Can collective democratic protest and rightwing authoritarianism and populism be distinguished as interdependent movements of political emergence, i.e. movements emerging outside democratic institutions and portending profound reorganizations of political order, but not yet fully recognizable as political entities as they own weak political representation? This essay argues that contemporary social sciences are often unable to comprehend or register political emergence, whereas, by contrast, contemporary art, art activism, literature and film – from the postcolonial novel and arts biennales to banlieue rap music and street actions for refugees – have in recent years produced profound insights into the nature of collective mobilizations and protests of all kinds. We thus observe that there exist parallel paths for intellectual inquiry into the same urgent issues of collective protest and populism. But we also observe a lack of methodological rapport and dialogue. Against this background, I argue that we stand to gain from an effort to study collective democratic protest and populist authoritarianism as converging issues with far-reaching implications for democratic society, and that we undertake such research by conjoining social scientific research and aesthetic analysis. To substantiate this claim, the essay turns to two cases of political emergence from the 1930s, in which we find mirrored our current condition, as well as the contrast between populist aesthetics and democratic aesthetics.