The Spirit of Commercial Populism

Spirit, in the sense of “ Geist ,” refers to what might be described as a set of shared logics and sensibilities that infuse the historical moment, as in the spirit of the time: the Zeitgeist . It can also refer to a ghost or specter (such as that which allegedly haunted Europe), or in religious terms as a community of faith and the agentive power it possesses. Here, we are interested in spirit in the sense of a shared formation with material and ideological elements associated with the rise—in democratic, capitalist societies—of deeply antidemocratic tendencies. This approach has elements of both the spirit of the time and a particular version of faith. We consider the media formation that links to this spirit: the rise of the commercial surveillance economy, which abstracts individuals from civic formations, backgrounds irreducible forms of political interdependence, and privileges consumer sovereignty over citizenship. To develop an approach to what we describe as the spirit of commercial populism, we first consider the significant shifts in the media environment that favored the rise of Donald Trump's populist appeal in USA. Then we develop the notion of “commercial populism” to mark the homology between the promise of the “miracle cure” and the political marketing strategies of the Trump campaign. This chapter concludes with a consideration of some defining elements of commercial populism and how these might resonate internationally.