This episode explores how populism has irreversibly transformed the political landscape. How does digital media play a role in this phenomenon and why has populism been successful in some advanced western democracies? Listen to hear about the pitfalls of technocratic governance and the challenges posed by alliances of populist political forces.
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Shalini Randeria (SR): Welcome to a new episode of Democracy in Question, the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world today. I'm Shalini Randeria, the rector and president of Central European University in Vienna and senior fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
This is the tenth episode of season eight of Democracy in Question. I am pleased to welcome Catherine Fieschi, a leading expert on European politics, who is currently a Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute in Florence. She is also a Senior Advisor to Macro Advisory Partners in London. Catherine is the founder of Counterpoint, a London-based think tank that provides governments and NGOs around the world with strategic insights on how to manage new forms of social and political risk and dissent. She is an advisor to the PEW Research Centre in Washington D.C., a member of Singapore’s Centre for Strategic Futures, and is on the Board of the National Centre for Social Research in the United Kingdom. She has also served as director of the Britain’s leading think tank, Demos, and was also Director of Research at the British Council. As an analyst who focuses on the rise of populist and authoritarian politics in advanced democracies, Catherine is a longstanding advisor to progressive political leaders and campaigns across the globe. Widely published in academia and beyond, she has a regular column in the Chatham House magazine and is a contributor for the Financial Times, The Guardian, Politico, also BBC, and CNN.
Her recent book, “Populocracy: The Tyranny of Authenticity and the Rise of Populism”[i] argues that populism has irreversibly transformed our political landscape, it’s shifted the boundaries of acceptability, and challenged the status quo. Hopes of returning to a less polarized, less divisive, and also less corrosive “old normal” are now naïve at best, and downright counterproductive at worst. To quote from the book: “the spread of populist politics reflects the growing ease and success with which the people vs. elite divide is routinely used to mobilize voters and, more broadly citizens. Populism has dictated the tempo of politics in western democracies: it has imposed an agenda, challenged mainstream parties, and is shaping policy.”
Many of our listeners will already be familiar with the theme of populism, as I have hosted several conversations on the subject over the years, notably with Jan-Werner Müller[ii] and also Nadia Urbinati[iii]. Catherine’s work places the fundamental traits of populism in a new light. I therefore begin by asking her to elaborate on the seemingly paradoxical relationship between authenticity and lying in populist discourse, on which she focuses a lot of her analysis of populism. I’ll also ask her to situate the insistence on immediacy, directness, and transparency in a wider social psychological context, which is being transformed by the impact especially of digital media. Why has populism proven remarkably successful particularly in advanced western democracies, which promised, but only partly delivered, greater equality to their citizens? We will also discuss some important changes in populist politics in Europe over the last few years and then address the likelihood of synergies between right-wing populism and national conservative politics in the European Union. On the eve of the European parliamentary elections, we will also speak about the problems of what Catherine has called “the phantom centre”. And also about the pitfalls of technocratic governance at the European level along with the threat of a sovereigntist backlash. Finally, we will also address the challenge posed by the transnational and transatlantic alliances of populist political forces to liberal democracies today.
Welcome to the podcast, Catherine, and thanks so much for joining me today!
Catherine Fieschi (CF): It's a pleasure to be here.
SR: Perhaps the most important theoretical insight of your work, Catherine, has been to shift the analytical focus in discussions of populism to authenticity as a key concept. It substitutes the ideals of individual rights and rational argument with the promise of genuine, organic relationships and unrestrained instincts, which actually in fact are calculated and cultivated. The democratic promise of authenticity may have emerged with the Enlightenment, as you show, but populism has turned this against itself, if you like, subverting democratic opponents. This has meant that for populist politicians, the claim to a quasi-exclusive monopoly on authenticity goes hand in hand with shameless duplicity. There is an intimate relational dynamic that you point to between authenticity and lying which is at the core of populist discourses. Could you elaborate on this strange interplay of lies and authenticity, and especially say something about the nationalist-specific political cultures that foster this kind of a mixture to a larger degree?
CF: Yes, of course. So, I think one of the arguments in the book, as you point out, is the fact that the way in which the evolution of the media and the evolution of our institutions have conspired to work together is that they've created a political landscape in which voters have moved from quite legitimately wanting to know about the character, as the Americans often say, of their leaders and politicians, which, again, is a perfectly legitimate demand. They've moved into a kind of wanting a forensic knowledge of who exactly is in power. And it's obvious that the media landscape that we have today leads to all sorts of intrusions into the way that people work, into their private lives. And let's face it, nobody looks particularly good from that up close. Not very many of us would survive that kind of scrutiny that the media provides.
