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A radical community development response to right-wing populism

This chapter evaluates what community development's response might be to right-wing populism. It begins by looking at the literature's analysis of right-wing populism. The chapter then considers a theory of social change that might help in charting a way forward for community development praxis. Community development practitioners need to engage locally and globally, bringing their particular skills in creating spaces, places, and platforms for associational life, filled with dialogical and agonistic conflict. It is their job to create the places where people can put aside their rage, and learn the disciplines of conversation and deliberation, heard, while not affirmed as necessarily right. In a nutshell, the work of reconnecting. These are the basic qualities of liberal democracy also infused with a radical egalitarian spirit, and a cohesive society.