What do Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and Jeremy Corbyn all have in common? Despite their differences, each leader, at some point in their lives, has been labeled a populist. We’re told that populism is on the rise in Europe, with the emergence of Italy’s Five Star Movement, Greece’s Golden Dawn party, and the rise of Hungary’s Fidesz party, whom we talked about in Episode 3.

But I’ve often found myself confused when listening to my peers talk about populism. Because, confession time, I’ve never really understood it as a concept. Is populism something I need to fear? Embrace? Should I be voting for the populist candidate on my ballet?

The answers to these questions, like always, are not exactly black and white.

So, why are we seeing a rise in p opulist parties in Europe? What, if anything, does the migration crisis have to do with this movement?  And what exactly is a populist? Today, we will be using the United Kingdom, and the rise of populism there, as our case study, to answer these questions.

In political science, populism is the concept that society is separated into two groups, ‘the people’ and the ‘corrupt elite.’

“The populist radical right combines three different features, and those together constitute the core ideology of this group of parties.”

That’s Professor Cas Mudde, the author of “Populism: A Very Short Introduction,” and “The Far Right America.” I was lucky enough to hear him speak in Hungary at Central European University, where he presented a talk titled, “From the Margins to the Mainstream: The Transformation of the Radical Right.”

So, according to Professor Mudde, populist radical right groups have three key characteristics:

“The first is nativism… simply stated, nativism is a combination of xenophobia and nationalism, it wants a monocultural state. It’s best captured by the infamous German slogan ‘Deutschland für die Deutschen. Ausländer Raus’, ‘Germany for the German, foreigners out.’ That is the core of nativism. It’s based on a fear of aliens, of non-natives, but the alien is not only a person, it is also values, but it is also a fear of alien values.

The second part is authoritarianism. Where order is the prime responsibility of the state, chaos is the worst, and it is the natural state of humankind and states should be draconian, have stringent laws and enforce them very strictly.

Finally, we have the p-word, populism. Populism I define, also in ideological terms, when society is constituted of two groups which are homogenous, antagonistic, the pure people vs. the corrupt elite, and where politics should be in line with what they think is the general rule of the people”.

Now, in this talk, Professor Mudde was describing the radical right, not populism as a whole. Populist parties can be found anywhere on the political spectrum. Bernie Sanders, a US Democratic nominee hopeful back in 2016, has been labeled a populist. But today, most successful populist politicians are found on the right, particularly the radical right, according to Professor Mudde (Molloy 2018).

But, in general, populists claim to speak for “the masses.” They seek to appeal to ordinary people who feel like their concerns have been ignored by the “elite.” The elite, as they are so called, comprise of the political, economic and media establishment, and they are accused by populists of placing their interests above the interests of the people they govern.

Now, all of this sounds pretty good to me. As a voting citizen of my country, I like the idea of electing someone who is looking out for my interests. Someone, who, instead of listening to big banks and big corporations, listens to my needs and puts me first. Someone who is there to serve me.

So where exactly does the issue with populism lie?

On June 23rd, populism reached a peak in the UK when British civilians defied expectations by voting to leave the European Union.

Despite an impressive line-up of political heads and authority figures informing the public that Brexit would be an unprecedented disaster, a majority of those voting decided to defy the warnings of their politicians and vote to leave.

Even before the controversial Brexit vote, Populism has manifested itself in many of the UK’s leading political parties. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has vowed to stand up for “ordinary working people” in a system rigged for the rich. Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to carry out “the will of the people” in her showdown with the European Union (Barnett 2017).

And this movement isn’t exclusive to political parties. The UK has seen a surge in the formation of populist activist groups, one such group being the English Defence League, and this is the group I would like to focus on today.

The English Defence League, or EDL, is a self-described street movement for the English working class. Founded in 2009, the EDL has been characterized as a populist group due to its claim to represent the ordinary people against liberal elites whom they accuse of controlling the country (Bartlett & Littler 2011).

In footage of protests, the EDL can be seen to be made up of primarily young white men. Despite this, the formal makeup of the group remains itself a bit of a mystery. This is largely because the EDL has no formal joining procedure or membership (Bartlett & Littler 2011, 3).

To understand the English Defence League’s politics, I sat down with the EDL’s Mission Summary, which is readily available on their website. The document comprises six key points, each of which it goes into detail to explain. Reflected in the EDL’s Mission Summary are a number of common populist views.

Section 5 reads as such:

The English Defence League reflects English tradition:
We are proud of England’s culture
We expect migrants in the UK to live in harmony with England
We refuse to tolerate the intolerant
We support our armed forces

But the EDL’s Mission Summary doesn’t just reflect general populist ideas. One of the main rallying points of the EDL is its distaste of Islam, and of multiculturalism.

Second 1 reads: The EDL has risen from the English working class to act, lead, and inspire the struggle against global Islamification.

Scattered throughout the Mission Summary are similar references to sharia law, Islam, and Muslims.

Section 3 includes the statements: “we stand for English cultural norms by opposing sharia” and “we oppose the Islamic distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims.”

Now, it’s all well and good to read the written statements of a group online, but I knew that I wasn’t getting a full understanding of the EDL movement. According to a report written by Jamie Bartlett and Mark Littler titled, “Inside the EDL: Populist Politics in a Digital Age.” “While leaders of the EDL claim they are a pluralistic, liberal movement, chants heard at demonstrations, and the vitriol frequently posted on EDL chat forums suggest otherwise” (Bartlett & Littler 2011, 3). I realized the only way I could really get my head around the whole thing was to talk to EDL directly.

