https://www.cato.org/commentary/terrify ... n-populism
Here is a nice quote to whet your appetite.
Antagonism, thus, is foundational to the populist mentality. And the central theorist of antagonism was Carl Schmitt, a German philosopher of the Nazi era—he is sometimes called the “crown jurist of the Third Reich”—who has had a strong influence on both the hard left and the hard right.
In The Concept of the Political (1932), a relentless critique of classical liberalism and constitutional democracy, Schmitt sought to displace the ideal of voluntary cooperation with the idea of conflict. The “specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced,” Schmitt wrote, “is that between friend and enemy.” The contemporary theorists who have taken this notion up include the left-wing populist Chantal Mouffe and her husband, Ernesto Laclau, author of On Populist Reason (2005).
Laclau, whose ideas have influenced populist governments in Greece and Argentina and populist opposition movements across Latin America and Europe, applies Schmittian thinking directly. Indeed, he goes further than Schmitt, treating enmity per se as the very principle of power. Where Schmitt, a virulent anti-Semite, identified the Jews as the perpetual enemy, Laclau’s hostility can be directed against anyone.
For Laclau, a populist movement is a collection of otherwise unrelated unmet “demands” aggregated by manipulative populist leaders. The demands are all different, but they are unified in a movement that constitutes “the people.” The designation of “the enemy of the people” is a strategic matter, a means of assembling a coalition powerful enough to be united under a leader for the purpose of seizing state power.
The final and most toxic ingredient is “affective investment”—that is, emotional engagement. What unites the otherwise disparate and inchoate demands, Laclau says, is the group’s adoration of the leader and hatred of the enemy.
Íñigo Errejón, a leader of the leftist Podemos populist party in Spain and an enthusiastic defender of Venezuela’s regime, builds his populism explicitly on the idea that collectivities are created by positing an enemy against which the people must struggle. In his case, the enemy is “the casta, the privileged.” When asked who the casta are, Errejón responded: “The term’s mobilizing power comes precisely from its lack of definition. It’s like asking: Who’s the oligarchy? Who’s the people? They are statistically undefinable. I think these are the poles with greatest performative capacity.”
Mouffe described the choice of target as essential to building the “sort of people we want to build.” By identifying The Enemy, The People is constructed.
