127 Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2020, pp. 127–156. issn 1930-1189. © 2020 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved. Nikos Potamianos Populism in Greece? Right, Lef, and Laclau’s “Jacobinism” in the Years of the Goudi Coup, 1908–1910 A ccusing the right and the lef of establishing incongruous coali- tions on the basis of a shared populism is a common topic in contemporary antipopulist discourse. Obvious political goals can usually be detected behind this argument: political opponents of the liberal center are exposed as inconsistent with their principles, and political fron- tiers are (re)constructed based on the contrast between modernization and its opponents—who are defned only negatively. Tere is a paradox here: usually it is populism that is associated with such sharp dichotomies, and nonpopulism with more complex perceptions of the political and the social. Although the extent to which such a point of view constructs its opponent (that is, populism) is apparent, few would deny that there have been and continue to be convergences of the kind described above. Tese convergences transcend the opposition between the right and the lef, which shaped the political geography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and which was based on rival attitudes towards social hierarchy and authority, emancipation movements that disputed them wholly or in part, and democracy and the equality it proclaimed. “Moments” of transcendence of this kind haven’t been so numerous as to create a movement to change the dominant political paradigm—yet they took place and must be interpreted. Populism may be a JSR14-2_first-pages.indd 127 JSR14-2_first-pages.indd 127 6/15/20 3:16 PM 6/15/20 3:16 PM