Mouffe spoke about the need for a charismatic leader as an “articulating agent” who could bring together the very different causes and grievances of the newly created “people”; of the need for strong passions, the expressions of our deepest, unconscious drives, to bind them; how important it was to define the enemy.10 She argued this could be done within democratic rules, but it wasn’t hard to imagine how it could turn into something frightening.
