Across the Divide

Joris Luyendijk

Before Brexit, before Trump, it was easy to dismiss populists as delusional. Not any more. The tide of populism is rising across Europe and it's time we started listening. Not to the politicians themselves, who are as full of bullshit as their mainstream counterparts, but to the complaints that are getting them into power.

In this book, investigative journalist Joris Luyendijk turns his candid eye on the motives behind populist movements. Drawing on his experiences reporting from Middle East dictatorships and from within the banking sector, he paints a devastating picture of the corrupt current system and considers why it might not be so irrational to vote populist after all.

Which is not to say that you should. Legitimate concerns have been made taboo or dismissed for so long that populism seems the only alternative, but its success is a surefire way of driving a truck through our democratic system. So Luyendijk set up a social experiment, breaking out of his own bubble and inviting populist voters to talk. The results are as surprising as they are heartening and show how we might we might force our mainstream political parties to reinvent themselves. Rather than catastrophe, the result of it all might be a repoliticised and refreshed democracy.

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