But when the EDL stopped replying to my emails, I found myself at a loss as to how to contact them.

“So I’m walking from Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square now.”

And that’s how I ended up at an EDL rally, first in Manchester, and then in London.

So, for a bit of background, the co-founder of the English Defence League is an activist named Tommy Robinson. On March 25th of this year, Robinson was arrested for live streaming outside of Leeds Crown Court, during a trial on in which reporting restrictions had been ordered by the judge.

The jailing of Robinson drew condemnation from right-wing circles and was the catalyst for a march I wound up in at London on June 9th. But the protest was about much more than just freeing Tommy Robinson. I ran into two lovely men during the march who were more than happy to chat.

“We are the sovereign people under God. There is God, then the people, then the government. But over the years, the government have taken over, they think they are above the people, but they  are not.

The government is corrupt, right. Police are corrupt, we want them all out.”

So again, we’re hearing this populist rhetoric of distrust in the government and distrust in our leaders. David Marquand describes populism, not as a doctrine, or an ideology, but rather as a disposition, a mood and a set of attitudes (Marquand 2017). And if I learned anything from attending the FDL rallies, it’s that people are frustrated. Frustrated at the system, frustrated at the people, frustrated at the government.

The EDL supporters I talked to reflected what Bartlett and Littler describe as “a lack of confidence in the legal and justice system … and a pessimistic outlook about the future” (Bartlett & Littler 2011, 6).  

All of these aspects came across in the speeches and rallying cries I heard at the rally I attended in Manchester.

“We are also here to protect the vulnerable and the weak. They’ve let each and every one of us down. Shame, shame shame on you…”.

According to Dr. Mudde, populism has been around for the last 25-30 years. But recently, he explains, there has been an acceleration.

“Established parties are increasingly adopting radical right ideological positions.

We’re not living in a radical right world, we’re living in a world where being radical right is not necessarily a bad thing.

The radical right has transformed from a marginal force from the outskirts to a more mainstream force in parts of Europe.”

According to a study conducted by the European Policy Information Center, around one-fifth of European voters, or 55.8 million people, now vote for left or right-wing populist parties (European Policy Information Center 2017, 1).

So why are we seeing a rise in populist parties?

Experts point to both societal changes like multiculturalism and globalism as key reasons. Globalization, took the world by storm, creating a new landscape, characterized by a loss of national sovereignty, open borders, financial deregulation, and the displacement of jobs by outsourcing or technology. According to Italy’s former Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti, “Globalization could not be stopped, but it happened too quickly. There has never been so much social change in a twenty-year period. Now we are looking at the results.” (Clark 2018).

This is where I think migration comes in. The freedom to move is a byproduct of globalization. And with the freedom, or ability to move, comes the idea of mixing cultures, the breaking down of our idea of borders and the intertwining of religion and customs. Your identity is based so much on where you live and who you surround yourself by so it can be pretty terrifying when migration calls this all into question.

American historian Richard Hofstadter described populism in 1960 as “the paranoid style of politics.” People fear change, and the idea of a migration crisis provokes strong emotions and is extremely polarizing. And as a result, populists politicians, who hope to play on this fear, have framed the migration crisis as a threat to European values and European security.

All of this talk about migration seems to have dragged us way off course from our original definition of populism. In its original form, populism is an ideology that argues that politics should be an expression of the general rule of the people. So this is where I think migration slots into populist rhetoric.

Populism is the fundamental idea of an “us” and “them” culture. “Us,” the people, and “them,” the elite. But somewhere along the way, those who are different from the mass “us,” those who don’t look like us, don’t share our religious or cultural values, became lumped in with what we define as “them.”

In the rally at Manchester, I passed a man with a shirt that said infidel, written in both English and Arabic. When I asked him why it was written in both languages, he said, “so that they can read it too.” And I think this truly encapsulates the us and them culture populism thrives on. Is it any wonder that the leading chant at the rally in Manchester was “whose streets, our streets.”

“We’ve had enough. We’ve had enough. This is our country.

I want you to look around you. This is your new family. These are the people who are going to look after your children”.

The problem is, and here is where I would like to leave off, I think liberals are a part of the problem too. There is a growing concern with how liberals sometimes respond to populist leaders and parties. When I hear right-wing populist rhetoric from leaders like Donald Trump, my instinct is to encourage non-cooperation with him, to not even read his policy demands and to refuse to listen to what he says. But this is problematic.

As Müller explains in their book “What is Populism,” “I have insisted that the problem with populists is that they exclude. So what do we do in return, exclude them” (Müller 2017, 82-83). Populist see themselves as ignored and exploited by those who are supposed to represent them.

So what is the alternative approach? Müller suggests that we seek to bring in those currently excluded (Müller 2017, 99). But this is often hard, for both liberals and conservatives, populist or not. But I think we have to try. Because the consequences of not doing so, bear heavily on the very migrants seeking our help.

Bibliography

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Barnett, Adam. “Only Winner of Britain’s Election Will Be Populism.” POLITICO. May 22, 2017. Accessed August 04, 2018. https://www.politico.eu/article/only-winner-of-british-general-election-2017-is-populism-theresa-may-jeremy-corbyn/.

Bartlett, Jamie; Littler, Mark. “Inside the EDL: Populist Politics in a Digital Age” Demos. November 2011

Clark, Jennifer. “Populism in Europe Is Thriving. Get Ready for a New Normal.” NBCNews.com. March 12, 2018. Accessed August 02, 2018. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/populism-europe-thriving-west-should-prepare-itself-new-normal-ncna855396.

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