Backlash : comment l’ultradroite s’infiltre au sommet de l’État: Backlash: How the Far Right Penetrates the Top Layers of the State

While many have suggested “right-wing populism” as a framework by which to understand Trump and similar New Right phenomena, such an approach has its limitations. It suggests a right wing on the offensive with left and progressive forces on the defensive. There is another approach from the 1980s and 1990s, organized around the framework of “backlash” that takes a quite different approach. The concept of backlash emerged as a core element of political analysis with Susan Faludi’s early 1990s analysis of developments in the Reagan era. In Canada, Abigail Bakan and Audrey Kobayashi deployed it to effect, in particular with reference to the 1990s-era Mike Harris Tories in Ontario.