Why populism leads to authoritarianism
I'd like to get feedback from the Forum on the following thought.
Populism in it's core idea, to take one definition by Jane Mansbridge and Stephen Macedo, is "the people in a morally charged battle against the elites". They continue:
When we define it like this, we can see that many successful political movements in history have either been or at least have sold their ideas with this kind of antagonism in mind, even if ideologically they have had a lot more in mind on what to do with the World. Marxism-Leninism saw the Capitalist elites like this: the Capitalists didn't care about the people, the proletariat, and hence the system would (and should) collapse. For the Nazis it was the International Jewry behind everything as the evil elite. Now days the populist movements and their leaders perhaps don't have such grand totalitarian plans to make a brave new World, but they sure are crowd that is eerily similar in their messaging and behavior.
The term "populist" is rather misleading as what easily comes to mind is "popular". Perhaps "anti-elitist" would be better. In a democratic system promoted policies should be popular and have the support of the people, and should not serve only those in charge. So why is populism something that doesn't support democracy and promotes typically strong leaders and authoritarianism?
Here the inherent antagonism kicks in. Firstly, we in the West live in democracies and here the idea is that the evil elites have corrupted the democratic foundations of our states and the morally good people don't get their say. If the economy is bad, it's because of this. Hence the answer isn't more transparency, more dialogue or more consensus. The system doesn't work, it's rigged. And this is the reason why in the end populists are against democracy and for authoritarianism: they don't believe democracy works. Or it's function should be to get them into power. Because this is a moral issue, just embracing the system won't do because the system is flawed. This is a battle. Hence engaging in a dialogue or seeking consensus isn't the answer. The populist movement is the only true representative of the people, others are the "sheeple" that follow loyally the elites. The core idea in populism also nurtures conspiracy theories, because everything is seen from a prism of "the elites being against the people". And when it's a struggle like this, any conspiracy will do when it shows how bad the elites are. In case of the populist it's simple: you have to replace the evil elite with yourself, the true representative of the people.
So why then are these movements have a fixation with strong leaders? The first reason is simply the battle: in a battle, you have to have a leader, not a colloquium debating issues. But the obvious reason is the idea that while the elites have control of the democratic institutions and there's the disfranchisement of the people, you need strong leaders to turn things around. The system doesn't work, so trust us to get it working for you!
Yet once in power a populist ought to have a foundational problem when the leader and his own crownies are in power ...and are the new elite. But it isn't: the conspiracy, the elites, just become international and have to be even more menacing. So if beating a dead horse keeps people thinking that you're moving on, then just keep on beating the dead horse.
Authoritarianism has always been seen as the cure for the failure of the democratic institutions. And especially when you have widespread corruption, the idea of evil elites isn't so far fetched. It is very easy to show the real failures of the system, and somehow the idea "I will correct this!" makes people to believe that the populist has the magic wand to solve the problems. What they end up actually doing usually doesn't work. Perhaps today the drastic measures of totalitarianism have historically been shown as disastrous as they are, so the new authoritarianism-light is the present day populism.
It just seems that there's no antidote to populism, no way other than the disillusionment after the populists fail when in power. Then you just hope you have the means to get them out of power.
Comments? Or have either missed or gotten something wrong?
Populism in it's core idea, to take one definition by Jane Mansbridge and Stephen Macedo, is "the people in a morally charged battle against the elites". They continue:
All populist movements claim to represent the people. All conceive the ordinary or common people as morally good or oppressed and elites as corrupt or otherwise morally in the wrong. All see the relationship between the two as antagonistic.
When we define it like this, we can see that many successful political movements in history have either been or at least have sold their ideas with this kind of antagonism in mind, even if ideologically they have had a lot more in mind on what to do with the World. Marxism-Leninism saw the Capitalist elites like this: the Capitalists didn't care about the people, the proletariat, and hence the system would (and should) collapse. For the Nazis it was the International Jewry behind everything as the evil elite. Now days the populist movements and their leaders perhaps don't have such grand totalitarian plans to make a brave new World, but they sure are crowd that is eerily similar in their messaging and behavior.
The term "populist" is rather misleading as what easily comes to mind is "popular". Perhaps "anti-elitist" would be better. In a democratic system promoted policies should be popular and have the support of the people, and should not serve only those in charge. So why is populism something that doesn't support democracy and promotes typically strong leaders and authoritarianism?
Here the inherent antagonism kicks in. Firstly, we in the West live in democracies and here the idea is that the evil elites have corrupted the democratic foundations of our states and the morally good people don't get their say. If the economy is bad, it's because of this. Hence the answer isn't more transparency, more dialogue or more consensus. The system doesn't work, it's rigged. And this is the reason why in the end populists are against democracy and for authoritarianism: they don't believe democracy works. Or it's function should be to get them into power. Because this is a moral issue, just embracing the system won't do because the system is flawed. This is a battle. Hence engaging in a dialogue or seeking consensus isn't the answer. The populist movement is the only true representative of the people, others are the "sheeple" that follow loyally the elites. The core idea in populism also nurtures conspiracy theories, because everything is seen from a prism of "the elites being against the people". And when it's a struggle like this, any conspiracy will do when it shows how bad the elites are. In case of the populist it's simple: you have to replace the evil elite with yourself, the true representative of the people.
So why then are these movements have a fixation with strong leaders? The first reason is simply the battle: in a battle, you have to have a leader, not a colloquium debating issues. But the obvious reason is the idea that while the elites have control of the democratic institutions and there's the disfranchisement of the people, you need strong leaders to turn things around. The system doesn't work, so trust us to get it working for you!
Yet once in power a populist ought to have a foundational problem when the leader and his own crownies are in power ...and are the new elite. But it isn't: the conspiracy, the elites, just become international and have to be even more menacing. So if beating a dead horse keeps people thinking that you're moving on, then just keep on beating the dead horse.
Authoritarianism has always been seen as the cure for the failure of the democratic institutions. And especially when you have widespread corruption, the idea of evil elites isn't so far fetched. It is very easy to show the real failures of the system, and somehow the idea "I will correct this!" makes people to believe that the populist has the magic wand to solve the problems. What they end up actually doing usually doesn't work. Perhaps today the drastic measures of totalitarianism have historically been shown as disastrous as they are, so the new authoritarianism-light is the present day populism.
