MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Populism is not an ideology, it's a political technique which thrives on angry people
Populism is not an ideology. It’s just a political technique, equally available to right-wingers, left-wingers, and those (like Trump) with no coherent ideology at all. 
In this era, populism seems to partner best with right-wing nationalist ideologies like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary and the Brexiteers in England Five of the world’s largest democracies now have populist governments, claimed The Guardian last week, and proceeded to name four: the United States, India, Brazil and the Philippines. Which is the fifth? At various points it name-checks Turkey, Italy and the United Kingdom, but it never becomes clear which. (And by the way, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi is not a populist. He’s just a nationalist.)
It’s embarrassing when a respected global newspaper launches a major investigative series and can’t really nail the subject down. Neither can the people it interviews: Hillary Clinton, for example, admits the she was “absolutely dumbfounded” by how Donald Trump ate her lunch every day during the 2016 presidential campaign. She still doesn’t get it.
“We got caught in a kind of transition period so what I had seen work in the past ... was no longer as appealing or digestible to the people or the press. I was trying to be in a position where I could answer all the hard questions, but ... I never got them. I was waiting for them; I never got them. Yet I was running against a guy who did not even pretend to care about policy.”
Yes, Trump is a classic populist, but why did he beat her two years ago when he wouldn’t even have got the nomination 10 years ago? She doesn’t seem to have a clue about that, and neither do other recent leaders of centre-left parties interviewed by The Guardian like Britain’s Tony Blair and Italy’s Matteo Renzi. So let us try to enlighten them.
Populism is not an ideology. It’s just a political technique, equally available to right-wingers, left-wingers, and those (like Trump) with no coherent ideology at all.
In this era, populism seems to partner best with right-wing nationalist ideologies like those of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary and the Brexiteers in England, but even now there are populist left-wing parties like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain.
How does this tool work? It claims to be on the side of ‘ordinary people’ and against a ‘corrupt elite’ that exploits and despises them. It’s light on policy and heavy on emotion, particularly the emotions of fear and hatred. It usually scapegoats minorities and/or foreigners, and it only works really well when people are angry about something.
The anger is about the fact that the jobs are disappearing, and what’s killing them is automation. The assembly-line jobs went first, because they are so easy to automate. That’s what turned the old industrial heartland of the United States into the ‘Rust Belt.’ What’s going fast now are the retail jobs, killed by Amazon and its rivals: computers again.
The next big chunk to go will probably be the driving jobs, just as soon as self-driving vehicles are approved for public use. And so on, one or two sectors at a time, until by 2033 (according to the famous 2013 prediction by Oxford economist Carl Benedikt Frey) 47% of U.S. jobs will be lost to automation. And of course it won’t stop there.
Why don’t clever politicians like Hillary Clinton get that? Perhaps because they half-believe the fantasy statistics on employment put out by governments, like the official 3.7% unemployment rate in the United States. A more plausible figure is American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt’s finding in 2016 that 17.5% of American men of prime working age were not working.
That’s three-quarters of the way to peak U.S. unemployment in the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it goes unnoticed because today’s unemployed are not starving and they are not rioting. You can thank the welfare states that were built in every developed country after the Second World War for that, but they are still very angry people – and they do vote. A lot of them vote for populists.
Populism thrives when a lot of people are angry or desperate or both. Donald Trump and people like him are not the problem. They are symptoms (and beneficiaries) of the problem – yet they dare not name it, because they have no idea what to do about automation.
By Gwynne Dyer
Top Comments
Disclaimer & comment rules-
-
Read all commentsNo mention of the socialist riots in France that turned the country upside down then?
Dec 06th, 2018 - 03:37 pm 0Those people weren't angry, they were legitimately “dissatisfied”.
But I see what this writer is getting at though. Liberal thinking is level headed, conservative thinking is “angry”.
If a liberal is elected, that is not populism. If a conservative is elected, those people that did that were “too emotional to really think that through”.
After the populist Donald Trump won the election, due to an “angry” populace, the liberals that burned limosines, smashed windows, and attacked conservative victory rallies were not “angry”, they were legitimately “protesting”.
The Americans that voted for a crooked politician, Hillary Clinton, were level-headed in their thinking. They made a “good” choice. No one can condemn them for voting for a crook. Only those that voted against having a crooked politician as their leader can be condemned.
Americans had a right to choose their leader, and they chose the one this author didn't like. So something must be wrong with their thinking. Only when we choose leaders that this writer approves of is our thinking “good thinking”.
And the message here is clear:
Liberals are level-headed and balanced, conservatives are “unbalanced”. So you see ladies and gentlemen, only a liberal voice is legitimate.
The world would obviously be better off if only liberal voices were allowed to participate in democracy. That would be a good, level-headed, balanced, and superior democracy.
Is this writer politically balanced, like a professional writer should be? Well, of course he is. A pallet of bricks has the left side of the scale crushed to the ground, that is “balanced” and “level” to him.
This author is not “unbalanced”.
The Guardian is very balanced and level too, like Fox News.
“My thinking is good, your thinking is bad.” And this is the logic of a “superior” intellect, the kind that should be running things.
“Populism is not an ideology. It’s just a political technique, equally available to right-wingers, left-wingers...”. Sounds fair....up to here.
Dec 06th, 2018 - 08:23 pm 0When she writes “In this era, populism seems to partner best with right-wing nationalist ideologies like those of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil”, the biased crap begins. The bias becomes even more obvious as she goes on “it claims to be on the side of ‘ordinary people’ 'n against a ‘corrupt elite’ that exploits and despises them. It’s light on policy 'n heavy on emotion, particularly the emotions of fear 'n hatred...”, without mentioning Lula, and clearly trying to associate these tactics to Bolsonaro.
Despite having stated 'populism' serves both sides, left 'n right, and having unwittingly described Lula & PT administrations down to a tee, not even one bad word about Lula, who played the “people's-man” card to exhaustion, threw the poor against the elite etc....Seems that author G. Dyer believes that Lula's hatred of the 'elite' was justified, even though he is now part of it....and despite the fact that his current abode deprives him of enjoying his ill-gotten gains.
She goes on to mention that “the anger is about the fact that the jobs are disappearing, and what’s killing them is automation”......true in the US. But she fails to mention the 14,000,000 jobs lost in Brazil due to Lula's populist policies, as if it were insignificant .....but of course, that's ok, as it's only a problem when/ if caused by a right-wing government...
Getting back to her “In this era, populism seems to partner best with right-wing nationalist ideologies like those of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil”, she has the nerve to insinuate that the problem Brazil is going through now - which she conveniently ignores because it was caused by Lula's populism - is all Jair Bolsonaro's fault, who hasn't even taken over yet.
Her left-wing bias prevents her from mentioning the biggest and most destructive-ever, populist fiasco in Brazil.
Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!