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On Populism
What’s your definition of “Populism?”
As Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, editors of Twenty-First Century Populism, suggest, “Much like Dylan Thomas’s definition of an alcoholic as ‘someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you’, the epithet ‘populist’ is often used in public debate to denigrate statements and measures by parties and politicians which commentators or other politicians oppose.”
But they go on to try to formulate a more rigorous definition. Their research focuses on Europe. It was conducted well before anyone could have dreamt of the rise of Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders; it even antedates Obama’s rise to power:
We define populism as: an ideology which pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice.
Populism, they suggest,”proposes an analysis designed to respond to a number of essential questions: ‘what went wrong; who is to blame; and what is to be done to reverse the situation?’ Put simply, the answers are:
- The government and democracy, which should reflect the will of the people, have been occupied, distorted and exploited by corrupt elites;
- The elites and ‘others’ (i.e. not of ‘the people’) are to blame for the current undesirable situation in which the people find themselves;
- The people must be given back their voice and power through the populist leader and party.
‘The people,” they continue,
constitute a community, a place where … there is mutual trust. Moreover, the community is a place where “it is crystal-clear who is ‘one of us’ and who is not, there is no muddle and no cause for confusion.” By contrast, the enemies of the people — the elites and ‘others’ — are neither homogeneous nor virtuous. Rather, they are accused of conspiring together against the people, who are depicted as being under siege from above by the elites and from below by a range of dangerous others.
Populists, therefore,
invoke a sense of crisis and the idea that ‘soon it will be too late.’ … This journey is usually led by a charismatic leader who is portrayed as knowing instinctively what the people want. As Canovan says, ‘populist politics is not ordinary, routine politics. It has the revivalist flavour of a movement’ and ‘associated with this mood is the tendency for heightened emotions to be framed on a charismatic leader.’ … Of course, the greatest sacrifice is made by the populist leaders themselves who are forced to put to one side their normal (and preferred) profession and instead enter the dirty arcane world of politics in order to save democracy. Seeing the normal procedures of parliamentary politics as frustrating the popular will, the populist advocates a direct relationship between ‘the people’ and their government. …
“The rise of populism in Western Europe,” they write — and remember, this was in 2004,
is in large part, a reaction to the failure of traditional parties to respond adequately in the eyes of the electorate to a series of phenomena such as economic and cultural globalization, the speed and direction of European integration, immigration, the decline of ideologies and class politics, exposure of elite corruption, etc. It is also the product of a much-cited, but rarely defined, ‘political malaise,’ manifested in steadily falling turnouts across Western Europe, declining party memberships, and ever-greater numbers of citizens in surveys citing a lack of interest and distrust in politics and politicians. Fostered by the media, an antipolitical climate is said to have grown throughout Western European societies in which people perceive politics to be more convoluted, distant and irrelevant to people’s lives and politicians to be more incapable, impotent, self-serving and similar to one another than in the past. … In particular, these alternatives have emerged in the shape of populists who offer straightforward, ‘common sense’ solutions to society’s complex problems and adopt forceful ‘man in the street’ communication styles which are able to galvanize at least some of those who have lost faith in traditional politics and its representatives. They offer a ‘politics of redemption’ in contrast to the Establishment’s ‘politics of pragmatism.’ They claim that radical changes for the better are possible and that they can make them happen. In short, they promise to make democracy work.
So assuming we use this definition — and I think it’s a good working definition — what happened since 2004 to give us such a stunning rise in populism — first in Obama, now even more in Trump and to a lesser extent Sanders, but also, interestingly, far more widely across the world, in Putin, Orbàn, Le Pen, Erdoğan, etc.?
It’s now a platitude that the Western democracy’s élites are out of touch with their voters. But why exactly would these elites be so out of touch with their voters? It’s the voters who elected them, after all.
It makes me wonder whether we’re really discussing “out-of-touch elites.” Or might the phrase be a stand-in for the more Marxist notion of class? Would we find, do you think, that we could substitute “elites” for “those who own the means of production and purchase the labor power of others,” and “disaffected voters” for “those who do not own any means of production or the ability to purchase the labor power of others, but rather sell their own labor power?” It’s not quite exact, but perhaps something closer to that is going on.
Might the wave of populist politics we’re now seeing across the globe be some mutant expression of the class conflict Marx predicted? And if so, what’s causing it?
Published in General, Politics
Interesting. In my browser I see (and I wrote), spelling out the punctuation “OPEN-ANGLE-BRACKET/AKA-LESS-THAN-SIGN insert heinous crime here CLOSE-ANGLE-BRACKET/AKA-GREATER-THAN-SIGN”. The punctuation I have spelled out is used by HTML markup. I wonder what system you are trying to view this on. (It looks fine to me, Chrome on Windows 7.)
I never consider whether an idea is populist. I only consider whether it’s correct.
But of course I wasn’t trying to insert html. Indeed, I was gesturing towards CPP include syntax. Chrome shows the LESS_THAN etc occurring inside a p context. Now, I bow to no-one in my contempt for html, but I’m not sure it’s sensible for a renderer to …
Whatever. If even Chrome and Firefox can’t agree about how to render what TinyMCE renders on WordPress it’s time to revert to FidoNet. (:
When did this turn into a French website? Overnight? Is this CB’s doing?