It just seems that there's no antidote to populism, no way other than the disillusionment after the populists fail when in power. Then you just hope you have the means to get them out of power.
Comments? Or have either missed or gotten something wrong?
Comments (56)
Quoting ssu
Yes, that's the take home message for me. Or 'popular prejudice'. Like the old 'migrants are destroying our culture and taking our jobs' trope.
But I also tend to think that most politics is populism - the attempt to capture popular issues and use tribalism to divide and conquer voters. Some exponents of this are more cynical populists than others.
When it comes to elites, the real target for self-described populist like Gore Vidal (in the US back in the 1970's) were the corporate and property classes. Vidal defined the hot issues of populism as turbo charged funding for schools and infrastructure, free healthcare, raising taxes for corporations and the wealthy, isolationism and an end to military incursions overseas, slashing the military industrial complex.
Quoting ssu
Voters seem to be activated most by fear and self-interest. The easiest way to harness these in politics is to lie, divide and conquer and promote tribalism. For me it is the political process I fear almost as much as the type of populism it can promote.
The important factor here is the cause of populism. It doesn't appear out of nowhere. It's a symptom of an elite that is increasingly corrupt and losing touch with the people, and reality. This is for example readily apparent in the US and Europe.
One example of a non-authoritarian possible cure to failed (representative) democratic institutions is direct democracy.
Populism, however, doesn't necessarily lead to authoritarianism. Basically, populism is a means for achieving something through the use of the cohesive force that can arise in crowds and populations.
Like fashion, political ideas compete and propagate in various ways. Sometimes it doesn't take much to succeed, the quality of an idea can be sufficient for it to become popular. But often it takes exposure, advertisement, or the help of influential individuals or institutions (e.g. media). Bad ideas or styles that wouldn't propagate on their own require more of the latter. Also bad ideas can succeed and reach a point of "critical mass' when they become self-sustaining. This has to do with the function of popular things in social contexts. It's harder to dismiss bad ideas when they are popular.
The populist narrative wouldnt be required if the state was truly democratic. Instead we get a representative government and a vast administrative state, all of which teams with people who want to run the lives of others.
Authoritarianism, and the peoples submission to the will of the state and her benefactors, is forever the modus operandi of those in charge, implicit in the relationship between rulers and ruled, and explicit in the manner with which they carry out its dictates. It couldnt be otherwise.
Representative government is the rejection of pluralism, of the rule of the people, and an authoritarian system of the highest order. It has merely convinced people that one man can in someway represent thousands, millions, and this is a reflection of their own rule. Its the greatest stroke of propaganda ever written.
What makes it all treasonous, though, is the promise that authority and the perpetual submission to it is there according to your own will. You chose this. This is what you want.
The reign of the elites is already authoritarian. The treason of the elites and their corruption is what breeds populism, nothing more.
Good that you point out this, because here lies one important reason why populism is in the end anti-democratic.
After all, if you have corrupt leaders, then obviously the antidote would be put them on trial, have stronger institutions starting from an effective justice system, more transparency. That's what you do with criminals.
Yet notice the difference where populism starts with: it doesn't think that it would be a few bad apples, it goes against a collection of people, the elite. The justice system is designed to deal with individuals, the populist starts from the idea that the whole system is rigged to serve the elite. The "ordinary man" cannot get justice against the elites. What populists are against is a vague group of people they assume to be this elite that actually works like a cabal. It is the hostility and the confrontational juxtaposition in the rhetoric and in the narrative, that the elite is against "the people", which goes far beyond just condemning some individuals.
Condemnation of a class of people isn't something that fits well with democratic thinking. So basically populists have a problem with democracy.
Hence just as noted above, these movements end up being authoritarian, because they don't trust democracy or that people could govern themselves. Perhaps because the elites have too much control of the people or will easily use their influence take that control. The populist movement is really out there to replace the elite with it's own elite dedicated to serve "the people".
And who are then these wonderful "real people"? Naturally they are the supporters of the movement, the agent trying to overcome this other. Hence it is these people that the populist has listen to, which the populist thinks is enough democracy. Others might be in cahoots with the evil elite.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, it starts from the fact that people aren't happy with the representational model. As @jkop mentioned, direct democracy is one option, but how does that work in societies made from tens or even hundreds of million of people is a problem for direct democracy. Representative government and a democracy already asks a lot from the society to work properly.
Quoting NOS4A2
If you think so, then likely you will think that any representative body is authoritarian.
Quoting Vaskane
I assume this Chomsky you talk about isn't the Noam we know, because I don't think he's a zionist.
Nietzsche is a great philosopher to quote, but perhaps it would be better to make the link here. Or is it that Nietzsche thinks that democracy will get authoritarians elected? Well, when people have been really disappointed in their democracy (or basically in their whole society), they indeed have gone with of with the radical ideas.
No, I think this is too much of a sweeping statement. The PVV in the Netherlands for example is both populist and not anti-democratic.
It works when there is no longer a republic, nor any people or institution which claims rights and dominion over the lands and the people that reside in them. Unlike fascism, communism, monarchism, or conservatism, democracy cannot work within a republican model. The fact that the model necessitates minority rule necessarily forbids the rule of the people.
If I request someone to represent me, for instance in a court, it requires that they know me and understand my wants and grievances. It is simply not enough, or a bold-faced lie, to say that a person can represent another without even knowing he exists. So it's a mistake to say such a body is representative, for all they can represent is themselves and the people they know.
I would say that the True-Finns are populist too. Or at least they genuinely declared themselves to be "populist" in their earlier party program, although the actual program was far more of being popular (popularist?) and in the end on both occasions it has been in the administration (now it's on it's second time in a coalition government) it behaved quite ordinarily as a coalition member. And when your party program supports the Welfare state, your party leaders give aspiring speaches of solidarity to the the Ukrainian Parliament in Ukrainian (and get an standing ovation), and the party has disagreements with other populist or right wing parties in the European Parliament, then yes, all populist parties aren't cut from exactly the same mold.
Yet there is still something similar with the populist movement.
Quoting Vaskane
Actually, I think that many people would consider themselves as Zionists in the way Chomsky considers him to be one. Yeah, that's old Noam. But I think that topic is for a thread at the lounge.
I think you misunderstood my reasoning here.
If this thread becomes political, meaning it discusses Israel/Palestine, then it's not a philosophical discussion and is sent away to the Lounge. People running the site don't want that crap here, because easily tensions rise. That was my point.
