Populism

"Taggart’s book is mostly a historical overview of populism worldwide, but it is full of fantastic, small insights. One of the ones I like the best is (paraphrasing) when he writes that populism is politics for ordinary people by extraordinary leaders. What he shows—and what we also discuss in our book—is that a lot of populist parties are led by people who are in no way descriptively part of the people. “Populism is not about who you are. It is not about class. It is about morals.” Silvio Berlusconi was one of the richest people in Italy. Ross Perot was one of the richest people in the US. Thaksin Shinawatra was one of the richest people in Thailand. In the Netherlands, Pim Fortuyn was a flamboyant gay man leading one of the most homophobic electorates in the country. And the reason for this is that populism is not about who you are. It is not about class. It is about morals. So the idea is that Trump—while being from New York, which is home to the East coast liberal elite—is actually, in terms of his values and his morals, part of the people. Yes. Exactly. Common sense is used by others as well, but it is central in populist discourse. Common sense is partly a critique of ideology and partisanship. It is a fundamentally apolitical term because by and large it argues that there is one solution that is good for everyone and that’s common sense. It also links to anti-intellectualism, which is very strong in the US, but generally also strong among populists. When you have common sense, you don’t need experts, you don’t need academics. We don’t need to think about whether a wall is good; that’s common sense. The other thing that Taggart introduces in his book that’s related to this is the concept of the heartland. The heartland is Middle America, or… The heartland is that subset of the people who are the authentic people. When populists—like Trump—speak about the people, they don’t include everyone. But they’re also not without any definition. So they tend to reference the real America, and that’s the heartland. The heartland is where the real people live, the salt of the earth. They are God-fearing (here in the US), they work for their money, they’re not pretentious, they have common sense, they know what is good, they’re pure. The heartland is a subset of the people, but are also, morally, the definition of all the people. Anyone who’s not in the heartland is not legitimately part of the people. Technically, populism doesn’t have to be xenophobic. Most of its successful representatives are, but if you look, for example, at Podemos or Syriza, at the moment, in Europe, they’re very inclusive towards immigrants. Occupy Wall Street had a strong populist discourse that was inclusive, at least in rhetoric, with regards to ethnic and racial groups even though the movement itself was incredibly white. The heartland is a stereotype. Popular stereotypes always have a kernel of truth, but it is a simplification. So yes, there are people that are exactly as the heartland is described. But many people who live in what is allegedly the heartland do not fit that stereotype. Similarly, many people living on the coasts fit the heartland stereotype better than the coast stereotype. That depends a lot on the country and the role of intellectuals. The US has always been very strongly anti-intellectual in general and particularly on the right. Intellectuals were always part of the elite. In Britain, that wasn’t so much the case. One of the reasons why the populist part of Brexit turned against experts was because experts featured almost exclusively in the ‘Remain’ camp. So they became part of the political struggle. What you see with populists is that often they will be very respectful when they write about a professor. They always indicate that he or she is a professor when they say something that is useful for them. When a professor says that the political system is rotten, they’ll highlight the fact that it is a distinct professor who said that. But when a professor says that it’s bad to leave the EU, then he or she becomes a ‘so-called expert.’ It’s all very opportunistic. This is a newer thing and, in part, about how the experts are both presenting themselves and are being presented. So many of these economists—as well as political scientists—came out in a political way and stated that Brexit was bad, not just for the economy, but for Britain. Then many of the ‘Remain’ groups would roll them out as evidence for their claim, and so that made them politicised. The problem with Taggart’s book is that he never really clearly defines populism. That might be one of the reasons why the book isn’t as influential as it should be. He speaks about six key features, but he doesn’t really say whether populism has all of them or how exactly that works. So it gives you a very good overview of different groups that have been described as populist, but, at the end, you’re still not completely certain what the core of populism is. He brings in the idea of crisis. Populism has pretty much always been linked to crisis. Taggart also links it to being episodic. He argues that populism really only emerges in times of crisis and just as crises are short-term, populism is episodic. It comes up in times of crisis and it disappears as soon as the crisis is over. This is a very powerful idea, which is the basis of Judis’s book."