And so, what's really interesting is that, to connect to the lying, we've moved from a period where the scrutiny from the media would catch leaders out. They had affairs, or they were corrupt in terms of money, or in terms of nepotism, etc., and these politicianshad to defend themselves against these accusations. Nobody wanted to be caught lying. "I never had sexual relations with that woman," for example, or Nixon's, "I am not a crook." But now, we're in a different situation whereby the public's demands for knowing their leaders has led, I think, a lot of populist leaders, to say, "Well, I am going to display myself to you, warts and all. I don't mind if you catch me lying. I don't mind if you see my dark side. In fact, that makes me potentially a more relatable, authentic human being."
And so, this is how we've got authenticity kind of stood on its head. It goes from a legitimate demand where people have to say a bit more about themselves and seem a bit more accessible to a moment where they have to defend themselves against accusations, what I would call the populist moment, where actually authenticity really becomes shamelessness: "I'm not better than you are. I'm actually just as bad as you are." And that is somehow catnip for a lot of voters that the person who claims to be leading them or wants to be leading them is as flawed a human being as they are. And that somehow seems to be the height of authenticity, according to the populist creed.
SR: Do you see differences in what would be a Trumpian model of bragging about his own faults to kind of a more restrained European model, should I say it’s also a gendered model? Because some of the European successful populists today are women. So, is there a gender dynamic to this model of lying and shameless bragging if we look at Trump compared to Meloni or Marine Le Pen?
CF: So, I think that probably the bombast is something that is quite masculine. To some extent, I think that the kinds of leaders that we think about who get caught lying in that respect and actually brag about it are more the Trumps. They're also the Boris Johnsons to some extent. In a sense, it's almost a flirtation, a political flirtation: "I'm lying. You know I'm lying. I know that you know I'm lying. We understand each other." And it's a very powerful offer, if you like, because it creates a circle of people in the know. Anybody who gets stuck into what they would describe as some kind of liberal, puritanical notion of politics is outside that circle of people who understand one another. And often this circle is male.
So, I think that the gender dimension is important. I do think that there is a cultural dimension to this as well. And it plays out in subtle ways. And it depends a little bit whether we're talking about polities and nations that have a political culture of transparency, for example. I think of the Nordic countries, for example, where remunerations of civil servants, political leaders is readily acceptable and available. I think that in those cultures, it doesn't mean that there is no lying or that there isn't this the con of the populist authenticity. Quite the contrary. I think that in a culture where lying is frowned upon by the majority and transparency is a key value there is a power, if you like, or there is a purchase to actually slaying this sacred cow and actually being far more upfront about how little you care about these political norms. Whereas, in fact, if you look at a place like Italy, I think that there is a tolerance for shameless lying that you probably don't have elsewhere. So, the value of lying and the value of shamelessness, they have a different currency in these different places.
SR: You make an important point in the book when you argue that authenticity and also transparency goes hand in hand with an emphasis on immediacy. Let me quote you here: “Claims to authenticity enable populist discourse to contrast the unmediated natural intelligence and instinct of the people (who are authentic) with the acquired knowledge, book-learning, and (untrustworthy) sophistication of the elite… This explains why another related set of ideas crops up regularly in discussions about populism, but also in populist manifestos: directness, immediacy, and transparency.” Acknowledgment of complexity, sophistication, differentiation, nuance are all dismissed here as serving some shadowy elite. By contrast, populist politicians prefer to appeal to “gut feelings” and to knee-jerk, instantaneous solutions, which supposedly resonate with the common sense of ordinary people. So this is not just about relatability, but it’s also about an unmediated axes, immediacy, which of course social media, especially digital media, allows for, in a way that earlier media like the press or television did not. And the crucial question that you’ve been trying to answer in your book is: What makes political culture today particularly responsive and amenable to populism? And in trying to crack this puzzle of people responding to the siren song of populism, you point to the role especially of social and of digital media, which in a way encourages this rapid-fire, shock-prone rhetoric that populist leaders have managed to capitalize on as a privileged form of authentic expression. Could you say something about the elective affinities between the digital revolution in communication and what you’ve called in your book the “demand side” of populism, which in a way leads to a kind of privatization and infantilization of politics?