Umm.. a bit hard to follow.
But then again, so is reading Nietzsche.
Quoting Vaskane
Ok. Well, in such complex systems as our modern societies, the masses are quite heterogenous. Not as if we would be all peasants or hunter gatherers. Perhaps that's why you need "Propaganda"...or marketing.
So, do you think that control isn't needed? Just how we are controlled matters. Democracies, or should we be more exact and say republics (not excluding constitutional monarchies with parliaments) just have some safety valves that authoritarian and totalitarian systems don't have. Hence the difference isn't just about marketing, or polishing it to look better.
The populist has a very simply model on how this system of control works.
The many peasant revolts that died with the people who participated was an argument before proposing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Is there an example of Fabian tolerance which has a better result? Are not all these questions of what is helpful to be measured against contrasting views?
I think this is fundamentally wrong.
"Populism" is a term that is used when a political elite continuously refuses to acknowledge problems that exist inside a society.
The person outside the political establishment who does acknowledge the problems (A Trump, a Wilders, etc.) is then called a populist.
The genesis of populism happens inside the political elite who, contrary to what their citizens believe, believe "there is no problem" (or have a vested interest in pretending there isn't).
This political elite forgets that it is there not to impose its opinions on its citizens, but to carry out the will of the people. Because this political elite does not want to carry out the will of the people, it attempts to persecute those who do as "populists".
It's a political elite who has somehow gotten it into their ant brains that they are the "rightful ruling class", and that what the people believe or want changed, solved, etc. is unimportant.
This usually goes hand-in-hand with a healthy dose of hubris and an inability to accept view points other than one's own (again, the current political climate is filled with this dogmatic "wrongthink" attitude).
It's indicative of a political elite that has gotten out of touch with reality, and with the people. The term "populism" is a symptom of a failing democratic system, and people who busy the term are probably part of the reason why the system is failing!
I think such a trend goes back further than the advent of liberal democracy. If you look at how monarchs became a centralized locus of power, with a monopolies on force and the administration of the justice system in Western Europe, it was through the emerging urban middle classes and the peasantry supporting the monarchs against the feudal elite. There is a long history of "the people" supporting the centralization of power as a means of keeping recalcitrant elites in check.
However, in general, I think we tend to focus too much on the threats of totalitarianism. We look back to the last crisis, to Hitler and Stalin. Our dystopias generally focus on the role of a domineering state. Our classic literature is fixated on this problem.
Yet if anything, states seem to be decaying, and economic elites gaining more power and leverage. The 60 year stagnation of median wages, the steady drive towards most income in advanced economies coming from capital ownership, not labor, the growing share of all workers who work for large corporations, dramatically increasing market concentration across a variety of industries, etc. all point in the opposite direction. AI and automation stand to blow open this trend, already 50+ years in the making.
Particularly, mass mobilization of the "people" seems less and less relevant to winning wars. Gone are the days of massive corps-sized formations carrying out operations in warfare. Modern militaries are shrinking both China and Russia embarked on a dramatic downscaling in order to [I] strengthen[/I] their militaries. New technologies like autonomous drones, autonomous artillery systems, which are already being produced, will only compound this trend. This is crucial in that many historians point to the need to "mobilize the people," as a determinant factor in "the people" getting widespread political rights.
What happens when "the people" are largely irrelevant to winning wars? When small groups of professionals can outclass mass mobilized armies? IDK, it isn't something we've seen since the advent of the stirrup.
But I would point to an assessment made by Michelle Alexander in her "The New Jim Crow." There she says the problem for African Americans isn't that elites want to oppress them to extract their labor. It's that their labor is increasingly becoming irrelevant to elites. As she notes, African American communities with high rates of poverty are more the "canary in the coal mine," here than anything else. It does seem that most of "the people's" labor will become increasingly irrelevant, as will their ability to provide military service.
IMO, this points more in the direction we saw with the collapse of the Roman Empire and the advent of feudalism (although obviously it will take a quite different path), then the situation that gave rise to Hitler and Stalin.
Is it? But then the "people's" will often is to do some pretty nasty things. Massacre the Jews, again and again, disenfranchise and segregate African Americans, etc.? Is it necessarily the case that Eisenhower was acting illegitimately when he federalized the Arkansas national guard to allow black students to attend school unmolested by rioters? Certainly, he was acting against the will of the people. Or was St. Bernard of Clairvaux abusing his considerable political clout in admonishing the Germans to stop carrying out pogroms on the Jews?
Consider that if authority is founded solely on the aggregate "general will" then there could be no challenge to a dystopia like "A Brave New World," since it is a society its citizens overwhelmingly support.
And there is to consider cases where the general will is too inchoate and divided to lead much of anything. Being angry about problems is not equivalent with knowing how to solve them.
And it isn't just the democratic society, It's every society. That vast numbers of human beings live together simply necessitates cooperation, specialization of work and an economy. All this needs rules. One might be critical of them, but they are needed.
You're talking about constitutional/human rights, not the basic function of democracy.
Corrupt elites don't serve democracy - they undermine it and use it for their own gain. Yes, sometimes states do awful things, almost categorically enabled by the elites.
I think this is a wrong depiction.
Corrupt elites are often extremely powerful, since they have hollowed out the state (which formerly protected citizens) and put it infront of their own cart, leaving the citizen defenseless.
The only way to remove a corrupt elite is therefore by overpowering them, sometimes through mass voting, discontent/protests, sometimes through revolution and violence. This is something markedly different from "authoritarianism", since in one instance it is a means and in the other a goal.
Well, I assumed I was talking about the telos of governance in general, as defending/empowering freedom, ensuring justice, etc.
I don't think the function of democracy is readily apparent. Why is democracy good? Is it because it is good in virtue of what it produces, i.e., on average, better governance, or is it intrinsically good for people to select leaders or policies by voting?
Political scientists, with their aversion to pronouncing on norms, often focus on the former. Liberal representative democracy is good because of what it tends to provide in terms of better governance, economic growth, property rights, liberties, etc. Clearly, it doesn't always provide these benefits though, and it is possible for less democratic systems to sometimes outperform democratic ones on these metrics.
However, I can see an argument that democracy is a good in and of itself. It would seem to enhance citizen's freedom. Moreover, it can help foster a sense of ownership, getting citizens to identify with their state.
