Qualifying the ‘Social Disconnectedness’ at the Core of Right-Wing Populism

Abstract

That a comparatively heightened sense of social disconnectedness characterizes the core of right-wing populism in the US is a matter of record. But such terms as ‘social disconnectedness’, ‘alienation’, and even ‘loneliness’ are large unwieldy terms with multiple causes and multiple expressions effecting broad demographic swathes and classes of citizens with ‘mental health issues’; these terms in general usage make it difficult to analytically apply them to specific phenomena like the belligerent form of social disconnection currently embedded within the core of right-wing populism. The term ‘social disconnectedness’ is in need of a measure of dissection. This paper shows that the social disconnection at the core of right-wing populism manifests some distinguishing features of excessive and problematic individuation that have coalesced into a coherent social phenomenon (to be called ‘emporia’). This paper extricates this psychopathy from the expansive and nebulous reference in general discourse that is ‘social disconnectedness’.