Economic Anthropology 2018; 5: 144–147 DOI:10.1002/sea2.12111 How can economic anthropology make sense of and engage with rising global populism? Out-trumping economic consequences in populist voting Peter Hervik Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Aalborg East, Denmark Corresponding author: Peter Hervik; e-mail: hervik@cgs.aau.dk Global populism seemed to reach a new peak when one of the richest men became president in the United States by using a classic populist platform. When President Trump hired a team of other mostly successful businessmen with immense economic power for his administration and as advisers, he further perplexed those who saw him as a populist, because these hires expand the income gap between the leader and his voters, or between rich employers and precariat employees. Tis election succeeded in trumping out (see Puar 2007) feminism, science, and even democracy in favor of ideas of external threats to the nation, moralism, and gut-level truthiness in news media and politics whose economic consequences remained invisible, ignored, or misconceived for the supporters and voters. Similar elite-led forms of nationalist populism have, in several decades in Europe and elsewhere, dominated mostly in small afuent countries at frst (Gingrich 2006) and later moved on to larger ones. In Denmark, where I did in-depth research, one dominant party has been governed by an infuential elite for more than twenty-two years. Even if they do not match the American populist counterparts in economic power, they still make far above average incomes and take on powerful positions in the country based on a classic populist agenda and a charismatic and talented leadership speaking to and with “the people.” Populism is a concept that cannot be studied separately from neonationalism, neoracism, anti-elitism, anti-intellectualism, antimulticulturalism, antifeminism, and a host of other things. Tus there are no easy solutions to defning populism. Neither is there any (simple) way by which economic anthropology can tease out economic and materialist consequences of the rising global populism. Instead, attention could rather be paid to the explo- sion of inequalities undergirding the precariat (Standing 2014) and to the everyday economic consequences of the increased inequality gap that also follows from the global populist upsurge. Classic populism Now, without going into the research history and theories of populism, I shall remind the readers of six cri- teria introduced by Paul Taggart (2002): (a) populism as hostile to representative politics; (b) populists iden- tifying themselves with an idealized heartland within the community they favor; (c) populism as an ideology lacking core values; (d) populism as a powerful reaction to a sense of extreme crisis; (e) populism as con- taining fundamental dilemmas that make it self-limiting; and (f) populism as a chameleon, adopting the col- ors of its environment. Each of these criteria deserves special treatment, which I cannot provide in this lim- ited space. But, besides the easy applicability to President Trump’s discourse and practice, I will ofer four 144 © 2018 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved