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.
A Populist who is not? All – almost all – are populists, also, this does not want it to be. Because populism has prevailed. He sets the Tone of the debates, he tailors the arguments, he knows how to appeal to the people. No, you do not have illusions, writes the Italian Journalist and writer Stefano Felti: populism has won. In Italy, but also elsewhere in Europe, also beyond Europe’s borders. The Proof? “All parties, all the Intellectual, the Newspapers and TV channels have taken over the language, Agenda, instruments, and slogans of populism.” So, Felti, in his book “Populismo sovrano”, you would have done out of pure opportunism – “as you have done in the past, about the communism, and in the 90s with the ‘third way’.”
Feltis Argument, you could say, in turn, is a little bit populist. In any case, if one is populism, the tendency towards gross generalisation, the slope, a symbolic order in which things are into weaving, you don’t have in reality – simply because in reality everything is much more complicated. Things are differentiated, and the people are too. The people, – quotes the political scientist Jan-Werner Müller in his book “What is populism?” the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, “occurs only in the Plural”. This applies to the species of politicians.
Nevertheless, Felti diagnosed with a phenomenon that has become in almost all European countries a reality, even and especially in Italy. There, with the “Lega” and “Cinque Stelle” even two parties of this type: a right – and a left-wing populist.
The country no longer recognize
Both parties articulate one thing above all: a diffuse, on many levels articulating discomfort. Ernesto Galli della Loggia, a Journalist of the “Corriere della Sera”, makes it to many phenomena. Also in little things. Of, for instance, 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. This is more tragic. But in his own way, but also telling.
A Form of descent: the film festival of Cannes in 2017 without Italy
Because of the failure in Cannes, writes della Loggia, standing in a row with other, considerably more serious phenomena: a stagnant Economy; decline in income; the poor condition of the roads are liable to become (due to the collapse of the Polcevera-Brück in Genoa, tragically, apparently); the poor state of public transport; the lack of efficiency of the bureaucracy; more is not always comprehensible judgments. The list could go on and on. And the Italians know their country back, della Loggia.
All of this leads to a diffuse feeling of discomfort, the Italians knew not the answer. And, as the sociologist Marco Revelli, not a political one. The discomfort, he writes, is above all a dumb state of mind. It is not high net worth individuals to articulate themselves, and particularly not, because the mass parties of old-style, shaken by numerous scandals, would have been dissolved and the electorate, “liquefied”. It was melted and now find no closed Form, that is to say: contemporary mass parties. The country had hardly more politicians, the egalitarian concerns, the assigning of the Suspended as well as the insecure middle class. “Without an adequate language in which they tell their own history could, threw the citizens back on resentment, and resentment.”
Just then the hour of the populist beat. They focused on one thing: the direct contact with their potential voters, beyond all structures and institutions. As it is, the Power of the direct, warm word that binds many to their self-proclaimed representatives.
The, writes the political scientist Jan-Werner Müller, claim trademark of populist politicians: “populists: ‘We are the people’. You mean, however – and this is always a moral, not an empirical statement (and at the same time, a political Declaration of war): ‘We – and only we – represent the people.’”
Controversial elite criticism from the right: AfD leader Alexander Gauland (li.)
Criticism of the elites
Alexander Gauland, one of the Federal speaker and President 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 to fix also the Central concern of a social democratic and Christian democratic policies. The major parties have not been able, apparently, to solve satisfactorily, is likely to determine the success of the AfD. At least the views of the neighboring country of France teaches. The populist machinations of unsuspecting social geographer Christophe Guilluy has studied in several highly acclaimed 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.”
The wrath of the road: right-wing demonstrators on may day in 2017 in Paris
As Revelli for Italy Guilluy for France, diagnosed the existence of a self-provided class that extends to precarious become of the middle classes in their resentment of the new political figures to turn to, in this case, a female Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National movement, earlier National Front.
In his recent book, “No society” does not extend Guilluy his analysis on the increasingly precarious living, the middle class in France. The title refers to a notorious word of the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: “There is no such thing as society” – “society does not exist”. In this formula, the implied policy – the far-reaching dissolution of social ties – have sharpened the boundaries between the political Camps and the policy to play a show, so Guilluy: “In the Western world belonging to the Right or to the Left to defend is often a attitude, a paint, a role-playing game that allows it, a patch debate, concentrating on the Essentials: a model of society that benefits.”
Fear of the other
Guilluys analysis is not only limited to Europe. It applies in many Parts of the US. The endangered or at least threatened-being center, at the University of Siegen teaching at the end of an Americanist, Daniel stone, was it then also helped the Donald Trump of his election victory. “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 are afraid of social decline, others are against a pluralistic and open America. You despise, also, in what they describe as a political and academic elites. 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.”
But above all, Trumps voters driving the fear. He does not recognize his country, writes the Italian Journalist Ernesto Gallo della Loggia. The same alienation many Americans, as stone suggested. “Given the demographic development will make up around 25 to 30 years, the self as a know-understand-Americans are the majority. There are Federal States, which now have a strong Hispanic influence. The presence of these people changed American society, and not everyone agrees with that.”
“Defending the American dream”: solidarity demonstration with the “Dreamern”, Los Angeles, September 2017
Trump and the American dream
Trump also aware of these Fears, so is stone, and he knew to fire and the associated potential for Violence, rhetorically. Therefore he had promised during the election campaign, to a wall on the border to Mexico to build. That is why he had announced that the so-called “Dreamers” deported. “This is of course a very UN-American idea,” says stone. “People, deport them, get involved and contribute, the want to only live the ‘American Dream’ – to do the expression of a deep-seated racism and a populist attractive xenophobia”. So Trump points. “Some of his voters live in cities, where within a few decades, the formerly white majority to a minority. These people feel that the America, the believed to know it is in decline, and you get it in the right Talk Radio and television again and again demonstrated,” says stone.
Trump had accomplished another feat, stone: He managed to keep his political promises and his actual Agenda is far apart, without that this would have triggered major criticism from 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.”
Brazil’s extreme right edge: Jair Bolsonaro at an election event in Rio de Janeiro in October 2018
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 middle class, says Claudia Zilla, research group leader for America at the Berlin science and politics Foundation. Bolsonaros voters had quite a good education, so Zilla in an interview with DW. “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.
Even Bolsonaro itself was a long-time professional politicians. “But he has always said that he belong to this dirty politics. He would take care of the people and with the problems of Brazil are concerned. This discourse from people buy him.”
A part of his success Bolsonaro owes to the influence of Evangelical groups. Their preachers have advertised open for him. 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.
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In a word… populism
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In a word… populism
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, populism has made a lot of promises. Now he must show how he holds it with the implementation.