CF: Yes, absolutely. I think that one of the reasons for the success of populism and what I've basically called the advent of populocracy is the fact that our epic is marked by a kind of cruel paradox or cruel irony. On the one hand, we have societies in which groups are far more differentiated, and we are able, for example, in public policy terms, to target people's needs and their demands much better. We are able to classify them into groups, and political decision-makers can try and actually really calibrate the answers. But that creates huge levels of complexity. And, of course, the fact that we are interdependent, if I look at even the micro level of the European Union, the fact that we are a group of 27 whose decisions are highly consequential to one another from commerce to defense, to fiscal, that means that we've reached a level of complexity in terms of policymaking that we've never reached before. So, on the one hand, we have that.
And on the other hand, we have a private sector, and particularly within that private sector, certain types of media, but also certain types of commerce that create the illusion that everything is readily available or should be readily available immediately, including knowledge. And so, we find ourselves in this situation, particularly in advanced democracies, where citizens expect things to be immediately accessible and immediately knowable. If it starts to sound too complex or even too complicated, there is immediately the suspicion that this is a con. This really is at the heart of some of the problems that we're facing, complexity perceived as a con in a context where so many things feel readily available.
And in that respect, I think populists are very good at creating this sense in which everything should be reducible to common sense propositions. If decision-makers and politicians are not able to reduce things to that level of accessibility, they must be pulling the wool over your eyes. And that fuels resentment, suspicion, anger in citizens and voters who now live, many of them, I think, and I think there are people who are in great difficulty and great need, I don't want this to be misconstrued, but I think that many citizens and voters who are in average circumstances live in an illusion and in a delusion, if you like, that you can actually lead a life without the frustration of waiting, without the frustration of not understanding immediately. And I think the promise of social media, of making everything readily available, bite-sized, easy, is partly responsible for that.
SR: Catherine, what would be, in your view, a good way to convey to people on the one hand, the complexity of the issues that one has to deal with, and on the other hand, to inculcate a sense that delayed gratification may not be such a bad idea?
CF: Well, of course, starting with your second proposition, that's always a difficult one because it can sound dismissive. Somebody who has very great needs or very basic needs that go unmet, it's very difficult to say you must understand the pleasures of delayed gratification. But it always makes me think of the marshmallow experiment with the kid who chooses one marshmallow now or two marshmallows later. You will only choose two marshmallows later if you trust the context in which you're in, if you trust the person to show up with the two marshmallows. And I think that, unfortunately, not everyone is in the position to develop that kind of trust and confidence. So, I don't think that it's about telling people about delayed gratification. I think it's more, to answer the first part of your question, about letting them feel two things, letting them feel comfortable in the fact that these are specialized domains, and it's okay that it takes work and time to understand what's going on.
And this is where I think actually every instance of public consultation and public deliberation that I've been involved in has given me great faith in the fact that actually, if you co-produce a little bit the decision, and also if you co-produce the kind of expertise that we need in our current political systems, whereby you have policymakers who have knowledge of complex processes, but also citizens and users who have knowledge of the complex situation in which they find themselves, but actually, when you bring those two together, that's how you create trust and understanding. I'm not necessarily advocating for everything to be joint decision-making, but I am quite convinced of the fact that the more people participate, the more they become comfortable with not understanding everything, but actually realizing that this is part of the course. They're experts in some things and others are experts in other things.
And so, I think that that shift toward what I would call a co-created expertise is incredibly important. And it should go on throughout people's lives, even in short bursts. A bit like a good friend of mine, Peter MacLeod, who runs one such outfit in Canada, says it should be like jury duty. You should know that you're going to be called up to participate and co-produce decisions several times in your life. And that changes people's perspective on the decisions that are being taken.
SR: Could you give a few examples of the kinds of initiatives you've been involved in, Catherine, where there has been this kind of public deliberation and especially co-production of decision-making involving experts, citizens and politicians?
CF: So, I've been involved in various types of these initiatives. The first time I was involved in something like this was years ago when I worked at the think tank Demos in the U.K.. And we ran what we called the Nanodialogues. And so, it was very interesting. It was on a purely scientific matter, on nanotechnology, but it was about bringing groups of people together on expert scientists and citizens to get them to develop a view on this kind of technology. What they got out of it in terms of the nanotechnologies per se is neither here nor there. But what I think everybody got out of this series of consultations was a much greater sense of how you construct a dialogue between different types of experts and between expert citizens and expert policymakers. And I remember that shortly afterwards, we ran the same kinds of exercises with patients and doctors in terms of user journeys in the medical field.
