient 'national question', produce ambiguous notions of 'the people' on the one hand, and impede the potentials for a 'populist moment' on the other hand. By assessing the performative dynamics of oppositional parties in Cyprus, the empirical analysis suggests that the absence of populism is rooted in the following factors: First, nationalist discourse prevails over, and significantly weakens, populist discourse. Second, self-proclaimed challenger parties served 'old wine in new bottles' further undermining their position and claims. The failure of populism to take root in Cyprus, brings to the fore important theoretical insights relevant to the non-emergence of populism even under favourable conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how 'populism' was used in public discussions during the COVID-19 outbreak. It argues that the indiscriminate use of 'populism' and its association with the pandemic is rooted in the negative way it is talked about in public debates. Critically evaluating pundit claims framing populism as an 'anti-scientific', 'irresponsible' and 'authoritarian' response to the health crisis, this article shows that 'populism' does not suffice to explain actors' responses to COVID-19. Rather, populists' ideological positions played a crucial role in their pandemic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2018, Slavoj Žižek published a two-part contribution titled 'Should the Left's answer to rightist populism be really a "me too"?'. In this text, Žižek reproduced his diachronic skepticism on populism as a fruitful strategy for the Left. In a critical vein, we believe that Žižek's latest interventions join - unconsciously or not - an avalanche of antipopulist discourses that usually emanate from elitist politicians and journalists, and reproduce a moralist, alarmist stance against populism. As a consequence, anti-populist elitism blurs the concept of populism even more thereby hampering our possibilities to capture the changing politico-historic reality in the age of collapsing neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]