Populist politics is based on a series of lies deliberately created and ruthlessly promoted by those who pursue this base form of campaigning. The steps can be relatively easily broken down. The story told is as follows:
1) The world is split between the people and those who oppress them.
2) Those who oppress the people are an elite.
3) The elite oppress the people with cunning plans.
4) Those cunning plans invariably mean that the people's hopes and aspirations are dashed because the elite promote the interests of groups who are not part of the people, with those other groups taking all the advantages that really belong to the people.
5) As a result people need saving from this elite.
6) Those other groups who the elite have favoured also need to be put in their place.
7) The populist politician can save the people from the elite, who need to be thrown out of power.
8) In the process they will give the other groups who have taken what belongs to the people a good seeing to.
9) They populists can do this by challenging the elite's cunning plan.
10) Whilst doing so they will remove the privileges of the group to whom the elite have given the rewards that belong to the people.
11) The populist politicians will now run the country for the people.
12) The populist politicians will repeat, time and again, that they are not now an elite although they by this point in time they exercise all the power that the elite they opposed once did.
13) In case the populists' plans do not work out as hoped they will create a new crisis that they will suggest the people need saving from.
14) They will also find a new group who threaten the interests of the people who are the cause of this new crisis.
15) They will come up with a plan to restore the right of the people by eliminating the threat to them from this new group.
16) Repeat stages 13 to 15 until people realise that the populists were the real problem and that all they ever wanted was to become an elite by displacing those who previously held power.
If in doubt about the truth of this fit Brexit into that story.
Then see Covid as a new crisis, with NHS staff as the group now considered to be favoured by the behaviour of an old elite.
You could of course also use the narratives favoured by Trump.
Fascist history provides other such narratives, of course.
This whole process is based on four things.
The first is powerful, fear-based narratives that are very unlikely to be related to the truth.
The second is a willingness to wholly unjustifiably victimise a group, or groups, in society.
The third is the willingness to tell a lie, usually related in very simple soundbites that are repeated often to a media willing to promote them.
Fourth, there must be a weariness with the counter-narratives that political opposites have to offer.
How does the process end? If it is to be peacefully, then the political counter-narrative has to be re-established. That is the task that this blog is engaged in.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
In addition the old adage applies:
It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled
Those that have read today the scale of the crisis in the NHS and other public services and the failure of government to respond with immediate and long term pledges of greatly enhanced resources will understand the poignancy of this article. We really are on the brink of a collapse of these services on which we all rely. Still there is more talk about saving Christmas than saving lives. Presumably, a populist believes that any crisis is a good crisis, in the sense that populism as a political strategy can always find a way to profit from one. In a country like present day England, one can see the argument. The problem as always is that what I firmly believe is a clear majority of anti-populists has no centre around which to gravitate, no leader. All movements require leadership and the advantage of the English populists is that they have one. As you commented, even at this moment of the most stupendous obvious, universal corruption and incompetence at all levels, one third of the good citizens of Shropshire voted Tory. There is a majority against this insanity but, as yet, not even a putative leader on the horizon.
“Two legs good, four legs bad”
The most important point is the last one. “How does the process end?” The biggest danger it doesn’t end because the populists have taken over the media, eradicated non government opposition such as the courts and ensured that the police and army leadership have been replaced by supporters.
This is happening now with concerted attacks on the BBC and Channel 4 and the attempt to politicise the appointment of judges. The danger is one day we wake up but it is too late. Many countries are in this position now and others are well on the road.
So I bang on about it whilst I can
And – to add balance maybe – both Left and Right behave like this at their extremes and use Fascist methods as confirmed by Tim Snyder and Avner Less (the Israeli who debriefed Adolf Eichmann) for example.
I agree with that
Ten years ago you published The Courageous State.
What we still need ten years on, is courageous politicians who will challenge these sorts of narratives. And not just the politicians.
It will have been a long wait…..
There are well financed organised international networks behind a lot of this – including Steve Baker and co
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/12/14/steve-bakers-conservative-rebellion-tied-to-pro-trump-disinformation-network-bankrolled-by-robert-mercer/?mc_cid=abe7fa3e3d
The list resonates very strongly with my Scottish partner and predates Brexit by many years
There is also corruption, starting at the top and percolating down through the hand-picked yesmen and then outwards to infect other organisations such as the civil service, and the media and even aspects of the police force.
[…] following has been reproduced from the Tax Research UK Blog as it outlines the process and no other explanation needed and I make no apology for republishing […]
And whilst the NHS steadily drowns under the load it is placed under, starved of resources, we have a billionaire chancellor fresh back from his trip to California where reputedly he was talking to the heads of US health care companies. That can be for only one reason. Selling the NHS to get that cost off the budget. And he talks of the unaffordability of future booster programmes, which undoubtedly will be required.
We have an elite in power right now – a nexus of Eton, Oxford, Goldman Sachs and the City, all linked to the wider network of far right funders and think tanks. That fantasy elite that people thought they were voting against – the BBC, liberal media, academia, scientists – in practice have little or no power. Persuading people that they were fooled is going to be tough though Shropshire might be a straw in the wind.
Hannah Arendt became very interested in the concept of evil as a result of covering Eichmann’s trial in Israel.
I think that she contended that Eichmann was just not able to think for himself, not able to have an honest conversation with himself about what he was actually doing. I think she called this phenomenon the ‘banality of evil’ – that this lack of questioning by essentially anyone not even doing something obviously evil or inhuman created a gap that enabled unspeakable acts to be committed.
This inability to think was created by the implanting of replacement narratives in German society over and over again by the Nazi party, that portrayed ( in this instance) Jews as a threat to the German people – economically, racially, legally as well as the nation’s security.
I see too many uncomfortable parallels with this Tory government in how they’ve handled the people in this country. And even Labour’s’ ‘For the many and not the few’ wasn’t that clever either and made me wince.
Creating false narratives is just mass distraction isn’t it? Throwing people of the scent, and so too full of hate to see what is really making them miserable.
Sometimes you know, I don’t think we’ve learnt a fucking thing about anything given all the suffering the human race has under is belt.
Well said
PSR
“ Creating false narratives is just mass distraction isn’t it?”
As many a independent journalists around the world have pointed out about false narratives – they are not completely false. There is always ‘truth’ which is then elaborated with ‘untruth’ to create the narrative and nudge required. Much that happens here is part of a grander ambitions.
The best example before the Covid avoidable crisis was of course Brexit. Which wouldn’t have happened without the Austerity of the 2010 coalition.