The Founders established a Republic not a Democracy. That was an important distinction, one completely lost to public discourse today. A Republic is ruled by representatives of various interests, dominated by those with vested interest in economic success. That’s why the franchise was limited to those who owned property. That idea has been anathema for over 150 years now which is why we have descended into populist poppycock like Social Insecurity and ‘Sustainable Development’ to mention just a couple unworkable schemes that are strangling our economy. These schemes are designed to buy votes and reward cronies that have put and/or will put ‘leaders’ into office. They are ‘popular’ in the sense that they sound good (Utopia always does) but the result is always disappointing since they can’t possibility deliver what has been promised; think ObamaCare. I don’t see a way back as long as the state maintains a monopoly on education as they will always frame every problem as having it’s solution in the formation of yet another government program or handout.
All that said, I’ll still take Democracy over Dictatorship as much the lesser evil.
TinyMCE will accept angle brackets for HTML insertion from iPhones (and presumably iPads) in normal mode. This will remove text in angle brackets that doesn’t translate out to a legitimate HTML tag, and the enclosing brackets as well. If the user requests the page be rendered in desktop mode (giving access to the normal formatting controls such as ‘quote’), the angle brackets and the text therein are rendered as written.
This concludes the Morning Nerd Spasm (from Iowa, at least).
MA, I did explain this. See #43.
Tiny mice?
You mean we’re not hamster-powered?
OK, pencils down everyone.
Here are the answers; please mark your tests.
Or might the phrase be a stand-in for the more Marxist notion of class?
Yes.
Would we find, do you think, that we could substitute “elites” for “those who own the means of production and purchase the labor power of others,” and “disaffected voters” for “those who do not own any means of production or the ability to purchase the labor power of others, but rather sell their own labor power?”
Yes.
Might the wave of populist politics we’re now seeing across the globe be some mutant expression of the class conflict Marx predicted?
Yes.
And if so, what’s causing it?
Man’s lower nature: vanity, greed, covetousness, ignorance. Same weaknesses that Marxists use to gain mass support for what would otherwise be an inherently unpopular proposition: I’ll be the master, you be the slave, then you’ll be happy.
My experience is similar. I sometimes wonder if I’m biased.
[I’m kiddin’ wit you, Mister Magic. I know what you meant to say, it just came out funny and I couldn’t resist!]
All people, most of the time, are populists. Left to their own accords, most people will end picking a fascist system. Which is why for most of human history, in most places, such systems dominated.
This was something the founding fathers of this country understood…and which “conservatives” of today could care less about. “Why aren’t they paying attention to ME and my needs!” is the rallying cry of “conservatives” today. That was always the rallying cry of the Leftists, so no surprise there.
This is why no one should pay attention to “the voters”. The voters are a mob. The mob wants blood. Mob rule is what this country was trying to avoid.
As to why the “change”, I don’t think there has been one. Certainly in the examples you gave, I don’t see a change. No change in Putin (was Russia ever not populist?) or in Europe (is this not normal for most of European history?).
Even for the US this is hardly abnormal. What could be more populist than the FDR years? Or his cousin before him. Or the numerous anti-immigrant and know-nothing parties which were quite popular in the past.
The reason the US constitution tries to limit the power of government is because the people are a dangerous mob.
While you’re mis-characterizing a bit what the book says, this also doesn’t tell us much. It’s not as if Donald Turmp supporters are rallying…against…authoritarianism.
They want more authoritarianism. It’s not as if they are rallying for the “rule of law”. They just want the rule of law to be at their whim.
A recommendation: When people define populism inside their heads, they should have as a reference the original populist movement in the United States. A lot of the usages that have been presented in this thread seem to be divorced from the original meaning.
It’s like with fascism. The term is often thrown around carelessly, as a general-purpose epithet, without any knowledge of or reference to the original fascists of the 1930s. That seems to be what was happening in this thread with the term populist.
It’s not that we need to use the terms only in their complete original senses. The movements themselves morphed and didn’t remain as originally conceived. But when we refer to Hillary as a fascist or to academic fascism, it’s more effective and useful if we do it with some knowledge of the tenets and behaviors of the original fascists, e.g. in their handling of the relationship between government and business, or government and civil society.
While a lot of the original populists tended left and veered into socialism, there were also some who drew on their populist inclinations and became ardent anti-New Dealers. There is nothing in the original populism that says it shouldn’t work that way.
And now I’m out of words, and maybe out of knowledge, too. I’m off to read some books on the populist movement and organizations such as the farm bureaus so that I can understand this transition better.
First of all, welcome back, AIG. Missed your take on matters.
However, here I wonder if you aren’t being a bit severe with Trump “supporters”. A voter can want a decisive candidate without yearning for authoritarianism. Example: Were Trump to come out and say, “we are going to end the Public school K-12 monopoly and open up education to market competition!” I would shout “Huzzah” even though I know that the local and state governments own K-12 education mostly.
There are countless attempts to make status permanent, contra democracy and free market capitalism. Trade guilds and unions. Country clubs and faculty lounges. Mainstream media. There will always be a class of “right” people who don’t like outsiders. Trump is gauche. So was Bush, Glenn Beck, Rush. William Jennings Bryan. Their appeal is to the wrong kind of people. Nothing they do or like can be right, by definition.
That said, I believe Trump entered the race either consciously or as the unwitting tool of Bill Clinton, to get Hillary elected despite her many shortcomings. Remember that Bill is better than most at playing the rubes. It’s why so many otherwise bright people say they like him.
You don’t succeed as a populist by saying absurd things; you must mix in some common sense, and that’s always readily available in the corner bar or in the comments section.