THE RISE OF POPULIST POLITICIANS: A REFLECTION ON TWO BOOKS FOR OUR TIME

By Ralph Early, Food Scientist and Moral Philosopher.

If I were to tell you that a few weeks ago I was abducted by aliens who tortured me to reveal the identity of Boris Johnson’s hairstylist, would you believe it? As intelligent and rational individuals, most of you would not. Some might be tempted to believe such a tall story, possibly because it appeals to their imagination. Others, only a minority, would likely swallow the ridiculousness of it without question: hook, line and sinker. Beliefs are tied up with tricky aspects of the human psyche. We often stand ready to form beliefs not because they are based in fact, but because what is presented to us appeals in some way to our established world view and the nature of what we already believe. That beliefs are truthful, or can be validated as truthful, is not entirely necessarily to our understanding and our being. This is something that politicians understand only too well and which some will choose to instrumentalise for personal and party-political gain.

The notion that if one tells a lie often enough it becomes the truth is frequently attributed to Nazi propagandist, Josef Goebbels, although it is also said that Hitler’s interpretation was that if one tells a lie which is big enough and often enough, it will then be believed. My proposed lie about alien abduction is of course fanciful and absence of verifiable knowledge of aliens would make it difficult to swallow. However, if one were to tell a lie interwoven with elements that could indeed be plausible, then acceptance as belief and something not based in fact would be an entirely different matter. As a political ploy with the force to open doors to power, status and wealth, the Big Lie is, today, increasingly being adopted by politicians who are categorised as ‘populist’. Populism is a political stratagem by which politicians who are of society’s elite themselves, appeal to ordinary people who feel disenchanted, even marginalised, by the elite which seem to control the essence of economy and life in general for their own benefit, so to further their own interests and that of their elitist dynasty. We saw this with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States of America in 2016. Here was a populist billionaire real estate mogul and TV personality, handed the keys to the White House significantly by that section of America’s society which feels most marginalised economically and in terms of life opportunities, and therefore unable to access the American Dream. Now, five years on and having lost the 2020 presidential election, Trump, an acknowledged sore loser, is propagating his Big Lie that the election was stolen from him. In doing so, he is clearly playing according to the fascists’ playbook defined by the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

Some reading this may question my proposition that Trump is playing to by fascists’ rules and I would be the first to encourage their questioning, not just on political matters but about everything, for that is how we learn and make progress. However, in this instance don’t take my word for it that Trump, as the archetypal populist politician, is using fascist methods to manipulate sections of America’s society for his own ends. Consider the argument of Jason Stanley in his book, How Fascism Works (Random House: Published 2018: Reprinted 2020) and also that of Ece Temelkuran in How to Lose a Country: The Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship (Harper Collins: Published 2019).

In his short book, Professor Stanley lays out clearly and crisply in 10 chapters plus an epilogue, the methods that fascist politicians use to capture and control whole countries and their people. The chapters are titled: The Mythic Past; Propaganda; Anti-intellectual; Unreality; Hierarchy; Victimhood; Law and Order; Sexual Anxiety; Sodom and Gomorrah; Arbeit Macht Frei. In his exposition of fascist devices, Stanley recognises the power of the Mythic Past as key and the catalyst for the development of nationalist emotion. In the UK we have experienced this in recent years, with Britain’s imperial history and the winning of two world wars justifying claims of greatness on the world stage and calls for separation from the European Union (EU). Stanley explains how fascist regimes also create myths which establish their authority, so leading to the people giving permission for populist politicians to take power. Important in this process is the identification of enemies and threats, as these energise the emotions of the people which, in turn, supresses their critical faculties of reasoning and judgement. Again, in the UK and as part of the scheme which delivered Brexit, we experienced populist politicians portraying the EU as the enemy of the UK intent on erasing British identity through the creation of a federal Europe by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Significantly, the same populist politicians also painted migrants, especially EU migrants, as a threat to our way of life and they even manifested the fantasy threat of a horde of invaders ready to take our jobs and livelihoods, with eagerness to sponge off the British welfare state. Indeed, the threat of a Britain overwhelmed by Turkish migrants was the biggest Big Lie and one perpetrated by two of the leading populist Brexiter demagogues. Although it was so obviously a lie intended to justify secession from the EU, many British citizens failed to understand it for what it was.

