Misuses of history: The case of US populism in European political science

The countless studies European political scientists have produced on populism since the 1990s rest on a complicated relationship with the populist movements of the past. I will study here how they deal with a particularly significant historical example of populism: the People’s Party in the United States. I will show that this example is either ignored, equated with today’s populist parties and movements, or reduced to a perennial populist language. These misrepresentations can be explained by dubious choices in the literature on populism, which build a false image of US populism but strengthen the usual definitions of populism in political science. A better knowledge of studies on the People’s Party would not only make it possible to propose a more truthful account of it, but also to think anew the concept of populism in the light of this movement.