In 1994, US strategist Edward Luttwak predicted the flight of US working-class voters from both the Democrat and the Republican parties and their respective establishment. That prediction was the underlying story of the 2016 primaries and presidential election – a full 22 years beforeit unfolded.
Between 2001 and 2003, the late Italian philosopher Umberto Eco published several articles for the popular press in which he analysed Silvio Berlusconi’s media strategy – both for winning the 2001 Italian election and for governing afterwards. Down to almost the last detail, Eco might have been describing Donald Trump’s strategy – 15 years before it happened.
For example, Silvio Berlusconi, the richest man in Italy, described himself as a ‘worker president’ almost two decades before Trump was described as a ‘working-class billionaire’. Berlusconi’s pronouncements on the Italian constitution and magistrates were no less shocking than Trump’s on the US constitution and judges.
And Berlusconi’s ‘gaffes’ were said, by pundits, to be leading inexorably to his ruin, just like Trump’s. Instead, they boosted his popularity.
Luttwak got it right by analysing the economic conditions that were bound to give rise, he thought, to a demand for economic nationalist populism. (At the time he said “fascism was the wave of the future”; but he has been supportive of Trump.)
Eco analysed the impact of the media on liberal democracy. He described Berlusconi as a new kind of politician, exploiting not just his ownership of important media channels but also the logic of mass communications. Trump owns no TV channels, but his use of Twitter enabled him to follow a similar strategy.
In Europe, meanwhile, the idea of a pluralistic ‘citizenship’ is beginning to compete with the idea of a single, indivisible ‘people’. Strongmen seem more attractive to growing numbers of youth, more of whom are locating themselves on the extreme edges of the political spectrum – in France, Germany, and Sweden, as much as in Greece, Hungary and Austria.
Between them, Luttwak and Eco show how the rise of populism in Europe – as seen most strikingly in the Italian election result – should not be analysed simply in terms of individual events or errors of judgments by the governing elites. Both Luttwak and Eco were writing before the epoch of mass immigration, of the financial crisis, and even before economic sluggishness and stagnant wages could be blamed on the euro.
All those factors matter, of course, if we are to understand the Italian result. So do Italy’s particular problems – with unemployment, productivity, banking, deficits, welfare cuts and a surge in immigration.
But there are also other factors and mechanisms responsible for making populism seem, currently, like the wave of the future in European politics – despite the recent defeat of populism in several of the founding members of the EU.
Here are four signs (among others) that a country’s politics may be ripe for populism.
First, there’s the economy. It doesn’t have to be doing badly. In Italy, the north is doing well and yet is the springboard of the far-right League.
What you need is a sense of relative deprivation. Even if you have a job, you might feel it’s insecure. Or you may be doing reasonably well, but not as well as others, or as much as you think you should.
In the US, Trump’s heartland lies among people – Luttwak tells us – who cannot afford a new family car, in a country where private transport is indispensable. Elsewhere, it might be the cost of housing, putting individual and family independence out of reach.
Second, there is the attitude to political alternatives.
First, there’s the economy. It doesn’t have to be doing badly. In Italy, the north is doing well and yet is the springboard of the far-right League
The rejection of mainstream politicians in Europe and the US is the rejection of a political class that has grown hoarse telling the electorate there is no possible alternative to the technocratic, deficit-cutting, welfare downsizing, free-trade policies that are being implemented.
Ironically, this mantra of ‘no alternative’ is being repeated to an electorate that no longer has direct experience of the historic alternatives: fascism, communism, strongman politics. Arguably, so, the fear of the alternative is less.
Moreover, liberal democracy has proved robust over the last century, despite the various shocks like wars and severe economic slumps. The curious result of this robustness is to make extreme populists more electorally attractive: you vote them in to shock the system, but depend on the system to tame the populists.
Third, there is the rhetorical replacement of ‘citizens’ by ‘the people’.
The citizenry is intrinsically pluralistic. It’s made up of different groupings bound together by a constitution. A silent march by a mere handful of dissidents is still a civic demonstration. The citizenry as a whole can only be represented by the totality not just of Parliament but of civil society.
All that changes when politicians begin to talk of representing ‘the people’, a totality that doesn’t even need Parliament to represent it. One charismatic leader, who claims to have a hotline to the people’s will and desires, is enough.
As the political scientist, Jan-Werner Mueller, points out: populists are not content to claim they are the 99 per cent. Turkey’s strongman, Tayyip Erdogan, has challenged dissenters: “We are the people. Who are you?”
Dissent here means treachery and betrayal. The meaning of democracy begins to change. ‘The people’ speak at elections, so to express a minority opinion in between elections is to challenge democracy itself.
Populists are always lecturing others on real democracy and the immorality of dissent. They govern as though ‘the people’ are under siege by immoral opponents who will stop at nothing to retain or regain power. So, even though courts, judges, magistrates, and the free press are part of the democratic system, they can be criticised – whether by Berlusconi 20 years ago or Trump today – for frustrating the will of the people.
By doing their job, they are proving their illegitimacy. They are part of a system clearly in need of reform, preferably constitutional reform.
Fourth, you know you’re very likely in the midst of populist politics when there is a spike in accusations of media conspiracies, or fake news. Foreign powers are also likely to be dragged in.
It’s not just Erdogan and Russia’s Vladimir Putin that see international conspiracies.
Fifteen years ago, Berlusconi and, consequently Italy, was receiving concerned attention from the international press, including The Economist. Berlusconi’s conflicts of interest and attacks on the rule of law were especially highlighted.
As Eco wrote at the time, the coverage was “not so much out of compassion and love of Italy as from the fear that Italy may once again become the laboratory for a sinister experiment that might extend to all of Europe”.
That didn’t stop Berlusconi from accusing the international press of being manipulated by Italian opposition politicians.
Creeping populism is easier to recognise abroad than at home, but in our case that’s no cause for concern. It would have no chance over here.
ranierfsadni@europe.com