That said, it is clear that it doesn't always do this. Wealthy liberal democracies in particular tend to have citizens who say that are least willing to fight to defend their current system. Populist movements themselves seem to show that you can have elections without people feeling much ownership vis-a-vis the state. If demagogues are a real threat to democracies, and I would maintain they are, then it cannot be the case that the benefits of democracy lie simply in leaders doing what a majority of the people want.
In particular, crowds tend to be dumb. Large groups are not conducive to reasoned debate. Yet governance seems to call for such reasoned debate. The legitimacy of either elites of populist movements comes down to what their aims are. Being justifiably angry doesn't justify a groups policy ideas. The Cultural Revolution would be an example of a populist movement that was absolutely disastrous. The current US case is particularly dubious because you have a populist movement interested in securing minority rule, with an explicit focus on "we will get more support for the legitimate types of people," not "we will get more support from all citizens."
So, I would say populism can be bad for a state for the same reason a jury can obviously be less just than a judge in some instances.
Yes, and historically this meant popular support that turned the French monarch into the "Sun King" of Louis XIV, whereas during the Hundred Years War the monarch couldn't even keep his nobles for raiding and annexing each others' land or implementing their own justice system in their lands.
Of course, yes, people eventually began to chaff under the new locus of power, and so you get the move towards constitutionalism and democracy. Authoritarianism isn't the ultimate goal, but sometimes it is seen as the proximate goal. But vis-a-vis the embrace of the "divine right of kings," it was also the ultimate goal in many cases.
Umm...let's look at some definitions populism.
Your definition is more like saying "Yep. Populists got it right!" :wink:
Quoting Tzeentch
This is a very valid point. Why would it be so negative and why would it lead to authoritarianism? And perhaps this comes into topic I would hope to be discussed.
In politics there are two different questions to answer: a) What is basically wrong and b) How this problem will be solved.
And usually what is enough for a politician to get to answering part a). If a politician can in a simple fashion or in eloquent new way just say what's wrong and why, that basically it. If it's the issue that has nagged voters, yet perhaps they haven't come around to understand it so clearly, obviously someone just telling the truth will get support. Because to answer question b) is very complex and many times confusing. So your problem can be rampant corruption. Or unemployment and a failing economy which doesn't seem to have any answers. Then for the real political message of answering b), one can just declare "I can fix this!".
So if that is basically universal for all politicians, then what makes the populist different? In short, it's the antagonism, which is in the core message of populism: the culprits are the elite, who are against
the common honorable people. And if the populist has been part of the elite, that's absolutely no problem: he or she can just say: "Believe me, I know these people, I've been part of them!" And immediately the populist is made, by his or her own count, as a rebel and the enemy of this elite, who he or she has betrayed here when coming to the help of the common people.
A political ideology that has antagonism and starts from an inherent juxtaposition might not be the most helpful to create social cohesion, and can surely be abused.
Before anybody makes the remark here that "Isn't sometimes antagonism justified", it surely can be so. Revolutions do happen because of justified reasons. You can have a corrupt, out of touch elite that is ruining the country and when there is no other way to correct the system, then you can have in the end a revolution. But then it should be about the individuals in that elite, not about general hatred toward elites. It should be about correcting the culture of corruption and unlawfulness. It is abot the absolutely crucial question of how to solve the problems and what to build in the place of the old. When the ideology itself is antagonist from the start, it has the difficulty to then make the small fixes that are needed. There's the urge to just throw everything away and you can end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Also when you have started from the idea of the "evil elite" that you have to oppose, it's quite logical to replace this with your "own elite" of the right-minded. It isn't that your objective is to listen to your opponents and try to get some consensus. The populist has the moral high ground: he or she is working for the people, the common man and woman.
Well, yes. Kind of.
They often correctly sense there is something wrong with the political elite. Their methods and visions of "the way forward" can be wrong, of course.
Populism doesn't appear overnight. Usually years of neglect precede it, which is where all the anger and discontent comes from.
Corrupt political elites especially cause a lot of anger, because it makes people feel powerless. The political elite no longer have the best interest of the nation at heart, and they have usurped the mechanism by which the nation could correct that.
The people are right to feel that anger.
Quoting ssu
If innocent people get targeted, that is of course regrettable. Personally, I don't see this as a problem particular to populism. "Guilty by association" is an altogether human phenomenon, and honestly populism is more of a "force of nature" than something truly rational. It's something that the corrupt (or neglectful) elite themselves create, and eventually it gets out of control, and is led by mankind's less sophisticated tendencies. I'm not even convinced people like Trump play a key role in it. I think they only serve as a vessel. That's why many people who don't like Trump still vote for him. Same goes for Wilders in the Netherlands.
That's the point: there is much to tell what is wrong. It can be a great narrative.
Many times it can be the politician that falls out from the "in-crowd", messes up or gets his hand in the cookie jar. You won't find a better person to tell how crooked the elites are!
The real issue is, what really to do then!
Quoting Tzeentch
I agree. It can be really a really long thing that really takes ages to happen. Disillusionment doesn't happen in a day.
Quoting Tzeentch
Yet are these individuals? Or is this a class or something vague?
Quoting Tzeentch
The real question is if targeting people is the answer in the first place.
And one thing is how do you define someone to be the culprit. Is trying, but making mistakes wrong? Or not doing anything about some issue when believing it's not your responsibility in the first place.
I would argue that states arise out of conquest, confiscation, expropriation, and the introduction of a slave economy. The Genealogy of Morality would be relevant on the topic of Nietzsches theory of state formation, though I dont remember which aphorism.
Whoever leads the crowd probably doesn't matter all that much. They are just a vessel for the discontent. That's why they're so often demagogues and other types of uncouth individuals as you suggest.
In the end it doesn't matter. Populism is a symptom of corruption and thereby that the system is nearing its expiry date. It will be refreshed the easy way or the hard way.
Quoting ssu
Corruption is an ugly beast that affects individuals as well as entire systems, so it's hard to say. For populism to take root, I would have to assume the majority of the political class to be corrupt, because if it weren't there would be counter-forces in the system that would make populism unnecessary.
Quoting ssu
Corruption is a human phenomenon, so yes, I think it is.
However, when populism takes hold the system is probably already so rotten that targeting individuals is no longer a feasible option, and thus the anger is directed at the political elite as a whole.
The alternative would be fighting corruption one rotten individual at a time, which is obviously unfeasible and would play into the hands of the corrupt elite.
