Emotional swindling in populist politics and beyond: trust, affect, and the performance of authenticity

This paper will offer some reflections on emotions and swindling generally before turning to the question of how populist political actors engage in what might be termed ‘emotional swindling’ – the strategic manipulation of affective bonds to simultaneously generate and betray trust. Both trust and con-fidence are inherently emotional phenomena, fundamental to social action, and to the endurance of social bonds and political communities, yet are also constructed, malleable, and open to manipulation. Drawing on theories of political emotions, populism, and performativity, I argue that contemporary politics, and the populist repertoire in particular, operates through a paradoxical dynamic: the (staged) promise of emotional authenticity based on the systematic deployment of inauthentic, (perhaps ‘post-’) emotional performances. Yet, the ambiguities of the swindler, and the complicity of the swindled or ‘the mark’, need to be accounted for. As Edwin Sutherland said, a ‘confidence game will fail absolutely unless the sucker has got larceny in his soul’, and the question of ressentiment, power, and the ‘deep story’ of those taken in by emotional swindling will also be addressed.