From Far-Right Populism to Oligarchic Hegemony: The DeVos Family's National-Popular America

While the 'populist hype' (Brown and Mondon 2021; Galanopoulos and Venizelos 2022; Glynos and Mondon 2019) seems far from over, American politics-counterintuitively seems to be witnessing a shift away from organized far-right populist parties to alternative political logics. Since the 2020 presidential election the far-right Trump movement has migrated from a populist strategy to an insurgent, centralized, authoritarian strategy (Connolly 2020; Katsambekis 2023). Yet, far-right political movements capitalizing on grassroots support and popular resentment seem more salient than ever. For example, eruptions of political coups against local school boards across the country contesting library books and curriculums (Carr 2023); legislative efforts to restrict reproductive rights (Surana 2022); and the reappearance of the political leverage of Christian Zionism in American foreign policy towards Israel (Hummel 2019). Adopting a Logics Approach framework (Glynos and Howarth 2007) consistent with the Essex School of Discourse Analysis (Townshend 2003), this paper proposes a new conceptual lens to make sense of this new constellation of far-right movements. Taking a cue from Antonio Gramsci (Gramsci 1971) and Stuart Hall's (Hall 1988) research on 'Authoritarian Populism' and national-popular hegemony (see also McNally 2018), I introduce the concept of 'oligarchic hegemony' to name and illuminate the contemporary turn in American far-right politics and its various hegemonic political, social, and fantasmatic logics. Oligarchic hegemony describes the uneven and overt influence of far-right elites in setting the policy ideas and organizing prerogative of far-right movements. In contrast to canonical accounts of populism, where a plurality of plebian political agents horizontally align and unify for the sake of common goals (Laclau 2005; Vergara 2020) oligarchic hegemony is delineated by a top-down agenda setting by far-right elites who utilize cultural, epistemic, and emotional practices to construct a popular hegemony to buttress their leadership of representative, executive, and judicial institutions. I demonstrate this new framework through the case of the American DeVos family 'dynasty' (Barkan 2017; Mayer 2016; Turner 2020). Utilizing a corpus government (e.g. CARES act 2020) and NGO records (e.g. Heartland Institute 2018), reputable investigative reporting (Campbell 2012), and political speeches (Pluralism Project 2007), I analyze the oligarchic logics mobilized by the DeVos family in securing local, regional, and national hegemonic support for a variety of far-right political projects. The first section on the social logic documents the DeVos family efforts to build hegemonic support for several policy proposals for 'school choice' and increased Christianity in schools across the local, regional, and national levels. The second section on the political logic, explores how Betsy DeVos attempted to transfer popular hegemonic support for the school choice issue into an insurgent occupation of political office as Education Secretary. The final section on the fantasmatic logic, describes how the DeVos family has constructed and performed a fantasmatic narrative of a righteous Christian nationalism, documenting how this vision attempts to achieve popular hegemony on local, regional, and national levels (Reitman 2017).