Quoting ssu
That's the 'force of nature' element I'm trying to get at. When shit starts flying, nobody cares about the details anymore and people who are genuinely innocent would probably do well to get out of the way instead of trying to plead their innocence to an angry mob.
I would disagree that populist movements are only ever responses to corruption. The backlash against the Democratic party in the South over the end of Jim Crow was a populist movement, but it wasn't, and did not consider itself, primarily a movement against corruption. It was a popular backlash against racial integration.
We could consider what would happen if some new party swept into power in the US and radically reduced corruption and perceived corruption. Now let's say our new party is all about "building the future" and turns around and says "we have to deal with global warming and the national debt. This will mean national sacrifice. We will be implementing carbon taxes, benefits cuts, and raising revenue to pay off the debt, and this will mean that everyone has to change their patterns of consumption, consume less."
I'd argue that this is 100% guaranteed to produce a major populist backlash in the current enviornment, regardless of how virtuous the new party is and how much it has reduced self-dealing and conflicts of interest.
The populist backlash against plans to do much of anything to combat climate change aren't grounded in charges of corruption, they are grounded in the fact that such plans require reductions in consumption to be effective.
And a democracy to function, it ought to have the ability change the individuals that are in power. Violence already means that democracy isn't working.
Violence is something that we shouldn't get to. And this come to my point: if an ideology is confrontational from the start and creates juxtaposition, then it's abuse is easy. Political ideologies have to be viewed from how absolute idiots will take them. Those that ideologies that accept or promote violence are the worst. Marxism is a good example: a communist revolution morphs quite quickly to simply killing the rich. Or those perceived to be rich. After all, if the Capitalist system has to be overthrown violently, doesn't that mean killing people? Many Marxists would disagree, but they aren't the ones with the rifles going house to house to look for the class enemy, usually.
Naturally the present populism doesn't start from such a situation. But basically it has doubts about the whole democratic process. With populism there is this obvious "us" and "them" and "they", where the elite, "they", aren't some specific individuals.
Populism is a political narrative. It surely can be used in any society, but it is part of the political discourse in a democratic system. If people are satisfied (at least to some degree) with the system and there aren't huge political problems, then populism stays on the fringe with a tiny part of the political system. There's always those people who think this way, just as there always are radicals in a democracy.
Populism becoming mainstream tells something about the political environment, which I think the point that @Tzeentch has made.
Quoting Vaskane
Nations do need some kind of homogenization starting from being equal citizens. Even if patriotism and nationalism have their dark sides, you has to remember that they also connect people who otherwise have little if anything common. It's important for social cohesion.
I think it depends.
People are ... taught a main language, rarely more than a couple others ... incentivized to not just shoot others on the street (e.g. minority protection) by law [sup]()()[/sup] ... "indoctrinated" with arithmetic ... enculturated regionally ...
Does that count as homogenization though?
Populism is, essentially, plebeian mentality, and plebeian mentality is antidemocratic, simplistic, black-and-white, thus authoritarian.
It's not that the elites would have become corrupted; it's that (also because of democarcy), plebeian people, ie. people from low socio-economic classes have been able to attain positions of power (in politics, economy, education, art). These people have probably accumulated wealth and obtained higher education degrees, but they still are plebeians at heart.
There is: the traditional class/caste system.
Equal??
People are not only not equal, people generally despise the very idea of equality.
I think you should watch more popular culture, reality tv, commercials (such as those for beauty products).
I want to post the links to some popular commercials that will dissuade you from ever thinking about equality as something possible or desirable.
(I won't post them for fear or legal consequences.)
This is a very interesting point you make, @baker.
Plebeian mentality might well be the root of the ideology. Our society, even if there is a democratic republican system, is still very meritocratic. Actually strives to be meritocratic, hence there will be always "the Plebeians". Meritocracy with capitalism creates income inequality, and that is structural, a basic part of simply supply and demand. What we do to erase the worst effects of this inequality is up to the society and the amount of social cohesion the society has. Still, Plebeian mentality won't go away. You will find this kind of thinking in every country, no matter how liberal or libertarian they are.
And when have democracy, it shouldn't be a surprise that actually what people think does matter. Yet if things are generally OK and people are happy, there simply isn't a reason for the juxtaposition and hatred in the way populism tells it. It simply isn't accepted in the public narrative or in the Overton window. Those holding the most radical "Plebeian ideas" simply don't say them aloud as they would be laughed upon.
In a way, populist ideology becomes publicly acceptable. It's the populist politician that changes the Overton window. The populist politician first says something outrageous, which before would have ended a politicians career, and suprisingly to the media that follows politics, he's getting support. And usually it's the media that is bashing him or her that actually makes then people to hear about this new politician. And when you a general dissatisfaction about how things are, these "outrageous" comments are exactly what the dissatisfied want to hear. That he is denounced makes him popular. The denouncement creates the "elite" that is hostile against the people and encourages more to believe in the populism.
And perhaps here is the so-called "elite" formed, because something has been unacceptable in the Overton window, it seems that criticism against breaking the accepted norms becomes "a concentrated effort by the elite to attack the populist". Hence the elite that the populism talks about is formed basically by all those who go to criticize the movement. They are the talking heads, the supporters and the sheeple brainwashed by the "elite".
Quoting baker
Equality in some matters. Legal equality. Equality in voting. Equality with the rights of freedom. Equality in being citizens of our countries.
Not equality in income and wealth as we surely have different kinds of jobs. I can just iddle my time writing here and not work, so why would somebody that works ten times more have equal income?
As I stated above, this inequality cannot be erased away. Only the worst aspects that it might lead can and should be taken care of.
On the one hand, 'the people' have been ruled by a small elite since the beginning. During many of the past 250 years, the elite has run rampant over 'the people'. On the other hand, the elite has successfully convinced 'the people' that there are no elites (against whom to fight). 'The People' rule! God bless the United States of America!"
Better than not having any elites at all, the American (and other) elites have done a good job depicting themselves as an attractive group of people. The Beautiful Rich are over there having a good time. Why should they not?
Why should they, one might better ask, given that their wealth has been stolen from the labor of the working class (either recently or in the past).
