Slaying of British legislator shows populism’s inherent threat

Powerful extremists have rationalized violent attacks on democracy

The murder of British MP, European Union proponent and immigration defender Jo Cox has been called a “senseless killing.” That’s incorrect. Her murder is many things — hideous, devastating and thoroughly despicable — but it isn’t random or illogical. That a political representative was gunned down by an apparent far-right terrorist during an era of insurgent populism makes terrible sense.

Violence is not merely incidental to populism. Violence is populism’s implied threat.

If you’re concerned that this line of thinking demonizes an oddball but perfectly legit political orientation, you have only to consider populism’s primary aim: to make the general will of the people reign supreme. What is The General Will? Whatever The People like. Who are The People? Whoever you like, as long as you’re not someone who conspires against The General Will of The People. Democracy must be saved from itself, from all the things that representative democracy depends on. The media, the judiciary, the political operatives, the whole system: it’s all plotting against the average Joe.

Or so the charismatic charlatan will argue — the Donald Trumps and Nigel Farages of the world. The populist’s argument is clear, and so are its implications. If the only justifiable limit to the public will is the public imagination, if whatever the public wants, the public ought to get, then any action necessary to impose the public’s will must be legitimate. The People don’t like a constitutional limit? Down with the constitution. The People don’t like a judicial ruling? Screw the separation of powers. The People don’t like the evening news? Kick the reporters out and sue the bastards. The People are afraid of Mexicans and Muslims? Build a wall and ban them from the country.

But what if all this isn’t enough? What if The People encounter a person or group of persons who insist upon limiting unbounded populism by representing or defending the existence of a rule, or institution, or political culture that The People seem not to like?

I’ll shoot her in the face, thinks a man who does just that. “I’d like to punch him in the face,” muses a man running for president.

The latter was never strictly necessary. Trump’s savage fantasies shock us to distraction, their bellicosity muting the physical brutality inherent in his populism. His explicitly violent proclamations are redundant: while a white supremacist call to arms may mobilize some thugs to grab bats, they’ve long since been handed malignant beliefs. The threat of violence is already there.

“The president is conspiring against you.” “The political process is stacked against you.” “The judiciary is ruling against you.” “The media are lying to you.” “Your country is being taken from you.” “The outsiders are coming for you.”

These messages are menacing enough. For, if every respectable channel is off-limits to you, what avenues for dissent can possibly remain? The violent ones, of course, the self-made.

The logic of unfettered populism, then, justifies a certain type of violence. If your desires represent the righteous will of the righteous people; if the crooked system and its corrupt apologists persist in undermining what you want; if the constitution, the law, democratic norms and basic rules of etiquette keep getting in the way; if words don’t work; if argument doesn’t get you what you feel you are entitled to, then you, a member in good standing of the Authentic Public, must have the right to start breaking things that are already broken and that are threatening to break you.

At fascist-frenzied rallies, in the grieving United Kingdom, across western politics, populist extremists will carry on. They will disagree with people, and when people disagree back, punches may be thrown or guns fired. When this happens, it won’t merely be because a few crazy men became violent; nor will it be solely because a crazy man running for president told other crazy men to go on, get violent.

A powerful political ethos has rationalized vigilante violence against democracy, and by rationalizing violence, it has incited it.