Populism, a rising tide?

[stpioc]

It isn't actually that difficult to understand

When a particular model of capitalism is working successfully, material progress relieves political pressures. But when the economy fails – and the failure is not just a transient phase but a symptom of deep contradictions – capitalism’s disruptive social side effects can turn politically toxic.

That is what happened after 2008. Once the failure of free trade, deregulation, and monetarism came to be seen as leading to a “new normal” of permanent austerity and diminished expectations, rather than just to a temporary banking crisis, the inequalities, job losses, and cultural dislocations of the pre-crisis period could no longer be legitimized – just as the extortionate taxes of the 1950s and 1960s lost their legitimacy in the stagflation of the 1970s.

The Crisis of Market Fundamentalism by Anatole Kaletsky - Project Syndicate

The funny thing is, those on the wrong side of neo-liberalism, the ones that are now revolting, vote for the party who will double down on it. And there is more to it:

Yet the concerns of people from the U.S. Midwest to Greece, where a populist, anti-austerity government has been in power for almost two years, are only partially rooted in a sense of abandonment in a global economy. There’s a deeper discontent with the way they are governed that a fiscal stimulus program, import tariffs or a stock-market rally won’t quickly soothe.

Unemployment where Heinzelman lives is 3.2 percent, matching the lowest level since 2000. His beef is with undocumented immigrants, so the retired small-business owner backed Trump. Durand, whose family farm is in a moderately prosperous region between Lyon and the Alps, said bureaucrats in Brussels who are “totally removed from the real world” have solidified his loyalty to France’s National Front party, which could help propel the anti-euro party under Marine Le Pen to power next spring. "Whether they’re virtual or real, the reality is we’re going to see a world with more walls," said Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk consulting firm.

Outrage Over the Economy Doesn’t Explain Surging Global Populism - Bloomberg

[stpioc]

Twenty years ago, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs titled “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.” His thesis was that democracies around the world were surrendering to illiberal reforms, and that the strands holding the traditions of democracy and liberalism together were rapidly eroding. “From Peru to the Palestinian Authority, from Sierra Leone to Slovakia, from Pakistan to the Philippines,” he wrote, “we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life — illiberal democracy.”

Zakaria’s piece made an important distinction between democracy and liberalism, constructs that are often conflated. Democracy is a process for choosing leaders; it’s about popular participation. To say that a state is democratic is to say little about how it is actually governed. Liberalism, by contrast, is about the norms and practices that shape political life. A properly liberal state is one in which individual rights are paramount. It protects the individual not only against the abuses of a tyrant but also against the abuses of democratic majorities.

You might think of liberal democracy as democracy with legal buffers. It’s what you get when the Hellenic ideal of individual freedom is buttressed by the Roman devotion to rule of law, or what some today would call constitutionalism. Wherever it springs up, illiberalism assumes a familiar form: more corruption, greater restrictions on assembly and speech, constraints on the press, retribution against political opponents, oppression of minorities. All of these things are bad, but they’re not necessarily undemocratic. Putin’s Russia is spangled with repressive and illiberal policies, and yet Putin is overwhelmingly popular among Russians. He is, like many near tyrants, a populist..

Fareed Zakaria made a scary prediction about democracy in 1997 — and it's coming true - Vox

Zakaria's thoughts are elaborated in his book The Future of Freedom, highly recommended.

[Admin]

Interesting take

In my recent interview with Tucker Carlson, he waited until nearly the end of a long conversation to drop a bomb: He might vote for Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020. OK, there’s a “but” and an “if.” Carlson actually said that if Warren focuses on the economic populism ideas articulated in her 2004 book “The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke,” he would consider supporting her. It wasn’t a promise. From the point of view of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, it might be more like a threat.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson bashes capitalism — and says he might vote for Elizabeth Warren – Alternet.org

[Admin]

Populists across the world are significantly more likely to believe in conspiracy theories about vaccinations, global warming and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a landmark global survey shared exclusively with the Guardian. The YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project sheds new light on a section of the world population that appears to have limited faith in scientific experts and representative democracy. Analysis of the survey found the clearest tendency among people with strongly held populist attitudes was a belief in conspiracy theories that were contradicted by science or factual evidence.

The research may go some way towards understanding the success of rightwing populists such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, who have fuelled conspiracy theories, undermined efforts to address global warmingand dismissed fact-based journalism as “fake news”. The survey findings may also prove useful to public health officials who are battling to contain outbreaks of measles around the world amid alarming rates of unvaccinated children.

Revealed: populists far more likely to believe in conspiracy theories | World news | The Guardian

[Admin]

Populist lying, by contrast, is designed to be seen – it is the opposite of a cover-up. In the populist playbook, lying itself is glorified; it is an instrument of subversion, its purpose to demonstrate that the liar will stop at nothing to “serve the people”. The lies are signals that these politicians are not bound by the usual norms of the liberal democratic elite. Liberals have virtue signalling – populists have outrage signalling. This is the politics of appealing to the gut over the brain.

Above all, though, the lies are about taking one of representative democracy’s creeds – authenticity – and turning it on its head. The idea of authenticity is at the heart of the populist worldview, yet it is rarely studied as a political concept. In liberal democracies the notion that politicians will uphold basic values of honesty has long been a given. It means delivering on what you promise and doing as you said you would – or paying an electoral price if you fail. With ever closer media scrutiny and the growing reach of social media, an even deeper correlation between the private and public self has been demanded of politicians. They have to be true to themselves, not just true to their word.

Populists have been quick to turn the value placed on authenticity to their advantage. Not by striving to be truthful, but by demonstrating that they are authentic (or instinctively connected to the experience of “the people”, who are authentic) to the point of not caring about being shown to be liars – as long as the lies are told “in the interest of the people”. They tend to either sweep away the evidence that they lied with great nonchalance (well, I might have said that, but so what?), or flaunt the lie to show their chutzpah, their willingness to game the system – and to highlight the supposed hypocrisy or stupidity of whoever is being deceived.

Why Europe’s new populists tell so many lies – and do it so shamelessly | Catherine Fieschi | Opinion | The Guardian

• A pretty astute observation, the whole article is interesting.