Of the Term "Populism"

In recent years usage of the word "populist" has exploded--almost always in reference to figures, tendencies, ideas, movements, parties of the right whose politics a short time earlier would have put them outside the mainstream; to what can be called, descriptively rather than pejoratively, the far right. Almost unquestioned by the mainstream media, some analysts of contemporary politics have nevertheless taken issue with that choice of terminology as obscuring the facts in highly consequential ways, among them Aurelien Mondon.

In making his case Mondon begins with an indisputable definitional mistake on the part of analysts--their conflating "populist" with "far right." After all, the two terms are not synonyms. There are populists who are not of the far right; and there are far rightists who are not populists; but one would never know that from how the "punditry" uses the word "populist." However, at a deeper level there is also the reality that even those far right tendencies which advertise themselves as populist have not only been elite-tolerated or elite-backed (without which tolerance and backing a far right tendency would be no more successful than the left tendencies which have such a hard time for lack of such tolerance and backing), but elite-founded and elite-led as they promote elite agendas. At the very least such facts impose on any serious analyst the obligation to admit that such a tendency is more complex in nature than the opposition of "the people" to "the elite" denoted by the use of the term "populist." It also draws attention to the fact that in many an ostensibly populist movement the popular component is not only slight, or only marginally supportive of the tendency in a field offering few choices amid much discontent, but mere "astroturf."

Because of its centrist ideological bias the media is ill-equipped, and frankly disinclined, to cope with such complexity, or penetrate beneath the surfaces of political life to get at underlying realities. After all, the epistemologically pessimistic, consensus-minded, center is neither particularly interested in nor optimistic about the intellectual endeavor involved in uncovering the truth, while being much more interested in adhering to the rules of "civil" discourse. These rules hold it to be "uncivil" to do anything less than take at their word anyone it has not ruled out of the discourse as an "extremist" and thus deprived of the legitimacy obliging it to show respect--all as the center avoids calling out extremism at the right end of the political spectrum, keeping them from being so ruled out (in contrast with the left the center treats as as inherently illegitimate, and excludable as a matter of course). Adding to the difficulty for the media on this particular point it is especially squeamish about attending to realities of class and of power--making it even less likely to call out a "populist" movement as other than that, the more easily in as the centrist is so attached to the image of working people as hippie-punching "hardhats" (with the fact that the thought of a right-wing working class is much more comfortable for the centrist than a proletariat out of an Eisenstein film not irrelevant to their promulgation of that image).

Altogether this gives the centrist media ample reason to respect far rightists who claim to be "populists" as being what they say they are--with, ironically, even those in the center troubled by the far right's ascent the more inclined to believe them because the centrist is so ready to believe in the wisdom and responsibility of elites, and the backwardness and viciousness of "the lower orders." However, as with so much else produced by centrist news coverage the resulting view of the situation is not only intellectually muddling, but highly advantageous to the right as against its rivals. In discussion of such groups it switches the subject from their politics to their presumed popularity, with the same switch uncritically affirming their claim to being the true representative "voice of the people" which, presumably unrepresented before or by anyone else, must be given a respectful hearing, and accordingly afforded a platform for the presentation of its views such as that same media would not have accorded it earlier (and again, such as it would never give the left).

As Mondon has made clear all this has played its part in mainstreaming the far right, enabling its electoral victories again and again--even as that same media condemns "extremism" in its profoundly hypocritical fashion.