And then more recently, I was involved in this kind of deliberation around decision-making around schools, where there had been great polarization on the kinds of issues that have become part and parcel of local communities around halal cafeterias, or kosher food for kids, etc., the respect of different kinds of religious holidays and so on, and basically between the local school parents, the schools, and the representatives of the state, and how we could achieve some kind of understanding on this. And actually, I was incredibly struck. This was in various European countries. I was incredibly struck by the level of respect and dialogue that people were absolutely able to have with one another and how happy they seemed when they left, that they had spoken, they had been heard, they'd understood a little bit better each other. I'm not saying it was a panacea. France did it around the end of life, did it around climate, citizen consultations, but with experts present, I think that these are very valuable instruments. They're not necessarily the answer for immediate decision-making, but they will change the texture of our political lives by changing the levels of trust.
SR: So, let me go back to one other point which I wanted to bring up. You were talking about the way in which populist politicians have managed to very skillfully use and even manipulate digital and social media. Let's go back a step, Catherine, and look at more traditional media channels, the television, or even the press because actually, for example, if we think of Italy – a country that you’ve written a lot about – Berlusconi made his career as a media tycoon before he launched his political career. And Trump made a name for himself in various television shows. So, using more traditional media before the rise of digital and social media. How did the earlier structural transformation of ownership in more traditional media like the television and the tabloid press, which got concentrated in the hands of powerful media moguls, paved the way for the kind of media that we are seeing now? And do you think that these broader changes in the media landscape over the last two, three decades have somehow proved to be a major boon for conveying populist messages?
CF: Yes, I think it's very important, first of all, to say that social media didn't invent populism. It's very important to note that populism emerged in Latin America around radio and traditional media, that, as you say, quite paradoxically, for a long time, for example, people used to think, I mean, even in academic circles, that Britain was the great exception, and that it was completely immune to populism because it didn't have this kind of populist party. But what was interesting is actually the kind of populist tropes were alive and well in the tabloid press a long time before we saw the emergence of UKIP and then Farage and the kind of the fluorescing of the madness of Brexit. Where I would say that social media makes a difference is that it contributes to the fragmentation of society by allowing people to live in their own little bubbles. So, it does make a fundamental change. But it's absolutely right to point to traditional media as having played a major role. You referenced, of course, Berlusconi and his media empire, the fact that he owned Mediaset gave him incredible power in Italy. And he owned a football team. I mean, in a sense, you're cornering a particular market at this point in Italy. You've got a hand on a lot of levers of power and fantasy. So, I think that that's very important.
It's also very important in the case of what we've seen develop in France, the fact that in a country where the state is still relatively powerful and media still was regulated until very recently, that actually you've got media ownership by certain groups and certain individuals that have managed to create political options like Éric Zemmour. Éric Zemmour is is the political creation of a particular television and a particular set of television programs. This guy was given several hours every day for years. And then, of course, the case of Britain also takes it even into a different kind of stratosphere because in the case of Italy and France, it was the people who owned this media are actually French and Italian. In the British case, it's even more extraordinary. It's owned by essentially somebody who has no skin in the game. It's the Murdoch press. So, I think it is very important. The power of traditional media fashioned early populism, very much so. And then I think the power of populism and the power of the populist rhetoric was then enhanced by social media.
SR: To go back to the title of your book, "Populocracy," a portmanteau word of populism and democracy, the title signals that the potential for populism is inherent in democracy. And not only in new emerging democracies, which are yet not fully established, but also in rich, advanced democracies. Not only are these not immune to the threat of populism, but in fact you seem to suggest that populism may thrive in these well-established democracies. The four countries which you look at in the book, four European countries, are all liberal policies with large-scale systems of social protection, all of them technologically advanced. And yet, as you say in your book, they all seem busy dismantling their own success. So in a way, they allow us to explore the relationship between what you call democracy and its dark shadow. I'd be interested to hear about what you think has been the evolution of populism in all these four cases. Since you wrote the book five years ago, Berlusconi is dead. Salvini in Italy has been almost completely marginalized. Meloni has become one of the most successful Italian prime ministers in decades. And in Netherlands, Wilders has surprisingly won the election. And in France, there is a formidable challenge that Marine Le Pen now presents to Macron. So could you elaborate on the trajectory of populism, old, new, and latest, if you like?
