The Critical Masses: The Rise of Contemporary Populism and Its Relation to Solidarity, Systems, and Lifeworlds.

This paper examines the contemporary spread of populism across the globe. We argue that populist movements worldwide are responses to the colonization of lifeworlds by increasingly opaque knowledge and regulatory systems. The complexity of the systems that regulate and control the day-to-day life of individuals from afar makes these systems alien and incomprehensible, and consequently perceived as illogical and oppressive.