Former prime minister Imran Khan is notorious for utterances that are often lambasted by his critics for being delivered in bad taste.

Not only does he issue bombastic threats to police officers and judges, he also has a habit of mocking his opponents through crude rhetoric and mannerisms bordering on misogyny, sexism and bigotry.

The former US president Donald Trump used similar ‘tactics’, and so does Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

The other common thing between the three men is that they are all considered to be populists.

To suit their political agendas, populists mobilise existing prejudices in society, which encourages transgressive behaviour by their supporters

According to the political scientist Pierre Ostiguy, populists rely on “performing what is culturally referred to as coarse, misbehaved, and vulgar.” Compared to the more mainstream politicians, populists are willing to bring into the public sphere rhetoric that is generally considered to be distasteful. They know there’s an enthusiastic audience for it who will interpret it as ‘honesty’ and ‘straightforwardness’.

The decorum of mainstream politics tends to have little room for the crude and coarse. But populism challenges this. According to the political scientist Cass Mudde, “Populist leaders in general use simple and even vulgar language.” This they do to disrupt the mainstream decorum and create a space for themselves as the ‘voice of the people’. It is done with such audacity that the opponents of the populists are compelled to target it. Populists relish the attention this brings.

To the political scientist Maria Casullo, populists have an “antagonistic vision of society.” They see society as being at loggerheads with an elite. The populists offer themselves as champions of the disgruntled. The articulation of this antagonistic vision is done in a performative manner, through dramatic rhetoric, gestures and theatrics. It is a performance that shapes the political persona of the populist.

Imran Khan’s ‘performances’ include rallies that have a live soundtrack interjecting his speeches with bits of songs and music, chosen to suit his words. He mixes raw ‘humour’, bombastic claims and bursts of anger to express his antagonistic vision. This has moulded a perception of him as a person who is a ‘straight talker’ and ‘young at heart’.

He also often quotes select bits from Islam’s holy scriptures. The frequently circulated images of him praying, and of him hobnobbing with Islamic evangelists, expands the perception. To his supporters, he is thus not only an ‘honest’ man, but a very spiritual one as well, chosen by destiny as a saviour.

Various political scientists and sociologists have often used the word ‘transgression’ to explain the function of ‘bad language and manners’ in a populist’s armoury. This is one way with which populists disrupt mainstream norms, because they believe such norms are the domain of elites which the ‘common people’ cannot relate to. This is a notion that populists carry and proliferate. Some even go to the extent of justifying their ‘vulgar’ outbursts with the concept of ‘free speech’.

Trump mocked people with physical disabilities. He was transgressing the rules of a new norm in which the word ‘cripple’, for instance, was being replaced by more ‘respectable’ terms such as ‘differently abled’, ‘visually impaired’, ‘hard of hearing’, etc. In Trump’s mind, the new terms were part of a project of the liberal elite to transform the way common folk spoke. To him, it was an ideological project to weigh down common Americans with the guilt of being uncouth and politically incorrect.

Imran Khan often describes a nemesis of his, Maryam Nawaz, as a ‘naani’ [grandmother], even though she is 48 and Khan is 70. Indeed, she is a grandmother. But Khan frames this fact in a rather misogynic manner, by more-than-alluding that she is a naani who dresses fashionably, and supposedly has had cosmetic surgery performed on her.

It is as if, to him, grandmothers, no matter what their age, should be plain and modest and certainly not in politics. He, on the other hand, can be 70, married thrice, and do all he can to look like the hunk he used to be decades ago. The ‘hunk’ bit is vital to his performative populist appeal.

By speaking the way he does about Maryam, Khan is disputing the idea that women do not need to start looking ‘old’ the moment they become mothers or grandmothers. He is doing this by re-enforcing the caricature of grandmothers with white hair and few teeth. In his mind, this is how ‘common people’ imagine grandmothers to be (and thus, so should he). Therefore, the opposing and more evolved view in this respect becomes a ‘Westernised’ construct that is to be negated.

But what is the impact of the transgressive rhetoric beyond instant applause and excitement among the followers of the populists? A May 2019 study, published in The European Journal of Political Research, posits that populists mobilise existing prejudices and divisions in a society. They undermine the idea of resolving these through more democratic and consensual means and, instead, encourage direct action. The opposing side is demonised and dehumanised so that their misfortunes can be celebrated and mocked without any guilt.

This is why physical attacks on minority groups in the US increased during the Trump presidency, and so have attacks against Muslims in Narendra Modi’s India. Existing prejudices were mobilised by Trump and Modi. Khan, on the other hand, intensified perceptions of his opponents being ‘corrupt’ and then mobilised these perceptions. The result of this is frequent transgressive behaviour by his supporters on social media as well as in physical spaces where his opponents are present.

Two years ago, a good friend of mine, who is from Charsadda in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told me about an elderly relative of his who was very concerned about Khan’s impact on young Pakhtuns. The relative lamented that young men had lost all respect for opposing views and were willing to physically assault anyone who disagreed with them. He added that a young man now would not even hesitate to slap his own father if he found him to be disagreeable.

The most disconcerting part of the story was that the relative worried that, even if Khan were to be ousted from politics, the transgressive behaviour that his rhetoric has normalised would remain, and may end up finding a new outlet for the youth in militant organisations.

To the relative, the damage was already done.

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 16th, 2022