CF: So, I suppose that one of the things that's important to say in echo to some of what was in your question is that I think that we have a difficult time combating populism because it is not fundamentally anti-democratic. And this is why it's such a difficult opponent. It's very hard to say that a not what I would call an ideology that wants to follow the will of the majority is non-democratic. But, of course, it's the worst kind of democracy. It's an oppressive, majoritarian democracy, and particularly in advanced democracies that are often diverse democracies, this is the kind of democratic development that is most unfair and most unconducive, actually, to some kind of serene democracy. It's important to note, though, that it is a difficult foe because it's not necessarily easy to depict it as anti-democratic. I think it's also important to note that probably, it does even better in established democracies than elsewhere.
First of all, I think that there has to be some form of democratic eclosion, if you like, for populism to exist because populism thrives on broken promises. And so, you have to have some kind of democratic promise, I think, for populist movements to thrive. But I also think it does particularly well in established democracies because over time, and this addresses part of your question on the evolution, over time, advanced democracies become technocratic democracies. And actually, they often become pluralistic, diverse systems, and they become technocratic systems.
And I think that these are the categories against which populism is most against. It's against pluralism and it's against technocracy because I think that over time, the various leaders and parties that I would put in the populism camp have become very good at arguing that technocratic politics are bloodless politics, that they are emotionless politics, that they don't allow people to express what they really feel. So, this idea that, "I don't like the opposition of the head and the heart, I prefer the opposition of the head and the gut." But that's what populists would argue, that technocracy are the politics of the head, and they don't cater to people's fundamental needs of belonging, of connection, of a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves, and also to the idea of common sense, which is where the gut comes in. This sense that underneath all populist discourse, there is this notion that if you're one of us, you should know what's wrong or right without having to think about it. You should be able to bypass your brain and go for the gut.
So, I think that in the four cases that I cover in the book, and I hasten to add that there's going to be another book with more cases, and particularly the United States, first of all, what's interesting is that one of the arguments that I make is that Salvini is lower than he was, Berlusconi is dead, but actually in all of the countries that I cover in the book, in one way or another, populism is not just alive and well, it's doing better than ever. And that seems to me to be a fundamental piece of data because for a long time, populism was reduced to being about personalities, a strong man, a type of leader. So, it was either a communication style or a leadership style and so on and so forth.
And I'm not saying that that doesn't play a role. Of course, it plays a role. But the fact is that we no longer see these parties or this political option disappear. Someone, if it's not Berlusconi, it'll be Salvini. If it's not Salvini, it'll be Meloni. So, the point is that populism is no longer dependent on specific personalities. And this means that unfortunately, I think it proves my point that over time, it has developed into an ideological proposition that is more robust. It's not just about protest votes, it's not just about personalities. It's unfortunately become a viable political option because of the nature of the democracies that we live in.
SR: But there's another paradox here between populists who are all talking about the real people and the real people defined in terms of an ethno-nationalist understanding of who the real people inhabiting a territory, a nation-state are. And yet, populist leaders seem to be so much better than others at forging cross-border transnational alliances all across Europe. Since we are having this conversation on the eve of the European parliamentary elections, could you say something about how they have managed to forge strong ties across nation-state borders in Europe? We heard yesterday, for example, that these ties may not be as strong as we thought because the French right-wing wants now to distance itself from the AfD in Germany, who they now think are too close to the Nazis for French tastes.
CF: It's good to know they have a red line when it comes to Nazis. No, I think there are a couple of things here. One is that in many of these countries, like in France, the Rassemblement National with Marine Le Pen, they have her bid for power is in part that she is not her father and that she runs a mainstream party. And I don't think it's pushing the boat too far out by saying that really what she wants to be is perceived as just a nationalist conservative option. She wants to remake the French right around her own values. And let me say in parenthesis that the French mainstream right is actually outdoing itself in aping for the Rassemblement National. So, I think that for a number of these parties like Marine Le Pen's party, for example, there is a sense in which they've spent too much time mainstreaming to be associated with something like the AfD.
