National Populism
National Populism

A right-wing psyche?

I concluded my previous post on the psychopathology of Brexit by suggesting that right-wing populist ideology is an attempt to articulate a trauma.  In this context, trauma can be thought of as a manifestation of the Real, as Lacan makes clear in Seminar XI.  Another way to look at this …

Restless ghosts: the psychopathology of Brexit (part 2):

Is Brexit  the manifestation of a right-wing populism?  Certainly, some of the key motivations that appear to stand behind Brexit, which include concerns about immigration, a desire to see Britain ‘great’ again, xenophobia (especially towards ‘Europeans’), a distrust of (liberal) political elites, social conservatism veering towards authoritarianism, and so on, …

A psychotherapy of the right?

In my previous post I began to explore the question of whether psychotherapy in this country is left-wing or at least whether it has left leanings.  I posed this question in the context of the recent UK election and Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise ‘victory’ (he lost but you wouldn’t know it), …

Brexit and the left (behind)

Two years ago Robert Ford and Mathew Goodwin wrote what turned out to be an eerily prescient book about the radical right in Britain, and focusing particularly on the rise of UKIP1  Although the idea of a referendum on the UK’s relationship with the EU was already firmly on the …

The ideology of Brexit

In my previous post on this subject I briefly explored the ideas of Robert Ford and Mathew Goodwin as laid out in their book on the growth of UKIP and the radical right in Britain.1 As I noted in that post, Ford and Goodwin’s argument was essentially that, contrary to …

Liberal democracy hung out to dry

Last night’s ‘shock’ election result which has left the UK with its second hung parliament within the space of seven years has not only upset the usual suspects (the political class, the commentariat, Daily Mail and Telegraph readers, etc) but also all those people who thought there was a direct …

Lone wolves?

The recent attack on the Finsbury Park mosque by Darren Osborne has rekindled the whole argument regarding so-called ‘lone wolf’ terrorists. The Times was the first out of the gate with the headline “Jobless ‘lone wolf’ Darren Osborne held over attack on Finsbury Park mosque”. Other media reports were quick …