Climate, technology and chaos Blog

What is ‘Populism’?

Populism has nothing to do with popularity. You can have popular movements which are not populist.

Populism differs across the world, but as far as I can see it starts as a movement which pretends to be for the people, but ends up being for the bosses; either established bosses or for an authoritarian party and its leader.

While populist leaders promise the people power and wealth, they act to increase the power and wealth of the established, or themselves, quite ruthlessly. For example, Donald Trump recognised the crisis of the American Wage earner, and gave tax cuts to the wealthy (including himself), cut back services to the wage earners and subsidised large corporations.

In order to distract the people from this sleight of hand, populists conduct culture wars.

• They pretend minor philosophies are inherently corrupting will lead to social collapse (especially if they identify the believers in these minor philosophies as being opposed to them);
• They pretend there is some kind of devious and evil infiltration from outside, which is allied with a relatively powerless minority;
• They pretend social minorities are subversive criminals who are incredibly powerful;
• They pretend that the nation’s ‘race,’ biology or ‘blood’ is particularly significant, and sets one group of people with the right race against others with the wrong race;
• The pretend the country is being overrun by immigrants or refugees;
• They pretend to support tradition, while ripping tradition down – especially any tradition which hinders their power;
• They pretend to support real Religion against terrible or Satanic enemies, or against heresies and behaviour which will draw down the wrath of God;
• Real religion is religion which supports them;
• They misdirect claiming that only they are standing against the forces of oppression while boosting those forces of oppression;
• They can pretend to be for free markets, because that means that they can support the victors in the existing markets and stop people interfering with the freedom of those bosses who have succeeded;
• They lie repeatedly because they think that whatever gives them more power is true;
• Lying allows them to be flexible and always generate a persuasive answer. Falsity is quicker than truth which takes research, and this leaves their opposition stumbling;
• Because they are wedded to lies, they try to suppress all those who disagree, no matter how little;
• Obedience and virtue is shown by how much rubbish the follower can swallow;
• The leader of a populist party is often the face of the party, the point of the party and the party autocrat. The leader is the one who sees the party’s Truth through his (or more rarely her) special insight;
• Populists purge the party of those who openly disagree with the leader to show the consequences of thinking for yourself or attempting to follow the truth;
• Populists in power often attempt to purge the media, or suppress hostile coverage as being biased; and
• Populists never have to listen to anyone else, because those who are not aligned with them are inferior.

Populists apparently need to manufacture enemies out of nothing, so that they can look to be good, and they can use the fury they whip up in their followers – angry people don’t always think well, and are more likely to go along with them.

The secret of populism is that its leaders think that the people are fools, or sheep, who need to be led to the paradise of total obedience and uniformity.

Populists eventually fail, because

• No one tells the leader, or the upper echelons of the party, the truth because they know what will happen to them;
• You can only ignore the truth for a relatively short period of time, before it bites back fiercely; especially if there is a real crisis you wish to ignore – such as the ecological crisis.

Nationalism

Nationalism is not about love of one’s home, or homeland – it appears most people feel love for their home, to some extent.

Nationalism has historically been used to produce conformity or a sense of belonging “as long as you are like us”. In the US, nationalism seems to be used to support capitalist exploitation as representing American values and American supremacy. Nationalism is used to obliterate recognition of class difference (as the recognition that classes do not always have the same interests is a usual part of the left orientation) and by obliterating that recognition aims to help the triumph of the capitalist class by reducing opposition to the power of that class. It tries to tell the inside-people they are more important than everyone else in the world, simply because of the place of their birth. People are told they can ignore oppression by their bosses and masters, because they are ‘American’ or ‘French’ or ‘Chinese’ and special – they are part of a crowd. Nationalism often makes one ‘race’ dominant and suppresses all others because, even if they have lived there for hundreds of years, those others are not ‘really’ part of the Nation – they are considered natural victims, primitives, or enemies. Nationalism often leads to war, to demonstrate that the idea of national supremacy is justified, and because of the need of the nation’s leaders to fuse people into one through a hardship they can blame on others.

Nationalism is particularly dangerous when we have to fight global problems such as ecological catastrophe or economic dominance and failure, as it factions the world. You need co-operation between states, as well as state rivalry.

One reason we have probably failed so dismally with respect to climate change, is this sense that States are just rivals, and that they are not going to co-operate but seek their own national benefit alone.

It is probably sensible to recognise that States are rivals who need to work together, more than they need short term victory.

Conclusion

Populism often uses nationalism, because it provides an easily triggered sense of group identity, which can then be set against other identities, and build a sense of us or them, which pushes people to identify with the leader.

Nationalism and populism, often seem to be forces of oppression which, in the modern world attempt, to enforce capitalist domination and destruction.

Tags: fascism, politics, social category theory

This entry was posted on June 5, 2021 at 7:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.