Game of fear: the political populism

Populist politicians are on the rise. Almost around the globe you will increasingly win elections. What is it that makes populism so attractive? And how reputable is he? A track search in five countries.

Some time ago the Italian Journalist Ernesto Galli della Loggia, author of the “Corriere della Sera”, to the readers of the blade confessed to a worry: He was born as an Italian. But he did not know whether he was going to die as Italians. To quickly the country was changing – in the Negative. The exchange della Loggia makes the little things in life. About the fact that in the year 2017 at the Cannes film festival not an Italian movie delivery – for the first Time in the history of the festival at all.

The failure in Cannes, writes della Loggia, number of a in a sequence of other, considerably more serious phenomena: a stagnant Economy; declining income; the poor state of the roads; the poor state of public transport; the lack of efficiency of the bureaucracy. The list could go on and on.

All of this leads to a diffuse feeling of discomfort, on the Italians do not know the answer. And, as the sociologist Marco Revelli, not a political one. The mass parties of the old style had dissolved, after they had been shaken by numerous scandals. These parties are now missing. The consequences were dramatic: “Without an adequate language in which they could tell their own story, threw the citizens back on resentment, and resentment.” Just then the hour of the populist beat.

A Form of descent: the film festival of Cannes in 2017 without Italy

Criticism of the elites

The Problem is not limited to Italy. Alexander Gauland, one of the national spokesperson and Chairman of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), has outlined the beginning of October, in an article for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, which groups would be found in his party to each other: “on The one hand, the bourgeois middle class to the economic middle class that can’t just shift its business to India in order to produce particularly cheap; on the other hand, many of the so-called simple people, whose Jobs are often paid lousy or not, the have made a life long the hump is crooked and now a shabby pension. The are at the same time, those for whom home is still a value in itself and to lose their home, because it’s your Milieu is, in the immigrants flows. You can’t just move somewhere else to play Golf.”

Gaulands article has often been criticized. In the elite scolding, he put it there, saw some critics about a contemporary reformulation of formerly anti-Semitic motives. The “homelessness”, once a Central Topos of anti-Semitic incitement, dive in Gauland in a new guise, only that it is directed against the globalized elites. Others complained the polemical or xenophobic escalation in the article, such of the immigrants dedicated to Passage.

France seen from the margins

However, Gauland formulated problems, which are similar to that seen by the Left. In France, for example, the populist agitation has investigated unsuspicious social geographer Christophe Guilluy in a number of books, the decline of the French socialists. “La France périphérique” (“The peripheral France”) is the name of his best-known book, in which he focuses on the double, namely, socially and geographically on the edge, pushed the French under-class, the period after the Dismantling of large industries, a miserable existence on the margins of society. “No party, especially not the left, represents its interests, takes care of your despair. The relevant organisations, including the trade unions, no longer represent you.” Many citizens turned to a question of new political figures, in this case, a female Marine Le Pen, the Head of the National Front, which has renamed itself meanwhile in the National collection of movement.

The wrath of the road: right-wing demonstrators on may day in 2017 in Paris

Fear of the other

Guilluys analysis is not only limited to Europe. It applies in many Parts of the US. So the endangered or at least threatened-being helped there at the end of the middle Trump to his election victory, the at the University of Siegen teaching at the end of an Americanist, Daniel stone. “It’s not like that, especially the very poor people would have chosen Trump,” stone in the DW-Interview. “Rather, it was the voices of people from the middle of society, which made the difference. These people often have the feeling that your country is unrecognizable. Some people have a fear of social descent, others are against a pluralistic and open America. And then someone like Trump, ignores all the established rules, to the claims, in Washington and in the world to clean up, and the interests of his constituents against any form of political correctness to enforce. And the feelings of many of as a likeable, especially the rights of TV channels such as FOX News this image around the clock.”

A have managed to Trump, says stone: He let his political promise and his actual Agenda, are widely different, without attracting criticism from within its own ranks. “The health reform, which Obama, for example, would be a way to alleviate fears of Relegation. But it is precisely this Reform want to get rid of the Republicans. There is a contradiction between the populist demands of the election campaign, and a pop is hard-right policy, which mainly uses the upper layer and the large corporations.”

“Defending the American dream”: the Anti-Trump-Demonstration in Los Angeles, September 2017

Brazilians despair of the policy

At the end of October, the presidential elections in Brazil in their second, decisive round. A favorite of the right – wing populist or right-wing extremist applicable Jaire Bolsonaro-a man who always finds good words for the Brazilian military dictatorship of the 1960s and 70s. Also Bolsonaro turn mainly to the educated middle class, says Claudia Zilla, research group leader for America at the Berlin science and politics Foundation. “But these people have the impression that the other parties differ from each other hardly, and that politics is a corrupt business.” So that the people would not be more wrong, Zilla. Actually, the Brazilians are in the last few years several major corruption scandals witnesses have become politicians.

A part of his success Bolsonaro owes to the influence of Evangelical groups. A random, the not so Zilla: populists of the right-wing camp, and evangelicals used to be on a similar conservative Agenda. “It’s okay, it’s about family, it’s about traditional values, it is of marriages is the privileging of heterosexual.” New Pentecostal churches were often in their worship services to staging strategies to those of the populists were similar. Both were looking for the immediate contact to the people, both appeal primarily to the emotions and, if at all, only second to the intellect.

Brazil’s extreme right edge: Jair Bolsonaro at an election event in Rio de Janeiro in October 2018

Populism as a battle for All

The populism, the Argentine political scientist Loris Zanatta in the newspaper “Clarín”, – styled political quarrels a fight for All. “The horizon of populism is the promised Land, the extinction of sin, the return of the people to its original purity. Nothing more and nothing Less. This is the stuff that his big story: the eternal battle of Good against Evil is nourished.”

However, warns Zanatta, you have to see what come out at the end of concrete. In a fear-driven world, the populists made a lot of promises. Now you must show how you hold the implementation.

Game of fear: the political populism

In a word… populism

In a word… populism