When we talk about what moves something, we usually mean, why is it happening? What's the stimulus or reason? Part III is all about cause—and rethinking it.

From Part II, we know that New Populisms were able to spread around the world thanks to the new sociotechnical relations associated with audience democracy. Abridged, Web 2.0 was one kind of catalyst. But access to a new means of transmission—an available how, or medium—isn't a full answer to why. Not just why now, but why this now? What prompted New Populism, and why is the feeling of aggrieved entitlement so catching?

Most scholars of populism think of cause in this way. Populism signals a fault in the current order, they say. It is a symptom, a sign of unsustainability. Something once taken for granted is losing legitimacy, and papering over the cracks will no longer do. The burning question is, what is that something? If populism reliably indicates troubled waters, what is causing New Populist waves?

One answer is the overwhelming favorite: New Populism is an outgrowth of the Great Recession, that is, the growing socioeconomic divides that followed from neoliberal policies, led up to the late 2000s, and mushroomed after the global financial crisis. Joshua Roose, a scholar of politics and religion, tersely summarizes, “There is a general consensus that key causal factors of contemporary global populism include the 2009 sovereign debt crisis and associated policies emphasizing austerity … securitisation… and mass migration.” Put simply, frustration over class inequality, compounded by demographic shifts, is widely held to be the leading cause.

I suspect most readers are familiar with some version of this answer, and we will review the most popular versions shortly. But there is a glaring omission already. Gender is consistently and conspicuously minimized by this account. If present at all, it appears as a curious preoccupation of New Populism—an overplayed hit in the culture wars but, ultimately, a distracting tangent.

Now that Part II has established what is populist about aggrieved entitlement, the time has come to sniff out what gender is doing here. Why does it hang around nearly every strain of New Populism, to the extent that it can fairly be called the one global constant? Why do The People care so much about the gender binary, if their movement is mainly about class, or class as it interacts with cultural politics?