How To Fight Populism

How do you fight populism?

Populism is brew­ing in many Western demo­cra­cies. According to FT Magazine colum­nist Gillian Tett, we haven’t reached peak pop­u­lism yet. 

I’m wor­ried; pop­u­lism gone rogue rarely ends well.

Is there a way to fight back?
Or is it too late?

Here goes:

What is Populism?

Populism is a polit­ic­al ideo­logy and approach that seeks to rep­res­ent and cater to the interests and con­cerns of ordin­ary people, often emphas­iz­ing the divide between the “com­mon folk” and the “élite” or “estab­lish­ment.”

Populism typ­ic­ally arises from a per­cep­tion that the exist­ing polit­ic­al and social sys­tems are unre­spons­ive or unfair to the needs of the major­ity. Populist lead­ers and move­ments across the polit­ic­al spec­trum, from left-wing to right-wing, often employ emotive rhet­or­ic to gal­van­ize pub­lic support. 

While pop­u­lism can give a voice to mar­gin­al­ized groups and drive neces­sary reforms, it can over­sim­pli­fy com­plex issues and, in some cases, lead to the erosion of demo­crat­ic insti­tu­tions and values.

Group psy­cho­logy mixed with aggres­sion, scape­goat­ing, and fear-mon­ger­ing can res­ult in a dan­ger­ous soci­et­al cocktail. 

The Amplification Hypothesis

Populistic sup­port­ers often com­prise people who used to enjoy a cul­tur­ally rel­ev­ant pos­i­tion in soci­ety but gradu­ally lost it. Trying to erad­ic­ate their claims with oppos­ing argu­ments could even have adverse effects:

Gasoline on the Fire: The Conversion Theory

Few things make pop­u­list sup­port­ers angri­er than being talked down to by up-and-com­ing minor­it­ies. To pop­u­list sup­port­ers, such oppos­i­tion is gas­ol­ine on their fire:

Fear, Social Media, and Cancel Culture

Social media plat­forms, which employ algorithms util­iz­ing iter­at­ive test­ing to boost audi­ence engage­ment, have recently been scru­tin­ised for allegedly pro­mot­ing con­tent that height­ens aggression. 

Critics argue that these algorithms, designed to keep users engaged and act­ive on the plat­forms, inad­vert­ently pri­or­it­ize mes­sages that pro­voke strong emo­tion­al responses, often incit­ing anger or hostility. 

This phe­nomen­on raises ques­tions about the role and respons­ib­il­ity of social media com­pan­ies in shap­ing pub­lic dis­course and the poten­tial con­sequences of an increas­ingly polar­ized online envir­on­ment for soci­ety at large. Populism plays right into basic media logic using social con­trol and fear. ⁸Media logic is a col­lec­tion of the­or­ies. An excel­lent place to start would be Media Logic, Social Control, and Fear by David L. Altheide.

As such, the amp­li­fic­a­tion hypo­thes­is, fueled by con­ver­sion the­ory and social media algorithms, is a strong argu­ment against can­cel culture:

In short: We can nev­er fight pop­u­lism by fight­ing pop­u­lists.
The only way is to remove that which fuels their anger.

Fear: Cause and Effect

Politicians with a pop­u­list­ic agenda are often blamed for incit­ing fear and anger in soci­ety. Still, fear and anger were already present in the pop­u­la­tion: oth­er­wise, it wouldn’t have been sus­cept­ible to pop­u­list pro­pa­ganda in the first place.

Misplaced pride and frus­tra­tion with­in a pop­u­la­tion is a fer­tile breed­ing ground for any­one will­ing to stand against the élite. Such actions will grant even one indi­vidu­al enough power to rad­ic­ally shift an entire polit­ic­al narrative. 

Populist sup­port­ers will read­ily invest their ener­gies in their cham­pi­ons to do as they please — if noth­ing else, to “stick it” to the establishment.

Here’s why:

Populism is not about mak­ing people angry. It’s about mak­ing people angri­er. At their core, pop­u­lists are angry about some­thing and blame oth­ers for their loss of sig­ni­fic­ance. ⁹See also Pew Research Institute’s 2018 report on pop­u­lism.

How To Stand Up To Populism

To mit­ig­ate the rise of pop­u­lism, we must address the con­cerns of those who feel mar­gin­al­ized or dis­pos­sessed by social reform, ensur­ing that they con­tin­ue to per­ceive them­selves as cul­tur­ally relevant:

Progressive politi­cians must take extra cau­tion in times of social change. Groups that have enjoyed influ­ence nev­er take kindly to los­ing power and significance.