Is there a difference between a leftish populist (maybe Bernie Sanders) and a socialist committed to revolutionary goals? I think so. The socialist revolutionaries may not be in close touch with reality, but they do have a plan, a method, a goal which encompasses the whole population. Where socialists have dry, cold plans, it seems like populists have hot steamy resentments--directed at any number of deserving groups: muslims, immigrants, welfare mothers, women, gays, etc. etc. etc.
Any thoughts about this distinction?
Long, Wallace, and Trump also smelled more than a little like fascists, something I wouldn't say about Perot or Sanders.
The language of "elites" is as screwed up as the language of "class". A sociologist looks at society and sees classes -- working class, middle class, upper class, ruling class, etc. Class is definable by various features (blah blah blah -- you know this, so I won't go on). "Elite" is a familiar adjective when applied to athletes--think gold medal olympians. "Elite" also applies to those who have, guide, and execute power--the Power Elite of money, military, and politics. The power elite is a fraction of the wealthy top class. There may be 5 million people in the wealthiest class, of whom maybe 50,000 compose the power elite. Some of them are technocrats; quite a few of them are extremely successful capitalists; a few of them are politicians (politicians usually come from below the elite classes, but serve the elite if they want to stay in office); some of them are military elite; there are artists who are elite in their field--most of them nowhere near as wealthy as Taylor Swift
The elite class supports both political parties, more or less consistently, but not strictly; they occasionally support counter-cultural movements like the civil rights movement which was bucking the Jim Crow system 70 years ago.
So much of what goes on in society is managed by the power elite directly or indirectly. How much will we give to Ukraine? How much to Israel? Taiwan? How many millions of asylum seekers/border crossers/migrants will we accept? How much will the rich be taxed? How oppressed will the poor be? How much are we going to do, or not do, about global warming? So on and so forth.
The elite are not sitting up there pulling strings; they aren't puppet masters because the masses are not puppets. It's much more a trickle down process, where the stated interests of the elites flow downward from on high through various academic and institutional channels until it reaches the pavement.
It is important to bear in mind that the Elites are not necessarily nice. It may suit them to have someone like Donald Trump stumbling around in the china store; maybe some of them feel that the liberal establishment needs to be braked. One thing IS quite certain -- the ruling class has class consciousness, and they know (in detail) what is good for them. They don't like chaos, loss of control, uncontrolled violence, and so on. They prefer to operate in an orderly society where people do what they are told to do, so up about it, thank you very much.
So, a lot of the discourse about privileged elites, progressives, populists, authoritarians, fascists, and so on is just peripheral chatter.
G. William Domhoff has done extensive research in the American Ruling Class, the power elite, and how it maintains and perpetuates itself. Here is a
There are reasons for this. Many ideas about America that Americans have have been against it.
Quoting BC
I agree. This is something that is drilled into the minds of Americans of the exceptionality of America and the American dream. You should know just how difficult is for many Americans to talk about there being classes in America. Some think of the word as being similar as "caste" and start a monologue of how the US is different from other nations.
Then there's the unique history.
Of course there's a simple reason why the "founding fathers" didn't see themselves as part of an elite. That time the elite was the aristocracy, which had inherited it's rule thanks to feudalism. And not many of them had immigrated to America. I think those that had been governors had titles and hence were part of the aristocracy, but these people weren't usually on the side of the rebels. Perhaps it would have been different if feudalism had come with the British.
Then there's the American admiration of the rich, especially the "self made man". This can be seen clearly in American politics where billionaires just being billionaires get admiration for the "obvious talent" in getting rich. Mr Trump wouldn't had at all that support if he had been just a guy with 10 million dollars (which he might have in net wealth or something far less than he says). Obviously you can see this from the fact that richest women don't get such a say as the majority of them have got their wealth in either a divorce or their husband dying. I think only the 7th wealthiest woman in the US has made her money herself.
Also the whole idea of the "American Dream" and the focus on individuality actually has worked in favor of the people accepting the elite. Americans do listen to their billionaires and take them seriously. And if some are foreign born (like Elon Musk), that just shows that the US is still the "land of opportunity".
Of course now things are little by little changing. And I think this is the reason why populism has only know got a firm place in American politics. The Overton window has changed.
A disorganized response:
1) as said I think the analysis is correct. There is more and more concentration of power in government, media corporations, banks and other financial institutions and corporations in general. Power and money are getting more concentrated and things like government oversight of industry, for example, or equal treatment under the law are now going back to less fair times and practices.
2) populism is not restricted to the politicians who get labelled this way. In the US both Republicans (who were career politicians and not considered fringe by most) and Democrats (also having those characteristics) have run with significant degrees of implied or stated populist rhetoric.
3) which hints at the problem for me: the people running as populists are part of the elites. They may claim outsiderness, but at most their sort of black sheep of the elites. Trump and Clinton for example have been attending the same events and power groups for decades. So, you get a slightly to significantly loose cannon elite member when you vote for a populist. Why is this so? Well, you just can't be some kind of (merely seeming) outsider with any chance of winning without having tremendous power and connections. But given the myth of outsiderness, now you have a mandate to make changes, sweeping and deep changes. Well, that's autocratic. Of course, it could be a benevolent dictatorship and there are a few rare instances where people came in made big changes and allowed other factions to take over when voted in. But it's rare.
4) Not enough people are willing to face the fact that the system is messed up and getting worse. Which means that how to make fundamental changes and all the negotiation and analysis that needs to go into that, and a broad set of players engaging in the process is ruled
out.
5) And then we want to get rescued by a strong daddy (or, now, potentially, mommy).
From my perspective anyone who can be in a position to become president is an elite. Left and right mainstream are just differently wings of the same neoliberal elite.
I would imagine that one form of populism might also embrace wanting to end wars, invest in schools, housing infrastructure and health care, reduce military spending and tax the wealthy, That form of populism seems to be quashed.
Well, today it seems like the opposite is true, but it got me thinking that in electoral systems there is a benefit to pooling votes, something like "I will vote for things I don't like for you if you will vote with me on things regardless of what you think of them." The centralization of decisionmaking allows votes to be used for more effectively. People can essentially trade autonomy and the ability to have a voice in all votes for political power, i.e., a greater ability to get their way on some key issues.
This has the effect of shifting to locus of power away from votes in the legislature and into the more shadowy realm of internal party politics, which is sort of the opposite of "populism." However, it also has an application to popular support for authoritarianism. Here, people are willing to give up on having input in all issues for getting their way on some key issues that are more important to them. So, they might support giving significantly more autonomy to a single leader, reducing their own power, in exchange for getting progress on some key issue like immigration, welfare expansion, etc.
