Resurgence of Global Populism, by Karyene E Messina, is an extremely important book for the times in which we find ourselves. Goldwater rule aside, Messina puts a critical eye and subtle understanding of individual and social psychology to the task of understanding the great political threat of our time - that is, right wing populist movements. and more specifically, the role that Donald J Trump has played in it's resurgence.
For anyone confused as to how we've gone from the "end of history" to the beginning of a proto-fascist movement threatening the very foundation of our democratic ideals, this is a good place to start,.
Smart, accessible, measured, I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the current political situation.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Interesting times. Projective identification was one term that was
never heard before. But after reading this, it makes sense.So if you want
something a little different.give it a read and you might like it.

What is behind the current phenomenon of the autocratic strongman? What makes it so easy for them to hijack a vulnerable democracy? What role does disinformation and scapegoating play in all this?

This writer, Karyn E Messina, takes a psychoanalytical approach to these questions, most specifically towards the need for such autocrats to look for scapegoats: even when this is most deliberately deployed, Messina argues that scapegoating isn't the behaviour of a healthy individual. Only those having suffered early deep psychological damage will feel the need to project all their badness and dissension onto a feared minority, or an individual, the tragedy being that the people in these cases can be so easily manipulated into doing likewise.

Messina wrote this book to question how Trump ever came into power. In examining this question she looks for precedents elsewhere, though curiously she does not look at the influence of the biggest daddy of strong men and disinformation of them all - as she herself mentions, the Ukraine war only broke out as she was putting the finishing touches to this book. He research onto these precedents then reads like a rogue's gallery of strongmen, or autocrats. In some cases, the psychological damage is clear: Niroragua's Daniel Ortega for example was raped amd tortured whilst in prison. The Philipines' Rodrigo Duterte came from a violent family where beatings were common. More often however, the main trauma appears to be more related to being shamed over being poor. Trump for example, is said to be shamed over his mother's poor immigrant background.

Bolsonaro is mentioned, and there is also a close look at what has been happening in recent years in Hungary, Poland, Austria and in the UK, with Johnson's Brexit. Most strong men are aggressively mysogynistic as well as being anti specific minorities, and care nothing about the current climate crisis, though attention is brought to France's Marine Le Pen.

Australia and New Zealand are looked at here - this is where this book is as much about political science as it is about the psychoanalysis of the autocrats discussed here - as the writer points out that in some democracies, right-wing popularist is far less likely to take root (she doesn't mention Scandinavia much in this context). A little more explicit commentary on how to make democracies more immune to right-wing popularism would have been very welcome here and possibly too, more on how neo-liberalism erodes welfare and greater equality, adding to greater discontent omong the people might have helped too.

What Messina does do is pinpoint just how easy it was for these strong men to use social media to spread their messages and foment outrage against their chosen scapegoats. The capacity for malicious disinformation to be spread virally has certainly, already been seen to have helped explain both the success of Trump and Brexit (Cambridge analytica).

This book certainly puts the spotlight on how the current, very critical and global situation has come about, although there is less about how to counteract it on a grass-roots level. It is still an engrossing, if sobering, read.