Brands of populism
DONALD Trump’s ascension to the US presidency has produced a whole host of explanations for his wild card path to power. The widely held explanation is that he tapped into the anger of the US working-class, left behind by globalisation and neatly wrapped up in an identity crisis triggered by rising immigration. He traded on these twin grievances like any other populist demagogue of the right. In this, Trump’s populism is of a piece with other forms of far-right populism in Europe and elsewhere.
This is one reason why Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right National Front, was the first to gloat over Trump’s victory. Her pithy comment telescoped its significance when she said, “It is not the end of the world. But it is the end of a world.” The world she was referring to is one of liberal and tolerant values, interconnected trade and economies now consigned to the flames by Trump’s insular and racist agenda.
In this sense, Trump represents the right’s populism in its all essentials. This brand of populism is composed of anti-globalisation, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-EU sentiments. Together, these ingredients tap into grievances arising out of jobs being outsourced to labour-cheap parts of the world, loss of white identity engendered by migration, and loss of national sovereignty caused by trade blocs and supranational structures like the EU.
Both populisms, left and right, are set to run parallel to one another.
In the right’s populist narrative, the influx of immigrants is automatically equated with lowered wages for local workers, besides feeding into broader identity anxieties. This, in their narrative, causes both economic decline and the dilution of a Western way of life. Trump used all the tricks of textbook right-wing populism: national sovereignty threatened by US trade deals, national identity diluted by a rising immigrant population, and economic decline believed to be occasioned by both – with the ruling liberal elite identified as the orchestrator of all this. This line of attack provided a powerful, anti-establishment ballast to their populist narrative.
In France too, Marine Le Pen scapegoats Muslims, globalisation and the EU for the decline of French cultural, political and economic way of life. Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right UK Independence Party, was instrumental in the UK voting to leave the EU on the flawed basis of diluted national sovereignty and influx of EU migrants. There is a natural affinity between Trump’s and Farage’s racist, populist agendas, as evidenced in the close working relationship between the two. So much so that Trump termed his US presidential campaign ‘Brexit plus’, in imitation of Farage’s Leave campaign in the UK.
On the other hand, parties of the left are tapping into populism of a different kind. This insurgent populism, however, is raged against some anti-people and anti-welfare elements of the current political order, presided over by pro-neoliberal parties of the right and left. Part of this insurgent populism is also aimed at replacing left-wing parties tainted by neoliberalism. This insurgent left populism has notably been observable in Greece, Spain and the UK. Alexis Tsipras, Greece’s prime minister and leader of the left-wing Syriza, led his movement to electoral victory by railing against harsh austerity politics pursued by parties on both sides. His populist pitch was also directed at the corporate and financial institutions driving Greece’s harsh austerity agenda. This insurgent narrative is entirely free of anti-immigrant rhetoric. Moreover, while railing against some elements of globalisation, this populism focuses more on inequality issues rather than identity politics and loss of jobs under globalisation.
Most of the left insurgent populism has resulted in lessening the relevance of established leftist parties. Syriza succeeded in reducing the socialist party Pasok to a marginal player. In Spain, Podemos is similarly engaged in replacing the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party by advocating an ostensibly anti-austerity, anti-corporate and anti-neoliberal platform. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn emerged as the representative of this populism within the Labour Party, which had veered in an undiluted neoliberal direction. Like Syriza, Jeremy Corbyn’s platform has focused on anti-austerity, inequality, enhanced workers’ protection and defence of the welfare state, now being dismantled by the Conservative government.
In the coming years, both populisms are set to run parallel to one another. Since right-wing populism appeals more to emotions and identity, it is likely to stage more seemingly improbable victories such as Trump’s. France may be the next station for far-right populists as they run their victory lap. For the foreseeable future, while “the best lack all conviction”, in the words of W.B. Yeats, the destabilising “passionate intensity” of the far right’s politics is more than likely to continue on its hate-fuelled course.
The writer is a consultant and policy analyst.
Twitter: @arifazad5
Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2016