Counterintuitively, delegating your political authority to a centralized decision-maker is a way to increase your political power, even as it reduces your individual input into decisionmaking. This strategy works as long as enough other people are also willing to delegate decisionmaking authority.
Populism is inherently unstable in democracies though because people can always pull out of such tacit agreements and because this sort of agreement entails that legislators don't actually represent their voters, but instead the "party-line." The current state of the GOP is a good demonstration of this tension.
There naturally is both right wing populism and leftist populism. Perfect example of far left populism in our time is Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Quoting Bylaw
I agree. The populist leader has to create the myth around him (or her) that he either has had this awakening or that from the start he has been fighting against these elites. As you said, the black sheep are in the perfect position here as they have nothing to lose, they are already out from the 'in-crowd'. And it surely gives that personal drive for the revenge against them.
But let's think this through, because it comes to core of populist belief and narrative, the idea of the evil elites and the good people. So, do we want our political leaders be unexperienced, even not well educated? Are those really traits that we want from our leaders?
Because if a person is very experienced in leadership roles, he or she is surely part of the elite, isn't it so? Even if the person is highly educated, seen the World, has studied the problems the society has and so forth, aren't those kind of persons also part of the elite?
For the populist, they surely are. The only saving grace can be if the person is onboard with the populist cause. Then suddenly, they are accepted, because there against the elites. And here you can see just why populism leads to authoritarianism and to leader cults. Even if we have democracy, our society is a meritocracy and specialization of work. Meritocracy creates elites, just like a division system in sports creates the sporting elite, where the highest league has professional athletes and the 5th division teams have people whose hobby is sports. Now if you would mix the players of all the divisions meaning that the best and the worst players would be distributed in all teams randomly, then ask yourself, would you be willing to spend money to see such great 'democratic' sports games?
Since populism at it's core is against this specialization that structurally causes elites to be formed, it has a permanent glitch in it's thinking as populism is a prisoner of it's own narrative. It's against elites and sees everything from this focus. You might argue, that this isn't something important, but it is. Because once the populist leadership is in power and if it fails, gets clogged in the democratic process with dealing in parliamentary politics, the opposition in the movement can always cry wolf and say that the leadership has betrayed it's goal and is now simply part of the elite that it once was fighting against.
Elites can and many times are corrupt and incapable and don't worry much if anything about other people, but the fact remains that in politics there's always going to be an elite. States and societies are simply too large for anything else. As @Tom Storm above said the obvious:
Quoting Tom Storm
This is why the narrative of populism is so hollow. It really becomes a problem when the populist movement gets to hold the power. Who is then the evil elite? Either populists then have to go with the idea that the evil elite are foreigners, the international conspiracy of the bankers,
or something like that, and now it the populist country against the elites, or they have to simply to fortify their position against the elites now driven off from power, but scheming always for the ouster of the populists. Or likely do both.
The problem is that in this juxtaposion of people against the elites, there is no room for democratic consensus, of making coalitions with other parties. Populists have an enemy. You don't team up with the enemy. Hence democracy isn't the way forward. Authoritarianism is. It's a battle.
Quoting Bylaw
And here the seductive populist narrative works very well. With it's brash rhetoric populism sounds so different and the supporter of populism thinks he or she is making changes to politics.
I think Bernie Sanders is a good example of a cause populist. I don't think cause populism leads to authoritarianism. The mandate of the leader is conditional not absolute and the conditions of success are pragmatically defined. You can ask a group of fellow cause populists about what policies they want implemented and get fairly consistent answers.
I see power populism on the other hand as resting on the promise of power without responsibility, of the resetting of power dynamics as an end in itself with the audience being those who believe that power has been wielded irresponsibly and unjustly against them. The social framework of the power populist is society not as a cooperative among interested parties but as an arena where one party must dominate (and whoever currently dominates is the elite). But the wish of the power populist is not really to rid society of elites, but to become their replacement (an elite by any other name). And the means are virtually irrelevant. Nor does the leader have any particular responsibilities except to wield power against those who his followers see as previously wielding it against them.
I think Trump is a good example of a power populist. His mandate is considered absolute and the conditions of his success are not clearly defined. In fact, they are almost anything he or his followers (but mostly him) decide them to be in the moment because the power is itself the success. People get confused why nothing Trump does dents his popularity. The solution to the conundrum lies in recognizing that he was always popular with those for whom he is an almost pure projection of a need for power. To criticize him would be an almost performative contradiction as long as he appears confident (powerful) in what he is doing. Which he does. It's obvious then how power populism is married to authoritarianism. And it's predictable that asking a group of power populists about policy matters and expecting consistent answers on substance (rather than e.g. slogans) is futile.
(Is Bernie a populist? He might be popular, but I'm not so sure he is a populist. But let's keep this more to the lines of political philosophy.)
Here I think it's important to make the separation with ordinary "non-populist" political movements and a populist movement. Let's say your objective is workers rights or tackling climate change. Here the issue is that you have a political agenda that you want to implement and basically anybody that agrees with your demands is an ally in this cause, even if in other policies they might not be. This is how democracy should work. Those who are against your climate change initiatives or even the corporations that oppose your work reforms aren't a class of people...because they hold these views. People understand that there's lobby groups that are against your ideas and promote different views. To say these groups exist isn't in my view cause populism: in a democracy you surely will find people that have different opposing ideas to yours. Above all, your focus is your agenda, not being against those that oppose certain people. Hopefully you see the difference here with a specific corporate lobby group and the people against the elite juxtaposition.
You really have to be Marxist and assume the juxtaposition of the proletariat against the capitalists and this to be part of the struggle against capitalism to have similar ideas as the populist. The juxtaposition between the proletariat and the capitalists is quite similar to present day populism, even if naturally Marxism has lot more than this populist idea. You can also see the obvious populism in German Nazism.
Quoting Baden
In my view your definition of Power populism is what populism really is. Cause populism is more like a classic political movement, which naturally has those against it that are happy with current situation and the present status quo.
