In a continent largely and constantly diagnosed by social sciences and neoliberal economists as pathologically populist, Ernesto Semán's book on anti-populism is no less than a great piece of news. Breve historia del antipopulismo is an openly political book written by a scholar who writes in a long-standing intellectual tradition of intervening in current affairs using the polemic essay style. The book must be understood as an intellectual product of the recent years when Mauricio Macri was president in Argentina (2015−19). Macri's electoral triumph against the Peronist candidates first, and then his efforts as president to impose a new political and historical anti-populist mindset launched the questions about the long-term roots of anti-plebeian perspectives, representations and policies in Argentina. Semán's book accompanies recent efforts made by other social scientists and historians such as María Esperanza Casullo and Ezequiel Adamovsky to de-stigmatise populism and its followers and to politicise and historicise their fierce opponents. Now we can affirm that we are witnessing the birth of an anti-anti-populist intellectual and political tradition that reminds us that ‘populism’ is less a precise concept than a politically biased term aimed to be used in politics.

The book's main idea is that, since the early nineteenth century, Argentine elites have repeatedly perceived the subaltern sectors as a pervasive threat to be tamed in the best case, or to be persecuted or removed, in the most repressive perspectives. So, anti-populism became a defensive attitude toward an alleged menace from below to formal democracy, to security, to property, to good manners, to blood purity, to the return of the past, etc. The lack of empathy and will to negotiate with el pueblo is introduced as a key political behaviour of a meaningful part of the ruling class and the politicians all along the national history. El pueblo was recurrently perceived as a problem to be tackled, but simultaneously its political participation was considered as an inevitable feature of a self-imagined modern, post-colonial, independent republic. That definition reminds us of Benjamín Arditi's metaphor of populism as the uncomfortable drunk guest of the liberal democracies’ fancy dinner party: the hosts cannot get rid of the disturbing guest easily but at the same time they attempt to isolate him to avoid annoying moments. Populism functions as an internal moment of liberal democracies and at the same time as an element that disturbs the normalised space in which politics unfold.

Semán offers a long-term history of the Río de la Plata elite's hatred toward subaltern subjects from colonial times until today. Thanks to a very attractive and provocative style that readers will appreciate and enjoy, the author tracks the recurrent ways in which upper-class politicians, writers and intellectuals disdained, rejected and tried to re-educate popular sectors since the very beginning of Argentina, in the early nineteenth century. Breve historia follows a strictly chronological order in its ten chapters. The first section, ‘Prehistoria del populismo’, encompasses the first 100 years of the country (from 1810 to the 1910 Centenario). The ‘Historia del populismo’ section examines the period from 1910 until the end of the last dictatorship in 1983, the decades when self-conscious rightist and leftist anti-populist actors framed their positions. And the third section, ‘Posthistoria’, comprises the last 40 years of Argentine political life, when new anti-populist groups emerged and configurations aligned with what the author calls the ‘post-industrial consensus’. Semán shows that anti-populism has been a transnational belief not just among Argentine politicians but also US sociologists such as Seymour Lipset and the social scientists devoted to the issue of the ‘transition’ from traditional societies to modern ones.

The book considers that Macri's anti-populist government embodies the historical perspective from earlier in Argentina. Long-term currents, fears and prejudices accumulated over decades were transformed into an anti-populist coalition that finally achieved enough electoral appeal to run successfully against Peronist candidates. So, Macri's triumph seems to be an updated and improved version of this anti-populist tradition, and also the final, unbeatable one. This perspective could lead to a teleological approach to the history of anti-populism, since Macrism seems to be in nuce from the nineteenth century in Domingo F. Sarmiento's warning on the moral qualities of the gaucho, in the elite's suspicion of the compadritos and the cabecitas negras living in Buenos Aires in the interwar years, in Gino Germani's sociological interpretations on the ‘peronised’ working class in the 1960s or in the army proclamations against the ‘populist and subversive threat’ in 1976.

Breve historia sheds light on Argentine history using the study of the anti-populist traditions as a particular Ariadne's thread that permits us to better understand some of the most important national dilemmas, such as the tension between civil rights, anti-authoritarian movements and the demands for egalitarian policies. This book will be more enjoyable and enlightening for those readers who are already familiar with Argentina's political life of the last 50 years. Those who have only basic knowledge of the troubled political history of the country will miss some of Semán's creative and well-informed dialogue with long-running debates in Argentine history. In any case, Breve historia is a very smart, sensitive and provocative book on the Argentine elite's anxieties and fears and their lack of commitment to a functioning democracy. And it will not be possible to read the endless scholarly discussion on populism with the same eyes after reading Semán's book.