Lauren Mason, Blog Editor
Across the media and political spectrum, a seemingly new yet rather familiar idea is being discussed: the rise of right-wing populism. Figures such as Nigel Farage, Alice Weidel, and, of course, Donald Trump have earned themselves the moniker of ‘populist’. They are often showmen and women who rely on division within society to propagate their beliefs. Yet the true nature of populism has been lost within journalistic sound bites and headlines. This may appear to be an innocuous semantic concern; however, it hides a more malignant reality. Ask yourself – who do you fear more, a populist or a fascist?
Populism is a relatively new idea. It took its first steps during the late nineteenth century in Imperial Russia, with the Narodnichestvo movement, and continued to grow in twentieth-century movements such as the proto-Nazi Völkisch movement and the agrarian American People’s Party. In Argentina, populism saw its first true political success with Peronism, a political movement that rejected pluralism and advanced a distinction between the supposedly “pure” people and the “corrupt” elite. The ideas central to Peronism bring us to the key elements of populism today; whilst its definition is academically disputed, it can be generally agreed that the crux of populism is the idea that ‘the people’ is an indivisible whole diametrically opposed to ‘the elite’, a small mysterious group of people who hold the reins of power. A populist leader becomes the voice of the people, sent to liberate them from subjugation by the elite. Above all else, the leader must not just represent the people but embody them. This is why leaders such as Hitler or Lenin cannot be considered truly populist, as their movements saw a small revolutionary elite group guiding the people rather than one leader embodying them.
With that in mind, we now come to the twenty-first century, where populist politics has once more raised its head. Both the left and right iterations have seen a renewal that began in the 2010s. However, the right-wing variant of populism has been overwhelmingly the most successful. Populism has become synonymous with the far-right across Europe and the US, and leaders across the right have been branded populist. The Guardian talked of Boris Johnson’s ‘empty populism’, and the Financial Times warns of a ‘surge of right-wing populism in Britain’ under Farage, but rarely is little detail given as to what this ‘populism’ actually entails. Indeed, this extends beyond the media, with Angela Merkel herself talking of ‘fact-denying populism’ in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, using populism as a dirty word to colour all deceptive politicians as united by a joint movement.
Through this reporting, ‘populism’ has become the common word for ‘showmanship’ and has become a simple way to lump the rise of the right together into one neat camp. That is not to say these politicians are not in some form populist. Certainly, Farage and Trump particularly trade on the populist rhetoric of the people, aligning themselves with the people despite their position as wealthy elite leaders. Consider Trump’s plan to ‘drain the swamp’ of political elites and Farage’s focus on freeing the UK from the powerful elitist EU. However, their message has changed. Trump’s second term and Reform’s current messaging stray from what we can reasonably label populist in nature. While both are divisive, yes, not all diversionary politics are populist. It is hard to argue that a group of poverty-stricken asylum seekers represents a small elite group controlling the levers of power. And yes, there are attempts to link this to elite left-wing and ‘woke’ groups; however, the prevailing message remains one of racism and cultural incompatibility. The huddled masses, in many ways ‘the people’ seeking freedom, are said to be coming for what we, the ‘elite’, believe we are entitled to. Having achieved their battle for power, Trump with his second term and the UK firmly ‘free’ from the EU, these leaders can no longer rely on traditional populist language. Now that Trump has won another election, should the swamp not have been drained? Now that the UK has left the EU, the people are now free of the European elite, but why do they find themselves no better off? As such, proto-populist leaders are left in want of a new way to motivate the electorate.
These politicians have divided society to the point that populism no longer fits as a descriptor and have themselves become the small elite group they once sought to protect the electorate from. Trump’s MAGA movement is a privileged group in his America, with a range of leaders and figureheads beyond Trump himself representing an oligarchy, a small privileged group leading the wider people. The recent martyrdom of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk exemplifies this perfectly. He is a symbol of a class of Trump loyalists, such as JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, and Kash Patel, who take on the role of oligarchs in Trump’s regime. The subsequent framing of Kirk’s death has sent a clear message: this man was a hero of the movement, a leader, and part of Trump’s political family – a family which should expect to hold unquestionable power. None of this is compatible with populist rhetoric. One leader cannot embody a whole people if the people cannot see themselves within that leader’s power. A challenger can be populist, but a victor cannot.
The danger of this mischaracterisation may not be immediately clear. Of course, terms evolve and grow as they play out in real life rather than in academic thought, and the nature of populism may be changing. However, these leaders also embody many other well-defined terms, which the media are much more hesitant to employ. Their movements are authoritarian; they seek to increase the powers of the state security forces, using fears of immigration to do so. Their movements are reflective of the fascist playbook seen in the last century. Instead of using these more accurate labels, populism has become a catch-all, a poorly understood term applied liberally to different and distinct leaders and movements. This erodes understanding of populism and its meaning in an intellectual sense and distracts from a worrying trend towards fascism in many Western societies. Euphemistic language has always sought to downplay the seriousness of an issue; this new use of euphemism is doing just this when it comes to growing authoritarianism and division. We are shying away from saying the stronger word and, in the process, mischaracterising these movements. They do not propagate division to create power for the people but rather to consolidate their own at the people’s expense.
Sources:
https://www.ft.com/content/dd6dff7d-c2c4-49ec-a11e-eb9e2130ccbb
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/09/boris-johnson-empty-populism-covid-inquiry