PR Resource: Media Logic

Media Logic

Contrary to pop­u­lar belief, media logic is not one single the­ory. Instead, it’s a col­lec­tion of the­or­ies about how the medi­um and its con­text influ­ence medi­ated messages.

“The dom­in­ant pro­cesses, estab­lished routines, and stand­ard­ized formats which frame and shape the pro­duc­tion of mass-media con­tent, espe­cially its rep­res­ent­a­tion or con­struc­tion of real­ity, and its man­u­fac­ture of news. Media logic inter­sects with com­mer­cial logic and polit­ic­al logic — con­flu­ences asso­ci­ated with such phe­nom­ena as tabloid­iz­a­tion and the medi­at­iz­a­tion of polit­ics. Media logic exists wherever medi­ation exists. It con­trib­utes to the shap­ing of social order in mod­ern post-indus­tri­al cul­tures.“
Source: A Dictionary of Media and Communication

Media logic is a rhetorical/​critical approach to PR. The the­or­ies often describe how the media shapes minds and is used to estab­lish power structures.

“Media logic is defined as a form of com­mu­nic­a­tion, and the pro­cess through which media trans­mit and com­mu­nic­ate inform­a­tion. The logic and guidelines become taken for gran­ted, often insti­tu­tion­al­ized, and inform social inter­ac­tion. A basic prin­ciple is that media, inform­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies, and com­mu­nic­a­tion formats can affect events and social activ­it­ies.“
Source: Media Logic ¹⁰Altheide, D.L. (2016). Media Logic. In The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, G. Mazzoleni (Ed.).

For example, a nation­al news­pa­per should ideally pro­duce news reports from all parts of the coun­try — that’s how it should work. 

However, due to com­mer­cial imper­at­ives, new dis­tri­bu­tion mod­els, and changes in con­sumer beha­viours, the news­pa­per might lean towards pro­du­cing journ­al­ism closer to where the report­ers work, where most pay­ing read­ers live and rely more heav­ily on click-baiting.

“The pos­i­tion and size of art­icles on the front page is determ­ined by interest and import­ance, not con­tent. Unrelated reports […] are jux­ta­posed; time and space are des­troyed and the here and now are presen­ted as a single Gestalt. […] Such a format lends itself to sim­ul­tan­eity, not chro­no­logy or lin­eal­ity. Items abstrac­ted from a total situ­ation are not arranged in caus­al sequence, but presen­ted in asso­ci­ation, as raw exper­i­ence.“
Source: The New Languages (1956) ¹¹Carpenter, E. & McLuhan, M. (1956) The new lan­guages. Chicago Review. 10(1) pp. 46 – 52.

One way to illus­trate this dis­crep­ancy is to con­sider three cent­ral aspects of media; pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­bu­tion, and media use:

As tech­no­logy shifts to digit­al and news cycles become short­er, journ­al­ists might begin to favour news stor­ies that journ­al­ists can pro­duce faster and faster.

“[…] each com­mu­nic­a­tion chan­nel codi­fies real­ity dif­fer­ently and thereby influ­ences, to a sur­pris­ing degree, the con­tent of the mes­sage com­mu­nic­ated.”
Source: The New Languages (1956) ¹²Carpenter, E. & McLuhan, M. (1956) The new lan­guages. Chicago Review. 10(1) pp. 46 – 52.

Learn more: Media Logic is Dead, Long Live Media Logic

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PR Resource: Spiral of Silence

The Spiral of Silence

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s well-doc­u­mented the­ory on the spir­al of silence (1974) explains why the fear of isol­a­tion due to peer exclu­sion will pres­sure pub­lics to silence their opinions.

Rather than risk­ing social isol­a­tion, many choose silence over express­ing their genu­ine opinions.

“To the indi­vidu­al, not isol­at­ing him­self is more import­ant than his own judge­ment. […] This is the point where the indi­vidu­al is vul­ner­able; this is where social groups can pun­ish him for fail­ing to toe the line.”
— Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann

As the dom­in­ant coali­tion gets to stand unop­posed, they push the con­fines of what’s accept­able down a nar­row­er and nar­row­er fun­nel (see also the opin­ion cor­ridor).

“The smart way to keep people pass­ive and obed­i­ent is to strictly lim­it the spec­trum of accept­able opin­ion, but allow very lively debate with­in that spec­trum — even encour­age the more crit­ic­al and dis­sid­ent views. That gives people the sense that there’s free think­ing going on, while all the time the pre­sup­pos­i­tions of the sys­tem are being rein­forced by the lim­its put on the range of the debate.”
— Noam Chomsky

Read also: The Spiral of Silence

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