But I also think that what's important here is that I'm not sure that this great populist international runs very deep. It's not just about the fact that Marine Le Pen has distanced herself. And I might add, Salvini has also added that he was distancing himself from the AfD. A few days after their big jamboree in Madrid, the tiles are coming loose on all of this. But I think that what we need to keep in mind is that these parties, they are nationalist, they are sovereignist. So, cooperation amongst each other for a great international of anything isn't going to come easy. And for a long time, I think many observers, and potentially myself included, I would say, we thought that they would have such a difficult time really collaborating with one another that certainly at the European Parliament level, they would never get their act together. Their groups would constantly be breaking up.
In the run-up to this election, it started looking as though as you were saying. They were making huge efforts to get along. I think that these efforts aren't going to be completely conclusive. I think we should expect huge fluidity in the European Parliament after the elections. The fact that they are right now in two separate groups that have been kind of not warring factions, but they've stood for different things. ECR has stood for Euroscepticism but changing Europe from the inside. Identity and democracy has stood for a much stronger kind of almost Europhobia and rejection of European institutions. But now, we see that actually the lines are being scrambled. And one of the things that's scrambling these lines, I think, is both the presence of Orbán, who used to be part of the center right EPP, and now is hesitating which group he'll join and which group Fidesz will join after the elections. And the other is, of course, that they don't see eye to eye on Russia and Ukraine. So, we've got somebody like Meloni, who's firmly on the side of Ukraine, at least for now. Let's see what happens if Trump were to get elected. And then you have people like Marine Le Pen who disagree with that.
So, I think it's going to be a moving picture. But I would conclude on one thing. These parties are much closer than they used to be to the center-right. And the center-right has moved toward them, and they have moved to the center-right, although I would argue it's the center-right that has shifted further right. And this means that the results of the European elections, even though we're not going to see a tidal wave in favor of the European far-right or populist parties, the fact is that we will see a shift at the European Parliament level, where we will have probably more alliances, more ad hoc moments of understanding across this whole right.
And let's face it, I think that we need to be aware of the fact that Europe is going in a conservative nationalist direction in some ways. We see this around the stance toward immigration and some of the more outlandish proposals that some of the leaders are making, the fact that von der Leyen is signaling that she would be willing to work with some of this. I'm hoping these are campaign tactics, and she doesn't really mean it. But I think that this is where we're headed. And I also think this is where we're headed because a number of national elections are going to bring to bear some leaders in the European Council, never mind the European Parliament, where the right will be much more robust, whether it's Wilders's government or the elections that are going to take place in Austria. We are going to find ourselves with European institutions, I think, at every level, tilting more to the right, more toward conservatism, in part because of the far right and the populist right, but also in part because of the center-right.
SR: We've talked about European alliances so far, but let’s turn to the strong transatlantic alliance, which could prove to be an important one with the possibility of Trump winning the White House again and the support of right-wing Republicans and Trump himself, for a lot of right-wing populist European leaders, including Orbán in Hungary. But there's also a lot of Russian money at play here in supporting a lot of the rise of the far-right parties across Europe. So, it's not just about a network of ideological transfers, but also of money, resources being pooled, a toolkit from which populist leaders across the globe are borrowing from one another. what would be the best way in your view to counter such an alliance, both on a national European, but also on a transnational scale?
CF: These questions always have a two-part answer. Part of the answer is what we alluded to before, which is that it's about slowly changing the context in which people are making their political choices, restoring trust, becoming more comfortable with complexity, etc. But then there is, I think, what can be done, which is on a practical level in terms of, for example, controlling this money, in terms of actually regulating social media much better than we have so far. I think that in terms of reining in those networks that are, as you say, networks of money, networks of media, a kind of mimicry from one country to the next, I think there are practical steps that really need to be taken. But also, I think that there is a naivety that we need to let go of.
I would argue that we, I put myself in this as well, but certainly, our policymakers twigged far too late in terms of the uses of social media, the disinformation, misinformation. I think we were too tolerant too long, partly because we were too naive. I have to say that in that respect, there are really not very many silver linings to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. But I think that to some extent the scales fell from a number of eyes in terms of the kinds of measures that need to be taken vis-a-vis Russian misinformation and disinformation. And I think that we're probably going to be a little bit more vigilant. And I think both European institutions, but also national institutions are slowly giving themselves the power to be a bit more effective in countering these networks that can and should be dismantled.
