It would seem to me that anti-populist ideologies and democracy are like oil and water. The natural result of democracy is that popular ideas hold the power, even if those ideas happen to be wrong. I don't think you can be for both without some degree of internal contradiction.
What seems odd about this Democratic Party transformation of "populism" into a pejorative in the wake of Trump is that it's ironically undemocratic. Why attack populism at all? Why not try to make your ideas the new populism, supplanting the old? Very strange, and not a good look.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
It would seem to me that anti-populist ideologies and democracy are like oil and water. The natural result of democracy is that popular ideas hold the power, even if those ideas happen to be wrong. I don't think you can be for both without some degree of internal contradiction.
What seems odd about this Democratic Party transformation of "populism" into a pejorative in the wake of Trump is that it's ironically undemocratic. Why attack populism at all? Why not try to make your ideas the new populism, supplanting the old? Very strange, and not a good look.
Yeah um, populism in politics isn't about 'popular' ideas, really...
Populists seek to appeal to ordinary people who feel their concerns have been ignored by the "establishment" and their parties are often dominated by a charismatic leader.
There are two broad strands.
There is right-wing populism, which is prevalent in north and central Europe and attacks the ‘elites’ on nationalist or very conservative issues, and its left-wing cousin, seen more in the south, which focuses on capitalism and globalisation when criticising the so-called establishment.
2. How did it start?
Spoiler
The populist wave in Europe began with the 9/11 attacks: the subsequent security crackdown legitimised cutting back on human rights and helped far-right parties tough on issues like law and order.
Then the financial crisis hit, fuelling populism in southern Europe amid fears over poverty and unemployment.
It saw the emergence in Greece, for example, of populists from both extremes of the political spectrum: Syriza (left) and Golden Dawn (right).
At the same time there was a rise in western and central Europe: Austria, Switzerland and Scandinavian countries. Not because they were so struck by the crisis but out of fear they could be struck. So to protect your country, to protect your benefits, to protect your welfare you don’t want migrants and refugees.
Then you have the eastern countries where the refugee movements really triggered enormously the rise of right-wing populist and extreme parties and that’s basically Hungary and Poland where such parties have the majority in governing coalitions.
They basically legitimised their various policies which now challenge and endanger democracy: freedom of media, freedom of opinion and freedom of the courts, by pointing to Islam and the refugees.
That’s interesting because Poland doesn’t have any migrants. It has a few Ukrainians but that is not what they complain about.
3. Why is there a rise in populism?
Spoiler
The number of Europeans ruled by a government with at least one populist in cabinet has increased from 12.5 million to 170 million. This has been blamed on everything from recession to migration, social media to globalisation.
But the Czech experience shows it can be more complicated than that. Only 2.3% of the country’s workforce is out of a job, the lowest rate in the EU. Last year, its economy grew by 4.3%, well above the bloc’s average, and the country was untouched by the 2015 European refugee crisis. But in last year’s general election populist parties won just over 40%, a tenfold increase from 1998.
The Czech Republic demonstrates that the factors behind populism’s surge are both far more complex and infinitely more varied than first thought, and that a voter’s decision to cast their ballot for a populist party is just as often a reflection of psychological state as of circumstances and identity.
In 2008 came the financial crisis and recession. As many people, particularly in southern Europe, saw living standards shrink, the centrist parties that had governed hitherto – and the Eurocrats in Brussels with their clipboard austerity – became an obvious target.
Hit hardest of all by the crisis, the Greeks gave 27% of their votes to the radical leftwing populists of Syriza in 2012, electing them to government three years later with a score nearly 10 points higher. In Spain, the anti-austerity Podemos took 21% in 2015 just a year after the party was founded.
In Italy, decades of corruption, mismanagement and the impact of the 2015 refugee crisis resulted in the anti-establishment, tax-and-spend Five Star Movement sweeping to power last year in an unlikely coalition with the far-right, anti-immigration League.
The biggest advances have been made in central and eastern Europe. All four so-called Visegrád countries are governed by populist parties including Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary – where populist parties secured 63% of the vote in this year’s elections – and Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice in Poland.
Both parties only started showing their true colours – populist, culturally conservative, authoritarian – after they were first elected. They are now attacking core liberal institutions such as the independent judiciary and free press, increasingly defining national identities in terms of ethnicity and religion and demonising opponents.
4. What is the impact of rising populism?
Spoiler
While it is true that populist parties, and more specifically populist radical right parties, have been on the rise in the 21st century, this is only one part of a bigger, and more important story: namely the transformation of European party politics.
This transformation affects all parties, not just the populist ones. Centre-left parties are the main losers, greens and radical right parties the main winners, while centre-right parties survive, and sometimes prosper (at least in the short term), by moving sharply right. In addition to the Rechtsruck (political swing to the right), primarily in socio-cultural terms (notably immigration and integration), it has also led to more problematic and prolonged coalition formation processes, from Germany to Sweden, and more vulnerable coalition governments.
Populist progress has been accompanied almost everywhere by a profound redrawing of Europe’s postwar political landscape and a continuing fragmentation of national votes. As the big mainstream parties of government have shrunk, the smaller parties – some of them populist but by no means all – have been getting steadily bigger.
Although this process has affected both the centre-right and centre-left, it is Europe’s traditional social democratic parties that have been hardest hit, haemorrhaging votes to the radical right and left. It is a trend that looks hard to turn around: Germany’s once-mighty SPD is languishing at 14% in the polls, the French Socialist party scored just 7.4% in last year’s parliamentary elections, and also last year the Dutch Labour party won just 5.7%.