As the populist is against the existing power elite, the game isn't as in normal politics. If your are pushing an agenda (workers rights, climate change etc.), you would be OK with the elite if the elite accepts your agenda and goes along with it. But as the populist starts from the idea that the people are being downtrodden by the existing elite, then that elite has to go. There's no other answer. Drop dead isn't a constructive proposal to reach some consensus. It's not about individual policies, it's about that evil group of people themselves. And replacing them the populist movement simply have to guard against the old elite from taking power again. And if you think the democratic system doesn't work, the legislature, the judiciary system and the executive branch are all corrupt, then the easy solution is authoritarianism. You see simply democracy as the reason why everything is so bad.
So it's no wonder that populists just love conspiracy theories. The bigger, the nastier, the better.
We're basically in agreement except for the nomenclature I guess, but fwiw I see Bernie as a kind of extension of occupy, which was more clearly populist and I at least think it's worth recognising a spectrum of populism with what I call power populism and what you see as populism proper the most virulent form of the phenomenon.
I think Bernie has been in Congress since the 1990's and is so old that he participated as a young man in the civil rights movement.
Yet Occupy Wall Street was surely populist. The Occupy Movement hardly was looking for a leader, which basically made it disappear, so it really doesn't fit perfectly in the mold of a populist movement. Of course the Tea Party (that started originally from Ron Paul's campaign) was also populist. As this following venn diagram from years ago shows:
Yet the division between the left and the right is so successful that Americans didn't notice that both were against the obvious corruption that happened during the financial crisis. And Ron Paul, just like Bernie (or people like wasn't a populist. Both are quite OK trying to use the democratic system and understand they aren't the majority view.
If some Houdini of a politician can join both leftist populist and right-wing populism, that's it. Can break up firm political institutions very, very quickly.
The easy part is of course to notice the obvious things that are wrong, the more difficult what to do about. Yet populism has the answer that we've know seen again and again: Vote for us, and we'll fix it! Yep, that's enough that you have to say. It's enough because explaining lengthily how you will do something isn't the populist way. It's short, snappy sentences that people can easily remember and chant. Being undiplomatic and rude to others to show you aren't an appeaser, but tough.
Some Houdini would have to bridge the psychological divide between those spheres first. The cognitive linguist George Lakoff describes it in terms of use of metaphor. The dominant metaphor for liberals and leftists is authority as "nurturing parent" and for conservatives and rightists it's authority as "strict father" and social expectations from the micro to the macro get built up around that, so even when an obvious problem becomes a common source of antipathy the two generally can't get together because the frameworks differ so much.
Quoting ssu
I would still hold that this is true. But perhaps here Trump's vindictive and outrageous policies are just creating this antidote to populism in a far quicker pace that we could imagine.
In Canada the conservative Pierre Poilievre was campaigning "Maple MAGA" and totally following the Trump playbook, until Trump had his brainfart of wanting Canada to be the 51st state of the US and started the trade war. A year ago Trumpism seemed to be working. But now it seems like a kiss of death. Similar things seem to happen also in Europe.
I think probably you're missing that a great number of people do not think your take on his policies are that way. I mean, I can see objectively that some are vindictive, by definition, but that doesn't actually make them bad so people are open to interpret a bit differently.
That said, I think its pretty obvious populism is what people do. There is something to the notion that people crave strong leaders. And most people are not that smart (shame, but true).
But ever-increasing privatization, endless pursuit of life-destroying growth and so social alternatives which could even the system out a bit, will lead to what we have.
This is correct. And the obvious idea for the supporters is that because nothing would happen otherwise, Trump needs an Elon Musk, to go through "the waste" by a chainsaw, even if accidents happen. They don't care that this isn't how the Constitution says how these things should be done.
And some can indeed see just from two impeachments, the lawsuits and so on that there is the "deep state" and the opposition that is without reason going after him. Especially the Clinton supporters made the similar argument of the impeachment of Clinton. But then, we have to remember that Obama wasn't impeached. Biden wasn't impeached. Totally fabricated issue won't go anywhere further in court. That's the hope, at least. The US doesn't have theatrical show trials yet as in Stalin's Russia.
Quoting AmadeusD
Juxtaposition is easy. The use of "us and them". Populism succeeds if the "other", the "evil elite" is small. If it is just the few modern day robber barons, that doesn't brake up social cohesion. But once those "evil people" who are against the ordinary people are a larger group, then it get's truly ugly and becomes a monster as it tears apart the fabric that holds a society together.
I've said that when these populists go on with things like talking of annexations of territory, it's like summoning up the devil. Nothing creates so much anger than offending people like that. That's why Putin is such a threat when he says that some countries are "artificial" (as not only Ukraine is artificial according to Putin).
Yeah, which is a bit wild given their position on that document by lip service.
Quoting ssu
Yes, that's been quite troubling for sure. That spells out something far beyond any domestic issues that are present, as far as i can see.
And this is the real problem with authoritarian regimes: once in power, they can easily implement to utterly crazy policies simply because they can, which their supporters when electing them didn't at all anticipate. Trump's insistence on annexing Greenland and Canada are on the less serious side on this, because there simply isn't any support for this even in the US. These (hopefully) just stay on the level of Trump's and his administration talking points in the similar way that purchasing Greenland was in the first Trump administration.
Yet there is a huge brake that limits the Western democracies in falling into authoritarianism, and that simply is the case of that we've seen in history what authoritarianism leads to and how it has utterly failed. In the 1930's it was totally different: for example Finnish journalists visiting Germany under the rule of the Nazi party could easily notice that democracy wasn't working, but they did notice the positive side how it looked back then. Because up until then, the Weimar Republic has been very volatile with coup attempts and various armed groups fighting it out on the streets. Unemployment was down and many things seemed to be improving. The most eccentric issues of the Nazi ideology could be brushed aside, which later couldn't be as the ugly reality came into light. You could back then easily read the "Mein Kampf", but to think that this is truly the playbook the Third Reich will go with only started to dawn to people in the late 1930's.
With the US there's January 6th. If Trump would really have wanted to do a self-coup, that would have been the moment as back then the Democrats wouldn't have fathomed that any US president could grab power in a self-coup. There would have been the strategic surprise and the backdrop of people storming the Capital. Now the Democrats think it's totally possible. And this puts the Trump team under scrutiny of every move they can make and every fight Trump has with a judge is viewed in this context.
So does this refute my original argument. Perhaps it leads to a situation of "authoritarianism light", where you can have changes through the ballot box, you can have democracy still prevailing with some authoritarian sidesteps being taken and things like habeas corpus not being followed. The US still has a strong economy and most of Americans feel being prosperous and OK.