SR: An important point that you just made is about liberalism's inability, or should we say, its inherent weakness in dealing with its opponents. One characteristics of liberalism is that it allows all kinds of opposition to voice itself in the public sphere, as part of political culture of open societies. Once illiberal ideas and authoritarian leaders come to power making use of this tolerance displayed by their liberal opponents, they obviously don’t extend the same tolerance for plurality, for dissent to their political opponents, whom they treat instead as their enemies. So here we are confronted with a real problem in a way that liberalism is handicapped in defending itself against its own enemies’ using liberal means.
CF: And it's in part, I think, because liberalism treats everyone, even when you disagree with them, you treat them as an opponent. But an opponent, therefore, someone who's playing by the same rules as you. Whereas actually, what populists have taught us is that in their worldview, somebody who disagrees with you is not your opponent, it's your enemy. And therefore, all is fair in love and war. It's taken us far too long to realize that they don't play by the same rules. And in fact, it's what I call the jujitsu move in my book. They've used very much our political liberal culture of tolerance against us. We now need to be able to reverse the move. How do we use social media? How do we use immediacy, transparency in ways that grow trust in the system as opposed to undermine trust in the system?
SR: Catherine, thank you so very much for this fascinating and wide-ranging conversation. And I can only hope that some of the countermeasures that you propose come into effect soon and prove to be effective.
CF: Thank you very much, Shalini. It was a pleasure.
SR: Catherine’s book, “Populocracy”, argues that populists have turned the ideal of authenticity in politics on its head. They use shameless lying as a signal of virtue, to foster a sense of belonging and understanding between themselves and the people. Populism may be gaining momentum due to the tension between our increasingly complex differentiated societies governed through an essentially technocratic logic and the dangerous illusion that everything should be instantly accessible and knowable for all. This is an illusion that’s promoted especially by new forms of digital media. The false promise of such an unmediated immediacy renders political institutions and policy routines suspicious. Populists easily exploit such suspicions or frustrations by offering instead a corrosive mix of false accessibility, transparency and a manipulative use of common sense. Populism is a peculiar form of oppressive, majoritarian democracy that provides however a primal sense of belonging. It thrives on the broken promises of technocratic policymaking and pluralist forms of representation, which also make it difficult to resist. It has outgrown the figure of the strong leader meanwhile and become a rather successful ideological template in many of our, or should we say most of our democracies by now. So in order to counter it what we need are more robust forms of citizen involvement, such as regular public deliberations, co-production of decisions with citizens and experts coming together. These are now becoming absolutely indispensable for any viable strategy to counter the lure of populist politics. The upcoming European parliamentary elections may well represent a litmus test while the nationalist and sovereigntist politics of populists in the EU may undermine their successful transnational cooperation. Catherine cautions us that the real success of populism lies in its ability to unite these days far right parties with the mainstream center right parties, at least in terms of many of their policies, especially their opposition to immigration. This overall right-wing turn casts a long shadow over the prospects of overdue measures of regulatory oversight and intervention, state intervention that are necessary for combating the transnational networks of ideas and of money that have contributed to the success of populist politics in Europe today. The strategic dilemma of liberal democracy in the face of this populist backlash is crystal clear: How can political liberals engage with their populist opponents who don’t recognize them as an opponents, but target them instead as enemies? Whether liberal democracies in Europe will be able to defend open pluralist societies against this right-wing onslaught will be clear in two weeks’ time, when we discuss the results of the elections to the European Parliament.
This was the tenth episode of season eight of Democracy in Question. Thank you for listening. Join us again for the nextepisode in a fortnight, when my guest will be Ivan Krastev, renowned political scientist and political analyst, the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and permanent fellow at the IWM in Vienna. I’ll discuss with Ivan and ask him to analyze the outcome of the European Parliamentary Elections 2024 as these will be decisive for the future of the EU.
Please go back to the episode you might have missed and, of course, let your friends know about the podcast if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the Central European University at www.ceu.edu and the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy in Geneva at www.graduateinstitute.ch/democracy.
[i] Fieschi, C. (2023). Populocracy: The tyranny of authenticity and the rise of populism Catherine Fieschi. Agenda Publishing.
[ii] https://democracy-in-question.simplecast.com/episodes/populism-and-democracys-critical-infrastructure-DQ2krC_h
[iii] https://democracy-in-question.simplecast.com/episodes/nadia-urbinati-on-the-resurgence-of-populism-its-history-and-its-various-forms-92TcpHw0