Stanley’s book is an interesting, educational and thought provoking read. It is also a disturbing read when viewed through the lens of Brexit and the behaviours of Boris Johnson’s government. Indeed, given the ascendency of right-wing political lying in the UK and the creeping authoritarianism now evident in Westminster’s corridors of power, one may be forgiven for wondering at the extent to which our country’s future may come to resemble that of 1930s Germany. Certainly, the freedom of movement in the EU which the British people have enjoyed for many decades has now been lost. Also we are drawn to reflect on the fact that Priti Patel’s proposed Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill which, for instance, threatens to kill the right to peaceful protest, resonates strongly with Stanley’s thesis in his chapter titled, Law and Order. History records that extremist right-wing governments elected as populist governments invariably portray themselves as law-and-order governments, not for the purpose of benefitting the people, but for using law and order as a mechanisms of state control.

While Stanley’s book provides a theoretical framework for understanding fascism, Ece Temelkuran tells the story of populist politicians rising to power by means of fascist methodologies and particularly the recent history of populist political success in Turkey. Although she often refers to politicians such as America’s Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and the UK’s Boris Johnson, much of her focus concerns Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the means by which he captured and has come to dominate the Turkish state with the support of ordinary, hardworking Turkish people. It is interesting that while Erdoğan regarded the Turkish army as threat to his ambitions and something that required immediate neutralisation, he also considered academics and the educated classes in the same light. This resonates with Stanley’s account of fascist anti-intellectualism and it stimulates recall of Michael Gove’s response to questions from Sky News journalist, Faisal Islam, during the run up to the EU referendum, in which Gove stated “I’m asking the public to take back control of our destiny from those organisations which are distant, unaccountable, elitist …” and “… I think the people of this country have had enough of experts, with organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong …”. Whatever Gove’s intention, he successfully painted experts, a term which includes academics and educated people, as among the enemies of the British people and this line of argument has since been pursued by right-wing British politicians in their claims that the UK’s universities cultivate woke culture and attitudes harmful to both British identity and freedom of expression. In this we clearly see Stanley’s and Temelkuran’s notion that populists represent a threat to the very nature of liberal democracies.

Temelkuran’s account of the populist annexation of Turkey is set out as a series of chapters which resonate with the fascists’ playbook and Stanley’s work: Create a Movement; Disrupt Rationale/Terrorise Language; Remove the Shame – Immorality is ‘Hot in a Post-Truth World; Dismantle Judicial and Political Mechanisms; Design Your Own Citizen; Let Them Laugh at the Horror; Build Your Own Country. In her account of Erdoğan’s seizure of power, we hear echoes of Michael Gove’s opinion regarding experts and the UK governments suspicion that universities are indeed hot beds of Marxism. Turkey’s academic community has been systematically suppressed, with many thinkers, including journalists, fleeing the country for culturally and intellectually enlightened countries. However, this is not necessarily the destiny for every country which succumbs to the authority of populist politicians, but it has occurred in Poland and Hungary. Indeed, one of the first actions of Hungary’s populist leader Orban on achieving power was to force the Central European University, founded by philanthropist George Soros and supportive of liberal, open societies, to depart Hungary for Vienna.

Both Stanley and Temelkuran present well written explanations of the methods by which fascism and populism may function to erase from liberal societies the enlightenment values and freedoms which historically, so many struggled to win and preserve over so many generations. Their accounts are entirely valid and presented in a manner which makes for easy and stimulating reading. For those who would stand in opposition to the oppressive nature of right-wing extremism and populist politics, with its undeniable capacity for social repression, these books are invaluable. They both stand as guides as to how to recognise populism when it rears its deformed head and how to defeat it. In this, they hold much wisdom and are highly recommended.