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Post U.S. Election: The Liberal Delusion

by Jan-Werner Müller

№ 18/2020 from Nov 10, 2020

Jan-Werner Müller

Plenty of voters are apparently willing to overlook authoritarian behavior because they prioritize their partisan commitments, or economic interests, over democracy as such.

I Voted Sticker

I Voted Sticker
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Election results often resemble Rorschach tests more than x-rays: we read into them what we knew all along. In an era that keeps being labelled “the age of populism,” pundits and politicians see Trump’s surprisingly strong showing as confirmation of the sheer power of right-wing populism in particular. Instead of the expected blue wave, we get what Nigel Farage, with characteristic modesty, once called the tsunami of populism. While it might not have been large enough to carry Trump back into the White House, it seems to remain a central force in twenty-first century politics. Yet that conclusion misunderstands how and why populist politicians succeed.  

 

Populists are not primarily characterized by anti-elitism. Rather, they claim that they, and only they, represent what they call “the real people” or also the “silent majority.” They condemn all political competitors as corrupt and, less obviously, insinuate that all those citizens who fail to support them do not properly belong to the polity at all. As Representative Jim Jordan, a Trump sycophant, tweeted a few weeks ago: “Americans love America. They don’t want their neighborhoods turning into San Francisco” -- as if the California city was home to a foreign enemy within the country (whose votes should also not really be counted).    

 

Populism is not just a matter of style; it’s a secondary phenomenon how Trump and figures like Indian prime minister Narendra Modi tweet or dress. It is also not really a question of economic policy. Rather, it is an exclusionary, anti-pluralist form of identity politics in which white Christians or Hindus are told that only they are the real people – and that they are under relentless attack by enemies, be it folks from “shithole countries” or Muslims.

 

We know such leaders to be anti-pluralists because they tell us in their speeches. The mistake is to infer that everyone who votes for them is also anti-pluralist, or even pays particular attention to what, after all, is only ever one part of a larger political package.

 

It is not a mystery that even members of the minorities attacked by populist rhetoric might sometimes vote for populists, as apparently just happened with an increase of African Americans and Latinos opting for Trump. If what political scientists politely call “low-information voters” can be convinced that Trump is a business genius who will revive the post-pandemic economy, or that Biden has a soft spot for Cuba, it does not necessarily matter what Trump said years ago about white supremacists in Charlottesville.

 

Apart from this pedantic reminder that different citizens vote for different reasons, there is the less obvious – and truly troubling – fact that plenty of voters are apparently willing to overlook authoritarian behavior because they prioritize their partisan commitments, or economic interests, over democracy as such.

 

Populists are extremely clever at polarizing societies such that a significant number of citizens feel every election is an apocalyptic showdown between us and them. This is not enough to give populists majorities – but it crucially helps, when right-wing populists also attract traditional financial and business elites who are willing to overlook authoritarian conduct in exchange for deregulation or lower taxes. After all, nowhere in Western Europe or North America have right-wing populists come to power without the collaboration of established conservative elites.

 

Trump was not the cause, but the symptom of a larger trend among the GOP to adopt “plutocratic populism": policies that mostly benefit the one per cent in combination with relentless culture war which distracts from economic ideas which most Americans do not find particularly attractive.

This combination of bigotry and big business is also behind the success of the BJP in India and of self-declared “plebeians” like Viktor Orbán who talks the talk of resisting neoliberal globalization, but de facto rolls out the red carpet for all kinds of German industries.

Liberals like to think that they comprehend complexity, while populists seduce the masses with simplistic solutions. Yet liberals have also lapped up tweet-length explanations of supposedly uniform global trends, as it makes the world so much easier.

Trump’s triumphs set them on a search for the most real of all real Americans in some Midwestern diner; now, they are likely to fall for Trump’s boast that the Republicans have become the party of the “American worker” (who is indeed being stiffed – but, above all, by Trump and his party).

 

Liberals forgot that successful movements are not based on a monolithic political identity. Trumpism has always been different things to different people. Hence one also cannot just subtract Trump form Trumpism: American conservatives might be hailing the latter as “socially conservative, multi-ethnic economic populism” (a kind of red Toryism for the US of A) minus a norm-breaking reality TV star. But they forget that Trumps’ antics appealed to folks with anti-establishment attitudes; a smooth demagogue of the Tom Cotton-type will not necessarily have the same following.

      

Jan-Werner Müller is Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences

Professor of Politics

Princeton University