Populism

by Rick Johansen

Nearly 78% of those who supposedly voted in Russia’s ad hoc non-referendum (there is no paper trail of how the voting went) to extend President Putin’s period in office to 2036 also voted for some highly dubious and downright unpleasant changes. As well as the populist increases to the minimum wage and pensions, Russians are now obliged to have ‘faith in God’ and they have banned gay marriage. Before we tut tut and take the piss, there is one clear lesson here: to quote the journalist Michael White, ‘many people can be persuaded to self-harm by supporting a tyrant promises strong leadership.’ This is precisely what happens the world over.

America has elected Donald Trump who, given half a chance, would install himself for life. Even now, trailing heavily in the polls to Democrat candidate Joe Biden, Trump and his supporters are working hard to stay in power.  They will stoop to any depths including a vicious, negative personal campaign against Biden and measures to make it as hard as possible for certain groups of likely Democrat supporters to vote at all. For Trump, as in Putin, it’s all about power. Free speech can wait, witness his attacks on the free press which he derides as fake news’, preferring the genuinely fake news from the right wing conspiracy media outlets and Fox News.

Whilst Boris Johnson is clearly not a hard man, like Putin and Trump aspire to be, the methods by which the friends of Johnson have changed our country for the worse are little different. Brexit was achieved not by a philosophical debate about our economic links with Europe: it came about through populism and the illusion of so-called British exceptionalism. Oh, and lying on an industrial scale. Behind Johnson’s clown image lies nothing substantial, other than naked ambition and Trumpian levels of narcissism, but behind Johnson stands Dominic Cummings who is not the power behind the throne: to all intents and purposes he is the power on it.

At uncertain times such as these it is true that many seek ‘strong leadership’, or something they perceive as being strong leadership. As polls of Tory members have consistently shown, there are significant numbers of people who are happy with a rule-breaking leader if they feel he is acting in their interests. This happened when the illiberal elite establishment engineered a societal fissure that turned Britons against each other in the Brexit vote. Nigel Farage emerged as our strong man, painting himself laughably as the man of the people. And because our country was so divided in terms of inequality and unfairness, it was easy to paint Europe and not the decisions of our own government as being the reason for it. The point is that populism is populism. Brexit was not the same as the election of Trump but it is a blood relation.

What happens in America usually ends up happening over here.  It’s as simple as that. I would always prefer my leaders to be visionary and compassionate rather than just ‘strong’, whatever that means.  Right now, in Britain we have neither. My concern is that, with COVID-19 still out of control at a time when the economy is crashing, the simplistic populism that has exists in America will cross the Atlantic. We more than any other nation should know where out of control populism and nationalism can lead.

 

You may also like