PSYCHO-POLITICAL REASONS OF RISING POPULISM AND POPULIST MOVEMENTS

Özet

Populism is a rising phenomenon all over the world and is a global issue. Populism is associated with psychological concepts such as archaic fear, belonging, exclusion, and othering that have been seen since the first emergence of human existence. Populism is also a socio-psychologic reaction to the corruption of democracy in general, its corrupt institutions, the political establishment and the political-bureaucratic elites. In other words, populism is a social reality that emerges from the traumatic destruction of emotions and emotional capital in contemporary democracy psychologically. The research aims to examine the emotional, traumatic and political psychological dynamics of populism, in short, based on psychology. Therefore, the study examines how the psychological consequences of the destruction of liberal democracy reveal populism. One of the psychological causalities in the rise of populism is that feelings of belonging and othering, instead of pluralism, are socially and politically decisive dynamics in an age where emotions and feelings gain importance. Populism and populist movements, especially in the West, seem related to liberal democracy's tendency towards elitism and bureaucratic hegemony and its loss of legitimacy.

Keywords: populism, otherness, emotions, political communicate, ontological security.