Griffith Review 57: The Perils of Populism

Not long ago the suggestion that a former reality television star would make it to the White House would have been beyond belief, but here we are. A profound resurgence in populist politics has spread over much of the world, inciting bouts of economic uncertainty, social unrest and cultural backlash. So what are we to make of it? The Griffith Review has tackled this phenomenon marking our times in their 57th edition, The Perils of Populism. 
We’re chuffed to have a panel of three distinguished contributors to this edition come together at St Albans to discuss their pieces. Rodney Tiffen’s The Restorationist Impulse confronts the nostalgia for an imagined past and its relationship to our fears of a future unknown. David Ritter advocates an outsider environmentalism in the face of the ‘rabid anti-environmentalism, climate-change denialism and sucking up to the fossil fuel industry’ that threatens to hinder, or even undo, the environmental progress we have already made in The restorationist impulse. In Held on Trust, Justin Gleeson traces our value in freedom of speech through its intersections with our senses of taste, judgement and personal morality.