WEBVTT - What Is Populism? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.440 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:11.480 brain Stuff, Lauren Bogobam here. For years now, populists have 0:00:11.560 --> 0:00:15.000 been popping up all over the globe, from India and 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.360 Europe to the Philippines in South America, and of course 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:22.880 into the United States. Politicians with populist leanings and those 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:25.439 who have gone full fledged populist in their quest for 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.840 power have been making a lot of noise and a 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:33.480 good deal of trouble. Think Marine Lapine in France, Victor 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:38.400 Orban in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, former Venezuelan 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:43.680 President Hugo Chavez, India's Prime Minister Nearndra Modi, and ys 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.120 by many people's definition, Donald Trump in the United States. 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:53.480 But what is a populist? What is populism? Answering that 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:57.279 is notoriously difficult. A part of the difficulty arises from 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:00.160 the fact that populists can come from all part of 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.760 the political spectrum. There are leftist populists around the world 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.720 who combine various forms of socialism with their populist message. 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:10.480 There are those on the right who push anti immigration 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:15.720 and anti lgbt Q plus platforms in their populism. Populism 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:20.319 in general refers to appealing to ordinary people as a 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:26.320 political ideology or approach. It involves emphasizing the wants, needs, voices, 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:30.560 and good qualities of the common people, and it usually 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:34.080 does so by contrasting this idea of the good common 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:39.680 people with the bad elite working against them. Best case scenario, 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:43.040 a populist leader would be honestly looking at the issues 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:46.919 that ordinary people face and helping create solutions for them, 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:51.240 thus making the will of the people law, and that 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:55.800 is what populist leaders tend to promise. Unfortunately, what tends 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:59.000 to happen, and what political scientists have observed in the 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:03.680 aforementioned play is, is these populist leaders bending the definitions 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:07.360 of both the common people and the elite in order 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:11.399 to gain power within a democratic system, and then undermining 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.079 the very fabric of that democracy in order to stay 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:17.280 in power, de emphasizing some of the crucial parts of 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:21.640 the democratic process, such as the articulation of varied interests 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:26.880 and the thoughtful mediation of those interests. It can be 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:31.000 incredibly effective for the leader and incredibly damaging for the 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:34.560 democracy that they're distorting, and for anyone who lives within 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:37.320 that democracy who isn't in the group that the leader 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:42.239 has defined as the common people. So worst case scenario, 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:46.760 populism redefines the common people as a group with narrow 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:53.480 interests and then insists that only their will matters. We 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:57.800 spoke with political scientists Anna Gujmala Bussa, a professor at 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:00.720 Stanford University and the director of the School Rules Global 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:05.280 Populisms Project, which published a white paper in March called 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:09.720 Global Populisms and their Challenges. It addresses the threats of 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:15.000 populism and identifies several possible solutions. According to the paper, 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.560 populism is growing across the globe because of the failure 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.080 of major political parties to address the thorny issues that 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:27.920 ordinary people face in today's world, immigration, economic inequality, and globalism, 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:31.920 just to name a few. This gives populist leaders a 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:33.960 sort of foot in the door to claim that not 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:37.440 only the elite members of those political parties are bad, 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:41.880 but that the whole system is bad. Populist leaders climbed 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:45.560 to prominence by dividing society, splitting it into two not 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:50.080 just separate but opposing factions, the people and the elite. 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:53.840 A University of Georgia political scientists by the name of cast. 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:56.400 Mood explained it this way in an article for Vice. 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:00.000 Quote the key distinction between the people and the elite 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:03.400 is not based on class or power, but on morality. 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:08.880 It is always the pure against the corrupt. But again, 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:13.080 the people is often an exclusive group. But to quote 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:18.040 the Stanford paper, populists redefine the people, often by excluding 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:23.320 vulnerable ethnic or religious minorities, immigrants, and marginalized economic groups. 