02/05/2024
The Appeal of Anti-Establishment Politics is a Symptom of a Broken Political System
The past few years have seen the steady rise of populist, anti-establishment politics across a broad swathe of the West. In the mouths of its defenders, populism is liberation from the yoke of global domination. In the mouths of its critics, it is cheap demagoguery and the greatest threat to rule of law we have seen in generations. A true diagnosis requires a form of analysis that digs beneath the slogans of both populists and their critics.
Let’s start with a simple definition of populism: Populism could be understood, broadly speaking, as a style of politics whose leaders, instead of simply criticising the policies of political adversaries, align themselves, at least in their rhetoric, with the interests of the “real people” against an allegedly corrupt, arrogant and out-of-touch political establishment.
Populist leaders, whether Trump, Milei, Farage, Le Pen, Orban or Meloni, claim a new kind of moral high ground: whereas traditional politicians promise better policy outcomes, using rhetorical strategies that seem to assume something like “politics as usual”, populists, tapping into a growing wave of voter discontent, rail against the “system” and its cronies and are not afraid to paint themselves as political saviours who will restore the integrity of a corrupt system (this promotional video of Trump, laced with messianic tropes, is an extreme example).
One generally encounters two rival perspectives on the significance of populism for western democracy: first, that of populists themselves, who view populism as a long overdue “shock treatment” designed to oust arrogant political elites and bring politics back in touch with “the people”; and second, that of critics of populism, who view populist movements as menacing the values of liberal democracy, undermining rule of law, and peddling exclusionary and simplistic narratives of national identity.
Both of these viewpoints are partially correct, but neither grasps the true depth of the political crisis now confronting most Western democracies...
The past few years have seen the steady rise of populist, anti-establishment politics across a broad swathe of the West. In the mouths of its defenders, populism is liberation from the yoke of global domination. In the mouths of its critics, it is cheap demagoguery and the greatest threat to rule of...
