Ambivalence, but more usually outright hostility,
marks any discussion of populism. Even when allowing for a “progressive”
strain, outside the United States, populism has always enjoyed a bad press,
mainly because of its association with authoritarian, far-right and even
fascist tendencies, especially in Western Europe. Terms such as “radical
right”, “extremist right” and “far right” certainly invest the literature with
a degree of conceptual variety, but may smack of a regard for academic
connoisseurship that actually blurs the wider picture, or does less than
justice to its variety. For conceptual richness still fails to capture key
facets of populist politics, parties and movements around the world, such as in
the Americas, Eastern and Central Europe and Asia, where some practitioners –
Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and the late Hugo Chavez, in Venezuela, are
the most cited currently – favour leftist economic policies.
In a previous frisson of localist -populist politics
found mainly in Western Europe in the mid- to-late 1990’s, the temper of
critique was sharply critical of its “anti-political” style and brand of
political mobilization. The label “anti-politics” was intended to capture the
alleged passing of a relatively benign and ordered system of democratic elitism
in the global north and west and its replacement with a version completely and
unhealthily framed by media; whose ubiquity was exploited by “know-nothing”,
but resourceful adventurists. The democratic credentials of populist movements
and their increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the media, led Georges
Balandier (and many others) to lament a serious outbreak of “democratic
sickness”.
By mid-decade among the main culprits in this regard
were the Lega Nord and Forza Italia in Italy and James
Goldsmith’s Referendum Party in the
UK; the latter enjoying only a brief flowering in public support. Meanwhile in
the United States during the same period, Ross Perot’s populist assault on the
presidential nomination process and Pat Buchanan’s “new populist” appeal to the worried
burghers of Virginia in 1996 touched raw nerves, in part because they looked
set to attract a coalition of support among people who might not normally vote
together, or vote at all; thus threatening older constellations of more
predictable voting behaviour. In Pierre
Taguieff’s noteworthy phrase, both figures were the epitome of the tele-tribune. Taguieff’s was an early
foray into the by now fevered debate on the scope for a media-saturated
politics to undo the rules on political mobilization, party identification and
the ethical conduct of electioneering.
Today, populist rhetoric and appeals again display a good deal of
vigour, whether on the part of those “left behind” by globalization or, and /
or, worried that immigration endangers national culture and values, pace the
UK after the Brexit referendum and Germany according to the AfD. It is seen too in the machinations
of Donald Trump, with his seeming rejection of the global liberal order in
favour of a latter-day Jacksonianism, with its emphasis on economic
nationalism. Down-home populisms can be seen from Marseilles to Moscow, via
France, Italy, Spain and Greece, Hungary and Poland. On some accounts it is
visible in Narendra Modi’s strain of Hindu nationalism in India and in the
‘patronal authoritarianism’ practised by Vladimir Putin in Russia and Recip
Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey.
But we need to be careful about conceptual stretching and
trying to standardise strains of populism, regardless of context. Donald Trump,
whose social media appeals to American voters went over the heads of
established party elites, and played fast and loose with much of the etiquette
of usual politics, has distanced himself from facets of both neoconservative and neoliberal dogma. His electoral
platform (since modified in part, to be sure) included populist-left slogans on
trade protectionism (higher tariffs on Chinese goods), renegotiating NAFTA, and
more right wing items, such as his now implemented promise of tax cuts for
businesses and the wealthy. In his State of the Union Address in January 2018,
president Trump called for a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants, a constituency
previously accused of heinous crimes and misdemeanours, and whose very presence
had been deemed an affront to American social and cultural mores.
Leaving aside Trump’s unpredictability; all this is much
in line with the idea of populism as a “thin” ideology and so points up the
need for caution when attributing consistency, let alone core values, to
populist thinking. Populisms share a suspicion of and hostility toward elites,
mainstream politics, and established institutions. Beyond this, as Cas Mudde says, no definition
of populism will fully describe the gamut of populists. There is no
encompassing and “thick” description of what precepts should guide and which
strategies might implement the will of the people. And there is no holistic
take on how politics, economy and society should be ordered. Populism is a long
way from being programmatic. In part this is why it is both an attractive,
portable formula for electoral success in times of crisis and an empty
signifier when it comes to proffering a blueprint for and the necessary policy
detail on how to deal with perceived hard times.
For a practitioner like Donald Trump, populism’s very
imprecision and lack of detailed prescription is both an incubus because, among
other undesirable attributes, he looks light-weight and irresolute; and an
advantage, because he refuses to be burdened by anything that resembles a dogma
or a coherent programme. But to
underline the variety of populisms, the same cannot be said of one of the U.S Democratic
Party’s presidential hopefuls during the party nomination contest in 2016.
Socialist Bernie Sanders ran a campaign based on a potent mix of dry policy
detail and left-wing polemic. Unlike Trump, and many other leading populists,
neither did Sanders engage in the politics of victimhood to bolster his appeal,
and this is a departure from more usual practice in this constituency. In an
age when the culture of victimhood infects ever more relationships, such
leaders have not been coy about presenting themselves as at once powerful and
marked for greatness – all while remaining the conduit for the aspirations of
the virtuous public from whom s/he has a mandate - and the butt of
establishment corruption, perennially lying media (witness Trump’s penchant for
castigating any dissenting opinion and all criticism as “fake news”) and
sabotage by a coterie of domestic and global elites. This simplification of
politics breaks all the rules of electioneering and of governing, disrupting
the grain of usual politics, questioning its ability to deliver for the people,
and thus its legtimacy. Simplification lies at the core of what one might call
populism’s methodology.