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:29.800 The result is majority rule without minority rights. Once in power, 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.080 populist leaders attack not only the rights of individuals who 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:37.080 don't fit into the defined majority, but the very foundations 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:40.800 on which the country lies. That includes the papers authors 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:45.800 wrote quote, the takeover and taming of courts and oversight institutions, 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.480 and new laws that limit the freedom of the media 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:53.400 and civil society. We've seen this in the United States, 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.799 with Trump calling the press the enemy of the people, 0:04:56.200 --> 0:05:01.360 criticizing judges, resisting congressional oversight, claiming that elections are rigged, 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:05.040 flouting laws, and claiming that a deep state of bureaucratic 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:07.720 actors is out to get him to deny the will 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.600 of the people he represents. It happens with other populist 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:17.400 leaders all over the world. Gamala Busa explained the mindset, saying, 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:20.320 the opposition is the enemy of the people. Why would 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:22.839 you listen to them? The media is the swamp. Why 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:27.480 would you listen to them? Everything is fake, everything is suspect, 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.160 and no one is to be trusted except the populace. 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:36.400 And that populace, remember, does not include voices of the 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:41.240 population's minorities or anyone who disagrees with the labeled majority. 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:47.000 Gamala Busa said, this is not about making poor people wealthy. 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:50.200 This is not about punishing the elite and redistributing wealth. 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:54.479 There's almost nothing in the populist program that actually makes 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:58.640 everyday people's lives better. Populists don't do that. They simply don't. 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:01.360 It's not the people who have suffered the most who 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:04.680 support populist parties. It's really sort of the people who 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:08.799 fear dropping further down in societal prestige and economic status. 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:14.719 Populist leaders often don't spring from the working class roots 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:18.560 of what's thought of as being the people though. Consider 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:22.640 Trump is a self professed billionaire real estate investor. Brazilian 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:26.480 president Shaier Bosonar is a longtime congressman and military leader. 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.279 Francis Lepine is the daughter of a career right wing 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:33.880 politician the Philippines to Thirte spent decades as a mayor 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:37.880 and lawyer, and India's Muody came from humble beginnings, but 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:42.719 he's been in politics for more than forty years. Whatever 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.159 their origins, populist leaders are identifiable by their claim to 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:50.719 understand the people, by their US versus Them rhetoric, and 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:54.080 by their assertations that they alone are the answer to 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:58.840 the people's problems. They often speak in brash common of 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:03.320 the people talk to. Despite their often highbrow educations, they're 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:07.800 considered by many to be charismatic, and they damage democracies 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:11.800 in other not readily apparent ways by striking down or 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:15.600 radically altering what has become accepted over years of building 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:20.240 a society, things like healthy debate, respect for opponents, and 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:24.880 civil discourse. The illusion of telling it like it is 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.240 draws in those looking for a change or not wanting 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.520 to lose their grip on their place in society, but 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:36.280 the populist leaders popularity is not forever. Populists who rise 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:39.880 to power, the Stanford Project found often are punished more 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:42.680 heavily by voters in trying to hang onto their power 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:47.960 because they don't fulfill the promises they made. However, through 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.760 these tactics of dividing people into good and bad, by 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:56.240 chipping away at society's institutions, the courts, the media, the legislature, 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:00.720 and by weakening norms of healthy debate, fair elections, and 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:04.280 respect for one another, populists can hang on to power 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:08.640 and even become all powerful. The Stanford paper authors wrote, 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:13.200 the result is a gradual slide into authoritarianism, each step 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:16.800 justified by the need to better root out disloyal elements 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.920 and better serve the people read the partisan interests of 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:26.720 the incumbents. Populism, gamal Abusa said, doesn't help the people 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:32.480 it purports to serve. In the end, that's just politics. 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:37.559 She also noted that populism and populist politicians aren't all bad. 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:42.439 She said, I think populism in opposition of populists who 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:46.320 don't enter government, play incredibly powerful roles in sort of 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:50.160 shaking up the system, and above all, in reminding the 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:54.040 existing political parties and politicians that they shouldn't be complacent. 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:01.559 Today's episode it was written by John Donovan and produced 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:03.600 by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:06.480 other topics. Visit how stuffworks dot com. Green Stuff is 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:08.959 a production of iHeart Radio. Or more podcasts my heart 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:12.000 Radio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:13.320 you listen to your favorite shows.