The type of populism can make all the difference in getting good governance

POPULISM HAS NEVER BEEN more, well, popular. At least judging by the use of the word. Specifically, it’s associated with Donald Trump and movements in Europe, where populations in the west are feeling particularly vulnerable to change.

Today, “populist” is most often applied to right-leaning political movements. In the past, however, it was left-leaning ones. From that, we can see how the label is applied by those in power at the time – typically the elites who are happy with the status quo, namely keeping themselves in power.

Like the words “left” and right,” populist has largely lost its meaning. Certainly the more conventional meanings that emerged in the early 20th century, though we still hang on to some of those divides. See, too, the banding about of the words “communist” and “fascist,” the latter being more applicable today, though not in quite the same way as 1930s Europe.

In talking about populism in the context of what’s going on in the U.S., the label can be applied to both Trump and, say, Bernie Sanders in that both garnered supporters based on challenging the elites and calling for change to how politics are done.

The comparison ends there, however, as the kind of populism espoused by Trump is the exclusionary kind – it’s a singular vision of what makes “America great again” to which you either subscribe or are deemed a roadblock, whether fake news media or, to tap into another “ism” (McCarthyism), un-American. Sanders, on the other hand, was about a more inclusive vision of reforming democracy to cater to the grassroots rather than the corporate donors and lobbyists, which is what Washington has become almost entirely under both Democrats and Republicans.

Both Trump and Sanders – here representing two forms of what can be called populism, also on display in other parts of the globe – are indications of our growing disdain for the status quo, including corporatists, greedy and inept politicians and their policies such as globalization. Life is getting worse for many, and more of us are taking note. That’s an issue for those long in power, as their presence relies on, and assumes, the woeful ignorance of large swathes of the population.

Where real democratic reform is desirable, we’ve not seen much of it in the manner espoused by Sanders. Instead, we’ve had the likes of Trump, whose prescriptions lead us down a much different path, one that not even his supporters really want to go ... if they thought it through.

Trump is not alone. The evolution of populist politics is an ongoing study by Jan-Werner Müller, a professor of politics at Princeton and a fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna, whose latest book is “What Is Populism?” He notes that Trump is in much the same vein as Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Nigel Farage, who led the Brexit campaign in the UK. There’s a world of difference from the likes of Sanders, UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and European parties such as Syriza and Podemos.

“The claim to exclusive representation is not an empirical one; it is always distinctly moral. Populists’ political competitors and critics are inevitably condemned as part of the immoral, corrupt elite, or so populists say when running for office; once in government, they will not recognise anything such as a legitimate opposition,” Müller writes in The Guardian. “The populist logic also implies that whoever does not really support populist parties might not be part of the proper people at all: there are American citizens, and then there are what George C. Wallace, an arch-populist of the 1960s often viewed as a precursor of Trump, always called ‘real Americans’ (white, God-fearing, hard-working, gun-owning and so on). Thus, populists do not just claim: we are the 99%. According to their own logic, they actually have to say: we are the 100%.”

That’s the exclusionary nature of such populist movements: It’s their way, or the highway.

“Think of Nigel Farage celebrating the Brexit vote by claiming that it had been a ‘victory for real people’ (making the 48% of the British electorate who had opposed taking the UK out of the European Union somehow less than real – or, rather, questioning their status as members of the political community). Or consider a deeply revealing remark by Trump that went virtually unnoticed, thanks to the frequency with which the New York billionaire has made scandalous statements. At a campaign rally in May, he announced that ‘the only important thing is the unification of the people – because the other people don’t mean anything.’”

My inner Lord of the Rings geek sees an analogy with the battle for changes to the status quo, hitting on this passage from the wizard Gandalf:

“He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind. That we should try to destroy the Ring itself has not yet entered into his darkest dream.”

By my reckoning, the “he” in question (Sauron, evil incarnate) is the current corrupt politicians and the corporate masters (the elites), while the populists who look for the ring only to seize power themselves (Trump et. al.) are the wizard Saruman. Those who would overthrow the evil and allow all people to be free (Sanders and his ilk) are Gandalf, preferring to act in the real public interest.

“There is a tragic irony

in all this: populism in power commits the very political sins of which it accuses elites: excluding citizens and usurping the state. What the establishment supposedly has always done, populists will also end up doing. Only with a clear justification and, perhaps, even a clear conscience. Hence it is a profound illusion to think that populists ... can improve our democracies. Populists are just different elites who try to grab power with the help of a collective fantasy of political purity,” says Müller.

Clearly, what we really need is to destroy the One Ring that seeks to bind us in the darkness so that no one can wield it. A tall order indeed, and much more difficult than building a wall, carrying out tests of Canadian values or taking endless streams of corporate money to prop up the status quo. It starts with the right kind of populism.