In terms of aggregate scores, the leftwing parties (the SPD and Greens) largely offset each other, as did the two rightwing parties (the CSU and AfD). In fact, the biggest gains were in the centre, or better centre-right, where two smaller parties (the Free Democratic party and Free Voters) won, collectively, 4.4% of the vote.
Does this mean little changed? Far from it. First of all, both “blocs” have shifted ideologically, with the right becoming more radical right and the left becoming more left. We have seen this across (western) Europe, with not just radical right parties gaining, but also mainstream parties moving further to the right. Similarly, in many countries, including Belgium and the Netherlands, we see social democratic parties lose (big) and Green parties, and sometimes the radical left, win (big). In these cases, the bloc moves (somewhat) to the left.
Across Europe, rightwing populist parties have also succeeded in influencing policy even when they are not in government, with parties such as Britain’s Ukip, the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People’s party, the PVV and the AfD dragging the discourse of their countries’ dominant centre-right parties to the right on subjects such as immigration.
5. Conclusions and discussion
Spoiler
People wanted change from the seemingly similar centre-left and centre-right parties. THey got it through populist parties.
Where populist parties got in the ruling government, or managed to influence most of the public and politics from the opposition (UK and UKIP/Farage and Brexit), people ended up not being very happy at all after the honeymoon period and a couple years (Finland and the True Finns).
I see this happening more and more, because populists cannot keep their promises. It's the contradictory nature of populism, that will be its downfall. Look at Poland, an extremely anti-EU, authoritarian government, takes the most money in EU payments and is the largest beneficiary in the EU. The government knows this, has no intention of leaving the EU, yet maintains the rhetoric to the people to maintain power. Look at the corrupt authoritarian Orban in Hungary. If the EU and the establishment is so terrible, why not leave? Because they are profiting and benefitting from the EU.
The whole tenet of protectionism increasing economic prosperity, has been proven wrong time and time again. It appeals to the public, because immigrants are such an easy target. They are stealing our money, jobs and women! Turns out, as with Brexit, EU immigrants were a net benefit to the economy, and the rest had largely a slightly negative, negligible impact.
When the reality that is the mess that is Brexit actually sunk in, and how the populist parties had lied and manipulated the public, nobody else wanted to follow suit. There was supposedly going to be this massive domino effect of Exits. People were like, fuck that shit, we don't want to become the UK.
Wow, thanks for convincing me that having only 2 political parties to keep track of is optimal.
What a disaster to try and keep up with all those groups. No wonder the whole world just follows USA politics, the rest of the world is too confusing (except 1 party rules countries I guess)
Wow, thanks for convincing me that having only 2 political parties to keep track of is optimal.
What a disaster to try and keep up with all those groups. No wonder the whole world just follows USA politics, the rest of the world is too confusing (except 1 party rules countries I guess)
I don't know if I would call it optimal.
The whole point was that the previously distinct main political parties of centre, left and right, have been converging for decades ideologically.
This political upheaval due to the financial crisis and the refugee crisis, has made them adapt. Left went more left, with 'radical' left gaining big, and the right went more right, with the 'radical right' gaining big.
What is really confusing is the making of coalition governments, and trying to predict that. I.e. if I vote party A, they will always partner with party B, but who will be the third party in the coalition government then? A+B working together usually leads to party C, but sometimes party D, depending on compromises and concessions. But the order matters, i.e. if you vote B then they might partner with party E, instead of C or D, in addition to A.
Still with me?
Neither am I.
Bipartisanship in the UK and also in the US, usually eliminates smaller parties ever getting any power. If you think that's simpler, I agree with you. More democratic? Not really.
It would seem to me that anti-populist ideologies and democracy are like oil and water. The natural result of democracy is that popular ideas hold the power, even if those ideas happen to be wrong. I don't think you can be for both without some degree of internal contradiction.
What seems odd about this Democratic Party transformation of "populism" into a pejorative in the wake of Trump is that it's ironically undemocratic. Why attack populism at all? Why not try to make your ideas the new populism, supplanting the old? Very strange, and not a good look.
Personally, I don't like democracy as a system.
It was a good start but it should have been pushed to be more enlightened. Instead, the system cater to popularity instead of competence...
In the US, it's even worse because of conflict of interests via lobby-ism
Build of the week #9 - Breaking your face with style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_EcQDOUN9Y
IGN: Poltun
It was a good start but it should have been pushed to be more enlightened. Instead, the system cater to popularity instead of competence...
In the US, it's even worse because of conflict of interests via lobby-ism
It can definitely work, but it largely depends on the level of corruption.
Lobbyism is a huge issue issue as without limits, it mainly serves the big corporations. Who have probably used the fact that there few limits to campaign donations, to back the right candidate into power.
See the Environmental Polluting Agency in the US right now.
What this whole debacle has been, at heart, is a huge indictment of two core American institutions, both of which are dangerously out of date and left the door wide open for a world-class grifter. Globally, we're going to look back at that time when America had a legendarily shady, unsuccessful businessman with a slew of psychological disorders on full display daily as its president and ask two incredulous questions:
1) 'How the hell did the political system let that happen?'
2) 'why the fuck did it take the legal system so long to deal with it?'
For the first 1) one, we can speculate for years the causes of why Trump was elected, and not really find a meaningful answer. Yes, Russia interfered in that election, but the magnitude of that has not been established, and I doubt it ever will be. It's just...impossible to quantify whether some propaganda and misinformation was enough to sway a voter.
2) Up until November, i.e. for two years, both House and Senate were Republican controlled. Their track record for bi-partisan solutions is like, worthless.
Basically, during the whole Nixon debacle, there were enough Republicans with a backbone to ensure a bi-partisan win in an impeachment trial.
Look at the GOP now. See what's happening in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan. They are utterly without any sort of loyalty to their country, just party.
